Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) (18 page)

It spat a stream of fire in an arc that grazed the rafters and cascaded down over their heads. Mara held up her hands to deflect the fire, which seemed to flow around them. By the time flame and smoke had cleared, the dragon was swiveling its neck back toward Abby, who remained crouched on the floor against the back wall, gaping at the mountain of scales that once again lurched toward her, setting off trembles in the cold concrete floor.

Suddenly the creature’s head jerked to the right where motion caught its eye. Vanderberg dashed from the far side of the warehouse, running below a bank of windows, trying to make it to one of the large metal bay doors that opened to the loading dock, the one farthest from where the dragon stood but still in the back wall of the warehouse. The dragon’s gaze tracked the soot-covered man until he nearly reached the large door and then hissed loudly, spewing flames that leaped the width of the warehouse, engulfing Vanderberg’s torso. A high-pitched wail reverberated off the walls as the man’s clothing burst into flames, and he stumbled forward, falling into a smoldering ball, well short of the doors. The wails died down to sobs until the dragon’s tail swept the floor, hurtling Vanderberg’s body back in the direction from which it came, leaving a smear of wet soot in its wake.

The dragon turned back to Abby.

Mara turned to Sam. “There’s light now. You can see his eyes.”

“I can’t see them through the back of his head. I’ve got to get his attention, and he seems more interested in your blonde friend at the moment.”

The dragon lowered its head and slowly opened is jaws. It approached Abby, who squirmed away along the wall, back toward the door she had entered.

Mara instinctively raised her hands to her eyes, couldn’t bring herself to watch her best friend—

“Mara, you better open your eyes,” Sam yelled from across the warehouse.

A warm gust that smelled of fetid meat wafted over her. Mara lowered her hands and stared into the pink wet mouth of the dragon. Her head snapped back and forth. Abby was now in the center of the warehouse; Mara stood in her place. A pumpkin-size glob of saliva slowly dripped off the dragon’s lips splattering the front of her shirt as they pulled back to reveal teeth larger than Mara’s head. She reached out with both hands and in each grabbed a nostril. Blue arcs of electricity shot out of her palms, jumped along the creature’s scaly mane, which snapped into the air and grounded themselves into the horns that crowned its head.

It howled, its snout knocking Mara against the wall as it reared away from her.

She rolled onto her side and caught Sam’s eye. “Do it. Prompt him,” she mouthed the words.

Sam shrugged and waved his hand to the back of the dragon’s head. Mara lowered her head to the ground and closed her eyes. And concentrated. When she opened them, she lay on the ground in the center of the warehouse, next to where Abby sat stunned.

“Mara! Are you nuts?” Sam screamed from across the room where he stood in front of the stomping, angered beast, just as it had recovered its wits and was about to attack again. As it lowered its face, Sam straightened and locked eyes with it.

The dragon froze.

“Sleep,” Sam prompted. “Sleep.”

The dragon exploded into a cloud of gray dust, knocking Sam off balance, sending him staggering across the floor until he stepped into a puddle of the creature’s saliva, slipped and fell to the concrete.

The gray cloud spun for a few minutes, and Mara wondered what shape it would take. At first it remained dispersed over the width of the warehouse, but slowly it coalesced and condensed into a smaller and smaller area. After what seemed an eternity, the profile of a man took shape, and the dust solidified into Ping.

More crumpled on the floor than sitting, Abby gawked at him for a second, then slumped forward.

“Oh my, that was disturbing,” Ping said.

Mara snorted and rolled her eyes.

He nodded toward Abby and added, “Is she going to be okay?”

Mara slowly stood up, swaying with the effort and walked over to her friend. Patting her cheek, she said, “Abby, Abby, wake up.”

Abby snapped awake and grabbed Mara by the shoulders. “What the hell is going on? Mara, what is going on here?” She turned, pointed with a trembling hand at Ping and stuttered incoherently. She then pulled away from Mara, pointed and said, “And you,
you
. What
ARE
you?”

Mara looked down at herself as if her friend were pointing at a stain on her shirt. She was semitransparent, flickering like an old film being played by an antique projector.

Sam approached and caught Abby’s eye. “Why don’t you take a nap? You’ll feel better,” he said.

Abby’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped again.

Mara solidified and glared at her brother. “I just got her conscious. Why’d you knock her out again?”

“She was freaking out, and she wasn’t going to settle down with you blinking in and out like that. Serves you right for throwing me in front of the dragon.”

“You’re the one who said you needed to get a good look at him.”

Sam’s face reddened. “I didn’t mean from the inside.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

Ping raised a hand and stepped between them. “Let’s figure out what we need to do, and then we’ll take Abby home.”

“We also have to get rid of that body.” Sam pointed to the right in the direction of the wall with the bank of windows.

“Body? What body?” Ping said.

“Vanderberg, your partner in crime, remember? You toasted him and swatted him with your tail. Well, the dragon did,” Sam said.

Mara shook her head, looking downward. “Oh, my God. What are we going to do with a body?”

Ping walked over to where Vanderberg lay and squatted next to him. Virtually all of his clothes and hair were burned away. Soot and ash made it impossible to tell how badly he was burned. Placing two fingers on the man’s neck, Ping looked up at Mara and said, “He’s still alive.”

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Mara said. She glanced down at the top of Abby’s head and added, “She might need to go also.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Ping said. “The bay doors on the left side of the building are at road level. Let’s go get the car and pull it in here. That will be better than trying to carry him outside.”

“What are we going to do?” Mara asked.

“I’ll explain on the way,” Ping said, standing and surveying the piles of rubble and ash scattered across the warehouse floor. “We’ll have to leave this until later. At least we didn’t burn down the building.”

“
We
?” Mara and Sam said simultaneously.

“I was referring to me and my alter ego,” Ping said, looking away.

A few minutes later, Ping had driven his Camry into the warehouse and pulled up next to Vanderberg’s prone body. He stood over the man’s shoulders and pointed to his feet. Nodding at Sam, he said, “I’ll lift his upper body, and you grab his legs. We can’t drag him or we might injure him further.”

“It would have been easier if you had eaten this one too,” Sam said, bending over to grab the man’s ankles. “Speaking of eating, where is my half-pound colossal burger you promised to get me?”

Mara who sat next to Abby, pointed to the toppled metal cabinet. “I put it in there. It’s probably cold and smashed by now.”

“I don’t care. I’m starving.” Sam released Vanderberg’s ankles and straightened next to the open passenger side back door of the car. Ping had successful pulled the man’s body into the backseat by crawling into the passenger side and exiting the driver side.

Ping pointed at Vanderberg’s feet and said, “You need to slide his feet over so they hang off the seat. That way you have somewhere to sit when we leave.”

“I don’t want to sit back there with him,” Sam said.

“Mara and Abby are sitting up front with me. You need to sit back here,” Ping said. “It’s just from here to the shop where Mara’s car is parked. Mara and Abby will switch to her car and then you can sit up front with me for the drive down to your house in Oregon City.”

“You’re taking him to Oregon City?” Mara said, indicating Vanderberg.

“That’s right. I’ll explain on the way,” Ping said.

Suddenly a
be-be-beep, be-be-beep
sound filled the warehouse. Sam glanced up to the ceiling, while spinning around, trying to determine the origin of the sound. He zeroed in on his sister. “Is that your phone ringing?”

Mara reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a pink plastic egg. “No, it’s my Tamagotchi. It wants to be fed.”

Ping looked over at her, disappointed. “You lost your focus.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

Ping slowly lowered himself into the armchair next to the fireplace in the Lanterns’ living room, looking as if every joint in his body ached. He had carried Abby up the stairs to Mara’s bedroom and returned to his car to haul Vanderburg out of the back seat and into the living room, where he now lay on the floor in front of the hearth. Closing his eyes, Ping exhaled steadily, trying to slow his heart and let the tension drain from muscles.

“Thanks for helping me with Vanderberg, Sam,” Ping said as the boy bounded into the room and sat next to his mother on the couch.

“No problem,” Sam said, then turned to his mother. “Mom, Mara tried to feed me to the dragon.”

Diana swept a lock of red hair off her son’s forehead with a finger and, with an expression of mock concern, said, “She did? That’s terrible. Mara, don’t feed your brother to the dragon. Do you understand?”

“I’m serious,” Sam protested. “She practically put me in its mouth.”

“Okay, sweetie. I’ll have a talk with her later when we don’t have company,” Diana said.

From the armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace, Mara rolled her eyes. “Mom, I don’t get the impression that you fully appreciate the gravity of the situation here.” She waved a hand at the charred torso laid out on the floor between them. “This is not company. This man did not stop by for a visit and a cookie. Abby isn’t upstairs having a sleepover. She’s probably having a nervous breakdown.”

“Do you think it would help if the rest of us had a nervous breakdown too?” Diana asked.

“No.”

“Then why don’t you calmly explain to me what happened and why this man is not in a hospital emergency room.”

Vanderberg released a dry, raspy breath sending the smell of singed hair throughout the room.

Mara glared over at Ping and waved an upturned hand toward her mother.

Ping slowly straightened in his chair, but, before he could say anything, Sam piped in enthusiastically. “This man’s partner tried to shoot Ping, and Ping turned into the dragon and ate him. Then he spit fire all over this guy and smacked him with his tail, sent him sliding all the way across the warehouse.”

Diana looked questioningly at Ping.

Ping shrugged and said, “I guess you could call that the unabridged version of what happened.”

“How do you know these men?” Diana asked.

Again Sam interjected, “They were partners with Ping—not this Ping, the one who came from this realm. They smuggled drugs and stolen stuff through the warehouse.”

“And Mr. Ping ate one of them?”

“Whole. In one bite,” Sam said, jerking his head back as if slinging something into his own gullet.

“Technically it was the dragon, not Ping,” Mara added.

“I was under the impression that this creature was under control, Mr. Ping,” Diana said. Sam started to say something, and his mother raised her hand. “Let Mr. Ping speak.”

“Generally I believe he is. It appears he sometimes becomes restive, and I can sense him, and, of course, as we now know, he seems willing to emerge and protect himself if he feels threatened,” Ping said.

“That’s disconcerting,” Diana said. “I wasn’t aware there was such potential danger involved here.”

“Mom—” Mara said, stopped by another raised hand.

“Look, you guys. I’m about as open-minded of a mother as you are going to find in this particular corner of creation, but it’s completely unreasonable to allow you to be exposed to risks like this.” She pointed to the burned man on the floor.

“Sheesh, Mom. Ping would never hurt us,” Sam said.

“Perhaps your mother is right,” Ping said. “It is unreasonable to expose you two to this danger.”

Mara stood up. “No. That is not acceptable, Mom. I need Ping. You said yourself that he was a great mentor for me. I can’t do this without him, and I think that Sam and I proved tonight that we can take care of ourselves.”

Diana had that resolved look that Mara knew all too well. “This situation cannot continue like this. If Mr. Ping cannot assure me that he has the creature under control, I’m going to have to ask him to keep his distance.”

“You were the one who said I would have to face up to who I am, to accept my metaphysical role. Those were your exact words. Well, Ping is a part of that, dragons and all.”

Her mother’s face softened slightly as she turned to Ping. “I expect you to do whatever is necessary to make sure my children are not hurt.”

Ping nodded and said, “You have my word.”

Turning to Mara, she said, “This conversation is not over, but now’s not the time for a debate.” Looking down to the floor, she asked, “What are we going to do about this man? He needs medical attention.”

There was a knock at the door.

“That would be Denton and Melanie Proctor. I called them on the way down from Portland,” Ping said.

Sam got up, ran to the door and opened it.

Melanie Proctor held out her hand. “Hello, young man. I’m Melanie, and this is my husband, Denton. Is Mr. Ping here?” When she took Sam’s hand in hers, he saw a spark of light form in the back his eyes, a sort of afterimage that he quickly blinked away. Shaking his head, he caught the woman looking intently at him. “We should sit down and talk sometime soon,” she said to him.

“Come on in. Everyone’s over here,” Ping said, waving them into the living room.

As Denton and Melanie walked around the end of the couch, they could see Vanderberg’s body spread out on the round throw rug in front of the fireplace.