Witch Creek

by Laura Bickle

  . . . and a growl behind her. Sig. She would recognize that growl anywhere. She stopped. “Sig!”

  She would never leave him behind.

  But he had no intention of retreating. He snarled and barked at the ghosts. Petra automatically reached at her waist for a gun with her arm that wasn’t numb, but she had no gun, no knife . . . nothing to defend them with.

  The ghosts . . . well, the ghosts were plenty impressed with Sig. They seemed to drift back, like dandelion seed in a stiff breeze. And Sig himself was a bit different, too, it seemed; he was outlined in a dim pale-green glow, like foxfire.

  “Sig!” She knelt and threw her arms around him, trying to drag him away, even as the ghosts seemed to cower before the coyote.

  Something flew overhead, and she ducked, covering her head with her good arm. When she looked over her elbow, she saw it, and her breath caught in her throat.

  A white eagle. It glowed with a curiously incomplete light, not translucent like the ghosts, but not entirely corporeal. It streaked over her head and slammed into a wall.

  Petra knew it instinctively. It was trying to escape. She stripped out of her coat and tried to throw it over the eagle, to try to trap it. The coat got only partway over it, and she fumbled with her dead arm. The eagle’s talons were fierce, tearing into her chest and arm. She could hear her blood striking the floor in a rattle.

  “Gabriel!” she shouted at it. Surely, there was some piece of him in there, some piece that might know her . . .

  A golden, inhuman eye rolled back at her, and the eagle screamed in panic.

  It split apart in her arms into a dozen screaming ravens. They sluiced through her arms and fingers with razor-sharp feathers and pitiless caws, smacking her head and face before they dissolved into the dark.

  She blinked, and it was still dark.

  Just less so. Petra’s chin jerked up, and her eyes fluttered open to see the star-spangled sky above the Eye of the World. The Milky Way stretched in all its glory from horizon to horizon. Sig snored with his head in her lap, moving his paws. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to return to the vision. But it was no use; a cool wind scoured the sandstone sentries around the Eye of the World.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, blinking up to the sky.

  “You saw?” Nine had curled into the shadow of a rock and crept into view on all fours. Her long hair was mussed, flipped awkwardly over her shoulder and tangled in her hood.

  Sig yawned and stuck his cold nose in Petra’s armpit. Petra moved to rub his forehead and found a black feather stuck to her collar, brushing her face. She plucked it from her coat—a broken pinfeather.

  “Yes.” She glanced back at the water that was suddenly blurry.

  “What did it mean?”

  “It means . . . Gabe is alive. Somewhere underground.”

  Nine was still, her head tipped in the attitude of a canine with a flipped-over ear. “You know where?”

  “Rutherford Ranch. Has to be.”

  Nine said nothing. She waited for Petra to shift Sig to the ground and climb to her feet. Sig yawned wide enough to twitch his ears and plodded forward on the path back to the house.

  As they walked, Petra gestured over her shoulder to the Eye. “It let me go to the spirit world that time. Not any of the times I tried before. Why?” It seemed as if Nine had more answers that she was giving up.

  Nine shrugged. “It opens for me, though I don’t go that deep. I just stay on this plane of the living, watching the pack. I think . . . that the barriers between this world and the next are thinner for you. You can slip back and forth more easily than you could before.”

  Petra made a face. Time was running out, and that was just more proof. “Then I’d best begin looking for Gabe . . .” Her fingers clasped around the car keys in her pocket, and they jingled.

  “Get some sleep. There’s no use searching for the Raven King in the dark, especially without a plan.”

  “Or without guns,” she murmured.

  They didn’t speak further on the way back to the house. Nine didn’t even turn the lights on when they arrived. Petra’s eyes had adjusted so well outside that the dim light above the stove seemed bright as noonday sun. She left her coat on the couch and navigated to the bedroom by Sig’s claws clicking on the hardwood. She heard him jump up into bed, and she climbed in beside him. Maria and Pearl hadn’t moved.

  Petra stared at the ceiling. The Eye of the World had opened to her . . . and it shook her. She hadn’t given much thought to what was going to happen to herself afterward, after she was gone. She had deliberately decided not to think about what might happen to her soul, since she guessed she possessed one. She’d actually thrown the hospital chaplain out of her room after he had wanted to get into an inventory of her sins. But having seen what could be, she sure as hell hoped that however lengthy the list of her sins was, she wouldn’t be trapped in the land of ghosts.

  She contemplated striking out and never returning.

  Once she’d felt the sun on her body and the taste of blood again, it was a tempting thought. Returning to that dark den where she’d spent the last 150 years was a thought that filled her with visceral dread and hate.

  But there were things that Muirenn wanted. She had not yet had time to scout the new world beyond her lair. Things had clearly changed; she could hear it in the distant rumbling of machines and taste it in the tang of the fisherman’s blood. She saw it as she rifled through his box and his shiny belongings that chirped and beeped until she drowned them in the water. She knew it as the creek formed unfamiliar bends and odd flows that she suspected were manipulated by men through earthworks she couldn’t fully imagine.

  All around her was change, and she needed to soak it all in. Good thing that she was, above all, patient.

  She returned after night fell to the gate to the underground river, which remained jammed open. She rolled her shoulders, feeling the memory of sunshine leaving her as she dove into the black water and swam slowly upstream to her old prison and the keyless warden.

  She lurked in the darkness of the deep water, listening before she broke the surface.

  Owen’s voice was clear, echoing in the space in a one-sided conversation:

  “You said to trust her. I trusted her. And now she’s gone. She might not ever be coming back.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know. But how do you know that?

  “I can’t. No. I don’t have what I need from him, yet. He knows too much. No. No, I can’t just set him loose.

  “Well, there’s such a thing as being in too deep. And I deserve some answers.”

  She waited until he had lapsed into silence before she lifted her head above the surface. She spied Owen, sitting on the bottom step of a narrow flight of stone stairs that led to the tunnels above. An electric lantern sat beside him, illuminating the cavern in a blue-white brightness. Not as bright as outdoors, but perhaps bright enough. Drizzle made it shimmer in a pale fashion. After seeing outside, it seemed very artificial to her.

  He jolted to his feet. “You came back.”

  “Of course.” She paddled close to the shore. “I would never leave you, Owen.”

  He gazed at her with narrowed eyes. “You didn’t tell me you’d take off.”

  “Owen, I’ve been imprisoned for many, many years. You can’t imagine how badly I wanted to feel sunshine on my face.” She lifted her speckled hand to her face and smiled.

  Owen’s resolve to chastise her visibly faltered. “Well. I’m glad you’re back.”

  “I have many gifts to give you. Many things that can be yours.”

  “Like the pearls?”

  “The pearls are small things. I can give you so much more.”

  “How about you start telling me about why you’re down here? Someone clearly put you here. And I’m thinking that I just pissed off whoever your jailer is. Was.”

  Muirenn shrugged. “I was captured by an alchemist, many years ago. He enslaved me, made me conjure things for him.” She gave a shudde
r. “He wasn’t as kind as you were.”

  Owen’s mouth twisted. “How long ago?”

  “So long. I’ve forgotten.” She started to sink below the surface of the water.

  “Wait.”

  She paused, just her black eyes above the surface.

  “I’m not him. Not that . . . alchemist.”

  She lifted up her chin. “I know. Which is why I am pleased to serve you. There are many things I can do for you.”

  “You keep saying that. But what exactly do you mean?”

  The water greyed and became fuzzy. It showed Owen’s reflection as he stood, with one difference: the silhouette showed him complete, with two hands and all his fingers. He gazed into the reflection, unconsciously flexing his right hand missing two fingers.

  “Given time, and the proper resources, I believe that it would be possible to restore your hand.”

  Owen looked down at his mutilated hand. “Really?”

  “It can be done. And I can free you of that ghost that haunts you.”

  Owen stilled. “The ghost. You can see her?”

  She nodded. “She has been with you a long time.”

  He scrubbed his hand over his forehead. “Yeah. For years. Since I couldn’t solve her murder . . .” He paced and turned back to face her, babbling. “But Anna’s just a little girl. She deserves better. Can you send her on? To heaven, I mean, not leave her here or send her to hell? Because that’s just not right. She needs to go to some bright white light somewhere.”

  “I can send her to the light. It will take time, though, to prepare the magic that can do it,” Muirenn said soothingly. “Just not tonight—I am exhausted from my brief journey outside. We should speak of this more in the days to come.”

  Owen nodded. “That’s fair.”

  She inclined her head. “I look forward to serving you, my king.”

  She sank beneath the water, to the darkest black of the river, where she couldn’t be heard.

  And she laughed.

  “Good morning.”

  Sunshine filtered through Maria’s lace curtains, forming soft shapes on the walls and bed. Petra dragged herself to a sitting position under a mountain of bedclothes. She smelled bacon.

  Maria sat on the edge of the bed, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Petra pulled aside the blankets to put her feet on the floor, and noticed that she was wearing the plush robe she’d gone to bed in—not the black clothes she’d worn the night before. Had she dreamed the whole thing? Her brow wrinkled, and she glanced at Sig. His nose was working, and he clambered out of bed, more interested in investigating breakfast than ruminating the nature of Petra’s reality.

  “You okay?” Maria reached out to press her hand to Petra’s forehead, as if checking for a fever.

  “I think so? I can’t remember if . . . I went for a walk last night or if I had a dream.”

  “Either way, you’re here now.” Maria’s cool palm remained on her forehead.

  Petra sighed. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe she had the information, and how she came by it was irrelevant. If it wasn’t some stupid hallucination, like she’d had at the hospital. She’d had a vivid dream there that she couldn’t find the light switch and had woken up to find herself pressed against the wall like a spider, searching for it, while her IV pole bleeped its electronic brains out.

  Maybe this was the business of dying. Maybe the line between reality and Other blurred until there was no differentiating the two, and one slipped away into Other. The hair on the back of her neck stood up at that realization, the truth of that sliding over her skin.

  “Come have something to eat,” Maria said, ever the pragmatic one.

  Petra obligingly followed her out to the kitchen, awash in sunlight. Nine was seated at the table, eating bacon with her fingers. Sig was slobbering all over a plate on the floor that was now empty, while Pearl looked onward from her perch on top of the refrigerator, washing her face. Petra was betting that the small bowl beside her had also been full of bacon.

  A man with a buzz cut in a park ranger’s uniform sat at the table, and he stood when the women came down the hallway.

  “Hey, Petra,” he said quietly and gave her an awkward hug. It seemed that he was afraid of crushing her.

  “Mike. It’s good to see you.” She hadn’t seen her friend and coworker for a couple of weeks . . . had it been that long? Longer? She couldn’t remember. He’d definitely come to see her in the hospital. She just didn’t remember when.

  “Like the new hairdo.” He glanced at her hair, as if he was afraid to comment on the rest of her.

  “I owe it to Maria’s fine knowledge of a pair of scissors.”

  “Yeah. Well, she’s always been good with sharp things. Scissors, knives . . .”

  Maria jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow.

  “Elbows.”

  “Don’t get me started,” Maria said, waving a spatula at him. He held his hands up in mock surrender.

  Smiling, Petra sat down at the table before platters dauntingly filled with toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon. Maria put a cup of tea down before her. “Drink this first.”

  Petra did as she was bid and grimaced at the bitterness. “Any news on Gabe?” she asked, choking down the tea and reaching for a piece of toast to quell the taste.

  Mike frowned. “I put out an APB for him. Didn’t get any leads in Yellowstone. But the highway patrol found the truck he was driving.”

  Her heart jumped. “Where?”

  “At a bus station near the state line. A city policeman slapped three tickets on it before it was towed as an abandoned vehicle.”

  Petra leaned forward on her elbows. “Was he in it?”

  “No. It was empty.”

  Of course it was.

  “I called in a favor and asked to look it over myself,” Mike continued. “No blood inside, no damage to the truck. Change was left in the console, and it was locked up tight.”

  “Who left it?”

  “It’s not like there was surveillance footage to show who left it there,” he said gently. “I did a quick dust for prints—mind you, I’m not an expert. But I didn’t find anything besides the ones I found on the kitchen table of your trailer. If I was a betting man, I’d say that somebody planted it there to make it look like he was on the lam.” Mike drained his coffee. “It’s just too convenient.”

  Petra’s shoulder slumped. “Dammit.”

  “Look. Nothing ever disappears without a trace. There has to be evidence out there,” Mike affirmed, nodding reassuringly.

  Petra offered him a thin smile over her teacup. She didn’t know how much of this was to soothe her, and how much he really believed as the World’s Biggest Boy Scout.

  “You just gotta concentrate on getting better,” Mike said.

  Petra nodded. “I will.”

  He didn’t look as if he believed her. One eyebrow quirked up a bit, and she knew that to be his trademark sign of skepticism.

  “I’m in the best possible hands,” she protested innocently.

  “Yeah. I know.” He glanced at his watch. “I gotta head in to work. I just wanted to check in with a report before I went. And snag some breakfast, of course.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  He stood, put on his jacket and boots. Maria gave him a peck on the cheek, and he waved as he headed out.

  Maria waited until the sound of his engine receded, then turned to Petra. “Would it be too much to hope that you’d stay here and let Mike track down Gabriel?”

  “Yep.” Petra scooped a spoonful of eggs on her plate.

  Maria sat in Mike’s chair at the table. “What does that mean?”

  Petra murmured around a mouthful of eggs, “It means that I’m going to war.”

  “I’d guessed as much.”

  Nine plucked a piece of bacon from the tray, broke it in two. She gave half to Sig and crunched on the other. “I’m going with her.”
>
  “As if there was any question about her going anywhere to look for him alone. But you’ve got to be properly armed.” Maria went to the stove, where she lifted the lid off a pot. A jumble of herbal fragrances and the sharpness of alcohol flashed over the smell of breakfast. Maria stood a battered Thermos beside the pot and perched a strainer on top of it. With expert care, she poured the brown contents of the pot into the Thermos. When it was full, she screwed on the lid and parked it on the table in front of Petra.

  “What’s that?”

  “A tonic for strength. Drink a cup every four hours.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I wouldn’t thank me—it’s going to taste terrible. But it will help. And follow the instructions in here.” She placed a lunch box beside the Thermos, a grey metal thing that probably dated from the 1940s. “There are some smudge bundles, tea, and oils in here.”

  “Will do.” Petra knew that there was no arguing with Maria.

  “And you’ll need some guns.”

  “Guns would be really nice. I mean, I bought a couple of my own, but if you’re offering . . .” Petra hadn’t been able to bring her six-shooters to the hospital. She’d left them at her trailer.

  Maria crossed to the living room and pulled a quilt off the top of a trunk serving as a coffee table. Petra followed her, slurping on her tea, and almost dropped her cup.

  “Wow. You’re like the Fairy Godmother of Firearms.”

  “Eh,” Maria said noncommittally. “Clutter accumulates.”

  The chest was full of ammo boxes, sawed-off shotguns, a rifle, and an assortment of handguns. Petra reached in for one of the shotguns. “Not exactly legal, is this stuff?”

  “Mike’s gone. There’s no paper on any of it. So. You do what you have to do.” Maria shrugged. “Just don’t get caught.”

  Chapter 5

  The Door

  The gate to the underworld wasn’t like Rodin pictured it. There was no grand carved door adorned with foreboding friezes of angels and demons warring. No nude figures writhed in bronze agony, thought really hard in hunched postures of contemplation, or plotted in cabals at the lintel. There wasn’t even a door knocker. No decoration to show outsiders where it was. The real door to the underworld was hidden, anonymous.