Dark Alchemy

by Laura Bickle

  Maria grunted, tying his shoelaces.

  “Do you remember?” He gripped Maria’s sleeve fiercely.

  Maria’s brow furrowed, as if sorting through the old stories that a younger, more sober Frankie had told her as a child. “She was the woman who turned all her suitors to skeletons.”

  “All alone. Incomplete.”

  Maria squatted before him and brushed the hair from his eyes. She kissed his forehead. “It’s okay, Frankie.” She put his arms through the shirtsleeves and began buttoning him up.

  “It’s not okay. It’s killing. It will keep killing. They want it, what she has. That peace.”

  Maria clasped the old man’s shaking hands. “It’s okay, Frankie. Nothing will hurt you.”

  “Forgotten . . .” Frankie mumbled. His eyes swept the horizon outside. “That timeless peace . . . immortal.”

  Petra looked away, to the water. She had the sense of intruding upon a terribly intimate scene. She was a stranger, and this was not her family.

  A blue, smokelike shadow swirled in the water. She tried to focus on it, imagining that it was some aftereffect of the hallucinogen. The shadow curved and curled, and took the shape of a form with claws and teeth, growing more solid and grey.

  Sig hid behind Petra’s thigh and growled, the fur on his back standing up. It wasn’t just her imagination; Sig sensed it, too.

  “Go away,” Frankie hissed, while Maria struggled with his pants. He, too, stared into the blue depths. He threw a rock at the smoke creature, and the splash and ripples caused the shape to dissipate.

  Sig gazed up at her. The fur along his back had calmed, but the coyote still was tense as a spring, tail twitching. Petra wished that she could see what the coyote had seen, to know if it wasn’t just Frankie who was hallucinating. Just her and Frankie.

  “Something is coming,” Frankie announced. “Something hungry.”

  Petra shivered. Whatever it was that she’d seen, she didn’t want to have anything to do with feeding it.

  Cal was striking out today. Big time.

  Stroud had taken Cal and Justin and a ­couple other tweakers to run an “errand.” After he’d run like a little girl from Stroud the other night, he was surprised the stringy old dude had dragged him along this time. Cal had scrunched up in the backseat of the Monte Carlo, wishing that there was some way that the torn upholstery could reach out and devour him. He didn’t like it when Stroud got that cold, metallic glint in his eye that changed color from blue to grey. And Stroud was wearing gloves and a coat in the late summer swelter. That never boded well.

  The others didn’t seem to notice. Promised all the Elixir they could smoke for taking out Stroud’s garbage, they were now taking turns trying to see how many bullets could be crammed into handgun ammo clips before the springs gave out.

  “What’s the mission, boss?” Cal croaked from the backseat. “Are we gonna go look for Adam and Diana?”

  Stroud looked back at him with eyes the color of mercury. Fucking creepy. A bead of sweat formed on the old man’s upper lip. “I already sent someone to look for Adam and Diana. We’re going to search the trailer on Lascaris’s old land, for an artifact. It’s gold. About the size of your fist. Looks like a compass.”

  Cal sunk down in his seat. Great. Back there, again.

  One of the tweakers, Kyle, asked, “Anybody living there?”

  Stroud’s metallic gaze flicked back at him. “A woman. Her name’s Petra Dee. A geologist.”

  Justin looked up from thumbing bullets into the magazine. He lost count, swore, had to empty the clip and start over. “Hey. That’s the new bitch. The snotty one we saw on the road the other day.”

  Curiosity lit in Stroud’s voice. “You met her? You didn’t mention that.”

  “Yeah.” Justin punched Cal in the arm. “Would’ve gotten a decent piece of ass if Cal hadn’t fucked it up.” Bullets spilled on the floorboards and rolled under the seats. “Damn it.”

  Stroud looked back at Cal more intently, and he squirmed. “Was there anything . . . special about her?”

  Cal blinked. “Special? She’s kind of cute. In a MILFy way.” He decided against telling Stroud about what he’d seen at the Compostela last night. Petra was special in terms of that ballsy standing up to Rutherford’s men, sure, but . . . he was pretty sure that wasn’t what Stroud was asking about.

  “No. I mean . . . magical.” A cataract of silver licked up over Stroud’s right eye, momentarily obliterating the white and iris.

  Cal shook his head. “No. Nuh-­uh. Not like you.”

  “Did she have that coyote with her?”

  Cal shook his head. “She was alone.”

  Stroud frowned.

  He didn’t say anything more until they pulled up in front of the trailer. Cal hoped to God that Petra had enough sense or luck to be gone. He sighed with relief when he didn’t see any cars around.

  The men piled out of the Monte Carlo. Justin and the two others were armed. Cal brought up the rear, nervously examining the blade of the tactical knife he’d never used for anything but cleaning gravel out of his boots. Only Stroud appeared unarmed beneath his black coat.

  But Cal knew better.

  Stroud opened the screen door, tried the doorknob. “Check the windows. See if the back one’s open.”

  Justin always liked to go first. He sprinted to the back of the trailer with the other two young men in tow. Cal moved to follow.

  “Not you.” Stroud’s hand clapped down on Cal’s shoulder. Cal obeyed, though he squirmed at the hot, churning feeling in the palm of Stroud’s glove. He could feel it through the cotton of his T-­shirt, and he tried not to shudder. “Wait.”

  Justin sprinted back around the corner. “Locked. Looks like no one’s home.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Stroud climbed up the steps and kicked in the door, then motioned for the armed men to go ahead first. Justin and the other two tweakers tumbled all over themselves to get inside. Stroud stepped back. He stripped off his glove, and mercury slid over his knuckles, as if anticipating something.

  Cal fought a queasy feeling. Why this regular chick, who ran from them like a freaked-­out rabbit on the road? What did she have that Stroud wanted? What could she do that made her powerful enough to both defy Rutherford’s men and piss Stroud off?

  “No one’s here,” Justin called from inside.

  But Stroud was still careful. He walked into the trailer as though it might be booby-­trapped, mindful not to so much as brush the doorframe. He looked at the shabby surroundings, nodding to them. “Take it apart.”

  And they did. Cal and the young men ripped through Petra’s bags, tore the racks out of the oven, even peeled the paneling from the walls. And found nothing more thrilling than women’s underwear, a cardboard box with a razor blade jammed in it, and a note.

  Cal found the note. It mentioned that some equipment was waiting for Petra at the ranger station. He balled it up and chucked it among the litter on the floor without telling anyone, filing that information away for later. Maybe he could use it, warn her somehow that one seriously pissed-­off alchemist was after her.

  They left empty-­handed. Stroud wasn’t happy, but dispensed enough Elixir to each one of them to make the evening pass quickly.

  Cal had gratefully accepted his share. Instead of building a bonfire with the others at the Garden, he slipped away. Confident that no one would miss him, he dragged his old dirt bike out of the shed and walked it down the road until he was sure that no one could hear the engine start. It took three tries to get it going, and it buzzed loud as a lawn mower in his ears until he picked up speed.

  Night wind and miles slid past him.

  Adam and Diana were still gone.

  He knew that they wouldn’t have just run off, not without him. They were like his family, protecting him against Justin a
nd the rest of the morons. Cal had run away from his last foster home two years ago, and his friends were all he had. He had to find them.

  They wouldn’t leave him at the Garden, not all alone. They had to know that they were the only reason he stayed . . . didn’t they? His vision blurred.

  The hired hand at the bar had said a body had been found on Rutherford’s land. Hope and fear churned in Cal’s stomach as he turned down the dark dirt roads to Rutherford’s ranch. He switched off his headlight, bouncing over ruts and rills that shook his teeth until he was nearly out of gas.

  He walked his bike along the edge of a freshly mown field that smelled of hay and dew. A few half-­finished bales lay scattered about. This had to be where the field hands stopped work, the spot he’d heard about at the Compostela. He propped his bike up against a fence post and clambered over the barbed wire fence. He paced along the edge of it, fear gnawing his chest. He saw no sign of upturned earth that he could identify as a grave. But it was dark, and Rutherford’s land was vast. Going alone into enemy territory was fucking stupid.

  He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Think. How did the detectives on crime shows find bodies? Not the lame-­ass pogues around here that belonged to Rutherford, but the good guys with badges that existed on the other side of the television glass. They looked for disturbed earth. Right. He’d tried that. But if there was a body on Rutherford’s land, his men would surely have found a good place to bury it . . .

  Cops would bring in dogs. Yeah, dogs. But Cal didn’t have a corpse-­sniffing dog. He remembered some guys on a television show looking for Jimmy Hoffa’s body under Giants Stadium with some kind of sonar equipment that looked like a lawn mower . . .

  Petra. The geologist. She knew dirt. She might know how to find a body . . .

  Lights glinted in the distance. Cal squinted. Not flashlights. Something weirder. Like eyes. Lots of eyes, glowing like fluorescent coals that swam noiselessly over the landscape.

  Cal didn’t know what the fuck they were, but he knew to run.

  He raced through the field, grasses whipping at the legs of his cargo pants in a zip-­zip-­zip noise that slashed in counterpoint to his heart. He ran until he thought his lungs would burst, until he reached the fence. Throwing himself on his bike, he cranked the starter, wrenched the clutch, and stomped on the accelerator.

  Nothing happened.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he whimpered, struggling to start the bike. The glowing eyes were advancing, and he could see that they had roughly the shapes of men, advancing across the pale field in the wan moonlight.

  The engine finally engaged as he let out the clutch with agonizing slowness, and he floored the gas. The little bike growled to life, and he retreated down the road in a cloud of dust that obscured the shining eyes behind him.

  The drive home was quiet, with no other cars on the road. Petra’s head hurt under the weight of her questions and the remains of her hallucination.

  She switched on the radio, fiddled with the dial. A hint of country music bristled through the static, then slipped away. She spun past it, finding nothing but static bouncing off the mountains.

  “ . . . the green lion . . .”

  A voice emanated clearly from the speaker, over the roar of the engine and the crackle of the static. A familiar voice—­one that sounded like her father’s. Impossibly just like him.

  Her fingers stilled on the knob. She slammed on the brakes, causing Sig to slide off the seat and onto the floorboards. She cranked the wheel to guide the Bronco to the shoulder and shut off the engine. Sig grumbled and scrambled back into the seat.

  “Hush,” she ordered.

  White noise filtered through the speakers. She worked the knob a fraction of an inch back and forth. Broken words seemed to slip through, warped by distance, spoken in that familiar voice:

  “Go back . . . go back to the sea . . .”

  The fine hair on the back of her neck lifted. It couldn’t be him. Couldn’t be. She cranked the volume all the way up, pressed her fingers to the plastic housing of the radio, as if she could crawl inside. Yet the voice on the radio sounded exactly as she remembered.

  “Dad?”

  “ . . . nothing for you here . . . lion . . . gold and dust . . . go . . .”

  The voice slipped away to soft static that filled the truck. Petra sat in silence, straining to hear it again, yearning.

  Then sound roared back into the truck, a jolting wall of music that caused Sig to yowl and Petra to lunge for the volume.

  “Somewhere, beyond the sea . . . somewhere, waiting for me . . .”

  “Bobby Darin,” she breathed. She hadn’t heard that song since she was a child. The song seemed to crackle out of the speakers with a life of its own, Bobby’s voice clear as a bell, as if she were in the parking lot of a radio station.

  When the song ended, she waited with white-­knuckled hands to hear the soothing pitter-­patter of a deejay’s voice—­a voice that she’d be able to rationalize belonged to a whole other man, that the coincidence of radio reception had dredged up something deep in her memory.

  But the song ended, and there was simply silence. No pop and hiss, no jangly advertisements for car dealers or strip joints. Just the whoosh of air across some unfathomable distance.

  It was a full fifteen minutes before she cranked the ignition and started toward home.

  She swore to herself that she would not cry, no matter the terrible tricks her mind was playing on her, whether they were of her own doing or the lingering effects of Frankie’s sweetwater.

  She pulled up to the trailer, shut off the engine, and rested her head on the steering wheel. Sig jumped out and immediately began to find someplace to pee, nose to the ground.

  After a long moment, she got out, slung her gun belt over her shoulder, and grabbed the Tupperware container of leftovers Maria had sent home with her. She trudged up the steps to the trailer and discovered that the door had a nice dent in the bottom. She pulled one of the pistols out of its holster and nudged the door with the barrel of the gun. The door swung open easily.

  “Damn it,” she said. Heart hammering, she flipped on the light.

  The trailer had been tossed. Well, as tossed as the meager shelter could be. The futon had been overturned, and the refrigerator stood open. Her spectrometer had been torn apart, and the paneling had been peeled from the walls. Even the stupid note that Mike had left for her about the equipment was wadded up on the floor. She kicked it.

  “Fucking tweakers.” She was gonna lose her deposit, for sure.

  She jammed the door back in its frame as best she could, tearing out a damaged piece of weather stripping. With that out of the way, the lockset still worked, for all the good it did. She locked the door behind her and set the kitchen table up against it. If it moved during the night, she’d hear it. She righted the futon, rearranged the blankets, and opened the windows for some air. Petra figured that the food in the fridge was a loss, but shut the door anyway to save power.

  She hung her gun belt up on one end of the futon, turned off the light, and stretched out. She was too tired to drive to the lodge in Yellowstone; she’d stay here tonight. Just for a few hours. Tears of anger and exhaustion dribbled down her nose. She balled her fists against her eyes and gave in to a good cry.

  Something scraped the skin of the trailer outside. Petra peered out the window, reaching for her guns, but it was only Sig. He hoisted himself up through the window and lay down beside her with his head in her lap. When she’d been reduced to hiccups, she gingerly stroked his rough fur.

  “This place fucking sucks, Sig.”

  She wondered what her father saw in it, what he’d found to make him think otherwise.

  Chapter Twelve

  Digging in the Petrified Forest

  Petra dragged herself out of bed at dawn and lured Sig out of the trailer with a slice
of lunch meat. He was irritated when she shut and locked the door behind him, thrashing his tail in the dirt.

  “Look, you’re just gonna have to find somewhere else to sleep today,” she said. “It’s not safe for you in there.”

  Sig sulked and skulked beneath the trailer.

  “Come out of there,” she insisted. “You are not on guard duty.”

  She feared what might happen to him if the meth heads came back. Maybe Sig could hold his own, or at least would have enough sense to run.

  She plodded sourly over to the Bronco. She’d slept like shit, and was considering taking a detour into town to pick up some coffee at Bear’s before she showed up at the ranger station for work. The Bronco had no cupholders, but she’d figure something out.

  She opened the door, threw her gun belt on the seat, and checked her bag of geology equipment in the back. The compass and her remaining cash were tucked safely in with her tools. She’d no sooner hopped up on the running board than a tawny mass of fur wriggled past her into the truck.

  “Sig! Get the fuck out of there!”

  The coyote plunked his ass on the passenger seat and stared at her. His lips parted in a canine grin, and his tongue snaked out from behind his teeth.

  “Sig, honey, I have to go to work. It’s a few miles away. If you get lost, you might not be able to find your way back home.”

  Sig turned away from her and looked out the window.

  Petra crossed to the passenger side, opened the door. She returned to the driver’s side and tried to push Sig out. The coyote growled at her, and she backed off.

  “So, you’re coming.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Sig slapped his tail on the pleather seats.

  “You have to stay with the truck, okay? All day.”

  Sig looked down his long nose at her. As he panted, it seemed that he was laughing.

  “Damn it,” Petra muttered. She shut the doors and jammed the key into the ignition.

  She decided to nix Bear’s in favor of getting to work early. First day, and all. The territory roughened as she drove, and forest began to reach green fingers into the landscape, grass fields giving way to aspen with yellow leaves quaking in the breeze. Petra followed the road signs to the northeast park entrance. Craggy mountain peaks rose around the road with lodgepole pine trees clustering at their feet. Some stood upright, while others had fallen victim to forest fires from years ago, charred and broken and still not decomposed.