Mercury Retrograde (9 page)

“Tomorrow morning. Bright and early.”

After getting all the sign-­offs she needed to delay her other work, Petra wound her way out of the park to get a jump start on provisioning. She spent another two hours in traffic getting out to the main road, and she took the back roads to Temperance.

The idea of following the snake made her, at turns, queasy and exhilarated. To see something like that in person would be nothing short of amazing. But she'd seen what the snake had done to the campers. Petra had always tried to follow the rules where wild animals were concerned—­she stayed the required twenty-­five feet away from bison and all the other critters in the park. She didn't leave food in her truck to tempt bears, and she always took her trash with her. With the exception of Sig, she wasn't interested in creating a situation in which personal space needed to be negotiated.

“What do you pack to hunt a giant snake?” she wondered as she drifted through the aisles of Bear's Gas 'n Go, Temperance's gas station and deli. Sig had ditched her back at the deli counter, where Bear was feeding him slices of pepperoni in violation of every health code known to man.

“I dunno,” Bear said. “But giant snakes are excellent for business.”

“No kidding. How'd you get all this swag, this fast?”

“One-­day shipping from the Internet. If you want it bad enough to pay for it, anything can be on your doorstep in a day.”

Shelves had been cleared in many places, sold out of toilet paper and potato chips. One of the reels of lottery tickets was even gone. Bear had jumped on the snake bandwagon with both feet—­he had a display of primary-­color plush snakes parked in the window, plastic writhing pythons perched on an end cap, and snake-­shaped pens in a mug at the checkout. Couldn't blame the man for trying to make a buck off the gullible.

“I suggest staying the hell away from it. If it really exists,” he amended, scratching his salt and pepper beard.

“I kinda signed on for an expedition.” Thinking of the dead campers, she was beginning to feel twinges of regret.

Bear chortled. “Well, your odds are probably better than those of the rest of the monster hunters. For one, you're sober.”

“Yeah.” She wasn't going to mention the Venificus Locus. “I was wondering if . . . you might be able to watch Sig for me while I'm gone? No worries if you can't . . .” She could always drop him off at Maria's, but she knew that Sig adored Bear's cooking.

Bear patted Sig's head. “Of course, I'll watch the little guy. But . . . is this that serious?”

She made a face. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

“So what they said on the news is true.” His face darkened, and his gaze lingered on the brightly-­colored snake paraphernalia.

“And more.” Petra crouched down before Sig. “And I don't want this fella to get hurt.”

“He can stay with me until you get back. And I'll make sandwiches for you to take with.”

Bear disappeared behind the counter, and Petra looked Sig square in the eye.

“You have to stay with Bear for a ­couple of days, okay? It's not safe.” She didn't want to imagine Sig as a mottled corpse—­he was the dearest creature on Earth to her. She had to protect him. She'd lost everything: her father, Des, and Gabe. And now, Cal. She couldn't bear to lose him, too. She felt her eyes tearing up.

Sig held her gaze for a long, solemn moment. Then, he leaned forward and licked her nose.

She laughed out loud.

Still, when she left the store with a sack balanced on her hip, she looked back. Sig stood inside the door with his paws on the glass, watching her as she put the bag in the Bronco and climbed inside. She felt like she was leaving a dog behind at the animal shelter.

He'll be okay,
she told herself as she stabbed the key in the ignition.
He has Bear. And all the lunch meat he can eat.

She cranked the engine over and put the truck in gear. She backed out of the parking spot and into the street . . .

. . . when the cow bells at the door jangled and a grey blur launched through the open passenger window. Sig sprawled across the bench seat, scrambling for purchase in a flurry of fur and toenails.

“Sig!” she shouted.

Bear was puffing across the parking lot. “Sorry! He opened the door on his own and . . .” Bear rested his hands on the open window and stared at Sig, who had settled down on the passenger seat. “ . . . I guess he's going with you.”

 

“W
here are we going?”

The young man, Cal, sat beside the remains of the fire as the women raked it out. He blinked in the sunshine, radiating confusion about how he got here and what was next, as the bags were being packed, tires checked, and the canteens passed around. Bel didn't bother to tell him that he'd slept for a solid twenty-­four hours. Hypnosis did that, sometimes, to her subjects. Bel had been eager to break camp, but she knew that she couldn't rush the process.

“I mean, I am going with you, aren't I?” There was a mixture of hope and dread in his voice.

“Yes,” Bel said. “You're coming with us.” She said it gently, but she thought that Cal guessed that he really had no choice in it.

“How did . . . how did you do what you did last night?” He rubbed the back of his neck. He had some color and looked mostly human, now. Maybe he had a hypnosis hangover, but it certainly beat what he'd gotten into before.

“I know magic. And you don't.” She sat down beside him, cross-­legged, with her hands in her lap. “Your reptile brain can control a whole lot more in your body than your autonomic nervous system.”

“Yeah. I don't know anything. The guy that this came from . . .” He looked at the palm of his hand, as if scrutinizing it for traces of the element. “He knew it. The Alchemist.”

He told her, in halting terms, that he'd been the footman of a drug lord, how he'd come across the mercury when the alchemist had died. She brushed the back of his neck with her hand, and she could feel the mercury still there, but sluggish. It wasn't trying to assert dominance. She'd cowed it into submission last night. She'd have to do it again. He wasn't strong enough to do it himself.

And she wondered about that. The mercury was an intriguing thing, when it leapt out of him to attack her. It seemed as if it almost had its own volition, not simply reflecting Cal's own fear as a self-­defense mechanism. It had been in him for some time, had gained traction. The boy's will was weak. His own kundalini energy stayed tightly balled up at the base of his spine, parked in his root chakra like a frightened rodent in a burrow. But perhaps he could be taught to dominate the mercury. Or perhaps she could take it from him and install it in a more worthy vessel. She hadn't yet decided if it was too powerful to waste energy in taming, or if it would be more useful to her wild, in this body or another. The boy could live or he could die, depending, and make a fine sacrifice to the Great Serpent. Time would tell.

“ . . . so it was an accident,” he said, fidgeting. “Yeah. It sounds nuts.”

She shrugged. “No. It doesn't. Trust me, the things I've seen would make this look like a Halloween prank.”

“So . . . Are you guys . . . gals . . . a gang or something?”

She laughed. “Not a gang. We are sisters.”

His gaze roved over the women, who clearly did not physically resemble each other.

“Spiritual sisters,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. But she could tell that he didn't really understand.

“We should get going.” She stood up, brushing off her pants.

“So . . . where are we going?”

“We are going to find the Great Serpent,” she said.

“What's the Great Serpent?” His brow knitted.

“The Great Serpent is the wellspring of power in the world. It's the beginning and the end of time, the source of creativity, rebirth, and protection. She is the Great Mother of Many Names.”

He dodged her gaze and picked at a thread on his sleeve. “Um. Like . . . a real snake?”

She laughed. His naïveté was actually quite charming. “Yes. A real snake.”

He reluctantly followed her to her bike. She found a helmet for him, and they zinged through the woods. Dust kicked up as they crossed the backcountry for nearly three miles before meeting the road again, to even black pavement that rode much easier for a newbie like Cal.

They stopped around midday for food, at a chuck wagon caravan set up at the base of a mountain, a place for tourists with eyes bigger than their stomachs. Cal fell into his plate as if he hadn't eaten in a week, going back for seconds and thirds.

Tria watched him on his fourth trip back to the chuck line tent, where cast iron pots of stew, potatoes, and beans hung over hot coals. They sat at a creaky picnic table, a breeze chewing at their paper towel napkins.

“I don't trust him,” Tria muttered around a mouthful of prime rib.

“No?” Bel chewed an apple thoughtfully.

“I don't believe that story he told. About the alchemist.” She dipped another piece of meat into hollandaise sauce.

“He's got something in him,” Bel said. “Something pretty powerful.”

“Yes, but . . .” Tria shook her head in frustration. “He's sneaky.”

“We don't have to trust him,” Bel told her. “But he needs us to survive. That's enough, as far as his loyalty goes.”

“What if he talks? What if he tells ­people about . . . about us?” Tria waved her hand at the group, ranged over the scattered picnic tables.

Bel could feel her disapproval about telling him about the Sisters of Serpens. She rested her chin on her hand, fixed Tria with a look. “Who would believe him?”

Tria deflated, picked quietly at her food with her fork.

Cal, oblivious, returned to the table to tuck into a plate full of baked potatoes and prime rib.

Bel watched him closely. He didn't have the awareness of a master magician. She was convinced that whatever accident had befallen him, it was not of his own doing. She was certain that he had not told her the whole truth, but that would come later. If it was even relevant at all. She'd been practicing magic since she was a little girl, when she'd been bitten by a rattlesnake. Bel had nearly died, had lain in the forest for two days before her father had found her. In that time of paralysis, of lying in a ditch, looking upward at the sun and moon and feeling the worms and ants move beneath her, she realized what a gift it had been. The Great Mother had blessed her with the gift of life and the gifts of the snake.

She turned her face to the breeze and listened. She could feel the Great Serpent moving, just beyond the edge of the horizon. Sometimes, she covered ground, sliding through the undergrowth like steam. Sometimes, she slept, finding a warm spot where the afternoon sun beat down on rocks, luxuriating in that heat. She was ancient—­Bel could sense the Serpent's memory deep in her bones. The Great Serpent Mother been sleeping, and something had awakened her. Bel couldn't know what it was—­her own ego would like to believe that the snake had awakened just for her and the Sisters of Serpens.

But she knew that was unlikely. A power that massive awoke and slept by her own rhythms, by geologic time and the movement of stars ticking along in the spheres of the heavens. But she was here. In Bel's lifetime. That was all that mattered.

And she would get the Great Serpent's attention, prove herself a worthy follower. She knew that she and the Sisters would be blessed. Once the Serpent saw their devotion, she would share her power with her followers. The Great Serpent Mother would need followers to guard her secret sleeping spots and to bring her sacrifices. They would be useful. Useful, and rewarded.

When Cal had finished stuffing himself like a tick, the Sisters cleared their dishes and headed to the bikes. They'd parked on a gravel flat spot bordering some woods, down the hill and beyond the sight of the chuck wagon camp. Bel hadn't been in the mood to be chatty with the locals about the bikes, and the walk after riding was always welcome. Cal lurched along, blinking.

“How do you feel?” Bel asked him.

“Better.” He gave her a wan smile. “That was really good. Thanks.”

“You're welcome . . .” She broke off, as some motion at the edge of the woods caught her eye. Behind the line of the Sisters' bikes, she could make out three young men, howling and laughing at something on the ground.

Her eyes narrowed. She broke away from Cal and strode up to them, her boots crunching harshly in the pea gravel.

The men were in their twenties, with their T-­shirt-­covered backs turned to her.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. Men in packs were rarely up to anything good.

The men turned, laughing. One of them held a stick, on the end of which dangled a dead snake.

“Check out what Rob found on the road!”

It was a beautiful snake—­a rattler, with a pale belly and diamonds working up and down its four-­foot long back.

Bel could feel her teeth gritting, her eyes narrowing. “Did you kill that snake?”

“Yeah!” The one named Rob twirled the snake on the stick, like a little girl with a streamer at the end of a baton. She could see that the snake had been pierced behind its jaws, the mouth split open with the tiniest runnel of red. “It's gonna make one helluva belt!”

This was a test from the Great Serpent to prove her loyalty. She could feel it.

“That's unfortunate,” she observed.

T
he Sisters of Serpens did not fuck around.

The Sisters flocked from behind Bel to the men with the snake. It was like one time Cal remembered from his childhood summers, when there had been a heavy rain that drove the earthworms up out of the ground. When the rain stopped, there were night crawlers on the road in front of Cal's house. A murder of crows had descended from the sodden sky and fought over the night crawlers. The worms had been pulled apart, helpless against the onslaught of all those black beaks and furious claws.

The women swept over the young men. Shocked, the man with the snake dropped it and tried to run. So did one of his friends, who disappeared into the tree line with two of the Sisters in pursuit. The third tried to fight. He took a swing at one of the women.

But there were more of them. And they had knives, glinting in the dull sunlight.

“What are you doing?” Cal blurted.

Bel stood with her arms crossed, watching. “I see their souls. And their souls deserve a reckoning for such an act.”

“The snake?” Cal squeaked. He'd never hurt an animal in his life, aside from any creatures that wound up on his plate. When he lived at the Garden, he'd release daddy longlegs outside, even though they'd only get chased down by the chickens. Dumb bugs. But this seemed sort of . . . excessive.

“The snake. And everything else they've done.” Bel's hollow voice drew chills down his neck. That green gaze looked like it could pierce the fabric of these meatsuits that humans wore, and for a moment, he believed that she could actually see into men's souls.

But . . . oh, my God.

Two of the women had pounded the fighter's face into a rock. He was bloody and unconscious, leaking red from his nose and swollen eyes.

Others held Rob the Snake-­Slayer down on the grass. Bel strode to him, walked over him. She picked up the stick with the impaled snake. She tenderly separated the snake from the stick, curling its limp form in her arms as if it were a beloved pet.

She knelt over him. “You will pay for this.”

Rob was writhing and grunting. But they were too far from the view of the chuck wagon for help to come. He had to know it.

“It's a snake!” he yelled. “It's just a fucking snake!”

Bel gently placed the snake in the grass. She reached to her belt, pulled out a silver knife with a blade the length of her hand. Deliberately, she crossed to the tree line, and cut down a small sapling with it. She stripped the branches from the trunk quickly, easily, and crossed back to Rob.

She stood before him, holding the branch like a spear. Its sharpened edge pointed to his throat.

Spittle flew from Rob's mouth, tears from his eyes. “It was just a fucking snake! What's wrong with you?”

Bel thrust the spear down under his chin, up into his mouth, and out through the back of his head. Blood gushed. Cal watched, horrified, as the muscles in her shoulders worked. She'd skewered him on the ground, like a bug on a pin.

The women released him. But he was held by the neck by that stake. He reached up to try to dislodge it, but couldn't. His fingers scrabbled on the shaft of the spear as he gurgled.

Cal edged away slowly, one foot after another. Maybe if he didn't make a sound, they wouldn't notice. Maybe they wouldn't see him as he turned and ran . . .

He plunged into the forest, his breath ragged in his throat. His flip-­flops made smack-­smacking sounds as he ran, and he kicked them off. The bristle of thorns and pine needles on his feet, anything, was preferable to being discovered.

They fucking killed that guy.

He lifted his arms, thwarting the lash of branches as he fled, gasping. He knew, instinctively, that he had to get away from Bel and her crazies. Bel might have a bit of magic that could save him, but even Stroud hadn't been that mercurially brutal.

His head pounded, and the forest spun around him. He ran blindly, bouncing off trees and whimpering, zinging through dappled shadow.

And he felt the mercury twitching in him.

Not now,
he thought.
Not now.

He heard a man's scream elsewhere in the forest, somewhere off to his left. They'd caught the other guy—­no way they would leave witnesses.

Cal lurched forward, but the mercury twisted in his gut, doubling him over. It lunged upward in his esophagus like the worst case of acid reflux known to man. Silver liquid dribbled from his lip. He shuffled forward, but the cramps ratcheted through his body. It felt like his stomach was being perforated.

He heard footsteps in the leaves behind him.

He spun, trying to escape. But the dark figures of Bel's women surrounded him. He ducked right, then skidded left on the wet leaves, zagging over a shallow gully, into mud on his hands and knees.

“Cal.” Bel's voice, as calm as if she was reading from the newspaper on a Sunday afternoon.