by Laura Bickle
“Bring him.”
Two of the Sisters lifted him to his feet. They draped his arms over their shoulders and carried him through the forest. Cal’s head lolled back on his shoulders, and he blinked upward at the light playing through the leaves. His toes barely brushed the cold leaves and ground. He idly wondered if his feet were bleeding red or silver.
“You’re gonna be okay,” the one with the purple hair whispered into his ear. “You’ll see.”
When they came to the edge of the parking area, only the Sisters’ bikes were there. There was no sign of the men, not even a stain on the grass to suggest they’d been there. Cal began to wonder if he’d hallucinated the whole thing.
The women placed him on the gravel, and he sat there, stunned and thoughts rumbling.
The blond one, Tria, knelt before him. She was holding a pair of men’s boots. She pulled out his rubbery legs and began to tie the boots on his scratched and bleeding feet. At least they bled red. That was something.
“Where did those boots come from?” Cal whispered.
She looked up at him impishly, under a fringe of black eyelashes.
He recoiled, turning away.
And he saw the only sign of what had transpired here—the snake.
The snake had been hung on a tree, draped over arms of the tree that reached out parallel to the ground, like a cross. It had been carefully hung over the branches like a stole.
At the foot of the tree, Bel knelt in prayer.
Cal hiccupped and passed out.
CHAPTER NINE
DOWNSTREAM
“Ready to hit the trail?”
Petra shifted from foot to foot in the overcrowded parking lot of the ranger station, uncertain. She’d packed a backpack containing most of her gear, a hazmat suit with a minirespirator, a gas detector, a fistful of sample bottles, a steel flint, a first-aid kit, a couple of plastic tarps, a change of clothes, food and water for herself and Sig, and some miscellaneous odds and ends from Bear’s store. Her sleeping bag was tied to the bottom—this time of year, the days could be in the fifties, but the nights routinely dipped below freezing, and she would take no chances. She wore a knee-length vintage leather coat she’d picked up at the pawn shop in the summer and cargo pants stuffed with her cell phone, a solar charger, sunscreen, the Venificus Locus, and ammunition for the guns she wore concealed in her gun belt under her coat. Her battered canvas safari cap perched on top of her head, and she wore her old boots. They were broken in, and she knew they wouldn’t give her blisters.
She thought she’d overpacked, but now she felt severely underdressed.
Phil and Meg had arrived with massive aluminum-framed backpacks that were larger than they were. Petra was pretty sure that each one weighed fifty pounds, minimum. They’d shown up in matching camo jumpsuits and coats that looked like they’d been military-issue, except that there were no names embroidered on the left breast pockets. Each of them carried hikers’ poles that looked like ski poles.
“Um. Hey,” Petra said, looking down at her scuffed boots.
Their boots were Gore-Tex with gaiters up to the knee. New. Maybe they didn’t get out much and just went overboard with shopping.
“Is that all you’re bringing?” Meg asked.
Petra slung her back over her shoulder. “I’ve got enough to get by for three days. Is that enough?”
Phil and Meg swapped glances. “Sure. We can radio to the rangers if we need more stuff. They should be able to airdrop supplies to us if we come up short.”
Petra nodded, and Sig pressed close to her knees. She flipped open a coat pocket. “And, hey, I brought bear spray.”
She meant it as a joke, but they looked uncomfortable. She wondered if perhaps they’d forgotten bear spray. Pelican Valley was notorious for grizzlies. They generally minded their own business, but they were walking around with bags full of food, and that was hard for a hungry bear to resist.
Mike tooled up in a Forestry Service Jeep. “Hey, campers.”
He looked like shit, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. Dark bags clung to his eyes. It didn’t look like he’d shaved, which was an admission that shit was seriously out of control for him.
She climbed in the backseat with Phil and Sig, while Meg called shotgun. The gear got piled in the back, and Sig set about inspecting it. Phil gave him a sidelong glance.
“I’m gonna let you guys off about four klicks away from the location of the campsite Petra and I checked out the other day,” Mike told them as he pulled the Jeep out onto the two-lane road. “I’ve got your permits in the dash, in case you run across other rangers. Nobody’s supposed to go off the marked trail in that part of the park.”
“You’re not coming with?” Petra pushed Sig’s cold nose off her neck. That had been the original plan, pending a quagmire of sign-offs from Mike’s chain of command.
“I’d love to go chase monsters with you guys, but I’ve got enough of a circus on my hands. I’m gonna be the only one at the Tower Falls Ranger Station after noon.”
“Bummer,” Petra said. “I know that you really wanted to meet the critter in person.”
“I’ll be on the radio, though. We kept the site out of the media as best we could, so you guys should be alone. For a while, at least.” He whistled the title theme to the X-Files.
“Tell us the truth. It’s the sweet overtime you’re getting,” Petra teased him.
“Oh, yeah. All that sweet time-and-a-half OT spent telling people that we do not issue hunting permits for giant snakes. With all due respect to the esteemed scientists present . . . bite me,” he said sourly. “I spent the largest part of yesterday looking for some dude who fell off a cliff, reportedly because he was walking backward with his selfie on a stick.”
“It’s a selfie stick,” Meg supplied.
“What’s a selfie stick?” Petra had never heard of one. “Is it like cheesecake on a stick?”
“Yum,” Phil murmured. “Fair food.” He offered Petra an awkward fist bump.
“You stick your camera on the end of one and your self-portraits are more wide-angle. Also, they’re great for getting your camera around nooks and crannies. I packed one!” Meg announced brightly.
I bet, Petra thought. “Did you find your hiker?” she asked Mike.
“I did. He was lucky enough only to have broken about half of the bones in his body.”
In the opposite direction, a load of teenagers in a pickup truck whooped and hollered. They were clearly speeding, and no one in the truck bed was wearing a seat belt.
“Excuse me,” Mike said.
The Jeep spun a tight U-turn on the blacktop, sending bags and the coyote shifting to the right. Petra held on to the seat in front of her and Sig’s collar, relieved not to wind up in Phil’s lap by virtue of her seat belt.
“What the heck?” Phil muttered.
“Mike’s a rules kind of guy,” Petra said.
Mike floored it and caught up with the pickup truck. He motioned for them to pull over, and the truck reluctantly stopped at a scenic turnoff.
“Be back in a sec.” Mike popped open his door and approached the pickup.
Petra reached in the back to straighten out the gear. She was startled to be shoved aside by Phil.
“I got this,” he said.
“Okay.” She slid back into her seat. Clearly, the guy didn’t like anybody touching his stuff.
Mike, ever the rules-stickler, scribbled out a raft of citations. The unhappy teens were stuck at the side of the road, waiting for their parents to come pick them up, when he returned behind the wheel.
“It’s been that kind of week,” he muttered.
“So the scene is clear—the spot where you found the dead campers?” Meg asked.
Petra piped up. “It should be reasonably safe. I wouldn’t
roll around in the grass, but it’s rained since then, and the air samples I took were clear.”
“Did you bring dog booties for Sig?” Mike asked.
“Funny you should ask,” Petra said. “I have plastic bags and zip ties. Since this is a classy operation.”
They wound south, past the spectacular Tower Falls and the Upper and Lower Falls and over the Fishing Bridge that spanned the Yellowstone River. Mike gave the scientists the tourist spiel:
“This part of the park is off the beaten trail, a bit. There’s a loop trail, and tourists are supposed to stick to it. It’s not unusual to see elk standing in the creek for a great photo op, but it’s also bear country. There’s not supposed to be any camping around here at all, and folks are required to clear off the trail by dusk—you guys are the exception. We still spend a lot of time chasing down folks who ignore the rules and pitch tents, anyway. Had one grizzly last year invade a campsite and get stuck in a steel fire ring while looking for stale marshmallows. That was fun to resolve.”
“The campers you found dead . . . they weren’t following the rules?” Meg inquired.
“Nope. No permit. Neither were the morons who saw the snake on the news. You can tell people what to do, and for very good reasons, but there’s a certain percentage that think you’re just kidding and that they’re smarter than the rules.”
“Any other wildlife that we should be aware of?” Phil asked.
“Just the usual assortment of coyotes, fishing birds, and some wolves. You might run into a wolf pack, if they’re in transit from here to the Lamar Valley. Those guys will leave you alone, though.”
“They’re part of the wolf reintroduction at Yellowstone?”
“Yeah. This group is called Mollie’s Pack. Neat animals, if you get to see them.”
“You mentioned some unusual geological activity in this area.”
“There has been,” Petra piped up. “There used to be a lot of defunct thermal features, and it was pretty quiet in this area for many years. But in the past few weeks, many of them have become active again, and new ones have formed. I’ve cataloged twelve new fumaroles, sixteen mudpots, and even a new hot spring.”
“So these are different from the paint pots and mudpots in the other parts of the park?”
“There are probably more than ten thousand geothermal features in Yellowstone. The vast majority of the features I deal with are small and somewhat disappointing to tourists after they’ve seen Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful.”
“Bigger is better.”
“Eh. Bigger just means it’s been more thoroughly studied. I like to look at things that are weird. To see a feature that nobody’s ever seen before is just really neat stuff.”
Mike pulled off to a forestry road near the scene of the campsite, and the Jeep’s underbelly scraped over tree roots and rocks for more than an hour. When he could go no farther, he put the Jeep in PARK and came to the tailgate to help them with their things.
Meg and Phil lugged their packs out immediately and began logging their notes into handheld tablets. Phil was already taking air readings, wandering toward the edge of the forest.
Mike leaned on the tailgate and spoke to Petra in a low voice that didn’t carry. “Here.” He handed her a small black device, about the size of a retail theft tag.
“What’s this?”
“GPS tracker. Put it in your pocket.”
“But I have a GPS device. And a phone, and a walkie in case we get within range of anybody at the Pelican Springs patrol cabin, and . . .”
“Your cell reception is gonna suck in the valley.” He spoke with his back to the biologists. “I put one on each of those guys, and I’m telling you to take one and hide it on your person. If I knew that you were bringing Sig, I’d have brought one for his collar.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You planted bugs on Meg and Phil?”
“In the aluminum casings of their backpacks. They might find them if they discern a rattle.”
“That doesn’t sound like standard-issue ranger gear.”
“It’s not.”
“No matter how extensive your personal network is, there can’t possibly be enough cell towers around to triangulate anything.”
“Doesn’t need cell towers. Those babies run on satellite.”
“And might I ask why you decided to drop major coin on gadgets to keep tabs on us?” She slipped her tracker in the front pocket of her pants, and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Well. Not to be a total pessimist, but the mission might be a bust, and I might need to go find your bodies.”
“That’s sweet. But you could just tell us. All of us.”
He frowned. “I don’t trust those guys.”
“What do you mean?” Her brow furrowed.
“I checked with a friend of mine who’s still in the military. Just to know what they were up to. I was talking to him anyway about Cal, and I figured . . . what the hell.”
“That’s . . . invasive.”
“Do you want to know what he found or not?”
She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Yeah. I want to know.”
“He found nothing. On either one of them.”
“That’s good, right?”
“That’s good, for a ghost.”
“A ghost,” she repeated.
“Yeah. One of two possibilities. Either those two grew up as choirboys . . . er, girls, or whatever. No speeding tickets, no insurance claims, no fingerprints on file, anywhere. Or they’re something else.”
“Like what?”
“Could be military, operating way above my friend’s clearance level. Could be corporate spies.”
“Awesome.” She rolled her eyes.
“Look, it might be nothing. But I wanted you to know, in case you wanted to back out.”
“Thanks.” She punched his sleeve and hoisted her backpack. “But I’m down for the ride.”
“Look, I would go, but . . .” His eyes drifted back and forth from the biologists to the road.
“You’re the only one at the station. I get that. Drunk teenagers need you to stop them before they fall out of trucks and split their brains open on the pavement.” She grinned. “Ya gotta protect and serve.”
“It’s kind of one of those ‘needs of the many versus needs of the few’ things.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked guilty. “I have to do it.”
“Mike.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re a cop. That’s your thing. See you back at the station in a couple of days.”
“Sure.”
She whistled for Sig, and followed the biologists up the trail.
When she looked back, she could see Mike standing beside the Jeep, looking back after them. He stayed there until she couldn’t see him anymore.
Gabe had sorely misjudged the basilisk before. He would not do so again.
Unwilling to sacrifice whatever bit of unlife remained in the Hanged Men, he had decided to search for it on his own this time. If he failed, it would be entirely his own failure, and hopefully the Lunaria would die quietly and take the rest of the Hanged Men with it. He hoped that they would simply fall asleep one evening in its glowing embrace and not rise the following morning—the peaceful death that they all deserved.
He had taken one of Sal’s horses, a sorrel with a bit too much wild for Sal himself to handle. But Rust was sure-footed and had good instincts. Most importantly, he tolerated the Hanged Men. When Sal had been thrown years ago and ordered Rust shot, Gabe had quietly moved the horse to the back field with the other work horses. Sal was unobservant enough not to be able to tell a sorrel from a chestnut, and Rust had spent his days beyond the reach of Sal’s scrutiny.
Rust was curious enough about Gabe’s mission: his rider was covered neck to feet in an oilskin coat he’d rubbed down with li
nseed oil and lead salt. It might buy him a little time from the snake—enough time to get close. Tied to the saddle on one side was Gabe’s rifle, outfitted with a new scope, and on his hip hung a loaded revolver. On the other side of the saddle was a bundle of spears made from dropped branches of the Lunaria. If the basilisk could hurt the Hanged Men, maybe there was enough magic still in the tree to take some blood from it.
Gabe and Rust took the back way to Yellowstone, through the pine forests. Quaking yellow aspen were beginning to drop their leaves, masking the little-used trails. The park was crowded with tourists, and Gabe wanted no part of them.
Gabe sent out a solitary raven to scout the skies above. It had rained recently, rinsing the stink of acid away, and the raven had a difficult time picking up the trail. He kept the bird close, scouting among the treetops for signs of the basilisk’s passing.
He knew that the basilisk had to be one of Lascaris’s old experiments, though his exact memory of his time with Lascaris was spotty. The basilisk had awoken somehow, crawled out of some nook or cranny. Maybe some of the recent seismic activity had awakened it. Maybe it was the other way around. In alchemy, the crucified serpent symbolized the removing of poison and the precipitation of mercury. The ouroboros, the snake devouring its tail, was a sign of regeneration. He remembered that much. He hoped that he could bring the good out of the ouroboros, the elixir of life, to save the tree and continue to work the magic of the Hanged Men’s regeneration.
He reined Rust in at the top of a ridge. Something moved in the valley below, where a creek slipped among large sandstone rocks. A pale shape drifted in the water, beyond the tree line.
The raven lit on his shoulder and slid underneath the collar of his oilskin coat, fluttering against the pulse in his neck. Gabe lowered his hat and nudged Rust forward, down to the creek.
Rust paused halfway down. His nostrils flared, and his ears swiveled back. He sensed something, something wrong. He dug in and would go no farther.
Gabe could respect that. He could smell it, too: the faint residue of poison. He slid down out of the saddle, looping the reins through a tree branch. That would be enough tension to keep Rust here for a time, but if he didn’t return, the horse would be able to disentangle himself and escape. Gabe lifted his rifle in the crook of his right elbow and slung the bundle of spears over his left shoulder.