Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (22 page)

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Sam said, “It feels like it’s wedged in there in a way that the tires can’t grab the road.”

“The tires are grabbing some, or they wouldn’t be squealing. We just need to time the push right, and I think it will move,” Bohannon said.

Sam looked up at the darkness above, the underside of the overpass, and said, “I don’t know what’s going on up there, but I don’t think we’ve got much more time before this whole thing comes tumbling down. We look like we’re in a tunnel now, a one-lane tunnel.”

“All right, let’s give it one more try,” Bohannon said, leaning forward and nodding toward Diana. “One, two, thr—”

The dragon’s roar shook the air around them. Sam and Bohannon fell away from the car hood, grabbing one of the nearby overpass pylons for support. A large mass moved in the darkness behind the patrol car, into the orbit of the flashing blue lights. Red orbs, hanging in the dark, peeked over the roof of the car, like an alligator in a swamp. The flashes didn’t illuminate the features of the dragon so much as leave a burned afterimage on their retinas.

Sam ran toward the car and jumped on the hood. While he scrambled to get over the windshield, the car suddenly jerked backward, sending him sliding down the hood and bouncing off the bumper.

Bohannon picked him up by the shoulder. “What are you trying to do, get eaten?”

Sam shook loose. “It’s got the car. I’ve got to stop it.”

Inside the windshield, Diana’s confused expression appeared to be sliding back into the dark.

Sam bolted after the car and jumped onto the hood again. He crawled over the bar of flashing lights and pushed himself across the roof, sliding toward the back of the car. Somewhere in the darkness, he heard Hannah calling to him.

As he slid down the back windshield on his stomach, he saw the snout of the dragon clamped onto the back bumper, its lips sliding wetly over the trunk of the car. It shook the vehicle back and forth like a dog with a bone, yanking it backward, trying to unwedge it from its perch on the shoulder. The sound of metal screeched, as the car moved slowly.

Sam tried to lock his gaze onto the dragon’s eyes, but he was too close. He could only see on eye at a time, depending on which way he leaned, and both appeared to be rolled back in its head. The creature snarled, as its teeth crunched metal. Frustrated, Sam slammed his fist into a nostril, striking a pool of goo with a loud slap. He pulled back his hand with a grimace.

“Sam! Get out of there!” Diana called from the front of the car.

He looked back over his shoulder, not sure what to do. Through the back window, he saw Hannah twist in her seat, looking at what was happening behind her. He couldn’t prompt the dragon from this close up, but he wasn’t about to retreat and let the thing drag away his mother and daughter. Standing unsteadily, he paused to take a deep breath and leaped onto the face of the dragon.

“
Oooph
!” The impact knocked most of the breath from him.

He could feel the spiny scales bite into his skin through his shirt as he landed on the dragon’s forehead, the bottom half of his body dangling over the bridge of its nose, putting his legs between its eyes. Grabbing two small horns jutting from its brow, he dug his feet into some ridges along its nose. The dragon continued pulling on the back of the patrol car. Sam pounded a fist into its forehead but got no response. A kick to the armored bridge of the nose was ineffectual as well.

Sam twisted around. With a final shake of its head, the dragon succeeded in unwedging the patrol car from the shoulder and the guardrails. It was now backing out from under the overpass.

Slapping the side of its nose with his fists, Sam screamed, “Let them go! Let them go!” He raised his knee into the corner of the dragon’s eye. The dragon snorted and shook its head, sending Sam sliding down its snout. He found a foothold against the rim of its nostril, but a blast of flame erupted from it, enveloping his foot.

“Hey!” Sam yelled, stomping into the orifice several times. The dragon snarled and cringed, shaking its head some more. Sam looked down and saw his shoe smoldering, but it didn’t appear to be on fire, so he quit kicking. “No fire, dude, and I won’t kick. Now let go of the car.”

The dragon made a yanking motion, seemingly in defiance, pulling the car a foot farther onto the road and angling back toward the open space to the side of the overpass. Sam pushed up from the dragon’s snout and looked around. He could see nothing but darkness and dust. In the distance, he could hear Bohannon calling out to his mother.

“No, no, don’t get out of the car. Stay in there and get down!” the detective yelled.

Then Sam heard a gunshot.

A growl rumbled up the jowls of the dragon. Sam kicked and clawed, crawled up the dragon’s face and landed a punch into its left eye.

Releasing the back of the car and rearing into the air, the dragon slammed its head into the bottom of the overpass, sending more debris crashing down onto the roadway and more dust into the air. Sam lost his grip and rolled over the side of the dragon’s snout. As he fell, he reached out and grabbed something soft and fleshy. Dangling in the air, he looked up to see he had a handful of dragon lip, just as its mouth was about to close. He let go and fell into a cloud of dust. A moment later, he landed on the hood of the patrol car with a crash.

“Ouch, that hurts,” he said, pushing himself up.

Next to the car Bohannon stood, holding a handgun pointed at the dragon, whose head swung toward them. Bohannon fired a warning shot above its head.

“Hey, don’t hurt him! Ping’s in there somewhere,” Sam said.

Bohannon ignored him and crouched down to look into the car. “Okay, get out. Hurry! It’s going to grab the car again!” He opened the back door and grabbed Hannah, while Diana jumped from the driver’s door.

The dragon latched onto the patrol car’s bumper again.

Bohannon grabbed a handful of Sam’s shirt and pulled him off the hood of the car. As he swung the boy to the ground, he said, “Assuming we live through this, you and me are going to have a talk about the proper procedure when dealing with dangerous animals, and it doesn’t involve climbing on them when they are in the process of eating a patrol car.”

A loud clash and flash of light filled the night behind the dragon. Arcs of lightning crawled along its torso. It released the car, jerking its head upward, again smashing into the overpass. Bellowing into the falling debris, it spewed a stream of fire, filling the space under the overpass with a blinding, suffocating mix of dust and smoke. Pounding its wings on the roadway, the dragon, backed up, withdrew from the cramped space below the overpass. Once clear, it lifted it head and swung its tail forward, striking the side of the overpass.

Mara’s hands flickered as she extended them over the edge of the overpass, sending bolts of electricity into the backside of the dragon on the street below. She winced when it howled but continued, until the structure below her heaved upward tossing her in the air. Without a handhold, she staggered down the slope of the collapsed roadway, heading for the cliff into the blackness below. She twisted and fell to her knees, her jeans providing just enough traction to keep her from sliding off. Once again, she found herself scooting up the precarious incline of the fractured roadway, resisting gravity and wet asphalt.

Just as she approached the level portion of the overpass, the dragon’s tail swung up from below and struck the balustrade next to her head, sending a pile of concrete rubble into her face. Blinded, she wildly swung her right arm upward and grabbed something rough and metallic sticking out of the road above her head. With her left hand, she wiped grit from her face, keeping her eyes scrunched closed, until she was sure she’d cleared them. Her eyes fluttering tentatively, she looked around and could see nothing but the black outlines of clouds above.

Sliding her feet beneath her, she pushed upward until her shoulder caught on a jagged outcrop of concrete. Rolling over onto her stomach, she grabbed the ledge and pulled up onto the uncollapsed portion of the raised roadway. Standing with her arms held out for balance, she inched to her right, toward the crumpled balustrade.

A beam of light swept from the sky, momentarily blinding her again. She could sense, more a vibration than a sound, the thump of helicopter blades. Another roar erupted to the right and below her. Squinting, she saw the dragon’s scale-covered, tree-trunk-size tail hurling at her, slamming into the side of the overpass just below her feet, sending her flying once more in the air.

For a few seconds, she felt weightless, as if swimming in a dark ocean, until she landed facedown on what felt like a hard-shingled roof with almost enough force to knock the breath out of her. The ground beneath her shifted and rippled. She scrambled for a handhold, still fearing for some reason that she might fall from the overpass.

The light from above returned—as did the thumping sound.

Maintaining her grip, Mara twisted to look up. The helicopter circled with a spotlight locked on her. Staring back at it, like a deer in headlights, she didn’t move for several seconds, until a shadow loomed over her torso.

Moving slowly into the cone of light from the helicopter, the head of the dragon, at the end of its long twisted neck, swung into view. Mara quickly turned around to look above her shoulders and realized that she was no longer on the overpass, nor was she on the ground. Muscles and scales rippled beneath her, not pavement or shingles. She had landed on the back of the dragon.

Wide-eyed, she pushed herself up from its back and looked around. She lay to the left of the raised spines that erupted from the dragon’s backbone and ran from its head to its tail. The creature undulated beneath her. The massive wings rose up from the darkness just a few feet from Mara’s head. Wind crashed down on her, pressing her down, against the armored hide.

Above her, the dragon swiveled its head over its own back and screamed into the sky, blowing a burst of flame at the helicopter, which moved away and ascended, its pilot clearly determining that it wasn’t safe to hover around a fire-breathing serpent.

The dragon swung its torso in one swift turn, trotted for several paces and leaped into the air. Mara flopped along its upper flanks, flailing for a way to hold on, but the whipping wind and angle of ascent pushed her backward. She wedged her fingers between scales and held on for a few seconds, but they sliced into her skin, and she let go. Rolling sideways, she tumbled into the dragon’s spine—the tall, flat quills that bisected its back. There she got a handhold, grabbing one of the bony protrusions with both hands. Digging her heels into a thick patch of scales, she ducked her head and pressed herself against the dragon’s back. Once she felt stable, she let the muscles in her arms and legs relax a little, took a deep, ragged breath and looked up.

Facing backward, she looked down the slope of the dragon’s back toward the ground. The pile of debris that was the overpass on McLaughlin Boulevard had already sunk into obscurity and was now simply a void in the otherwise teeming sea of city lights and traffic that surrounded it. Warehouses and expansive lit parking lots boxed in the immediate area. Farther afield, to the north, the blazing cityscape of downtown Portland glowed beneath a heavy bank of clouds.

Mara wondered if the dragon purposefully had selected this spot to attack her mother. While still in the middle of urban sprawl, it was isolated enough for the dragon to do its business. On second thought, she doubted the dragon cared about being discrete.

A muffled roar and a sudden tautness along the dragon’s torso caught Mara’s attention. She slowly twisted around to see they were flying directly at the white helicopter, emblazoned with a bold stylized
12
. She gasped as the dragon screeched again and emitted a blast of flame that licked at the bottom of the helicopter. The vehicle wobbled for a second, smoothly dipped into a shallow U and disappeared into the clouds.

The dragon arched to the right but stayed below the cloud layer. Mara sensed it stalking its prey. She suspected the helicopter had doused its spotlight, because there was no hint of light in the sky. Nor could she hear it, but that could simply be the wind masking the beat of the rotors. They circled below the clouds like a shark.

Mara silently prayed that the helicopter had somehow slipped away above the clouds. That would leave her with just one worry: how to get down from here. The last time she went on a dragon ride, it was, for lack of a better way of putting it, at the behest of the beast—and through the influence of Ping, shortly after he had merged with it. Now it seemed the dragon was calling the shots.

Ahead and to the right, a wisp of vapor separated from the dark clouds. Mara could see a faint red light winking in the distance. The dragon’s head twitched that way, and it made whatever adjustments its wings needed to alter course. As they approached, the helicopter broke through the clouds, descending quickly, swinging below the dragon’s body, where Mara could not see it. The dragon growled, sending a tremor through its body. Swinging left, it dove into a corkscrew.

Mara’s stomach felt like it was coming up through her throat. She could not inhale and felt light-headed when they leveled off. After catching her breath, she saw the dimly lit helicopter directly ahead but much lower, and facing away from the dragon, tilted toward the ground. It moved toward the darkened area of McLaughlin, back to the overpass. Once it approached the ground, its spotlight was illuminated again.

Mara was aghast.
Are those people insane? That thing looks like a little bug, and it’s about to be swallowed whole by this flying lizard I’m riding.

Tucking its wings to its sides, the dragon let gravity take over, as it dove toward the helicopter.

Mara’s eyes widened, and she screamed into the wind, “No, Ping! You have got to stop this!” She tightened her grip on the dragon’s spine and stomped on its back, hoping to distract it somehow. Kicking at the scales, she gritted her teeth and screamed in frustration. It didn’t flinch. They continued to dive.