“What it is?” Mara asked.
“Something is in the sky up ahead—and, call me crazy, but it’s flying toward us.”
CHAPTER 43
Mara and Ping leaned forward and peered through the windshield into the sky ahead. A bright light plummeted toward them, growing as it descended, glowing violet, throwing off red and yellow sparks. A black smoky contrail marked its course across the early morning sky. The comet-like mass plunged downward, lining up with the road they traveled as if it intended to use it as a landing strip.
A shiver ran up Mara’s spine as she turned to Ping. The look of fear on his face confirmed the sense of déjà vu she felt.
“Pull over!” Mara said. “Now!”
Diana glanced at them again in the rearview. “Mr. Martin’s restaurant is right up this way. I can pull over there.”
“There’s no time. We have to get out now. That meteor’s coming in faster than you think, and, when it hits, it’ll smother us all!” Mara said.
Her counterpart in the passenger seat said, “How can you know that?”
“We’ve seen one before,” Ping said. “In our realm.”
Sam frowned. “We have? I don’t recall seeing any meteors that smother people before.”
“It was the night your mother crossed over from her realm. While we were on our way to the Oregon City Bridge, a meteor just like that one smashed into my mother’s SUV and nearly killed us,” Mara said. She rolled down her window and leaned out.
“The locals will freak seeing a robot hanging out the window,” Sam said.
The purple mass flew twenty feet above the roadway, barreling toward them like an out-of-control semitruck. It was less than one-quarter mile away.
“Stop now!” Mara screamed, smacking the back of Diana’s headrest with her palm.
She slammed on the brakes without pulling over to the road’s shoulder.
“Quick! Get out of the car!” Mara yelled, grabbing the handle of the door, swinging it open and jumping out. The others followed suit.
The fiery purple meteor slammed into the front grille and windshield, rocking the SUV on its shocks, splattering on impact. Burning gelatin enveloped the vehicle, flowed lavalike over its frame, enveloping the top and carriage, oozing over the back window. Inside the writhing mass the tires exploded, and the SUV slumped to one side, looking as if it might roll over dead. Muffled screeches of metal, crunches of shattered glass and snaps of rendered plastic filled the morning air as the goo consumed the remains of the vehicle.
Diana, Ping and Sam emerged from a ditch on the far side of the large lump of purple while the other Mara appeared from somewhere behind Mara.
“That was close,” Diana said. “I assume that was Tran’s doing?”
“I guess she’s not ready to give up just yet,” Mara said. She scanned the rural setting. Both sides of the road appeared to be fenced fields, probably for grazing, broken only by the gravel parking lot of Martin’s restaurant a few hundred feet down the road.
“We need to get out of the open and be less of a target. If she can hurtle one meteor at us, it’s likely she can send another,” Ping said.
“Our only option is the restaurant. You think it’s open this early?” Mara asked.
Diana nodded. “Definitely. I’m sure they have a big breakfast crowd.”
They headed that way. As they walked along the shoulder, Ping sidled up to Mara and said, “If you walk into a restaurant looking like that, you’ll cause a panic. The customers will likely stampede.”
“I know,” she said, holding up one of her silver skeletal hands. “I’ll hide out back while you guys call for a ride home. Someone needs to keep a lookout for Tran anyway. I’m not so sure how much of a deterrence a restaurant full of people will be to her doing something.”
As they approached the parking lot, Mara was surprised at the number of cars parked out front. A row of cars—at least twenty of them—faced the long narrow building while a second row of at least that many faced outward, toward the road. Probably more were parked in the rear. The shoulder of the road took them past the parked cars to the tall marquee sign that still featured Welcome, NaRealm Tran at the gravel entrance to the lot. As they continued into the lot, Mara glared up at the sign.
A sudden strong wind would blow those letters right off.
As she resisted the urge, a flash of light flew past her shoulder and struck the base of the sign, exploding it with a loud bang and a shower of sparks. The pole holding the marquee sign buckled and released an ear-splitting metallic screech as it spun and tipped over like a felled tree, crashing to the gravel, landing on the sign’s side in a cloud of dust, blocking the entrance to the parking lot.
Mara spun around to see where the flash of light had originated. In the center of the road, less than one hundred feet past the restaurant, stood Tran, her face contorted with anger. The curate raised her cupped hand. Above her raised palm, a spark ignited and grew into a brilliant orb of light. Rearing back like a baseball pitcher, she flung it at them.
Ping grabbed Mara’s arm and pulled her into the parking lot, pushing her behind the fallen sign as the flash of yellow flew past and struck a red truck in the lot. With another loud bang, the flatbed exploded into ribbons—as if something had shredded it from the inside—which fluttered away before disappearing into thin air.
“That looked weird, how that truck exploded,” Mara said.
“Yeah,” Sam said, frowning.
Peeking over the edge of the sign, Mara spotted Tran, still standing, not making a move toward them. “What the hell is she doing?”
Ping gave her a little push to get her to step back. “Pardon me,” he said.
Mara looked down at her feet. Under them were transparent plastic tiles that had fallen off the marquee sign. “What are you doing?”
“Look.” Ping pointed to the ground next to where the other Mara and Diana crouched. Four of the plastic tiles lay next to each other, somewhat askew. There was an M, and two As with an R tile between them.
Ping glanced at the marquee sign. The Welcome letters were still attached, apparently painted onto the backlit sign. However, all of the NaRealm Tran letters had been dislodged. He bent and picked up more tiles, tossing each one onto the ground behind them.
He’s gone nuts. “Ping, we’re under attack by a meteor-wielding psycho. We don’t have time to play Hangman right now,” Mara said.
“I’m missing a T and one of the Ns,” he said. Pulling out his wallet, he extracted a business card, flipped it over, pulled a pen from his pants pocket and began to scrawl. “Don’t you see it? Look at the tiles.”
“There’s no time for games,” she said. Turning away, she glanced past the sign again. Tran just stood there.
Sam sidled up to her and took a peek. “What’s she up to?”
“I don’t know. She blew up the sign and the truck, and now she’s just standing there, staring at us,” Mara said.
“No, she isn’t!” Sam said. He pointed past her shoulder. Another purple meteor plunged out of sky. “Incoming! Run!”
He grabbed Mara’s shoulder, pulling her back while waving the others toward the row of vehicles behind them. After running behind a large cement-mixer truck, Mara ran past its cab and looked around its front bumper. The meteor’s trajectory seemed to be off now, tracking in their general direction but not targeted at them any longer.
They hadn’t run far enough for that to happen. It had turned. Toward the restaurant.
Mara bolted from behind the truck, holding up her arms toward the gigantic flaming mass that hurtled above their heads, now just a few yards from crashing into the roof of the restaurant.
“What are you doing?” Sam yelled over the rumble of wind crashing down as the meteor passed.
Arcs of lightning shot from Mara’s palms and split the air with a crack as they reached upward and struck the fiery ball. Exploding into a burst of hot lavender mist and smoke, the meteor disappeared as a wall of thick clouds rode
a wall of gale-force wind to the ground, snuffing out the rays of the morning sun, plunging the restaurant and its parking lot into a billowing darkness. Vehicles rocked back and forth, threatening to roll over while, somewhere in the distance, the shattering of glass mixed with the strains of groaning metal.
Coughing and sputtering, Mara held herself up against the rocking cement truck, hoping it wasn’t about to roll over on them. In the haze, Ping moved next to her and said, “Look at this!” He held out something in his hand, but Mara couldn’t see it.
“What is it?” she asked.
The hood of the car next to them burst into flames. A glob of purple goo spread across it, igniting the metal and curling its paint, providing some light along with billows of noxious black smoke.
Ping held up the business card, shoving it close to Mara’s face. On it, he had written NaRealm Tran and struck out the letters. Below it, he had printed the same letters again, in a different order—Mara Lantern.
“It’s an anagram,” Ping said. “NaRealm Tran is Mara Lantern. Don’t you see?”
“Another counterpart?” Mara asked.
“And another progenitor.”
CHAPTER 44
“What is she doing here?” Mara asked. “What does she want?”
“I don’t know, but she seems to know a lot about us, so I’m sure it’s not happenstance that we encountered her at this time and this place,” Ping said.
Another vehicle exploded somewhere beyond the smoky haze. Everyone jumped as they huddled next to the cement truck. There was no way to tell if Tran—or Mara—continued to lob explosive orbs at them or if the residual fires from the exploded meteor claimed another vehicle victim.
Sam leaned toward his sister. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Mara shook her head and pulled back. “No more talk. You guys need to make your way to the restaurant.”
“What do you intend to do?” Ping asked.
Without no flesh on her face, Mara was certain her mentor could not see the grimness she felt as she turned to him. “She’ll keep coming until she kills all of us, even if she has to incinerate everyone in the restaurant or the whole town to do it. I have to stop her, and I can’t do it cowering behind a sign or a truck,” she said. “I want you guys to sneak down this row of vehicles and cut over to the other side of the lot, then get inside the restaurant.”
Something slammed into the cement truck. Everyone cringed as two tires on the far side exploded, and the massive rig rocked and slumped away, making them feel a little more exposed.
“Why face her alone? Assuming Tran is a progenitor,” Ping said, glancing down the narrow space between vehicles at the other Mara, “with her help, it would be two against one.”
Mara shook her head. “The other Mara’s not ready. Besides, you might need to use her as a backup plan.”
“What backup plan?” he asked.
“You still have the Chronicle?” When he nodded, she added, “You’ll come up with something. Now get everyone over to the restaurant.”
Ping turned and herded the others to the back of the truck and around the bumper of the burning car next to it, heading down the row of vehicles away from the entrance to the rear parking lot. When it was his turn to go, Sam resisted, calling after his sister, “I have to tell you something.”
Another crash shook the cement truck, spraying glass from the cab over Mara, forcing her to crouch and cringe. “There’s no time,” she said. “Please go. We can talk later.”
Ping took his arm.
“But I can help! If I can get close enough, I might be able to prompt—”
Mara shook her held. “She’s already blinded you. Next time, she might do something worse. Go with Ping, and protect the other Mara. She may be our only hope when this is over.”
Ping pulled Sam into the roiling smoke.
Mara turned, stepped past the cab of the cement truck and walked to the toppled sign at the entrance to the parking lot. Still standing on the road, allowing clouds of smoke to swirl around her, Tran stared as Mara climbed over the long sign post. As she moved past the shoulder of the road and stepped onto the pavement, a large truck hauling a trailer stacked with bales of hay barreled out of the roiling haze, flipped on its lights and drove directly toward Tran. As the vehicle flew by, a wide-eyed driver in a red cap gawked at Mara.
She held up a mechanized hand, waving a single pass. A casual observer might have thought she had acknowledged the truck driver’s attention, but he had disappeared in a flash of blue light. A microsecond later, the confused man stood next to her, his mouth hanging open, with a dumbfounded look on his face.
His truck plunged forward, then exploded into a stream of ribbons that split in two and flew around and past Tran’s unmoving frame before disappearing into thin air.
Mara turned her silvery skull toward the truck driver, let her metallic jaw drop dramatically and said, “Run!”
Despite a barrel chest and a beer belly, the driver bounded past the downed restaurant sign like a gazelle.
Mara continued to walk along the road, stopping thirty feet from where Tran stood.
A knowing smile emerged as her gaze followed the path of the retreating trucker. “You can’t save everyone, Tin Man. You can’t save the world.”
“And you can’t destroy it, if I don’t let you.”
Tran laughed and feigned being offended. “Destroy the world? Me? I have no interest in destroying the world—this one or any of the others out there. You, on the other hand, want to save them all. It’s a burden with a price too high to pay, a sacrifice too final to bear. Not me. We are not as much alike as I thought. You’re willing to pay that price, make that sacrifice. It has been your undoing.”
“I’m not undone yet.” Mara thrust her hands forward, splayed open. An arc of blue energy burst from each palm, striking a single point in the center of Tran’s chest. A blinding flash of light consumed her body, and, when it had receded, Tran glared back at Mara with her own face. The curate’s facade was gone.
“So we meet again,” her counterpart said. “No disguises, no proxies. Just you and me, face-to-face.” She paused for a chuckle. “Well, one of us has a face. You seem to have lost yours.”
We meet again? Face-to-face?
“No clever retort or snide response? Perhaps you’re more insecure about your appearance than I anticipated. I assure you, it was not my intent to demean.” She pouted, then winked. “Chrome and wire looks good on you. Not every girl could pull that off.”
“I’ve learned to make do,” Mara said.
“There’s the retort.”
“What do you want?”
“What makes you think I want anything?” her counterpart asked.
“You lobbed the burning blob of purple goo to get us to stop, and then you threw a second one at the restaurant because you knew it would get me out here.”
“Not the first time you’ve seen that trick, is it?” she smiled.
I’m missing something here. Mara couldn’t resist and asked, “How can you know that?”
Her counterpart practically cackled. “You still don’t understand—not all of it. Unfortunate, because, if you don’t know now, you may never learn.”
“What the hell are you babbling about? What do you want?”
“I want you, Mara. I want your world, your life. Everything,” her counterpart said without a hint of humor or sarcasm. “And you will give it to me willingly.”
“You’re delusional,” Mara said.
Her counterpart opened her arms widely, and a flash of blackness engulfed her. When it receded, Sam stood in her place, a wry smile on his face.
“Little brother has figured out what is going on here,” he said in Mara’s voice. “What’s taking you so long?”
“What’s the point of another disguise? I know who you are.”
He laughed Mara’s laugh and caused skeletal Mara’s proverbial skin to crawl. His eyes flashed green and, in his own echoing voice,
said, “It is us, Mara. You need to know, she’s my—”
The green glow of his irises faded, and the smile returned. So did Mara’s voice. “Ah, ah, ah! She has to figure it out for herself.”
“Sister,” Mara finished his sentence. “You’re the Mara from Sam’s realm.”
“Finally she gets it,” said her counterpart possessing her brother with mock amazement. “It was getting tiresome waiting for you to catch up. How did you figure it out?”
“You knew too much—that Sam is a prompter, that Ping could disperse and how I came to have this body. That meant you have been watching us for a while. Using the Arboretum as a trap, as a way of blocking my abilities, meant you were a progenitor—one of my counterparts.”
“Very good.” The other Mara nodded Sam’s head.
“Your crack about the meteors not being the first time I’d seen them, told me it was you—Sam’s Mara—because, at the time I’d first encountered them, you were the only counterpart I had ever met. I had assumed your mother or Suter had sent the meteor the first time, but I was wrong. It was you.”
“It was me.”
“We thought you were dead this whole time. Your mother said your body returned to your realm after the explosion on the airplane.”
“That’s what I led her to believe.”
“And her ability to cross over from her realm to mine—that was you. Wasn’t it?” Mara asked.
“She was powerful, but she could not have crossed over and possessed your Diana without me. Your Mr. Ping was correct about that.”
“You’ve been around, lurking ever since. Suter, Prado, the Aphotis, the dragon—you were behind all of it.”
“It would be more accurate to say that I took advantage of the opportunities presented by the circumstances. You were the one responsible for the explosion on the aircraft—by touching me while I was in contact with the Chronicle. And, you caused the schism between realms that allowed creatures to enter your world. But, that’s water under the bridge. Now it’s time to face the consequences.”
Broken Spells (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 6) Page 26