Mercury Retrograde (20 page)

“Mother . . .”

Luminous yellow eyes appeared in the darkness.

Bel laid Dallas down on the stone ground before her. Dallas had stopped breathing. “Mother, please give your blessings to this woman who has faithfully followed your will.”

She knelt, her slick hands on the dirty floor of the cave, breathing hard. She knew she smelled of fresh blood, that she was little more than faithful food in the eyes of the Mother.

The yellow eyes peered over Dallas. Scales scraped in the dimness.

The basilisk slid over Dallas's chest and peered into her face. She turned to look at Bel.

“We will protect you, Great Mother. I promise. No matter what the cost.”

The basilisk approached Bel. She held very, very still, not even daring to breathe. The snake slid over her shoulder. She was heavy, heavy and muscular and warm as she slid behind Bel's shoulders. The snake rested her head on Bel's shoulder, the tail curling around her waist. Bel could feel every exquisite twitch of scale and bone as she moved, sinuously. Her tongue flickered in Bel's hair, tasting, curious.

Bel was willing to be weighed. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she knew that the Great Mother could feel it. Energy hummed along her spine, and she gasped when she felt the Mother's energy trickling down her back, mingling with her own as it uncoiled.

She caught images that must have come from the Mother's mind. They felt as clear as if she'd experienced them herself, each sensation and color. She sensed the Mother in her true home in the spirit world, a temple in a field. Supplicants came infrequently, but no one threatened her. She hunted, she slept, she napped in beautifully-­manicured gardens. A favorite pastime was crawling to the stone roof of the temple and soaking in the sunshine. A priestess would make a fire for her at night, and she would sleep curled around it. Her priestesses would bring her flowers and food, and she would bestow upon them great protection and healing magic.

But someone came looking for her. It was a man, more than a century ago. He came with a crystal to trap her, sneaking into her temple. Once he was discovered, the Mother's priestesses fought hard, but he was a powerful alchemist. Enraged, the Mother chased him. But the alchemist tricked her, causing her to fall through a portal to the physical world. The vessel she was given to inhabit was an ordinary rattlesnake. That was the shape the alchemist had chosen for her, a shape that he thought he could control.

The Mother would not be controlled. She was a powerful spirit, and the body she wore changed, grew too large for its physical cage. She grew the crown on her head to show that she was not to be trifled with, and refused to allow her neck to touch the ground. Venom boiled through her, growing stronger and more powerful. She took up residence in the alchemist's fireplace, determined to find a way to escape.

The alchemist had wanted the Great Mother to act as a guard dog, to spit in the drinks of his enemies. The Great Mother, bearing no great affection for the alchemist, ignored his requests. She killed his servants and destroyed many of his experiments. She would climb out on his metal roof and sun herself, as it reminded her of the temple she'd left behind. The alchemist was furious at her being any place she could be seen.

The alchemist had a mistress, the madam of the bordello in town. Her love for him had been poisoned by his avarice, and she had grown to despise him. Once, she had been charmed by his party tricks and pretty declarations of love. But the mistress had seen what power had done to him, and she was plotting a way to flee. She was with his child, and she had vowed never to raise a man like him.

The mistress felt some sympathy for the Mother. One evening, the mistress left the alchemist's house after a night of particularly brutal ardor. The Mother had slid down the chimney of the fireplace, watching the woman in the darkness as she crept to the door, shoes in hand.

The Mother and the mistress understood each other. They regarded each other in that moment, silently. The mistress crossed the tiled floor of the fireplace, gathered the Mother into her arms. She took the Mother with her, back to the bordello. She and the six prostitutes who lived there intended to take the next train out, heading to San Francisco, in the hopes of finding greener pastures.

The alchemist awakened alone in the night, finding both his mistress and his guardian missing. He took his most loyal men with him, and they laid siege to the bordello. The mistress and her women hid beneath the beds with the Mother, waiting for the glass to stop breaking and the hot lead to cool.

But the alchemist was determined to make an example of the mistress and the others. He set fire to the brothel. The Mother saw to it that the mistress and the other women escaped, and she turned on her old master.

The alchemist was ready for her. He trapped her in a lead-­lined box and hauled her out to the wilderness, intending to bury her. The Great Serpent broke the box open, and she and the alchemist fought for three days. He fought her with fire and magical weapons and sheer stubbornness. Eventually, the Great Mother had no choice but to retreat. She sought someplace warm, and she slipped beneath the ground. She found a place, far, far underground, where she could feel the heat of the caldera. And she slept. The Mother had dreamed while she slept—­dreams of the world turning in fire, liquid heat. She grew, shedding skin after skin, in that darkness.

But something had disturbed her. The rock had shifted, waking her and collapsing the tiny pocket she'd called home.

And now . . . all she wanted was a new one. Someplace that she would be safe, away from threats. She wanted warmth, a full belly, and the feel of sunshine on her skin. Someplace she wouldn't have to hide.

Home,
the basilisk thought, her voice bright and piercing in Bel's head.

Tears slipped down Bel's cheeks. This was the most sublime sensation she'd ever experienced, this communion with the goddess.

I will give it to you
, Bel promised.
I will give you a home.

 

“W
hat happened to Sal?”

Petra persisted, as Gabe knew she would. She would not let this go, would not allow him to protect her from any bit of knowledge, no matter how gruesome. Still, he hesitated.

“Sal's dead, isn't he?” There was no judgment or horror in her voice.

“It doesn't matter, anymore.”

“What did he do to you?” Her fingers brushed his sleeve. There was so much tenderness and sympathy in that gesture that he cracked.

“He burned the Lunaria.”

Her breath sucked in, audibly. “Oh, my God.”

“We don't have much time to get the basilisk's blood. If there's still some life in the roots—­maybe it will help, if not . . . we have perhaps two, three days.”

Petra's fingers had wound in his sleeve. He removed his hand from the steering wheel and twined his fingers with hers.

“We will find it,” she said, with what seemed like a deep well of certainty.

He felt the shadows of a great many things, now: worry, anger, even the ghost of love. But not certainty.

Getting into the park proved much more difficult than the last time. The east entrance was blockaded with sawhorses and Highway Patrol cars. A caravan of camouflaged trucks with U.S. government plates had stopped before the checkpoint and was being waved through one by one. Gabe made a U-­turn and went back the way they'd come. They turned off on a forest road.

“Mike said the park's closed due to ‘seismic anomalies.' ” Petra made air quotes around the words.

“I'm sure that's not deterring anyone who's serious about chasing the basilisk. The military's crawling out here.” The forest road became a dirt road, then vanished. In the jump seat behind them, Sig made retching noises. Petra reached back to pull him up to the front.

“It's okay,” Gabe said. “It's Sal's truck, after all.” Funny how the idea of some coyote barf in Sal's pristine truck cheered him a bit.

They stopped in a field for Petra to provide directions. She climbed out of the truck and walked a good hundred yards away from them. This many Hanged Men would likely screw up the Locus's perception of magic; there was no way to calibrate it to “serpent” and exclude “undead.” Back in the heyday of Temperance, when Gabe had used it himself, the magnitude of magic seemed to screw with its detection abilities. If there was something stronger than the Hanged Men here, it would likely pick it up.

That wouldn't be hard; the basilisk was much stronger than they were. He didn't want to admit it to Petra, but he felt the loss of the tree deeply; he knew that all of the Hanged Men did. He felt sluggish, dull, as if he were interacting with the world from under a bucket. His shoulder clicked metallically when he moved it, and he couldn't feel his right foot; it had fallen asleep on the gas pedal several times on the way over. The Hanged Men in the back sat slack, like puppets, barely keeping the guns behind their feet from clunking around in the bed of the truck. Things were not good. And he expected them to get much worse.

Ahead, Petra gestured broadly, pointing north.

They gathered the gear and followed her. She held a flashlight in her hand, shining it on the compass, the only light. Gabe didn't like her walking so far ahead, but there was nothing to be done for it. Her star moved steadily ahead over the landscape, with the coyote orbiting around her. The Hanged Men, the ones still able to hold a rifle steadily, swept their scopes over the dark land, watching for anything that might pop out of the wilderness.

They plodded that way for hours, winding through grassland and scrub forests, tracking a creek along a valley. Gabe remembered it—­Raven Creek. The creek drained away to a stream, then to mud. As they forded it, the water felt curiously warm. Stream water should be cold, but something was polluting it. Gabe cupped a bit of water in his hand and smelled sulfur.

In the distance, Gabe could see firelight. The star moving ahead halted, then went out. Gabe and his men could still see well enough, and they caught up with Petra within moments.

“Did you lose the trail?” he asked Petra.

She shook her head. She held the Venificus Locus in both her hands, staring at it. A bead of blood spiraled in circles at high speed around the rim. A bit of her blood trickled down her hand to her arm.

Gabe touched her wrist.

“I'm okay. It's just . . . really thirsty.” She frowned. She rubbed the blood away on the hip of her pants. “It was leading me there . . .” She pointed at the light. “But then it just went nuts. I don't think it's entirely you guys. I think the basilisk has to be up there . . . and if there's fire, then there are ­people. And they're in danger.”

Gabe squinted at the distant gleam. He took a deep breath. With effort, he concentrated on the feeling of air on wings. A black lump formed beneath his shirt, clawed its way up his collar, onto his shoulder.

It was a raven, albeit a sad one. It had only one good eye and was missing feathers on one wing. But it could still fly. He sent it up, flying low, skimming toward the firelight.

He had to keep above the trees; he had no depth perception, and couldn't risk crushing the bird's body against a branch. From his good eye, he could see the glitter of firelight on mud, where the creek formed an oxbow on itself, and the figures of ­people.

He swept lower. There were women and motorcycles, and he could smell oil and blood and magic gone stale. In the mud, he could see bodies, lying facedown. One of them was out of the mud, but it was unmoving, with a woman standing over it. No telling if that one was alive or dead.

This couldn't be good.

He winged up, up and over into the night, to rejoin his body.

The raven misjudged the descent in the dark; he was not a nocturnal creature. He careened through a cloud of bats hunting for mosquitoes, missed his target, and swept back for another try.

Petra switched on a flashlight, and he could see better. The raven, all feathers and skidding claws, tried to perch on Gabe's shoulder. He wobbled, and Gabe reached up to grasp him. He melted into the rest of his human flesh, in a slow, lumpy way, like tar melting down his sleeve.

“What did you see?” Petra asked quietly.

“There are campers there. And it seems the snake has been at work. I counted five bodies. There may be more. There's magic, but I'm not smelling the venom.”

“We have to get them out of there.”

“They're not running. Monster hunters of some kind, I'd bet.”

Petra frowned. “Hopefully, we won't have to fight through them to get to the snake. If they have seen what it can do, and haven't run . . . they must be determined.”

“So are we.”

P
etra wasn't sure the Hanged Men were going to make it.

She didn't say so, of course. When they shambled across the fields, they stumbled in a disconnected way, as if many of them were trying to walk with one foot in this world and one in the afterlife. Their eyes burned even more oddly than usual. Instead of fireflies, Gabe's eyes resembled light reflected in a mirror. She didn't say anything, did her best not to stare. But she could see that something was winding down in them, and she needed to stop it.

She prepared for the confrontation with the basilisk. As the others checked their guns and unpacked the spears, she opened her garbage bag of fiberglass. In this weak moonlight, it looked like cotton candy. She dreaded handling it, the itching of glass splinters, and donned a pair of aluminized welder's gloves. The fiberglass had been separated and cut into pieces. She pulled the part cut like a tunic over her head and set about lashing other scraps to her clothes with duct tape.

“What on Earth are you doing?”

Gabe was watching her, head cocked like one of her birds.

“It's fiberglass. Impervious to acid. I mean . . . it
is
porous. So I wouldn't survive a dip in a puddle with it, but it's good for casual contact.” She offered him a chunk, feeling like a kid offering an adult some cotton candy. “Want some?”

He shook his head. “I think . . . you should keep on wrapping yourself in that stuff.”

She shrugged and continued suiting up. When she was done, her arms, legs, and torso were covered in itchy pink fiberglass.

Sig looked bewildered.

“Come here.”

She grabbed Sig by the collar and looped the fiberglass around his body. She did her best to keep the brown paper side close to his fur. She then set about trying to seal it shut with duct tape while the coyote tried to squirm away, whining piteously.

Gabe watched, and she swore that his shoulders were shaking in laughter.

“Gabe. Either help hold him or quit snickering.”

Gabe held the coyote while she succeeded in sticking duct tape to his fur. When she was finished, it looked like she had a coyote dressed in a pink poodle suit. He glowered at her, clearly resenting the loss of the last bit of street cred he owned.

“Hey. You insisted on coming.”

He promptly flopped on the ground and tried to tear it off.

“Sig.” She didn't have time for this.

She grabbed him one last time and wrapped a piece of welding blanket around him like a cape. The hardware store only had this one, small sample. She wrapped it around his head and fastened it into his collar with the duct tape.

“There. Now you look like a Jedi.”

This seemed to be acceptable. Sig snorted.

The Hanged Men were on the move, starting toward the light.

She shoved a respirator on her face and slapped a fiberglass welder's helmet on her head. It wasn't perfect protection against acid, but she hoped she wouldn't have to get too close.

She squinted and pulled the helmet's face shield up. It was hard to see through the clear window of the helmet—­it had an auto-­darkening feature that made sense for welders, but was pretty useless walking around the wilderness at night. She flipped it down again and squinted at the fire. She could still see it from a distance. Maybe it would work.

She slung the potato gun under her arm, her gun belt over her shoulder, and picked up the bottles full of lye.

“I'm ready to party, Sig.”

Sig growled, his cape flowing behind him.

She trotted behind the Hanged Men, feeling a bit like she did that one time in college when she went to a Halloween party, and she was the only one in costume. That time, she'd gone dressed as Ripley from
Aliens
, with a papier-­mâché alien queen glued to one shoulder and a spray-­painted Super Soaker gun slung over on the other. This was infinitely more practical, she told herself. Not nearly as badass. But more practical.

But something was off. A flock of sparrows exploded from a tree about a quarter mile away, bursting into noise as if someone had shot at them. Sig whined, keeping close to Petra's legs, his tail slapping her pink-­clad legs.

They were crossing a creek, and the water seemed to hesitate in its flow.

“Guys,” Petra hissed. “I think a seismic anomaly is happening.”

“What do you mean?” Gabe asked, as she tiptoed over rocks, mindful not to get the fiberglass soggy.

“Earthquake. I think a quake is coming. Well, that's what I'd think under normal circumstances. It's possible that the snake's presence is creeping out the wildlife, as well.”

Frogs began to bounce out of the stream to the banks.

“When?”

“Don't know. Could be minutes or hours.” She craned her head to the horizon.

“We need to get to the basilisk.”

They reached the clearing, a shallow hillock before the creek turned into a muddy oxbow. The firelight haloed the silhouettes of women above.

Gabe stepped into the touch of the light. He'd slung his spears and rifles over his shoulder and raised his empty hands. “Hello.”

The rest of the Hanged Men lingered out of sight, behind the tree line. Petra could see a lot of machines . . . ATVs, motorcycles. Nice ones, at that. Seemed like more machines than ­people.

Two women advanced about twelve feet. Petra could see blades glittering in their fists, lowered by their hips.

“What do you want?” one of them, a willowy blond, asked. Her motorcycle leathers were streaked with mud.

Gabe paused, and Petra could see him weighing what to say as his shoulders shifted. “I heard a noise. I thought someone needed help.”

Petra held her breath. He was playing it cool. Given that the women were armed, maybe that would put them at ease.

Or not.

The blond woman took two more steps toward him, limping, extending the knife at arm's length. “Look, mister. It's been a long night. I'm going to do you a favor. You have exactly one chance to turn around, go back, and go have a drink someplace other than here.”

He cocked his head. “I can't do that, ma'am.”

“Then we have a problem.”

The blond woman limped down the slope to Gabe, blades flashing in her fists. The other woman was not far behind.

The Hanged Men began to detach from the shadows, their eyes glowing, moving into the firelight. This didn't stop the women—­they barely broke stride as they called an alarm to the others.

The blond woman limped to Gabe. He tried to sidestep her, but she was still fast. She looked him full in the face and plunged a knife into his chest. She stood back, panting, clearly thinking the job was done.

Petra muffled a squeak. With the tree dying, would the Hanged Men be vulnerable? Would they succumb to such mundane things as knives and bullets, now?

The blond woman seemed to expect Gabe to fall neatly in a pile on the grass, but he remained standing. He twisted the knife out of his chest and threw it away.

The woman stood her ground, slashing at him with her other knife.

Enough of this dumb-­ass, misplaced chivalry. Petra drew her pistol, aimed, and shot at her. The bullet caught her shoulder, spun her around, and she tripped. She landed on the ground in a tangle of bootlaces, still growling and swinging.