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

by D. W. Moneypenny

  “What else could I do? Look at him. Ping is eating that man.” Mara pointed to the two charred legs sticking out from between the scaly lips and plated jaws of the beast whose muscles were taut, clearly frozen in midchew. A large drop of blood hung suspended in the air just below the dragon’s chin.

  “That’s not Ping. It’s the dragon.” Sam stood up, walked over to the creature and grimaced. “Wow, that is gross. Look how big his teeth are.” Sam grabbed two handfuls of dragon jowls and pulled downward, showing the larger back teeth that appeared to be readying themselves to grind Galinsky into digestible bits. Sam let go, causing a wet smacking sound, and wiped his hands on his jeans.

  “Stop fondling the dragon, you idiot. I’m not sure how long this is going to hold,” Mara said. “Don’t you find this a little bit disturbing?”

  “What?” Sam walked over to her.

  With an exasperated expression, Mara jabbed her finger in the air in the direction of Galinsky’s legs. “A man is being eaten alive.”

  “I told you, Mom—well, Diana—used to feed people to the meat-eaters all the time. I’ve seen it before.”

  “And it doesn’t bug you in the least?”

  “Mara, dragons eat meat. That’s what they do. I don’t particularly like watching it and hearing the screaming. The fire, the smoke and the roaring can get on your nerves. But if you’re going to hang out with dragons, a few people are going to get eaten along the way.”

  “Unreal. You look like Howdy Doody, but you’re actually Charles Manson.”

  “I didn’t feed him to the dragon. Although he did hit me in the face with a gun, so I guess what goes around comes around.”

  Mara shook her head. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can’t just stand here while Ping eats one man and toasts another alive.” She pointed to the almost comical figure of Vanderberg standing on one leg in midhop with his arms raised in midpat trying to put out his flaming coat.

  Sam walked over to Vanderberg and made a show of examining him. “We can probably save this one.” He turned and pointed to the dragon. “But Galinsky’s a goner. As soon as Time starts moving again, he’s hamburger. Oh, that reminds me. Did you get my half-pound colossal burger?”

  “That’s unacceptable.”

  “Well, there’s the element of Space, right? You can move things with your abilities, right?”

  “So far all I’ve been able to do is swap places with people, and I haven’t done that since the night in Oregon City when your mother crossed over.”

  “Well, that wouldn’t be a very smart move. And, by the way, she’s your mother too, but a different version.”

  “Whatever.”

  The flutter of a flame on the side of Vanderberg’s sleeve caught Sam’s eye. He pointed and said, “Look it’s starting to move. Slow motion but moving. What does that mean?” He looked at his sister as she flickered out of sight for a second. “Uh-oh. You flickered.”

  “That’s bad. We’ve got to do something.”

  Sam walked behind Vanderberg, grabbed his collar from behind and pulled until his overcoat slipped off his shoulders and arms. The stilled flames made smears of red and yellow in the air, and Sam tossed it away. “Okay, this guy should be all right. You need to let it go, and I’ll try to prompt the dragon to go back to sleep.”

  “What about Galinsky?”

  Sam shook his head, and, as Mara was about to protest, she flickered again and then disappeared. Time became unstuck.

  Galinsky’s muffed screams filled the warehouse, and the dragon continued lifting its head. It reared up, loosened its jaws, throwing Galinsky the rest of the way into its throat with a snap of its neck. With one swallow, Galinsky was gone. With a roar of satisfaction, the dragon spread its wings and extended its head upward, swinging it back and forth until it crashed into the light fixture above the makeshift classroom, plunging the warehouse into pitch darkness.

  A second later, one weak fluorescent tube flickered back to life, providing only enough light to let Mara and Sam know something very large lumbered in front of them.

  “Why aren’t you prompting him to sleep?” Mara whispered, feeling ridiculous, knowing her voice was carrying anyway.

  “Oh, nice of you to reappear for the dragon’s redheaded dessert. I can’t prompt him if I can’t see his eyes.”

  “What? Who makes up these rules? What do his eyes have to do with anything?”

  “Duh? Eyes are the windows to the soul. Haven’t you ever heard that?”

  “I wasn’t aware your ability was governed by quaint little sayings.”

  “You’re the progenitor. You do something.”

  A bone-rattling roar assaulted them from within the dark, followed by the dry bellowed winds of the creature spreading its wings. Mara flashed back to the night she had first faced this creature and had a sense of dread. She pulled Sam behind her.

  “Hey,” he protested.

  “Shut up. He’s about to—”

  Fire poured out of the night and enveloped them. Mara held up her hands, pushing the flames away in her mind. Then she reached forward, rolled her hands around an invisible sphere and flames followed her, spinning themselves into a roiling ball of fire, floating in front of her. Mara then slapped the sphere and sent it hurdling toward the dragon’s chest.

  The dragon swatted it away with a swipe of a wing, sending Mara’s meteor careening into the whiteboard, which exploded, its remains crumpling into a pile of melting plastic and flaming sticks.

  “What are you trying to do, kill him?” Sam yelled.

  “Last time he turned into a cloud of dust after he blew up, but I guess he learned his lesson.” Mara glanced around at the burning wreckage around them and said over her shoulder, “Do you have enough light yet?”

  Sam looked up and said, “No, his head’s way up there in the dark.”

  “Let’s see if we can light up this place then.”

  Mara held out her hands and focused. Blue streaks of lightning shot out of her palms and arched into the blackness ahead. There was no response, just silence. Then the ground shook and stopped, then shook again and stopped. Scrape, stomp, pause. Scrape, stomp, pause.

  “He walking,” Sam whispered. “Where’s he walking to?”

  “I don’t know. It feels like he’s going to the back of the warehouse,” Mara said.

  The only sound was of giant clawed footfalls.

  Then a rattle, a knock. At the door. Followed by a shuffle. “Hello? Mara, are you here?”

  “Oh, no,” Mara said.

  “What?” Sam whispered. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Abby.”

  CHAPTER 26

  A heavy swishing sound filled the air as if someone had dragged a rolled carpet across the concrete floor of the warehouse. Mara squinted into the murky darkness hoping the lone fluorescent tube above would hold out a little longer. She could make out an unmoving huge black mass looming over the rear portion of the warehouse, but something had slithered behind it. The dragon’s tail slowly whipped back and forth, like the tail of a cat readying itself to pounce.

  “Mara, why are you standing in the middle of a dark warehouse?” Abby called to her.

  Maybe the lone fluorescent tube wasn’t such a good thing after all. Its light was enough to illuminate Mara’s profile so that Abby recognized her and felt comfortable entering the darkened structure.

  Mara held up a hand and said in a stilted, lowered voice, “Abby, stay right there. Do not move an inch.”

  “Where are the lights? There’s got to be a switch around here somewhere,” Abby said, knocking around the frame of the door. “What’s this?” she asked.

  The sound of the metallic clank had not even bounced off the walls of the warehouse before rows of industrial light fixtures ignited above, illuminating, in a series of clicks, one right after the other, like a row of dominos that revealed a smoldering pile of wreckage behind Mara and Sam. And a crouching reptil
ian beast whose head reared up to scrape the ductwork mounted along the ceiling.

  As Abby turned to face the center of the warehouse, the dragon spread its wings, stretched its neck upward and roared so loudly, the sound knocked her against the wall. As Abby slid downward, her gaze locked onto the creature, and she shook her head in denial.

  “Abby, don’t move,” Mara said, extending her hands toward the dragon.

  Sam looked back and forth between his sister and the creature. “What are you trying to do?”

  Mara nodded toward the back of the warehouse. “I’m trying to stop him, stop Time.” Then she flickered, disappearing for a blink of an eye.

  Sam watched the dragon lower his head and take a step toward Abby. Sam held his arms out for balance as the floor shook and said, “Ah, that’s not working. Why don’t you stop that before you completely dissolve into nothing?”

  Mara leaned forward, holding herself up by placing her palms above her knees. “There’s got to be something we can do.” She gritted her teeth and growled in frustration between them. Straightening, she held out her hands again. This time a bolt a lightning shot out of her palms, striking the dragon in the back, above the tail.

  It howled and twisted its head to look around at them, without turning its body. Mara’s eyes widened as its red glowing eyes narrowed and brightened, the scales along its torso stood up as its chest expanded to inhale. “Watch out, it’s going to—”

  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 unt
il 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.”