They flew over a cluster of emergency vehicles sporting spinning red and blue lights parked in the median several yards behind the knot of abandoned cars near the crumpled overpass. A line of people with flashlights appeared to be making their way forward along the shoulder of the road. The dragon barreled past the stalled cars directly for the helicopter.
Mara tensed, getting ready to strike out at the dragon, when it rolled onto its side. Mara’s feet slipped out from under her, and she dangled in the night sky, nothing between her and the pavement a few hundred feet below. Slowly she felt her grasp slip. Grabbing at the dragon’s hide with her fingernails, she could not gain purchase. Her stomach clenched.
The dragon jerked its head upward, sending a wave through its body that rippled all the way to its tail, a whip snapping at the wind. Mara’s left hand fell away, and her right cramped and trembled as it slipped to the end of the bony spine.
The dragon rolled over onto its back.
And Mara fell.
She watched the dragon fly on without her, as she slowly dropped toward the ground, her mind frozen in the moment, not comprehending her situation. The sound of the helicopter’s blades brought her back to reality, and her eyes flicked in that direction. The dragon plunged toward it, letting out a roar and a column of fire that grazed its fuselage. The tiny craft jogged to the right like a hummingbird, trying to get out of the monster’s path, but it did no good. The dragon corrected its course with the flick of its tail and zeroed in. When it was just a few feet away, the dragon flung open its wings, catching a cushion of air that allowed it to hover before the helicopter. The spotlight at the bottom of the helicopter rotated from the ground and pointed toward the dragon, illuminating the creature splayed in all its monstrous glory.
As Mara plunged, she slowly raised a hand toward the nightmare unfolding above her. She winced and closed her eyes.
The leathery wings of the dragon shimmered in the spotlight, blurred for a moment and melted away in a shower of glittering cubes that caught the wind like confetti. The remains of the creature plummeted below the edge of the spotlight where Mara could no longer see him.
Mara closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable.
But only silence came.
She opened her eyes and realized she no longer felt the wind whipping past her body. Still prone in the air but not falling, she twisted her neck to the right and saw the cluster of abandoned cars on McLaughlin Boulevard. She was suspended about ten feet in the air. Realizing she could no longer hear the helicopter, her head spun around, looking skyward. There it was, hanging motionless but intact a few hundred feet above, its spotlight now pointed downward, but not directly at the ground. The cone of light it cast was filled with a cloud of dense dust. Ping.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sam said.
He was below and to her left, walking toward where she hung in the air, her back to the ground. Mara twisted around and looked down at him.
“I appear stuck somehow,” she said.
He pointed the flashlight at her, ran it up and down her body as if he were looking for wires. “You ever been stuck like this before?”
“Well, I fell off the Oregon City Bridge that night and kinda got stuck like this right over the water,” she said, twisting back and forth straining leverage somehow.
“How’d you get out of that then?” he asked.
“Ping, or the dragon, plucked me from the air and took me for a ride, but I don’t think that’s an option this time,” she said.
“Well, you better figure out something fast,” Sam said. “You’re flickering again.”
Mara looked down at her body and watched it disappear. Everything went black for a second, and then she was back. Once again she disappeared. Only this time she stayed in the blackness longer. Then she hovered above the road again.
“Mara! Just release Time,” Sam yelled at her. “You’re going to fritz away if you don’t.”
She fell from the air, crashing to the pavement.
The sounds of traffic came back like a wave. Emergency vehicle lights swept over the horizon, and the thumping of the helicopter came over them.
Sam ran over to her, grabbed her arm and said, “Are you all right? Can you stand up?”
She leaned against him, as she tried to stand. “I think so.” It took her a minute to be sure she would not crumble to the ground, but her legs held, when her brother slowly stepped away from her side.
“You look like hell,” Sam said. He lifted the flashlight to Mara’s face, and she raised a hand to her head, tried to run her fingers through her hair but couldn’t because of the thatch of tangles.
“You’d look like hell too if—”
Something landed with a loud thud about ten feet behind them.
Sam pointed the flashlight at the ground near the right shoulder of the road. The beam illuminated the feet of a man sticking out from a pair of white pants. Baker’s pants.
CHAPTER 37
Sam swept the flashlight up the pants legs, but they were white only to the knees. From there the cloth was a deep, wet red, drenched in blood. Ping lay crumpled over the curb, his back accordianed at an unnatural angle, as if he had been poured in place. Sam ran to him and crouched down, shining the light into Ping’s unrecognizable face. His features were swollen into each other, the back of his head flattened against the asphalt. Grabbing him by the shoulders, Sam lifted and cradled Ping’s upper body, discovering his arms were missing.
Mara ran up to them as Sam turned to her, holding up his blood-soaked hands. “What did you do to him? His arms are gone! He’s dying!”
Mara’s eye filling with tears, she said, “I—I don’t think you should try to move him until we can get some help.”
“Help? Look at him! No one’s coming to help.”
Mara crouched down next to them and put two fingers on Ping’s neck. She felt a pulse, though it seemed weak to her. “He’s still alive. There’s got to be a way to help him. There’s always a way.”
She looked down, trying to compose herself, to blink tears away. Blood pooled around her feet.
“Where is Hannah? She healed him before,” Mara said, grabbing Sam’s shoulder, trying to get him to look at her.
Sam shook his head. “She’s gone with Mom, gone home. She didn’t heal him last time. She prompted him to heal himself. Ping’s unconscious. there’s no way to prompt someone who’s unconscious.”
Mara heard footsteps approach from across the road and turned to see who it was.
Sam grabbed her arm and said, “You can heal him. I know you can. You have to try.”
She shook her head. “I can’t—” She staggered away from him.
“Mara? Is that you and Sam over there?” It was Bohannon.
She stood up and turned. “Bo, do they have an ambulance out here somewhere?”
“They’ve got an army of cops, firefighters and paramedics down the road. Why? What’s going on?” the detective asked, as he approached. He looked past Mara’s shoulder and saw the body on the ground. “Lord Almighty, is that Ping?”
Mara tried to answer, but her voice caught in her throat as she nodded. She leaned into the detective, and he wrapped an arm over her shoulder.
“What happened to him? It looks like he got hit by a truck or even a train,” Bohannon said.
Sam turned and through gritted teeth said, “Can one of you please get some help?”
The detective pulled out a phone, tapped the screen and held it to his ear. “Yeah, it’s Bohannon. Look, I was wrong. We’ve got one down here. It looks pretty bad, massive trauma and bleeding. Send in a set of paramedics and an ambulance. Once they clear out, everyone else can come in and clean up.”
Bohannon slipped the phone into his pocket, put his hands on Sam’s shoulders and tried to pull him away. Sam resisted. Bohannon softened his voice and said, “Let me in here to have a look at him.” The boy relented and moved out of the way.
“God have mercy,” Bohannon said. H
e turned around and looked at Mara, conveying his grave assessment of Ping without saying a word.
She crouched down next to him and asked, “Is there anything we can do?”
Ping coughed, spitting up blood onto his chin. It ran down his neck onto his chest.
Bohannon grimaced and turned to her. “At least he’s breathing, but it doesn’t look good. He’s losing a lot of blood. The paramedics will be here in a minute, and we’ll get him to the hospital. Too bad that healer guy who fixed my broken leg isn’t around. Might be worth calling him and asking him to meet us at the hospital, ’cause I’m not sure a regular doctor can sew Ping back up. I mean, look at him. How did he lose his arms?”
“Keep it down,” Mara whispered and looked over her shoulder toward her brother. “Ping is the closest thing Sam has to a father, and we can’t give up hope. I can’t give up hope, for my own sake.”
“You really should prepare—”
“Wait, what did you say?” Mara’s eyes widened, and she grabbed the detective’s sleeve.
He lowered his head closer to her. “I said, I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
“No, you said that healer guy. Denton Proctor. He healed you.”
“Yeah, so?”
She held up a hand and said, “Hold on.” Turning around, she spotted Sam pacing a few feet behind them, red lights sweeping across his face. “Sam? Is that the ambulance coming?”
“Yeah, they just pulled over into the median to get around the abandoned cars. They’ll be here in a few seconds.”
She waved him over and said, “I need you to buy us some time, stall them for a few minutes.”
“Stall them? What are you talking about? They need to get Ping to the hospital.”
“Just keep them occupied for a few minutes. We’re going to try something here,” she said.
“How exactly do you want me to stall them?” he said.
“Prompt them. Just tell them to stand there and do a jig. I don’t care. Just do it.”
Sam raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Just help him.” He walked to the far side of the road, as the ambulance approached.
Bohannon caught her eye and said, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not going to do anything. You are,” she said. “Give me your hands.”
“What?” Bohannon held up his hands and looked down at them.
Mara grabbed his wrists, twisted them so his palms were facing downward and shoved them onto Ping’s chest.
Bohannon recoiled, slipping out from Mara’s grip. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Denton Proctor said he passes on his healing ability to the people he heals. He fixed your broken leg, so I’m betting you can heal Ping. Now put your hands on his chest and keep them there,” Mara said, pointing to Ping’s body.
“You said something about that before.”
“Yeah, I did, but I just remembered. Now do it!”
“You don’t seriously believe I can heal him simply by touching him, do you?”
“It doesn’t matter what we believe. Denton said it was a biochemical process that’s passed on from the healer to the healed. It either works or it doesn’t. You either have the biochemicals to make it happen or you don’t. Think of it like a science experiment. No magic, no metaphysics, just a police detective doing a little innovative first aid on the side of the road. No big deal.”
He looked dubious. “What do I do?”
“You were there when he healed your leg. Put your hands on Ping and let what happens happen.” She grabbed Bohannon’s wrists and pushed his hands back onto Ping’s chest.
“Now keep them there,” she ordered.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw two men climb from the ambulance. Sam walked up to them and said something indistinguishable, and both casually leaned against the side of the vehicle, as if they were waiting for a bus.
“I can feel something. I swear to God, I can feel something in my hands!” Bohannon said. “It’s sort of warm and tingly.”
Mara squinted through the shadows and flashing ambulance lights, looking for some sign of improvement in Ping’s face. After a moment she swore she saw his cheek tremble, then his head rose a bit as the dent in the back of his head filled out. The swelling in his face slowly receded.
“I think it’s working,” she said.
Bohannon’s voice trembled. “I know. Look!” He nodded toward Ping’s shoulders.
Red stumps slowly emerged from the bloody sleeves and flopped down onto the ground, continuing to slither down his side. Several minutes later the appendages sprouted fingers, flattened into hands and articulated themselves at the elbows and wrists. The wet redness faded to pink and that faded to a peachy skin tone.
Mara glanced at Ping’s face, and his features were now recognizable, despite the heavy spatters of blood caking his cheeks and neck. She could see his eyes rolling under their lids. Reaching down with her right hand, she wound her fingers in his. Leaning over him, she placed her other hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Welcome back.”
CHAPTER 38
The paramedics lifted the gurney where Ping was strapped and slid it in the back of the ambulance. Sam put his foot on the bumper, leaning into the rear entrance of the vehicle, when the paramedic standing nearby grabbed his arm and said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t allow passengers other than the patient. You’ll have to catch another ride to the hospital.”
Sam glanced down at the man’s hand, then looked up to his face and said, “It’s okay if I come along.”
The paramedic’s hand fell away, but, before Sam could get into the ambulance, Mara grabbed him by the arm. “I think it would be best if I go. Bohannon can get you a lift with one of his police buddies,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work, because the only way you can convince these guys to let you ride along is if you blow up the ambulance or something. On the other hand, they seem to be okay with me, right guys?” He nodded at them, and they nodded back.
Mara pressed her lips together and asked the paramedic leaning over Ping, “How’s he look to you?”
“It looks like he’s in shock. He’s lost a massive amount of blood, but I can’t find any obvious injuries. He probably has significant internal injuries, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how he got blood all over his clothes and skin. Might be someone else’s blood. You guys sure there’s no one else injured around here?”
Bohannon leaned into the back of the ambulance. “He’s the only one. I’ve been all over this place.”
“Well, then we need to get going. The plasma we are giving him will hold him for a bit, but he’s going to need a transfusion, so you folks need to let us go,” the paramedic said. He pointed to the doors. His partner closed them, while Sam waved as he disappeared from view. The remaining paramedic gave Mara and Bohannon a nod and walked to the cab at the front of the vehicle. With a loud squawk of the siren, the ambulance pulled away, slowly crossing the median of McLaughlin to merge with northbound traffic.
* * *
Sitting in the back of a patrol car on the way to the hospital, Mara and Bohannon sat in silence, until they had merged into traffic, where it appeared the patrolman in the driver’s seat was occupied with navigating and talking on the radio. Fighting off a sudden wave of exhaustion, Mara stretched open her eyes and tried to force away the drowsiness. Looking to occupy her mind, she glanced over at Bohannon, prepared to make a snarky remark about the City of Portland’s lack of preparedness to deal with large flying reptiles, but the expression on his face cut her off. A mix of anxiety and panic shaped his features.
“What is wrong? Did I miss something?” Mara asked.
The detective just stared ahead, not responding.
Mara tapped him lightly on the knee. “Bo? Why do you look like someone just murdered your mother? What’s wrong?”
He slowly lifted his hands in front of him and said, “I healed him. With these hands. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, you saved Ping’s life. That’s a good thing. So what’s with the freaked-out look?”
Still not looking at Mara, Bohannon said, “You know, my dad was a Baptist preacher in the Deep South. Every once in a while we would go to these revival meetings—tent meetings they called them—and a preacher would heal people, but I never believed it. I always thought they planted people in the congregation to pretend they were lame or blind or whatever, and they’d just fake being healed. I thought it was a scam to get people to pony up, when the plate was passed around at the end of the service.”
“Yeah, so?” Mara asked.
“People are going to think I’m some kind of con man, just like those preachers,” he said.
“Nobody says you have to go around having revival meetings and healing people,” Mara said. “Just because you can heal people doesn’t mean you are compelled to, and you certainly don’t have to turn yourself into some kind of circus act. If you don’t want to heal people, don’t.”
“Yeah, but ethically, how do you stand by and do nothing if people are suffering? You’d have to help, to heal them. Wouldn’t you?”
Mara shrugged and looked away. She was too tired to offer much solace.
“These abilities you have, how do you deal with them?” he asked.
“Not very well. It’s been one disaster after another since I became aware of them. Everything that has happened today has been my fault.”
“I’m not following. How can you be responsible for what the dragon is doing?”
“There wouldn’t be a dragon if it weren’t for me. I’m the one who caused it to fuse with Ping in this realm. It was my counterpart—another Mara—who started all this by experimenting with crossing over from other realms.”
“Sorry if I’m being dense and more than a little distracted, but none of that makes a bit of sense to me. You’re saying you fused this dragon into Mr. Ping?”
“It’s a long story but, yes.”
Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) Page 19