Mercury Retrograde

by Laura Bickle

  Noiselessly, Gabe descended to the creek, to the flash of brightness he saw drifting there.

  A pale silhouette had gotten hung up on some rocks. A body.

  Gabe advanced into the creek warily. Cold water lapped up his boots, and his coat fanned behind him.

  The body of a girl bobbed against the rocks. Long blond hair with pink streaks was twisted in pine needles and twigs. Her fingers were open, splayed, and her jeans and white hoodie were stained with mud. Her eyes, like the eyes of the victims at the morgue, were blood red, and her skin was turning violet and mottled. Her bee-­stung lips were slack, and an oak leaf was caught in her earring. Gabe didn’t need to touch her to know she was dead. The acid vapor had been mostly washed from her, but the soft smell of decay had taken hold. She’d been in shade and cold water for some time, but the rotting had begun.

  She looked like a younger version of Jelena, his wife from more than a hundred fifty years ago. He could still see her delicate features etched behind his eyelids if he closed them. She could be Jelena’s younger sister from that time, or perhaps her descendant in the present.

  Likely, this was the girl who had vanished with the group of young ­people days ago. In this isolated part of the park, it could be a very long time until she was found. Maybe heavy rains would dislodge her from this bit of the shallows, maybe a visitor would find her at the campground miles downstream. But it would likely be a long time, if she stayed here.

  Gabe reached out and grasped her arm. He gently tugged her free of the rocks and debris. She came loose, and he pushed her down the river.

  She drifted, feet first, down the creek, into the singing chorus of late-­season frogs and cicadas.

  It was all he could do. Hopefully, someone would find her and give her the peace of a proper grave.

  CHAPTER TEN

  VENOM

  “What do you think a snake that size eats?”

  Petra genuinely wanted to know, and it seemed like as good a question as any to pose to the biologists.

  “Anything it wants,” Meg offered. “Depending on whether it eats its prey whole, it could be coyote, beaver, deer . . .”

  Sig cast her a dirty look. He wasn’t a happy camper, as is. Petra hung with him at the edge of the campsite where the family had died, her fingers tangled in his leash. To protect him, she’d zip-­tied the plastic baggies on his feet, and he was focused on chewing them off. He had shown absolutely no interest in going near the yellowed grasses—­in fact, he’d wrinkled his nose and turned away.

  But Meg and Phil were fascinated. They’d donned their plastic suits and were fingering everything in sight. Phil was shooting pictures with a digital camera, and Meg was taking measurements in the grass. The scene had been cleared, only surrounded by yellow caution tape. The tent and the campers’ belongings had been removed. It had rained, and it was likely that any damaging substances had been rinsed away. It looked like a lawn on which a plastic swimming pool had been parked for a whole summer—­sallow and thin.

  While Meg and Phil fussed over the area, she turned her back and wandered a bit away with Sig. Sig seemed content to stick close by her heel, and she was grateful for that. She took him off the leash and dug into her pocket for the Venificus Locus and her knife. With her back turned, she poked her little finger and dropped some blood into the channel around the rim. The blood slipped into the compass and remained still.

  She let out a deep breath. Good. The snake wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity. Maybe the poison was entirely gone, too.

  “This trail . . .” Phil photographed the track of brittle grass going off to the west. “This thing could be massive.”

  Petra pocketed the compass and joined the biologists. They followed the trail as far as it went, but lost it in the rocky land beyond, as Petra had before.

  Petra spread out a topographical map of the area on the ground. “We’re here.” She marked a spot on the map with a pencil. “The group that videotaped the snake reported encountering it . . . here.” She made another mark. “That’s a good bit of ground covered, about two miles through grassland.”

  “Well, we need to decide if it behaves like any other snake,” Meg mused, looking at the horizon.

  “Do you think it’s nocturnal or diurnal?” Petra asked.

  “Most snakes aren’t strictly one or the other,” Phil said. “They generally follow the habits of their preferred prey.”

  “Do we think that humans are the preferred prey?”

  Phil’s mouth twisted. “It didn’t eat the campers, right? So . . . I’m guessing that was just a fear response, a defense mechanism when it came across them.”

  “But it’s got to be pretty aggressive, then. Those campers weren’t posing a threat. Two of them were asleep, and the other was just sitting,” Petra observed.

  “Maybe it’s attracted to the noise,” Meg suggested. “The group partying by the river were probably making some racket.”

  “But does it even know what its prey is? If it’s the only one, or the only one of a very few, it might still be figuring that out.” Phil rubbed his chin.

  Petra stared at the map. “Well, both those locations were near geothermally active areas.” She showed them the campsite and the spot near the river. “There are mudpots near both of these sites. New ones. There’s been seismic activity in the valley that’s been opening up even more. I’ve been exploring them as they come up, mapping them out.” She pointed to her pencil marks and notes scribbled on the map.

  “That’s just . . . weird,” Phil said.

  “Eh. Yellowstone is always weird. Not everything is as predictable as Old Faithful. Geothermal features can wither away without explanation, and new ones form all the time. But this spate has been unusual. I mean, we get over one hundred tremors a day. Most of that is minor, but the ones lately have been much larger. We’re lucky that the disturbances are here, in the backcountry, with fewer ­people around.”

  “So, maybe the snake wants warmth, and doesn’t like to be disturbed,” Meg mused.

  “In which case . . . what exactly are we gonna do if we confront this beastie?” Petra felt like it was a little too late to be asking the question.

  “Observe. Photograph. But definitely not confront,” Phil said. “If we see it, we’ll call the Department of the Interior. We’ll have actual proof then that it exists, that we’re not a ­couple of crackpots.” Phil gave a wan smile.

  “And what are they going to do with it?”

  “We’ll get more personnel on the ground to secure the perimeter and minimize the risk to civilians. We want them to capture it,” Meg said earnestly.

  “Gotcha.” Petra’s finger traced the map. “The next nearest geothermal spot is here.”

  “Let’s try there. Maybe we can pick up the trail.”

  They headed into the gold grass, the long tassels brushing Petra’s pants as she walked. The grass was tall enough that Sig disappeared beneath it. This broad path in the valley had been scraped clean by a glacier, and it was a pleasant walk. She whistled for him to stay close, and he obliged by drifting between her and Phil.

  Petra stared at Phil’s pack. That still seemed like an awfully lot of gear for simple observation. She sympathized with the desire to observe the creature from a safe distance, but . . . she sure hoped that they’d brought some guns.

  They’d walked for nearly an hour through the grasslands when something caught her eye. A vehicle was parked at the bottom of a dry stream gully. It looked familiar.

  With a shout to the biologists, she waded through the grass to the truck. It was an old, beat-­up pickup truck, with faded red paint and a skin of rust spots. It hadn’t seen wax in years. A residue of straw was in the bed of the truck, still sodden from the rain. The rains had rinsed the mud from the fenders, and a rodent was making a nest in the wheel well. It had been here a few days.

  Petra t
ried the doors. They were locked.

  “Does it belong to anyone you know?” Meg asked.

  She glanced at Sig. “Yeah. Some guys who work at one of the ranches around here.” The Hanged Men. This truck had come from Sal’s ranch. She was sure of it.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody’s been here lately.”

  “I hope not.”

  She scanned the sky for ravens as they continued. She spied redwing blackbirds, a tanager, and a tree full of wrens patrolled by a red-­tailed hawk. No ravens.

  But the Hanged Men had been here. They might still be here. They had to be looking for the snake. And perhaps Gabe would be with them. Her stomach churned at the thought. Gabe was lost to her, mindlessly following Sal’s orders. Without that spark of life in him, he was little more than Sal’s puppet. So that meant Sal wanted something from the snake, that it had something even more insidious to do with the dark magic and alchemy that infested this land. And that meant nothing good.

  “Look at this.”

  Meg was a hundred feet to the south, poking at something with her walking stick. Petra and Phil circled the area, peering at what she’d found.

  The ground was scorched, burned black. A puddle of what looked like metal had melted into the ground.

  “Is that a meteor?”

  “That’s not a meteor.” Petra pulled on her gloves and worked at it with a trowel. It turned over, and she could see the outline of a trigger in it, tool marks. “It was a gun.”

  “This looks like leather . . . shoe leather.” Phil picked up a melted bit of brown pulp with a stick, from which dangled a metal eye and a shoelace.

  “Looks like someone else met the snake.”

  Petra poked in the weeds with the trowel. She heard Sig whine, paces away. She climbed to her feet.

  “Sig?”

  She saw the tip of his tail moving in the grass.

  “Whatcha got, boy?”

  She parted the grass to find Sig staring at a hat.

  It was a white cowboy hat, spattered with acid holes. Part of the brim had melted. The hat was familiar—­it was the one she’d last seen Gabe wearing, when she’d confronted him on the street in Temperance. He’d looked right through her with empty amber eyes.

  “Gabe found the snake,” she whispered to Sig. “And it . . . it killed him.”

  There was truly nothing left.

  She radioed the location of the truck and the ruined gun and shoe leather in to Mike. Maybe Sal Rutherford would care that one—­or more—­of his men were missing. Maybe he wouldn’t. But it was worth raising as much hell as she could.

  It’s just a shell, she tried to tell herself as she plodded along in the wake of the biologists, numb. The personality, the man she’d known as Gabe was gone. She tried to tell herself that he was a walking automaton, and that being dissolved in acid likely made as much difference to him as whether it was going to rain that day or not. But that wasn’t fair—­he was alive. Unalive. He’d survived the explosion at Stroud’s Garden. And maybe he would have gone on to create his own memories and his own life, ones that just didn’t include her. Believing that he’d died entirely at the Garden—­that was the unfair part of her thinking, ego-­driven, and she tried to challenge it. That had just been the part that she knew, that knew her. But it just summoned tears to her eyes, and she rubbed at them with the palm of her hand when no one was looking.

  But Sig saw. He walked close to her, his tail thumping against the backs of her knees as she trudged along.

  The sun had lowered toward the horizon by the time they approached the next mudpot, tucked in a thicket of forest. According to Petra’s survey, this one was larger than the others. Maybe it would be more attractive to the snake. It was difficult to see, with the sun streaming across the land. Petra lowered her hat on her head and unbuttoned her coat, deriving some comfort from the idea that her guns were within reach.

  She surreptitiously consulted the Locus. It suggested that they push forth to the mudpot. She had no idea of the range of the device, but the knowledge that the snake was close made her uneasy.

  “That’s interesting.” Phil pointed to a slash through the pine trees, curled bark as high as his waist. The green pine needles had begun to yellow, as if something caustic was chewing deeply in the sap.

  “It’s fresh.” Meg stared at sap dripping onto the ground, where it fizzled in resinous puddles that speckled the ground. And the smell was unmistakable—­it reeked of sulfur, even upwind of it.

  “Okay. Let’s call your buddies with the federal government.” Petra’s first instinct was to back away and let someone with helicopters and firepower swoop in for the glory.

  “I want to see it.” Phil’s eyes shone in fascination, and he stepped into the stand of pine trees.

  Meg had lowered her backpack to the ground. “Phil, wait.” She’d unzipped it and was donning her gear. Which seemed like a really good idea right about now.

  Petra set down her own pack. She crouched over her gear and quickly consulted the Locus. Her fingers were getting sore from stabbing, but forewarned was forearmed. The blood in the Locus swished around agitatedly, lurching east, then west. Magic was close at hand. The fluid separated into two drops, one to the right, and the other to the left.

  Shit. There were two of them, and they were circling the expedition party. Two fucking snakes.

  “Look out.”

  She drew a gun and swept it in a circle, through the blinding sun. Sig pressed against her leg, growling, the fur on his back lifting.

  A shape rose with the sun at its back, casting a long shadow over her.

  They were so incredibly fucked.

  Gabe had tracked the snake over the grassland of the valley. The snake had become less obvious in the trail it left behind. He followed bits of blackened grass and curled leaves with broken veins, sidestepping Rust around hazards. The horse, wary, was still bribable with wild crabapples, and consented to move forward.

  Gabe had partitioned a bit of his left shoulder into raven form. From the sky, he could detect the patterns the snake made in the grass, broad sidewinder stripes that were too subtle to see from the ground.

  But he’d gathered the raven back into himself on the final approach, dismounting from Rust and clutching his spears and guns. He thought he would lie in wait with his rifle, wait for it to move, and take it out from a distance. But there was a commotion at the edge of the field, where it met a stand of trees in the last flicker of brilliant sunset. He lifted his pistol and advanced, pulling the hammer back and ready to shoot. He could taste the magic, feel the serpentine alchemy of it unwinding just behind his field of vision.

  A figure stood up in the field, in the glorious sunshine. It wasn’t the snake—­it was her. It was the woman from the hospital, the woman he’d been spying on with his ravens, the woman who’d been haunting his dreams. She blinked at him, tendrils of her hair leaking from her hat and her coyote crouching and snarling at her feet.

  She stood before him and leveled a gun at his chest.

  It was just like his dream. Just like it. He could feel that ache in his chest, and he knew what it meant: She was going to kill him.

  “Gabe,” she whispered at him, in sunshine.

  He pulled the hammer of his pistol back.

  “Gabe.” Her face broke into a smile. “You’re alive.”

  His brow knitted. She was happy to see him. His grip on his gun tightened. It made no sense; she wanted him dead. She’d ripped the heart right out of his chest.

  She lowered her pistol. At her feet, the coyote wound up to pounce. And he saw her left hand . . . in it was a golden compass. That thing . . . he flashed on it, picturing her pulling it from his chest when he’d hung in the Lunaria’s embrace. He’d screamed, screamed with the voice of a raven.

  “Gabe.”

  The coyote at her side snarled. S
he blocked him with her leg. “Gabe, I know that you don’t know me. Not anymore. But I’m glad . . . I’m glad you’re alive.” Her voice dropped, and it seemed that she had resigned herself to something.

  She was a threat. Every cell in his body screamed it at him, in the voice of a raven.

  But something in him remembered. He remembered her standing in the chamber below the Lunaria, holding the gun on him. It had been . . . to take him out of his misery. He had been broken. She should have done it, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to shoot. She’d done as she had now—­she’d lowered the gun.

  “You’re alive.” She said it again, as if really trying to convince herself.

  He stepped closer to her, so close that his gun was inches from her face. She closed her eyes, and the breeze moved a strand of hair over her freckled cheek.

  He reached out, brushed it aside. His hand slipped down to her warm, sunburned cheek.

  And he remembered.

  She’d saved his life. He remembered her hauling his broken body from Sal’s barn. He remembered seeing her sliced-­open arms at Stroud’s Alchemical Garden. He remembered that she knew the secret of the Hanged Men, that he had led her through the warren of tunnels beneath Sal’s ranch. He’d shown her the Star Chamber. He remembered the way her mouth tasted, like the sea.

  “Petra.”

  He blinked and lowered the gun.

  She opened her eyes, brilliant hazel in that bright light. His fingers brushed the smile creases around her eyes as she looked up at him.

  “The Locus. I love it best when it leads me to you.” Her smile froze. “Wait. Are you alone? The Locus said there were two . . .”

  A scream rang out, and she jumped. Her coyote wheeled in a blur of fur, and Gabe looked over her shoulder. The sun had dipped below the tree line, pulling down shadows.