They groaned, shouted and strained to force the egg onto the truck bed.
“And don’t become a ghost,” Marley continued. “Not when you’re alive, and not when you’re dead. It weakens you, and you’ll need to be strong.”
The four of them cried out—Albert with tears running down his cheeks—and finally rolled the egg into the truck bed.
Albert dropped to his knees, clutching his right wrist. His hand throbbed. Nora and Nelson moved to check on him while Audrey slammed the gate shut.
A sudden blast of scorching hot air roared down the ramp into the garage, dust and debris knocking the four of them to the ground. The whole building trembled, and the noise it made sounded like the end of the world.
Marley slid behind the wheel of the pickup and stamped on the gas. Naima’s van still partially blocked the ramp, but maybe there was room, even for someone like her, who had not driven in...
Albert forced himself to his feet. “Aunt Marley!”
There was nothing he could say to stop her. She rammed Nora’s pickup between the rest-home van and a cement column, scraping both side panels as she drove up the ramp and out into the daylight.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The Trick to Catching the World's Attention
The street looked like a scene from an apocalypse movie. Huge chunks of steel and concrete lay in the intersection. Some had crushed cars beneath them; some were on fire. Papers still floated down out of the sky, and someone’s awful orange loveseat lay burning atop the mailbox on the corner.
The dragon was closer—barely a block away, hunched down over a building up the street and clawing through the wreckage. Its enormous bulk took her breath away, and its long blunt tail thrashed about, slamming through the wreckage of the condos across the street.
Once, the entire street had huge condominium buildings on both sides. Now there was only shattered wreckage.
Marley spun the steering wheel and turned away from it, driving on the sidewalk. There were no pedestrians, of course, though several people stood on the trunk of an abandoned car at the end of the block, taking video with their phones. Motorcycle cops were trying to drive them off.
She glanced into the rear-view mirror to make sure the egg hadn’t rolled out of the pickup bed while she’d rammed her way up the ramp.
There was a Celica on the sidewalk up ahead, its tail end smashed into a telephone pole. Someone had tried to escape on the sidewalk and, as Marley had hoped, they’d left a gap in the traffic wide enough to drive through. She turned left, hard, and passed between two Hondas, then slammed against the back panel of an Escort to force her way through. She turned sharply to the left again, jumping the curb just beside the Sculpture Park.
Suddenly, the dragon was huge in her windshield, still clawing through that city block—wreckage flying out behind it— and still moving closer to the building where Albert and the others were hiding. The sound it made was ungodly loud.
Not for much longer, she hoped. She blared the truck horn, interspersing long and short honks, but the dragon didn’t look her way. She was beneath the notice of a power like that. Oh well, she’d have to do this the hard way.
She had a sudden pang of worry over the vampires cowering inside the building. How they were going to get them safely out of there in all this chaos and daylight? Marley prayed that they wouldn’t die there because she’d asked for their help. Help them, Albert. She glanced at a car beside her, partially crushed by a chunk of masonry, and saw no one inside.
Marley couldn’t let herself be distracted now. A ghastly brown Sedona blocked the sidewalk ahead, there was no other way through, and Marley had to get to the water. She glanced into the rear-view mirror—the egg was still there—then stamped on the accelerator.
She slammed into the Sedona with all the momentum Nora’s truck could bring to bear. Her forehead slammed against the steering wheel, bringing her a blast of pain and another blare of the truck’s horn.
The driver of the Sedona must have abandoned it without setting the brake because it rolled out of her way. Marley rubbed her head to clear her thoughts, surprised that there was no air bag.
She heard Albert’s voice, somehow, above the clash and tumult of the digging dragon. He was calling her name.
A burning, overstuffed avocado-colored couch bounced across the sidewalk in front of her, striking the fence to the Sculpture Park. Marley stepped on the gas, knocking the couch out of the way.
She turned the corner, heading down hill toward Alaskan Way, then started honking the horn again. The cars that had clogged this part of the street had been swept away by the dragon’s dragging feet and tail, so she had room to drive.
A spray of bricks smashed the cars beside her. A cabinet full of broken dishes struck the driver’s door, shattering the window into her lap. A computer crashed onto the concrete in front of her and she rolled over it, taking a small bit of satisfaction in the damage it did to Nora’s truck. Marley may have been a committed pacifist, but property damage wasn’t violence, and damaging this truck was probably the only payback she would get for what happened to Libertad.
Sometimes the small, petty pleasures were the only ones left.
She kept blowing the horn, but the dragon still took no notice. Its tail slammed down on the street, pancaking half a dozen cars. Marley swerved left under it, heading for the water. If she couldn’t get the dragon’s attention, she was going to have to put the egg in the water herself. With luck, it would sense the return of its magic and go back to the depths of the Sound. That is, if it wasn’t too far gone into madness and thoughtless rage.
She pulled onto Alaskan Way, the street that ran along the waterfront. Except for a few abandoned cars and the wrecked freight train, it was deserted. In the distance, she could see flashing police lights. They were, as she hoped, nothing but a road block. There was nothing an officer with a sidearm could do in this situation.
The easiest way into the water would have been from Myrtle Edwards Park, near where she and Albert had been sitting when the car bomb went off. Unfortunately, the dragon had inconveniently failed to smash the guard rail and she couldn’t drive through.
The second-best option was the broken sidewalk where the pier had been torn away. There was a wide spot where the concrete had fallen part-way, forming a crooked ramp into the water between the pylons.
Marley aimed the truck’s grill at it, blaring her horn. Damn if the dragon hadn’t even deigned to notice her as yet. She left the truck in neutral, pulled the emergency brake, then began to climb through the broken window.
The dragon’s tail slammed down on the street not ten yards from her, then slammed down again and again. She could feel the frustration coming off of it in waves. She could feel its growing rage.
The driver’s window was narrow, but her yoga classes had kept her limber enough to squeeze through without falling onto the glass-strewn asphalt. Her forehead ached, but she didn’t think it was too serious. She honked one more time, just in case, then gave up on the idea.
The dragon was lost to its rage. She could have rammed the truck into its hind claw and it would not have seen the egg. In fact, it might easily have destroyed it.
She took a splintered length of wood and jammed it against accelerator. The engine raced but didn’t engage. She leaned in through the window and released the emergency brake at the same time she wrenched the gear into drive.
The truck took off, knocking Marley to the ground. She had not forgotten her training from her fighting days and managed to roll with the impact. Her whole left arm went numb from the impact and she cut her palm on a jagged piece of broken glass, but it could have been worse.
The truck went just where she hoped it would: It raced down the concrete and plunged into the water.
Cradling her arm, Marley struggled to her feet and hurried to the water’s edge. The cab of the truck bobbed in the water for a few moments, then tilted to the right and rolled over. It vanished beneath the waves.
That would never catch the dragon’s attention. It was time to do something more.
She turned toward the dragon and saw that it was standing upright again. It turned toward the condo where her people were hiding.
Marley closed her eyes to concentrate.
* * *
Up on the street, Albert crouched beside the fender of a delivery truck loaded with blue canisters of water. Another flock of bricks flew overhead, clanging against the truck. He needed to make his way to his aunt, but there was so much flying debris he couldn’t see a safe path.
To hell with it. He was just going to have to run for it. If there was anything that felt less like water flowing downhill, this was it, but he couldn’t keep hiding here, so far from his aunt and so close to the next building to be destroyed.
The flying debris suddenly stopped, which he knew was a decidedly mixed blessing. Albert didn’t know if the vampire hunters were still hunkered down in the condo garage, but Naima, Kenneth, and the vampires were. If the dragon was moving to a new target—
He couldn’t finish that thought because the dragon lifted its head and roared. Albert’s conscious mind was overwhelmed, reduced to a desperate, animal urge to move. He staggered away from the truck, instinctively moving farther from the building. Another attack was coming, and he had no hope of surviving out in the open if the dragon unleashed a blast of fire. He felt so small, so ridiculous and so helpless—
“YOO-HOO!”
The sound of his aunt’s voice cut through everything—the dragon’s roar, the rubble breaking under its feet, the thrumming of the world, everything. Even the dragon was startled. It stopped what it was doing and turned toward the waterfront.
Albert gaped. “Oh my God.”
There, standing in the middle of Alaskan Way, surrounded by fire and wreckage, was Marley Jacobs.
Except she was nearly two hundred feet tall.
She waggled her fingers at the dragon. “YOO-HOO!” her voice boomed. “LOOK WHAT I HAVE RIGHT HERE!”
The dragon’s egg—or its likeness—rested in the palm of her other hand. She showed it to the dragon, then turned and gently placed it in the water behind her.
“YOU SEE? YOU HAVE YOUR EGG BACK. THERE’S NO MORE NEED FOR ALL THIS FUSS.”
The dragon seemed to disagree. It opened its jaws wide and roared a challenge at her. The sound made Albert’s guts feel watery and he fell onto his hands and knees. The monster charged directly at Marley, its huge feet smashing through the wreckage of the seafood restaurant.
The gigantic image of Marley popped out of existence like a bubble. Albert stumbled to his feet and raced to the corner just in time to see his aunt stagger in the ruined street, clutching at a broken streetlight for support. If the illusion of four people lying on a carpet had drained her, what he’d just seen must have—
The dragon stopped at the water’s edge. Marley—the real human being, the tiny old woman—stood right beside its massive foot.
The dragon opened its jaws and poured a jet of bright fire onto her.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Only Terrible Daylight Remains
Albert screamed something. He didn’t know what. In fact, he hadn’t even realized he’d made a sound until much later, when he discovered that his throat was as raw as sashimi.
Marley was nothing more than a silhouette in those massive flames, and Albert saw her figure shrink even as she fell into the bay.
He ran forward, knowing already that it was too late.
The dragon leapt into the water and, as it sank beneath the waves, seeming to turn into liquid itself. It vanished as it became less real. The egg had also disappeared.
Water rushed over the broken sidewalk, pushing broken chunks of concrete and wooden beams down the street. Steam blossomed where the water touched the fires.
“Albert!” It was Naima’s voice calling from behind him somewhere. He ignored her, sprinting toward the site of his aunt’s death, splashing through the receding water.
He fell once as the water swept at his feet, but it was only a moment before he reached the water’s edge. He found nothing. Even if his aunt had been burned down to ashes, the water would have washed them away. He leaned over the broken edge of the sidewalk—
“Albert!” Naima was running toward him as fast as her small form could move, her gray hair a rumpled mess and sweat streaming down her face. “Albert, don’t!”
“I’m not going to jump,” he said, moving toward her. “Where are Betty and the others?”
Naima stopped running and put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Kenneth, Nora, and Nelson hurried down the sidewalk toward them. “They’re safely inside the condo.”
“We have to get them out,” Albert said.
“We can’t!” Naima replied. “They’re too afraid, and the van won’t run. They can’t ride in a normal car with windows, you know.”
Albert’s annoyance got the better of him and his tone turned sharp. “Emergency Services are going to search every room in that building, and they’re going to try to remove everyone inside. Look at it!”
They turned up the hill. The building they’d just escaped from was badly damaged on one side. Gaping holes had been punched in the walls and flames rose out of two of the windows. As they watched, a chunk of the wall near the roof fell into the street.
“If we don’t get them out of there, the government is going to do it.” He turned to Kenneth, who had just arrived. “Get back up the hill and find a truck with keys still inside. UPS, bakery, I don’t care. Steal it and drive it up close to the building. Go!”
Kenneth ran off and Albert turned to Naima. “While I’m helping him, I need you to find some blankets for them. You’re going to have to talk them into it, because it’s either leave with us or with the cops. Go!”
Nora and Nelson stepped up to him. Audrey was nowhere in sight, which was probably for the best.
“What can we do?” Nora asked him.
He almost snapped at them to get the hell out of his city, but he stopped himself. “Come on. Even if Kenneth finds a truck for the guests, someone will have to clear a path for him. I’m going to need your help moving cars.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Grieving Over Unwanted Treasure
Marley’s funeral was a little more than a week later. Albert tried to keep it a private affair, but there were TV cameras, protesters with signs that proclaimed all sorts of crazy things, and a thousand curious onlookers. The reception afterwards took place in the safe house, which wasn’t so safe anymore. The address had leaked to the media, and it was surrounded by people day and night.
The inside was almost as crowded. Weathers wandered around with a tray of finger sandwiches. Stan Grappleton had sent a big display of flowers, but he and Kevin were rumored to be at least three states away, lying low. Libertad and Isabeau were in the kitchen, fussing with dishes, snacks, drinks, and generally showing their love for Marley by taking care of as many people as possible, always under Miss Harriet’s watchful eye and stern direction.
Naima was there with Kenneth and Sylvester. Nora and Nelson had sent their condolences; they hadn’t left town, but they thought it best to pay their respects from a distance.
Detectives Lonagan and Garcia were also there, of course, in their dress uniforms. Albert met them at the base of the stairs and they all shook hands politely. Just beside them, Albert’s mother sat snoring in a recliner chair, an empty wine bottle in her lap.
“I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” Lonagan said. “I knew your aunt for many years and liked her quite a bit. Her advice, when I needed it, was invaluable. She was an amazing lady.”
“Thank you. I thought so, too.”
“She left everything to you?”
Albert sh
rugged. The question made him deeply uncomfortable. “A little was set aside for Jenny Wu—for her tuition—but yeah. She wrote her will this way when I was, like, nine years old. And before you ask, I had no idea.”
“Did she say why?”
“I don’t know why she did half the things she did,” Albert said. “She didn’t always know herself.”
Detective Garcia cleared her throat. “My condolences to you and your family. I know I have seemed... I thought your aunt was a nice woman.”
Albert smiled and said, with as much kindness as he could manage, “You can’t lie to me, and you don’t have to. I know you were trying to do the right thing. Aunt Marley knew it, too. And she certainly didn’t expect to be universally loved. Anyway, that’s all in the past. She would have been pleased to see you here. Thank you for coming.”
“Speaking of—“ Lonagan began, but a sudden outcry in the next room caught their attention.
Albert went into the den. There he found Elaine and a dozen other neighbors he’d never met standing transfixed in front of the television. On the screen a bare-chested man in an iron cage suddenly changed into a werewolf, to the gasps of the TV audience and the women in the room.
Jenny sat alone in a darkened corner, staring at the screen with an empty expression. Her parents sat beside her. All three looked pale and shattered.
“This is happening all over,” Lonagan said, his voice low. “Three men on death row are claiming their victims were vampires. A family in Montana claim to be werewolves and are trying to get a wilderness preserve. Two brothers in Spokane are suing each other over their father’s estate, each claiming the other one’s already dead. And then there’s the footage with your aunt….” Not only had the dragon been caught on video, but so had Aunt Marley’s gigantic illusion of herself. “It’s a mess.”
“I hadn’t realized,” Albert said. “I’ve had so many people coming at me from so many directions...”
“You have your usual naysayers and skeptics,” Garcia added, “but they’re getting drowned out. It’s like a dam burst; as soon as people were ready to believe, they had a bunch of new things to believe in. Like Charlie said: it’s a mess.”
A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark Page 30