Sliding her feet beneath her, she pushed upward until her shoulder caught on a jagged outcrop of concrete. Rolling over onto her stomach, she grabbed the ledge and pulled up onto the uncollapsed portion of the raised roadway. Standing with her arms held out for balance, she inched to her right, toward the crumpled balustrade.
A beam of light swept from the sky, momentarily blinding her again. She could sense, more a vibration than a sound, the thump of helicopter blades. Another roar erupted to the right and below her. Squinting, she saw the dragon’s scale-covered, tree-trunk-size tail hurling at her, slamming into the side of the overpass just below her feet, sending her flying once more in the air.
For a few seconds, she felt weightless, as if swimming in a dark ocean, until she landed facedown on what felt like a hard-shingled roof with almost enough force to knock the breath out of her. The ground beneath her shifted and rippled. She scrambled for a handhold, still fearing for some reason that she might fall from the overpass.
The light from above returned—as did the thumping sound.
Maintaining her grip, Mara twisted to look up. The helicopter circled with a spotlight locked on her. Staring back at it, like a deer in headlights, she didn’t move for several seconds, until a shadow loomed over her torso.
Moving slowly into the cone of light from the helicopter, the head of the dragon, at the end of its long twisted neck, swung into view. Mara quickly turned around to look above her shoulders and realized that she was no longer on the overpass, nor was she on the ground. Muscles and scales rippled beneath her, not pavement or shingles. She had landed on the back of the dragon.
Wide-eyed, she pushed herself up from its back and looked around. She lay to the left of the raised spines that erupted from the dragon’s backbone and ran from its head to its tail. The creature undulated beneath her. The massive wings rose up from the darkness just a few feet from Mara’s head. Wind crashed down on her, pressing her down, against the armored hide.
Above her, the dragon swiveled its head over its own back and screamed into the sky, blowing a burst of flame at the helicopter, which moved away and ascended, its pilot clearly determining that it wasn’t safe to hover around a fire-breathing serpent.
The dragon swung its torso in one swift turn, trotted for several paces and leaped into the air. Mara flopped along its upper flanks, flailing for a way to hold on, but the whipping wind and angle of ascent pushed her backward. She wedged her fingers between scales and held on for a few seconds, but they sliced into her skin, and she let go. Rolling sideways, she tumbled into the dragon’s spine—the tall, flat quills that bisected its back. There she got a handhold, grabbing one of the bony protrusions with both hands. Digging her heels into a thick patch of scales, she ducked her head and pressed herself against the dragon’s back. Once she felt stable, she let the muscles in her arms and legs relax a little, took a deep, ragged breath and looked up.
Facing backward, she looked down the slope of the dragon’s back toward the ground. The pile of debris that was the overpass on McLaughlin Boulevard had already sunk into obscurity and was now simply a void in the otherwise teeming sea of city lights and traffic that surrounded it. Warehouses and expansive lit parking lots boxed in the immediate area. Farther afield, to the north, the blazing cityscape of downtown Portland glowed beneath a heavy bank of clouds.
Mara wondered if the dragon purposefully had selected this spot to attack her mother. While still in the middle of urban sprawl, it was isolated enough for the dragon to do its business. On second thought, she doubted the dragon cared about being discrete.
A muffled roar and a sudden tautness along the dragon’s torso caught Mara’s attention. She slowly twisted around to see they were flying directly at the white helicopter, emblazoned with a bold stylized 12. She gasped as the dragon screeched again and emitted a blast of flame that licked at the bottom of the helicopter. The vehicle wobbled for a second, smoothly dipped into a shallow U and disappeared into the clouds.
The dragon arched to the right but stayed below the cloud layer. Mara sensed it stalking its prey. She suspected the helicopter had doused its spotlight, because there was no hint of light in the sky. Nor could she hear it, but that could simply be the wind masking the beat of the rotors. They circled below the clouds like a shark.
Mara silently prayed that the helicopter had somehow slipped away above the clouds. That would leave her with just one worry: how to get down from here. The last time she went on a dragon ride, it was, for lack of a better way of putting it, at the behest of the beast—and through the influence of Ping, shortly after he had merged with it. Now it seemed the dragon was calling the shots.
Ahead and to the right, a wisp of vapor separated from the dark clouds. Mara could see a faint red light winking in the distance. The dragon’s head twitched that way, and it made whatever adjustments its wings needed to alter course. As they approached, the helicopter broke through the clouds, descending quickly, swinging below the dragon’s body, where Mara could not see it. The dragon growled, sending a tremor through its body. Swinging left, it dove into a corkscrew.
Mara’s stomach felt like it was coming up through her throat. She could not inhale and felt light-headed when they leveled off. After catching her breath, she saw the dimly lit helicopter directly ahead but much lower, and facing away from the dragon, tilted toward the ground. It moved toward the darkened area of McLaughlin, back to the overpass. Once it approached the ground, its spotlight was illuminated again.
Mara was aghast. Are those people insane? That thing looks like a little bug, and it’s about to be swallowed whole by this flying lizard I’m riding.
Tucking its wings to its sides, the dragon let gravity take over, as it dove toward the helicopter.
Mara’s eyes widened, and she screamed into the wind, “No, Ping! You have got to stop this!” She tightened her grip on the dragon’s spine and stomped on its back, hoping to distract it somehow. Kicking at the scales, she gritted her teeth and screamed in frustration. It didn’t flinch. They continued to dive.
As they approached, the dragon swerved to the left, and Mara could see the silhouettes of two men in the cabin of the helicopter. Both wore headsets and were looking down at the street, not at the approaching menace from above. Mara fell to her knees and wedged her fingers beneath the scales of the creature’s back. Closing her eyes, she said under her breath, “Sorry, Ping.”
Arcs of blue lightning shot out from her hands, wrapped around the torso of the dragon and spidered across its wings, sending spasms throughout its body. A scream of agony tore through the night, as the dragon convulsed in midair, its course now flying wide of the helicopter but still heading toward the ground. Its body tumbled into a sideways roll with its wings flopping uselessly with each turn. The spinning flung Mara into the air and a passing wing smacked her back toward the dragon’s body. She tumbled freely along its flanks as it fell from the sky. At some point, she grabbed a bony protuberance and held on, not really having a sense of what was happening, apart from falling.
Buffeted by a wind whipping past her body, Mara could feel her heart pounding in her head and a heavy pressure built up in her chest. She gasped for air, feeling consciousness slip away. For a second she felt weightless, and then the tumbling stopped. She lifted her head from the dragon and found herself staring into lines of headlights. Horns honked. Cars crashed. They flew just feet above the roofs of the cars backed up on what she presumed was McLoughlin, though it could have been another street. Somewhere a woman screamed, but that sound faded as they gained altitude.
They disappeared into the clouds.
CHAPTER 35
Sam jogged out from under the overpass, and watched the dragon run down the road and leap into the air. He turned on his heel and called back to the pile of rubble, “Mara! Are you out here?”
Bohannon walked up, carrying a flashlight. He swept the roadway and the shoulder, making a point of looking behind mounds of debris scattered everywhere. No sign o
f Mara.
Sam pointed to the intact portion of the overpass on the right side of the road and said, “I think at some point she was up there. The lightning that hit the dragon was coming from above, and it wasn’t coming from the clouds.”
Bohannon pointed the light at the collapsed section of the overpass and ran it up toward the balustrade of the intact portion. “I’m not following you. What does Mara have to do with the lightning?”
“You saw her earlier. She was zapping it, you know, with bolts of electricity.”
“About that …”
“The dragon was perched up there, then it was down here. She must have swapped places with it at some point, after it became unfrozen.”
“Swapped places?” Bohannon repeated.
“She can move things, swap the locations of things. Like she moved all of us under the overpass before the dragon came crashing down.”
“She swapped us?” Bohannon asked. “With what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she got panicked and just moved us. She really doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time. She can do more than she’s willing to believe.”
Bohannon continued sweeping the overpass. “I don’t understand how all this comes together—the lightning, moving things, freezing things.”
“Mara’s a progenitor. She has the ability to alter reality, but she doesn’t really have a firm grasp on the whole thing, so she has this weird mix of stuff she does, mostly when she gets freaked-out. It makes sense when Ping explains it. You’ll need to ask him.”
“So I should ask the dragon.”
“Probably best to wait until he’s not a dragon,” Sam said, turning in a circle scanning the area. “Maybe Mara flickered away, or maybe she was on the dragon when it flew away.”
Bohannon shook his head. “I’m not even going to ask what flickering is, but why on God’s green Earth would she get on a dragon and fly away?”
Sam shrugged. “Don’t know, but she’s not here. I’m betting she’s with the dragon.”
“Sam?” Diana called from beneath the overpass. “Is Mara out there? Is she okay?”
He jogged toward the shadows and waved for Bohannon to follow. As the detective turned, his eye caught a line of flashing blue lights making their way along the shoulders of McLoughlin Boulevard. Several police cruisers navigated their way around the abandoned cars blocking the road, heading toward them.
He turned and ran over to the patrol car Diana had stolen earlier.
“Mrs. Lantern, I would recommend that you and Hannah take this patrol car and head home. In a few minutes this place will be crawling with cops,” Bohannon said. “No, better yet, stay on McLaughlin and go to a restaurant or shopping center and call a cab or a friend to come pick you up. You don’t want to get caught with the car at your house.”
Diana glanced at Sam. “Where’s Mara?”
“We don’t know,” he said. “We’ll stay here and look for her. I would really feel better if you and Hannah were safe at home.”
“How do we know the dragon won’t just keep following me?” she said.
“I think Mara is keeping him busy,” Sam said. “We’ll find Mara and bring her home.”
“You don’t even have a car.”
Bohannon interjected, “It really will complicate things if you are picked up with a stolen patrol car. We’ll all end up at a police station, and no one will be out here looking for Mara. So it is best you go, and go now.”
“All right, but take my phone. I’ll call you from home when I get there.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and handed it to Sam.
Hannah, standing next to her grandmother, said, “Dad?”
He bent down and said, “Yes, bean?”
“Can I carry the head while we drive home?” she asked.
Diana rolled her eyes and said, “Sweetie, you’ll have to ask the head that. He’s a person after all.”
Sam smiled at his mother, turned to Hannah and said, “The head’s name is Cam. Be nice to him and remember to treat him kindly. He’s had a long day.”
“We’ve all had a long day,” Diana said, as she guided Hannah to the patrol car.
Sam followed Diana to the driver’s side of the car and held the door open for her. “Don’t worry. We’ll find Mara and come home as soon as possible. Oh, and turn off the flashers, so you don’t attract attention.”
Diana pecked him on the cheek, got into the car and slowly drove away, swerving to dodge a couple chunks of debris in the street.
Bohannon walked up to him and said, “When the cops or emergency crews show up, we don’t know what happened here. It was like this when we got here. We don’t talk about dragons or missing sisters or any of that. As a matter of fact, just let me do the talking.”
“How are you going to explain how you got here? Your car is a pile of wet ashes,” Sam said, pointing to the debris north of the overpass.
The detective waved a hand dismissively. “I stopped to help a motorist in distress and someone stole the vehicle. No biggie.”
“And what about me? What am I doing here?”
“Like I said, let me do the talking. Cops are a lot less suspicious of their own. They won’t ask a lot of questions as long as we don’t start acting hinky,” Bohannon said, walking out from under the overpass. He held up a hand and felt no rain falling. “Maybe this storm front is getting ready to move on.”
Sam followed him toward the jumble of abandoned cars a few hundred feet away. The blue and red flashing lights were now parking along the shoulder nearby. He said, “I hope it doesn’t clear up too quickly. I think the clouds are providing the only cover Ping has.”
Bohannon nodded ahead and said, “That looks like it might be a tactical unit van parked along the median. That’s not good news.”
“Why’s that?” Sam asked.
“That means they’ve got reason to be afraid of something down here, and they are preparing to engage it with some real firepower. I wonder if that helicopter was broadcasting footage of the dragon earlier.”
Sam pointed up to the sky and said, “You mean that helicopter?”
A spotlight swept over them.
Bohannon shook his head. “Idiots. They are going to get themselves killed.”
Sam scanned the dark skies and could see nothing other than the layer of clouds reflecting the glow of the lights on the ground. He slowly turned, trying to sense movement above but detected nothing. “I don’t see him,” he said.
“You think there’s a chance that the dragon would come back here?”
Sam shrugged. “For all we know, he never really left. He might be up in the clouds, waiting for a chance to strike, or he could be miles away by now.”
“All right, let’s jog up the road a piece and talk to the cops and let them know nothing’s going on down here. For all they heard, an earthquake damaged the overpass, or there was an industrial accident with a truck. If there’s no crime scene and no one under immediate threat, their priority will be to clear the abandoned cars and get traffic moving again.”
Sam leaned against one of the abandoned cars. “It might be a good idea if I stayed here, just in case.”
Bohannon gave him a suspicious look. “You’re not gonna do anything, right?”
Sam raised his hands defensively. “No, just keeping watch. I won’t do anything or go anywhere, unless the dragon drops in.”
The detective handed him the flashlight and turned to walk up the road.
CHAPTER 36
Darkness and clouds conspired to keep Mara disoriented, as the wind pounded her relentlessly. Once again she had attached herself to a bony outcrop protruding from the dragon’s spine; however, this time she stood at the base of its neck, her feet planted firmly on its shoulder blades near the joint from which its wing erupted from its body. Her foothold rose and fell with the stroke of its wings, like an oar in water. She looked down at her feet and watched her knees slowly bend and straighten, trying to keep balance, as the dragon propelled i
tself through the murky skies.
She wondered if it knew she was here, that she had not fallen off. Her own skin was numb from the icy-wet air whipping across her body, but she was sure the dragon’s thick hide provided more protection. And though she felt small next to the massive creature, her full weight must be enough to provide some resistance to the flexing joint. She stopped wondering when the dragon’s head craned back on its neck, suspended a few feet above her.
Its red eyes narrowed, as its glare locked on her. It pulled back its lips and hissed at her, exposing teeth half Mara’s height. She made a point of pulling her body closer to the dragon’s, wanting to make sure any sudden fireworks would do as much damage to it as to her. The dragon rolled its shoulders, and its entire body yawed, causing Mara’s feet to slip off its shoulder, but she held on to its neck long enough to scramble and get her feet below her again. Gritting her teeth, she snarled back, “I’m not going to be that easy to get rid of.”
The dragon’s eyelid slid down slowly, a bored expression, as it turned away and stretched its head to the right, dipping it below its torso while raising its left wing—the one next to Mara—and swooped into a corkscrew dive. The plunge pressed Mara into the dragon’s side, but, as they spun around, she found herself pulled away. She wrapped her arms around the bony spine in a bear hug, pressing her cheek against the rough surface. Pressure built up in her chest, preventing her from breathing. Suddenly the clouds were gone.
Mara glanced around and tried to get her bearings—difficult to do considering they were spinning toward the ground. As best she could tell, they were south of downtown near the river, which meant they were still in the general vicinity of the overpass where this ride started. With a jolt that slammed her ribs into something spiking from the dragon’s hide, they came out of the spin but still descended, gaining speed. Mara lifted her head and looked straight ahead. There, in front of them again, was the helicopter, hovering over the roadway, its spotlight on a lone figure, looking up, hooding his eyes with his hands.
Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) Page 18