by Laura Bickle
“Tell me about something you loved.”
Owen thought a minute. “When I was a kid, I loved kites.”
“Kites?” she echoed.
“Yeah. I got my first kite when I was a couple of years younger than you . . . were. It was a big plastic kite shaped like a bat with flaming eyes. I flew it every day for weeks. I loved seeing how it flew, how it could seem so huge on the ground and so tiny up in the sky. I imagined what it would be like to fly. I adored it . . . until it got caught in some power lines and I couldn’t get it back. I was inconsolable.
“My dad got me another one. A fancy one. Shaped like a dragon. He sent away for it, had a buddy overseas send it to him. That was a wonder. It moved like a serpent in the sky. We’d stand for hours in the field behind the house, watching it and saying not much. It was like it was a living thing. I imagined that the dragon had all these adventures in the sky, chasing birds and circling the sun. It was . . . some of the most treasured memories of my childhood.” He lapsed into silence, gazing up at the circular window in the sky.
The sky darkened to black, then lightened. Instead of the dark charcoal of smoke, it was a bit lighter, a pearl grey. A deer wandered over and peered into the well. The doe gazed at him, seeming confused, then wandered away. A dim sun tried burning through the striations of smoke. Birds crossed it, and Owen imagined his kite. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. His mouth was sticky, and it seemed that the moments bled over from one moment to the next. When he opened his eyes once, he was in darkness, with a moon overhead. The next time, it was the dim light of dawn or twilight; he couldn’t tell. In between, Anna spoke to him of the things she remembered from her childhood: her favorite doll that her grandmother had made for her with yellow yarn hair; her best-loved cartoon, the princess one that Owen finally bought on DVD to let her watch over and over; and why she liked spaghetti more than ravioli. It was more fun to eat, she insisted, but it had been a long time since she’d actually eaten anything.
“Owen?”
“Yes, Anna?”
“Owen, look.”
She pointed. Down and to his left was a tiny spark of light in the darkness.
“What’s that?”
“It’s light, Owen.” She sank into the water up to her chin and took his hand.
He stared at it. It felt real and solid, like a little girl’s hand should. “I don’t deserve light. I’ve done a whole lot of shitty things. I think it’s here for you.”
“You probably don’t deserve it,” she said honestly. “But you fought a greater evil than yourself for the right reasons. So, that’s worth something to the light.”
Owen squinted at it. It looked like a distant star, cold and remote.
She tugged at his hand and pulled him down to her level. “Come with me, Owen.”
Owen looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “I wanted to bring you to the light,” he slurred.
She chuckled and kissed his cheek. “No, Owen. That was always my job.”
“You hung around . . . for me? All this time?” He was confused.
“Of course, silly. You needed someone to stay with you. I could have left at any time.”
Owen felt a lump in his throat. No one had ever made such a sacrifice for him. No one had ever cared this much. He thought he was rescuing Anna—but she was rescuing him.
“Come on. You don’t want to be late.” She tugged his hand.
Owen followed Anna into the warm blackness, to the light.
Chapter 19
The Touch of Death
“They won’t be spooked by fire?” Petra rubbed the sorrel nose of Rust, Gabe’s favorite horse on the Rutherford Ranch. The horse gently took a carrot from her hand and chewed it thoughtfully. All the fences on the property had been opened to allow the animals to escape any stray fires. Rust had wandered up to the barn and had his head in a sack of bird feed when they found him.
“Of course they will.” Gabe pushed an ATV out of the barn at the Rutherford Ranch. He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
Petra shrugged. “Knowing what you’re thinking is generally a pain in the ass.”
“Knowing what I’m thinking is also a pain in the ass from my own perspective,” Gabe admitted, tying a pack to the backseat frame.
“Owen won’t mind you borrowing one of his toys?” Petra glanced up the drive at the main house. It seemed quiet, and Owen’s SUV was missing. Maybe Owen wasn’t home and wouldn’t care.
“I haven’t seen Owen around in a while now. I’m betting he’s got bigger issues,” Gabe said. Even so, he’d insisted that they take Gabe’s truck to the ranch and not raise undue suspicion by leaving Petra’s Bronco parked in plain sight.
“Have you ridden one of these before?” Gabe asked.
“Not since I was a teenager,” she admitted. “I think I remember most of it.”
Gabe gave her a quick tutorial: starting, throttle, steering, brake. Petra nodded—she remembered that much—but it dawned on her why he was telling her all this.
“You want me to drive?”
Gabe nodded. He shook his arm, and two ravens exited his sleeve, flapping up into the air to perch on the roof of the barn. “I’ll send them as lookouts, but it might screw up my steering.”
Petra nodded. She threw one leg over the seat and cranked up the engine. Gabe sat behind her, wrapping one arm around her waist. She started off, slowly, moving west on the ranch, toward the smoke. As she got accustomed to the machine, she picked up speed. The ravens had taken wing and were far ahead of them.
Petra leaned over the handlebars, staring up at the sky, murmuring dark oaths. She was certain that Sig would have found this to be amusing. But she’d left Sig behind with Lev, who had promised to make the coyote some meatballs when they’d gone. She wasn’t about to drag her little buddy into a firefight with a phoenix.
She was vocally debating the disadvantages of a spouse who had wings while the four-wheeler jounced sharply over uneven terrain. She swore the fillings in her back teeth were rattling loose from the off-road journey. She’d already bitten her tongue three times over the cross-country trip, and was tasting blood as she followed the ravens, flying slowly overhead. They’d circle, drift in the sky, and then stop, perching on trees, waiting for her to catch up with barely concealed impatience. A bird above them on a pine tree cawed, and Petra stabbed a finger up at it.
“You. Shut up.” She was pretty certain they couldn’t hear her over the buzz of the engine, but it made her feel better. Sort of.
They seemed to chuckle at her, and she didn’t bother to elbow Gabe. She’d go as fast as she could. If the ravens got lost, he’d pull them back.
“The fire line’s ahead,” Gabe said in her ear. He sounded distracted, as he always did when he was peering through too many eyeballs.
Petra slowed and stopped. “We’re not going through,” she said.
“No.” Gabe dug into his pack and handed her a paint respirator and a pair of goggles to don. “But we’ll be close.”
“What about you?” she asked, her voice muffled through the cheap paint respirator. Likely, this was in the collection of odds and ends of junk Owen kept in the barn. But it didn’t look like there was more than one set.
Gabe tied a bandanna over his nose. “I’ll be fine.” His gaze clouded as he surveyed the dark sky overhead. “The ravens can’t see any sign of the phoenix, though they can confirm that this is the most active part of the fire.”
Petra reached into her jacket pocket for the Venificus Locus. She spat into the compass, emitting blood from her bitten tongue to its hungry surface. The Locus sucked up the blood immediately. It churned thoughtfully, swishing the blood around the groove circumscribing its edge. A glob of it swung toward Gabe. Magic. Right.
Another smattering of drops flickered off to the left, where the ravens were walking on the ground, picking at a piece of tinfoil. The smoke overhead had grounded them, but they were still magic.
But where was the phoenix? Was it t
oo far away for the Locus to register? Her brow wrinkled. If so, then . . .
The blood in the Locus boiled so suddenly she almost dropped it. The blood glopped all the way to the front of the compass, threatening to slosh over its edge.
Petra sucked in her breath. “That way, I’m guessing.”
The ravens fluttered up to Gabe and scuttled up his sleeve. The feathers resolved into fingers that wrapped around Petra’s waist.
“Let’s go.”
She nudged the four-wheeler forward, certain that the phoenix could hear their approach. The fire was roaring at a distance, but the four-wheeler sounded like an angry hornet to her ears. She drove it up to the edge of a rise overlooking a lake that mirrored the blackening sky, Bridger Lake. The trees on the far side were catching fire from the updrafts, flames leaping from tree to tree in the dry canopy.
But that’s not what seized her attention. What caught it was the man pacing the narrow, rocky beach. He was standing on the sand, arms outstretched, looking up at the trees.
She ripped off her respirator and yelled, “Dad!”
The figure on the beach turned. She saw, through watering eyes, that he had carved arcane symbols into the sand around his feet. He turned, a look of confusion and anger on his face.
She parked the four-wheeler and lurched off of it, rushing toward her father. Gabe shouted at her, but she ignored him. Her breath was ragged in her throat as she ran to him, stepping over the circle, and threw her arms around him. He smelled oddly of sulfur, but it didn’t matter. Her father was here, and he was safe.
She was conscious that he didn’t return her embrace right away. He slowly pulled his hands to the back of her neck and stared at her, as if she were a stranger.
“It’s okay, Dad. It’s me, your daughter. Petra,” she said, brushing pine needles from the lapel of his shirt. It stung that he didn’t recognize her, but she shoved that sadness aside. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here.”
Her father looked over her shoulder, past her, at Gabe. She was confused at his interest in Gabe when his hands tightened on her neck. With surprising speed, he turned her around and fastened his arms around her neck in a headlock. Her fingers automatically came up to his elbows, and she clawed at him, knowing that his dementia must have overtaken him. She had to subdue him without hurting him . . .
“Gabriel,” her father said, staring at Gabe. “It’s been quite some time.” One arm went to her waist, nimbly unbuckling her gun belt, where it fell harmlessly to the ground.
Gabe regarded him with narrowed eyes. “Let go of her . . . Joseph.”
Her father chortled, a brittle laugh as sharp as glass that she’d never heard pass her father’s lips. “I think not. She will make a fine sacrifice to the phoenix. So will you.”
Gabe paced closer, two steps, and his right hand rested on the butt of his pistol, easing it from its holster. “Let go of her . . . Lascaris.”
Petra’s heart stopped with an audible thunk that she felt in the soles of her boots. The only sound she could make was a soft squeak. She rolled her eyes back at the twisted face of her father pressed next to her cheek.
The man holding her smiled. “How did you know?”
“Your pocket watch. It started ticking again. I’ll show you.” Gabriel reached into his pocket and Petra knew he was reaching for the mirror. The watch was long gone.
Don’t do it, she thought. The mirror is for the phoenix. Don’t waste the mirror . . . She kept her eyes open and stared pointedly at Gabe, who glared at her in frustration. He finally blinked, a signal of resignation.
Except then he said, “Give up the woman, and I’ll serve you. As I did before.”
Lascaris snorted. “I don’t need you. Not anymore. You’re a failed process, best buried.” He hauled Petra back a couple of paces, her heels dragging in the sand. “She, however, is interesting. I bet Joseph taught her all he knew.” He leaned in and pressed his nose to her hair. “She smells like a homunculus. Did Joseph figure out how to do that? I underestimated him, then. If she knows that magic, she’ll definitely be of use to me.”
“What did you do with my father?” Petra croaked.
“Your father is gone. I fought him, and he lost. His spirit has been released to the light.”
She kicked at him, uselessly, tears glossing her eyes. “You fucking killed him?”
“Be still,” he growled. “If you don’t serve me willingly, it might be interesting to take you apart and see how you tick.”
Gabriel cocked his head, birdlike. “You really don’t need me? Have you seen a mirror? You look plenty weak to me. Your time is running out in that body.”
Lascaris gazed skyward. “It doesn’t matter.”
Gabe followed his eyes, and nodded. “Yes—the phoenix. You want the phoenix, as you always did. If you have the phoenix, you don’t need her. Trade her. Take me apart instead of her.”
Lascaris’s liver-spotted fingers traced over Petra’s, tangled in his elbow. They paused on the ring on her left hand. “You fell in love again. After all this time. This could be delicious.”
This was going badly. Needing to do something, Petra exhaled and went limp. Lascaris stumbled, the old man’s body struggling against that unexpected weight. His grip loosened.
At the same time, ravens exploded around her; she could feel their cries and the feathers beating against her skin. With just a touch of space now, Petra slammed her elbow back into the old man’s body and lurched free, stumbling forward.
As she did, she disturbed the symbols he’d scribbled in the sand and broke the circle.
She spun and gasped.
Lascaris was slapping at the ravens. Where he made contact with his hands, the ravens collapsed to the ground, turning into tarry black bits of rot clothing white bones.
Ravens screamed.
No . . .
Petra scrambled on the ground for Gabe’s gun. She aimed at her father—no, it was Lascaris, she reminded herself.
“Leave him!” she screamed.
The remaining ravens seethed away in a murmuration. Lascaris was in a half crouch, his face bloodied by raven beaks and claws, reaching for Petra’s gun belt on the ground before him.
“I will shoot you,” she said. “I will shoot you and send you back to the spirit world, where you belong.”
“Not as long as I’m wearing your father’s face.” He grinned at her and his fingers brushed the butt of a gun.
She pulled the trigger, striking the gun belt, splashing sand back into Lascaris’s face.
She aimed back at the old man—the body of what had once been her father—but before she could shoot, something with the voice of thunder roared over the tree line, howling with fire. Heat swept down over the beach, blowing back her hair with the blistering fire of a forge. Petra saw the suggestion of wings, black eyes, and a fury that froze her blood.
The phoenix had come.
The alchemist’s attention was focused on the firebird, so Petra took advantage, turned, and started digging through Gabe’s abandoned clothes for the mirror. She heard Lascaris yell, reaching toward the creature, but a flurry of ravens covered him in a blanket of seething black. Wings and talons obliterated the last of the magic symbols carved into the beach.
The phoenix soared overhead, swooping low, then moved east. Petra’s hands curled around the mirror. Too late. The fire rattled all around them. It blew through the trees with hurricane force. It washed over the ATV, and it burst into flame.
Lascaris slapped more ravens away and ran after the phoenix as fast as his old-man legs could carry him. She ran to follow him, but a tree crashed down in her path, blocking her escape in a wall of burning needles.
The ravens paused in their pursuit, looking back at her with wild eyes.
Petra covered her face with the respirator, smacking out tongues of flame that had taken hold on her pants. She jammed the mirror into her pocket. “Get out of here!” she screamed at the ravens. “Go!”
She turned and sp
rinted back to the lake and dove gracelessly in without hesitation. The steaming water closed over her head and she plunged down, clawing into the water to pull herself as deep as she could. Her fingers closed around gravel and silt at the bottom. She remembered when she was a child learning to pick up pennies at the bottom of a pool, when her father had taught her to swim . . .
She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. No. It could not be that her father was gone. Lascaris had to be lying.
But she also knew that her father was not in the spirit world. And he was not in his body anymore. Where did that leave him?
Above her, the lake roiled. The surface water was boiling—she could see it, shimmering and stirring. She lay at the bottom, staring up at the churning darkness through her goggles. The paint respirator was useless underwater, and she ripped it free of her neck.
A dark shape plunged into the water near her. The water burbled, and she recognized him. Gabe, mid-transformation, as wings melded into flesh, sodden feathers linking with bone.
But in this dim light, she could see something had gone wrong. Parts of his body remained blackened, as if burned. He plummeted to the bottom, beside her, as if he were a stone.
She swam to him and placed her hands on his cheeks. His eyes were open, and he blinked at her. He was whole-ish. And he would be—if they survived the fire. The water was hot, though—hot as scalding bathwater.
Her lungs were burning. She looked up at the boiling surface of the water and made to swim up to get air. Gabe likely did not need air, but she could only survive a short time without it.
Yet Gabe pushed her shoulders down. At first she panicked, worried he was trying to drown her for some reason. But he grasped her face, pressed his mouth to hers, and blew fresh air into her mouth. She devoured it greedily, even though it tasted like smoke. He went up for more, came back, and breathed for her. His skin was red and burned, but he took on the burden of something as simple as breathing so willingly for her—her heart ached.
She lost track of how much time they spent down there, suspended in the deep water. Eventually, Gabe took her hand and pulled her up.
