“I want you home as soon as possible.”
Sam tapped Diana’s shoulder to get her attention and pointed at Buddy. His head moved back and forth, as if he were trying to shake off a blow to the head. He raised his hands to his face and brushed fingers over the crags that ran along his cheeks, and he blinked rapidly several times. The blackness in his eyes swirled and faded, like oil floating on water that spun down an open drain, exposing the whites of his eyes. He staggered forward, released from the stillness of Sam’s prompts.
“Back up, Sam!” Diana warned. Into the phone, she said, “Buddy’s moving again. Sam’s promptings must be wearing off.”
“Wait, I don’t think that’s it,” Sam said, pointing at Buddy’s eyes. “I think Prado’s gone.”
Buddy looked around bewildered holding his hands out before him as if something repugnant clung to them. His mouth opened, yet nothing came out but a dry rasp. His distorted features contorted further, and a tear rolled down his cheek.
“What’s going on?” Mara said from the speakerphone.
“It looks like Prado left Buddy’s body,” Sam said. “I think Buddy is back in control.”
“Maybe he released the other shedding victims as well.”
“It’s more likely he got tired of me prompting him through Buddy and figured it was easier to let him go.”
“Get Buddy home. We’ll check on the people here, and I’ll come home as soon as I can,” she said and hung up.
CHAPTER 46
Mara looked up to the ceiling of the bicycle repair area of Mason’s Fix-it Shop in silent prayer as she hung up the phone. If it could only be that easy. Maybe Prado simply couldn’t maintain his grip on all those bodies, and he’s on his way to the great beyond—or wherever people from his realm go. Ping stood next to Bruce’s worktable in front of a bicycle wheel, the spokes of which appeared to radiate from his head like some kind of silvery halo glimmering in the muted light from the Exit sign above the back door.
“What did they say?” Ping asked in a low whisper.
“Sam thinks Prado left Buddy’s body. It might mean he’s released everyone. And it that’s true, I’m off the hook—no Chronicle, no crossing over to another realm.” She jabbed the cup of ashes into the air to punctuate the point.
“That shouldn’t be difficult to ascertain,” he said, stepping toward to the front of the shop and waving a hand for Mara to follow.
Streetlights from the end of the block provided a soft ambient glow that spilled in through the display window. Mara became hopeful when no shadows appeared to be shifting around outside, and her pace quickened as she and Ping passed the counter and approached the window. Four feet away from the front door, Mara came to a sudden stop and held out her arm to warn Ping.
A silhouette of a young boy lurched across the bottom of the front window, still walking with the gait of a shedding victim. As he passed from view, two more shadows, these taller, clearly adults haltingly shuffled down the sidewalk. One of them stopped in front of the window while the other continued on without hesitating. The straggler turned toward the shop, staring blankly through the window.
Mara held her breath as the dark figure raised a hand and placed it on the glass, flat-handed, and pressed against it. A thin sound of window molding cracking pierced the darkness. And stopped. The man slowly removed his hand, leaving a foggy outline on the glass, turned and continued his disjointed walk down the sidewalk.
Disappointment swept across Mara’s features as she whispered, “I guess he left Buddy to keep Sam from prompting him anymore. Prado’s still got the rest of them.”
Ping put a hand on Mara’s shoulder and waved toward the back of the shop. “Let’s go in the back. We’re less likely to draw attention there.”
Mara followed him.
Standing in front of the tiny office door, Ping said, “Is the Chronicle in there?”
“Yes, but do you really think this is the right thing to do?”
“I don’t see any alternatives.”
“I just think I need to think this through, talk this out for a minute.”
A loud bang rattled the large garage door that covered half the back wall of the shop. Mara jumped, nearly dropping the cup containing Prado’s ashes.
Ping lowered his voice and said, “There’s no time for talk. Get the Chronicle and activate it. You need to find out what is going on and see if there is a way to undo whatever Prado is doing to these people.”
Mara opened her mouth to protest, but another clatter from the garage door changed her mind. She tensed up, took a deep breath and ducked into the office. A moment later, she returned carrying the jeweled copper medallion, the Chronicle of Creation, on her upturned palm.
“What are you going to do while I’m gone?” Mara asked. “Assuming I actually go somewhere.”
“I’m going into that office, crawl under the desk and hide from those creatures,” he said, nodding toward the back of the shop.
“Take this.” Mara handed him the paper cup. “Stand here next to me and hold it out in front of you.” She extended her hand too and held out the Chronicle before her and said, “Show me creation.”
“Must you say that each time you activate the Chronicle?” Ping asked. “It sounds like some kind of silly incantation.”
From her palm, the copper medallion rose up into the air and floated. After a moment, it spun, and the blue azurite crystals on its face glowed and smeared into bands of light.
“I don’t think I have to say it, but reciting the words seems to help me tap into the part of my brain that makes this thing work. Call it a verbal talisman if that makes you more comfortable,” Mara said, staring into the light.
As it became a blurry disk, it flipped and gyrated in all three dimensions, emitting intermittent bursts of blue light. It hovered in the air before Mara’s face, then it gained speed and power, strafing the walls with streaks of blue light. In a final burst, the medallion completely disappeared, replaced by a spinning orb of blue mercury, pulsing with light that illuminated the entire room.
A blue translucent bubble burst from the orb and expanded to each wall. Within the bubble, bright blue lines drew themselves, running along the periphery of the bubble running into silvery nodes and continuing to split and connect to more nodes. Once the static edge of the bubble became congested with lines and nodes, they turned inward filling the interior of the bubble as well.
Unlike previous experiences with the Chronicle, this time Mara found herself standing outside of it instead of in the center. She looked over her shoulder and realized she and Ping were standing next to the wall of the office. The bubble was constrained by the area in which it formed and could not envelope them. The transparent boundary arched about six inches in front of them. Directly before Mara, a tennis-ball-size node appeared to press against the bubble, straining against the wall, distorting it slightly as if exerting itself to get to her.
She stared at it for a few seconds before it struck her that this node looked odd. Unlike the others, which were pure silver, the one before her looked dull, more gray than silver, with bands of black swirling along its perimeter.
“Why is my node the only one that looks murky like that?” she said.
Ping shrugged. “I suppose it could be related to what is happening with Prado, but that seems unlikely. It would take something of a metaphysical significance to alter how the Chronicles represents creation, don’t you think?”
“I don’t like it. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.” She glanced over to her right, and, in front of Ping, three nodes bobbed in the air, pressing against the edge of the sphere in front of him. Mara raised an eyebrow and said, “Three nodes? Why are there three nodes pulling toward you?”
“One for me, one for the dragon and one for Prado’s remains,” Ping said, lifting the cup as high as he could. One of the nodes before him followed the course of the cup, bobbing higher. “Each of us is from separate realms, and it appears these nodes can detect that.�
�
“Multinodal Personality Disorder,” Mara said. “You’re some kind of metaphysical schizophrenic, aren’t you?”
“I suppose that would be one possible diagnosis, but let’s not waste time analyzing me. We’ve got more pressing concerns to address.”
“Just making an observation.”
“Sam said all you need to do was grab this node and hold onto it,” Ping said, waving the cut toward Mara, guiding the node to within her reach.
“I know. I know.” She reached out tentatively, felt the static of the bubble’s frontier send tiny electrical prickling up her arm and pulled back. “Oh, I don’t know.”
Another rattle at the garage door, this one louder, made her jump. She looked over at Ping, concerned. “What will you do if they get in here?”
“Don’t worry about me. Just go,” he said.
Mara reared back her arm, as if she needed to gather momentum, and thrust it through the blue static wall, grabbing the node floating between her and Ping. A shock of electricity shot up through her fingers and coursed through her body. Before it reached her eyes, she saw the edge of the translucent bubble peel away from the sphere of lines and nodes, turning itself inside out and engulfing her instead. It collapsed on her in an explosion of blue light. She felt herself being pulled down, plunging somehow in a free fall that turned her stomach and pressed against her chest. She felt movement, velocity, but no wind touched her skin. There was no sound, as if she tumbled through the vacuum of Space. All she could see was blinding blue light, and all she could feel was that node in her hand.
Her fingernails dug into it as if everything depended on maintaining that grip.
CHAPTER 47
The blue light winked out with a static snap that sent a shock again down Mara’s arm. By the time her eyes adjusted, she found herself standing once again in the back of the shop, next to the office door and across from the garage doors. The Chronicle’s spin lost momentum and energy, and fell out of the air into her hand, a copper medallion once again. She turned to ask Ping what happened, but he was not here. For a second, she panicked, thinking that somehow she had inadvertently sent him into another realm.
But it was no longer dark here. Daylight streamed in from the front of the shop and from the small windows running along the top of the walls. She gazed around, disoriented.
The bicycle parts and tools were missing. Boxes were stacked up in a row where Bruce’s worktable had been seconds ago. Stepping around the boxes, Mara found a large tank of water with something clear and gelatinous swimming around in it. It looked alive.
Grabbing a plastic stick that hung off the side of the glass tank, Mara poked into the water, sending a yellow arc of electricity through the tank. A scream rose up out of the goo that made her think of a pterodactyl in a monster movie, sending a shiver up her spine. What the hell? She quickly replaced the prod and stepped away.
Vibrations along the wood flooring warned her that someone approached. From the other side of the boxes, the steps stopped and a familiar voice demanded, “Whoever you are, come out of there now, or I’ll let my chobodon loose to route you out.”
Mara paused for a second and looked around quickly. A chobo-what? There was nowhere to run. She took a deep breath and stepped from behind her hiding spot.
Standing before her was another Mara, holding something on the end of a leash that looked like a cross between a pig and an armadillo. The beast snarled and grunted, spattering drool on Mara’s jeans as it leaped forward, straining against the thin chain and chomping little tusks against a bit that traversed its mouth. Her counterpart gave the chain a hard yank, bent forward and stroked the pink-and-gray mottled armor that clung to the beast’s shoulders. Its ears twitched back and forth as it settled back on its haunches and growled.
Mara’s counterpart’s eyes widened with recognition. “You said you wouldn’t come back here. I did what you wanted. I gave you the reptiles and told you where to find the luminary. Now get out.”
She held up the hand that was not holding the leash next to her shoulder, palm up. In the air above, a tiny black puff of smoke appeared and spun and grew. Soon it blackened, became sooty, spitting off ash and flame. Collapsing in on itself as it continued to rotate, it glowed yellow, then orange, then red, growing more solid, a rotating molten ember the size of a tennis ball.
“Excuse me? Have we met before?” Mara said, eyeing the floating minimeteor spinning ominously above her counterpart’s hand.
“I said, get out. I’m going to give you until the count of three before I start burning holes into that pretty little face of yours. Use the door or use the copper doodad and jump in that big blue bubble you rode in on—I don’t care, just get out.” She hefted the fireball into the air.
Mara held out her hands. “I promise, I have never been here before. This is the first time I have ever used this thing to go into another realm.”
“One . . .”
Mara held up the Chronicle. “I got this from another girl who looks like us. She crossed over on an airplane and caused it to crash. And a bunch of people from other realms crossed over too.”
“Two . . .”
“One of them came from here, from this world, but he died and turned into this black mist that is spreading like a virus, possessing people and—”
“Three . . .” Mara’s twin wound up like a baseball pitcher and flung her arm forward, catapulting the fireball toward Mara’s head.
Mara held her hands before her, instinctively ducking at the same time. The fireball froze halfway between them, suspended in midair, a stream of glowing ash and smoke trailing behind it like a tail on a comet.
The counterpart raised her palm again. Another ball of flame swirled above it. Without preamble, she tossed it at Mara.
Again Mara held up her hands, and the fireball stalled in midair, a few inches to the left of the first one. “I don’t know how many lava balls you can throw before your arm gives out, but I suspect we could be here all day,” Mara said. She narrowed her eyes at the frozen fireballs, and they blurred into smears of yellow-and-red pixels. Reaching out, she batted at the blobs, and they fell apart, sending tiny translucent cubes showering to the floor where they faded away. She pulled back her hand and shook it in the air. “Hot, hot, hot.”
Turning her attention back to her counterpart, Mara recognized the look on her own face. It wasn’t resignation. Her counterpart dropped the leash she held and said, “Get her, Ginger.”
The plated pig-thing launched itself into the air, letting loose with a squeal as its tusked mouth opened in anticipation of closing on Mara’s neck. As the creature’s forelegs extended to break its momentum on Mara’s chest, she disappeared in a flash of light. Behind the lunging beast, its master also winked away. Each reappeared in a second flash of light, now in the other’s place.
Crashing into its master’s chest, the pig-thing squealed victory as it snapped at her chin. They tumbled into the stacked boxes and crumpled to the ground.
Mara’s counterpart, now splayed on the floor, slapped at the beast’s jowls. “Down, girl. No, Ginger.” She turned onto her side, rolling the pig-thing off of her. Swiping hair out of her face with one hand and holding back the beast with another, Mara’s counterpart sat up on the floor, her face flushed. Her pet snuggled up to her and tried to lick her face.
Now a look of surrender crossed her counterpart’s face, and she asked, “What do you want?”
“You seem to recognize me,” Mara said.
“Of course I recognize you.” She held up a hand under her own face. “I see you in a mirror every day.”
“No, I mean, you seem to think we’ve met before.”
“How many Maras are running around out there with a copper disk that lets them bounce around from reality to reality? Yes, we’ve met. And you said you wouldn’t come back.”
“That wasn’t me. That was another Mara, from another realm.”
“Right.” The counterpart didn’t look convinced.
“Aren’t there some other Maras out there that you girls can bother other than me? I just got this place fixed up from the last time you popped in.”
“I’m telling you, that was not me, at least not this version of me.”
The counterpart stood up, dusted off her pants, wiped some Ginger slobber off her shirt and looked down at the creature. “You go watch the front of the shop.” She waved an arm, and the pig-thing slunk away. “So you took the copper doohickey from the other Mara, and now you’re here. How’d you accomplish that? She seemed to have a penchant for blowing up things. She killed Ginger’s brother the last time she was here.”
“It’s a long story. She won’t be bothering you anymore.”
“That’s little comfort. Seems I’ve traded one evil twin for another,” the counterpart said. “What do you want?”
“I’m not evil.”
“No one thinks they are evil, but you’re here, and, in my book, that makes you evil. Again, what are you doing here?”
“There’s a guy who came from this realm, from your version of reality, and he was killed accidently, and now he’s turned into a black mist that is spreading from person to person.”
Mara’s counterpart rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, yes. I heard you. A black mist that is spreading from person to person, displacing their spirits and possessing their bodies. We’ve all heard the legend of the darkling wraith. You don’t expect me to believe that superstitious crap, do you?”
“You’ve heard of such a thing happening before?”
“In fairy tales and myths, stories used to scare people into believing old luminary dogma. No one takes it seriously. Well, most people don’t.”
“This dogma, what do they believe happens when people die? Do they turn into a black mist and go into other people’s bodies?”
“Like I said, I don’t really get into all that life-after-death stuff. You want to know about dogma, go talk to a luminary.”
“You mentioned that word before. Said you had sent me to one when you thought I was the other Mara. What does a luminary do?”
Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) Page 26
