“Can I say hi to Mr. Ping?” Hannah asked.
Ping leaned forward to get into the range of the phone’s camera, but Mara pulled back and said, “Ah, he’s in the middle of something right now. Gotta go! See you in about an hour!” She tapped the End icon on the screen.
Sitting back with an irritated look, Ping said, “Now that was rude, don’t you think?” The rims of his pupils radiated a red glow that bled over and filled his brown irises. Though the light again faded quickly, this time Mara did not doubt what she saw, or what it meant.
She shrugged, as if it were not a big deal, and smiled at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to slight you. I just wanted to wrap up the call and get on with our session. I know you’re tired, and I didn’t want to use up what little time we have entertaining a five-year-old, who really just wanted to talk to her father.”
He seemed to relax but still struck Mara as stilted when he said, “I see. Very well, what is it that you wish to discuss?”
CHAPTER 50
Mara scooted around on her mat, as if she were trying to get comfortable. In reality she was releasing some tension and hoping to put Ping at ease by feigning a casualness she didn’t feel. Dangling her arms before her, she shook them loosely while rolling her head on her neck.
“You look like you are getting ready to engage in a wrestling match. Should I be worried?” he said. There was no humor in his voice.
Mara straightened and locked her gaze on him. “I think I’ve figured out what that latest haiku means, the one I told you about in the hospital the other day.”
“The one that talks about this realm’s Chronicle. Is that what you are referring to?”
“Yes,” Mara said. She reached into her pocket, removed the copper medallion and placed it on the floor between them. She kept her gaze on Ping’s face and watched as he looked down at it.
His eyes widened. “You’ve recovered the Chronicle. But how?”
She shook her head. “You see, I believe we were on the wrong path thinking the haiku referred to the Chronicle of Continuity. While it’s true the Chronicle of Creation, the one that Ab—the Aphotis—took, was from a different realm, I had spaced to the fact that Ned Pastor had fabricated a replica of it. Mom told me that he had made a duplicate medallion, but I didn’t really pay much attention. I just chalked it up to one of my mother’s friends doing their usual New Agey thing and didn’t give it much thought.”
She paused, waiting for Ping to say something. When he didn’t, she added, “Don’t you see? The haiku said prepare like a pastor. It wasn’t talking about sermons or scriptures, like we thought. It was simply a hint pointing me to Ned. Ned Pastor. Sam even said the original Chronicle might have been fabricated by someone who looks like Ned, probably his counterpart in that realm. If that’s true, then this medallion is this realm’s Chronicle. Don’t you follow?”
Ping looked at her doubtfully. “I suppose all that is possible. Does it work? Will it give you the ability to cross over to other realms?”
Mara frowned. “I thought you said the Chronicle didn’t have any power, that its power came from me. If that’s so, why wouldn’t it work?”
He tensed and waved a hand dismissively. “I meant, does it work for you? Have you tried it?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact I activated it last night, and it worked perfectly. I even had an interesting discussion with one of my counterparts from another realm.”
“You traveled to another realm? That’s surprising, given your reticence to do that previously.”
“Actually she came to me, inside the bubble. She projected herself into Sam’s body and rearranged his pixels, so he looked like me—I mean, us. She looked like me, but she used his pixels while we talked. It was like some kind of astral projection, where she could send her consciousness into Sam temporarily.”
Ping’s eyes narrowed. “Exactly what did this other Mara have to say? Why did she reach out to you in such an unorthodox manner?”
For a moment Mara was sure his eyes were about to flash red again, but, after a beat, she said, “The other Mara says Abby is snatching passengers from Flight 559 and following them back to their realms, but she’s abandoning them between the realms, before they actually get home, leaving them to die there. Their consciousnesses are leaving this smoggy-looking mist inside the bubble leading to the other realms.”
“Interesting. Why would she do such a thing?”
Mara looked at him askance and said, “I wouldn’t call murder interesting. Outrageous or appalling, but not interesting.”
Ping nodded. “Of course. It was a poor choice of words. Did the other Mara have an explanation for this behavior?”
Mara shook her head. “No, she doesn’t know what is motivating Abby, but she did say Abby is hurting even more people inside the realms she is visiting.”
“We may be isolating the reason your future self has guided you to this realm’s Chronicle after all. Perhaps you are supposed to use it to stop Abby from whatever it is she is trying to accomplish. Have you considered that?”
“Chasing Abby from one realm to another, encountering God-knows-what at every stop? I don’t think so. My preference would be to catch her on one of her visits back to this realm. Seems to me that a good hunter does better letting her prey come to her instead of running around with no idea where they are heading. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Ping shrugged. “That’s one strategy, but, if that’s the one you should be using, then why would your future self point you to recovering this realm’s Chronicle?”
“I don’t know, but this Mara from the other realm did make a point that I have been thinking about since. She seems to think it might be dangerous to rely too heavily on these hints from the future, that, if it is possible to change the past in the way future Mara is attempting, then she doesn’t really know the repercussions of the changes any more than I do. I have to admit that I’m beginning to have my doubts.”
“Doubts about what?” Ping asked.
Mara reached into her pocket, took out the demontoid crystal and sat it on the floor between them, next to the Chronicle. “Does this look familiar to you?” Mara asked.
Ping glanced down at the green gem, then back at Mara. The red haze washed over his eyes again, and Mara jumped to her feet, holding her hands in front of her.
Ping froze, the corner of his lip, his right cheek and nostril raised in an almost imperceptible sneer, rendered more ominous by the crimson glow of his eyes. The predatory expression sent a shiver up Mara’s spine, as she walked up to him and bent down, putting her face an inch from his. Up this close, his skin had a translucent quality, as if a milky sheath were stretched over gravel. Mara pressed his unsneered cheek with a finger. She could feel ridges beneath the skin, something course and bumpy. Like scales. And it felt hot, like a fire raged inside him.
Mara backed away without taking her eyes from him, one measured step after another, toward her mat. The side of her shoe grazed the green crystal on the floor, knocking it against the copper medallion with a tinny clatter that startled her. After one more step, she sat cross-legged across from Ping, almost hypnotized by his glowing eyes and repulsed by the thought of what might lurk beneath his skin.
She had to do something; she was losing him to the dragon. Haikus from the future or not, she could not sit here, pretending to have a conversation with Ping, knowing full well that he was slipping away with every moment. Ignoring the dragon’s folly was no longer an option, as far as she was concerned. She just hoped she wasn’t addressing it with a folly of her own.
Leaning forward, she scooped up the green demontoid in her left hand and picked up the Chronicle with her right. She held both palms up with the backs of her hands resting on her knees. She took a deep breath, and, for the first time since she had sat down, her gaze left Ping’s eyes, as she focused on the green gem in her left hand.
Her fingers fluttered, and the crystal floated above her palm, rotating and casting an arcing train of gree
n smears, smudges of light that crawled across the concrete floor and slid across Ping’s torso, one after the other. As the crystal rose higher and spun faster, the lights whipped across his face and into Mara’s eyes. Once the crystal rose above their heads, the light spun faintly along the distant walls, encircling them more in motion than brilliance.
Squinting, Mara peered more deeply into the spinning crystal, willing it to open up like it did that night on the Oregon City Bridge. Spinning faster, it grew brighter until it exploded in a sunburst of emerald glass. Panes of green light sliced into the air, spanning the warehouse, sheering the space around Mara and Ping into sharp reflective angles, as if the crystal’s facets had expanded and engulfed them.
Mara peered into the crystalline walls around them. The edges of each facet shimmered with ambient green light, but their glassy planes were dark. Something was different this time. Before, she had seen her reflections, her counterparts from other realms, and they had helped her separate the consciousness of Diana, the reptilian cult leader, from the body of her mother. Not this time.
Mara turned back to Ping. He had not moved. She leaned forward, peering into one of the glassy walls to his left, to see if she could detect a reflection or something. She saw nothing. As she pulled back and settled on her floor mat, a hollow sound surrounded them—a high-pitched eeeee. The facets surrounding Ping glowed greener. The walls next to Mara stayed dark.
Now louder: eeeeee.
The light spilling over Ping grew brighter. In the wall around him, the glowing became amorphous, as if something were taking shape—many somethings, in many facets, taking shape—all surrounding Ping’s stilled silhouette and glowing red eyes. It looked like a gallery of photographs, or holographs, coming into focus.
And the sound grew clearer. It was a voice, muffled and distant; it now sounded more like reeeeeee.
Mara stared at the morphing lights and cocked her head to listen to the voice. No, it was voices, a chorus of them, coming from in front of her, from the facets surrounding Ping. The lights were getting sharper, and they coalesced.
Mara could see it was a person, a child, a girl.
The chorus of voices rang out around her. “Mar-ree!”
CHAPTER 51
Images of Hannah swam into view, as the green light within the faceted walls coalesced. Mara’s breath caught in her throat. Dozens of little girls, all Hannah, stepped from the glassy confines of the crystalline walls and stood next to Ping, as he sat on the floor facing Mara. Her heart pounded as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. What is going on?
Mara’s head turned from one side of Ping to the other, then looking into the faces of her niece, attempting to divine what all this meant. A flick of Ping’s eye, just a twitch, but a clear movement stopped her cold. The red shiny glint brightened. He was becoming unstuck in Time. Through gritted teeth, Mara stared at him and said, “Not yet.”
The emerald latticework of jeweled walls collapsed in a brilliant flash. Holding her head down, Mara cringed, as if falling glass might slice through her, but the light winked out, taking the walls and the phalanx of Hannahs with it.
A single band of light passed over Mara, drawing her back to the demontoid. It continued to float and spin in the air above their heads. A wave of exhaustion passed through her. She took a deep breath and tried to gather herself, as she looked down at Ping.
His eyes radiated so brightly they bathed his face in crimson, like someone standing in a photographer’s darkroom. Lines at the corners of his eyes deepened; muscles rippled along his jaw. A guttural sound of exertion or anger rose up from his throat. Something burbled below the skin of his forehead, as his brows pinched downward. His chin lowered, and his lips pulled back, revealing his teeth in a grimace as he strained.
Mara jumped up, holding her hands in front of her and willing him to stop moving. Her fingers flickered. She pulled them back to her chest and looked downward. Her torso was flashing like a bad video feed as well. Groaning aloud, she yelled up to the ceiling, “No, not now!”
Rolling his shoulders in slow motion, Ping twisted his head sideways, looking away from Mara, as if casting off invisible shackles. His head snapped back, making her jump. His skin was gone. The fiery red eyes glared at her from gray-green features of bony ridges, plates and spines. The muscles in his neck stood out, and he growled like a cat on the verge of pouncing. His body jerked forward, as if something snapped, and he was free.
In one smooth move he jumped to his feet, his body coiled and tense, about to lunge.
Mara staggered backward, slipped on her floor mat and fell onto her backside. Now facing upward toward the still-spinning crystal, she reached up to it with both hands, hands that continued to flicker and fade. Through gritted teeth she screamed, “Come on!”
A cone of brilliant green light burst from the spinning demontoid and enveloped Ping. He roared and threw himself at Mara but collided with the edge of the light, as if it were a solid wall.
Mara climbed onto her knees and focused on the light, envisioned the night it had surrounded her mother and had dragged out the consciousness of her mother’s counterpart. Glancing downward, she watched Ping twist and contort, fighting against the light, as it divided into two beams and separated. Ping’s body came apart, not in a cloudburst of dust, but melted like a sand castle on the beach as a tide came in. Under the emerald light, he disintegrated into a shapeless pile of black grit sprinkled with greenish sparks of mica.
Mara gasped. Her transparent hands trembled, and she turned back to the spinning crystal, narrowing her eyes with determination.
The pile of dust shifted and moved with the spinning green light. Flowing like wet cement into a tall column, it swayed and undulated. Bits of it landed on Mara’s cheeks, where it skittered across her skin. She jutted her head sideways, slinging it off, but forgot about it when the pile of grit in front of her molded itself into the head of the dragon, an animated bust that howled into the light and exploded, peppering Mara with a wave of stinging granules.
Holding her arms over her head, she ducked to the ground, making herself smaller. The grit clung to her back and neck, accumulated, and crawled down her legs and around her torso. She toppled onto her side, feeling like she had been dipped in plaster. It grew so thick, she could not move.
Then it was gone.
Rolling onto her back on the cold concrete floor, Mara looked toward the ceiling. Something clattered next to her head. From the corner of her eye, she saw, a few inches away, the demontoid, unmoving, unshining, under the sterile lights of the warehouse. Then everything got dark. Mara scrambled to her feet and spun around, kicking the crystal in the process.
Looming over her was the dragon, its head rearing back, ready to strike. Its neck swung in a wide circle and its wings lifted, sucking the air up toward the ceiling. Mara resisted being pulled forward by the wind and held her hands before her, cringing for the flood of fire that she knew was coming. When nothing happened, she lowered her hands and gazed after the dragon, just as it flung itself into the air. A blast of air knocked Mara again to the floor as the dragon’s wings swept back, propelling the creature through the ceiling with the resounding screech of rending metal.
Mara looked up in time to see a large section of ductwork peeling away from the ceiling and swinging directly at her. Rolling on her side, she moved just as the large pipe broke free and crashed down onto the concrete floor where she had been.
Flat on her back, she stared up at the remains of the ceiling to see if anything else would try to flatten her. Not seeing anything impending, she stared out at the starry night and wondered where the dragon was going this time.
Her phone rang. She slid it from her pocket, sat up on the floor and tapped the phone’s screen.
“Hey, Mom. I was just about to call you,” Mara said.
“You sound out of breath. Is there something strange going on I should know about?” Diana said.
Mara swallowed and tried to measure her breath
ing. “Why do you ask?”
“Hannah’s sitting here in the kitchen with me, while I’m cooking, and all of a sudden she begins to giggle. When I turned around from the counter to see what she’s up to, she was sort of green, like someone was flashing a green-colored light on her. She said she thought you were doing it, but, when I asked her to explain, she couldn’t.”
Mara tensed. “Is she okay?”
“She seems fine, but it was a little odd. Do you have any idea what is going on?”
“Not completely, but I want you two to stay in the house until I get home. I have to stop and pick up Sam at the bakery, but we should be there in less than an hour.”
“Why stay in the house?” Diana asked.
“I don’t want you to freak out, and I have no reason to think it’s on its way over there, but the dragon is loose again,” she said.
CHAPTER 52
There were no parking spaces in front of the bakery when Mara pulled up, so she illegally swung her Outback alongside a bus stop at the end of the block. Two old women, sitting on the bench in the Plexiglas shelter, glared at her as she bent forward to see if her brother waited down the street. Sam had said he would be there when she arrived, but light was still streaming from the front windows of the bakery, so he had yet to close up. Groaning in frustration, she was about to shift the car into gear and cruise around the block, when the bakery when dark. However, the inside of her car suddenly filled with light. A bus pulled up behind her, and the driver honked his horn. Mara pulled away from the curb.
She inched forward, looking for Sam on the sidewalk, while watching the flow of traffic on the street. Just as she approached, he darted out the bakery door and turned to lock it. Hitting her brakes, she tooted her own horn three times. The bus pulled up behind her again and honked. Slamming her palm against the steering wheel, she pressed the gas, just as she heard a knock on the passenger side door. Sam jogged alongside the car in the middle of the street. She braked again, and he jumped in.
Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) Page 28