He will be free.
—like taffy, the plastic turning white as it stretched before tearing with a snap. Val grabbed the man, dragging him clear, then turned to run back to the safety of the crowd. He was about half way when the gas tank of the Prius exploded, picking them up like a couple of dolls. Val tucked himself around the man, felt something sharp and hard stab into his back before they crashed together on the ground.
Val looked up to see the woman he’d given James to. She still held the kid, half clumsy, half protective. He looked around at the crowd. Caught a phone there, trained on him. Another phone, pointed at the inferno. Amateur reporters — no keeping this one a secret. Still. He hadn’t changed. Not yet. He pushed himself to his feet.
“Are you — are you okay?” It was the woman holding the kid. Her eyes were wide, a hand reached out towards him, but not quite touching.
Val looked over his shoulder, saw the piece of metal lodged in his back. He coughed around the pain. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” He reached around, grabbing at the edge, yanking it free. It looked like a California plate. Of course. Only place a Prius would come from. Val turned to go, felt the woman’s hand on his arm.
“Your back,” she said. “It’s—” Her eyes widened as she saw his face. “Your … your eyes,” she stammered.
Val didn’t need to see his reflection. He knew they’d be—
Change. Rise. Be free.
—a fierce, bright yellow. Without another word, he pushed into the crowd and away.
∙ • ● • ∙
“What’s your name? Do you know your name?” The paramedic looked down at Rex, adjusting the air mask.
“How bad is it?”
“Bad if you can’t remember your name,” said the paramedic.
“Rex,” said Rex. “My name’s Rex.”
“Like a dog?”
“Like a fucking Tyrannosaurus,” said Rex.
“Got it,” said the paramedic. “You’ll be fine.”
“Fine?”
“You got two sprained wrists and your ribs are going to be feeling everything for a couple weeks. Smoke inhalation too — don’t take off the mask. We need to get you in for a scan to be sure, but your belt took the worst of it. That, and the airbag.” The paramedic looked over at the emergency cordon, the firefighters still working on putting out the flames.
Damn airbag. Rex remembered the feeling of it punching up into his face. He remembered a man, too, who’d promised to get him out. What had he said? Damndest thing, like can you keep a secret … or something. Rex could keep a secret, especially when he knew that it wasn’t for the grace of God that he’d come out of this. The grace of something quite different. Quite, quite different.
“He’s all yours,” said the paramedic to an officer standing nearby. The cop walked over.
“Sir?”
“Yeah.”
“Sir, do you remember how you got out of the car?”
Can you keep a secret?
“No.” Rex coughed a little, adjusting his mask. “Mystery to me.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure,” said Rex. 30 years in the fire department, I should be dead, some kind of … some kind of goddamn hero pulled me out of a car wreck it should have taken industrial machinery to crack open. Yeah, yeah. I see why you’d want to keep that a secret.
“You’re absolutely sure?” The cop was folding away his notebook, a frown on his face.
“Yeah,” said Rex. “What, no one else see anything?”
“No,” said the cop. “Some kid was yanked from the bus but he says he was out when it happened. Good for him too, ankle looks like it was dislocated, would have hurt like hell. You wouldn’t want to remember that.”
“Can I…” Rex coughed again. “Can I see him?”
“Who?”
“The kid.”
“Why?”
“I figure…” Rex licked his lips. “Maybe it’ll jog my memory.”
“Maybe,” said the cop, in a voice that said bet it won’t.
“Thanks,” said Rex. It wouldn’t help his memory, not a damn bit. But maybe he could help the kid, say he was sorry, say … well. Something. And … and make sure they were both keeping the same secret.
CHAPTER FOUR
The alley smelled of rotten cabbage, a dumpster sitting lazy against the wall with its lid open to the sky. Half-disgorged innards seemed to bubble up from the inside like a bad meal coming back. Phillip stared at the same sky, cold asphalt against his back, blood in his mouth.
“Fucking slope,” said the man. He was stumbling over his words in his haste to spit out his hate. “Fucking chink.” Phillip felt the boot hit his side, his body curling up around his pain, and he retched.
“You think … you actually think you can come to our country, take our jobs?” The boot hit again. “You want to—” here, the boot hit him in the back, and Phillip arched, crying out “—rethink your attitude, son.”
“Get him, Percy,” said another voice. Phillip thought this one sounded younger, eager for the blood, for someone else’s pain. I’m going to die here, because I took out the garbage at the wrong time. He stretched a hand out towards the black plastic sack, but a boot came down on his wrist. Phillip screamed as something snapped, and he curled up, sobbing.
Some distant part of his mind admonished him. You should have checked. You should have looked. It’s not safe here. Five men in an alley? That’s a thing you shouldn’t have walked in on. They’d been arguing over a metal case, handle on the top, and their voices had dropped as he’d walked out the back of the restaurant.
Phillip looked back up along the strong, tall fingers of the buildings as they reached for the stars. Clouds snuck around a fat moon, her pale face looking down. He tried to speak, nothing but blood and a tooth coming out.
“What’s that?” The man — Percy — leaned down over him, face broken in a smile that wasn’t nice or kind or safe. He held a gun, an ugly thing of black metal and straight lines. He tapped the muzzle of the weapon against Phillip’s face. Tap, tap, tap. Phillip flinched back at each tap. “You trying to say something, gook?”
“I’m … I’m sorry,” said Phillip. And he knew it, he felt it, that he was sorry. He just wished he knew what for.
Percy’s face twisted into a snarl. He reached a hand up. “Give me a knife.”
There was a giggle behind him, another man stepping into Phillip’s view. Phillip saw the knife, the blade a foot long, a finger ring set at the base of the handle. Percy took the knife, his hand closing slow and steady around it. Percy leaned in close. “I thought you all knew karate or some shit. Hell, boy, you went down like a tall glass of water on a hot day.”
“No … karate,” said Phillip. “I—”
“I don’t give two shits,” said Percy. “I’m going to cut you, bleed you out, and walk away. Go home, get laid, and not think about you any more. How’s that sound, boy?”
“Sounds unfair,” said a new voice from the head of the alley. “Sounds a bit fucking one-sided, if you ask me.”
Percy’s gaze jerked up, but the knife held steady at Phillip’s throat. Phillip didn’t want to turn his head, he could feel the edge of the knife kissing into his flesh already. Please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die.
Percy didn’t seem to notice, maybe didn’t care. “Walk away,” he said. “Just walk the fuck away.”
“Sure,” said the voice. Phillip could head footsteps as they came closer, his ears picking out the sounds of shoes against the asphalt. “You let him go, I’ll walk away.”
Percy laughed. “You for real?” He turned his head back to his entourage, the knife easing from Phillip’s throat. Phillip swallowed, tossing a quick glance at the newcomer. Another white man. Clothes look — burned — like he’d walked through a fire. Strong. Phillip met the other man’s eyes. Please, Phillip mouthed at the stranger. Please.
“I’m for real,” said the man, ignoring Phillip. “Fair trade, I reckon. I walk away with
this guy, and you don’t get executed like you deserve.”
“What?” Percy seemed astonished. “What?”
“What’s in the case?” The man nodded a head towards the metal case. It was still on the ground. Forgotten, for a moment, before the man had drawn everyone’s eyes back to it.
“Fairy dust and wishes,” said Percy. He stood up away and away, Phillip momentarily forgotten. The ugly pistol was in his hand again. “You picked the wrong night to be a hero.”
“You shoot me with that and—” said the man, and was cut off as Percy pulled the trigger. Six shots rang out, hard and violent in the alley, the flashes from the weapon throwing strong shadows against the wall each time. Phillip cried out, curling up again, a hand against his head.
Silence. No, not silence: Phillip’s hearing came back in stolen fits and starts, overlaid with ragged breathing, the sound of cars, a siren somewhere — nowhere close — and the shuffling of feet against the grime and muck of the alley floor. He opened his eyes.
“You finished?” The man with burned clothes was still standing, slightly to the left of where he’d been before. Phillip turned his head to look at Percy — the man was looking between his gun and the man with burned clothes as if he couldn’t believe it.
“I shot you,” he said. “I shot you five times.”
The other man held up a hand, palm out. “Look, I don’t want to be that guy,” he said, “but it was six times, and you shot at me.”
“What?”
“Six times. You missed.”
“I don’t … I don’t miss,” said Percy. A sort of honest disbelief was in his voice, a thing that said now there’s something you don’t see every day. “I shot you. I shot you.”
“At,” said the man, again. “Nearly got me on the fourth one.”
“What?”
“The thing is,” said the man, tugging at his burnt shirt, “I was done for the day. It’s been a long one, you know? I’ve already been shot once tonight, and I was in an explosion downtown. I thought, ‘Hey Val, maybe you should go home, put your feet up, grab a Coke and a smile, just let the dawn creep up on you and the sofa,’ and then I come down here and—”
“Your name’s Val?” Percy took a half step forward, then thought better of it. “You’re a dead man. You’ll never—”
“Right,” said Val, nodding. “You’ll kill my wife, my kids, my cat. Whatever.” He ran a hand through his hair, and Phillip thought the man looked so tired right then. “You didn’t get my surname.”
“I’ve got Google,” said the man.
“Google’s not sorcery,” said Val. “You need to give it something to work with.”
“Don’t you … seriously? We’re having this conversation?” Phillip caught the movement as Percy flourished his gun in a sudden motion and pulled the trigger. Another shot rang out, but Phillip was looking right at Val, saw the other man already leaning out of the way.
“The thing is,” said Val, “when I got shot earlier this evening, it was because I was trying to talk someone out of doing something stupid. Kind of like this.”
“I—”
“The way I see it,” said Val, “is that you can pick up your wounded pride and get out of here, leaving this poor guy—“ and here, he jerked a thumb in Phillip’s direction “— alone.”
“Or?” Percy was shifting from foot to foot, the men behind him standing still as stones.
“We’ll need to get creative,” said Val.
“Creative,” said Percy. “I like creative.” He looked at his gun, then—
Heartbeat.
Val was already moving, running towards Phillip. Phillip could see it before it—
Heartbeat.
—happened, how the gun would come down towards his head, how the last—
Heartbeat.
—thing he saw would be the bright flash of eternity from the barrel of a Western gun. He just wanted to—
Heartbeat.
—tell his family that it was over now, and he closed his eyes. For him he would be free of this tired kingdom of liars and cheats—
The shot rang out, but the tired kingdom rolled on. Phillip felt a splash of wet, opened his eyes to the back of the man Val standing above him, standing between him and Percy. Phillip could see red was blooming on the back of Val’s burned and tattered shirt.
This man took a bullet for me. He is going to die for a stranger. Phillip wanted to get up then, to rise and help this man. He started to push himself off the cold ground, Western words trying to form on his lips, and then—
Val turned to him, his eyes a yellow hue. There was something wrong with his face, his teeth, and the words he spoke sounded like they were spat out, their taste and shape unfamiliar. “Get. Away.”
“I—” Phillip reached a tentative hand out. “You’re hurt.”
“Can’t,” said Val, something animal, something awful, in his voice. “Stop.” Then he lifted Percy off his feet, tossing the man into the side of the dumpster.
Phillip scrambled to his feet and ran.
∙ • ● • ∙
The unfamiliar limbs felt weak and slow. There were no claws at the ends of his hand, nothing to rend with, and the teeth in his head felt blunt and small. He was tied to this tiny body and its weak and frail ways. He looked out at the men around him, their puny weapons held high. He heard the stuttering, frantic beat of their hearts, and caught—
We don’t have to kill them.
—the smells of an unfamiliar place around him. This wasn’t a forest, a place to run free, and he felt the low, roiling burn of anger. Anger at being caged here. He longed to take those loping, easy strides under a night sky free from these tall structures of stone and iron that rose up all around. A small pain nudged at his stomach where the insect had done something to him with a weapon that spat fire. It was nothing, and the insect—
There’s another way. Please listen.
—would die. They all stood before him, ready to toss their lives into the ever black of nothing, and for what? He caught the glint of metal, a rectangle made by weak and simple creatures. And yet … and yet, there was this—
The other man got away. We did what we said we would do. We saved him. We don’t have to kill anyone. Please.
—other voice inside him that nagged and snipped and bit at his heels like a pestering pup. He couldn’t make the voice stop, but it made him question things. Where he was going. Why he was going there. It made him question his purpose.
He stepped among the four remaining creatures, grabbing at one. There were bright flashes, pain blooming in his chest, but it was small pain, insignificant, unlike the terrible burning of—
Silver. It’s called silver.
—the metal the ancient enemy had cursed him with. He tossed the creature he held aside, then paused. The three left were standing around him, fear writ large on their faces, eyes wide, the beat of their hearts faster than a hunted deer. He looked closer at the one on his left, and it dropped its weapon, a tiny sliver of metal clattering to the ground.
See? They’re stopping. They’ll run away. We don’t have to kill them. We don’t have to—
That was when the one to his right stepped in, a long piece of wood in his hands. The creature smashed it against his head, the other voice falling to silence in a shattering of splintered timber.
It set him free.
∙ • ● • ∙
Phillip crept back to the mouth of the alley, one tentative foot in front of the other. His hands touched the edges of old brick as he peered around the corner and into the dark. Lights were out, nothing but the night sky with its fat moon reaching silver legs down to walk faint light on ground. His eyes couldn’t pierce the gloom, the blaze of street lighting at his back doing nothing to illuminate the dark unknown. Swallowing, Phillip walked into the alley. “Hello?” His voice was barely a squeak, and cleared his throat. “Is anyone there?” He let his feet take him forward.
He wanted to help the man named Val.
He wanted to make sure he was okay, because one man against five was crazy, it was suicide—
Phillip slipped, stumbling forward and landing hard on his hands. He looked behind him at what he’d stepped on. His eyes started to pick out the details in the half light, small sticks connected to a thicker branch. It made no sense until he realized that he could see a leather strap, a watch band, encircling a wrist.
A severed hand.
The stump was ragged, torn. Phillip scrambled backwards like a crab trying to get away from it, but his hand connected with something warm and wet, sliding out from underneath him. He landed against a man’s chest, but there was something wrong, it was—
Just a chest.
The head, arms, legs were all gone, blood gone black in the half-light. Phillip looked around, taking in the details of the alley as his eyes adjusted, the bits and pieces of what used to be men scattered around him. There, legs in the over-full dumpster. There, a head on the ground. There, another severed arm, fingers holding a gun. And there—
Something huge and full of darkness turned to look at him. Phillip couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at until he caught angry, yellow eyes. That’s when he was able to work out there was a mouth full of teeth, and that was a massive arm ended in claws, drenched wet and glistening in the black in the alley. Phillip saw the eyes blink at him, the yellow vanishing for — Oh God it’s seen me oh God — a second before a growl broke the night air. The sound cut through the noise of traffic seeping in from the mouth of the alley. The noise turned his bowels to water. He took a step backward, his foot slipping on something soft. Phillip looked below him, each individual item in the pile of red wet at his feet unidentifiable. He turned and ran.
He wasn’t fast enough.
CHAPTER FIVE
She hugged her arms to her sides, shivering. She’d been outside the cabin for a long time.
“Don’t you think you should just call him?” Carlisle stood off to her left, coat wrapped around her like a shroud. “Jesus, Danny. It’s freezing out here. Isn’t the point to make him suffer?”
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