Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) (38 page)

Suter turned and shuffled away leaving Ping and Mara standing in the dark.

“Are you confident this is the correct course of action?” Ping asked.

“
Confident
isn’t the word I would use,” Mara said. “I don’t know if Prado has turned into this darkling wraith or if any of that other nonsense that Suter is spouting is true. Frankly I don’t care if it is, as long as he believes it and can put Prado’s soul into that lightbulb and take him back to where he belongs.”

“So you don’t believe you’re the progenitor who has the ability to rewrite history?”

“I’d tell him that I’m the colonel who invented fast-food fried chicken if that’s what it takes to get him to conduct that ceremony.”

“That does look like your handwriting in the book, the Chronicle of Continuity.”

“I know.”

“Perhaps we should ask Hannah a few more questions before we proceed.”

“I didn’t want to grill her in front of Suter.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m not sure, just a feeling. She didn’t seem to like him very much.”

“If you don’t trust him, perhaps you should reconsider doing this ceremony.”

“There’s not an alternative. Nothing else to try at this point.”

“How are you going to get him in the presence of Prado without subjecting him to being taken over like the others?”

“I’m going to take him up on the roof. That’ll put him in the presence of a bunch of Prados, don’t you think?”

“I think I should go with you.”

“Oh, I think so too. Someone has to help me beat back the zombies while Suter does his thing.”

Mara pushed open the office door with two fingers, swinging it back silently. Abby had not closed it all the way when she and Hannah had entered. The glow of Abby’s phone cast light across her face as she raised a finger to her lips. She turned the phone downward to spotlight Hannah, who was curled up in a fetal position in the footwell under the desk, fast asleep, a thumb tucked into her mouth.

Slowly opening a drawer, Mara extracted a flashlight, then cocked her head sideways, indicating she wanted Abby to follow her out of the office.

Outside Mara said, “We’re going up onto the roof. I want you to stay down here with Hannah until we get back. Can you do that?”

“I suppose. What are you hoping to accomplish up there?” Abby asked, then raised a hand. “Don’t tell me.
It’s complicated
.”

“Well, it is complicated, but I don’t mean that to be rude or to not give you an answer. I don’t think we have enough time to explain everything right now.” Looking past Abby’s shoulder into the office, Mara asked, “Did she say anything to you?”

“No. I tried to make conversation, but all I got out of her was that she’s five years old, and it’s past her bedtime.”

Suter walked around the corner wrapped in the tarp with the neon cord around his midsection. Despite the improvised robe, he looked as if he had donned one of his own robes. He held the electric lantern in one hand and the luminiere in the other.

“Okay, are we ready to go?” Mara asked. She held up a finger and added, “Just one more thing.” She walked out of the range of the light, past the workbench again. She reached behind the edge of some shelves and pulled out a large broom and a mop. She placed the head of each under her foot and unscrewed the handles. Returning to the light, she handed the metallic mop handle to Ping. “This isn’t really going to make much of a weapon. The idea is to keep any of the shedding victims from touching you or from getting up on the roof once we are up there.”

“What about me? Don’t I get one?” Suter asked.

“You concentrate on getting Prado into that lightbulb, and we’ll keep the zombies from turning you into one of them, got it?” She patted her jeans pocket. “The minute you’ve got him, let me know, and I’ll send you both back where you came from.”

“You’re very bossy for someone so young,” Suter said.

“Anyone with a better idea who wants to take over management of this particular venture, by all means step forward,” Mara said. Without waiting for a response, she looked at Ping. “I’ll go first to make sure the coast is clear. Then Suter. Then you cover his backside, okay? About five feet to the left of the door, there’s a steel ladder mounted into the wall that leads directly up to the roof. That’s where we are headed. I haven’t heard anyone outside the door in a little while, so now might be our chance. If I get distracted, and you reach the ladder before me, go ahead and climb up.”

She turned to Abby. “Promise me you will stay in here. I can’t keep my eyes on you and these guys all at the same time.”

“I’ve no desire whatsoever to go out there,” she said.

“Good.” Turning back to Ping, she leaned toward him. Under her breath, she said, “No dragons, no poofing, just poke the zombies with the stick, okay?”

He saluted with the mop handle. “I will do my best.”

She tucked the small flashlight into her left pocket as she walked over to the door. Wrapping her fingers around the doorknob, she took a deep breath, mentally counted to three and turned it, pressing her shoulder against the door as it opened. Holding the broomstick in front on her, she swung around in the alley to see behind the door. No one was outside, though she could clearly hear screams and crashes in the distance. She thought she saw movement in the distance, but it seemed like someone walking past the mouth of the alley at the end of the block.

She ran to the ladder and began to climb, clumsily holding the broomstick under her left arm. Halfway up the side of the building, she felt Suter and Ping climbing behind her, vibrations running through the metal rungs under her hands and feet. A mental image of a being blocked at both ends of the ladder motivated Mara speed up her ascent.

“Mara,” Ping whispered, trying to make his voice loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to carry. “Mara! Look up!”

At first she looked down under her right arm to see what he was yelling about, then the message sunk in, and she glanced upward. A craggy shadow hung out over the ladder from the rooftop, vacantly staring down at them. It bent over, and Mara felt a light wind brush past her forehead as its impossibly long arm swung downward at her. She cringed and stepped down one rung. Over her shoulder, she shouted, “Back up, you guys. Back up!”

The shaking of the ladder increased as the sound of fast shuffling and clattering of leather against steel rose up from below. She remained where she was. Glancing downward again, she saw Ping and Suter had reached the ground. They had gotten out of the way. Now the ladder shook again, this time from above. The silhouette at the top of the ladder seemed to be trying to figure out how to get onto it. It hiked its leg onto one of the top rungs but didn’t appear able to figure out how to shift its weight forward and take the next step.

Mara closed her eyes, straining with concentration. She disappeared in a flash of light. So did the figure at the top of the ladder. An instant later, in a second flash of light, they reappeared in each other’s place. Mara stood at the top of the ladder looking down. The tall, lanky man with cracked gray skin stared blindly into the night with one leg extended out into the air, trying to get a foothold where there was none.

Mara reached down with the broomstick and poked him in the chest. He grabbed the stick and pulled it toward him. For a moment Mara thought he was going to pull her over the ledge, and, in her exasperation, she shoved it at him, connecting with his sternum, sending him tumbling to the ground.

From the alley below, Ping called up, “Mara, are you okay?”

“Watch out, one of them just fell down the ladder!”

She could make out the outlines of Suter and Ping in the alley. Movement at the base of the ladder indicated the shedding victim was getting up. He stood between them and the ladder.

Mara closed her eyes and muttered to herself, “Come on. Come on. Give me two for one, two for one.”

She sensed a flash of light through her eyelids. When she opened them, she stood in the alley below with the lanky shedding victim lumbering toward her. She glanced up and saw Ping running along the edge of the roof, looking downward. Suter, assuming he had popped up there with Ping, had backed out of sight.

“Join us, Mara. Join us,” the creature said in that deep baritone with the light lisp that turned “us” into a breathy hiss. It reached out with gray bony fingers clawing at the air between them.

Mara shivered and said, “No, thanks Prado. I’m not a darkling-wraith kinda girl.” She raised her hands, and he froze, midgait with a hip and shoulder cocked oddly into the air. Mara walked around him and grabbed the bottom rungs of the ladder and lifted herself up. After quickly climbing to the top, she saw a hand reach out over the ledge above, startling her.

“Let me help you up,” Ping said, grasping her arm.

“I’m assuming there are not more of them up here, or you two would be running around trying to avoid Prado. He seems to be getting talky again. I wish he would find someone to talk to besides me. I’m starting to get paranoid.”

Suter stood at the edge of the roof over the front of the building. “Come here. You have got to see this.”

Mara and Ping jogged toward him. As they approached the waist-high brick wall that surrounded the roof, Mara heard a soft chant, “Join us, Mara. Join us.” It sounded like hundreds of people softly whispering in unison.

Mara’s breath caught in her throat as she approached the edge of the roof, seeing all below. Movement and fluorescent light drew her eyes to the sidewalk across the street. There stood dozens of greenly transparent figures with stricken expressions of confusion and panic, lost souls looking out onto the street with revulsion and dread where hundreds of decomposing gray-skinned people filled Woodstock Boulevard, all of them standing still and straight, their wet black eyes turned upward toward the roof above Mason Fit-it. Most of them wore pajamas or hospital gowns that were torn or filthy or both. They stood in a landscape of desolation amid shattered storefronts, uprooted shrubbery and overturned cars. Streams of smoke hung in the air, barely visible in the light of distant streetlamps and a fire some two blocks away. All of them said in that deep baritone, “Join us, Mara. Join us.”

She staggered from the sight with her hands over her ears and, through gritted teeth, said to Suter, “Do something. Make them stop saying my name. Do it now!”

From the corner of her eye, she saw movement. A hand reached up from the ladder at the back of the building. Ping saw the look of panic cross her face and followed her gaze.

Raising the mop handle, Ping said, “Go ahead. I’ve got this.” He ran toward the ladder and poked his head over the edge of the roof. “Get started. These things are so slow, I think I can keep up with them for a while.”

Mara nodded toward Suter, who lifted the cowl to cover his head and stood up on the brick ledge. He raised his arms and lowered his head. After a minute, Mara heard a soft hum beneath the ongoing drone of the shedding chant from below, “Join us, Mara. Join us.” She could not tell from where it emanated. And then is grew louder, more urgent, and she turned toward Suter’s cowled profile hanging out over the scene. He hummed the tune the flautist had played during the ceremony she had seen earlier.
That seems to make sense.
Soon it grew into a moan, the same tune as before, only a quicker beat that flew into a higher register, growing louder with each measure until it became a piercing, keening sound with no melody whatsoever.

Mara leaned forward to see past the edge of Suter’s cowl. His eyes glowed brightly, two pins of light in the shadow of his hood that grew more intense with the power of his voice.

His song, or whatever it was, was so loud, it blended with the chant, then overcame it.

Looking out over the crowd below, Mara realized that Suter had not drowned out the blighted people below. They had stopped chanting. As Mara was about to comment, all of them collapsed in unison, falling to the pavement with a short but thunderous rumble. Bodies were strewn all over the street.

Suter lowered his arms toward the field of prone bodies that stretched for as far as the eye could see, and he too fell silent. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he raised his arms again. Below, a dark haze formed over the fallen people.

Mara realized it was a huge black mist, coalescing above the street for blocks.
Prado has left them
.
Through the growing fog, she saw the green phantoms dissipate.
They’ve gone back to their bodies
. The fog thickened, blackened and roiled. The black mist rose up above the buildings and swirled below the clouds, circling above Suter’s upraised arms.

“Come,” Suter said. “Gather to me so that what has been spoken for millennia may come to pass. It is time for the rampage of the darkling wraith to end and for the Battle for Existence to commence. I call to the soul of Juaquin Prado . . .”

Still standing on the brick wall at the edge of the building, Suter turned away from the street and looked over the roof. Mara saw his eyes, ablaze, two yellow beacons in the shadow of his cowl. The swirling black mist gathered above his head and descended in a riotous black sphere before him, casting off gusts of wind that whipped at his makeshift robe, sending it flapping around his body, blowing his hood from his head.

A river of soot flew out of the sphere and pierced Suter’s eyes. He stiffened as if receiving a shock. His shoulders hunched, his arms half bent, as if reaching toward the blackness that was filling him. Soon, the roiling ball of mist was dissipated, directed into Suter’s eyes, which had been extinguished, filled with an inky blackness.

A lecherous smile crossed his lips.

“Ah, I see now,” he said in a deep baritone.

The lisp raised the hair on Mara’s neck.

Suter raised the luminiere into the air and, in his own voice, said, “I call to the soul of Juaquin Prado, take up the mantel of Aphotis, to take this vessel to be your own.”

He turned his head, locked eyes with Mara and threw the luminiere at the ground, shattering it between her feet.