by Laura Bickle
“Everything cool?” Cal asked.
“Yeah, yeah.” She rubbed her face.
Cal nodded. “I’ll take you to the Garden.”
Chapter Twenty
The Garden
The Garden was not what Petra expected.
The name conjured up an image of some secret mystical grotto where Druids and dryads danced under glittering leaves. Instead, a dilapidated house stood at the end of a long dirt road surrounded by a makeshift trailer park. White paint peeled from the structures like birch bark in winter. Sheds, tents, strung-up laundry, rusted-out car chassis and chickens sprouted among the tall grasses. The whole compound was surrounded in barbed wire. Beyond it, stalks of corn nodded their heads in a vast field.
“I thought you said that this was a garden.” Petra slammed the door of the Bronco. Sig slipped out from behind her legs and immediately took off after a chicken.
“There is a garden.” Cal pointed to a cluster of stringy tomato plants clinging to each other. “But Stroud says that it’s more of a philosophical garden. Something about the alchemist’s secret vessel. I just nod like I understand,” he said sheepishly.
“Sure.” Petra picked her way up the rotted steps, through the torn screen door and the lintel covered in glass beer bottles. Her heart hammered in her chest behind the necklace her father had given her, and she paused to button her shirt collar up to her chin, hiding it.
The interior of the house was strewn with trash: crushed Styrofoam cups, broken glass, and bits of aluminum foil. The walls and ceiling were yellowed and stained with smoke. The acrid smell of meth and piss clung to the drapes, the stained shag carpet, and the sagging velvet couch on which a woman was stretched. She looked to have passed out, one arm flung over her head.
“You live here?” Petra asked. She was used to tough living conditions, but this squalor was something else entirely.
Cal ducked his head and didn’t answer.
She felt a pang of sorrow for him as she followed him through the kitchen stacked high with dishes and beer bottles. A roach the size of a mouse scuttled along the countertop, unafraid of people or daylight.
Cal paused before a door that Petra assumed led to the basement. The red paint was peeling off the surface in chunks, but the crystal knob sparkled. It was the only clean thing that Petra had seen in the place.
“He’s down there.”
Cal opened the door and descended into darkness. Petra took a deep breath and followed him down the creaking steps. The air was stale here, metallic and reeking of dried blood. At the bottom of the stairs was what appeared to be the Alchemist’s laboratory. Shelves of mason jars and decanters surrounded a table made of a door propped up on cinder blocks and mismatched turned legs. The door was marred with a rusty brown stain that dribbled off the side to the concrete floor. Wadded rags, tongs, and an empty vodka bottle stood on the table. A moth circled a bare lightbulb overhead, fluttering into the glass with a futile tap.
“You came.”
A voice crawled out of the shadows at the far wall. Stroud sat upon a threadbare gold-upholstered chair. He was, as Cal had said, in a bad way. The Alchemist was shirtless, his torso bound with what looked like the remnants of a bedsheet. Hair matted, he sat slouched with his pale fingers gnawing the fringe on the arms of the chair. Underneath his skin, Petra could see the mercury moving like a trapped creature. As it crawled up under the loose skin of his face, it flicked up over one eye, covering the iris and sclera. When he spoke, Petra could see it glittering on his tongue.
Petra struggled to keep her voice steady. “Cal said you had information about my father.”
“Did you bring the Locus?” The mercury seethed between his ribs in a lump.
“Yes.”
Stroud licked his lips, leaving a sticky silver residue in the corners. “Your father came here in search of alchemical knowledge. I remember him well. He believed that alchemy could be used to extend human life, transmute the decay of cells into perpetual regeneration. He was trying, in effect, to cheat death.”
“Where is he now?”
“He wasn’t successful in his quest. I did try to help him.”
“You’re telling me he’s dead.” Her voice sounded leaden to her.
“No. But the Alzheimer’s chewed far into his brain. He might as well be.”
“Alzheimer’s?” Petra echoed. “He was too young.” But her mind raced back to the postcards and letters he’d sent her, the disjointed commentary about lions and violet flames. She’d suspected schizophrenia, but . . .
“Early-onset. He knew that he’d had it for years. He was desperate for a cure. By the time he’d come to Temperance, he often forgot what year it was.”
“Why would he rely on alchemy for an answer?” Petra’s nails chewed into her palms. “He was a man of science.”
“And also a man of faith. He knew that modern science doesn’t hold all the answers.”
“Where is he now?”
“Phoenix Village. It’s a nursing home forty minutes from here.” Stroud extended a shaking hand. His fingernails were black, and two of them had peeled off, revealing moist nail beds the color of wet steel. “I’ve honored my part of the bargain. Now, you.”
Petra reached into her jacket pocket for the Locus. The finish on it was dull with her dried blood.
Stroud’s eyes shone when she handed it to him. “Lascaris wrote about the Venificus Locus. A beautiful tool. He engineered it himself to feed on blood and find magic. I’ve tried to reproduce it, but failed every time.”
“What will you do with it?” Petra asked. “Use it in your experiments?”
Stroud grinned. “Sal Rutherford has secrets on his land. Some that not even he knows about, ones that rightfully belong to me. The Locus will lead me to them.”
He gestured to the bloodstained table. A battered brown book lay open. Across two pages was an elaborate ink illustration of a tree. A gorgeous tree, reaching heavenward with its branches and deep into the earth with its roots. The Lunaria.
Petra’s throat closed. Shit. She’d woefully underestimated the scope of Stroud’s knowledge and ambitions.
At the top of the stairs, she heard the door slam shut. She reached for the guns in their holsters, whirled on Stroud. “We had a deal.”
Cal twitched in alarm. “You said that you wouldn’t hurt her.”
Petra leveled the guns before her, backed up the stairs. The knob was locked, and wouldn’t turn. She aimed at Stroud. “Let me out.”
Stroud shrugged. “I can’t make the Locus work. Not on my own.”
“Why not?” Her grip on the gun was sweaty. She pulled back the hammer.
“I’m too much magic.”
Her thoughts raced. “There are others in the Garden who can use it for you.”
“Yeah,” Cal said. His eyes were wide with fear. “I can try it.”
Stroud shook his head. “They’ve taken too much Elixir. Their blood is too contaminated with magic to work.” He leaned forward. “I need fresh blood, ordinary blood. There is nothing magical about you.”
Petra stared over the pistol at Stroud. “Let me out or I’ll shoot. I swear that I will.”
“I don’t think so.” Stroud smiled. His gums glinted silver, lurid against his blackened lips. “You are too much your father’s daughter.”
Petra turned and aimed at the doorknob. She shielded her eyes and pulled the trigger, shattering the crystal lockset in a hail of splinters. The echo of the shot in the small space was deafening, and it competed with the roar of blood in her ears as she shoved the door open and stumbled into the arms of a half dozen of Stroud’s people clustered at the top of the stairs. They were thin and gaunt, like ghosts, smelling like acid and sweat. She felt hands upon her, ripping away the pistols and gun belt.
Stroud crawled up the basement steps on all fours l
ike a revenant, blinking in the light. As she struggled and howled, she saw him grab a steak knife and a mason jar from the kitchen sink.
Something slammed against the screen door. Sig, she thought. She hoped that he would run, not try to help her like the Good Dog he’d turned out to be.
“Hold her,” Stroud hissed, and a man stretched out her arm, tore her sleeve up to her elbow. The steak knife ripped into the white, freckled flesh inside her arm, a horizontal cut that released red in a gush.
She fought, kicking, and knocked the mason jar out of Stroud’s grip.
Her head slammed against the filthy kitchen floor, and a sticky darkness that smelled like blood fell over her.
Petra awoke, seeing red. Red and white.
Her cheek was pressed to something cool and moist that smelled like fresh-turned earth.
And roses.
Her vision was blurry, and rose petals stuck to her face. Around her stretched massive hedgerows over seven feet high, full of crimson and white roses, exquisitely wound in an organic wall. On her hands and knees, Petra squinted at them. These were not the fragile tea roses that she’d seen cultivated in civilized gardens. These were old-world roses, dog roses that grew wild. Blooms with flat faces and wicked spines reached out over insect-chewed leaves. It seemed like it could have been a garden that had been abandoned long ago and allowed to consume itself.
Her fingers flexed in the damp, petal-strewn earth. She reached to press a hand to her left cheek. Her eye on that side was nearly swollen shut. Perhaps a fracture—she couldn’t tell, and it made her queasy to poke at it. She squinted up at the sky. It was white and opaque, and she couldn’t detect the sun.
She sat up, and a grey blur immediately launched itself into her lap, licking the dew from her hands.
“Sig.” She sighed, throwing her arms around him. He grinned at her, his tail slapping her chest.
“Where are we?” she muttered around his ruff. Perhaps this was some unused part of Stroud’s “Garden.” It was certainly less grim than the house, and might afford her the opportunity to escape. Perhaps he was done with her, and she could run, run and warn Gabe about the terrible thing she’d done . . .
A deep, bass growl emanated behind her.
Petra turned, feeling Sig’s fur lifting under her fingers. It wasn’t him. The coyote’s lips pulled away from his teeth, and she smelled salami on his breath.
He snarled at the shadow of something moving just beyond the wall of roses. Something large. Something growling. Something with claws that she could see moving just under the hedge.
Petra scrambled to her feet, head pounding. She grabbed Sig by the collar and urged him to run. He obeyed, racing with her down a corridor of hedge roses to another wall of vegetation at the end. They could go right or left; right was closer to the growling thing. Petra chose left.
The hedgerows turned back on themselves as she ran, and she had the sinking feeling of being trapped in a maze. A maze with a minotaur. She skidded in the petals and leaves, dodging back and forth in the labyrinth with Sig at her heels. Her breath scalded the back of her throat, and her hair stuck in her mouth as she zigged, right, left, always away from the growling and the claws churning the debris behind her . . .
And then she struck a dead end. Her fingers scraped thorns and let loose a shower of petals. She briefly considered throwing her jacket over her head and trying to push her way through the hedgerow, but it was too thick to brute force her way through. She tried to shove Sig underneath it, but he resisted.
A roar that was deep enough to shake dew from the branches rattled behind her. She spun on her heel, to find herself faced with a lion.
A huge, muscled lion with a magnificent mane.
And he was green.
Petra shrank up against the thorns. He wasn’t just green, like a child’s cartoon. He was the color of verdigris, the patina on copper, that cold green that only came from time and a really persistent chemical reaction. The lion roared at her, showing white teeth in a black mouth.
“What the hell?” she muttered to Sig.
Petra felt like she did when she stepped off a ship and onto land after weeks at sea, the way she’d felt under the influence of Frankie’s microbial water. Reality was shifting, and she didn’t like it. She automatically reached down for her gun belt. To her surprise, it was still there. The pearl grips on the pistols quavered in her hands. Had Stroud’s people given them back to her in the name of sport? Or was she completely out of her wits? Was she unconscious on his kitchen floor, neurons firing helplessly away in a terrible dream while they minced her up and fed her to the chickens in the yard?
“Get back,” she demanded. Truth be told, she was less likely to shoot an animal than she was a person, and she knew it. But maybe the lion didn’t. She tried to nudge Sig under the hedge with her boot, but he slid away, circling around to face the lion.
The lion padded up to her slowly, every sinew taut and rippling in his back, tail lashing. He ignored the snarling coyote and moved close to her, nostrils flaring.
Maybe she could scare him. Petra aimed over his head, pulled the trigger in a warning shot. The sound echoed through the labyrinth and was quickly swallowed by the foliage.
The lion hunched down to the ground, looking over his shoulder. But he didn’t flee. He reared up, his paws pressing into her chest, pushing her into a painful wall of thorns. One of the pistols fell to the ground, and Petra gasped. She heard Sig barking below her, and a squeal as the lion shook him off effortlessly.
The lion was taller than her by more than a head, and she knew that he was going to devour her. She sucked in her breath, ready to be torn apart, feeling the meat of those paws against her collar and the scrape of the claws in her flesh.
But the lion’s peculiar white eyes were fixed on her throat. Not getting ready to tear it out, but staring at the gold pendant her father had given her, which had fallen over his paw.
The lion blinked. His slitted cat irises had gone round, more human. He pushed away from her and dropped to all fours.
Petra remained where she was, tangled in the roses, frozen.
The lion dipped his head. He seemed to melt, to fall into his shadow. Petra had only seen that before with Gabriel and the ravens. Fur dissolved and re-formed. The animal silhouette grew and lengthened to a man’s, and then stepped out of the pool of ink, a new shape.
It was a man in a black coat, with grey hair and brown eyes. Eyes like her father’s. It was the same man from her earlier vision, beside the sea.
“Dad?” she squeaked.
He reached out to his sides, as if he walked a tightrope and meant to steady himself. He looked about, dazed, until his gaze settled on her.
“Petra.”
She threw herself into his arms. His knotted fingers came to rest on her shoulders and under her chin, turning her face to him.
“You look like your mother when she was your age,” he said, the lines around the corners of his eyes crinkling “Are you dead? Is that why you’ve come?”
“No,” she said, then reconsidered, her hand flitting up to her bruised cheek. “Well, I don’t think so.”
He peered at her, as if she were transparent. Hell of a mutual existential crisis.
“Stroud said . . . he said you were in a nursing home.” Her mind tracked back, trying to bridge the border between reality and lies. “And you’re not. You’re here. Dad, you need to tell me . . .”
Her father’s mouth turned down, and his nostrils flared. “Come with me.”
He grasped her arm and led her back into the labyrinth. “Where are we?” she demanded, struggling to keep up. The old man moved fast, even faster than Sig.
“The Garden,” he said, seeming surprised that she asked. “No one comes here by accident. People spend lifetimes trying to find it!”
“Stroud’s Garden?”<
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“No. The Alchemical Garden. The vessel of the great work!” Sweat glossed his brow as he tugged her along. It reminded her of the postcards he used to send—rambling nonsense about signs and symbols.
Petra tried to dig in her heels. “Where are we going?”
“To the center,” he muttered. The wind was picking up, blowing the petals from the hedges. “The center is safe.”
“Safe from what? The lion?” She struggled to make sense, to follow the grooves of his thoughts in the maze as he slung her behind him like a rag doll, charging ahead.
He laughed. “You have nothing to fear from the lion! You are the blood of the lion.”
She tugged at his sleeve like she might have as a little girl. “Dad, stop!”
But her voice was torn from her by the rising wind, whipping dead foliage and rotten petals behind her, tearing through her coat and her hair. She stumbled with her father out into a clearing.
“I know this place,” she whispered.
A massive tree stood in the center—a scarred and massive tree that she knew. The tree of the Hanged Men—the Lunaria. The wind had stripped it of leaves, and only ravens clung to it now, cawing, their wings flapping. It seemed a great living thing, churning and crying out.
“The Philosophical Tree!” her father shouted, pointing. “You’ll be safe there.”
Petra grasped his collar and shook him. “Dad. Are you really here? Are you really alive?”
His pale gaze wavered, then seemed to fix on her and truly take her in for the first time. “I’m not dead. But I can’t get back to you. I can’t help you.”
“This is all in my head!” she shouted, above the rising maelstrom of leaves and thorns. Her shoulder struck the Lunaria, and she struggled to remain standing. Branches reached down for her, as they had reached for the men underground. “How do I get out?”
He grasped her hands in his, and they were cold. “Use all the tools at your disposal. Your hands and your blood.”
The birds took off all at once, screaming, as the white sky blew apart.