Dark Alchemy (20 page)

And found him.

The Lunaria hadn't entirely released him. He dangled like a half-­split milkweed pod trailing its contents along the floor, leaking strings of light from one arm. His head was bent back at a broken angle. His fingers twitched and jerked in the blackness. Roots reached down to comfort him, to pet him. He made a low keening noise that made Sig back up and growl.

Gabe reached up, took his head in his hands, pried open the eyelids. Jeff's eyes were unevenly dilated, one iris entirely black in the socket and tearing gold.

“Is he—­?” Petra asked.

Gabe's mouth was dry. “The Lunaria isn't strong enough to restore him. Maybe it could have, years ago, but now . . .” It was no use thinking of what could have been.

“We should take him to a hospital. Maybe someone can fix him.”

He shook his head. “They won't be able to.”

“We have to try.”

“And I told you that we might have to put him down.”

Color rose in her cheeks. “You say that as if he's a—­a lame horse.”

“I say that because he's not alive. Not anymore. And there's no use trying to preserve it, condemn what's left to a half-­life of pain.” Gabe found a broken piece of tree root on the floor of the chamber. He snapped it in half, revealing a sharp, jagged edge.

Petra watched him with round eyes as he advanced on Jeff. He put his hand over Jeff's eyes. Petra looked away.

And Gabe slammed the makeshift stake up under Jeff's rib cage.

Jeff's keening stopped, as if someone had shut off a switch deep within his chest. Cold light ran up over Gabe's knuckles, soaked his sleeve. Golden fluid gushed out from behind Jeff's ruined chest, tapping out on the floor like rain.

Slowly, the Lunaria released him. The tree roots set him down gently on the floor of the chamber, with reverence. Its roots slithered away, the fingers of a lover reluctant to leave her beloved's bed.

The glowing light faded, leaving the body dark on the floor. Whatever remained of Jeff was well and truly dead.

“We'll bury him. It won't be much, but I'll see that he gets a nice view.” Gabe stared down at the body. Petra's coyote sniffed it and backed away.

Petra stepped beside him. He could hear her shallow breathing in this enclosed space, like a rabbit in a trap. Tentatively, she put her warm hand on his elbow. “I think . . . I think I'm ready to go.”

Gabe nodded, led her away from the body without comment. The tree roots parted above him to yield a trapdoor. He pushed it open, revealing the pale light of true dawn, not the artificial light of the world below. He knelt and laced his fingers together before her. Petra stepped into his grip, fingers lingering on his shoulder.

Gabriel tossed her up as if she weighed no more than a stone. Petra landed on her hands and knees on the grass outside the passage.

He reached for the coyote, who looked at him suspiciously. Petra whistled from above. Sig consented to being picked up and handed through the opening.

Gabriel startled her when he leapt up through the opening to land on the grass beside her. He hadn't meant to alarm her with his unusual strength and speed, but there was no point hiding from her now. She spun around in the pink light of dawn, her salt-­brittle hair lashing her face.

She was beautiful.

Gabriel put his hands in his pockets, put his head down.

“Are you immune to it?” she asked.

“To what?” There were so many ways he could answer that. Immune to loneliness? Time? Despair? The way she bit her lip?

“To life. You took Jeff's so quickly . . .” She stifled a shudder; he could see it in the way she wrapped her arms around herself. “I keep fucking up. I keep bringing chaos and disaster behind me. I'm responsible for the death of the man I loved.” She wiped her nose, and her breath shook.

“No.” He reached out, shoved her hair away from her face, turned her chin to face him. “You have the most precious gift the universe can bestow. You have life. Real life. Not some simulacrum of it. Do you have any idea how much that's worth? Jeff had none of that. He was just a shell.”

“You don't understand. It's been more than a hundred years since you were human.” Her brown eyes were leaden.

“You don't think I thought about ending it? I did. Many times.”

“What stopped you?” Curiosity crawled into her voice.

“I wasn't the only one. There were other Hanged Men. They needed me.”

“I'm not as strong-­willed as you.”

“You don't have to be. You just have to be what you are—­a scientist. And keep on being that.”

He had no idea what she'd do when she left; she could keep his secrets or spill them to the entire world. He willingly gave her that power over him and the Hanged Men, to do with as she wished.

She gave him a wan smile and walked away. Walked into the rose-­gold dawn and Gabe's uncertainty.

But that bit of uncertainty made him feel alive.

 

Chapter Nineteen

The Athanor

S
troud was in a bad way.

Cal stood in the Alchemist's basement, clutching a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Stroud lay on one of his experiment tables, surrounded by jars and stained rags. He was propped half-­up with a pair of mildewy bed pillows, shirtless, digging at the wound in his lower right ribs with a pair of forceps that Cal had just sterilized in the furnace. A gooseneck clip-­on lamp illuminated his work in a hot circle of light, with a rearview mirror from a car allowing Stroud to get a better view of the wound. Not that this was the only one. Bits of birdshot peppered Stroud's arms, but Cal wasn't mentioning those. Stroud's creepy mercury intermittently spat out bits of it onto the floor. What remained of it in Stroud's flesh was not worth picking at now.

But the cop's bullet, that was serious shit. Sweat glossed Stroud's forehead as he grunted and worked at the wound, which began to soak blood through the rags that Cal had placed beside him to staunch the flow. Stroud's sweat was metallic in the light, seeming to bead and run together in crazed frost patterns on the surface of his skin.

Cal didn't want to touch him. Blood made him dizzy.

But he did as he was told.

“Can you see the bullet?” Stroud hissed.

Cal knelt and squinted. “Yeah. I think so. But it's hard to tell, on account of the blood.”

The forceps fell out of Stroud's grip and clattered to the floor. Cal rushed to scoop them up and sterilize them again in the fire. When he brought them back, the tips glowed red. He offered the cool handles to Stroud.

Stroud shook his head. A runnel of mercury dripped down his pale lip. “You do it.”

Cal swallowed. “I'm not a doctor.”

“Play one on TV. I can't see the damn thing.”

Cal screwed up his resolve. On one hand, he was flattered to be the only one Stroud would allow to tend to him, despite his many fuck-­ups over the past week. On the other hand, if he fucked this up, Stroud would kill him. That was, if Stroud survived. If not, the others would.

It was a no-­win. Cal grasped the handles of the forceps and stared into the wound. He mopped at it with a rag, stalling for time. The wound itself was really small, about the size of a dime, but the blood kept obscuring the surface. A bit of mercury kept welling up to gnaw at it, but it wasn't strong enough to push it out.

Stroud was losing a lot of blood. Cal flicked a glance to the trash can full of soaked cloth. He wouldn't be able to stay conscious much longer.

“Just do it.”

Cal put the flat of his hand gingerly on Stroud's belly, trying to keep the mouth of the wound from moving when the Alchemist breathed. He touched the tongs to the wound, and Stroud hissed, clutching the edge of the table.

“Do it!”

Cal reached in. He could see something shiny inside, dug into it hard with the tongs. The thing was slippery, twisted, twitching.

Stroud screamed as Cal worked. Cal finally succeeded in getting the tips of the forceps around the bullet and yanked it out.

He staggered back, holding a warped piece of metal stuck to a piece of flesh in the grip of the instrument. Nauseated, he dropped the forceps and the bullet to the floor. His hands shook.

“Good.” A silver tear leaked from Stroud's eye. “Now heat that bottle of mercury in the athanor.”

Cal looked at him blankly.

“In the furnace,” he said gently, eyes glazed. “It's called an athanor. The crucible where all purity is forged.” He pressed a rag to his leaking side. He began to babble: “Paracelsus said, ‘By the element of fire all that is imperfect is destroyed and taken away . . .' ”

Cal grabbed the pair of tongs, grateful to have something to do that didn't involve gore. He fitted them around the neck of the mason jar of mercury, held it over the flame.

“Heat it until it boils.”

Cal concentrated very hard on not dropping the jar. “Are . . . are you going to be okay, now?”

Stroud took a slug out of a vodka bottle. Cal noticed that Stroud never used drugs. And he wondered why, but never would ask.

“I think so.” Stroud's gaze fixed him, then wobbled. “Thank you.”

Cal squirmed. “It was nothing.”

The Alchemist stared up at the ceiling. “Justin tells me that you found a body. On the Rutherford ranch.”

Cal swallowed. “Yeah. I think . . . I think it was Emmett. It was wearing his watch.”

“How did you find it?”

Shit. Shit. Shit.
There was no use lying to him, even in his drunk and weakened and sort of poetic state. The Alchemist always found out. “I asked Petra to help me. I figured that if she was a geologist, she could find where that body the guy in the bar was talking about . . .” He trailed off, stared into the steaming jar.

Silence hung between them.

Shit.

“I thought I'd try to use her, you know?” Cal concentrated on not dropping the jar. “I didn't realize . . .”

“You may have opened a door that I can use,” Stroud said finally. Sweat prickled on the back of Cal's neck. That didn't sound good.

“She said that she was looking for her father. Maybe that's why she's with Rutherford's guys.” That sounded good. Like he had been out spying for Stroud and bringing back useful information. Still on the home team and shit.

Stroud shook his head. “They wouldn't know.
I
know.”

Cal looked over his shoulder. “You do?”

“Our paths crossed many years ago. He and I had . . . similar goals.” Stroud's gaze was distant and misty, as if he was remembering something. Or getting really drunk. Cal couldn't tell.

“He was an alchemist?”

“Yes. I worked with him for a time.”

Cal noticed that the mercury in the jar was bubbling. He drew it away from the flame with the tongs and walked slowly to Stroud, careful not to spill any.

“Set it here.” Stroud pointed to a vacant spot on the table.

“Was he like you? I mean, was he good?”

Stroud smiled. “He was good. Still is.” Stroud pulled on a welder's glove and grasped the jar. He poised the jar over the wound, drizzled hot mercury into it. He cried out and growled, the welder's glove shaking. Drops of mercury slid off the table and rolled away on the floor. Mercury pooled within the wound, turning black as it roiled.

Stroud set the jar aside and lay back on the table, panting. Cal got him a cool cloth from a bucket and wiped his brow.

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

But he didn't look okay. Veins of mercury crept out from the wound, black under his skin. It was as if a living thing dug beneath his flesh, worming under the surface.

“I want you to do something for me, Cal,” he said. He grasped Cal's collar, drew him close. The old man's breath smelled like sour vodka and metal.

“Sure. Anything.”

“I want you to find Petra. Tell her that I know where her father is. I'll trade the artifact for the information. Bring her here, and we'll make the trade.”

Cal licked his lips. There was no defying the Alchemist. “Yessir.”

“Good man.” Stroud reached up to ruffle Cal's hair. “I can always count on you. You're my number one foot soldier.”

Cal suppressed a shudder as a cataract of mercury slid over Stroud's eye.

P
etra sat next to Mike at Bear's deli, picking at her sandwich and thinking about how much to tell him as he conducted his fishing expedition.

“So, you gonna tell me how Stroud wound up in the trunk of his car?” Mike asked around mouthfuls of pastrami sandwich.

“I told you. That wasn't my call.” Petra looked behind the counter. Bear was feeding Sig leftover bits of meat from butcher paper in a major health code violation and cooing to the coyote in a voice that seemed entirely inappropriate for such a big man. Sig wriggled in pleasure, staring up at Bear adoringly. Petra was beginning to think that Sig would go home with him.

“Whose idea was it?”

“It was Gabe's. He said Stroud was dangerous. And I kind of agreed with that assessment.”

Mike sipped his coffee. “The deputy he attacked was babbling about a man in silver armor. The ER thought that Stroud might have choked the oxygen from his brain and caused one hell of a hallucination.”

“Maybe,” she said uncertainly. “But Stroud didn't look normal. He was leaking what looked like mercury. And Gabe . . .” She trailed off.

“You gonna tell me what one of Sal's men was doing at your place?” Mike turned his coffee cup around to inspect the Styrofoam.

“I asked him for help finding my father.” Petra didn't like lying outright; half-­truths were easier. She intended on telling Mike a version of events that was similar to what she told the sheriff's deputies: She was minding her own business when Stroud and the boys showed up looking for trouble for no good reason. The sheriff's office seemed to accept that Stroud's ­people were in the wrong and wanted little from her except a statement. Mike wouldn't be shaken off so easily, but she'd try. She changed the subject. “How's Justin?”

Mike shook his head. “Justin, the weasel, stayed long enough to demand about a gallon of green Jell-­O, then split. He went out the damned window when his assigned county guard was reading the paper in the hallway.”

“What about Stroud?”

“None of the hospitals within two hours' drive have reported any gunshot wounds. Between getting hit by Maria and the deputy, he's in a world of hurt. I don't look for him to survive beyond . . .”

He looked past her, through the window to the street, and began to slide off the stool.

“What's wrong?”

Mike gestured with his chin. “There's Justin.”

Petra followed Mike's line of sight, saw Justin crossing the street and slinking into the Compostela.

“Stay here,” Mike said. He was on his feet and banging through the door of the deli. The cowbell rattled like an alarm.

Petra was right behind him, whistling for Sig. “Not a chance.”

She rushed across the street to the ornate door of the Compostela. She tugged it open, reaching for the gun at her right hip. The bar denizens had fallen silent as a congregation at mass, turning their gazes toward Mike charging across the polished floor.

“The tweaker,” he demanded of a woman stacking glasses behind the bar. “Where is he?”

The waitress lifted her hands. “I don't want any trouble in here.”

Mike slapped his hands on the bar. “He's wanted for attempted burglary and assault with a deadly weapon. You tryin' to get in my way?”

The waitress pointed to the men's room. “In there.”

Mike straight-­armed into the men's room, and the door struck the wall with a sound like a gunshot. Fluorescent light flickered overhead, illuminating Justin leaning over a sink with a glass pipe.

“Drop it,” Mike ordered.

Justin sucked air from the pipe, held it in his lungs, and released it in a curling ghost of smoke that passed over his black eye.

Petra wrinkled her nose as the smoke drifted in her direction. It was unlike anything she'd ever smelled before: acrid and sweet at the same time. Like drain cleaner and roses.

Mike snatched the pipe from Justin, who was suddenly unsteady on his feet. “What's this? Meth?”

Justin's hands balled into fists, and his eyes were dilated so black that she couldn't tell the true color of his eyes. He shook his head. “Elixir.” The corners of his split lip turned upward in an expression of sublime love. He slid from his perch on the edge of the sink and oozed down to the floor.

“Great,” Mike mumbled, shaking the contents of the pipe. White crystals and a rim of liquid lay in the bottom, producing a Jack-­Frost pattern on the interior. “A brand new drug.”

“Well, it doesn't seem to be making him violent, at least.” In her few interactions with Justin, she'd known him to be fueled entirely by testosterone. Whatever the Elixir was, it was making him pretty damn agreeable.

The young man sat half-­upright on the broken tile floor, looking at his battered hands in his lap.

Mike bent down. “Where'd you get this?”

“From the Alchemist.” Justin looked up at him in an expression of utter peace and contentment. Petra had only seen that look on the faces of certain orders of nuns. He lifted his hands, stared at them in fascination. Maybe he was having a hallucination or was contemplating why his left pinky finger was turned in the wrong direction and an ugly shade of purple.

Maybe not.

His fingers splayed open, stretched, twisted. A splinter of bone pierced the skin on the back of his hand, dripping a runnel of blood down his wrist. His fingers turned back, freezing into claws.

“Jesus Christ,” Mike whispered, reaching for his radio.

Justin's preternatural calm broke. “What's happening to me?” he whispered.

The paleness crept up his arms, like venom. Petra could see his skin stretching, hardening, breaking. Blood leaked to his elbows. His radius and ulna turned backward, and he began to scream.

“ . . . Need the squad at the Compostela, right now,” Mike was shouting into his radio.

Petra held Justin's shoulders, horrified as the calcination began to crackle under the sleeves of his T-­shirt, bending and twisting redly under the cotton. It was like there was some terrible beast inside him, struggling to get out.

“Just breathe,” she told him, because that was the most important thing, and she didn't know what else to tell him. He needed to keep doing that. “
Breathe.
”

Justin twisted out of her grip, scrambled to his feet, and ran out of the men's room.

“Stop him!” Mike yelled.

Petra and Mike chased him through the bar, the patrons stunned to silence by his screams. Justin bounced off a pew like a pinball, crashed into a table, shattering glassware. He ran through the dimness of the bar, instinctively heading like a moth to the light of the outside.