“What do you suggest we do?” the other Sam asked.
“We’re stuck inside the structure of the ceiling above where the Apex is suspended. We can’t go up, and our intended destination is down.”
“Down?” Sam asked. “How do we do that?”
“We’ll cut through the ceiling membrane and drop onto the top of the Apex,” Ping said. He rolled over and peered at the white structure below. “I estimate it is only about eight feet below us. We should make it without injury.”
“Assuming we don’t roll off the edge,” Sam said. “It looks sort of rounded and slippery. How do you propose we cut the ceiling? Just claw our way through?”
“If flame can be used to sever the vines on the bridge, I’m sure it could make quick work of the ceiling. Wouldn’t you say, Phineas?” Ping asked.
The big man rolled his eyes as if considering the notion. A moment later, in Sam’s voice, he replied, “Phineas seems to think the cellulose material would burn easily enough, but he’s not sure how controllable it would be. We might end up burning down the building, or the stresses of the ceiling might rip apart once it is pierced. The acolytes spent most of their time trying not to burn down the Arboretum, so he’s not too sure. As a matter of fact, he’s freaking out at the thought of trying it.”
“He’s freaking out?” Ping asked.
“In our, I mean, his head. Don’t worry. I’m running the show as long as I am in here,” he said.
“Speaking of which, do you know how to get out of him? It’s not like you’ve had a lot of practice possessing people,” Sam said.
“I think so,” his counterpart said. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“Our track record with bridges today isn’t filling me with confidence,” Sam said. “But I get the point. So, do we burn a hole in this thing, and jump down onto the Apex?”
Phineas shrugged, and Sam looked to Ping, who nodded but didn’t look too confident.
“All right. Give it a go,” Sam said.
Phineas raised a finger, and blue fire erupted from its tip. “Here goes nothing.” He lowered the welding-torch-like flame to the membrane, drawing a black smoking line between him and Sam more than three feet long. Ripples ran beneath them as if they were suspended on a taut blanket in the wind. A thin wall of fire burst up from the mark, and then it opened, sending a shudder throughout the ceiling, causing the three of them to bounce into the air. As Sam and his counterpart fell back onto the membrane, the burning seam peeled open, it’s edges glowing orange, consuming more cellulose and sagging downward, forming a funnel-like depression into which they rolled, plunging into the opening below them.
A second later, Ping tumbled after them into the open air above the Apex.
CHAPTER 33
As they stepped inside the Bowraith Spire, Mara and Diana found Ginger perched on a flight of broad stairs that spiraled upward along the periphery of the structure. The outer walls were unfinished, nothing covering the rough-hewn intertwined vines that defined the facade from the outside. The stairs encircled a central pillar comprised of the cellulose that made up the walls of the Arboretum—mildly translucent and emitting enough light to see details around them. While the central core appeared large enough to accommodate rooms, its murky interior appeared filled with a thick vaguely green gel through which tendrils undulated.
Diana peered through the interior wall. “What do you make of that?” One of the tendrils snaked toward her as she asked, but, when the floor quaked again, it seemed to pause for the shaking to pass, then it continued toward her, sidling up to the barrier between them, seemingly caressing it. Now closer, she could tell it was one of the vines.
“I don’t know,” Mara said. “This whole place is giving me the creeps, like we’re inside one of those plants that lures bugs inside its petals and then snaps closed.”
“Venus flytraps.”
“And we’re the flies.”
Ginger snorted and bounded up the stairs, disappearing around the curve as she ascended, her leash pulling Diana, causing her to step onto the hem of her robe and nearly stumble. Regaining her balance, Diana followed. Without a look back at Mara, Diana said, “Ginger’s definitely picked up Mara’s scent.”
“Go ahead. I’m right behind you,” Mara said.
As she followed, a light tremble shook the walls around them. Mara kept her eyes on her feet, making sure she cleared the edge of the steps, which were deeper on the right side than the left thanks to the curvature of the staircase. The constant shaking and turning as they ascended had a mildly disorienting effect. To counteract it, Mara steadied herself by placing a palm against the transparent inner wall. Several steps later, she felt a pressure on her arm, forcing her elbow to bend. When she first noticed the sensation, she thought it was her own weight bearing down on the wall as she climbed, getting more tired. When the rubber sole of her shoe scraped against the wall, she realized the central column was moving outward.
She paused. “Mom, hold up a minute.”
Diana stopped midstep, gave Ginger’s leash a tug and pivoted. “What’s the matter?”
“The wall is moving,” Mara said.
Diana frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Look down at the stairs. Don’t they look a lot narrower than when we started climbing?”
“So? That’s not unusual for a spiral staircase.”
Mara turned toward the inner wall, splayed both hands against it while leaning forward, like a vertical push-up. “Watch,” she said. Slowly the angle of her body straightened. She glanced back at Diana. “The wall is moving outward. The inner column is expanding.”
Out of the murk beyond the transparent wall something slithered, then darted toward Mara’s hands. She snapped her arms back, raising her hands as if being robbed.
“Mara! Behind you!” Diana yelled.
A vine whipped over Mara’s right shoulder and ensnared her wrist. Another grabbed her left arm, looping several times near her elbow. Once their grip had been established, the vines yanked Mara backward, off her feet, dragging her across the stairs toward the outer wall. Twisting along the ground and resisting by digging in her heels, Mara craned her neck sideways and saw the vines had emerged from the gnarled wooden exterior of the spire.
As they retracted, they dragged her away from the expanding translucent column. Once she arrived at the far side of the stairs, she was pulled up to the wall. Now with gravity on her side, she shifted all her weight to her right side and yanked her right hand free. A new vine emerged nearby, whipped in a wide arc in front of her, sprouting a large thorn as it smacked into her palm, nailing her to a bulbous protrusion in the outer wall.
She screamed and slumped backward.
Several other vines appeared, rapidly pinning her torso and legs against the rough-hewn surface that pressed painfully into her shoulders and lower back.
“Mara? Are you okay? What happened?”
To her right, she heard Diana struggling amid Ginger’s snarls. Several steps higher, the vines had gotten her mother and were in the process of pinning her to the wall.
Through gritted teeth, Mara said, “Stop fighting them, Mom. They’ll nail you to the wall if you don’t give in.”
Ginger lunged and snapped at the tendrils, but her efforts didn’t deter the vines’ attack on her master. Several of the vines slithered toward the animal and jutted forward, asp-like, but Ginger bobbed and weaved, avoiding capture. Diana stopped struggling. To the chobodon, she said, “Heel, girl.”
Ginger backed away, mounted several steps above where Diana was bound to the wall and disappeared from Mara’s view, though she could still hear the animal snorting and growling.
Diana turned to Mara. “Are you hurt?”
Mara glanced at her hand. White liquid seeped out of the hole in the center of her palm. Then an arc of light danced in the air between her index finger and thumb.
“A thorn has my hand pinned to the wall. I don’t think it’s done major damag
e, but I seem to have a minor short circuit of some kind,” she said.
“Any suggestions about what we do next?” Diana asked.
Mara wiggled her right index finger and thumb, lightly wrapping them around the vine that pressed against her palm, holding it in place against the wall. “Give me a minute. I’m working on something.”
Another arc of energy jumped from her finger and thumb. This time, it danced along the edge of the vine pressing against her palm. A tingle ran from the thorn piercing her palm, up her arm, and the vine shifted horizontally, losing its grip.
Narrowing her eyes, Mara visualized the electronic pathways within her body and wondered if she could cause more voltage to flow to her fingers. There was no question her body stored more power. The energy cells in her torso contained the equivalent of several hundred megawatts of power, enough to power a small city for a short time.
“Whatever you’re working on, you had better hurry,” Diana said. “The interior wall is closing in on us.”
Mara glanced up. The translucent central wall was now about three feet away. “Just one more minute,” she said. In her head she mapped the connections from her energy cells to the short circuit in her fingers and willed more power to follow that route.
A ragged bolt of light exploded from her fingers, ripping through her skin and grounding itself into the vine, which turned black and curled, slithering away. Mara’s arm fell to her side, her hand smoking from the small eruption from her fingers. Everything past her wrist was numb, but she could still move her fingers.
“Are you all right?” Diana asked, straining against the vines to get a better look.
“A little singed but no worse for wear,” Mara said, lifting her right had to examine the damage. All of the skin had been burned away from her fingers, and her palm was now a flap that dangled loosely from the metallic skeleton of her hand, exposing various bundles of wires, tiny winking lights and electronic nodules that made up her joints.
With her damaged hand, she gripped the vine binding her left arm. Sparks flew from the sides of her hand, and the spire around them shook. The vine caught fire and melted away. Those holding her torso and legs also sagged, loosening their grip.
“That worked!” Diana said. She was unwinding her limbs from her constraints when Mara stepped up next to her.
Mara held up her scorched hand and said, “I’ve got an idea about how to defend ourselves, but we must escape this death trap first.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Diana said, reaching for Mara’s damaged hand.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “While my skin can feel pain, all these mechanical workings are grounded to avoid additional pain here.” She gripped her right forearm with her left hand and gave it a twist, disconnecting the burned appendage at the elbow. Then she remembered how her mother fainted the last time she did the hand thing as Sam called it. Glancing up, she eyed Diana’s pale face and added, “Don’t you dare pass out on me.”
Diana shook her head. “It’s a little disconcerting, but I’m not getting woozy.”
Pointing up the staircase with her disembodied right hand by holding up her left arm, Mara said, “Let’s get out of here before we get smashed to death. I think we’ve only got a few more feet to the top.”
Somewhere above them, Ginger squealed. And there was an explosion.
CHAPTER 34
Ginger ran down the stairs in a blur, bouncing off the curved wall of the staircase, slowing only when she saw Diana on a landing, skittering to a stop at the edge of the step behind Diana’s calves, hiding from whatever came from above. A cloud of smoke rolled down the stairs, filling the air above and cascading over Mara and Diana.
Her eyes watering, Mara scanned the outer wall for signs of attacking vines and—seeing none—leaned toward it to get a wider view above. The smoke swirled in a way that made her think someone moved around up there. Heavy footfalls confirmed it as did the hem of a robe peeking around the curved wall.
Mara held up her detached hand. Diana and Ginger stopped, now a couple steps below Mara on the landing. After pressing herself against the transparent inner wall, Mara waved for Diana to back up farther. The smoke was now so dense she could barely make out the gnarled outer wall.
Holding her breath, she waited.
A tall robed figure stepped down the staircase, rounding the curve just above where Mara waited.
Gripping her disconnected right arm as tightly as possible, she extended her left arm downward, pressing it against the curve of the wall and waited. The descending acolyte’s robe slid across her own foot as he stepped onto the landing she occupied.
As he extended his right foot to take the next step down, during the moment when his balance shifted into the open air, Mara swung her arm like a bat, connecting with the bridge of the acolyte’s nose with a loud crack.
The robed figure crumpled and tumbled down the stairs in a ball, rolling past Diana and Ginger. The chobodon growled as the acolyte fell out of sight.
“Let’s go,” Mara said through the thinning smoke, bounding up the stairs.
As they rounded the next bend in the staircase, they noticed a large dark blast mark on the woody exterior wall emanating from the floor. Ginger sniffed the charred spot and grunted as they passed. After another half turn around the central pillar, the stairs came to an opening in the ceiling. They were at the top of the Bowraith Spire, presumably just beneath the Apex.
The central wall nudged Mara’s shoulder, as if prompting her forward. Only one foot of space was left on the staircase. Taking the last couple steps upward, she peeked through the opening. She found a passageway onto a circular landing, above the moving wall.
Over her shoulder, she said, “Hurry. It looks like we’ll be safe up here. At least for the time being.”
As Diana and Ginger mounted the last steps, Mara pointed across the small round room to a large oval door mounted at an odd angle in the wall. It looked more like a hatch on a submarine than a standard door. “That must be the entrance to the Apex. Ginger must have run into a guard when she ran up here earlier. Probably a good thing she lured him down.”
Diana bent and scratched the chobodon behind the ear. “Good girl. Are we going in?”
“Not immediately. Let’s take a seat on the floor against the wall next to the door in case someone comes out. That will buy us a minute or two,” Mara said. “I need your help with something before we go inside.”
Diana followed her to the door and took a seat on the floor with Ginger next to her. “Help? With what?”
“A little bit of surgery,” Mara said, then thought better of it. “More like some minor gadget repair.” She held up her detached right arm.
“You want me to help you reattach your arm?”
“Not exactly,” Mara said. She placed her loose arm on the ground and slid her left hand into her left jeans pocket and extracted a wad of keys. “A few small tools are on this key ring that you will need. I’ll talk you through the procedure.”
“What exactly is the procedure?” Diana asked.
“We’ll make a weapon, with nothing but this burned stump and the little tool-thingies on my key ring, MacGyver-style.”
“Who’s MacGyver?”
Mara smiled and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. First, I need you to strip all the skin off my arm so we can get at the mechanisms inside.”
Diana gasped, then grimaced. “Seriously?”
Mara nodded and pointed to her appendage on the ground. “When it’s not connected, I can block the pain. My body’s designed that way to allow for repairs. We need to hurry. Someone will come looking for that guard eventually.”
Diana picked up the arm between two fingers and held it before her with a look of revulsion.
“You have to be a little less dainty to get this done,” Mara said. “Now, most of the skin burned off the fingers and hand, so wedge your fingers underneath at the wrist and peel off the rest by pulling toward the elbow. Pull it off like you would
a sock—there shouldn’t be too much resistance.”
Diana laid the arm on her lap and tucked her fingers under the loose charred skin at the wrist. “This underside feels like rubber—clingy and spongy but durable. Doesn’t really feel like skin,” Diana noted. Turning her head away, she pulled without looking as the skin doubled over itself and rolled smoothly from the metallic frame of the arm.
“Excellent,” Mara said. “Let me see.” Mara grabbed the arm and held it up, giving the innards of wires, gears, electronics and metallic tendons a closer inspection.
“What now?” Diana asked.
Without looking away from the arm, Mara said, “We need to remove a tiny junction-box-like thing near the elbow joint. Sort of like a surge protector that prevents too much power from coming into the forearm. When my palm was pierced by the thorn, it caused a minor short and a surge that activated the junction box. That’s what gave me the idea.”
“What idea?” Diana asked.
“If we remove that surge protector, I can route significant energy into my arm and fingertips. It will probably only work a couple times, but it’ll give us a fighting chance to find Mara and to get out of here.”
“Clearly the people who designed your arm didn’t intend that much energy to go through it, or they wouldn’t have put the surge protector in there. Are you sure this is a good idea? How much damage to your body can this cause?”
“If we get your Mara out of here, she’ll grow me a biological body, so how much damage I incur here won’t matter.” Mara handed the arm back to Diana. “A small plate at the open end of the arm is blocking your access to the surge protector. Remove that first.”
When Mara held out her key ring with a tiny Phillips screwdriver pinched between two fingers, Diana said, “I’m famously bad with screwdrivers. Coordinating the whole pressing-down-and-turning thing is beyond me.”
Broken Spells Page 21
