Broken Dragon (Broken Realms, #3)

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3Crunching across the gravel parking lot of Mount Blossoms Nursery, Liz Murray wondered what had gotten her boss all aflutter, not that it was rare for Reuben Stills to get into a tizzy over the most mundane problems. However, it was Thanksgiving morning, and Liz had expected to have the day off. Instead Reuben had summoned her to the small wooded lot south of Portland, home to the office trailer and the sizeable greenhouse that loomed behind it.

Rueben rushed up to her, breathless. “Elizabeth, thank you for coming! You are not going to believe what has happened in the greenhouse!”

Liz rolled her eyes. “Rube, I thought we agreed that I would focus on my responsibilities in the office, so, unless you have an emergency invoice that needs to go out, I’m going to return to fixing my turkey dinner. I have a houseful of relatives coming over in a few hours.” She stood half turned toward her car.

“I know. I promised I wouldn’t ask for your help in the greenhouse, but we’ve had a disaster, and I didn’t know where else to turn.” Rueben held his hands together prayerfully, almost bowing in front of her. “You are not going to believe what happened. All the poinsettias are dying! On Thanksgiving! Do you know what that will do to my business? We may both be out of a job.”

Liz sighed and waved a hand toward the gravel path that led around the trailer to the greenhouse. “I thought you said it wasn’t necessary to keep the poinsettias in the greenhouse, that they could be warehoused for a day or two until we got them to the retailers.”

“That was the original plan, but, with all the craziness going on with the shedding outbreak, I thought it would be less trouble just to put them here, instead of driving into town and getting caught in the mayhem. Besides, the greenhouse was empty, and I thought an extra day or two in a controlled environment would make them look particularly radiant.”

“And you could charge more of a premium for the shops that placed late orders.”

Stopping at the white plastic door of the greenhouse, Reuben turned the metal handle and pulled, releasing a gust of warm air. Holding open the door, he half bowed and waved for Liz to proceed. “I’m not ashamed of turning a profit. It puts food on all our tables,” he said. Following her inside, he flipped a light switch next to the door. “The power went out Tuesday night or early Wednesday, cutting off the heat and the watering system. To make matters worse, the alarm system failed to send a text message because of the congestion on the phone networks. Then, when power was finally restored late last night, the heating system defaulted back to its highest setting. The poor poinsettias were practically frozen to death and then immediately roasted alive. The soil in the pots feels like sand.”

He held out both arms to the rows of plants, all wilted, draping over the edges of the pallets on which their foil-wrapped pots stood. The ten-thousand-square-foot greenhouse looked like a study in surrealism, a sea of limp lettuce and melted tongues.

He looked expectantly at Liz. “Is there anything you can do to save them?”

She surveyed the rows of dying plants, then looked at Reuben, exasperated. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how much it would take to bring all these plants back to health?”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Reuben whined. He paused for dramatic effect and raised a hand, as if taking an oath. “Okay, okay, it’s too much. I should not have asked. We’ll just have to take the loss and figure out what to do.”

“Don’t play me, Rube.”

“I’m serious. If you are uncomfortable doing this, I’ll figure something else out.” He placed a hand on his hip and gazed at the dying plants.

Liz frowned. “It’s not about being uncomfortable. It’s just that I have a turkey to get on the table, and I wasn’t hired to be your personal plant doctor. You’re supposed to be the one with the green thumb, remember?”

“I’ll never ask again. I promise.”

“Yeah, right.”

“So? What can I do to help?” he said, rubbing his hands.

Liz looked up to some aluminum ducts suspended from the ceiling between the light fixtures. “Can you turn down the heat and crank up the fans so that the air circulates in here? I need the air to move around. It doesn’t need to be windy, but something on the order of a draft would be ideal.”

Reuben nodded, ran to the other side of the door and fiddled with some knobs on a panel mounted on the wall. Soon a whoosh shook through the ducts with a rattle, and Liz felt a few strands of gray hair tickle her forehead. She brushed it back and said, “That’s good, like that.” She tossed a thumb over her shoulder and added, “Now get lost.”

“You understand that I would not allow any other employee to talk to me that way,” he said, mock sternness in his voice.

“That’s because you don’t have any other employee who can do what I can do,” Liz said. “Now leave me be for about a half hour.”

“Would it be possible for me to stay and watch? If I can learn your techniques, perhaps I would not need your help in the future.”

“You already promised you would never ask me to do this again.”

“Why would I need to, if you show me how to do it myself?”

Liz shook her head. “Not gonna happen. This isn’t something I can teach, so vacate the premises, or get on the phone and start making apologies to your poinsettia clients.”

“Fine, I’ll go. I need to run over to the Christmas tree farm anyway. I’ll be back in a little while to check on you.” He spun on a heel and walked out.

There was no lock on the door, so Liz looked around for a way to secure it, just in case someone happened by or if Reuben decided to return before it was suitable. She spotted a spool of nylon twine used to secure plants and picked up a small knife nearby. After cutting a length, she tied it into a loop and returned to the door, where she placed one end of the encircled twine over the handle. She pulled a small spade off a wall peg embedded to the left of the door and hung the other end of the loop over the peg. Someone would not be able to enter without a lot of effort.

Feeling more secure, she turned toward the interior of the greenhouse, sighing as she looked at the rows of wilted poinsettias. She walked several feet into the center row and bent down to a shriveled red bract—the specialized leaves that many mistook for poinsettia flower petals—and rubbed it between two fingers. I need to hurry.

Straightening, she slipped off her jacket and laid it alongside a pallet. Rolling up her sleeves, she unbuttoned two buttons at the top of her blouse. Bending down again, she rolled up her pants legs to just below the knees and kicked off her shoes. After removing her socks, a shiver ran up her spine when she placed her bare feet on the cool dirt floor.

Taking a last look at the dying foliage, she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. The musty sweet smell of fall, of decomposing leaves and fertile soil filled her. She felt a cascade of warmth flow through her as she raised her arms, palms up. A sheen of moisture broke out across her brow, and she exhaled audibly. Her pores opened, creating a rash of raised pink dots on her skin that disgorged a thick oily liquid. It did not bead, like sweat, but flowed over her body, like a spring pushing water from beneath the earth, overflowing, coating her skin and soaking her clothes.

Liz sighed again, and the oily residue coagulated, then clotted. It became gelatinous. The gelatin grew cloudy, making her body and clothing appear frosted, coated with a crystalline icing. She stiffened, constricted every muscle in her frame, trembling with the effort. A groan slipped from her coated lips.

And then she blossomed.

Millions of thin white stems burst from the frosting on her skin and clothing, so dense it looked like fur.

Liz inhaled and held her breath, her covered cheeks bulging outward.

The stems exploded.

Tufts of white fuzz fanned across the greenhouse, like a blizzard of dandelion dander, filling the air above the rows of limp flowers.

Liz, now dry and unshrouded in goo or stems, let out her breath. She watched the downy fibers dance in the air, kicked around by the ventilation system Rueben had left running. Next to her, a tiny white filament alighted on the bright red bract of a slumped poinsettia and melted into a speck of oily residue. A moment later the speck disappeared, absorbed into the plant. The withered red leaf lengthened and filled, firmed up and stood, followed by its neighbors, jerkily reaching toward the greenhouse roof, like a stop-motion film showing the miracle of nature.

More filaments landed. The greenhouse filled with a leafy rustling noise, as the resurrected poinsettias stood up, bright and alive.

Liz smiled, hopped up and down to get her pants legs to fall, and slipped on her socks and shoes. She sauntered down the center row of the greenhouse, looking left and right, watching the flowers come back to life. As she approached the end of the row, she sensed a breeze, different and stronger than the air flowing from the ventilation system. Still watching the recovering plants, she dismissed it, thinking she must be getting closer to a vent. She did not bother looking down the aisle.

An electrical sizzle and the smell of ozone drew her attention.

At the end of the aisle, six feet ahead, stood a black gash floating in the air, as if the world were a balloon and someone had ripped a hole in it. A gust of wind pulled at Liz, drawing her toward the void. She instinctively leaned away from it and placed a foot against one of the pallets under the poinsettias. The vacuum ahead grew more insistent, more powerful, and she turned away to run. Behind her, she saw a translucent blue wall that sloped upward. She tracked it across the ceiling, until she once again faced the blackness at the end of the aisle. She was encased in a sphere, a blue bubble of static.

On the verge of tumbling forward, Liz extended her arm to a thin pillar that ran up to the ceiling, but, as she was about to wrap her hand around it, she realized her hand was gone. A luminous mist trailed away from the end of her arm, where her hand should have been, and flowed into the black hole ahead. Within seconds her arm was gone. She strained and twisted her head to the side, as her shoulder melted into mist. Shaking her head, she looked down. Her torso disintegrated into a cloud of ambient green and seeped away.

“It’s time to come home,” a baritone voice echoed from the blackness.

It was the last thing she heard before her head dissolved.