Broken Realms (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 1)

by Moneypenny, D. W.

  “Ms. Lantern, when you were at the Gamble home, did you encounter a man named Travis Johnson?” Suter asked, staring without blinking.

  “No, I did not.” She took a drink from her water bottle. Watching him sweat made her want to take a shower.

  “That’s not true.” Suter slapped a palm on the table. “He says he saw you in the garage. You did not see a man tied to the rafters?

  “No. I did not.”

  “Is that all you can say? ‘No, I did not.’” He mimicked her with a grating falsetto. “You don’t seem surprised that a man was tied up in the rafters of the garage. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “We entered the house through the garage. Mrs. Gamble was doing something in there when we arrived, but I did not see a man in the rafters. Although, I don’t recall looking up. Maybe he was there, and I didn’t notice,” Mara said.

  “You are lying!” he screamed, slapping down the other hand. “Are you saying your buddy, Mr. Ping, did not call 9-1-1 to report Mr. Johnson was being held in the Gamble garage?” Veins protruded from his neck, streaked across his cheeks, and crisscrossed his temple and forehead. Sweat dripped from his ears and chin. His head twitched sideways, slinging off droplets. His pupils rolled up into his eyelids, and he began panting, in quick, hoarse bursts.

  Mara looked to Bohannon for help. The detective placed a hand on Suter’s shoulder. His breathing calmed, and his pupils reappeared.

  “Well, Ms. Lantern?” Suter asked, acting as if nothing happened.

  “I’m not aware of Mr. Ping calling anyone.” She almost elaborated, stopped herself.

  “Ms. Lantern, I promise you, if you do not begin cooperating, there will be serious consequences.” Suter reached into his jacket.

  Bohannon tensed. He placed his hand on Suter’s arm with affected casualness and said, “I think we’ve got about as much information from Ms. Lantern as we are going to get. Why don’t we wrap this up for now?”

  Mara’s eyes widened, and she braced herself against the edge of the table as the two men tensed up in a strange tug-of-war, their arms taunt and pressing against each other. After a few seconds of a strained clench, Suter relaxed his arm and stopped reaching into his jacket. Bohannon relented as well.

  Suter backhanded him in the face.

  The detective flew out of his chair and into the wall, where he crumpled to the floor.

  Mara pushed her chair from the table, moving out of Suter’s reach. The FBI agent jumped to his feet, overturning his chair, and leaned across the table, his shoulders hunched, readying to pounce.

  His irises were yellow.

  The pupils had narrowed to slits. His eyes flicked back and forth, vibrating in their sockets. Each moved independently. His chin jutted, and his head snapped back. His throat bulged, crunching something in his neck. He emitted a wet gag that morphed into a moan and then into a full, deep growl. Sweat oozed from his pores, appeared to coagulate and cling to his skin. It sloughed off as spasms wracked his frame.

  He fell forward, bracing himself over the table. The crown of his head rippled and stretched, shedding hair that fell into globs of perspiration that had puddled on the tabletop. A ridge of gray bone emerged from his skull, bisecting it from forehead to base, tearing through his skin, sending cascades of blood down the sides of his face. He twitched again, shaking loose flaps of skin that peeled away his features. His ears, nose and lips fell away. The gore hung loosely from his neck and jaw.

  “Don’t move!” Bohannon slid up the wall, pointing his gun at Suter. “One move and I’ll shoot.”

  Suter jerked his head sideways, gazed directly at the detective. A long tongue snaked from FBI man’s mouth, flicked at the air. He hissed, spit.

  The gun in Bohannon’s hand began to smoke, then glow red. He dropped it and rubbed his scalded hand against his chest. He retreated along the wall.

  Suter stood between him and the door.

  Growling and grunting, he slung gore throughout the room. His skin flaps fell onto the table with a wet slap. His cheeks puffed out, and his jaw slid back and forth. He paused and then spit out a tooth. Leaning forward, he opened his mouth. The rest of his teeth fell out, clicking and clattering across the table.

  He craned his head upward, locked onto Mara with those yellow-slitted eyes. Gray-green scales glistened, crackled like wet leather as an eyebrow, now a bony ridge, lifted. The lipless mouth, a rictuslike gash that reached around his skull, opened just enough to flick his split tongue two feet into the air. What used to be Suter emitted an exotic hiss, broken up by a rhythmic, wet clicking noise that came from exhaling gill slits along his neck.

  “You were there, on the flight,” Mara said.

  “I was.” He stalked Bohannon on his side of the table, though he did not take his eyes off Mara.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “I have what I want. Now all we need is time.” Hissing and flicking his tongue, he turned to face Bohannon.

  “Lord, have mercy,” the detective said, dodging backward, then jumping forward, feigning an attack, hoping to push Suter away from the door.

  The FBI agent stood his ground, opened his mouth and spewed flames.

  Bohannon’s midsection was engulfed. His clothes ignited. He fell to the floor screaming. Smoke and flames leaped up from below the far side of the table.

  Mara grabbed her water bottle and uncapped it. Realizing it would be inadequate, she looked around for something to douse the flames. Suter snarled and swiped at her with a crusty wet claw. She jumped backward, collided with her chair and fell into the floor. Smoke poured over her from under the table. She could barely see the ceiling tiles and the sprinkler heads in the ceiling above. Her eyes widened. She grabbed the edge of her chair and pulled herself up.

  She stared at the three sprinkler heads on the far side of the table, and they erupted with a circular spray that covered most of the room, but flames still shot up from the floor. It wasn’t enough. Mara concentrated again. The spray intensified, became so strong that water cascaded down from the ceiling in a sheet, then a deluge. Water splashed up from the floor and a wave washed under the table, lapping at Mara’s shins, knocking the chairs on her side of the table against the wall behind her. Steam and smoke wafted up to the ceiling.

  Mara jumped onto her chair, using it as a step onto the table. Nearly a foot of water sloshed on the floor.

  A cloud of smoke parted, and the door across the room caught her eye. Suter, following her gaze, leaped onto the wall, adhering to it as easily as walking across the floor. Like a man-size salamander, he scampered to cover the door with his body, blocking Mara’s escape. Facing downward, he twisted his head more than 180 degrees to flash a threatening glare, punctuated with a flick of tongue. He dismounted to the floor, landing on his feet with a splash without looking away. He edged toward the table.

  “You appear to be learning, Ms. Lantern, but I prefer Fire to Water,” Suter said. He snorted a little flame from a nostril and rolled his shoulders. He leaned on the table again. Gray bony quills shot out of his spine, tearing away his suit coat, forming a sail down his back. The spines smoldered and glowed. Flames jumped from quill to quill along his back. The room sweltered, steam rose from the floor. A water bottle on the table burst, and the cheap venetian blinds sagged. For a moment, more daylight spilled into room until condensation fogged the windows. A cloud of steam gathered at the ceiling, thickened around Mara’s head.

  She crouched as Suter spat flame into the growing cloud. She backed to the edge of the table and was about to step down onto her chair when a tentacle of vapor reached down from the cloud, wrapped itself around her torso and pulled her into the air. Her feet dangled six inches above the table. Another tentacle grabbed her right wrist, a third wrapped around her left and pulled her arms upward. Bound and suspended above the table she could not move.

  “You are less of a challenge than I had anticipated. It’s difficult to believe you are a progenitor,” Suter said, spitting another
lick of flame into the cloud.

  A fourth tentacle descended, snaked around Mara’s neck. Suter’s features faded in the steam. The tentacle constricted around her throat. She could no longer breathe. Stars flared on the edges of her vision, a dark blur pressed in, growing darker until she could see nothing but blackness and one point of light.

  She refused to let go of the light. She focused on it, willed it to burst forth and drive away the darkness.

  *

  Ping and Sam waited in the Camry. Sam took an after-lunch nap while Ping looked over final inspection reports for the bakery. He paused for a minute to look at his watch and up at the office building. He wondered if the investigators planned to keep Mara overnight—when the building exploded.

  Shattered glass and debris blossomed from the sides of the office building, sending a wave of gravel, followed by billowing clouds of dust and smoke, across the parking lot. A film of grime settled on the windshield. Ping cracked his door to see if the shockwave had passed, if it was safe to get out. Sam woke up.

  “Whoa, what happened?” he said rubbing his eyes.

  “I don’t know. You stay here, and I’ll go check on Mara.” Ping opened the door all the way.

  “Maybe I can help. Let me come along.”

  “No. If I’m not back in five minutes, come find us. Mara said she was in the fifth room on the left in that hallway. That is where I am going. You stay put.” Ping gave him a stern look and jumped out, slamming the door.

  Shell-shocked office workers streamed out of the building. Glass and debris littered the lawn and parking lots surrounding the building. Every window was gone. Exterior doors hung lopsided on their hinges. Walls cracked and crumbled.

  Smoke billowed from only one opening, on the left side of the hallway where Mara was supposed to be. Ping ran toward it.

  As he approached the building, he could not see inside, but smoke and steam poured out of a one-hundred-foot gap in the wall. He stumbled over piles of wood, masonry and Sheetrock, stepped gingerly over the remains of a chair.

  He leaned into the building, holding on to an exposed beam. “Mara, are you in there?” Ping shouted.

  “Ping, is that you? Where are you?”

  Ping waved his arms in the smoke, stepped over a crumbling ledge into the building. “I’m here. Where are you?”

  “I’m up here,” Mara said looking down from the rafters through gouged ceiling tiles. “Check on Detective Bohannon. He is down there somewhere. Also, if you see a flaming dinosaur, that would be Agent Suter.”

  CHAPTER 56

  PING STRETCHED TO look behind the overturned conference table. An arm extended from below a pair of toppled chairs, moved slowly on the floor. He ran around the end of the table, hopping over debris and dodging dangling wires. Everything in the room was wet and singed. Large swathes of carpet had been burned away, other portions had been shredded. A chair on top of the detective still smoldered, sending a thin stream of acrid smoke up to the ceiling.

  Ping lifted the chair. Half of the detective’s hair had been burned away. The rest was badly singed. He no longer had eyebrows. The right side of his face, mottled with small blisters, looked sunburned. He opened his eyes, but they did not immediately focus.

  “Don’t move, Detective. Let me get some help,” Ping said, turning when he heard Mara drop to the floor. “What on earth happened in here?”

  “Turns out Suter is our pretender,” she said. “He was on the flight. He’s from another realm. One thing’s for sure, he’s not from around here.”

  Bohannon pushed a chair away and struggled to get up. The turned-over conference table blocked her view of him but she heard him moving around. Ping, who stood on the other side of the table, leaned down to help him.

  “I think it would be a good idea for you not to move around until someone can examine you,” Ping said, reaching for Bohannon’s arm.

  Bohannon grabbed the edge of the table, tried to pull himself up and screamed in pain.

  “Please, wait for the EMTs,” Ping said.

  “It looks like I don’t have any choice. I think my legs are broken,” Bohannon said, lying back on the sodden floor.

  Mara walked around the table. “Is there anything we can do? Ping, maybe you should go get help, show them where we are. I’ll stay here with Detective Bohannon.”

  “Yeah, and while he’s doing that, you can explain to me just what the hell happened here,” Bohannon said.

  Making his way around the table, Ping paused to lean toward Mara. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to explain too much to the detective.”

  “Considering what he saw a few minutes ago, I don’t think there’s much we could tell him that would surprise him,” Mara said, keeping her voice low.

  Ping made his way out of the room through the hole in the wall. Mara turned to the detective. She sat on some debris next to him.

  “Well? What happened?” He still looked dazed. Mara suspected he wasn’t completely coherent.

  “I’m being questioned? I figure since your partner turned into an iguana, you might cut me some slack,” she said, wiping matted hair from her face.

  “Consider it unofficial. What is going on?”

  “Well, it’s complicated. It might be easier to understand when you’re feeling a little better.”

  “Just a couple quick questions, and the rest can wait for later.” He leaned on an elbow. “You said Suter was on the flight. I’ve gone over the passenger list dozens of times. I would have noticed if his name was on the list. You think he was traveling under another name?”

  Mara pulled the list out of her back pocket and ran her finger down the page. “Nope. Ethan Suter. It’s right here on the passenger list I got off the web.”

  “How could I have missed that?” Bohannon asked.

  “Did you get your list from Suter? Could he have removed his name?”

  “It’s possible. He controlled the investigation. I came on after him, so he could have altered the list.”

  “That’s probably what happened,” Mara said. “What other questions?”

  “You’re saying Suter was on the flight, and he’s a clone.”

  “A clone?” she said.

  “Not the original person who left on Flight 559.” Bohannon lowered his voice. “You saw what was behind the plane that night you were in the hangar, right?”

  “The morgue. Yes, we saw it.”

  “Did you go in?”

  Mara nodded.

  “You saw what was on the tables?”

  “Yes, Detective, I saw the bodies of the passengers, including Ping’s.”

  “So he’s a—”

  “A clone, as you call it, though that’s not really what he is.”

  “What is he?”

  “Like I said, it’s complicated. I can explain, but there isn’t time. We have to find out where Suter went and stop him.”

  “Stop him from what?”

  “We are not sure, but, whatever it is, it’s not good.”

  “I might be able to figure out where he went. He grabbed my car keys before he left. Can you get my jacket? It’s over there on the floor. Hopefully my phone is still in the pocket.”

  Mara picked up the soggy suit jacket and fished in the breast pocket. The phone was there. She handed it to Bohannon. He pressed a button and waited for a connection.

  “Dispatch, can you give me a location on my vehicle, please?” he asked. “I don’t have time for an explanation. Please tell me where the vehicle is located. My badge number is 1-7-8-3.… That’s the vehicle I’m driving, yes.… Okay. Do you have an address?… Uh-huh.… No, I’ll call it in if I need to. Thanks.”

  Pushing debris out of his way, Ping stepped through the hole in the building, followed by two firefighters carrying a gurney. “He’s over there behind the table. He’s got serious burns, and he thinks his legs are broken.”

  “So? Do you know where he is?” Mara made room for the emergency workers, stood off to the side while they a
ssessed the detective.

  “I don’t think you should go after him. Let me call it in and have a couple units go after him. This is something the police should handle.”

  “The police? The police can’t handle this. Suter is not a shoplifter. You saw him. Do you think two cops are going to know what to do about him?” Mara looked to Ping for help.

  The firefighters bent over the detective, checked his pulse and looked at his pupils. One of them cut the legs off his suit pants and nodded to his partner. “They both look broken, but I don’t see any bone, so let’s get him on the gurney and to the ambulance.”

  They lifted the conference table out of the way and set up the gurney next to Bohannon, then stood on each side of him and lifted him onto it. He groaned in pain as they moved him.

  Mara grew impatient and waved a hand at Ping to say something.

  “Detective Bohannon, she’s correct. If you know where he is, please tell us. A lot of lives depend on it,” Ping said.

  The detective shook his head as the firefighters raised the gurney. He was strapped in, and they were trying to navigate debris to get out of the building. “I’ll call it in as soon as we get to the ambulance.”

  Mara raised her hands in a halting motion. “No.”

  The firefighters froze.

  Bohannon craned his neck. The firefighters stood suspended, motionless. One firefighter’s foot had stopped in the air, midstride. The other’s arm flailed out to his side, stalled halfway in making a midstep balance correction.

  “What did you do?” Bohannon shook back and forth on the stretcher, trying to figure out what happened to the men carrying him.

  “We don’t have time to explain,” Ping said. “We need you to understand we are better able to deal with Suter than any number of unprepared police officers. They’ll just get hurt or worse.”

  Mara nodded.

  “I’ll be damned if I know what to do,” Bohannon said. “At the very least I have to report the vehicle stolen. They’ll keep an eye out for the car without ginning up a manhunt for Suter.”