Salt and Iron

by Tam MacNeil

  People are missing.

  James’s heart lurches in his chest. “Gabe,” he shouts. Therese looks up, staring at him. “Where’s Gabe? Benecio?”

  Therese moves the phone from her face. She shakes her head at him.

  “No,” James says. “No.” He pushes to get by her.

  “You’re not going in. That thing just killed Benecio. It got Gabe, and Rob’s gone back for him. We’re getting Abraham, and you are not going in.”

  “The hell I’m not. The hell I’m not.”

  He shoves Therese. The only reason he can budge her is because she’s wounded, maybe worse than she looks. Therese goes stumbling back a couple of steps before she can catch herself, then grabs at James’s arm.

  “Wait,” she says. “Just wait.”

  James shoves her hard, but Therese’s got him now, holding on like a bulldog.

  “Wait. Yuko’s on her way, and Abraham is coming. I….” She shakes her head slowly.

  James realizes the blood’s still running, running into her eyes and into her ear and slicking her shirt.

  “I can’t go back in. Just wait ’til Yuko gets here.”

  He nods. “Okay,” he says. He relaxes the grip he had on her arm. “You’re hurt. Don’t stay for me. Go get looked at. I swear, I’ll wait.”

  She nods. The edges of her face soften a little with relief.

  “We’ll get them,” James adds softly. “Get to the hospital and get looked at. Trust me. We’ll bring them back.”

  Therese nods. She lurches toward the SUV, and Steve jumps out and helps her into the cab. He pauses, looks at James.

  “Where the hell were you anyway?” he asks.

  “Rob threw me off the team,” James answers.

  Steve doesn’t ask or speak. He just gets back into the SUV, and James watches him start it up and go. They turn the corner just as Yuko’s motorbike appears, coming the other way. She parks, slips off, drops her helmet by the side.

  “You got gear?” she asks.

  He hefts the bag.

  She nods. “Good.”

  ROB WAKES in a room that’s all slab-built concrete, fifty feet high, the ceiling hung with pendulum lights buzzing out an orange-purple-green-white sort of light so strong there are no shadows on the floor, and the metal staircase that runs up one side of the building seems insubstantial, as if it’s been drawn there and doesn’t really exist in three-dimensional space at all.

  There’s a crane hanging in the middle of the space, and there are two wheeled workbenches, a couple of bench stools. There’s a circle of white salt on the floor, and in that circle, a body. Rob’s heart lurches. It’s Gabe, lying there partially stripped, body discolored by bruises and raw patches on his shoulders, his buttocks, and his hips.

  Rob pushes himself up and hears chains rattle. He looks at himself. His hands are bound in shackles attached to a chain that’s strung up through the hook of the crane some twenty feet above him. He climbs to his feet. The chain is heavy. The hook swings like a pendulum when he pulls it.

  “Gabe,” he whispers, voice echoing in the soaring emptiness. “Gabe, wake up.”

  But Gabe doesn’t stir. Rob looks around. He sees the crane controls hanging near the stairwell, easily fifty feet from him, and he doesn’t have to test to know the chain will never let him reach that far. But the workbenches are close, and the farther one has a selection of tools lying on it. He starts toward them, chain rattling as he moves, and he realizes that the top of the nearest bench has a small round ring and a key lying on it.

  The benches are just outside his reach. Perfectly outside his reach. As if someone measured the chain and measured the length of his arm, and imagined the additional length of stretched-out muscles and desperation, and gauged it perfectly, because no matter how he twists his hands or tries to hook the bench with his foot, he’s too short by a couple of inches. A tease.

  He retreats so there’s slack in the chain, then undoes his boots, works them off his feet, and tries to catch the workbench with his foot. He strains until the shackles are cutting into his wrists, and his joints are screaming and the blood is running freely from the skin that’s stretched to breaking. Can’t.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he shouts.

  Near him, Gabe groans softly. He turns and looks and sees how Gabe is shuddering awake, shoulders suddenly tightening up, head turning just a little.

  “Gabe,” he says. No point in being quiet anymore, not since the shouting. “Gabe, man, you gotta wake up.”

  Gabe blinks once, twice, then turns his head. He whispers, “Rob?” Gabe sits up and stares at him. “Oh shit. Oh shit, oh fuck, I didn’t know they got you too.”

  “Yeah,” Rob says. “Yeah, c’mon, help me out. We gotta get out of here.”

  “You….” Gabe pauses, turning, half crouching. He looks at Rob. “You still human?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Just, there’s a key here. On the workbench.”

  “Okay,” Gabe whispers back. He licks his lips and nods. “Okay.” He climbs to his feet and hesitates.

  “Gabe, c’mon. I don’t know how much time we’ve got.”

  Gabe nods again. He hauls in a deep breath and sets his jaw and pushes forward, pushing against something Rob can’t see, lips parted, teeth clenched, making a noise like a stifled scream, and Rob understands with horrible clarity. The salt. He’s pushing against the salt.

  The world tilts under him. His lips are numb. He can’t speak. Gabe’s mouth opens, and he’s screaming, the palms of his hands blistering, breaking, then splitting, peeling, charring until his hands are cracked and blackened, and the salt on the floor skids around as if a wind disturbed it, and he’s left making gulping noises, sobbing noises, while Rob stands staring at him.

  Gabe lurches forward. He walks stiff-legged, mouth open, panting, teeth bared, hands charred to his forearms, making those gulping, sobbing noises. He goes to the workbench and takes the key, and when he comes to Rob, Rob can smell the sweet smokiness of charred meat. When Gabe reaches for him, Rob jerks back. It’s automatic. He can’t stop himself.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabe whispers.

  He’s ducked his head, as if hiding, but Rob can see how his eyes are running, nose running, how a line of saliva is hanging from his mouth.

  “They turned me. She. She turned me.”

  “Gabe, please,” he whispers. “Please.” He’s thinking of Howls, and he’s thinking of Yuko, and how before he was ready to do what was right, but now… now he’s thinking of Gabe when he was small and boyish and endless trouble and wondering if that counts for anything, anything at all. They used to be friends; now they’re enemies. “Gabe, please.”

  “I won’t,” he says, suddenly sharp-voiced and growling. “Never. I won’t. They said you wouldn’t come. She said I was a gift. She said that…. But you did come. It’s just….”

  He stops talking, as if he can’t, as if the words have jammed in his throat. He fumbles with the iron chain, gasping at the touch as if it’s cold, or maybe it burns him. Sets the key in the lock and, grimacing and sobbing, he turns it. The shackles open, and Gabe twists away, going down to the concrete to cover his wounded arms with his body, as if he can protect them from the damage already done.

  “Gabe,” Rob whispers. “Oh Jesus.”

  He knows he ought to run, but he crouches. Gabe’s flesh is torn and bloodied. There are marks of misuse all over him, the bite marks and the bruises, the claw marks and the scratches.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Rob can’t bring himself to touch Gabe, not even his shoulder, not even to offer comfort. There are tools on the workbenches. There’s a hammer there. He could end this. “What do you want me to do?” Rob asks.

  “You have to get out,” Gabe says. He’s sobbing. “You have to go.”

  It’s stupid, he knows it. He knows this isn’t Gabe anymore; he knows it’s an unseelie who is wearing Gabe’s skin. But it’s impossible to ignore the fact that this uns
eelie just burned its hands to charcoal to free him from this place. It’s impossible to ignore that the monster has just done exactly what Gabriel Marquez would do.

  “Okay,” he says. He steels himself, hand falling on Gabe’s shoulder to turn him to face him. His skin is fever-hot, dry as seasoned wood. “Come on,” Rob whispers. “Can you stand?”

  “What?” Gabe whispers, staring, dumbfounded. His eyes aren’t right. The brown of his iris is like a splash of ink bleeding into the white. It’s hard to know where the color begins and ends. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re getting out.”

  “No,” Gabe answers. His voice is broken; the words come tumbling out. It’s hard for Rob to understand him. “I have to stay. You have to go. Run. Get away before—”

  He doesn’t get to say what Rob should flee before, because it happens. The door opens, and shapes boil out like maggots from the mouth of a corpse. Little creatures. Maybe they used to be rats and birds and cats and dogs. Now they’re just winged and twisted things with eyes and teeth all over them.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rob whispers. “Can’t a guy catch a break?” He glances back at Gabe. “I think we’re boned, buddy.”

  Gabe’s tear-streaked face shifts. He smiles a strained half smile and climbs to his feet, rising like a wave. “Pets,” he whispers. “These won’t turn you.”

  He doesn’t ask how Gabe knows. He doesn’t want to have that kind of knowledge.

  “Well, I guess that’s good?” Rob asks.

  “They’ll kill you. I’m not going to let them.” He starts toward the creatures.

  “You’re still hurt,” Rob shouts.

  “You’re still human,” Gabe answers. His arms are almost brown again, the cracked and charred skin falling off him like old tree bark. “Stay behind me.”

  Rob does.

  WHATEVER IT was that was in here, it’s gone. It’s just an old building now, a little run-down, fuzzy with dust, drafty and cold and smelling like the river.

  But there’s a sound that both he and Yuko hear at the same time. First a boom, like something falling into a cavernous space. Boom, boom, boom. Then a noise comes up that isn’t the wind and isn’t industrial. A sound that means danger and pain and terror, a sound meant to warn or beg for help. It fists his stomach and drives his heart to running. He looks at her.

  Yuko nods, mouth turned down hard, the movement short. He knows what she’s thinking. She’s thinking torture. She’s thinking body horror and the agonies designed to break a person and then put them back together wrong. It doesn’t need to be supernatural to be terrible.

  They go together, Yuko moving on cat feet, so that all that James can hear are the ragged noises of his breath, his own imperfect footsteps. The screaming rises and falls without rhythm, sudden and startling as thunder every single time. Sometimes James thinks he can hear words, and sometimes they are only sounds.

  Boom, boom, again.

  There’s a steel door with a metal-threaded window set into it. Yuko lays her head against the crack between the door and jamb and then peers through the window. She beckons him a little closer and points. He looks through the window.

  Beyond there is a cavernous room that falls like a well beneath them. Concrete slab construction, and the sound is echoing up from something unseen far below. A set of metal stairs edged with a metal rail descends into a darkness lit by overhead industrial lamps that glow a weird combination of orange and purple-white.

  Yuko’s hand settles on the door latch. She looks at him, and he nods, and she pulls the door open just a little.

  Help, that is what the word is. Someone is screaming help somebody help. Screaming like it’s the only thing they know, like this is a button that is supposed to work and it’s not, but there is no other option, nothing more to do, and even though the button isn’t working, the person screaming is screaming it again and again.

  And the person screaming it. The person screaming it. James knows the voice.

  He looks at Yuko, and she looks back at him. She opens the door wide enough now that he can see the room beyond, the concrete well falling beneath the metal grating of the stairs. Wide enough that the smell of diesel and of grease and the hot-iron smell of slaughter come rushing up. Wide enough that the screaming wraps around them, and he knows the voice that’s making the cries. He’s frozen by it. Afraid to look.

  “Go,” she whispers, and it’s like she’s chipped him free of ice. He starts again, lurching forward through the door to grab the rail, to look down.

  In the well of the warehouse, he sees two shapes, one standing against the wall, the other standing just in front of him. Rob and Gabe.

  Gabe’s got his hands around the neck of a big dog-looking thing, but it’s a dog-looking thing that doesn’t have any fur and has too many eyes and mouths and is trying to get to Rob, and Rob pulls the trigger on the revolver in his hand, but nothing happens. In the snarling and the snapping noises, he hears Rob swear. He throws the gun at the nearest creature, and it connects. The animal yelps, darts back. Gabe throws down the one he had before and grabs for the last one.

  There’s something weird about the way he moves. Not just the strange light or the way fear makes people jump and jerk and start, but James can’t tell what it is, not yet. Gabe closes fingers around the dog-thing’s throat and kills it, just like that. As if it’s easy.

  And that’s it. The floor is wet with carnage, and both Gabe and Rob stand panting and still. Then Rob slides down the wall and covers his head with his hands, and Gabe looks at him, then lurches forward, grabs the revolver from where it fell, and Jesus Christ, jams it into his own mouth, and James screams “No!” at the moment the weapon clicks harmlessly there.

  James goes pelting down the ringing metal stairs, has to get there before Gabe tries again, has to get there before Gabe succeeds. But Gabe throws the gun down, staggers back from it, raises his head, sees James. Sees. His eyes the terrible black and red of bruising and broken blood vessels, his mouth slack, open, panting.

  James goes slipping across the gore-soaked concrete floor, goes crashing into Gabe, heedless of everything, heedless of the blood and the bruises and the way his limbs aren’t right, and feels Gabe collapse against him.

  “I gotta wake up,” Gabe tells him. “This is fucking awful. I gotta wake up.”

  Gabe’s shaking like a dying thing; he’s shaking like an earthquake.

  “It’s okay,” James lies. “You’re hurt, somebody hurt you, but it’s okay.” It’s all he can say, and it’s the most inadequate thing he’s ever said in a long line of inadequacies, but it’s all he’s got.

  WHEN YUKO kneels down by him, the smile that spreads across her face is like the sun rising.

  “Thought that was it for our little family,” she whispers. She frowns hard, as if she’s going to cry, then swallows the emotion.

  “Sorry, baby,” Rob whispers. “Didn’t mean to make you worry.”

  He reaches up and sets his palm gently against her jaw, feeling the warmth, the smooth skin, seeing her close her eyes and tilt her head. “You okay?” he whispers.

  She laughs.

  “I should be asking you that.”

  “I’m okay. Who’s got Howls?”

  “Torren’s with her.”

  He laughs, but it ends in a choke, and she dips down to fold him up while he holds her and gulps the air, fights down the shakes, the sobs that’ll be waiting as soon as they get back to their place and there’s time and it’s quiet and they’re safe. He’ll go to pieces then. Not now. Well. Maybe just a little bit now.

  “Gabe’s hurt,” he whispers. “I was too late.”

  “Gabe’s turned,” she says. She shakes her head. “He’s gone unseelie.”

  “I know.”

  She sighs. “James isn’t going to be able to do it,” she whispers. “It’s going to have to be one of us.”

  “No, Yuko, please.” He pulls back so he can look her in the face. “He saved my life. H
e freed me, out of iron, and when the others came, he protected me.”

  “He’s turned, Rob,” she whispers. “Not like….” She stops and doesn’t say it, but he knows what she would say. “He’s unseelie.”

  “He saved my life.”

  She stares at him, mouth twisted in sorrow and in grief. “Death might be the kindest way, you know.”

  “If he wants death, let him choose it.”

  She sighs and thumbs something slick from the side of his face and shakes her head slowly side to side, as if she’s got water in her ears. Then she sighs once more. “Saved your life?” she whispers. “Really?”

  He nods. He’s starting to shake now, as shock takes hold.

  “Where’s the Thing?”

  He shakes his head. “Don’t know. Don’t know. Not here anymore. You can feel it when she’s near. Never felt anything like that before.”

  She nods, frowning. “Okay. Okay.” She pauses, looking over her shoulder. The carnage, the dead unseelie creatures. And Rob still alive. She shakes her head. “Okay. Look, the others called, and Abraham van Helsing’s on the way, so if we want to keep Gabe alive we’d better get him the hell out of here.”

  Nine

  GABE’S HEAD rolls as if his neck is broken, and even though he’s upright, he’s not really on his feet. James hops up into the bed of Rob’s truck, and between him and Rob they get Gabe up into the bed. It’s unlined, metal scraped up and dented from hauling whatever it is Rob finds the time to haul around. James settles down in the corner near the back window of the cab and holds Gabe against him.

  Gabe’s breathing is ragged and uneasy. The muscles of his back jerk and twitch like they’re being shocked, like something’s trying to crawl out from under them. Maybe something is—James has heard of turning seelie, but he’s never seen it. He doesn’t know what to expect from an unseelie turning. No idea how long they’ve got, he doesn’t know if they can stop it or what’ll happen when it’s done.