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

by Moneypenny, D. W.

  “Go back to the search results. Let’s look at a map of the area,” Ping said.

  Mara hit the Back button and clicked on the Maps link. A map of the Willamette River filled the screen with a red pointer indicating the falls at its center. “I’m not seeing anything very helpful here,” she said.

  “Click on the satellite option. Let’s look at an actual picture of the area.”

  The map was replaced with an overhead photograph with the red pointer positioned in the center of the river surrounded by a series of craggy outcroppings and old buildings that came together roughly in the shape of a saxophone. The mouthpiece connected to the Oregon City side of the river and the horn attached to the bank of industrial buildings on the West Linn side.

  “I think that’s the canal and locks that used to allow boats to get past the falls,” Mara said.

  “Perhaps she built an altar on one of those outcroppings or in one of those old industrial buildings along the bank.”

  “If she did, we’ll never find her. Look at that place. It’s a maze. It would take forever to find her, assuming we could get out there.” Mara clicked the Back button again and returned to the search results page.

  “What’s this?” Ping pointed to a small square picture on the right under the heading People Also Search For. The caption under the thumbnail image read Oregon City Bridge.

  “That’s a picture of the Oregon City Bridge. Why?”

  “Why did it come up in a search for Willamette Falls? Are they close to each other?”

  “It’s just down the river. You can probably see the falls from the bridge.”

  “Show me on the map.”

  Mara tapped the Back button a couple times and returned to the map of Willamette Falls. She clicked and dragged the map from the upper right side and pulled it down, following the path of the river until a thick white line labeled Hwy. 43 crossed it. “That’s the bridge.”

  “Switch it back to satellite.”

  She clicked and the overhead photo of the river appeared.

  “Can you zoom in?”

  She clicked on the plus-sign icon in the corner of the screen a couple times. The photograph updated showing the approach to the bridge. The image was magnified enough to make out vehicles and streetlights.

  Ping pointed to the side of the bridge. “What are these?”

  Mara shrugged. “Pylons or columns of some kind.”

  “Mara, those are obelisks.”

  “Okay, they are obelisks.”

  “Sam said his mother conducts rituals on altars surrounded by serpent pillars. Obelisks.”

  Mara paled. She turned back to the screen. “The bridge has obelisks?” Mara navigated back to the search page and entered Oregon City Bridge.

  “I thought you grew up here,” Ping said. “How could you not know that?”

  “First of all, I generally keep my eyes closed when I cross bridges, unless I’m driving, then I just stare at the center line until I get across,” she said. “Plus I think most locals don’t really think of those as obelisks. Up close they look like pylons with lamps attached to them. It’s not like they are monuments or something.”

  “Undoubtedly that is where she is going.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I think that’s our best bet with the information we have. She’ll want to conduct her rites near those obelisks, and I suspect they are powerful talismans for someone with her beliefs. They could be very dangerous to someone challenging her.”

  “Well, if that is the case, then we’re in trouble,” Mara said, looking up from the computer screen. “The Oregon City Bridge has twelve of them.”

  “She didn’t pick this place by accident,” Ping said.

  Mara shut down the computer. “Let’s get out of here.” She walked from the room. As she went down the stairs, she glanced over her shoulder. “By the way, where is Sam?”

  “I asked him to stay in the car, just in case we were walking into a trap,” Ping said. He slowed his pace. “He didn’t want to wait outside. I’m surprised he hasn’t come in yet.”

  They ran into the living room. Out the front window, even though it was dark outside, they could see Ping’s car was gone.

  “I can’t believe I left him out there alone.”

  “Let’s check outside and see if he’s wandering around. If not, we have a good idea where they are going. We can take Mom’s car. It will take less than ten minutes to get to the bridge from here,” Mara said.

  She turned toward the kitchen, heading toward the back door, when her foot hit the demantoid, her mother’s green garnet. It was still on the floor where her mother’s counterpart had kicked it. Mara picked it up and put it in her pocket.

  A quick search in the front yard and backyard, and a few shouts in both directions down the street, indicated Diana, probably with Suter’s help, had grabbed the car and Sam. Mara and Ping jumped into the RAV4 and turned down Center Street toward Singer Hill Road, the route connecting the top of the bluff on which the neighborhood perched to Oregon City’s lower elevation.

  “Just keep going straight until you see the road slope, swing left and go down the hill. You’ll turn left on Main, and the bridge will be a few blocks down,” Mara said from the passenger seat. “It’s getting late. There shouldn’t be much traffic on Main in the middle of the week. There’s not much open down there other than some bars.”

  “We need to discuss what we’re going to do when we get there,” Ping said.

  “I guess that depends on what we find, doesn’t it?”

  “We need to get the Chronicle back. You need to be prepared to confront Diana and stop her from whatever she’s attempting to do.”

  “Why are you so sure I can stop her?”

  “You’re a progenitor. You have the ability to stop her. I believe that. Diana and Suter also believe that, or they would not have confronted you in the kitchen at your house. It was a delaying tactic so Diana could complete crossing over, possessing your mother. Why bother if there was nothing you could do?”

  “First, I’m getting my mom back. Then Sam. After that, we can worry about the Chronicle. I’m not sacrificing anyone just to get that damn medallion.”

  “It might not be that simple.” He squinted and leaned forward. “What is that?” He pointed into the air above the street ahead.

  A small bright light came directly toward them, growing as it descended, glowing violet, throwing off red and yellow sparks. As it got closer, tree limbs along the road waved in its wake, pointing toward a black smoky contrail in the night sky. A cometlike fiery mass—now the size of a large truck and just a block away—plunged out of the sky.

  “I think it’s another delaying tactic, and it’s coming toward us,” Mara said.

  “No, it’s coming at us,” Ping yelled, slamming on the brakes, reaching for the door handle. “Get out, now.”

  Ping dissolved, filling the air inside the vehicle with swirling gray particles.

  The fiery purple meteor struck the windshield, cracking it and rocking the car on its shocks. It splattered on impact. Burning gelatin enveloped the car, flowed lavalike to the street and wrapped the sides of the vehicle.

  Mara swatted at the air, trying to keep Ping out of her eyes. She unhooked her seat belt and reached for her door. While it was unlatched, she could not push it open. The flaming blob had encased the car and would not give when Mara pushed against the door. Light passed through the undulating mass, giving the vehicle’s interior a swimming violet tinge.

  A front tire exploded. The car lurched toward the driver’s side. The smell of burned rubber filled the car. Another explosion rocked the car to the passenger side. Two more tires blew, and the back of the car sank to the ground with a muffled thud.

  The windows around her spidered, bowed inward. Metallic groans shuddered throughout the vehicle as the mass constricted, compacting the vehicle while squeezing out what little air remained. The interior baked. Heat and dust made it hard to breathe.

&nb
sp; “Ping, it would help if you could—”

  The windshield buckled. The roof crinkled; its upholstery ripped. It pressed down on Mara’s head. She slouched down in her seat. Something snapped in front of her, emitting a loud crack. She pulled up her feet. The dashboard collapsed into the footwell. Her seatback warped as the floor and the ceiling closed in.

  Gasping for air, she curled into a ball, closed her eyes.

  She saw her mother’s face.

  Mara felt relief, until ink seeped out of Diana’s pores, flowed on her forehead and took the shape of an inverted serpent. Her mother’s eyes opened, blue and familiar at first, then the pupils folded into slits and the irises turned yellow.

  “I can’t let this happen. If I die, she dies,” Mara said to herself. She felt something push against her legs.

  “Push back,” she said.

  Metal screeched so loudly Mara could feel it vibrate in her bones. Plastic snapped, cloth ripped, and glass crackled. She scrunched her eyes tightly, trying to concentrate, trying to push back. She sensed movement around her. Something hot oozed over her foot. Her seat lifted up, pressing her head into the tattered ceiling.

  “Enough!” she yelled.

  The car exploded.

  Cool air rushed in. Then there was silence.

  Something metallic clattered next to her. Her eyes snapped open.

  A hubcap spun on its edge, a foot from where she sat, on top of a disembodied car seat in the middle of Center Street. Metal, plastic, glass and wire littered the ground around her for half a block.

  She sat up, stared at the swirling, tightening cloud of dust over the sidewalk. Ping.

  Porch lights came on at a nearby house. An elderly lady looked out the door, squinting into the night. She flapped an arm at Mara to get her attention.

  “Young lady, are you okay?” She didn’t step outside.

  “Yes, ma’am” Mara said. “I just need to call a tow truck.”

  The woman shook her head and went back inside.

  “A tow truck? I think you need to call a junkyard,” Ping said. He walked over and offered a hand. She kicked the steering wheel out of her way and stood up.

  She looked up at the street signs. They were at the corner of Sixth and Center. “Come on. We’ll have to walk. It’s not that far.”

  A thunderclap from the northwest made them jump. They turned and gazed upward. Blue lights danced off low-hanging clouds. It wasn’t a storm brewing. This light came from below the clouds, not within them. Something was going on near the bluff.

  “It looks like it could be coming from the bridge,” Mara said. “Come on, let’s take a look.”

  She pulled Ping’s arm directing him down Sixth Street instead of continuing on Center.

  “I thought we need to go this way to get down the hill,” he said.

  “We’re going to do some reconnaissance first.”

  CHAPTER 61

  MARA JOGGED TOWARD the blue light in the sky, crossing High Street and continuing into an empty parking lot next to a small office building. Streetlights provided some indirect light, but Ping had trouble discerning where she was going. Without pausing to get her bearings, she turned right on a sidewalk bordered by hip-high stone pillars linked by square wrought-iron rods. After a few feet, she stopped at a sign that read McLaughlin Promenade, Est. 1851. Ping turned to see a series of office buildings and retail fronts facing the sidewalk from the other side. Mara had her back to the storefronts, staring at a structure with two closed garage-style bay doors.

  “We can’t see anything from here. Where are we?” Ping asked.

  “This is the Oregon City Municipal Elevator.” She pointed to the rolling metal doors. “There’s an observation deck in there that looks out over downtown and the bridge.”

  The door on the left began to roll up of its own accord.

  “That sign says there are video cameras. There is probably an alarm system as well.” Ping looked around to see if anyone was nearby.

  “We’ll be gone before someone shows up. Come on.”

  Mara stepped into the dark entrance and turned left. Ping followed. Inside, she ran around the central elevator shaft to get to the front of the observation deck overlooking downtown. Reflected blue light streaked across dozens of holographic historic photographs mounted side by side along the wall. Mara ignored them. Ping eyed them as he jogged to keep up.

  She rounded the bend into full view of downtown. “Oh, my God.”

  Ping stumbled into her back. “What?” he said, stepping around her.

  Through the windows of the observation deck, hanging out over the bluff, they looked down on the business district, the Willamette River and the Oregon City Bridge. All was engulfed in a storm of blue and white light, bursting from below the arched superstructure that hung over the roadway. Bolts shot out across the river and into the sky, followed by claps that shook the observation deck’s windows. Lampposts on the bridge exploded, fell away.

  Main Street went dark.

  Flashes of blue silhouetted downtown. Mara lifted her arm to shield her eyes against the erratic bursts coming from the bridge. Even though she squinted, she could not make out what was happening.

  Then the bridge disappeared into the night. No light. No sounds.

  “Look,” Ping said in the dark, pointing to the bridge approach where it connected to Main Street.

  “What? I don’t see anything,” Mara said, whispering.

  “The lampposts, the obelisks at the entrance to the bridge.”

  They luminesced blue, pulsed from base to tip, base to tip, over and over, accelerating and intensifying with each pass.

  “Look, the four obelisks next to the arch are glowing too,” Mara said.

  “It’s hard to see, but I think the ones on the far side are illuminated as well. They are becoming quite—”

  A beam of light shot out of each obelisk, collided at the top of the arch, bursting into a plume of radiance and engulfing the center of the bridge. As the brilliance receded, Mara could see, floating above the Willamette River, surrounding the central arch of the bridge, a huge translucent blue bubble.

  “I thought you said only a progenitor could activate the Chronicle.” Mara stared at Ping’s pale blue-lit face.

  “That has always been my understanding,” he said, staring at the bridge, distracted by the light display. The bubble sputtered, became hazy. Then it became cohesive again. “It looks like she may have trouble maintaining it. It doesn’t look as stable as when you use it.”

  “It looks like she’s figuring it out.”

  “I still don’t think she’ll be able to transport someone from another realm. That is something only a progenitor can do.”

  “She’s not down there putting on a light show just for kicks. She has found a way to do it. We know she’s using the obelisks as her talismans. Why would she use a bridge? Unless her followers are over in West Linn, it’s not going to do much good.”

  Ping’s eyes widened.

  “What?” Mara grabbed his arms.

  “Maybe she’s not going to use any special abilities to bring her people to this realm. If she can use the Chronicle to tear an opening between our realms, she could theoretically walk them over. She’s creating a physical bridge between the realms. They’ll cross over physically, not metaphysically.”

  “That seems far-fetched, don’t you think?”

  “Given what you’ve seen in the last few weeks, I would think far-fetched might be within your ability to grasp,” Ping said.

  “Let me get this straight. She’s ripping a hole in the fabric of the universe, in the middle of the bridge. That way she can simply walk her serpent cult from her realm into downtown Oregon City. I think I might need a little more proof—”

  Ping’s eyes widened. He pointed out the window toward the bridge. “What is that?”

  A shadow emerged from the darkened arch over the bridge. Only movement separated it from the dark background as it took to the air, heading toward
them.

  “I can’t make it out,” Mara said, eyeing it while she talked. “Some kind of bird, maybe a seagull.”

  “I don’t think that’s a bird,” Ping interrupted. “It’s much too large.”

  Whatever it was, it dived toward Seventh Street, the road leading from the bridge directly to the base of the elevator. With the bridge and the blue bubble that encased it no longer behind it, it was impossible to see. Mara and Ping leaned into the windows, looking down on Seventh. A dark mass hurtled at them from below, flapping black wings, gaining speed.

  A burst of flame enveloped the windows, cracking the one directly in front of them.

  Mara stumbled; fell into the closed elevator doors. She grabbed the doorframe and steadied herself.

  “Tell me, that wasn’t—”

  Two thuds shook the roof as something alighted above them. Claws scraped, shifted as it found a perch.

  Ping gazed upward, tilting his head, listening. “I’m afraid it was.” He looked down at Mara and said, “A dragon.”

  CHAPTER 62

  MARA CRINGED AS the metal bay door at the back of the elevator’s observation deck clattered closed with a thud. She had hoped to get out of here without drawing the attention of the creature perched on its roof.

  Ping turned to go back the way they came. Mara grabbed his arm, pulled him in the opposite direction. She pointed down the walkway in front of the promenade and began jogging. Ping glanced to his left, past the wrought iron into the blackened open drop-off of the bluff. He could barely make out the railroad tracks below, running parallel and a block closer to them than Main Street. From this vantage point, he could see lights streaking and reflecting off low clouds, but buildings blocked a direct view of their source on the bridge.

  “Where are we going?” He looked over his shoulder to make sure someone, or something, was not following.

  “There are stairs that go down the hill,” Mara said.

  The walkway came to the junction of three roads and wrapped to the right back toward High Street, which they had crossed earlier. To the left, the road descended to Main Street. Mara stepped off the curb and crossed directly to a parklike area featuring a few old trees and a bench facing away from them. When they got to the other side, she pointed to a railing that descended into the ground.