Dark Alchemy

by Laura Bickle

  She set the nest down on the gravel and broke a tendril off. She chased a bit of flame with the twig and caught it. Shielding the burning twig with her cupped hand, she moved it to the awkward contraption she’d assembled to defend herself.

  The metal vacuum cleaner tank lay beside her, laced with bits of seat belt from a riding lawn mower. The tank sloshed when she moved it, the guts of the garden sprayer swimming in gasoline within. Garden hose snaked from its side, secured with bits of brass pipe fittings. A gun-­shaped device made of PVC pipe scraps, half-­rotted twine, and a hose nozzle was secured with the same duct tape that had held her prisoner. In the flickering light of the nest, it looked like a pathetically jerry-­rigged piece of shit. Like a high schooler’s science experiment. But it was all she had.

  She partially depressed the trigger on the gun, got the flow of gas going, lit . . . okay, okay, good . . . and set the spark to the twine pilot light. With shaking hands, she released the trigger, hoped that the damn thing wouldn’t burn her to death. She’d checked for leaks as best she could, but . . . she still held her breath.

  The pilot light caught, held with a steady flame.

  She let out her shaking breath, released the handle of the homemade flamethrower, and set it carefully down on the ground before her, afraid to breathe too hard on the pilot light. It should theoretically burn until she ran out of fuel. As for the rest of it . . . maybe it would work. It had to.

  She heard scratching against the wall of the shed. It didn’t surprise her that there would be rats here, but she didn’t want to waste precious fuel on toasting rodents.

  The digging intensified, and a whine and a muffled bark sounded.

  “Sig?” She rolled over onto her hands and knees and crawled to the side of the shed. The scraping noise was coming from where the wall met the gravel floor. She saw a tiny crack of less-­than-­perfect pitch blackness at the seam and heard paws scrabbling in gravel and dirt. A nose squeezed into the void, followed by Sig’s head and shoulders. Petra grabbed his flea collar to haul the coyote through the tiny crack in the dirt, which looked barely large enough to accommodate a cat.

  Sig shook filth from his coat and tumbled into Petra’s lap. His hot tongue washed her face, and she weakly wrapped her arms around him. He sniffed at her arms, licking at them like a worried mother over a puppy. She let him, figuring that Sig’s mouth was cleaner than Stroud’s cutlery.

  “I’m okay,” she said into his ruff, but her voice caught in her throat. She looked over his shoulder at the open seam of grey light. Perhaps she could widen the hole that Sig had started, find a piece of metal or wood to make a makeshift shovel . . .

  A metallic sound tore at the front of the shed, and the door began to open. Petra scrambled for the flamethrower, throwing it over her shoulder by its seat belt strap. Cool air trickled into the closed space, and she could make out a tall silhouette against that lighter patch of night. Too tall to be Cal, her mind registered an instant before she pulled the trigger.

  Flames erupted from the nozzle of the device with a fwoosh. The light wreathed the silhouette, and Petra let up on the trigger with a yelp.

  Gabe stood before her, his sleeve on fire. He looked at the flames and slapped them out with his hat.

  Petra wobbled to her feet, one hand clapped over her mouth. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  Gabe crossed the space between them in two quick steps. He grasped her shoulders, and she sagged against him. His shirt smelled like earth and char.

  “Nice toy.”

  “Thanks. I made it myself.”

  He pushed her hair out of her face. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. How did you find me?”

  “Frankie and Maria. He had a vision that the ‘Green Lion’ was in danger. I got the Hanged Men, and we came the back way, through the fields. Sig led us the rest of the way.” He frowned at the blood on her sleeves. He took her wrists and turned her arms over to view the cuts across her arms. “What happened?”

  She looked down. “Stroud has the Locus. He . . . he needed blood.”

  Gabe’s amber gaze darkened. “I will find him.”

  “Gabe, I’m sorry, I didn’t . . .” He was furious. She hadn’t meant to lose the Locus, had no idea that Stroud would try to use it to find the Lunaria. “He said he knew what happened to my father.”

  “Never mind the Locus,” he said, and her jaw dropped. “The other Hanged Men are in the field. They’ll take you back.”

  “But Stroud . . .”

  “I will take care of Stroud.” He slipped his arm around her waist to lead her from the shed. “Where is he?”

  “In the basement of the farmhouse. He’s wounded.”

  A gunshot roared from the direction of the house, and Sig whimpered.

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  Gabe’s jaw was a hard line in the gloom. “Maria called your friend Mike. He rustled up some friends in law enforcement. The DEA is here.”

  He pushed open the shed door into the falling darkness, looked right and left before pulling Petra into the cool night air. No lights were on in the house or trailers. Petra thought she saw fireflies swimming in the distance. But as her eyes adjusted, she could see that the lights were in pairs: the Hanged Men walking in from the field, climbing over the barbed wire at the back of the compound. Ravens perched on the fence, clotting like blood.

  Gabe handed Petra off to the nearest Hanged Man. “Take her to the hospital.”

  “Leave Stroud for the DEA,” Petra said. She reached out and put her hand on his charred shirt.

  Gabe shook his head. His gaze was bright and murderous. It was the most feeling she’d ever seen in him. “No. Stroud’s gone too far.”

  He reached out, curled his cold hand around the back of her neck and kissed her with cool lips that tasted like winter.

  Petra blinked, stunned, as he drew away.

  He gave her a half smile. “What, it’s only okay if you kiss me?”

  She was speechless as he turned and walked away toward the house, the remaining Hanged Men soundlessly falling in step behind him.

  Gabe strode across the ragged grounds of the Garden, seething. Rage was a sensation that he had not experienced in many years. When he had turned over Petra’s arms, had seen what Stroud had done, he felt it rise deep within his chest, thaw some of the coldness that lay there. He could almost hear that frost crackle and break.

  As he circled around to the front of the house, he could see the DEA advancing behind plastic shields. They had pushed past the gate and a pair of body-­armored men were dragging a fallen officer off the front porch to safety. The officer’s face was a mask of blood. From the upstairs windows, Stroud’s ­people were firing down on them. The muzzle flashes sizzled bright as lightning in the darkness.

  This was clearly not the best way in. Gabe returned to the rear of the house and plucked the paneled back door from its hinges. The Hanged Men moved past him into the acrid gloom of the house. He directed them upstairs with a jerk of his chin, toward Stroud’s gunmen. He heard their steps on the stairs, then screams and shouts.

  Gabe’s gaze swept the dim kitchen. Light leaked out from under a red door that he supposed led to the basement. The lockset was shattered, hanging by its stem. He shoved the door open and plunged down the stairs.

  He smelled the sharp bitterness of sulfur, the metallic softness of mercury, the tang of salt. And over it all, the copper scent of blood. He knew those odors: the stench of an alchemist’s lab. And the reek of death, gathering close.

  The basement glowed in light from an athanor burning at full blast. The heat made the air thick and muzzy, shimmering like noon on summer pavement. The Alchemist stood before his table, on which the Locus and ruddy jars of blood glistened. He was shirtless, his skin the color of slate and twitching over the tide of mercury roiling beneath it. He was packing an ammunitio
n bag of items—­Gabe assumed that he was preparing to flee.

  “I was expecting the DEA,” Stroud said, glancing up at him. “After me for selling Elixir.”

  Gabe cocked his head. “You’ve done more than sell poison.”

  Stroud shrugged, and the motion sent his grey skin rippling over his shoulder. “I didn’t intend for it to be that way. I was trying to create a sense of timelessness. A piece of the Philosopher’s Stone. The illusion of forever in a crystal.” He sighed, and the mercury in his skin slumped. “But I’ve created an incomplete process.”

  “Calcination.”

  “Yes. Too much of my Elixir, over time . . . they become the calyx, the body of stone.”

  “That’s not why I’m here. You took something that doesn’t belong to you,” Gabe said.

  Stroud glared at him. “The bulletproof man. Perhaps you’d like to give me your secret?”

  “I think you’ve had enough of secrets. You’ve poisoned yourself on them.”

  Stroud snarled, lips pulled back from his blackened gums, and threw a bottle at Gabe. He felt the glass explode against his chest, the sizzle of acid against his skin and clothes.

  He lunged over the table at Stroud, turning it over and shattering the jars of blood. He slugged Stroud, sending him sprawling on the floor. The Alchemist spat out a glob of mercury and a few teeth, but his fingers skittered in the debris and came up with a table leg. He thrust it at Gabe, slamming it into his belly with all the force his gaunt body could muster.

  Gabe gasped as the wood broke his skin and tore. Luminescent blood gushed from the wound. He staggered backward, crashing against a shelf. Bottles shattered against the floor, leaking on the cement. The pain was bright, excruciatingly brilliant, a fever of sensation. He fell to the ground, holding his gut. A string of luminescent blood worked free of his lips. Stroud stood on Gabe’s neck, reached down.

  “I’ll force you to give up your secrets.” The mercury dribbled from his hand, slithered along the ground like a force with its own volition. It began to creep into Gabe’s wound. Gabe howled.

  Through blurring vision, he saw the trail of liquid from the broken jars running toward the athanor. A panicked salamander scuttled out of the furnace. He could smell the vapors steaming along the floor.

  A spark escaped from the furnace, jumping to the volatile compounds on the cement.

  And a blinding roar rolled over Gabe that eclipsed all that luminous awareness of fire and pain.

  The Hanged Men were determined to follow orders.

  Two of them led Petra away into the darkness as gunshots flared. She twisted to look behind her. Men were shouting, and Stroud’s ­people were fleeing into the fields in the wash of high-­powered flashlight beams.

  She couldn’t leave Gabe to face Stroud alone. She struggled against the grip of the Hanged Men, but they held her in their cold, viselike hands.

  Petra took a deep breath and went limp, allowing her head to sag forward and her knees to buckle. One of the Hanged Men let go, and the other loosened his grip long enough to try to put her over his shoulder to carry her.

  Petra slipped out from under his arm and ran.

  Blood pounded unevenly in her chest, and her breath was ragged as she charged back toward the house. She was conscious of Sig running beside her, following her back into the fray.

  She could make out the figures of DEA agents in body armor storming the garden, tearing down strings of laundry, trampling the pathetic tomato patch and shouting orders. The denizens of the Garden who hadn’t already run were returning fire, fighting back with guns and even rocks.

  She spied a familiar figure: Mike had a young man down on the ground, handcuffing him. Behind him, she saw another man bearing down with a rifle. A man in ragged jeans and a sweatshirt that didn’t say “DEA,” a cigarette dangling from his lips.

  She shouted for Mike to look behind him as she disentangled the nozzle of her makeshift flamethrower from the garden hose. Mike couldn’t hear her over the fracas, seeming to be busy yelling orders at the man he was handcuffing.

  She aimed and pulled the trigger at the rifleman. Gasoline washed over him, and he was engulfed in a plume of flame. He shrieked, dropping the gun and rolling around on the ground beside the farmhouse. The conflagration spread along the dry brush, sparks leaping from the broken tassels of grasses.

  Mike looked up at her, stunned.

  The fire moved like waves on the ocean did—­inexorable and roaring. From the grass, it spread to the clothesline, turning laundry into burning ghosts. It slipped up the siding of the house, curling and shattering the paint, rushing into the open windows with orange tongues. The flames licked at something shimmering beyond the blackening curtains, some hazy fume that she’d barely tasted before in the kitchen.

  The farmhouse exploded in a deafening roar. The concussion hurled Petra to the ground. She rolled over, stunned, staring up at the house that was bursting at its seams in flames that blotted out the stars and the glow of the moon.

  She screamed. Gabe was in there.

  No. Not again.

  And it was all her fault.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Burnt Things

  Cal couldn’t explain why he felt drawn to return to the Garden after the fire destroyed it, but he did. He felt pulled in the way that metal is drawn to a magnet, or the way a vulture is compelled to circle carrion. Maybe it was because the Garden was the only life he’d ever really known.

  Maybe it was because he wasn’t quite done with that life yet.

  When everyone was gone, he ventured out of the grasses and crickets to absorb the devastation. Under a full moon, Cal paced the grounds with his hands in his pockets. He kicked at a piece of hot rubble from the ruined house. The heated metal melted a smudge in the toe of his boot. A few blackened beams reached to the sky, like charred fingers. The chimney still stood, though the cap had begun to slide down the back. It was as if everything had simply been scribbled over with a marker.

  He wasn’t the only one who’d come back. He’d stayed in the fields overnight and all of the next day, watching the DEA and volunteer firefighters comb the site while the ravens harassed them.

  His life, as it had been, was gone. No more being the footman of the local meth lord. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do next. Hit the road, he guessed. There was nothing keeping him here.

  He stood in the shadow of the broken chimney, remembering how this seemingly tiny pile of broken timbers and scattered shingles used to be a house that smelled like acid and piss. He hated to admit it, but he was relieved that Stroud was dead.

  Sort of.

  He spied something shiny, glimmering in the darkness like a sliver of moonlight. He knelt, wondering if it was something he’d be able to sell. So far, he’d found about ten dollars in change, a rusted key, and a melted fishing lure.

  Cal touched the ground. This section was cool. He dug in the dirt, brushing away the ash and burned clay bricks. But his excitement turned to a cold pit in his stomach as something soft and metallic squished under his hand.

  Mercury.

  He yanked his hand back, but the mercury stuck to his fingers. This shit was poison; Stroud’s madness was evidence of it. He shook them, trying to flip the drops away, but the metal still clung.

  He wiped his hand against his jeans, trying to scrub the liquid off. But the droplets crawled up his sleeve, scurrying like ants.

  In a panic, Cal yanked off his jacket and began to rub his arm on the ground. The beads of mercury congealed and began to seep into his skin. Jesus, he could feel it soaking through his pores, worming under his flesh. It was hot as liquid metal in his veins, and he gasped, clawing at his body. His nails dug deep bloody welts in his skin, but they summoned only blood. He couldn’t dig the mercury out.

  He could feel it settling, leaden and heavy in the marrow of his bones. He sh
ook in fear, wondering if he should try to get to a hospital. Maybe they could get it out of him.

  A rustle emanated from the far side of the field. Cal dragged his gaze away from his crawling flesh and saw glowing eyes advancing on him over the dark terrain.

  Shit.

  He’d seen them before, that first night alone at the ranch and again as the Garden burned. Sal Rutherford’s ranch hands had come, silent and unflinching, to tear the remains of the farmhouse apart. Stroud had been right: They were unnatural. Magic.

  And Cal wanted no more of magic. He scurried away, running to the safety of the road.

  Looking behind him, he could see that they had stopped at the ruins of the house, carrying shovels over their shoulders. A raven cawed softly at them, as if in greeting.

  With silent determination, they began to dig.

  Nothing and no one was indestructible. She knew that, now.

  Petra returned to the Garden days later. The sky overhead was a clear blue, feathered with cirrus clouds. The house fire had burned itself out, leaving a pile of charred and broken timbers behind.

  She was still bandaged from shoulder to wrist on both arms. Stroud’s experimentation would leave her with scars that would never disappear entirely. She’d cut her hair off at the shoulder to remove the ends charred in the explosion, but it still smelled burned whenever it fell over her face. Her gun belt, retrieved by the DEA from a tweaker fleeing the scene, was slung around her hips, feeling more natural than she cared to admit.

  But she was alive.

  Sig walked at her side. He wore a real dog collar now, with tags for his name and the address of the trailer. His fur felt soft and shiny, thanks to a bottle of shampoo and three types of hair conditioner.

  She’d left the Bronco behind the police tape at the gate and walked slowly to the pile of skeletal junk. Ash stirred in the breeze. A backhoe was parked beside the ruins of the house, ready to be pressed into ser­vice soon. Mike had told her that the DEA would be excavating for weeks, but they expected that the heat from the meth lab explosion had likely incinerated any useful evidence or human remains. There was no way to reconstruct Stroud’s formula for the calcinating Elixir. The members of the Garden who had been captured didn’t know any of Stroud’s recipes. DEA was considering the deaths to be a freak accident, a bit of mad science gone wrong.