Dark Alchemy (4 page)

She scrubbed until her skin was raw and pink, letting the water and the soap do its work. Gradually, the scent of the cedar soap permeated her skin, calmed her. No red—­it was gone.

When she stepped out of the shower, she surveyed her clothes. The bra and tank top were ruined, but her pants seemed fine and she pulled them on. Maria's shirt, a gauze peasant top, wasn't designed for a bra, anyway. It was a chocolate brown color, off the shoulder, with smocking that wrapped around her waist. She had to admit to herself that it was pretty. Petra hadn't owned feminine clothes in years. This felt . . . different. It didn't smell like salt, unlike everything she owned. This smelled like land, like it had been dried in sunshine and kept in a closet with lavender sachets.

She padded out of the bathroom in bare feet, the ruined shirt and bra balled in her hands.

“Feel better?” Maria stood at the kitchen counter, chopping herbs. Pearl perched on top of the refrigerator, taking a bath. Her tail tickled the colorful kitchen magnets studding its surface.

“Yes, thanks. I hope I didn't use up all your hot water.”

“There's always more. You're welcome to stay for dinner.”

Petra shook her head. She didn't believe in Frankie's supposed special powers, but didn't trust her reactions around Frankie's drunken fishing. “I appreciate it. But I should get back.”

Maria nodded, wiping the knife off in a dish towel. “Truck title's on the table. Sign off, and I'll notarize it.”

“You're a notary, too?”

“I wear a lot of hats. Pearl will be our witness.”

Petra signed while Pearl watched from her perch until her attention was arrested by a refrigerator magnet that was fun to push around the surface of the fridge. While Maria stamped the document, Petra fished her money out of her cargo pants and handed eight hundred to Maria. The other woman didn't bother to count it, stuffing the wad into a cookie jar on the counter. She opened one of the upper cabinets and dug around for a blue bottle about the size of her hand with a screw-­on cap. Sunlight glistened through the bottle, outlining a shadow of plant matter inside. She handed the bottle to Petra.

“Take this.”

“What is it?”

“A sleep potion. I call it ‘Liquid Dreamcatcher.' Nothing harmful or illegal. Just herbs and rum.”

Petra swirled the contents of the bottle around. “I look that rattled?”

“You look like you need to sleep. That will help. Two sips should take you to dreamland.” Maria took a card off the counter and handed it to Petra. Her brown eyes were warm. “This is my card. If you need anything, and not just with the truck . . . Call me.”

The card was plain white, with Maria's name and the LISW designation below it, listing her address and phone number at the Family Center. On the back was a number scratched in red pen. “That's my cell number, when you're ready to talk.”

“Thanks. A lot. I mean it. And . . . I will call.”

And it felt like she meant it.

 

Chapter Four

Blood

“L
ook what the cat dragged in.”

Gabe slammed the truck door and leaned heavily on the fender. His fuzzy vision settled on a figure outside the barn holding an axe.

“Boss.” Gabe tipped his hat with his bloody knuckle, leaving a wet smudge on the brim.

Rutherford approached, inspecting Gabe's injuries. He poked Gabe in the shoulder with the axe handle. Gabe winced.

“What the hell happened to you?” Amusement lit in Rutherford's voice—­amusement and curiosity. Sal Rutherford believed that he was the only one who knew the vulnerabilities of his silent ranch hands. If others knew, his power over them might be diminished. Might.

“Lucky drunk took a ­couple of swings at me with one of your fence posts.” Gabe told him the truth. There was no need to lie.

Gabe walked heavily into the barn, Rutherford following on his heels. The light was lowering on the horizon, sliding through the chinks in the barn in golden slats. Dust motes were suspended in the light like daytime fireflies.

“
Hnh.
” Rutherford seemed to chew on what Gabe had said. He blocked Gabe's way with the axe. “Where you think you're going?”

“To ground.” Gabe paused, fixing Rutherford with his amber gaze.

Rutherford shook his head. “I've got work for you boys.”

Gabe narrowed his eyes. “Not tonight, dear.”

Rutherford swung the axe. Gabe raised his arm to block it, and the blade of the axe embedded itself in his palm. Gabe looked serenely over the blade, wrenched it away from Sal.

He pulled the axe blade from his hand. It was like pulling a paring knife from an apple: no blood, no sign of pain. He cast the axe to the floor of the barn, and it skidded away in the straw.

Rutherford smiled. “You boys always amuse me. I can shoot you, burn you, stab you, and you'll remain standing. But whack you in the knees with a baseball bat, and you go down like everyone else. Makes me wonder what would happen if I skewered you, like that Vlad the Impaler guy . . .”

Gabe was on him in two swift steps. He grasped Rutherford by the throat, lifted him with one hand. Rutherford's feet kicked up straw dust, and he wrapped his hands around Gabe's wrist, gurgling and flailing.

Gabe leaned in close to whisper in the boss's ear, his breath ruffling the grey hair of the boss's muttonchop sideburns. “You'd do well to remember that you've got more weaknesses than we do. Many more. And there are more of us than there are of you.”

Rutherford smiled and croaked, “You could kill me. But I have the tree. The Hangman's Tree is on my land. All it takes is one can of gasoline over that thing and a book of matches, and you're done. And that's exactly what the Rutherfords will do if anything happens to me.”

Gabe dropped Sal, gasping, to the floor. He turned on his heel and walked away, into the field beyond the barn and the sunset. Closing his eyes, he felt the warmth of sun on his skin and the tall grass flickering through his fingers as he walked. He could find his way back to the tree without looking, had counted these steps over and over in his mind for more than a century.

A lone elm stood alone in the center of the field, gnarled with age and reaching toward the sky with bent and twisted branches. It had been here ever since he could remember, which was a very long time. The cool shadow of it pressed on his face, the breeze rustling through its leaves. Somewhere above, a raven perched, cawing to its fellows. They came here at sunset, the ravens, all to this place. Men like Rutherford called it the Hangman's Tree. It still bore scars in its lower branches where ropes had scraped away the bark.

But Rutherford had little idea of what it really was, beyond knowing that Gabe and his men needed it. The Alchemist had called this the Lunaria, the Alchemical Tree of Life. Where its branches stretched to heaven above, its roots reached into the earth in perfect symmetry.

“ ‘As above, so below,' ” Gabriel muttered. The Alchemist had said it first.

The ravens gathered in the molten light, cawing to themselves, roosting in the tree by the dozens. Black wings flapped in the leaves, and the Lunaria took on the impression of something more intensely alive than a singular tree, moving, shifting in that pure breeze and cacophony of black feathers.

Gabe knelt, feeling the dry grass prickle his palms as he searched for the door. He found a hidden root, pulled open a rusty door covered with turf and dirt. He climbed inside the hole, away from the light and grass and the cackling of ravens.

It smelled like damp earth here, like a root cellar kissed by floodwater. The fingers of roots brushed Gabe's face as he dropped below the surface. This place was one of many rabbit holes the Hanged Men had dug over time to go to ground. Rutherford had little knowledge of the warren of tunnels that worked beneath the field, the barn, even his own house. As far as he was concerned, the boys disappeared and reemerged at will.

Gabe's vision gradually adjusted as he stepped into the dark. He could see the dirt walls and uneven floor of the tunnel as he wound deep into the earth. He looked down at his clothes. They were streaked with golden light, like frozen sunshine. He could taste it in his mouth, and he spat it out on the floor of the tunnel.

The tunnel opened up to a chamber directly beneath the tree. Roots reached out in all directions. Gabe could feel the pulse of water and light through the living wood as tendrils dug through the earth, worming after nutrients in the soil.

The other men were already there. They dangled motionless from the ceiling of the chamber, roots wrapped around their necks and arms, the grotesque fruit of the Lunaria. Gold light pulsed through the silent roots into their bodies, feeding them, regenerating what seemed to be corpses buried underground. Gabe and the rest of Sal's men could stay away from the Lunaria for a day, or even a handful of them. But they always needed to return, to feel the embrace of the tree.

Gabe reached upward, feeling the roots wind around his hands, shoulders, and throat. As the Lunaria lifted him into itself, he awaited the cold sunshine dripping into his veins, bringing with it the chill of sleep.

“
‘
As above, so below.'
”

T
he coyote was waiting for her back at the trailer.

The sky had purpled like a bruise by the time Petra returned to her new home. The Bronco chewed through the gravel road, kicking up stones that rattled against the undercarriage. She was more than halfway back before she noticed that Maria hadn't removed the beaded charm from the rearview mirror. Perhaps Maria was trying to lend her some luck. Petra promised herself that she'd return it. Even if there was such a thing as luck, she wasn't sure that any of it would stick to her.

She cranked up the windows and shoved down the locks, stuffing the keys into her pocket as she approached the trailer. She balanced her groceries awkwardly on her left hip and held her bloody clothes in a ball at arm's length. She'd seen no sign of the meth heads on the way over, but she was still wary. In the falling light, she thought she saw movement, and her hand twitched to her side, to the heavy pocket on her right. But, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that it was only the coyote.

He sat upright on the creaky wooden steps to the trailer door, watching her with shining eyes.

“Hello, again.”

The coyote cocked his head. One of his ears was black and speckled in gold, as if he'd been painted by a child with a short attention span. He seemed very comfortable in this place.

“You've probably been living here a lot longer than I have.”

The coyote stuck his hind foot in his speckled ear and scratched.

“I'm harmless. Really.”

The coyote looked at her and blinked.

“I'll make you a deal. You can keep living here, if I can keep living here.”

The coyote looked at the sack in her arms. His nose twitched.

Petra set the bag down. She'd picked up some lunch meat that was probably ruined by now. She dug through the provisions for the package of salami, ripped it open. She crouched before the coyote and extended a piece of meat to him.

“Seal the deal with a gift?”

The coyote's nose quivered. He slunk down the steps, body low to the ground and ears pressed back. He approached slowly, shied to the left, and snatched the piece of meat from her hands. Then he trotted away with his catch.

Petra fished the trailer key from her pocket and climbed the steps to the door. A piece of paper was taped to the glass. It was a man's handwriting, all capital letters:

SOME CRATES OF EQUIPMENT FROM USGS CAME FOR YOU AT THE TOWER FALLS RANGER STATION. YOU CAN COME BY AND PICK IT UP MONDAY MORNING.

CALL IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.

–MIKE HOLLANDER

Good,
she thought. She'd be able to get to work right away. Petra stuffed the note in her pocket and jiggled the key in the lock. She heard a rustling behind her, and spun in alarm.

It was the coyote again, head buried in the grocery sack.

“Hey!” she shouted.

The coyote dragged his head out of the bag with his jaws closed around the package of lunch meat. Seeming to grin, he sprinted away into the dark.

“Little thief.”

Petra's hands balled into fists as she went to retrieve the bag. The coyote drove a steep bargain. She guessed that she'd be playing by his rules, not hers.

Petra carried the sack and her ruined clothes into the stifling heat of the trailer. She switched on the light and opened the windows to get the air moving. Everything seemed as she'd left it. Her money and the engraved compass were still tucked behind the wall.

She emptied her pockets of the gun, her cell phone, and money. She set her groceries out on the small kitchen table, pleased to have accomplished the acquiring of essentials, like toilet paper and soap.

Maria's blue dreamcatcher bottle felt warm in her hand. Hesitantly, she unscrewed the cap and sniffed. It smelled like alcohol and something bitter.

“Two sips to dreamland,” Petra repeated. She took two slugs from the bottle and grimaced. It tasted metallic, like a mouthful of aluminum foil, burning on the way down. She beat feet across the tiny space to the bathroom for her toothbrush to scrub the taste from her mouth.

The overhead light was attracting bugs through the window above the futon. That window was missing a screen, and Petra had the unenviable choice of roasting alive or being covered in mosquito bites. She turned the light off and stretched out on the futon, propping her sore ankle up on the futon arm. A cool breeze trickled over her face as she waited for Maria's potion to kick in. Her eyes roved around the unfamiliar shadows of the trailer.

Back on the oil rig, there had always been light—­light to ward away ships and to summon helicopters. The rig had glowed like a small city in the darkness as the waves scraped its steel skin. It had been easy to believe that the rig was a world unto its own, a little planet floating in space.

But something gleamed here, too, in the black. Not the fireflies swimming outside, nor the stars overhead. Something gold and phosphorescent on the floor of the trailer near the door.

The hair on the back of Petra's neck lifted. She climbed off the futon to study the pulsing light. It looked like glow-­in-­the-­dark slime from a child's toy store, the kind that parents inevitably found ground into shag carpet. Warily, Petra turned on the overhead light.

The glow drained away. All Petra saw was her wadded-­up bloody clothes on the floor of the trailer.

She shut the overhead light off again, backtracked to the bathroom. She turned the light over the sink on, just enough to trickle into the main area. She crossed back to the floor and stared at the incandescing pile of clothes.

Petra knelt and poked at them. Where the bloodstains had spattered her shirt, the fabric looked as if it had been covered in phosphorescent paint, a bit of gold glitter that seethed in the light. Light that gave off no heat.

Fear and curiosity blended in her. She'd never seen anything like this, not even in books and material-­safety data sheets she'd read about radiation. Curiosity won out. She dug in her equipment bag for her hand lens, peered through the magnifying glass at the surface. The closest thing it resembled was cave lichen; it had a curiously granular appearance.

Petra tucked the clothes into the empty grocery sack and sealed it up as tightly as she could. This bore some analysis, she vowed. But in the morning.

Maria's dreamcatcher potion was taking effect; she could feel her thoughts slowing and running together. She washed her hands, climbed back into bed. She felt a tingling in her fingers, and the numbness spread to her face. Petra remembered feeling this way when she'd been given a heavy dose of Klonopin after the accident, after everything on the oil rig fell apart . . .

“Y
ou sure that there's something down there?”

The shift supervisor yanked off his hard hat to wipe sweat from his filthy brow. In his oilman's jumpsuit, the big man was roasting, even with the cool breeze coming off the water. The sky had been white-­hot and clear, the sea calm and smooth as bathwater, but tensions were boiling on the mobile offshore-­drilling unit. They had been drilling for weeks, all on Petra's assurances that dead dinosaur fluid was roaming somewhere under the seafloor. These assurances were becoming increasingly expensive.

The drill ship
Cassandra
had been anchored in the Gulf for days, the drill in its hull pounding away at the seafloor. The mighty engine thrummed an unceasing buzz through the soles of her feet and in the back of her dental fillings.

“It's there.” Petra stood with her arms crossed over her clipboard. “I was on the survey ship and sent out the hydrophones myself.” She stood her ground. Shift supervisors like this guy always thought they were right, despite what geologists could show in data. No one had ever gone out this far before on this range. It was risky, but she knew that there was oil to be found here.