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

by D. W. Moneypenny

  “Please just reconnect my cranium before you go. It will only take a few minutes,” Cam said. His eyes widened, as if something just occurred to him. “If you do, I can probably figure out how to find your mother.”

  Mara cocked an eyebrow at him. “How?”

  “I should be able to trace the text message back to her phone. Assuming it has GPS and your mother does a better job of keeping her phone charged, I can probably get a location from that by remotely connecting to it.”

  “You can do all that?”

  “Pretty sure I can, if you promise to reattach my cranium to my torso.”

  Mara stepped up to the gurney, grabbed Cam’s head and tucked it under her left arm, like a football. She turned and jogged from the room, letting the heavy metal door slam behind her, sending a hollow echo through the parking garage below the hospital.

  “Mara! What are you doing? Where are you taking me?” Cam yelled from under her arm.

  Mara jogged over to the elevator and pressed the Up button. She glanced back at the door to the room that held Cam’s body and made a mental note that she would have to get that nurse, Jazz, to enter the passcode for her again. She looked down at the top of Cam’s head and said, “Shush, I’m getting ready to run-through the hospital lobby, and I don’t want to have to stop and explain why I’m holding a talking head.”

  The elevator door opened. Luckily no one was inside. Mara stepped inside and punched the L button on the chrome panel.

  “The least you could do is tell me what you’re doing,” Cam said. “And rotate me around so my nose is not tucked into your armpit.”

  Mara slid him around so he faced her. From her vantage point, it looked like she had him in a headlock. “Sorry, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way. I’ll take you back and help get all your parts and pieces put back together, but for now I need you to tell me where my mother is.”

  “I could have done that from my gurney! You need to take me back immediately.”

  “As soon as we help Mom. Trace that message back and get me the location.” Mara slipped her jacket off her right arm and shimmied it over her left arm to cover Cam’s head.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I think I need to cover you up. It, I mean, you, look too much like a human head.”

  “I’m not going to help you until you take me back.”

  “I’m not going to take you back until you help me. Now get Mom’s location, or you’ll end up being a permanent addition to the knickknack shelf in an old gadget repair shop.” She wrapped her coat over the head just as a tone sounded in the elevator, and the doors opened to the lobby.

  Mara ran from the elevator, dodged a couple with a small child and continued down the short hall into the lobby. As she approached the glass front doors with her bundle, she pivoted and pushed the doors with her backside, stepping out into a steady downpour.

  “Great,” she said, looking up into the dark sky. She heard a muffled voice coming from the bundle but didn’t pause to figure out what Cam said. She ran for the sprawling parking lot while shunting the wrapped head under her left arm and retrieving her car keys from her right pocket.

  Stopping next to the passenger side of her Subaru Outback, she pointed the key fob at it, sending a squawk into the air. Opening the door, she placed the bundle on the passenger seat and unwrapped it. Cam looked up at her with a snarl, about to say something. She held up a hand and said, “Wait. Let me get in the car, and then you can yell all you want.” She flipped wet hair out of her face and slammed the door.

  After getting into the driver’s seat and starting the car, she leaned over to turn Cam’s head toward her. She glanced at the seat belt and determined there was no way to secure him to the seat using it. Instead she piled up her jacket around him and said, “Sorry, this is the best I can do for the time being. I’ll try to keep an eye on you to make sure you don’t roll away when I brake and turn the car.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Do you have the location?” Mara pulled from the parking lot.

  Cam just glared at her.

  “Look, my mother and niece could be in a lot of danger. I need to get to them. NOW WHERE ARE THEY?” Mara pounded the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. She had braked at the entrance to the hospital. “I need to know what direction to go to get to them.”

  “It looks like they are on Marquam Hill, in one of the OHSU buildings,” Cam said.

  “Okay, I just need to get over to Powell,” she said in a calmer voice and turned left. “Bad time of day to cut across town.”

  “What kind of danger are they in?”

  “You read the text message,” she said, not looking down at the head in the passenger seat.

  “Dragon, dragon, dragon.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re saying there’s a dragon attacking your mother and niece? There’s no such thing.”

  Mara kept her eyes on the road, executing several turns while glancing down occasionally. “Look, where you come from, people are made of gears and gizmos and stuff. Here we’re made of … meat, I guess. In other places, they are made of scales and wings and breathe fire. For the time being, you’re just going to have to take my word for it.”

  “Okay, assuming there’s a dragon out there, who’s after your mother, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Stick a pin in that for a moment. Are you going to be okay being this far from your body? I mean, you said that your primary core was in your chest, didn’t you? It didn’t occur to me that taking your head away might have severed the signal or something. Do you have a range limit or something?”

  “I’m not sure. My head has never been severed before, but I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. I’m not actually broadcasting a signal per se. I’m just using the signals floating around in the air to establish a connection, and, since you people don’t look like you’re going to run out of cell phones and television signals anytime soon, I think I can make do.”

  “Can you place a phone call as well as intercept them?” she asked. “That reminds me.” She slid her phone from her pocket and plugged it into the charger cable on the small console below the dashboard.

  “You want me to call someone for you?”

  “Yeah, if you can.”

  “I suppose it’s possible. I’ve never tried. Who do you want to call?”

  “My brother Sam. His number is—”

  “The Sam in your contact list?”

  “That’s him.”

  “I’ve got the number in my memory. Hold on.”

  “You sucked my contact list into your memory? Wait! Your head doesn’t have a battery that’s going to run low, does it?”

  Cam rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. As Mara turned onto Powell Boulevard and headed west, Cam said, “GPS isn’t that precise, but I think your mother may have left the building up on the hill. Also I’m dialing your brother now.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The smoldering tramcar, still swaying on its cable, slid into its berth on the covered platform standing at the top of the hill looking over the neighborhoods, highways and the Willamette River to the east and the downtown Portland skyline to the north. In the distance, the Cascade Mountains loomed. The station looked like a piece of angular modern sculpture hoisted onto a stick and tacked onto the back of a glass-and-chrome hospital building.

  Once the tram door slid open, a collective gasp of relief rumbled through the passengers as they pushed to leave the smoke-filled compartment. The tram operator, a bald, portly man wearing a TriMet uniform, stood pale-faced, just outside the door on the platform, waving an arm, as if the passengers needed encouragement to disembark. He shook his head, wiped his eyes and commiserated with his departing charges.

  “I know, I know. That was a scary one,” he said. “I’m not sure what that thing was. You’re right. It was too big to be a bird. Maybe it was a private aircraft of some kind or a drone.”

  Several of the passen
gers congregated just outside the door, looking back at the tram with expressions of shock and dismay. Black scorch marks wrapped around its shell. Along the bottom half of the cabin, the exterior coating had blistered and split open, peeling away from the cracked and warped windows above.

  Diana clasped Hannah’s wrist in her own trembling hand at the back of the car and held her back for everyone else to leave. Now that that door was open, the air seemed to have cleared, and it wasn’t difficult to breathe, though the smell—probably burning paint—struck her as potentially toxic. Toxic paint. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about at the moment. She looked down to her side. Hannah, still clasping the torn piece of comic book, did not appear upset. Her little friend Tomas and his mother had already pushed forward and exited.

  “Baby, are you hurt?” Diana asked.

  “Nope. Are you?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know. We’ve got to get out of here before that—” She leaned down to whisper the word “—dragon shows up again.” Diana gave Hannah a little tug toward the door.

  Hannah waved the scrap of paper. “If he comes back, you can zap him again, just like a superhero.”

  “Yeah, about that, sweetie. Your ole grandmother doesn’t like beams of light shooting from her eyes, so let’s not do that again, okay? Especially without any warning.”

  Hannah shrugged as she stepped outside onto the platform. She looked back at the tram car. “Boy, Ping really burned that bad. Look, it’s still smoking some.”

  Diana glanced at it and shuddered. “It’s amazing that we made it up here.” She turned to the man in the uniform and said, “How do we get out of here?”

  “Where do you want to go?” he responded.

  “Back down the hill and not in a bucket on a string,” Diana said. “I left my car in the parking area in the lower lot.”

  “I suspect they are going to take the tram off-line, until we know what is flying around out there and until they get a chance to check the system for damage. Usually that means a shuttle will start running, but that may take some time to get going,” he said. “There’s always a regular bus route, but that won’t be direct and will also take some time. Stops are out front.”

  “Thanks,” Diana said. She turned away from the tram and headed toward the short skybridge that connected the tram station to the hospital building. From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the gray sky through the tram’s open berth. “I didn’t even realize it was raining. Come on. Let’s go to the lookout area and see what’s going on up there.”

  Hannah stumbled, trying to keep up as she was tugged along. “Yeah, I bet that dragon is getting all wet up there.”

  The tram car operator’s eyes widened, as he watched them leave.

  After traversing the skybridge, they took a right and walked up to a railing, where several people stood in the drizzle, looking out over the murky vista. Unlike everyone else, Diana was not looking down into the valley but up into the clouds for any sign of the dragon. Her eye caught movement to her left. A patch of low-hanging clouds looked shaved flat on the bottom and hung unmoving between the patio where they stood and the skyline to the south. Something roiled the clouds, kicking wisps downward, as if it were tunneling through them just out of sight. Tunneling toward them.

  Diana squinted at the shifting water vapor but couldn’t discern if she were being stalked from above or if a light wind was blowing through. She didn’t intend to stick around to find out which. Turning away from the view, she entered the building with her granddaughter in tow.

  “Come on. We’re leaving,” she said.

  Less than three minutes later they stepped out the front door of the building, and Diana looked up and down the street for a bus stop. The rain had thinned out to more of a spritz than a downpour, so it wouldn’t be too miserable while they waited for a ride.

  “Where are we going?” Hannah asked.

  “We’re going to take the bus down the hill to get our car,” Diana said. She pointed to her right, and they walked down the sloping sidewalk to the street. After they had gone about fifty feet, a yellow taxi pulled up to the curb in front of the door they had just exited. Diana stopped and turned on her heel. “That looks like a better idea than standing in the rain for half an hour for a one-hour bus ride down the hill. Come on, sweetie.”

  They jogged back to the front of the building. An elderly woman was struggling to get out of the back passenger door, and Diana leaned in to give her a hand, steadying the woman while she stood and got her cane from the car. While doing that, Diana leaned down to catch the driver’s eye. “We’d like to catch a ride with you, sir.”

  The driver, a burly man with a full salt-and-pepper beard and ponytail to match, turned toward her, while throwing a meaty arm over the front seat. “Sorry, lady. Dispatch has already given me another pickup down the road. I can’t take on a fare right now.”

  Diana nodded and smiled at the old woman, as she entered the building. Bending down, she lifted Hannah through the open cab door and placed her on the seat. “Scoot over, babe,” she said, stepping in after her.

  The driver glanced up into the rearview mirror and caught Diana’s eye. “Lady, I told you—”

  “I’ll pay you double. We just want to go down to the tram terminal by the waterfront,” she said. “It’s a matter of life and death that we get out of here.”

  The man shook his head. “You could get down there in a couple minutes on the tram. Besides, I’ve already got another fare lined up, and it’s not just a spin to the bottom of the hill.”

  “Okay. Forget the terminal. I’ll get my car later. Take us to Oregon City, Center Street. I’ll pay double, but you’ve got to go now.”

  He turned around with a skeptical look on his face. “Double fare? To Oregon City?”

  Diana nodded.

  “You got cash? ’Cause a credit card receipt ain’t going to do me no good. Those just go through the company, and my boss isn’t going to process a tip that big.”

  “Yes. Now let’s hit the road,” Diana said, as she fastened Hannah’s seat belt.

  The driver turned around, put the car in gear and grabbed the microphone to the radio mounted in the dash. “Hey, Bert, you got someone else who can do that pickup on Marquam?”

  CHAPTER 24

  Mara heard a dial tone fill the inside of her car, like a speakerphone. She glanced down at Cam, whose eyes were looking upward, as if contemplating a particularly complex riddle. At first she thought the ring tone was coming from Cam, but then she realized it was coming out of the car’s speakers, just as if she had placed the call herself using her phone. When her eyes flicked from the dashboard to the road ahead, Sam answered, “Yeah?”

  Mara instinctively looked back down at the dash and then over to Cam. “That is amazing. How did you do that?” she asked.

  “Do what?” Sam’s voice responded.

  On the road ahead of them, a black Chevy pickup with oversize tires pulled directly into the path of Mara’s Outback from the left lane. She looked up too late to tap her brakes, and her car plowed into the truck’s chrome bumper, crumpling the front half of the car’s hood. Mara lost a sense of control over the car, as it began to shimmy. After a moment, she realized that it was being dragged to the curb, as the truck pulled to the side of the street.

  Mara smacked the steering wheel. “Great. I don’t have time for this!”

  “What’s going on? It sounds like you just ran into something,” Sam said.

  Mara glared out the driver’s side window at the rain and took a deep breath. She wasn’t getting out in the rain; the other driver would have to come to her.

  “Where are you?” she said to the ceiling.

  “I’m at Mrs. Zimmerman’s. We should be done in about an hour. Mom said you were going to pick—”

  “Hush, listen. I think Ping, or rather the dragon, is stalking Mom, like those other reptiles from the river were doing. She just texted a few minutes ago. I need you to come with m
e and deal with him. Maybe you can prompt him to leave her alone long enough for us to get her home.”

  “Mara,” Cam said from the passenger seat.

  She held up a finger toward him. “Just one minute.”

  “I’m not sure I have enough time to run by and pick you up.”

  Someone pounded on the window next to Mara’s left ear. She jumped in her seat, causing the seat belt to pinch her shoulder.

  Standing in the road next to her car in the rain was a large bearded man, glaring down at her. She rolled down the window and said, “Just one minute, I’ll be right with you.”

  Rolling the window up, she glanced down at her phone, as if it were the source of her conversation, then turned to stare at Cam’s head. She rolled her eyes and said to the ceiling, “Sam, I need you here now. Is Mrs. Zimmerman there with you now?”

  “No, she left me a bunch of algebra problems to do and went to run some errands. She does that sometimes at the end of the day.”

  The man pounded on the window again. Mara jumped again and pushed the button on her armrest to lower the window. “I told you that I would be right with you.”

  The man twisted back and forth, slinging water alongside the car, like a dog drying off, and said, “Look, little girl, it’s raining out here, and I’m not standing around getting soaked while you talk to your boyfriend the phone.” He reached for the car door. “Now, step out here and give me your license number and insurance card, like a big girl.”

  Mara leaned away from the door, and she said, “Hold on, Sam!” She closed her eyes and envisioned Sam standing in Mrs. Zimmerman’s house. The man next to the car disappeared in a flash of light. A second later Sam appeared in his place. Dazed, he blinked the rain from his eyes and stepped forward with a start, as if someone had pushed him from behind.

  “You could have given me a warning. What if I had been using the bathroom or something?” he said.

  “Shut up and get in the car,” Mara said, rolling up her window.

  Sam jogged around the back of the car and opened the passenger door. Looking into the seat, he said, “What’s that?”