Nine of Stars

by Laura Bickle

  The wolves snarled and backed away. Nine turned toward Gabe with her hands outstretched behind her, to protect the pack. “What are you doing with that?” she demanded.

  “It belonged to Skinflint Jack when he was alive,” Petra rushed to explain.

  “It might be able to hold his current form,” Gabe said. He moved the trap a couple of yards away, with the chain snaking around it. He returned to rummaging through the packs. The wolves circled it, growling.

  “It’s okay,” Petra said, trying to sound soothing to Nine. “Really.”

  Nine’s face was an impassive mask. “It reeks of old blood.”

  Gabe had crossed to the hoodoo and was writing symbols on the dark stone with a stick of chalk. Petra recognized some of them as alchemical symbols for air, earth, fire, water, mercury, and the sun. But the others were foreign to her.

  Petra opened her pack, glittering with damp and dirty salt packed around her tools. She planted a stick at the center of the trap and tied a rope around the stick. Measuring off nine feet, she figured that would be big enough to hold Jack. She walked in a circle around the trap, sprinkling salt as she went. The salt came out in chunks, but crumbled easily within a fist. It began to melt the snow with an audible crackling, leaving behind lacy patterns that collapsed as the salt sought bare ground. She hoped to hell that the old woman who salted the pond was right, that if Jack touched the salt, he wouldn’t be able to get out. Or, at least, that he’d be weakened.

  She nosed around outside the circle and found four fist-sized rocks, speckled granite. She figured she should make this as much like the pond as she could. Glancing at the compass on her watch, she placed one at each of the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. They seemed pathetically small compared to the big chunks of granite at the pond. But something in her gut told her the rocks were significant, somehow.

  Gabe was deep in concentration over his sketched-out marks. “Owen can make himself useful and build a fire. The light will show Jack where we are.”

  “Okay. What next?”

  “We set the trap. With bait.”

  The wolves quailed, crowding around the far side of the hoodoo, away from the circle.

  Gabe pulled a deer skull from the sack. Petra recognized it as the skull that had been installed in the wall of Jack’s basement. Bits of mud and mortar were still crusted in the jaw and eye socket, as if it had been torn from the mud of a wasp’s nest. One of the antlers was broken off entirely.

  Gabe opened the trap and set it, the rusty metal groaning. The end of the connected chain coiled around it, like a sinister tail. He placed the skull at the center of the trap, along with the remainder of the gold coins.

  “All that’s left is to summon Jack,” he said. “And the easiest way to do that is to piss him off.”

  Gabe tossed the last Star of Antimony down on the rocky ground with an almost careless gesture. He stomped down on it with the heel of his boot. The fragile mineral cracked.

  Somewhere in the far off distance below, something screamed, the bellow of a stag.

  And the wolves answered. They howled back, all of them, even Nine, their voices rising in the darkness. It was a challenge, a mocking of that ethereal string to Jack’s heart that Gabe had just shattered.

  Jack had been summoned. He was coming.

  The night was curiously still. At this height, Gabe would have expected the wind to tear through his coat and hat and obliterate their unshielded fire. But the cold simply radiated up from the earth, from the mountain, as a relentless weight in the air.

  Magic was afoot.

  He watched from the south, from the direction they’d come. The bright moon illuminated everything below: the halo around it in the cloudless sky, the wreck of the snowmobile at the foot of the mountain, the stillness of the snowfield beyond. He could see the far horizon into Montana. Time stood still here, and the earth knew it. The only sound was the snap and crackle of the fire, the crunchy pacing of the wolves behind him, and the ticking of blood in the compass.

  Blood churned in the compass, too quickly to freeze, like a second hand around a watch. Tiny drops swished as the wolves milled behind him. A heavy glob lay in the bottom of the rim, all around, like the stain of a coffee cup on a wood table. Gabe figured that was the mountain itself. Lascaris had liked to embroider his stories, and once told him that he’d put the hoodoo here as a grave marker for a creature he’d summoned and had to put down. That was par for the course for Lascaris’s experiments, but Gabe was never able to pry more out of him about this place. He only knew that the mountain had a reputation as a place horses would avoid, if given any choice. That was good enough corroboration for Gabe.

  He swept the binoculars across the ground below. This high, it reminded him of when he was a raven, when he could fly. He was struck by a pang of longing for the feel of air beneath his light body, the freedom of it.

  Something moved below, and Gabe stilled. A black figure flitted across the snowfield, inexorably toward the mountain. It paused at the snowmobile at the bottom, then looked up. One antler caught the glimmering moonlight.

  “He’s here,” Gabe said quietly, and heard the hiss of indrawn breaths behind him.

  The shadow began to ascend. It didn’t follow the trail that Gabe and his party had laboriously climbed. Skinflint Jack scaled straight up, flowing over obstacles in his path like water. The skull turned up, gazing at Gabe from dark eye sockets and the glint of silver eyes. Gabe could feel the hatred smoldering there. He had desecrated Jack’s home and the remains of his family. Jack would do anything to kill him. Gabe hoped that his rage would render him blind and sloppy; that was their only chance.

  Gabe retreated with the rest, holding his loaded rifle. The wolves had their backs to the hoodoo, huddled around Nine’s legs. Owen remained at a distance from the pack, muttering to himself. Gabe hadn’t seen fit to give him a gun. Petra remained before them with Sig, at the edge of the circle, guns drawn, and Gabe went to stand beside her. His heart pounded in his chest.

  Gravel rattled below them, from the ledge. A clawed hand reached over the precipice, and Skinflint Jack hauled himself up. The wolves growled behind him, a chorus of vibration.

  Jack pulled himself up to his full height, bellowing. His head inclined toward the circle, and he hissed. Knives made of bone glinted in his hand.

  He knew.

  He was smarter than Gabe had given him credit for. Or maybe Jack sensed the magic gathered here. But the darkness in his eyes fixed on the shattered remains of the Star of Antimony within the circle, and he couldn’t help himself. He’d spent too much time in the body of a beast. He lunged over the salt line at the perimeter of the circle and plucked the gold from the trap, quick as a raven plucking a shiny gum wrapper from the street. He landed on one knee and coiled up to leap over the salt line, to escape the trap with the bait.

  Gabe aimed and fired. Jack bellowed, and Gabe knew he’d hit him. Jack crumpled. Gabe dropped the gun and plunged forward, his shoulder striking Jack, attempting to keep him within the circle. Wolves snarled around Jack, harrying him, ripping at the hem of his ephemeral cloak. The skull at the center of the trap fractured, crunching into the snow.

  Darkness fell over Gabe’s vision like a curtain. Sound disappeared. Cold and all sensation vanished. He could see, now, how Owen had found this terrifying. But Gabe had spent more than a century underground. Darkness was nothing to him.

  He hit the ground, hard, away from Jack. Jack reeled back, snarling, clutching his shoulder. His cloak swept the salt at the edge. Jack fell into the open jaws of the trap and bellowed, thrashing as the rusty teeth pierced the darkness of his body. Gabe crawled to the edge of the circle, beyond the edge of its containment, and climbed to his feet.

  He turned around to look at Jack.

  Hatred smoldered in Jack’s glittering eye sockets. The trap had caught him around the knees, but he reached for the chain. He swung the chain over his head, cast it out . . .

  . . .
and it struck Gabe in the throat in a bright slash of pain. He stumbled and fell backward, tumbling off the mountain in a skiff of white snow and darkness. Panic sang through him as he flailed.

  He heard Petra screaming behind him.

  For this moment, he flew. He soared in the cold darkness, and he smiled to feel the rush of it in his face, the freedom of it . . .

  Until he hit a ledge and darkness slammed over him.

  “Gabe!”

  She saw him stumble back, lose his footing. She reached for him as he tumbled back into space, a dark shape against the white snow below.

  Her heart shattered when he fell, when he plummeted away from her and soared into the white. He struck an outcropping below with a sickeningly soft crunch.

  “Gabe!”

  He didn’t move. Oh, my God, he wasn’t moving. Jack had killed him.

  She wheeled around to Jack. “You fucking bastard.” Gabe’s gun was useless to her now—Gabe had gone over with the powder horn. But she didn’t care. She scooped up a fistful of broken antimony in the snow. One jagged piece was the size of a penknife blade. Small, but sharp. Rage soaked her skin, and she advanced on him.

  The Stag glowered at her from the circle, head lowered, puffing like a bull ready to gore her.

  “Asshole. Over here.” It was Owen, behind him. He’d picked up the chain connected to the trap. There was a good seven feet of it, long enough to make a weapon. He lashed it around Jack’s head, where it got hung up in his antlers. Jack snarled and pawed in the trap, and Owen approached with the remainder of the chain. Petra guessed that he meant to try to strangle him with it.

  She lunged forward, the antimony knife in her hand. The blade plunged into the creature’s shoulder and he howled. She pressed her knee into his side. Jack’s head twisted around, and he tried to bite her throat. His stinking breath steamed over her face, and a tooth scraped her chin.

  In a flash, she realized that it was her pendant he was after. The one her father had given her: the green lion devouring the sun. Gold.

  “No. No, you can’t.” The fragile piece of antimony fractured in her grip. The creature twisted around and kicked her. Petra went skidding, landing with her spine cracking against the hoodoo. She struggled to turn over and draw breath, tears leaking from her eyes.

  Owen was wrestling with the weakening monster. He’d gotten the chain around its throat, and the Stag thrashed and kicked, trying to free himself of the trap. Owen’s blackened knuckles oozed red on the chain.

  A gold ring gleamed on Owen’s right hand, snagging the Stag’s attention. Fast as a striking snake, Jack ripped into Owen’s hand, biting it off as if it was a piece of jerky. Owen screamed and fell back beyond the circle, dripping red.

  Nine slipped into the circle then, on all fours. Her hand snatched up the broken jaw of the skull and scraped up the fractured bits of bone that had become dust in the trap. She swept them into her hand, advanced on Jack, and blew the bone dust into his face.

  “Be dust,” she commanded in an ancient and hollow voice.

  Jack howled, clawing at his eyes.

  Nine lunged out of the circle, landing beside Petra, who struggled to her feet, fingers scrabbling in the snow for any remaining pieces of antimony. With savagery, she thought she’d dig Jack’s eyes out with the slivers, if she had to.

  A hand landed on her shoulder. “Wait.” It was Nine. She wrapped her arms around Petra, restraining her with a surprising strength.

  Petra struggled, tears blinding her.

  “Look.”

  Something was happening to Skinflint Jack. He thrashed in the trap, but he seemed to be melting. Black drained out of him into the ground, leaving behind the bleached whiteness of bone. Petra realized this was a twisted realization of the alchemist’s White Stag. Hooves lashed into the sky, antlers twisted, and Jack’s body sank below the permeable ground, as if sucked in by quicksand. Only the fractured bits of the skull remained, tangled in the trap.

  Silence settled over the mountain once again, punctuated by the whimper of a wolf and Owen’s sobbing.

  Petra sucked in her breath. “Is it done?”

  “He’s gone.” Nine said it with certainty, twisting to look at the hoodoo. “He’s in the mountain now.”

  The sun peeked up over the horizon, and the light changed subtly, from violet to pink.

  Petra broke free to look over the edge for Gabe. Owen was standing there, stupidly staring down, and cradling his bloody hand in the crook of his elbow. His eyes were glazed, and it sure looked as if he’d pitch over at any moment.

  She grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “Help me get him,” she ordered savagely.

  Owen nodded. She shoved a rope into his good hand and Nine’s, tied some knots into it. She looped it around the base of the hoodoo, mindful not to disturb the marks on the face or the circle, swearing the whole time.

  Gabe had to be okay. He had to be. She would not let him be otherwise.

  She made a quick rappel down this steep side of the mountain. She hadn’t bothered with constructing any kind of a safety harness. It didn’t matter. If Gabe was dead, none of this mattered.

  She bounced down nearly a hundred feet to the ledge, where Gabe lay motionless. Scrub skeletons of sage clung to the crevasses splitting the rock. She startled something in the gloom—a white-feathered eagle took wing from the scrub, sailing into the valley like a kite.

  Crouching over him, she gently touched his face. “Gabe.”

  He didn’t move. She stripped off her glove and checked for a pulse. There was one there, and she rejoiced. She pulled back an eyelid and winced. One was normal, if dilated, but the other eye was so black she couldn’t see the iris, rimmed in red. She knew he had to have a serious head or spine injury. Moving him could kill him. But leaving him here would be worse.

  She looped the rope under his arms, trying to be gentle. He wasn’t conscious to protest, floppy and rubbery. She tightened the rope under his arms until her stomach turned. She didn’t want to exacerbate the damage to any broken ribs, but if he slid out of the crude rigging, he would be dead beyond any retrieval.

  “Pull!” she yelled up to Nine and Owen.

  They pulled, hand over hand, the limp body rising up the mountain face as Petra watched. She winced each time Gabe’s body bounced against a rock or the wall. He spun like a doll, but she couldn’t look away.

  Finally, they succeeded in hauling him up over the rim. He vanished from her sight as Nine and Owen reeled him in. The rope came down again, and they hauled Petra back up. The slippery nylon rope cut into her hands in deep slashes.

  She scrambled over the lip and crawled to Gabe. Sig sat beside him, washing his face. Behind him, the wolves whined.

  “He’s in a bad way,” Owen said.

  “We’ve got to get him help. Get him off this mountain to civilization.” Petra turned on her heel. “The nearest road is five miles as the crow flies, that way.”

  “Let’s get him down,” Nine agreed.

  “What about . . . this?” Owen gestured to the ritual remnants on the peak. Petra squinted at it. The sun had crept higher, over the hoodoo. The sun seemed to pause perfectly there, balanced.

  “I don’t know anything about magic, but I think this is finished.” To make sure, she dug the compass out of Gabe’s pocket. She scraped some blood from her scratched hands into it. The blood boiled inside, tiny droplets clustering where the wolves stood. The deep groove was saturated with the mountain’s magic.

  She extended it toward the circle, taking a deep breath and stepping inside. She would not forgive herself if she unwittingly left some kind of magical trap behind for a tourist to stumble into.

  Nothing happened. The compass continued beating its bloody pulse, not altering in the slightest as she approached the skull.

  She pocketed the compass and lifted the skull. The antlers were broken off, and it looked like little more than a decorative piece of southwestern kitsch now. The Star of Antimony was shattered beneath it,
splintered on the ground. The trap was closed and folded in on itself, harmless, as she’d suspected. The gold was gone. Maybe that was the price of doing business.

  “Let’s go,” she said. She stepped away from the scarred circle in the snow, where all that terrible magic had spilled and faded.

  Climbing down the mountain was slow going. Petra bound up Owen’s hand as best she could—he’d lost the ring and pinky fingers of his right hand. He’d live. She dug a tarp out of the packs, and they used it as a kind of stretcher for Gabe. Petra carried the head and Nine the feet. Owen supported the middle, while Sig and the wolves rushed ahead. It took hours to take the trail down the mountain in the growing morning light.

  When they got to the bottom, they moved Gabe’s body to the sled she’d made from the hood of the old snow machine. It was too short, and she added the hood of the second beneath his body, held together at the hinges with bits of rope. She’d pitched all the gear on the ground. None of the rest of this mattered.

  “See if you can get a signal.” She tossed her cell phone to Owen. She’d pulled the battery before they’d begun their journey to keep Owen from tracking them, and there was still some juice left in it, thankfully. She didn’t care if the cops descended on them and hauled them away to jail, as long as somebody with some medical know-how got there for Gabe.

  “No good,” Owen said, shaking his head.

  “Do you think there’s anybody out looking for you?” she demanded as she tied off her knots.

  “Probably not,” Owen admitted. “Being sheriff has the privilege of being able to disappear at will.”

  Petra unwound a long length of rope and tied one end around her waist. “Come here. We’re gonna drag this sled to civilization.”

  But the wolves had another idea. After a consultation with Nine, they nosed Petra aside. Each wolf picked up a length of rope. Sig got in front and picked up a piece.

  All eyes turned toward Petra, expectantly.