by Laura Bickle
Her head broke the surface of the water, and she gasped in the smoky air.
A good part of the lake had evaporated. The water line had dropped, and the beach had easily gained eight feet of land. The phoenix’s fire had been truly preternatural.
They stumbled forward, supporting each other as they climbed out of the water. Petra’s fingers gingerly hovered over a blackened patch of flesh on Gabe’s shoulder. It glistened and smelled like roadkill.
“The ravens . . .” she murmured. He must have absorbed the birds that were killed.
“Lascaris has taken on the power of the fermentation process in alchemy,” Gabe confirmed grimly. “He can decompose anything he touches.”
Petra shuddered. Her fingers slipped up to her lips. “My father . . . he made it out alive, then?”
“I saw Lascaris run to the road and get into a car. He escaped.”
She took a deep breath and nodded to herself. “He’s alive, then. And we can—”
Gabe gently took her shoulders. “He is no longer your father. He is Lascaris. And he must be stopped, no matter the cost,” Gabe said.
“But the toad said—” And she remembered what the toad said. That she’d see her father’s face. She closed her eyes in despair.
“He’s not there anymore. He would have killed you.”
She said nothing. She knew something of wearing a body not intended for her. There was nothing to say. He was right. And there was no escaping that inevitable conclusion. Was there?
They climbed up the bank to the ATV. It was completely ruined. Plastic had melted to the metal frame, and the tires had oozed right into the ground.
“We’ll have to go on foot,” she said. Fire still burned in the tops of the trees, and fire churned beyond them. And, truth was, she wasn’t certain how to get back to the main road.
“Wait here,” Gabe said. “Stay near the water.”
He gazed up at the sky and dissolved into ravens; at least a half dozen fewer birds than before, she noticed. They climbed up into smoke and vanished.
Petra paced along the beach, where her guns lay. The gun belt had burned away, leaving only the metal buckle and rivets behind. But the guns themselves were still intact. They were blackened, but could be salvaged. She splashed water on them before gingerly picking them up. The metal hadn’t melted, but one of the bullets had gone off under the heat. The others were certainly ruined; she’d have to take care to remove them. She unloaded them and put the bullets in her pocket.
It was only then that she crouched down on the beach and gave in to grief. Sobs racked her body. She had been preparing for her father’s loss since she was a teenager. Now—now it seemed that it had happened. And she hadn’t said goodbye properly. She’d just told him to stay on earth and promised him chocolate muffins. She hiccuped and rubbed her face with her sleeve.
But she felt one terrible twinge of relief at this. Her father was not a murderer. He hadn’t killed those people. He had been a mostly decent man when she’d known him, and he’d died a decent man. She would be able to mourn him without reservation.
Except she still wasn’t ready to accept that loss yet. There had to be a chance he wasn’t gone. Lascaris was an evil man and a liar. Her father had to still be in that body, somewhere. Maybe he was squashed down and repressed, but he was still in there. Maybe. No matter what, she had to be sure. Because if he was in that body, she would rescue him. It felt naive of her, but he was her father.
And she wasn’t ready to lose him again.
After about an hour, a dull roar sounded in the distance. Petra froze, thinking that the phoenix might have returned. But then a raven landed beside her, and then another and a flurry of them. They quickly congealed into Gabriel.
The roar increased overhead, and the silhouette of a helicopter appeared in the smoke. Petra and Gabe backed away, squinting against the ash blown by the blades. It hovered close to the ground, then decided to land on the burned beach.
A man jumped down out of the helicopter and ran toward them, keeping his head low below the reach of the blades. He took off his helmet, revealing a familiar buzz cut and cranky face to give them a reproachful look.
“Mike!” Petra grinned. She was certain he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the helo.
Mike pointed at the two of them and curtly gestured for them to follow him to the helo, heads down. He gave Gabe a withering look at his nudity, but got them belted into the helicopter. He gave both of them blankets. As the helicopter climbed into the air, he handed each of them a headset. His voice crackled thickly with static over it.
“Fancy meeting the two of you out here,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Mike. But I’m glad to see you,” Petra said.
“It was the damnedest thing, though,” Mike said. “We were following the progress of the fire, trying to see where we’d need to evacuate, since the wind shifted. And this . . . flock, I guess . . . of ravens came up and started hassling us. They wouldn’t leave us alone, so we followed them. And found you guys.”
Gabe gazed out of the helicopter innocently.
“And it seems we have solved the mystery of the naked Good Samaritan.”
Gabe opened his hands helplessly. “I like to swim. A lot.”
Mike’s tone lowered. “What the hell were you guys doing out there?” He was pissed. Really pissed. They were taking time and resources away from others who needed it, and Petra felt like shit for doing so, like some lame-ass hiker who got out of her depth and needed a million-dollar rescue.
“I found my father,” she said. “But he got away.”
Mike leaned forward. “Your dad’s gonna be in a world of hurt when the law catches him. He was reportedly hitchhiking at the edge of the park about an hour ago. One evacuee ignored him, but saw in the rearview mirror that another car stopped. And he pulled the driver out, and the driver . . . turned to mush. That’s what the eyewitness said, anyway.” Mike shook his head, as if unsure whether or not to believe it. Petra knew that Mike had seen some weird shit out here in the backcountry, but this had to be challenging even his screwed-up perceptions about the parameters of reality.
“Shit,” Petra said. She sank back in her seat and put her hand over her mouth. Maybe she should have let Gabe take him out with the mirror. That lapse in judgment had killed another person.
Mike pulled a first-aid kit out and began examining their wounds. Petra was mostly reddened and blistered, with a handful of first- and second-degree burns. Gabe had fared worse with second- and third-degree burns and the blackened spots. “You guys have some burns going on here that need to be treated by a doctor ASAP. I’ll have an ambulance meet us at the last checkpoint, and they can take you to the hospital to get checked out.”
Petra shook her head. “No more wasting resources on us. If we can find a way to get home, we’ll get patched up there. If we need to, we can drive ourselves to the ER.”
Mike paused in daubing ointment on her wrist. “You can’t do that. The fire’s headed straight toward Temperance. The town’s being evacuated.”
Her heart fell into her shoes. “Sig. Sig is there. You have to take us there so we can get him.”
“I want to, but . . .”
She leaned forward and grabbed Mike’s lapels. “Please, Mike. You can drop us off there. My Bronco’s at the trailer. We’ll get Sig and we’ll get clear out. I swear.”
Mike grunted and looked away. He leaned back toward the cockpit and gestured at the pilot. The pilot gave them the most withering look a man could give through a tinted helmet.
The helicopter turned and went north.
Chapter 20
The Ruin of Temperance
The phoenix would not escape him. Not this time.
Lascaris whistled softly as he piloted the carriage down the paved roads. Truly, paved roads were a miracle of modern technology. Though this carriage stank a bit—he’d gotten some splash back from the decomposition of the driver—it was far superior to the blue carriage th
at Molly had driven. That vehicle had stopped running, sputtering and coasting to a stop most unexpectedly, a gauge reading “E.” Except this one was emitting some terrible music that took some doing to quiet. Lascaris had slapped at buttons until it shut up, at once warming the interior and causing some lights around the outside of the carriage to blink. That was a small price to pay for the sound to go away. He enjoyed the quiet, and overall found the ride quite comfortable. Too, this carriage sat up higher, seemed to go faster, and was packed to the gills with all manner of useful items.
Lascaris pulled off the road to explore this bounty. He found food, water, clothing that was a bit big for him, a kayak, paddles, and even a couple of modern guns. He experimented with the guns a bit—they were so much simpler than the ones that he’d owned in his time. One just needed to pull the trigger, and a bullet flew out cleanly, and without fuss. He was able to aim and hit a road sign with it, easily.
Lascaris peered toward the sky. The fire had divided and was moving south and east and north and east of his current position. Two flickering rivers of flame had split off from the main fire and were snaking away through the land, seeking out fuel. Hopefully, the bird was moving with one of them. He decided to go north, thinking that the bird might be coming to his old home to roost, and that offshoot of the fire was traveling more quickly.
He got back into the carriage and started it up again. He passed traffic moving away from the fire, but his lane was empty. He cruised toward the town of Temperance, curious to see how it might have changed since his time.
He hoped the phoenix recognized it. He hoped it remembered how he had summoned it here, that it would return to the place of its rekindling. There still had to be some residue of magic there, after all these years, and perhaps the bird would be attracted to it.
Lascaris chuckled when he reached the town. It was smaller than it had been in its heyday, during the Gold Rush he’d created. So much for modern progress. Without his gold, it had withered to a quarter of its former size. A two-lane road cut through town, with a few recognizable buildings still standing. The inn was now a hardware store, and the brothel was a pawnshop. There was a post office here, but no signs of rail tracks.
He laughed out loud to see that the church was now a tavern. It cheered him to no end to imagine that drinks and swearing and gambling had taken the place of deacons and sermons and God. This alone was worth crossing back to the physical world.
He turned right, down a gravel road to the spot where his house had once stood.
He wasn’t sure what he expected. But not—nothing. No one had rebuilt his house. There was no sign that it ever existed. Just—just a large tin can sitting on its side there. It looked like a ramshackle dwelling of some kind. A carriage was parked out front. He crunched down the gravel drive and stopped before it.
This place looked nothing like he remembered.
He got out and paced to the field behind it, where his home had once been. Grass covered earth, giving up no hint as to what had been here before, not even revealing the shape of the foundations. Pressing his hand to the ground, he sensed only the barest murmur of magic here, maybe some forgotten pieces of his long-ago buried basement. Or that could have been just his imagination.
Would this be enough to draw the phoenix here? Would it remember?
He wasn’t about to risk the chance.
So Lascaris took a stick and began carving alchemical symbols into the rock-hard dirt, beginning the spell again to fuse the phoenix to him. He drew the symbol of quintessence, repeated over and over with exactitude, crouched in the middle of the circle, and then waited. The phoenix would sense the symbols, as it had at the lake, as it had many years before in his athanor. It would sense magic and be drawn to it. Such a summoning would at least pique the bird’s curiosity. Once the bird saw him, and knew him to be an alchemist, they would join, and the Great Work would be complete.
He had been fortunate his encounter with Joseph Dee’s daughter ended the way it did, he realized. If she was an alchemist, the phoenix might have been equally, or even more, intrigued by her, and left him to rot. No—it was better this way. He would now find the bird separate from her presence, and it would have no choice but to join with him.
As he waited, though, his mind kept going back to that scene. Of her—a homunculus—in his arms. Such amazing power; he wondered who had made her. On top of that, she had married Gabriel! He laughed aloud at that. It amused him that Gabriel had survived all this time. It told Lascaris that perhaps the Rutherford Ranch and the Lunaria still existed, that the magic had not all emptied out of this land.
That even after all these years, he still mattered here.
In the distance, fire slipped around the foothills of the mountain, curling into the field. It moved in fits and starts, moved by the wind. He saw no sign of the phoenix, though. Still, he waited patiently, hoping for an inkling.
Finally, in the dark distance, he saw a fiery streak. He held his breath . . .
. . . and instead of moving toward him, it moved south, disappearing into the gloom.
Lascaris stood. He smiled.
It had survived.
The phoenix was wiser than he’d thought. It had even grander motivations, attracted to a greater magic.
He walked back to the carriage, got in, and started the engine. He drove back to the main road and began driving south.
South, to the Rutherford Ranch and the alchemical Tree of Life.
The helicopter pilot was pissed.
The helo hovered over the field behind Petra’s house. He didn’t touch down, levitating a couple of feet above the ground and not making much of an effort to keep things stable. The grass churned like ocean waves in a storm.
“You”—he pointed to the two of them—“get out of my helo now and quit wasting my fucking time and fuel.”
Mike shrugged and spread his hands. One couldn’t argue with the pilot. “Good luck, guys.”
Obediently, Petra and Gabe scrambled out of the helicopter. Gabe went first and reached up to grab Petra. The wind from the helo blades whipped the blanket off his body.
The pilot grimaced at them and flipped them a middle finger. As soon as Petra’s feet touched the ground, he veered away into the sky with such speed and force that Petra tasted dirt.
“I guess that’s why they call it the bird,” she muttered. She couldn’t blame him for being pissed. In the same situation, she would have probably dropped the two of them off at the jail. It was only by whatever pull Mike exercised that they weren’t getting charged with a bunch of crimes. Well. That could still happen, but she wasn’t going to think about that now.
Gabe looked at her blankly.
“Let’s get our stuff and get Sig from the Compostela and get out of here,” she said. The fire was in the distance, creeping near. It was about a half mile away from the trailer, she guessed, and getting closer.
She ran to the trailer, but Gabe paused halfway, frozen in place.
“What is it?” she asked, circling back to his side.
He pointed to the ground. “Lascaris was here.”
“What?”
A magic circle with alchemical symbols was inscribed on the ground, just as it had been at the lake. Only this one was intact.
“Do you think . . . he succeeded in summoning it this time?” she squeaked.
“I don’t know.” Gabe scraped at it with a rock, obliterating the symbols. “Let’s hope not.”
Petra rushed into the trailer. She reached under the sink for a box of garbage bags and dumped anything important she could find in bags—money, clothes, geology equipment, dog food. The power was gone, but there was enough light to see by. In less than five minutes, Gabe was dressed, she was packed, and they were loading the bags into the back of the Bronco. By then, the fire was within ten feet of the trailer.
Petra paused then, looking back at her home. Sadness poured over her. She kissed the Airstream on its aluminum skin.
“Thank you fo
r being our home,” she said to it quietly, then ran to the Bronco.
They raced to the Compostela, which now featured a CLOSED sign prominently placed on the front door. Petra parked in the alley behind the bar, within arm’s reach of the back door, which they both beat on. Maybe Lev was still in there. Maybe not. Either way, Petra thought she could trust him to take Sig to safety. But she’d feel safer herself if the coyote was at her side.
The back door finally opened, and Lev peered at them. “Shouldn’t you be off trying to chase a phoenix?”
“It’s not going all that well,” she huffed.
“So I see.”
“Shouldn’t you have evacuated?”
Lev shrugged. He opened the door. “Sig is waiting for you.”
Petra and Gabe barreled into the bar. The lights were off, except for a lantern placed on the bar. A battery-powered radio perched beside it murmured the news at a low volume.
Sig lay beneath some bar stools. He looked up at them and yawned.
“C’mon, dude. It’s time to go.”
Sig rolled over and belched. His belly was distended, and it looked like he swallowed a basketball.
“Whoa. Lev’s been feeding you all the goodies.”
Lev shrugged. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a canine around. Sig has a surprisingly well-developed palate. He likes to try new things. He really likes prosciutto.”
“Great. C’mon, Lev. Let’s get out of here.”
Lev stayed in place and stared at her. Petra noticed that he was barefoot, in a T-shirt and jeans. There were no packed bags. It looked as if he hadn’t made the slightest effort to get ready to evacuate.
“You are coming, aren’t you, Lev?” she said.
Lev shook his head. “I stay with the Compostela.”
She blew her hair out of her face in frustration. “Is this one of those the-captain-goes-down-with-the-ship things, only for domovoi? You don’t have to perish with your house.”
“I have no intention of perishing,” Lev said. He moved behind the bar and began pouring himself a drink.
