Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) by D.W. Moneypenny Page B

the light,” the man hissed. He pulled his hands away from his face. His eyes shimmered like a cat’s, radiating enough to cast light onto his soiled cheeks.
    Mara gasped. The man jumped up, pushed past Sam and dashed down the street.
    “That looked kind of creepy,” Sam said, staring after the man until he disappeared around the corner a half block away.
    “Perhaps that’s not an unusual characteristic of their eyes at nighttime,” Ping suggested.
    Mara shook her head and said, “Cam’s eyes never did that, and most of the time we had his head was at night and outside in light almost exactly like this. There’s definitely something odd going on with that guy.”
    “You said something about not wanting to get distracted?” Sam asked.
    Mara pointed up the street and said, “Right. The dots are pointing us in this direction.”
    After they had walked for two blocks, Ping said, “Assuming such a thing exists in this realm, I believe we are east of the Portland State University campus.”
    Mara looked down the street and saw the dots hovering over the sidewalk as far as she could see. “We’re definitely heading in that direction,” she said.
     

CHAPTER 14
     
     
    The floating dots that only Mara could see led them to a derelict brick building with a highly pitched roofline that struck her as oddly out of place among the nearby modern office buildings, but it filled her with a sense of déjà vu. Most of the landmarks they had passed were familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on this one. It had a gray stone foundation and a crumpled pile of cinder blocks that climbed to an arched doorway in its red and beige brick facade. Tall narrow windows flanked the doorway, but rotting wood obscured them. Mara pointed up the staircase remains and said, “I’m not sure what this place is, but the tracking signal from Cam’s head is coming from in there.”
    “Interesting choice of location,” Ping said. “It does raise the question of whether our synthetic friends actually practice some kind of religion.”
    “I’m sorry?” Mara asked.
    Ping nodded toward the front of the building. “In our realm, this is the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel, a Catholic church that is in much better repair than this. I would surmise that this version of the church hasn’t been used in many years. There are no signs. Even the crosses have been removed from the building. I wonder if that is significant.”
    “Right now its only significance is the location of Cam’s head. Once we get that back, we can ask him about his religious beliefs until we’re blue in the face,” she said. She motioned toward the rising chipped and broken cinder blocks and said, “Do you think these stairs are safe?”
    Sam stomped a foot on the first riser and said, “I think it’s more solid than it looks.” He quickly ran up the steps, hopping sideways over a couple large cracks and turning after he arrived at the landing in front of the door. “Get a move on, you guys. I’m getting hungry, and I have a sneaking suspicion that, if the people in this realm do eat, it probably isn’t any good.”
    By the time Mara and Ping had joined him on the landing, Sam was opening one of the doors leading into the church. Its hinges screamed in protest. After the door was ajar enough to see inside, he said, “It’s pitch dark in there. How will we find someone’s head?”
    Mara indicated the book bag over his shoulder and said, “There’s a small flashlight in there. I brought it when I thought I might have to do some repairs on Cam’s body.”
    Sam dropped her bag from his shoulder, fished around in it, pulled out the flashlight and handed it to Mara. She slid her thumb over the Power switch and was about to step through the door when Ping put a hand on her shoulder.
    “Perhaps it would be prudent for me to go in and have a look around, while the two of you wait here. After all, the last time we saw Cam’s head, it was with the Aphotis,