Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (16 page)

Mara instinctively looked back down at the dash and then over to Cam. “That is amazing. How did you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?” Sam’s voice responded.

On the road ahead of them, a black Chevy pickup with oversize tires pulled directly into the path of Mara’s Outback from the left lane. She looked up too late to tap her brakes, and her car plowed into the truck’s chrome bumper, crumpling the front half of the car’s hood. Mara lost a sense of control over the car, as it began to shimmy. After a moment, she realized that it was being dragged to the curb, as the truck pulled to the side of the street.

Mara smacked the steering wheel. “Great. I don’t have time for this!”

“What’s going on? It sounds like you just ran into something,” Sam said.

Mara glared out the driver’s side window at the rain and took a deep breath. She wasn’t getting out in the rain; the other driver would have to come to her.

“Where are you?” she said to the ceiling.

“I’m at Mrs. Zimmerman’s. We should be done in about an hour. Mom said you were going to pick—”

“Hush, listen. I think Ping, or rather the dragon, is stalking Mom, like those other reptiles from the river were doing. She just texted a few minutes ago. I need you to come with me and deal with him. Maybe you can prompt him to leave her alone long enough for us to get her home.”

“Mara,” Cam said from the passenger seat.

She held up a finger toward him. “Just one minute.”

“I’m not sure I have enough time to run by and pick you up.”

Someone pounded on the window next to Mara’s left ear. She jumped in her seat, causing the seat belt to pinch her shoulder.

Standing in the road next to her car in the rain was a large bearded man, glaring down at her. She rolled down the window and said, “Just one minute, I’ll be right with you.”

Rolling the window up, she glanced down at her phone, as if it were the source of her conversation, then turned to stare at Cam’s head. She rolled her eyes and said to the ceiling, “Sam, I need you here now. Is Mrs. Zimmerman there with you now?”

“No, she left me a bunch of algebra problems to do and went to run some errands. She does that sometimes at the end of the day.”

The man pounded on the window again. Mara jumped again and pushed the button on her armrest to lower the window. “I told you that I would be right with you.”

The man twisted back and forth, slinging water alongside the car, like a dog drying off, and said, “Look, little girl, it’s raining out here, and I’m not standing around getting soaked while you talk to your boyfriend the phone.” He reached for the car door. “Now, step out here and give me your license number and insurance card, like a big girl.”

Mara leaned away from the door, and she said, “Hold on, Sam!” She closed her eyes and envisioned Sam standing in Mrs. Zimmerman’s house. The man next to the car disappeared in a flash of light. A second later Sam appeared in his place. Dazed, he blinked the rain from his eyes and stepped forward with a start, as if someone had pushed him from behind.

“You could have given me a warning. What if I had been using the bathroom or something?” he said.

“Shut up and get in the car,” Mara said, rolling up her window.

Sam jogged around the back of the car and opened the passenger door. Looking into the seat, he said, “What’s that?”

“Just pick it up and hold it in your lap,” Mara said. She put the car in Reverse and slowly disconnected her crumpled hood from the truck’s bumper. When she turned the wheel to the left to get back out in traffic, it felt a little stiff.
Tires must be rubbing against the frame of the car or something
. She pressed the gas, drove past the large truck and continued in traffic. She leaned forward to get a better look at the hood, the front of which looked a little accordianed.

“Just hold on,” she said, rubbing her hand on the dashboard.

Sam said from the passenger seat, “What is this thing?” He held up Cam’s head and looked at the back of it.

“Get your fingers out of my ears. I’m not a bowling ball, you know,” Cam said.

Sam jumped and snapped away his hands, letting the head fall into the footwell in front of the passenger seat. “It’s talking!”

Mara smacked him on the knee. “Pick him up and be careful. That’s someone’s head.”

Sam leaned forward and nudged the side of Cam’s head with his foot until his face turned upward. “You’ve got to be … Oh, my God, you’re not joking.”

Cam looked up and rolled his eyes. “Can you please pick me up and stop rolling me around? I’m getting a little nauseated.”

“Just hold him in your lap,” Mara said. When Sam didn’t move to pick him up, she motioned her head toward Cam and said, “You can’t just leave him down there. Pick him up. I need his help tracking Mom.”

Sam grimaced. “I’m not so comfortable holding some dude’s head in my lap. Besides how can you track Mom with a head? Whose head is it anyway?”

“Would you two stop talking about me like I’m some kind of cantaloupe or something? I’m a real person down here, and I’m not tracking anyone from the floor,” Cam said.

“Let’s put it in the backseat,” Sam said.

“
It
is a person,” Mara said. “Use my jacket to hold him in place on your lap. I want him up here so I can talk to him.” After another moment she jabbed Sam with a finger. “Do it! Now! The dragon is after your mother and daughter, and Cam is the only way we have of finding them!”

“Okay. Sheesh, don’t lose your head,” Sam said. Looking down to the floor, he added, “Sorry, I was talking to her, not you.” He piled the jacket over his legs and bent forward. Pressing a finger to each of Cam’s temples, Sam gingerly lifted him to his lap. Cam’s face was turned upward at a forty-five-degree angle toward the driver’s seat. “Is that better? You can now talk to the head.”

“This is still an odd perspective, but it’s better than being on the floor,” Cam said. He rolled his eyes sideways toward Sam and added, “Hi, I’m Cam. Your sister has stolen my head and abandoned my body.”

“She’s like that.” Sam nodded. “The dragon we are after? She tried to feed me to it one time.”

“She certainly doesn’t seem to have any reticence taking liberties with the well-being of others,” Cam said. “So tell me about this dragon and what we are supposed to do about it. And did she say you have a daughter? That makes no sense. You’re just a kid yourself.”

“So says the head,” Sam said.

Mara glanced down to Cam. “There’s no time to explain everything. Do you still have a bead on Mom? Where is she now?”

Cam’s eyes rolled up for a second and then focused on Mara. “It appears she is crossing the Ross Island Bridge now, but I think something is going on over there,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Mara asked.

“There are hundreds of cell signals coming from the area. Most of them are dialing 9-1-1. Hold on a minute. Let me see if I can pick up some of the texts.” His eyes rolled up again, thinking. After a moment he spoke in a monotone, as if reading. “Monster … dive-bombing bridge … fire … gigantic wings … crashes … attacking again …” Then he went silent.

Mara’s eyes widened, as she swerved to miss a car that had slowed ahead of them. “What is going on?” she yelled. “Cam?”

Cam rolled his eyes toward Sam. “Sam, you still have your phone with you?”

Sam pulled it from his pocket and waved it.

“I’m forwarding to your phone a picture someone named Chelsea is posting to her Facebook page,” Cam said.

A second later Sam’s phone buzzed. He looked down at the screen, and his face went pale.

Mara’s head snapped back and forth from the road ahead to look toward her brother. “What? What is it?” she said, a slight tremble in her voice.

Sam held up his phone. On the screen a picture clearly showed the dragon, wings spread, diving toward a yellow taxi on the Ross Island Bridge. A plume of flame spewed from the creature’s mouth, enveloping that back third of the car. In the background, traffic was clearly in disarray, with smoke rising from several wrecked vehicles.

Mara had to glance several times from the road to the phone to take in the whole image. “Oh, jeez. He’s attacking in the heart of the city in broad daylight.” She moaned.

“It’s not going to be broad daylight much longer,” Sam said. “It’ll be dark in less than an hour.”

“I’m picking up police radio signals,” Cam said. “They are sending in an air unit to see what is going on, along with a dozen or so patrol units, I think.”

“A helicopter?” Sam asked. “That’s a bad idea.”

“A couple television stations have picked up on it too. They’ve got helicopters taking off right now.”

Mara quickly changed into the left lane as they approached a red light. As the car came to a stop, steam billowed out from under the hood and engulfed the Subaru. Mara looked at the lit panel in front of her. The Temp gauge pointed into the red zone.

“Just hang on,” Mara said, patting her hands on the steering wheel, willing the car to keep going. Then the Check Engine light flashed on, and the car died.

Off to the right side of Highway 26, as the roadway rose up to meet the Ross Island Bridge heading east over the Willamette River, Diana could see a dry dock and the cluster of buildings on the waterfront from which the tram cables stretched upward to the T-shaped tower on their way to the top of Marquam Hill. Neither of the two tramcars were gliding across the sky.

Even so, it suddenly seemed ridiculous to her that she and Hannah sat in the backseat of a taxi passing just a couple blocks north of where she had parked on their way to Oregon City.
Running in fear
. She craned her head around, assessing the streets to see if there was an easy maneuver that would allow the driver to drop them off instead of going all the way home. That thought evaporated when the low, stumpy concrete balustrades that bordered the bridge began to whip by her window, and the road grade sloped noticeably higher.

And fire engulfed the back half of the taxi.

They were already on the bridge, and, a moment later, when Diana’s brain caught up to what was going on, she realized they were also under attack.

Even before she could turn to assess what was happening on the road behind them, the sounds of squealing tires and crashing metal erupted close behind them. She turned in her seat. Flame and smoke filled the rear window, but she couldn’t tell if their car was actually burning or if the fire came from another source behind them. The taxi swerved, shoving Diana against the passenger door. Looking across the seat to her granddaughter, she asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Hannah said. She turned to press her face against the window on the driver’s side. “I think he’s back.”

Diana caught the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He cocked his head over to look out his sideview mirror. “Hells bells,” he yelled. His face went white, and he slammed on the brakes while cringing over the steering wheel, like he was dodging something coming at him from above.

Diana slapped the back of his seat with her palm and yelled, “Don’t stop! Whatever you do, don’t stop!”

The taxi went into a skid on the wet roadway, its back end sliding to a twenty-degree angle before coming to a complete stop. Another crash reverberated behind them. Thinking an out-of-control vehicle was about to crash into them, Diana wrapped an arm over Hannah and tensed up. Instead of a collision, there came a sudden silence. The droning sound of rubber on asphalt, the
chunk, chunk
of tires on bridge plates was gone. Instead she heard, in the distance, a car horn bleat, the patter of rain on the roof, the
thump
of windshield wipers.

Suddenly the rain patter stopped, and a shadow swept over them.

The cab driver rolled down his window and stuck out his head to look behind them. When he didn’t see anything, he turned his gaze upward and let out a keening cry. Beating the frame of his door with his fists, he found the handle and opened the door. He fell out onto the wet roadway, landing on his knees directly onto the yellow centerline. Babbling something incoherent, he looked skyward, stood up and ran away.

The darkness slipped away. Gray light and the sound of rain returned.

Looking out the back window through smoke and steam rising off the blackened trunk, Diana watched the driver run in the direction from which they came, his ponytail whipping back and forth, as he tried to run and look over his shoulder at the same time.

“Nana, what’s happening?” Hannah appeared more curious than afraid.

“I’m not sure, sweetie, but I want you to stay right where you are.” She unhooked her seat belt and pulled herself up to look over the front seat. The keys were still in the ignition. “I’m going to move up to the front seat, and we’re going to get out of here.”

She reached for the door handle and pulled. The passenger side door opened, and she stepped from the car. Standing in the right lane, Diana could see that the taxi sat mostly in the center right lane with the driver’s side bumper poking into the oncoming lane on the left but not enough to stop traffic, which continued coming from the opposite direction, though at a snail’s pace. On the other hand, there was no traffic on this side of the bridge.

Diana turned to look behind the taxi. What she saw caused her to stagger backward into the car door. She held on to it for support, as she gawked at the string of mangled, burning cars strewn from her location more than halfway across the bridge to the connecting roadway on the western side of the river. Her eyes followed more than a dozen streams of smoke into the air, up to the cloudy, darkening evening. A drop of rain hit the corner of her eye, startling her, breaking the grip the apocalyptic scene held on her.

As if suddenly awakened, Diana’s head jerked around, quickly scanning the skies. Not seeing the dragon, she slowly turned back toward the front of the taxi, and just as she faced completely to the front, the skies ahead darkened.

Above the bridge ahead, the dragon lingered in midair, appearing for a second to be suspended, riding an invisible gust of air, as it extended its wings and raised its head. Its red eyes focused on Diana, a predator coiling its strength in the moment before it strikes. It sent shivers down her spine. The creature roared, sending a plume of flame into the air. Tucking its wings, it lowered its thorny head and dove toward the taxi.