Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (37 page)

She reached out and rubbed his cheek. “You will have time to get bristly.” She giggled, and he blushed, while blinking his eyes dry.

“All this time-travel stuff doesn’t really faze you at all, does it?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing.” He placed the book on the nightstand and stood up. “Are you going to go to sleep now?”

She shook her head. “Mar-ree said she would come say good-night to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were waiting for Mara earlier?”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“I’ll go get her, but I think you’re just using technicalities to drag this out, so you don’t have to go to sleep. I bet your old man doesn’t let you get away with this when he has a beard.” He left the room and headed down the stairs.

Behind him, Hannah called, “Do too! And I’m not dragging it out, I’m just not sleepy!”

Diana stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at Sam, shaking her head as he descended. “You are a complete pushover. Why is she still awake?”

He squeezed past his mother and stepped toward the kitchen. “What am I supposed to do, spank her? She wants Mara to come up and say good-night. Apparently promises were made that I was not made aware of until the last minute.”

Diana pointed through the living room toward the front of the house. “She’s not in there. I believe she’s on the front porch standing guard, waiting to see if the dragon shows up.”

Sam spun on a heel and reversed course in the kitchen doorway. As he walked past the stairs into the living room, he said, “Of course she is, always looking for the brighter side of life.” He snagged a jacket from the coat tree, opened the front door and stepped onto the front porch, where he found Mara huddled on the steps, looking up into the dark sky. When the cold air hit him, he stomped back and forth in place, as he slipped on the jacket. “Sheesh, it’s cold out here. Any signs of Ping up in the sky?”

“Not so far,” Mara said without looking back at him.

“Hannah says you owe her a good-night, and she refuses to sleep until she collects. If you like, I can keep an eye on things out here, until you get back,” he said.

“Oh, right. I wanted to ask her something, before she went to bed,” Mara said, as she stood up. “I don’t think there is much point in hanging around out here. It doesn’t look like the dragon will be making an appearance tonight.”

“You’re probably right. It only went after Mom that one time. There were a few other times it manifested itself, and it just circled around Mount Hood and stuff. For all we know, Ping might be himself again and resting comfortably at home.”

Mara crossed the porch and opened the front door. “I tried to call him a few minutes ago, and there was no answer, so I’m not as optimistic as you.”

“Anyway it’s cold. So I think hanging out in the living room is smarter than being out here,” Sam said, following her inside.

“Don’t take off your jacket,” Diana said, standing in front of the fireplace. “I need you to run out back and bring in some wood. I’d like to start a little fire.”

Mara took off her jacket, hung it up and said, “It’s nice to have a boy around to do manual labor, isn’t it?” She headed directly for the stairs.

Sam followed on his way to the back door and said, “How do you know she was talking to me?”

As Mara ascended the stairs, she said over her shoulder, “You’re the only one who still has a jacket on. She must have been talking to you.”

After she got to the second floor, Mara stepped into her own bedroom and grabbed the demontoid from the center of her desk, where it sat next to the Chronicle of Continuity and the Chronicle of Creation—or, as she still thought of them—the stupid book of haikus from the future and the doodad that downed a jetliner a couple months ago. Tossing the crystal up into the air and catching it like a baseball, she walked down the hall to her mother’s room.

“Hey, munchkin. You hanging in there okay?” she asked, sitting on the side of the bed.

“Yep, my dad just finished reading me a story.” She pointed to the green crystal. “Hey, you’ve got the demon toad crystal.”

“Actually it’s
demontoid
, but
demon toad
does sound better. Have you seen this before?”

Hannah nodded. “It’s a green crystal. It’s your favorite. Nana gave it to you a long time ago.”

“I see. Well, today I was staring into this crystal, and guess what I saw?”

Hannah’s eyes widened, and she smiled. “I bet you saw me, huh?”

Mara was a little surprised. “How did you know that?”

“’Cause a green light shined all over me in the kitchen, and, for a minute, I could see lots of me in the green light.”

“Did that scare you?”

Hannah shook her head. “I wasn’t scared. I was just seeing all of myselves, like in a funhouse, and you were there, so I knew it was okay.”

“So you could see me sitting on the floor?”

She nodded again. “Then the light went away, and Nana freaked out a little.”

“Strange lights tend to freak out Nana, when she doesn’t know where they come from. But you don’t seem to have a problem with them, do you?” Mara paused and watched Hannah shrug off the experience. “Did you see anything else in the light?”

“Nope, just lots of me and one of you.”

A loud rumble and a blue flash drew Mara’s eye to the window across the room. She glanced over, expecting to see the night sky outside, but a blue light continued to flicker, seemingly from somewhere below the window in the backyard.

“That’s strange. I didn’t think we were going to get any rain tonight and certainly not any lightning. Wait, that doesn’t even look like lightning,” she said, standing up. She ran to the back window, and, just as she pulled back the curtain, Diana screamed from downstairs. “Mara! It’s got Sam! Hurry!”

Mara looked out the window. A large blue bubble filled the back lawn.

Mara dropped the curtain and ran for the door, but, when Hannah flung back her blankets and bounded from the bed, Mara stopped in the doorway, pointed toward the headboard and said, “No way. You stay right there in bed, so I know you’re safe. I don’t need to be worried about you running around, while all hell is breaking loose.”

Hannah crossed her arms and pouted. “But …”

“No buts, get back to bed. I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you,” Mara said, turning into the hall. She ducked into her room, grabbed the Chronicle and ran for the stairs. As she slipped the copper medallion into her back pocket, she wondered what good it would do to have it. After all, the bubble—the portal to the other realms—was already floating around in the backyard. What would a second Chronicle do? She wasn’t sure, but the first thing that came to mind when she saw the bubble was the Chronicle.

“Mara, you have got to hurry! He’s disappearing!” Diana screamed. Mara bounded down the stairs, ran through the kitchen, knocking over a chair next to the table with a hip and going out the back door without stopping.

Diana stood on the back porch, one hand over her mouth and the other pointing to a thin trail of iridescent mist sparkling in the glow of the translucent sphere. The bubble spanned their backyard and stood nearly as tall as their two-story house. Mara’s eyes widened when she realized the mist flowed from Sam, and his legs were gone. The rest of him was quickly disintegrating, seeping through the static shell of the bubble and disappearing into a large vertical rip-opening at its center.

“He’s slipping away! Do something!” Diana said.

Mara paused on the porch long enough to say, “Stay here.”

She ran over to Sam. Though most of his body remained visible, it was spreading apart as if he were losing cohesion at a molecular level. An unseen force was pulling him apart and sweeping him away. She waved a hand in front of his face, but his shocked expression looked through her.

Looking around for some way to stop what was happening, Mara could see the lines and nodes appearing and filling the interior of the sphere, but she did not see Abby anywhere. She had to be doing this. The bubble looked exactly the way it did when it had appeared in Stella Reese’s kitchen, with that odd opening at the center. It also had that smog—the remains of people abandoned between realms—polluting the blue light that comprised the bubble.

She approached the static periphery of the sphere and pressed her hands against it. The thrumming and smell of ozone brought back memories of the night on the Oregon City Bridge. Groaning with effort, she leaned into it, sending bolts of lightning streaking from her palms throughout the electrical barrier. It flashed and sputtered, spewed a cascade of sparks like a power line shorting out. The translucent wall flickered but reconstituted itself, before Mara could pass through.

“Mara!” Diana called from the porch.

She glared over her shoulder, about to say something caustic, but her mother looked horrified and pointed into the night sky. Before Mara could turn to see where her mother pointed, a blast of fire came out of the night somewhere above the transparent sphere. Flames poured down over the back wall of the house, igniting the siding and turning it black with a loud
whoosh
. Windows exploded and a high-pitched scream filled the air.

“Mar-ree!”

Black smoke poured off the house and rolled across the lawn toward Mara in a billowing wave that blotted out any light coming from the window. She could no longer see her mother and turned to run back to the porch.

“Mom! Are you hurt?” Mara yelled.

“I’m okay! The porch roof covered me. Stay here and help Sam. I’m running upstairs to get Hannah!” Diana yelled. Mara heard the back door rattle and then felt the ground vibrate—the trembling footfalls of the dragon. She suspected it had landed somewhere near the corner of the house, but it was camouflaged by smoke and flame. When roiling clouds parted, a dark silhouette loomed high above the ground; its red eyes glared down at her.

“I do not have time for this!” she screamed. Raising her arms above her head, she threw them forward and flung bolts of lightning from her palms directly at the dragon’s eyes. “Get out of here, or I swear your wings won’t be the only thing you lose this time.” She flung her arms forward again, sending more jags of electricity ricocheting through the haze.

A wall of wind bore down on her, driving the smoke into the grass. For a moment she could see the back of the house; now a wall of fire lapped at the roof two stories above. Looking upward, she saw the scaly tail of the dragon whip past the corner of the house as it ascended from sight beyond the light of the flames. Turning back toward the transparent sphere, Mara caught a glimpse of Sam. He was almost half gone.

She froze Time. Sam stopped melting away; smoke stopped pouring across the lawn, and flames stopped crawling up the back wall of the house. The sudden quiet was startling.

“You know you are only putting off the inevitable, dude. How long you think you can hold it, before you start to disappear yourself?” It was a man’s baritone with a lisp but a feminine lilt. Prado’s voice with Abby’s attitude.

Mara’s head turned toward the bubble. Stepping from the giant hole at the center, Abby smiled as best she could with half her face melted away. The burning house reflected in her eyes as she looked around, assessing her surroundings. The red and black irises shone, as if she found something amusing.

“It looks like you’ve got your hands full,” she said, then pointed to the trail of mist leading from Sam. “Why don’t you let me have this one? You can always find another brother somewhere else. What do you say?”

“What happened to you?” Mara asked.

Abby turned her scarred cheek toward Mara. “Oh, you mean this?” She grinned and waved a hand over it. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable with this.” Abby’s features shifted and smoothed. The damage was undone. Other than the strange eyes, it was the Abby who Mara knew.

“I wasn’t talking about your appearance. What are you hoping to accomplish with all this?” Mara held out her arms to the sphere. “Why are you taking these people against their wills and abandoning them between realms?”

Abby laughed. “Abandoning them? You make it sound so wanton and heartless. I mean them no harm. The fact that they are sacrificed for the greater good is incidental and quite necessary. After all, one incarnation is a small price to pay in the battle for a more perfect reality. Don’t you agree?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Abby smiled and nodded toward the dark contrails inside the sphere. “I know. Let’s just say, circumstances have forced me to improvise. Think of them as collateral damage. But don’t fret. I’m sure most of them are living out other mundane existences in other places. Their loss is inconsequential.”

“What makes you think that’s up to you? Who died and left you in charge?”

“Abby did. She died so I could be born.” Her gaze slowly followed the arc of the sphere and then settled on Mara. “Unlike these poor souls, you sacrificed all of her, all that she was or could be, to save yourself. You don’t seem to be losing any sleep over that or over those you have killed in your pursuit of what you think is correct. I’m no different than you.”

Mara slammed her fists against the edge of the bubble and screamed, “Why are you doing this?” Nothing happened. She looked down at her hands, and they were flickering.

Abby shook her head and said, “Tick-tock. Time’s running out.”

“What do you want from me?” Mara asked. “Leave my brother alone, and I’ll give it to you.”

“Unfortunately that’s not possible. In a way he provides safe passage for me into his realm. As you can see from my injuries, simply stepping into an unknown realm can be somewhat problematic, if you are not prepared for, say, something like an atmosphere that is too acidic for your complexion. Your little brother and his friends help me find safe harbors, as I prepare myself.”

“Prepare yourself for what?”

Abby’s eyes twinkled. “For battle.”

“Who are you preparing to battle?” Mara asked.

“You, of course. Only one of us can determine the course of events.”

Mara raised her arms, as if surrendering. “By all means, have at it. You determine the course of events—whatever the hell that means. Just leave Sam alone.”