Salt and Iron

by Tam MacNeil

  But if they’d changed him, if they’d turned him, if he was one of them now…. It’d be one thing for James to try to rescue him, maybe. Maybe that would happen, because he and James, they’re probably in love. Maybe. He thinks they are. But Rob and Yuko, no, they’d have finished it.

  Every part of him hurts, like he’s taken a fall from a height, and his face is swollen, mouth swollen stiff on one side, the skin stretching against something that doesn’t flex as well as it should. “What happened to me?” he whispers, voice ragged from the sobbing. “What’s wrong with my face? Why’m I cuffed?”

  He hears James’s shaking inhalation. “Gabe. Gabe, listen. You got hurt.”

  Like falling. It’s like he’s falling.

  “You got hurt. They got you and they changed you.”

  Not a dream. Not a nightmare. A monster.

  “How bad?” he asks, even though a part of him understands that he could test it, that there’s a pool of wild strength in him that wasn’t there before. He’s afraid to touch the surface of it. Afraid to know how deep it goes.

  “Rob says you saved him. He says you stopped them from turning him too.”

  “How bad is it?”

  The beat of silence tells him everything he needs to know. “Listen….”

  It’s bad. It’s so bad James won’t say it. “You should have killed me,” he says, aware on a sort of intellectual level that it’s factually correct, that he had tried to do it himself and hadn’t been able to. “Who’s going to do it? Why am I here? Where is this?”

  “We’re… we’re out of town for a little bit, you and me.”

  Out of town. Silver bullet in the back of the head. Black garbage bag shroud. No consecrated ground for him.

  “Yuko and Rob helped get you here. We just… we just have to lie low for a little bit. ’Til the dust settles. Then we’ll figure it out.”

  “You’re hiding me?”

  “Shhh,” James whispers. He slides down to the floor, head leaning against the edge of the bed, and the light breaks on the glass in his hand, turns the little smear of liquid in it silver like a mirror. “Please, Gabe, you gotta keep your voice down. We’re hiding.”

  He hears the word, and it’s as weird and surreal as the rest of it. He shakes his head. “Jesus, Jamie,” he whispers. “You’re going to end up dead for doing this.”

  “Please.”

  James’s hands, cool as water on his face.

  “Please, just trust me, okay? Stay quiet for a bit. I’m gonna… I’m gonna figure this all out.”

  They’re quiet for a while, the two of them. Gabe sighs. The skin of his back is crawling, like something’s tickling it. He cranes his head around to see, but it’s too damn dark.

  “Hey,” he whispers. “Can we have some light?”

  “What?”

  “Can you turn on a light? I wanna see something.”

  A pause. A long pause. James is silent, not even breathing.

  “What?” he asks.

  “The lights are on.”

  It’s one too many things. He can’t. Like hail pinging off a window. “Well, turn them up, then.”

  “No, the lights are on. Are… can’t you see?”

  He realizes he’s chewed his bottom lip raw, tastes the blood. “Don’t fucking joke.”

  “Gabe.” James’s voice breaks. He turns, just a shape really, just white and black. Hands on Gabe’s shoulder, sliding up to his neck to cup his chin. “Does it hurt?”

  And this too. And this too.

  “No,” he says, voice scraped raw. “It’s… it’s just like night. You’re not… you’re not shitting me, Jamie?”

  “No. It’s the middle of the afternoon. The lights are on. All of them.”

  He sighs. He can’t even think. His mind just stops, won’t parse it. He closes his eyes and realizes he can still see. Sort of. He can see the lurid pattern of the hideous quilted bedspread, the colors of it muted and dull. He opens his eyes again and looks, but he can’t see it anymore. He turns, twisting, craning.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing, it’s nothing.” Damned if he’s going to tell the one person in the world who’s here with him, the one person who doesn’t necessarily want him dead. Damned if he’s going to say he can see where the blankets cover over him like his head is on the wrong way. As if there were eyes in his back.

  THE NEXT morning, James scuttles across the road, hating the heat, the exposure, the hammer of the sun, the way everything is edged with metal and gleaming, and comes back with breakfast from the diner. He doesn’t know what Gabe’s going to want, so he gets them both pancakes. At least they can eat them cold.

  The motel parking lot radiates heat, but inside the room the air is cold and stagnant, and Gabe is still huddled under the blankets.

  He closes the door softly and throws the bolts, then goes to the bedside.

  Gabe’s wrist is reddened where it’s been rubbing against the cuff. It’s the only part of him that’s visible, a hand clenched up in a fist.

  “Hey,” James whispers, sinking down near the edge of the bed. “You hungry? I got us something to eat.”

  Gabe’s shape contracts a little under the blankets.

  “You been… you been pulling on that cuff? You… you want me to let you out?”

  “No.”

  Soft voice, shaking.

  “Gabe,” he sighs. “Listen. I’m going to cure you. It’s going to be okay.”

  “It hurts.”

  Like a hand clutching his heart. He sighs again, slides his hand over what he’s pretty sure is Gabe’s shoulder, but it’s hard to tell with all the blankets and the pillows screwed up like they are. “You mean your eyes?”

  “My back.”

  James rubs at his forehead. He’s not sure if there’s a protocol for what you give someone as a painkiller when they’ve been turned by sidhe, and it’s not like there’s a pharmacy nearby anyway. “There’s whiskey,” he says, because Rob thinks of everything, so of course there’s whiskey.

  “I know. I was trying to reach it.”

  James gets up and goes to the table, retrieves the bottle and the plastic cup still wrapped in its plastic wrap. Something occurs to him. He settles on the floor beside the bed and pours out a measure. Two fingers exactly, no more. Gabe hasn’t eaten anything since James doesn’t know when, and whiskey for pain is rough medicine.

  “Here,” he whispers. “Come on.”

  Gabe opens the hand that’s cuffed to the bed.

  “You’re gonna have to sit up to drink.”

  Silence, then, “Shit.”

  “Come on. Don’t be stupid,” James whispers and takes the corner of the blanket up. He hesitates. There’s time for Gabe to protest, but they both know how this is going to go. He draws the blanket back. It’s not as bad as he was afraid it would be. Gabe’s back is weird, distended and stretched, as if there’s something in it that’s trying to get out. But there’s a lack of tentacles and teeth, so James figures, given the state of things, that really is a win.

  He settles on the edge of the bed. The skin of Gabe’s back is taut like a blister. When he touches it, Gabe makes a noise like he’s been burned, and something under the skin moves.

  “Don’t,” Gabe says. “It hurts.”

  He pushes himself up so that he can sit cross-legged on the bed, one hand still down where the cuffs keep it. James sets the whiskey in Gabe’s free hand and closes the fingers around it. Gabe drains the cup. He looks up.

  “More.”

  But Gabe doesn’t drink like James does, and so James hesitates. “You should eat something first.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Just. Just give it a minute.”

  “You’d have another,” Gabe says, eyes narrowing, but he’s not looking at James, or not seeing him. Just looking in his direction.

  James sighs.

  “Yeah, I would. But I like you better than I like me, so you have to wait.”

  Gabe swall
ows and looks down at his lap. “How bad is it? My back, I mean.”

  “Doesn’t look good,” James admits. “Looks like it hurts. Like a… like a big blister.” He doesn’t say like a big blister except that it moves, but God, he sure is thinking it. Gabe can probably feel the thing inside moving. He doesn’t want to think about what that would be like. “How are your eyes?”

  Gabe shakes his head. “I can’t see a fucking thing anymore,” he says. He raises the empty cup. “I want more whiskey.”

  “I know, but give it a sec. I gave you two ounces, and you’ve got an empty stomach. You’re—”

  “I’m scared. I’m fucking scared, and I just want to not be scared, just for a fucking second, and if I could get it myself I would, but I can’t, so I’m asking you.”

  James would say something, but it’s like Gabe’s come unstuck, and all the silence of the last twenty-four hours is at an end. There are things he wants to say, and James isn’t going to be able to stop him.

  “I don’t see why I should have to be braver than you are. I don’t see why I should be stronger.” Gabe’s shouting now. “I don’t want this. I don’t want to feel like this. I want it to stop!”

  James hesitates. Then he takes the cup and gets up and goes to the table again. He’s uncorking the whiskey when somebody knocks on the door. Jesus. It occurs to him how bad that must have sounded from outside. Then it occurs to him what this is going to look like to a casual observer. Two of them, James in yesterday’s clothes, unwashed and unshaved, and Gabe half-turned, half-unseelie, stripped to the waist and cuffed to the bed because God knows when the transition’s going to get serious, and James isn’t stupid. He’s going to need that extra second to get away.

  He tries to tidy himself, pushes a hand through his hair and straightens his collar. Then he goes to the door, ready for “Honestly, sir/ma’am…” opens the door and the words die in his throat, because it’s not a couple of security guards. It’s a dozen women, all of them wearing dinner jackets and leather shoes that shine. Brett is the one nearest the door.

  “James, did you seriously take a half-turned unseelie?”

  “Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, that was me.”

  Brett shakes her head and steps forward. “That was really stupid.”

  “You can’t come in,” James says, heaving himself up to stand between Gabe and them. “You can’t—”

  “This isn’t a home, leastways it isn’t your home,” she says. She bares her teeth at him in a sort of grin. “Don’t need an invitation.”

  She pushes forward, and then there’s a crowd in the little motel room, and the smell of unwashed bodies and fresh, turned earth, of summertime asphalt, and the low and distant sound of the rumble on the highway come in with them.

  “Wait, wait!” he’s shouting, but he might as well be trying to hold the river in place. Someone goes over to the bed, and someone grabs hold of him and hauls him deeper into the press of bodies, and in between his shouting and the questions he can hear Gabe’s voice rising, making noises, not words. Making those noises, those terrible noises, like he can’t get enough air.

  “Stop it,” he shouts, not seeing, only guessing. “Stop, Gabe’s not unseelie, he’s hurt, I just want to help—”

  “Why do you think I’m here, van Helsing?” Brett snaps, her face rising above him, waxy as a moon. “You’ve got as much salt and as much iron as anybody could want, and there’s a goddamned Bible in the drawer.” She smiles a death’s-head grin. “Real nice when you’re looking after a sidhe, you know, to be surrounded by that. Maybe if you hadn’t cuffed him to the bed, he’d’ve done himself in. Maybe he’s been trying to read himself in all those times you haven’t been watching.”

  James’s stomach lurches. He looks at Gabe, who’s looking down and away.

  “Gabe?”

  “All you know is how to kill us,” Brett says. “What makes you think you’re going to be able to keep him alive without help?”

  He gapes at her. He has no answer to that. He’s been trying to keep him safe from the Firm, from whatever’s gone wrong there. He hadn’t thought about the rest. “Will you?” he asks.

  “Will I what?” She tilts her head at him, like he’s a weird-looking thing she found stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

  “I know the seelie hate the unseelie. I know they kill each other when they cross paths. But… Skinny Mary is my family. Will she help him?”

  “You want to make a deal with Skinny Mary?”

  He nods. “Yeah. If it’ll save him, yeah.”

  Brett licks her teeth. “You can ask,” she says after a moment. “But you’ll have to go see her.”

  That’s fine. He can manage that. “Gabe,” he calls. “You okay to go?”

  “Yeah.” Gabe’s voice floats back to him, soft, dreamy, all the pain drained out of it, like they’ve given him something far stronger than the whiskey. James musters up a little courage and nods.

  “Okay,” he says. “Okay, show me the way.”

  She laughs. “No chance. I’ve got orders to come collect him, not you. You’re on your own.”

  James lurches toward her, and half a dozen pairs of hands hold him back. “You take him anywhere, anywhere, and I will follow. I will go back to the Firm and I will arm up and I will follow.”

  “Then do it and get the fuck out of my way.” She bares those teeth again.

  “You’re gonna have to put me down—”

  He meant to talk big, stall for time maybe, maybe convince them to take him along. But Brett works nights in a bar, and James doesn’t even see the blow coming.

  THEY DON’T kick the shit out of him, but they do work him over. Then they leave him there, lying on the sunbaked blacktop, blood coagulating under him, the air heavy with sweat and the scent of hot rubber and diesel exhaust.

  He lies there until the pounding in his head abates, until he can see more than a pinprick again. Then he pushes himself up and fishes his phone out of his pocket. Corner smashed into a spiderweb of glass, but it works. He dials Rob’s number.

  “James?”

  “They took him,” he says. He didn’t realize he knew what it meant yet. He didn’t realize the words would come out in a sob. He drags in the will to steady himself. “They took him. I’m going after him.”

  “James, don’t be stupid. Of course they took him. He’s unseelie. Even the other sidhe are afraid of him.”

  He hears Rob getting to his feet, the creak of a chair, the sound of footsteps as he searches for something, maybe his wallet and his keys.

  “You hurt?”

  “Don’t care. I’m going after him.” He pauses, wiping blood from his nose and onto his sleeve, knowing he has to follow before he can’t, before he thinks better of it, rationalizes everything right into inaction, before he goes back into the hotel room and drinks the bottle dry and curls up where Gabe had been. “Tell Abe, okay?”

  “Wait, James—”

  “Tell him I’m sorry about all this shit.”

  “Wait.”

  He hesitates. Rob sighs into the phone.

  “Jesus Christ almighty,” Rob whispers.

  He sighs again. James can imagine him passing a hand through his hair.

  “Don’t go on your own.”

  James smiles faintly. It feels lopsided, mouth all screwed up and swollen on one side. “You’re not coming with me. You’ve got Howls to think about.”

  “I know,” Rob says, steady and sure now. “I’m sending Yuko.”

  James is about to protest, to remind him again of his daughter, but Rob cuts him off.

  “She can get you in. She’s one of them. A sidhe.”

  He hears it, but it doesn’t make sense. “Oh,” he says.

  “Stay put,” Rob says. “She’ll be right there.”

  He nods, phone pressed against his ear. “Okay,” he says, as if he understood.

  HE SITS on the concrete abutment in the blazing sun, letting the blood get sticky on his hands and face and letti
ng the pounding in his head subside. By the time Yuko arrives he is able to see properly again, his head aching a little bit less, and all his terror is transmuting into exhaustion. He can’t remember the last time he slept, and he isn’t sure when he had his last good meal, either. And he wants a drink, bad. Not bad enough to shake, but heading that direction. So when she pulls up on her motorbike, she pulls up her visor and looks at him and says, “Shit.”

  He smiles, carefully.

  “Who was it?”

  He shakes his head. “Some girls in suits,” he says softly, slurring a bit rather than making his jaw work too hard. “Filed teeth.”

  “Horses,” she says and sighs. “Samedi’s people. Could have been worse. It could have been other unseelies.” She leans down and squints at him. “Man. The Horses really worked you over.”

  “Hurts,” he agrees.

  “You concussed?”

  Maybe. “Don’t think so.”

  “You gonna get cleaned up?”

  “No.”

  To get to the sink he’d have to go past the whiskey on the table. He knows himself well enough now to know he’d never be able to get by it without pouring a measure out. She doesn’t ask, just tosses the spare helmet at him.

  He catches it, fumbling a bit, and pushes himself, aching, to his feet. “So,” he says, “you gonna tell me all about it, or should we just pretend I don’t know?”

  She unbuckles her helmet and pulls it off, and looks at him with that assessing kind of look she has, like he’s a gun she’s going to take apart and reassemble. Then she shrugs.

  “Secret’s out now, so you might as well know everything,” she says. “Skinny Mary sent me to keep an eye on the Firm. When the Thing started showing up in town, things got a little more serious.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think? Because the Thing goes after sidhe, and I can’t think of anybody who’d like that more than the Firm.”

  “We don’t use magic,” he says automatically. We’re….” He stops himself. He was going to say what he always used to say, We’re the good guys, but it’s looking less and less like it, actually.