Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) (20 page)

“The victor of course.”

“You seem sure of yourself, considering your circumstances. This realm has no Consciousnesses to blend with or any physical bodies to snatch. That’s why you’re drifting around scaring the natives. In this place you have no leverage, no way to wage your pointless battle for existence.”

“Ah, but there is one Consciousness. I can smell it like a vulture smells carrion,” he said. His gaze moved over her, and he added, “You reek of it.”

“You’re the vulture. You are a nothing but a scavenger, subsisting on death and destruction.”

“It would not be wise to underestimate me. Every puzzle has a solution, and every realm has a place for someone like me. Just like every realm has a place for someone like you. It’s part of the grand design. The battle cannot be avoided.”

“Good and evil.”

He smiled. “We are talking about forces of nature here, not morality. But, if we must pick teams, take sides, I’m comfortable playing for the devil’s.”

A red sheen swept over his eyes, and they narrowed, focused on Mara like a hunter who had found its prey. He looked more like a hawk than a vulture when he leapt at her, his body dissolving into a wave of black vapor curling over her.

Mara cringed, holding up the Chronicle of Cosms like a magic wand.
Boy, Ping would not like that analogy
. The advancing black front exploded into fine soot that danced around her, carried away by billows of blue steam.

Turning to make sure he was gone, she said out loud, “I should have done that sooner.”

She flipped the Chronicle over and peered into the bottom lens. It emitted that spinning blue light again, and she felt herself drawn into it. After a moment of falling, downward this time, she found herself standing in the center of the mill’s power plant floor, next to Sam and Ping, blinking, trying to quicken the fading of the blue spots before her eyes.

Sam leaned away from her, shielding his eyes. “Hey, how about some warning next time? You will give someone a heart attack just bursting in like that.”

Ping took her arm. “Are you all right? What happened to the Aphotis?”

“Yes,” the chief said, walking toward them after helping Milt to the exit. “What happened to this Aphotis of yours?”

Mara got the impression she had missed something but figured she’d quiz Ping about it later. She pointed with her chin to the steam-filled cylinder above the door. “He’s in there, where he can’t harm anyone.”

The chief frowned at her. “You used the Chronicle to transport yourself and that black cloud into the cylinder, and you left it in there?”

“Technically transported us into the steam at an elemental level,” Mara said. “You knew that’s how I created the various steam technologies that we use every day?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve just never witnessed the process before.”

Ping interjected, “Are you sure it’s safe to leave him there?”

“I don’t see how he could be a danger to anyone. He’s a bit of pollution floating around in the blue steam. What could happen?”

A rumble shook the air above them, and the front of the building shook, drowning out the sounds of gears and pulleys that had become white noise to them. A sharp crack cut through everything, and everyone looked up. Lines spidered across the face of the transparent cylinder. The brass piston plunged blue steam inside. The lines thickened and deepened to fissures, and, with another loud crack, they ruptured, sending vents of steam spraying into the air, adding a loud hiss to the cacophony reverberating around them.

“
What could happen
?” Sam yelled. He pointed to the now-fractured cylinder from which shards of glass were falling. “That could happen. He’s busting out of there.”

Ping raised a hand, made a calming motion, and said, “Let’s not jump to conclusions. It might be a mechanical issue. Perhaps exposure to the Chronicle weakened the cylinder walls.”

Sam glanced at his sister. “Do you believe that?”

Above their heads, a disk of swirling blue steam spun, centering itself beneath the giant vertical gear that continued to rotate in sync with the water wheel outside. The growing mass looked like satellite weather footage of a hurricane, angry and threatening.

Mara stared up at the gathering storm and said, “No. That doesn’t look like any mechanical issue I’ve ever dealt with.”

Crosswinds whipped around them as they watched the strange blue cloudy disk gyrate above them, turning on its side, floating parallel to the giant gear. Mara had to lean into the gusts pelting the floor and blowing past them.

“What’s it doing?” Sam asked.

Mara shook her head.

Engulfing the main gear and wrapping wispy tentacles around the drive staff connecting it to the water wheel, the blue steam glistened as it pressed itself—compacted itself—against the mechanisms, forming a sticky, shiny gelatin that oozed between the teeth of the gear and formed thick ropes of slime that twisted along the shaft as it turned.

“Look,” Mara said, pointing to the blue goo. “It’s disappearing.”

“It’s seeping into the metal, being absorbed by the machinery,” Ping said.

The gear and shaft took on an odd sheen, as if someone ran a light over its surface. It sped up, rotated faster. A tremor ran through the building as the teeth of the gears blurred, and a loud
crack
split the air behind them.

Mara spun around to see the huge water wheel spinning like a vertical roulette wheel, splashing so much water it was impossible to see through the massive window, which now had a large diagonal crack running from floor to ceiling. The ground beneath them shook.

Above the door, pistons became brown blurs agitating blue foam. Several cylinders exploded, casting glass and sizzling foam across the interior of the building. Pulleys snapped free from the ceiling, sending wheels and wires raining down. Larger pieces of machinery snapped free, falling all around them.

Chief Simmons took Mara’s arm, intent on pulling her outside. “We need to leave here. The place is coming apart. No telling what that volatile steam will do now that it has breached the system.”

The building filled with a blue fog.

Mara didn’t budge but kept staring at the giant vertical gear, spinning even faster now, kicking up a hot wind that roiled the blue steam around them. “I’ve got to see if it’s him, if he is free,” Mara said.

Ping leaned closer to her. “We can’t stay here any longer.”

The water wheel broke free and crashed into the side of the building, collapsing into the window and pouring water inside. The fractured, still-spinning drive shaft fell to the ground, gained traction, and pulled the entire gear-and-pulley system loose from its mountings in the ceiling. A wave of metal, wheels and gears, still connected by shafts and wires, came crashing down like a net. There was nowhere to run.

Mara saw the mass plunging toward them and raised her hands.

And Time stopped. So did the noise.

“Great job destroying the entire mill, sis,” Sam said.

Chief Simmons stared at a suspended gear the size of a large pizza pan just three inches above his head and asked, “What did you do?”

“She froze Time,” Sam said. “She can do that.”

“You called her
sis
,” the chief said. He looked from Sam to Mara for an answer.

“We don’t have time for twenty questions,” she said. “Ping, you and Sam go with him out the back way. I’ll be right behind you.”

Ping nodded and said, “What are you planning?”

“I’ll take a look at that gear the steam went into. I have to find out if the Aphotis caused this to happen.” When no one moved, she said, “Go!”

“Chief, can you show us the way out?” Ping asked.

The chief stared at Mara, and she nodded to him. “Seriously I’ll be less than a minute behind you.”

When they jogged toward the back of the building, Mara stepped over some larger pieces of machinery while wading through a growing pool of water.
Thank goodness these people don’t use electricity
.

The large gear’s teeth bit into the concrete floor, spitting a frozen plume of concrete dust into the air. To get to it, Mara climbed over the trunk-size drive shaft still attached to it. She approached the massive apparatus—almost twice her height—and rubbed her hand against its surface. That strange sheen was there, trailing across the giant round disk.

He was in there. He did this.

A groan reverberated in the empty building, like someone twisting a steel pipe. Mara looked up; tons of debris hung in the air, most of it inches from her head. She couldn’t afford to be standing here when Time unstuck. Examining her hand, she determined she wasn’t flickering or fading. Stopping Time usually did that to her.

So, there’s time to do something. No pun intended.

She stared at the gear and narrowed her eyes, visualized the metal falling away. Wafts of clear fog rolled down the sides of it, peeling away the brassy alloy, sending sheets of steam rolling to the floor and around her feet. It looked odd, tendrils of fog the only things moving in this chaos-filled room, curling around fallen machinery, glass and wires.

Stripped of its metal, the gear now consisted of a blue-black substance, spongy, perhaps what the blue steam and black mist combo would look like frozen in Time. Something inside it shifted, like a fish under a frozen pond.

Mara leaned forward and squinted. Must have been a trick of the light. She rubbed her eyes, and, when she pulled back her hand, she was flickering.

Her gaze shifted back to the gear. Streams of vapor danced along its edges. Looking up, she saw a piece of wire still attached to a suspended pulley, dangling—swinging—in the air.

Moving.

The giant gear exploded, replaced by a cloud of blue-black mist.

Mara turned and ran to the back of the building. Grinding,
clank
ing sounds, garbled like a recording played at the wrong speed, echoed behind her. In the distance she saw an open door in the corner of the building. Ping and Sam stood there, waiting.

“Run!” Mara yelled.

Seconds after the bone-shaking crash, a wall of dust, water, steam and air blew Mara out the back door of the mill, flying across a patch of high wild grass a few feet from the edge of the river. Landing on her hands and knees, she sunk into the wet ground halfway up her forearms and well past her knees. Momentum rolled her to her side, but the boggy soil refused to release her.

A cringe-inducing scream of metal filled the air. The roofline of the mill’s power plant collapsed, and the giant wheel that had loomed over it minutes before lurched to a halt against the rear of the building, tumbling with a loud crash into the pile of what remained of the mill. Mara felt the wet ground ripple and shake.

Ping and Sam ran to where she lay on the ground.

“What happened?” Sam asked.

“You clearly overdid it,” Ping said.

The police chief jogged over to them. When his gaze locked on Mara, his eyes widened. “What is happening to you?”

Mara looked down at herself and saw that her body was semitransparent, flickering beneath the muddy smears on her arms and legs. “Nothing to get too worked up about, chief. It’ll go away in a minute.”

“Did you see any evidence of the Aphotis being released again?” Ping asked.

A loud rumble akin to a volcano growled in the distance, vibrating the air. When the ground shook, the chief’s eyes widened and he said, “We should get away from here.”

Mara looked once again at the remains of the building. The steaming pile quivered and shifted, bulged upward, as if a buried creature clawed its way out. Jumping up from the ground, she yelled, “Run!”

“Is that all you can say?” Sam said as he followed the group down a dirt path alongside the river.

A fireball burst from the middle of the wreckage, shot into the sky and exploded, releasing a shockwave that struck them from behind, knocking them to the ground. After the blast had passed, Mara rolled over and looked at what used to be the mill. Dust and ash rained down as smaller explosions continued in the rubble. A column of smoke climbed into the sky.

Mara looked away from the disaster and pushed herself to a sitting position on the ground. She glanced at her mud-caked hands. They were solid again, but she felt the tiredness that came after one of those flickering bouts.

Chief Simmons got up, brushed himself off. “I’m going back to make sure no injured people were left behind. Milt said everyone was out, but I want to see for myself.”

Mara nodded, and he left.

Sam and Ping walked to where she sat.

“Are you injured?” Ping asked.

“No. Just a little tired,” she said. She patted the grass next to her, and they sat down. “I’ve made things worse. A whole lot worse.”

“How so?” Sam asked.

“He appeared as Juaquin Prado—in his body—when we were inside the blue steam,” she said. “I figured he couldn’t do any harm if I left him there. It didn’t occur to me that he could infuse himself into the steam and pose a danger to the mill.”

“We don’t know that’s what happened. Do we?” Ping asked.

“He possibly tapped into the steam’s energy somehow. Now it appears he can possess objects, become a part of them—like he did with people back in our realm. He seeped into the mill machinery, blended himself into some kind of metaphysical alloy. You saw what happened. He drove it to explode.”

“Maybe he died in the explosion,” Sam said. “If he was part of the equipment when it blew up, didn’t
he
blow up?”

Mara shook her head. “He was back to being his misty self by then, albeit black and blue instead of just black. There’s no telling what he will do now.”

Ping’s gaze shifted to the sky over Mara’s shoulder, toward the remains of the building. Concern swept across his features. He pointed and said, “You better see this.”

The rising column of smoke parted as a darker substance flowed through it, lingering like a bird of prey, circling, as if hunting. Though no more substantial that the smoke through which it passed, the mist moved with purpose.

They watched it for several minutes until it flowed back on itself and flew away somewhere beyond the smoke.