by Laura Bickle
Stroud was doubled over, howling like an aggrieved cat.
“Jesus, you’re hit!” Cal climbed to his numb feet and dragged Stroud back to the Monte Carlo. The Alchemist was holding his side, groaning in pain. Cal shoved him in the passenger’s side, reached behind the sun visor for Justin’s extra set of keys, and jammed them in the ignition. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Justin was still slumped on the ground, and the cop was climbing to his feet, croaking into his radio.
Cal stomped the gas, spinning out.
The cop fired the remainder of his clip at the Monte Carlo’s tires as the engine revved. He hit a door panel, but the car spun off, peppering him with gravel.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.” Cal’s heart pounded so hard that he thought his chest would explode. He stared in the rearview mirror at the figure stumbling in the drive.
“You did good, boy.” Stroud reached for him and patted his cheek with that hot silver hand.
Cal flinched as silver tendrils crept across his face.
“Get the knife on my belt. Cut him down!”
Petra’s shaking fingers scrabbled around Gabe’s waist, searching for a utility knife. She removed it from its holster, ripped it open.
The limb on which the body was suspended was easily twelve feet above ground. Petra shimmied up the trunk of the tree. Leaves tore in her hair and birds screamed as she scrambled along the branch. She could feel scars here, old wounds in the wood that had formed knots and bulges. Scars from other ropes, from a long time ago.
She sawed at the fresh rope with Gabe’s knife. The sharp serrated blade chewed into the fiber, severing it in three strokes. The body fell to Gabe’s shoulder.
Petra awkwardly swung herself back down. She landed gracelessly in the grass on her hands and knees beside Gabriel, scraping her hands. She crawled over to the prone form. Maybe the man was still alive, maybe Gabe had been in time to save him . . .
Gabriel hunched over the body, surrounded by ravens. One perched on his shoulder. Another stood on the chest of the body, nibbling at shirt buttons.
Sig circled the body, whining, and backed away.
Petra pressed her fist to her mouth. The neck and head of the body were swollen, eyes bulging, tongue protruding. But the face was recognizable. It was Jeff, the ranch hand from the Compostela. The one who’d found the body on Sal’s ranch. The one who’d run his mouth too loudly and too long.
“Is he—?” She bit her lip.
Gabriel shook his head. His amber gaze was furiously cold.
Petra looked up. The other ranch hands circled them in the field with an eerily silent reverence. They held on to their hats, keeping them from tearing away in the wind.
“What the fuck did you do this for?” Petra screamed at them.
The raven who’d been nibbling at his buttons hopped over to Jeff and began plucking at his eye. Gabriel shooed it away.
“They didn’t do it.” Gabriel’s voice was murderous. “He did.”
Sal strode past the Hanged Men, surveying his work. “I don’t think he was ripe, yet.”
Petra looked down at the body. In the shade of the tree, a gold fluorescing shimmer dribbled from Jeff’s lip, twisting and turning like spider silk. The mottled bruising and abrasions around his throat seemed to pulse with light, as if he’d swallowed a flashlight.
His right arm twitched.
“Jesusmotherfuckingchrist.” Petra jumped back, landing on her ass in the dirt. Sig backed away, ears flattened. She couldn’t hear him over the racket of the birds, but she could feel his chest vibrating in a growl against her arm.
Jeff’s arm seized and jerked. Gabe turned him on his side. The body twitched, and strings of light-vomit dribbled from the broken jaw.
“He can’t still be alive. He’s—” Petra stared at Gabriel. “He’s not like you. Is he?”
Gabe’s mouth was set in a thin line. He stared at Sal. “You should not have done this.”
Sal shrugged. “Seems to have taken. I considered it an experiment.”
Gabe climbed to his feet, stepped over Jeff’s seizing form. “You have no idea what you’ve fucking doing. None. The Hanged Men weren’t made this way.”
Sal stabbed a finger at the tree. “You all came from that. From the Lunaria.”
“The magic isn’t what it used to be. It kept collapsing, fading.” Gabe pointed to a couple of men at the fringes of the circle. “Hell, they can’t even speak. Three of them aren’t even passable to take into public. Why did you think you could do any better?”
“I . . .” Sal seemed on the verge of admitting something, but he bit it back. “I couldn’t have him running off at the mouth.” His gaze was black, blacker than the eyes of the ravens. “He was dead, either way. Might as well have made him useful.”
Gabe hauled back and slugged him. Sal collapsed like a ton of bricks. Gabe stood over his boss’s body for several seconds, and it seemed to Petra that simple act of violence weighed more heavily on him than she could fathom.
Gabe turned back to Petra, his eyes glowing amber. “Take Maria and Frankie. Get out of here.”
Her fingers knotted in the brittle grass. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He looked down at her. “If you don’t go now, Sal will do to you what he did to Jeff.”
She stared at the twitching form, looking like a half-smashed lightning bug. “What the hell’s happening to him?”
Gabe shook his head. “He’s dying.”
Her heart thundered in her throat. “I’m not going anywhere until you give me some answers.”
“I can have them put you off the property by force.” His mouth pressed into a grim slash.
She lifted her chin. “And I’ll come back with cops. For Jeff and for that calcified body in your back forty.”
He appeared to weigh something imperceptible. A raven fluttered down onto his shoulder. It seemed to speak conspiratorially to him, leaning close to his ear with feathers brushing his cheek.
He gestured with his chin to the men. The Hanged Men. “Get them all off the property before the boss wakes.”
Two of the men came forward and grasped Petra by her forearms. She could feel the cold radiating from their hands through the cotton of her shirt. Sig growled, snapping at the men. Her hands curled into fists.
She could fight. But there would be no point. There were more of them.
She opened her hands and allowed herself to be led away.
“Down, Sig,” she told the snarling coyote. He fell sullenly into line behind her.
Looking back over her shoulder, she glowered at Gabe as the wind whipped through her hair. This wasn’t over, she vowed, as the Hanged Men marched her back to the barn. She tried to talk to them, to ask them what was going to happen to Jeff. But they just looked through her and beyond, into the leaden sky.
They’d left behind two men at the barn to watch Frankie and Maria. Maria sat on the back tailgate of the Explorer with her arm around her uncle. The old man was blinking, dazed. His head kept dipping forward into unconsciousness, and Maria was trying to keep him from sliding off the tailgate.
“Where are Sal and Gabriel?” Maria demanded.
Petra shook her head. “Gabriel said we can go.” She didn’t know how to begin to form the words about what had happened to Jeff. But the most important thing was to get help.
“I’m going to take him to the hospital,” Maria said firmly. “He’s got alcohol poisoning. Bad.”
Frankie looked up, fixed Petra with his thousand-yard gaze. “You can stop the hungry ghost.”
Petra took a step back. Rain began to spangle the dirt before her. “Frankie, I don’t know what—”
“You can,” he insisted. “You must.”
In the distance, a dust plume lifted and twisted. Petra squinted at the road. The dust resolved into cars, lots o
f them, with U.S. government plates.
Petra’s heart lifted. Mike had come through for her.
“Who’s that?” Frankie slurred.
“Cops,” Petra said. “Lots and lots of cops.” She turned to grin victoriously at the Hanged Men.
But they were gone.
Vanished, as if they had simply dissolved in the warm rain that began to patter down on the dust in a steady dull tapping.
Chapter Seventeen
Down the Rabbit Hole
Petra stood in Rutherford’s field, rain thudding on her scalp.
Beside her, Mike kicked at chunks of dirt, watching with his hands in his pockets as federal agents dug through the mud with shovels and a backhoe. A hole ten feet deep yawned behind yellow crime scene tape, runnels of water sliding back into the red soil to make a filthy soup.
“You sure this is the right spot?” he asked neutrally. Again. Rain dribbled down his temple. It could have been sweat.
“Yeah. The GPS said so.” Petra’s mouth flattened. “It was right here.”
A man in mud-streaked coveralls looked up at them, shook his head.
“I swear,” Petra insisted. “It was here. Just like the body at Specimen Ridge. I sent you the picture.”
Mike rubbed at the moisture on his brow. “Well, it’s not here now.”
“They must have moved it.”
“Probably.” Mike seemed to take what she said at face value, for which she was grateful. “But this is the only spot named in the warrant for the Feds to search.”
“Did they look at that tree? For Jeff’s body.” Petra had not told Mike about how Jeff had glowed and twitched. Her credibility was questionable, as it was. But she had asked them to search for him.
“They walked past the tree while looking for Sal. That much, they can get away with. If there’s evidence of a crime not named in the warrant out in the open, they can look. But they didn’t see anything and are lobbing that ball back to the locals.” He rubbed the back of his neck, which Petra knew he’d stuck out for her.
“Why am I not surprised?” Petra stared up at the sky. It was thick and close, like smoke, tendrils reaching toward the ground.
“Maria says she wants to press charges against Sal for kidnapping and assault.”
“Did they find Sal, at least?”
“Yeah. But he wasn’t in the field near the tree, like you said. He was propped up on the rocker on his front porch when they went to serve him. Unconscious. Had a hell of a shiner.”
Petra blew out her breath. “They arrested him, then?”
“They’ll turn him over to the locals—tribal police and the sheriff’s department—for what he did to Frankie and Maria. When he gets out of the hospital, that is. Unfortunately, he didn’t commit a federal crime.”
Petra lifted her eyebrow. “And this body’s a federal crime?”
“It’s a matter of national security, if it’s a contagion, or a pattern of serial killings that began on federal property, like a national park.”
“Sounds like territorial hairsplitting.”
“Yeah, well. If you want to get shit done, sometimes you’ve gotta get creative.”
“At least Sal’s gonna be behind bars. Until he posts bond.”
Petra kicked ferociously at a clod of mud. Instead of skittering away like a stone in a satisfying fashion, it disintegrated and stuck to her boot like a cow patty. “You need to ask Gabriel. He knows.”
“I would if I could. But none of the ranch hands can be found.”
“None of them? There are more than a dozen of those guys, roaming around.”
“They’re gone, now. Maybe they’re off having a drink. Or they blew outta town the instant they saw us coming.”
The Feds climbed out of the hole, and the backhoe began to fill dirt in.
“That’s it?” Petra said, feeling deflated.
“Yeah. Unfortunately.” Mike plucked at the yellow tape. “But you should feel good. Sal’s going to jail. Maybe not for the reason you wanted him there, but there is a happy ending.”
“Yeah. Some happy ending.”
Petra walked back to the cars with Mike. Sig sat inside the Bronco, his nose pressed to the glass, tongue writhing through the condensation. There was digging going on without him, and he felt left out. Petra opened the door, and he rewarded her with a lick on her chin. She solemnly scratched his ears.
“Hey. You did good. Really,” Mike said awkwardly. He chuffed her on the shoulder, but the gesture came out all wrong.
“Right.” She gave him a wan smile and slid behind the wheel.
“I heard that you had some more visitors at the Airstream today.”
“Little bird told you?” Petra was eager to know that the cops had indeed come for Cal and company.
“Word gets around. One of the deputies they sent out got nearly choked to death and shot at your prisoners. Two of ’em got away.”
“Which two?” She hoped that Cal was one of them.
“Sounds like Stroud and a goth-looking kid escaped. One was left behind—a blond kid who was beat to a pulp. He’s at the hospital. The sheriff’s office wants to talk to you.”
“Are they gonna go after Stroud and Cal?”
“Yeah. I expect that they’ll do a proper raid once they get their ducks in a row and get some federal backup. Stroud did try to kill one of their own, and that’s not a deed they’ll let go unanswered.”
Petra frowned and stared through the smeary windshield. “Look, I didn’t want anybody to get hurt.”
“I don’t fault you for defending your castle, Petra. You do what you’ve gotta do when it comes to protecting yourself and your property. But why the hell were they there?”
“Stroud’s after an artifact I found on the property.” There was no reason to lie. “It’s something that I think belonged to Lascaris. And I’m not giving it to him.”
Mike shook his head. “Please don’t go back there. I mean it.” He wasn’t ordering her. He was asking. And that carried a lot of weight with Petra.
“I’ll stay with Maria. Promise.”
“Okay.”
She cranked the engine and guided the Bronco out on the muddy road. She headed north toward town, tires splashing through the puddles, waving back at Mike to make sure he saw her.
Once she was out of his line of sight, she turned left and doubled back on one of the many truck ruts that crossed Sal’s land. The ancient shocks on the Bronco squealed in protest. Sig complained at the terrain and rolled off the bench seat to the floor.
“Sorry, dude.” She wrestled with the wheel as the Bronco bounced over the uneven land. “We aren’t done here, yet.”
From the floorboards, Sig huffed and snorted. He made a hacking noise that sounded suspiciously like a cat with a hairball.
“Just don’t barf. Please.”
She reached the barn as the light began to shift. Though the sun wasn’t visible behind the low-hanging grey clouds, twilight began to darken their shadows on the pale fields. The contrast was stark, almost like a black and white photograph. Petra parked the Bronco out of sight on the far side of the barn.
When she popped the door, Sig tumbled out. He retched twice in the dirt and looked miserably up at her, snorkeling back a string of drool.
“I’m sorry.” Petra squatted and rubbed his back, cooing at him. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
She hugged the coyote to her chest and looked over the landscape. Sal was gone. The Hanged Men were gone.
The cops might not be able to search for answers, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t.
She rooted around in the Bronco for her gun belt and flashlight while Sig cleared his palate by drinking from a mud puddle.
She stared at the barn, where ravens paced along the eaves. They were quiet, walking slowl
y, watching her with sober indifference. This was where she’d found Gabriel, where Sal had kept Frankie prisoner. It seemed like as good a place to start as any.
“Where’s your master?” she called to them.
One of the ravens cocked his head, but didn’t answer. The gesture was very similar to Gabriel’s mannerisms, a bit mechanical, like a clock run down over time.
They weren’t agitated, not like when she’d found Gabriel passed out on the floor of the barn. Maybe that meant Gabriel and the rest of the Hanged Men were truly gone. But the presence of the ravens might also mean that the Hanged Men were still here, hiding somewhere and biding their time until the ruckus cleared out.
She pulled the Locus from her pocket, oriented the compass to north. She licked her lips and rubbed at the paper cut she’d given herself back at the trailer. She picked at the wound, summoning a reluctant drop of blood that splashed into the groove of the Locus. The blood spiraled lazily around the circle, then stopped due west, directly at the barn.
Petra climbed to her feet, mindful not to spill the blood. She put one foot in front of the other, keeping an eye on the Locus.
Sig make a quizzical noise.
“Yeah, well. I’m not entirely buying this, either.” She tried to sound more certain than she felt. “We’re going to find Gabriel.”
She walked into the cold shadow of the barn, sweeping her flashlight beam before her. The light wrung suggestions of movement from the farm equipment, stretching crazed shadows of cages and metal spines. Broken glass from a shattered liquor bottle crunched underfoot, and she smelled soft straw and sharp gasoline. Sig snuffled along the ground in front of her, snooting vigorously among the tools and bags of fertilizer. Something made him sneeze.
She shined the light on the Locus. The drop of blood wobbled, moved, leading her farther into the barn. The bead led her to a dusty corner, to a pile of scrap wood and metal.
