Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) (36 page)

“You’re talking about a parallel universe.”

“Yes. So you understand the concept of alternate realms, that the universe is going through the process of creation by trying out every possible design of existence in an endless series of realities?”

Suter smirked. “I understand science fiction tropes. That doesn’t mean I believe them.”

“You seem all hunky-dory with me traveling through Time, but you have a hang-up with me coming here from a parallel universe? That doesn’t strike me as very logical.”

“I think we’ve left logic behind for the moment.” He reached across his desk to small wooden box on the corner and opened its lid. He reached inside and removed an empty luminiere. Staring into it thoughtfully for a moment, he then gestured with it, pointing toward Mara. “I still can’t seem to figure out your angle with all of this. You act as if you don’t understand even the most basic tenets of culture and society, like where light comes from or what happens at a typical funeral. You seem to have this odd ability to stop Time and claim to be the Keeper of the Chronicle, but you deny traveling through Time. Now you claim to be from a parallel universe.” Twirling the crystal bulb between two fingers, he contemplated something silently. Appearing to come to some decision, he placed the luminiere in the center of the desk and sat back. “Show me the book,” he said.

“What book? What are you talking about?”

“The Chronicle, show it to me.”

Mara extended her leg out straight in front of her chair, slid her hand into the front pocket of her jeans and removed the jeweled copper medallion. Holding it up in her palm, she said, “The Chronicle is not a book.”

“You think that trinket is the Chronicle of Continuity? That’s ridiculous.”

“No, no, no. It’s called the Chronicle of Creation. It’s what I used to cross over to this reality. I’m not sure what you are referring to.”

“The Chronicle of Continuity will herald the coming of the Aphotis during the rampage of the darkling wraith. That is how we will know the time has come, when the Keeper of the Chronicle receives the ancient book from the future.”

“How can an ancient book come from the future? That makes no sense.”

“That’s why I can assure you that whatever you think you have encountered cannot be the darkling wraith. The signs and portents passed down in the oral histories are not in place yet.”

“So this book-Chronicle gives the Keeper the ability to travel through Time? What does this have to do with the Aphotis?”

“The oral histories say that the Keeper will have the ability to rewrite the past and the future. Most people interpret that to mean doing so by traveling to different epochs and altering the flow of events, changing continuity, if you will. Also an ancient book from the future will have to be transported backward in some manner. Many people surmise the Keeper will bring it back in time. That will herald the coming of the Aphotis, according to these traditions, and the great battle for existence will commence,” Suter said.

“Who’s in this battle? The Aphotis and who else?”

“The Keeper of the Chronicle, who is known to be a progenitor. Are you familiar with that term, ‘progenitor’?”

“Vaguely,” Mara said.

Suter placed his palms down on the desktop and pushed himself upward to stand behind the desk. “Well, I must admit this has been the most interesting conversation I’ve had in weeks. But I do have commitments to keep, so I’ll show you back to the vestibule, and we can both get on with our day.”

“Wait! Give me one more minute,” Mara said, holding up a hand. “Assuming this thing I’m dealing with is not a darkling wraith, but maybe a lost spirit of some sort, confused because the rules are different in my realm, is there something I can do about it?”

“If I were to buy into your premise of parallel universes and that a person’s spirit from this reality is actually loose in your world, I would assume that an internment ceremony like what you saw earlier would resolve the issue by drawing the spirit into a luminiere.”

“Okay, so will you do that?”

He walked around the side of the desk and stood in front of Mara. “These ceremonies are not something to be trifled with. They are both sacred and dangerous, designed to not only provide comfort but to prepare the way for a great spiritual battle that will help shape existence. I can’t simply do this because you’ve gotten some strange notion that a spirit is running loose in your world.”

“I suppose it’s a little presumptuous of me to even ask,” she said. She reached across the desk and picked up the luminiere which Suter had left there. Holding it up to him, she asked, “Can you tell me what these are made of?”

She handed it to him, and he took it. While he looked down at it, Mara grabbed his arm, raised her left hand, palm up, holding the Chronicle and said, “Show me creation.”

The copper medallion hovered and spun, causing Suter to rear back, shocked. Mara maintained her grip on him. The Chronicle gyrated, blurred into a bright blue ball of mercury and exploded into a translucent bubble that engulfed the entire office. Mara grabbed the murky gray node that appeared in front of her and tightened her grip on Suter. A blinding shock ran through their bodies, and the bubble collapsed in a flash, leaving the office empty.

Ping stood in the back room of the dark gadget shop disconcerted after watching the translucent blue bubble consume Mara in a neon torrent that collapsed into a single point of light that teased him before it winked out. He stood still next to the tiny office door listening to the intermittent pounding and shuffling of the mindless creatures that roamed on the other side of the garage door. He crept toward the office door, planning to make good on his promise to hide under the desk. As he turned to enter, he heard another sound, this one from the front of the shop, a regular pounding, a frantic knock at the door, followed by a muffled voice.

“Mara! Mara! Hurry up and let me in. I know you are in there! Mara!”

Ping shuffled in the dark toward the front of the shop, holding his arms out in front of him. While he knew the general layout of the place, he wasn’t completely sure of every obstacle he might bump into. As he cleared the end of the counter and the large grandfather clock there, muted light from the street coming through the front window allowed him to move a little more confidently.

The knocking at the front door continued, growing louder and more urgent. “Dude, I have got zombies and green ghosts like five feet away! You have got to open up this door!” Pound, pound, pound.

The glass in the door rattled loudly enough to make Ping think the young woman on the other side was going to shatter it. “I’m coming. I’m coming,” Ping said, speaking loud enough to be heard through the door but not so loud that he drew attention from the street beyond.

“It’s now or never! They are crawling over the car! Hurry!”

Ping flipped the dead bolt and opened the door. As a short blonde teenager tumbled into the shop, he saw four men, suffering from the shedding, clamoring over the roof of a silver car parked on the sidewalk directly in front of the shop’s door. Farther away, in the middle of the street, stood a handful of green transparent figures looking on, bewildered. It appeared the Woodstock business district was abuzz with activity despite the late hour.

“Shut the door, man!” Abby yelled, lifting herself off the floor. “You’re going to let them in!”

Ping closed the door and flipped the dead bolt as something crashed into the window above the doorknob. Ping jumped and moved away from the door. The glass had cracked and bowed inward but did not shatter, pressing against the Open sign that now hung askew.

Turning his back to the door, Ping took Abby by the elbow and led her to the rear of the shop.

“Hey, you’re the dragon man, the guy next door with the bakery, aren’t you?” she said.

“Ping, yes. And you’re Abby, Mara’s friend, if I’m not mistaken.”

“A Chinese guy who turns into a dragon is kind of trite, don’t you think?”

“Firstly, I’m an American of Chinese descent. Secondly, the creature with which I coexist strikes me more of an Arthurian dragon than one from Chinese mythology.”

“I doubt many people make that distinction when you are frying their butts with that bad case of halitosis he’s got going.”

As they entered the back of the shop, Ping turned to her. “You seem to be taking the situation a little more lightly than you did the other night in the warehouse.”

Abby shrugged. “It’s how I deal with pressure. After being chased by zombies and ghosts and being rescued by a dragon man, I have a tendency to become a smart-ass.” She glanced around the dark, empty bicycle garage and asked, “Where’s Mara? I saw her car in the alley, but I couldn’t get close to it because of all the creepy-crawlies out there.”

“She left.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “Right. I hope she left in an armored car, because, if she didn’t, she’s probably out there walking around stiff-legged with a steadily worsening skin condition.”

“That’s a little difficult to explain.”

“Don’t tell me.
It’s complicated
. I’ve heard enough of that. Where did she go?”

A loud electrical snap ripped through the dark room, and Ping pulled Abby from the center of the room toward the office door. A tiny storm of light flickered and flashed for a split second and then exploded into a large translucent sphere that expanded to the width and height of the room. Standing in the middle of the bubble was Mara, grasping the arm of a man whose back was to them. The bubble collapsed into a ball of molten blue light. Then it too winked out, leaving a copper disk floating momentarily in the air before it fell to the floor with a loud
clank
.

The sudden flash of brilliant light and the subsequent plunge back into darkness left everyone momentarily blind. Not needing to see to find her way, Mara walked over to the office and rummaged around for a moment.

Ping stood in the doorway, speaking into the darkness and spots that still muddled his vision. “Mara, are you okay? Why are you back so soon? Did something go wrong?”

She pulled a small electrical lantern off a shelf behind the office door and looked back at Ping. “So soon? How long was I gone?”

“You left only a few minutes ago. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes, just time enough for me to walk to the front of the shop and back,” he said.

“That’s strange. I was there for more than two hours, probably closer to three. If I had known there was going to be some kind of time difference, I wouldn’t have been so stressed out to get back.”

From outside the office, a man’s voice called, “Mara! What did you do? Where am I?”

She stepped out of the office and flipped on the lantern. Next to her stood Abby.

“Where did you come from?” they asked each other in unison.

“I walked in the front door chased by the undead. What’s your story? It looks like you rode in on that bubble that belongs to the good witch in
The Wizard of Oz
. Well, not really. That one looked more like a soap bubble. Yours looked more like a force field on
Star Trek
.”

“Abby, what the hell are you doing here?”

Suter walked into the soft glow of the lamp, holding the luminiere, his face flushed. “Mara, I demand to know where I am! How did you transport me to this place? Have I been kidnapped?”

“Mr. Suter, give me a minute, and I’ll explain.”

Ping’s eyes widened, and his mouth gaped open as he too walked into the lit center of the room. “Suter? Oh, my God, Mara. What have you done? You brought Suter back with you?”

Suter looked at him. “Do I know you? I don’t recall ever meeting.”

“Okay, everybody, I cannot have three conversations at one time. Let’s take it from the top. First, Abby, you need to go home. Hanging out in the middle of a zombie apocalypse is not the ideal time for you to come to grips with metaphysics. I don’t want you to get hurt. So get lost. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Have you looked outside? The whole city is crawling with greenies and ghoulies,” Abby said. “I’ll go sit in the corner and stay out of the way, but I’m not going anywhere unless you can take me home in that bubble of yours.”

Mara made a disgusted sigh and turned to Suter. “You are going to do your liturgy of bereavement—”

“Beguilement, liturgy of beguilement.”

“Whatever. You’re going to suck Juaquin Prado’s soul out of all those people out there and stick him in that little lightbulb. Then I’m going to take you both back where you belong. Got it? If you don’t, you can stay here until you turn into a little cloud of black mist yourself.”

She turned to Ping. “Yes, I brought Suter back. He’s a pretender who can wrangle souls. If you have a better idea, I’m all ears. It wasn’t like your counterpart over there was much help.”

Ping leaned down to her ear and whispered. “A pretender? There must have been an alternative to bringing him—”

Mara raised her hand. “
Shhh
!” She turned her head back and forth, then cupped her ear. “Do you hear that?”

Everyone paused and cocked their heads.

“Mar-ree! Mar-ree!” A child’s voice softly rode the air from the front of the shop.

Mara glared at Ping. “You didn’t bring that old Philco radio back over here did you?”

“No. As far as I know, it’s still at the bakery, but who can tell what condition it’s in with all the destruction that’s been wrought over there.”

“Mar-ree! I’m coming!” The voice grew louder, clearer.

Looking to Suter, Mara said, “If this thing that’s running loose is a darkling wraith, is there something in your oral history about the disembodied voice of a child that’s related to it?”

He shook his head. “There is no darkling wraith, the signs are not—”

“Answer the question!” Mara gritted her teeth.

“No, no voices, no children.”

“Mar-ree!” It sounded like the child was in the front of the shop, in the building with them.

Mara crept toward the entry to the front of the shop. Holding onto the frame of the wide opening, she scanned the dark customer area, wanting to see who was out there before coming closer.