Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) (33 page)

Another rattle at the garage door, this one louder, made her jump. She looked over at Ping, concerned. “What will you do if they get in here?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just go,” he said.

Mara reared back her arm, as if she needed to gather momentum, and thrust it through the blue static wall, grabbing the node floating between her and Ping. A shock of electricity shot up through her fingers and coursed through her body. Before it reached her eyes, she saw the edge of the translucent bubble peel away from the sphere of lines and nodes, turning itself inside out and engulfing her instead. It collapsed on her in an explosion of blue light. She felt herself being pulled down, plunging somehow in a free fall that turned her stomach and pressed against her chest. She felt movement, velocity, but no wind touched her skin. There was no sound, as if she tumbled through the vacuum of Space. All she could see was blinding blue light, and all she could feel was that node in her hand.

Her fingernails dug into it as if everything depended on maintaining that grip.

The blue light winked out with a static snap that sent a shock again down Mara’s arm. By the time her eyes adjusted, she found herself standing once again in the back of the shop, next to the office door and across from the garage doors. The Chronicle’s spin lost momentum and energy, and fell out of the air into her hand, a copper medallion once again. She turned to ask Ping what happened, but he was not here. For a second, she panicked, thinking that somehow she had inadvertently sent him into another realm.

But it was no longer dark here. Daylight streamed in from the front of the shop and from the small windows running along the top of the walls. She gazed around, disoriented.

The bicycle parts and tools were missing. Boxes were stacked up in a row where Bruce’s worktable had been seconds ago. Stepping around the boxes, Mara found a large tank of water with something clear and gelatinous swimming around in it. It looked alive.

Grabbing a plastic stick that hung off the side of the glass tank, Mara poked into the water, sending a yellow arc of electricity through the tank. A scream rose up out of the goo that made her think of a pterodactyl in a monster movie, sending a shiver up her spine.
What the hell?
She quickly replaced the prod and stepped away.

Vibrations along the wood flooring warned her that someone approached. From the other side of the boxes, the steps stopped and a familiar voice demanded, “Whoever you are, come out of there now, or I’ll let my chobodon loose to route you out.”

Mara paused for a second and looked around quickly.
A chobo-what?
There was nowhere to run. She took a deep breath and stepped from behind her hiding spot.

Standing before her was another Mara, holding something on the end of a leash that looked like a cross between a pig and an armadillo. The beast snarled and grunted, spattering drool on Mara’s jeans as it leaped forward, straining against the thin chain and chomping little tusks against a bit that traversed its mouth. Her counterpart gave the chain a hard yank, bent forward and stroked the pink-and-gray mottled armor that clung to the beast’s shoulders. Its ears twitched back and forth as it settled back on its haunches and growled.

Mara’s counterpart’s eyes widened with recognition. “You said you wouldn’t come back here. I did what you wanted. I gave you the reptiles and told you where to find the luminary. Now get out.”

She held up the hand that was not holding the leash next to her shoulder, palm up. In the air above, a tiny black puff of smoke appeared and spun and grew. Soon it blackened, became sooty, spitting off ash and flame. Collapsing in on itself as it continued to rotate, it glowed yellow, then orange, then red, growing more solid, a rotating molten ember the size of a tennis ball.

“Excuse me? Have we met before?” Mara said, eyeing the floating minimeteor spinning ominously above her counterpart’s hand.

“I said, get out. I’m going to give you until the count of three before I start burning holes into that pretty little face of yours. Use the door or use the copper doodad and jump in that big blue bubble you rode in on—I don’t care, just get out.” She hefted the fireball into the air.

Mara held out her hands. “I promise, I have never been here before. This is the first time I have ever used this thing to go into another realm.”

“One . . .”

Mara held up the Chronicle. “I got this from another girl who looks like us. She crossed over on an airplane and caused it to crash. And a bunch of people from other realms crossed over too.”

“Two . . .”

“One of them came from here, from this world, but he died and turned into this black mist that is spreading like a virus, possessing people and—”

“Three . . .” Mara’s twin wound up like a baseball pitcher and flung her arm forward, catapulting the fireball toward Mara’s head.

Mara held her hands before her, instinctively ducking at the same time. The fireball froze halfway between them, suspended in midair, a stream of glowing ash and smoke trailing behind it like a tail on a comet.

The counterpart raised her palm again. Another ball of flame swirled above it. Without preamble, she tossed it at Mara.

Again Mara held up her hands, and the fireball stalled in midair, a few inches to the left of the first one. “I don’t know how many lava balls you can throw before your arm gives out, but I suspect we could be here all day,” Mara said. She narrowed her eyes at the frozen fireballs, and they blurred into smears of yellow-and-red pixels. Reaching out, she batted at the blobs, and they fell apart, sending tiny translucent cubes showering to the floor where they faded away. She pulled back her hand and shook it in the air. “Hot, hot, hot.”

Turning her attention back to her counterpart, Mara recognized the look on her own face. It wasn’t resignation. Her counterpart dropped the leash she held and said, “Get her, Ginger.”

The plated pig-thing launched itself into the air, letting loose with a squeal as its tusked mouth opened in anticipation of closing on Mara’s neck. As the creature’s forelegs extended to break its momentum on Mara’s chest, she disappeared in a flash of light. Behind the lunging beast, its master also winked away. Each reappeared in a second flash of light, now in the other’s place.

Crashing into its master’s chest, the pig-thing squealed victory as it snapped at her chin. They tumbled into the stacked boxes and crumpled to the ground.

Mara’s counterpart, now splayed on the floor, slapped at the beast’s jowls. “Down, girl. No, Ginger.” She turned onto her side, rolling the pig-thing off of her. Swiping hair out of her face with one hand and holding back the beast with another, Mara’s counterpart sat up on the floor, her face flushed. Her pet snuggled up to her and tried to lick her face.

Now a look of surrender crossed her counterpart’s face, and she asked, “What do you want?”

“You seem to recognize me,” Mara said.

“Of course I recognize you.” She held up a hand under her own face. “I see you in a mirror every day.”

“No, I mean, you seem to think we’ve met before.”

“How many Maras are running around out there with a copper disk that lets them bounce around from reality to reality? Yes, we’ve met. And you said you wouldn’t come back.”

“That wasn’t me. That was another Mara, from another realm.”

“Right.” The counterpart didn’t look convinced. “Aren’t there some other Maras out there that you girls can bother other than me? I just got this place fixed up from the last time you popped in.”

“I’m telling you, that was not me, at least not this version of me.”

The counterpart stood up, dusted off her pants, wiped some Ginger slobber off her shirt and looked down at the creature. “You go watch the front of the shop.” She waved an arm, and the pig-thing slunk away. “So you took the copper doohickey from the other Mara, and now you’re here. How’d you accomplish that? She seemed to have a penchant for blowing up things. She killed Ginger’s brother the last time she was here.”

“It’s a long story. She won’t be bothering you anymore.”

“That’s little comfort. Seems I’ve traded one evil twin for another,” the counterpart said. “What do you want?”

“I’m not evil.”

“No one thinks they are evil, but you’re here, and, in my book, that makes you evil. Again, what are you doing here?”

“There’s a guy who came from this realm, from your version of reality, and he was killed accidently, and now he’s turned into a black mist that is spreading from person to person.”

Mara’s counterpart rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, yes. I heard you. A black mist that is spreading from person to person, displacing their spirits and possessing their bodies. We’ve all heard the legend of the darkling wraith. You don’t expect me to believe that superstitious crap, do you?”

“You’ve heard of such a thing happening before?”

“In fairy tales and myths, stories used to scare people into believing old luminary dogma. No one takes it seriously. Well, most people don’t.”

“This dogma, what do they believe happens when people die? Do they turn into a black mist and go into other people’s bodies?”

“Like I said, I don’t really get into all that life-after-death stuff. You want to know about dogma, go talk to a luminary.”

“You mentioned that word before. Said you had sent me to one when you thought I was the other Mara. What does a luminary do?”

“They enter the souls of people when they die, a very utilitarian function that has been traditionally dressed up in a lot of ritual and dogma. Again mostly just to keep people in line by scaring them with stories about the afterlife and the end of the world.”

“Stories about this darkling wraith.”

“Among other things.”

“Can you give me any details about how to deal with this wraith thing?”

Her counterpart half-snorted, half-laughed. “Seriously? This stuff isn’t real.”

“Let’s assume it is. Who could help me figure out how to deal with it?”

She shrugged. “Go talk to a luminary.”

“They will know what do?”

“Not that I buy into it, but if you’ve got a problem with a darkling wraith, a luminary is the person to talk to.”

“Where would I find one of these people?”

She raised a thumb over her shoulder. “There’s a luminorium down the street. You can find one there, same place I sent the other Mara who showed up.”

Mara turned toward the front of the shop to leave but stopped and turned back. “Why did you tell the other Mara to go see the luminary? Did she mention something about the legend of the darkling wraith?”

“No, she was only interested in two things—power and reptiles.”

“These luminaries keep reptiles?”

The other Mara rolled her eyes. “No, luminaries are supposed to have mystical abilities that allow them to wrangle the souls of departed people. The reptiles I built.”

“You
built
reptiles?”

“Custom order, from scratch. She seemed to like them. Said they would make her mother happy. I built one with this big red extendable fan that would inflate around its head. Sort of a fancy geckolike creature. Nice job, if I say so myself.”

“I think I might have run into that one,” Mara said, then paused to look around the interior of the shop. “What exactly do you do here?”

“I’m a biomechanic. I mostly work on gadgets and appliances. Once in a while I’ll do some engine work on a car back here, but the engine entrails can be a hassle sometimes. Occasionally I get creative and actually put together original pieces, like the reptiles for your friend.”

“You make machines out of body parts?”

“No, that’s ridiculous. I grow parts from slurry. That’s the stuff in the tank you were messing with back there.” She pointed behind the stack of boxes. “It’s cheaper than buying parts pregrown and cryogenically packaged, and you can configure them how you need them.”

Mara shook her head. “I wish I had more time to see, but I’ve got a darkling wraith to deal with.”

Her counterpart laughed again. “You better hope that’s not true.”

“Why’s that?”

“According to legend, the coming of the darkling wraith is supposed to herald the end.”

“The end of what?”

“Of everything. Existence.”

Resisting the urge to stay in this version of the Mason Fix-It Shop to crack open some gadgets and see how their biomechanical innards operated, Mara stepped onto the sidewalk running along Woodstock Boulevard. While the cars and trucks passing by looked normal enough, a typical smattering of old and new, foreign and domestic, they sounded odd, ranging from a low burbling sound while idling to a staccato purr when accelerating. Mara glanced around, and other pedestrians moving up and down the street appeared oblivious to the background noise of the traffic.
Must be normal
.

And the smell. Mara crinkled her nose as a whiff of methane and sulfur rode a light breeze across her face. She waved a hand in the air and winced. “Not sure I could live in a world where cars emit farts as exhaust,” she said under her breath, trying not to inhale too deeply.

“Excuse me? Were you talking to me?” a voice behind her said.

She had turned east, following the instructions of her counterpart, away from where Ping’s Bakery was located, but, as she turned, her gaze swept the end of the block, and there was no bakery to be found. On the other hand, standing before her was the proprietor of the missing bakery or at least his facsimile in a tweed jacket and a bow tie.

“Ping! Am I glad to see you!”

“I’m sorry. Do I know you? Are you a student in one of my classes?” Ping leaned away from her enthusiastic response.

“Oh, no. No, I’m not one of your students,” she said, trying to think of something to say. “I’m a, let’s just say, I’m a fan of your work.”

“So you’ve read one of my books?”

“Yes, I have. Very compelling.”

Ping looked doubtfully at her. “It’s very unusual to find someone so young who is interested in metaphysics. Unless, of course, she is required to be in order to pass a class.”