Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (35 page)

“Liar! That thing inside of you, she’s—it’s—got more control than you realize. You have no idea, none at all. I bet you don’t even remember nearly attacking that woman in the bakery this afternoon. Your eyes went red, like they did just now!” She turned and pointed to the newly replaced ceiling. “And you called it
magic
! Ping, the doctor of metaphysics, called something magic!”

“Mara, just take a deep breath for a moment, and let’s walk through this one step at a time. That way I can understand what you are trying to convey,” he said.

Red-faced, she leaned forward, about to say something, but she stopped when Ping raised his hand and said, “Continuing to yell at me isn’t going to help.”

She closed her mouth and sat back, deflated. She took a visible breath to placate him and to calm herself down. He was right; saying it louder wasn’t going to get through to him, assuming it was even Ping sitting across from her. One thing was for certain: even if it was Ping, that could change at any moment. She leaned back, placing her palms on the cold concrete floor and rolled her shoulders. After taking another deep breath, she pushed herself back into a sitting position and glared at him.

“You don’t remember saying that fixing the ceiling was magic?” she asked.

He snorted and said, “Of course not. We both know your abilities are metaphysical in nature, not supernatural.”

“Of course. So I just had some kind of lapse here or what? What’s your theory on why I thought I heard something like that?”

He shrugged. “I would surmise that you were a little disoriented after your intense bout of concentration. Using your abilities has been taxing for you in the past. Perhaps that was the cause of your confusion.”

“That’s all you have to say? You have nothing to add?”

“Of course I would like to say thank-you,” he said.

“Thank you? For what?”

He pointed to the ceiling and said, “For patching the hole in the roof.”

Mara pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. As she was about to respond, her phone rang. She pulled it from her jacket pocket. It was her mother, using the video chat application. Mara tapped it, and her mother’s and Hannah’s faces filled the screen.

“Video, I’m impressed,” Mara said.

Diana looked down at her granddaughter and said, “The munchkin insisted. She wanted to see her father.”

“Sorry, but Sam’s not here with us. He’s still working at the bakery, while Ping and I ran over to the warehouse to take care of some stuff. If it’s an emergency, you can call him on the bakery’s landline, but you won’t be able to see him,” Mara said.

From the corner of her eye, she took a quick glance at Ping. For an instant, too quickly to even take in a gasp, she thought she saw the red haze pass over his eyes again, but he blinked, and she couldn’t be sure. It might have just been a trick of the light.

“Can I say hi to Mr. Ping?” Hannah asked.

Ping leaned forward to get into the range of the phone’s camera, but Mara pulled back and said, “Ah, he’s in the middle of something right now. Gotta go! See you in about an hour!” She tapped the End icon on the screen.

Sitting back with an irritated look, Ping said, “Now that was rude, don’t you think?” The rims of his pupils radiated a red glow that bled over and filled his brown irises. Though the light again faded quickly, this time Mara did not doubt what she saw, or what it meant.

She shrugged, as if it were not a big deal, and smiled at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to slight you. I just wanted to wrap up the call and get on with our session. I know you’re tired, and I didn’t want to use up what little time we have entertaining a five-year-old, who really just wanted to talk to her father.”

He seemed to relax but still struck Mara as stilted when he said, “I see. Very well, what is it that you wish to discuss?”

Mara scooted around on her mat, as if she were trying to get comfortable. In reality she was releasing some tension and hoping to put Ping at ease by feigning a casualness she didn’t feel. Dangling her arms before her, she shook them loosely while rolling her head on her neck.

“You look like you are getting ready to engage in a wrestling match. Should I be worried?” he said. There was no humor in his voice.

Mara straightened and locked her gaze on him. “I think I’ve figured out what that latest haiku means, the one I told you about in the hospital the other day.”

“The one that talks about this realm’s Chronicle. Is that what you are referring to?”

“Yes,” Mara said. She reached into her pocket, removed the copper medallion and placed it on the floor between them. She kept her gaze on Ping’s face and watched as he looked down at it.

His eyes widened. “You’ve recovered the Chronicle. But how?”

She shook her head. “You see, I believe we were on the wrong path thinking the haiku referred to the Chronicle of Continuity. While it’s true the Chronicle of Creation, the one that Ab—the Aphotis—took, was from a different realm, I had spaced to the fact that Ned Pastor had fabricated a replica of it. Mom told me that he had made a duplicate medallion, but I didn’t really pay much attention. I just chalked it up to one of my mother’s friends doing their usual New Agey thing and didn’t give it much thought.”

She paused, waiting for Ping to say something. When he didn’t, she added, “Don’t you see? The haiku said
prepare like a pastor
. It wasn’t talking about sermons or scriptures, like we thought. It was simply a hint pointing me to Ned. Ned
Pastor
. Sam even said the original Chronicle might have been fabricated by someone who looks like Ned, probably his counterpart in that realm. If that’s true, then this medallion
is
this realm’s Chronicle. Don’t you follow?”

Ping looked at her doubtfully. “I suppose all that is possible. Does it work? Will it give you the ability to cross over to other realms?”

Mara frowned. “I thought you said the Chronicle didn’t have any power, that its power came from me. If that’s so, why wouldn’t it work?”

He tensed and waved a hand dismissively. “I meant, does it work for you? Have you tried it?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact I activated it last night, and it worked perfectly. I even had an interesting discussion with one of my counterparts from another realm.”

“You traveled to another realm? That’s surprising, given your reticence to do that previously.”

“Actually she came to me, inside the bubble. She projected herself into Sam’s body and rearranged his pixels, so he looked like me—I mean, us. She looked like me, but she used his pixels while we talked. It was like some kind of astral projection, where she could send her consciousness into Sam temporarily.”

Ping’s eyes narrowed. “Exactly what did this other Mara have to say? Why did she reach out to you in such an unorthodox manner?”

For a moment Mara was sure his eyes were about to flash red again, but, after a beat, she said, “The other Mara says Abby is snatching passengers from Flight 559 and following them back to their realms, but she’s abandoning them between the realms, before they actually get home, leaving them to die there. Their consciousnesses are leaving this smoggy-looking mist inside the bubble leading to the other realms.”

“Interesting. Why would she do such a thing?”

Mara looked at him askance and said, “I wouldn’t call murder
interesting
.
Outrageous
or
appalling
, but not
interesting
.”

Ping nodded. “Of course. It was a poor choice of words. Did the other Mara have an explanation for this behavior?”

Mara shook her head. “No, she doesn’t know what is motivating Abby, but she did say Abby is hurting even more people inside the realms she is visiting.”

“We may be isolating the reason your future self has guided you to this realm’s Chronicle after all. Perhaps you are supposed to use it to stop Abby from whatever it is she is trying to accomplish. Have you considered that?”

“Chasing Abby from one realm to another, encountering God-knows-what at every stop? I don’t think so. My preference would be to catch her on one of her visits back to this realm. Seems to me that a good hunter does better letting her prey come to her instead of running around with no idea where they are heading. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Ping shrugged. “That’s one strategy, but, if that’s the one you should be using, then why would your future self point you to recovering this realm’s Chronicle?”

“I don’t know, but this Mara from the other realm did make a point that I have been thinking about since. She seems to think it might be dangerous to rely too heavily on these hints from the future, that, if it is possible to change the past in the way future Mara is attempting, then she doesn’t really know the repercussions of the changes any more than I do. I have to admit that I’m beginning to have my doubts.”

“Doubts about what?” Ping asked.

Mara reached into her pocket, took out the demontoid crystal and sat it on the floor between them, next to the Chronicle. “Does this look familiar to you?” Mara asked.

Ping glanced down at the green gem, then back at Mara. The red haze washed over his eyes again, and Mara jumped to her feet, holding her hands in front of her.

Ping froze, the corner of his lip, his right cheek and nostril raised in an almost imperceptible sneer, rendered more ominous by the crimson glow of his eyes. The predatory expression sent a shiver up Mara’s spine, as she walked up to him and bent down, putting her face an inch from his. Up this close, his skin had a translucent quality, as if a milky sheath were stretched over gravel. Mara pressed his unsneered cheek with a finger. She could feel ridges beneath the skin, something course and bumpy. Like scales. And it felt hot, like a fire raged inside him.

Mara backed away without taking her eyes from him, one measured step after another, toward her mat. The side of her shoe grazed the green crystal on the floor, knocking it against the copper medallion with a tinny clatter that startled her. After one more step, she sat cross-legged across from Ping, almost hypnotized by his glowing eyes and repulsed by the thought of what might lurk beneath his skin.

She had to do something; she was losing him to the dragon. Haikus from the future or not, she could not sit here, pretending to have a conversation with Ping, knowing full well that he was slipping away with every moment. Ignoring the dragon’s folly was no longer an option, as far as she was concerned. She just hoped she wasn’t addressing it with a folly of her own.

Leaning forward, she scooped up the green demontoid in her left hand and picked up the Chronicle with her right. She held both palms up with the backs of her hands resting on her knees. She took a deep breath, and, for the first time since she had sat down, her gaze left Ping’s eyes, as she focused on the green gem in her left hand.

Her fingers fluttered, and the crystal floated above her palm, rotating and casting an arcing train of green smears, smudges of light that crawled across the concrete floor and slid across Ping’s torso, one after the other. As the crystal rose higher and spun faster, the lights whipped across his face and into Mara’s eyes. Once the crystal rose above their heads, the light spun faintly along the distant walls, encircling them more in motion than brilliance.

Squinting, Mara peered more deeply into the spinning crystal, willing it to open up like it did that night on the Oregon City Bridge. Spinning faster, it grew brighter until it exploded in a sunburst of emerald glass. Panes of green light sliced into the air, spanning the warehouse, sheering the space around Mara and Ping into sharp reflective angles, as if the crystal’s facets had expanded and engulfed them.

Mara peered into the crystalline walls around them. The edges of each facet shimmered with ambient green light, but their glassy planes were dark. Something was different this time. Before, she had seen her reflections, her counterparts from other realms, and they had helped her separate the consciousness of Diana, the reptilian cult leader, from the body of her mother. Not this time.

Mara turned back to Ping. He had not moved. She leaned forward, peering into one of the glassy walls to his left, to see if she could detect a reflection or something. She saw nothing. As she pulled back and settled on her floor mat, a hollow sound surrounded them—a high-pitched
eeeee
. The facets surrounding Ping glowed greener. The walls next to Mara stayed dark.

Now louder:
eeeeee
.

The light spilling over Ping grew brighter. In the wall around him, the glowing became amorphous, as if something were taking shape—many somethings, in many facets, taking shape—all surrounding Ping’s stilled silhouette and glowing red eyes. It looked like a gallery of photographs, or holographs, coming into focus.

And the sound grew clearer. It was a voice, muffled and distant; it now sounded more like
reeeeeee
.

Mara stared at the morphing lights and cocked her head to listen to the voice. No, it was voices, a chorus of them, coming from in front of her, from the facets surrounding Ping. The lights were getting sharper, and they coalesced.

Mara could see it was a person, a child, a girl.

The chorus of voices rang out around her. “Mar-ree!”

Images of Hannah swam into view, as the green light within the faceted walls coalesced. Mara’s breath caught in her throat. Dozens of little girls, all Hannah, stepped from the glassy confines of the crystalline walls and stood next to Ping, as he sat on the floor facing Mara. Her heart pounded as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
What is going on?

Mara’s head turned from one side of Ping to the other, then looking into the faces of her niece, attempting to divine what all this meant. A flick of Ping’s eye, just a twitch, but a clear movement stopped her cold. The red shiny glint brightened. He was becoming unstuck in Time. Through gritted teeth, Mara stared at him and said, “Not yet.”

The emerald latticework of jeweled walls collapsed in a brilliant flash. Holding her head down, Mara cringed, as if falling glass might slice through her, but the light winked out, taking the walls and the phalanx of Hannahs with it.