Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (21 page)

Mara stretched her neck and turned her face upward. “You cannot stay here, in this realm, any longer. You do not belong here.”

It pulled back its wet scaly lips, exposing rows of fangs, and hissed. Spittle, clearly more viscous than the rain, ran down its jaw and swung in ropes to the roadway.

“Ping, if you are in there, if some part of you can still understand what I’m saying, I need you to stop this. I need you to get control of this, until I can retrieve the Chronicle and figure out a way to send this … this thing back.” She rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath. “If you can’t do that, then I am going to have to stop it myself, and I’m not sure I can do that without hurting you.”

She stared up into the face of the dragon, seeking some hint of her mentor in the armored countenance that glared back at her. She could detect nothing but raw, seething hate.

“Do something!” she screamed, stomping a foot, sending a small splash of water into the air.

Suddenly the dragon lurched to its left. Mara couldn’t figure out what it was doing, until it lurched to the left again and raised its right claw, ripping a chunk of concrete and rebar from the side of the overpass. Letting out a roar, it tossed the man-size piece of debris onto the roadway below, just twenty feet in front of Mara. Some kind of gauntlet.

Mara took a step back.

“Please, Ping! I know you’re in there somewhere. Help me, please.”

Something fluttered. Mara cocked an ear upward, straining to identify the sound and where it came from. The dragon turned its snout skyward and straightened from its crouch. Something flickered in the clouds, and the sound grew louder, until it became the recognizable
chop-chop-chop
of helicopter blades cutting through the air.

Mara tensed as she watched the dragon track the sound, its head turning slowly in a circle with the overpass as its center. As she followed the dragon’s gaze to just over her head, the helicopter broke through the clouds, and a beam of light sliced through the night, landing directly on the dragon’s chest.

The creature raised its wings, leaned forward, its whole body coiled like a spring about to leap into the air.

“No!” Mara yelled.

She raised her hand, sending another bolt of lightning upward, striking the dragon in the ribs, just as its feet left its perch. Recoiling in midair, its wings dropped in front of its body, providing enough lift to keep it from tumbling to the roadway but not enough to propel it upward toward the approaching helicopter.

Twisting in the air, the dragon roared and flapped, its torso rolling in the air. Its tail struck the side of the overpass, seemingly giving it balance and the chance to get its flight under control. Chunks of debris clattered onto the roadway. Gaining a little altitude, the dragon momentarily hovered over the overpass, then turned, not to the helicopter but toward Mara, who bent over to place Cam’s head on the street behind her feet.

Looking up in time to see a stream of fire pouring down, she raised her hand. And the flame froze. Everything stopped.

The dragon hung suspended about four feet above the edge of the overpass some forty feet above where Mara stood. Passing through stilled raindrops—some of which were being vaporized into little tufts of steam—a diagonal frozen river of flame sliced through the darkness from the mouth of the dragon to just above Mara’s head.

Rain had stopped beating the pavement. She glanced to her right, straight up into the air. Just below the black clouds, unmoving, hung the helicopter, frozen in place as if it were a photograph. The thumping was gone and so were the sounds of traffic in the distance. The night was silent.

Mara turned on her heel and squinted through the tree branches that obscured the oncoming lanes across the median. Cars appeared to be stopped in motion. Not parked but frozen in place. Rain trailed off vehicles, forming thin steams suspended in their wakes, and fans of water stalled in midsluice next to tires. She turned to look down at Cam’s face. He too appeared animate but unmoving, his mouth half open, interrupted in some expression of amazement.

“Mara?”

It was Diana calling from the darkness under the overpass.

The frozen river of fire blazed brightly though the flames, yet did not flicker, making it impossible for Mara to see into the darkness beyond. She could hear her mother calling to her, sense her footfalls and those of the others as they approached, but she could not make them out, until Sam ducked under the unmoving flames and gave her a wide-eyed expression of amazement. At his side, Hannah held his hand and scampered to keep up with him.

“What do you think you are doing?” Mara said to him. “You guys need to get back under the overpass.”

“Hi, Mar-ree!” Hannah said.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Don’t get in a snit. We’re just here to see if we could help during the intermission. Maybe I could get into position to prompt the dragon, so you don’t have to get into nuclear progenitor butt-kicking mode.”

Diana and Bohannon arrived from the darkness farther to the left, having given the suspended flames a wider berth. Mara’s mother looked disheveled and had a small cut on her forehead. As she approached, her eyes followed the ramp of fire up into the night. Mara tracked her mother’s gaze, thinking it looked like lava flowing down a mountainside, but someone had taken away the mountain. When she turned to look back at her mother, Diana looked horrified as she stared into the face of the dragon hanging in the air above.

Cast in sharp relief by its own fiery sputum, the creature’s blazing red eyes and demonic countenance snarled down on them. Shadows accentuated its horns and bony ridges, yet its scaly hide glistened in the stilled rain, a ravenous reptile with a goatish face flanked by sinewy wings, looming over talons poised to strike.

Diana turned her head toward her daughter but never took her eyes from the nightmarish tableau above and said, “Good gracious,
what
is happening?”

Mara took a deep breath and said, “What’s it look like, Mom? I’m trying to get this dragon off your back long enough for you to make a break for home. But
noooo
, instead of getting in your stolen police car and hightailing it out of here, you guys come traipsing out here to gawk at the show.”

“You don’t honestly think we were just going to drive away and leave you?” Diana asked.

“I didn’t think it out of the realm of possibility that it might have occurred to one of you, the grandmother, the fourteen-year-old father, or maybe the police detective, that a tactical retreat would be a better strategy than waltzing into the path of a fire-breathing dragon with a five-year-old.”

Bohannon looked back and forth between Mara and the suspended dragon. “Are you doing this, this pausing-of-the-monster thing?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mara said. “But the point wasn’t to convene a confab and take a vote on what to do next. You guys need to get out of here. Now!” Mara pointed through the flames toward the overpass. “Get in the police car and go home, or at least go somewhere else.”

Hannah tugged at Sam’s pants leg, made a
tsk
ing sound and shook her head. “My Mar-ree doesn’t yell so much.”

“She still has some growing up to do, sweetheart, even if she forgets it sometimes,” Diana said. To Mara, she added, “We’re not going anywhere without you.”

“Mom, I can’t do what I need to do if I’m worried about you guys. Just please get away from here, and let me deal with this.” She bent over, picked up Cam’s head and handed it to her mother. “I need you to take this with you. Be careful with it.”

Diana took it without looking at it.

“I wish you people would stop passing me around like some kind of football and stop calling me
it
,” Cam said.

Diana jumped, yelped and tossed the head back to Mara.

“What the hell is that?” Diana said. “Is that a person’s head?”

After bobbling it for a second, Mara got a firm grasp on Cam’s cheeks and held it out to Sam. “Here, try not to leave
him
behind the next time you’re in a burning car.”

Hannah lifted up on her toes. “Lemme see. Does he talk?”

Cam frowned at her. “Of course I talk.”

“Can I hold your head? I promise I won’t drop you.”

“You can talk to Cam in the car, bean,” Sam said. As he tucked the head under his arm, movement above caught his eye. Pointing into the air toward the fire, he said, “It’s starting to ooze or something. It’s moving toward us in slow motion.”

Hannah pointed to her aunt. “Look! Mar-ree’s disappearing in and out.”

Mara held up her hands and could see through them.

“Lord have mercy,” Bohannon said.

With strain in her voice, Mara said, “Please get my family out of here. That fire and that dragon are going to come crashing down here in a few seconds, and I don’t think there is anything I can do to stop it.”

She disappeared.

“Mara!” Diana yelled into empty space.

Mara solidified and reached out to her mother, trying to take her by the shoulder, but her hand passed through it. “You’ve got to go
NOW
!”

A burst of light enveloped them, and they disappeared. Mara stood alone in the road. From below the overpass, her mother called, “Mara!”

“Stay there!” Mara yelled and disappeared again.

The fire poured down from the sky and spattered over the roadway, consuming what was left of Bohannon’s car and the overturned semitruck, and flowing toward the shoulder of the roadway. Finding no more dry fuel, the flames evaporated in a steamy flash. When Mara reappeared, the asphalt beneath her feet felt soft but not sticky enough to hold her up as the dragon swept several feet over her head, sending a powerful gust of wind slamming into her, flinging her across the street and over the curb into the guardrail. By the time she got her wits about her and looked up again, the dragon was at the apex of a vertical loop just beneath the edge of the clouds. Twisting in the air, it did a backflip and dove toward the overpass. Mara was sure it was lining up for another run at her.

Instead the dragon tucked its wings and plunged in a free fall toward the right side of the overpass. Leading with its head, its appendages pulled tightly to its body and its tail trailing in a straight line, the dragon became a missile, cutting through the air, streaking downward. Just before striking the overpass, the dragon unfurled its wings, like a parachute, and its feet swung forward. Slamming into the raised roadway, it sent tremors through the structure down to the road beneath Mara’s feet. Ragged chunks of concrete and rebar tumbled down into the street, followed by a streetlight, twisting away from the lines that powered it.

Mara glanced toward the flashing blue lights of the patrol car below. She could see the silhouettes of Bohannon and Sam leaning over the front of the car, pushing on the hood, attempting to force it past the crumpled guardrail and back onto the roadway. Clouds of dust mingled with rain obscured Mara’s view of what was happening, but she hoped her mother and Hannah were in the car, preparing to make their escape.

A loud crack caused Mara to look up.

The center of the overpass collapsed, sending a huge plank of the roadway from above tumbling down onto the left side of McLaughlin just a few yards from patrol car’s bumper. Mara could no longer see under the overpass; clouds of dust blocked even the flashing blue lights of the police car.

Stepping forward and about to run under the collapsing overpass, she stopped when she saw the dragon, again dropping from the clouds. It dove toward the remains of the bridge above her family’s heads. Just before it struck, giving the faltering roadway another beating, she raised her hand toward the creature.

It disappeared in a flash of light.

And so did she.

When Mara blinked away the spots in her eyes, she stood on top of the crumbling overpass, staring into a black abyss where the road should have been. Waving her arms to keep from plunging forward into the dust and rubble below, she fell back onto her butt. The roadway beneath her inclined, and she felt the pull of gravity as she tried to get her bearings. Below, a rolling bank of dust-filled clouds obscured the road, where she stood just seconds before. From within she heard a scream that made her skin crawl and then a gust of wind cleared the air. Flapping its wings and running toward her, the dragon craned its neck upward.

Mara wasn’t sure it could reach this high, but she didn’t intend to find out. Scooting up the inclined slope of the damaged roadway, she tried to stand, but the slope was too steep and the surface too wet. Instead she inched backward on the seat of her pants, feeling the vibrations of the dragon’s footsteps as she went. She kept her eyes on the creature. As it approached, the sound of rubber squealing on pavement rang out from below.
They were still under there somewhere.

The dragon swung its head toward the noise. Turning away from Mara, it moved to the right side of the road, toward the portion of the overpass still standing, the portion from which Mara’s sloping roadway hung. She could no longer see its head, but could make out the creature’s back and tail as it appeared to stretch its neck in the direction of her family.

Panicking, Mara rolled over onto all fours and quickly scampered up to the level portion of the overpass. She ran to the mangled balustrade and looked down in time to see the dragon’s head disappear below the overpass. The roar of the dragon shook the air, and another squeal of tires pealed from below.

Sam grunted as he strained against the hood of the police car. Next to him, Bohannon’s shoulders rolled as he heaved, sending the heavy vehicle rocking on its shocks. The center of the patrol car balanced on the shoulder of the road, like a plank on a fulcrum, preventing the back tires from gaining enough traction to pull it back onto the road. They had to lift and push at the same time to unwedge the car. The detective relaxed and held up a finger to Diana who sat behind the wheel, pressing on the gas when given the signal. Sam could see the top of his daughter’s head past his mother’s shoulder, strapped into the backseat. He straightened and coughed dust from his throat.