Salt and Iron (15 page)

“We’ll send her away,” she says softly. “Rob’s got family in northern Canada. She’ll be safe up there. At least for a little while.” She pulls her helmet back on. “Are we done now?”

He nods, pulls the helmet on, and it’s a snug fit, makes his nose throb like he’s been blocking kicks with his face again. He settles onto the bike and leans forward, like he was going to fall asleep with his head against Yuko’s back. She puts the bike in gear, and they hit the highway, make a left, and then they just kept making lefts.

He doesn’t ask, just closes his eyes and lets his body follow the pull of momentum. On the fourth turn in he opens his eyes again. The diner and the store are a blur on the right, the motel a blur on the left. Turn, turn, turn, turn.

Of course
, he thinks, feeling stupid and feeling impressed all at the same time.
Of course they would. Fucking Summer Court motel.

They circle again, and one more time, and another, until he isn’t exhausted anymore, until he isn’t closing his eyes because he’s tired and his head hurts, but because he’s actually starting to get nauseated, and his side hurts from the punches and the kicks, and from keeping himself upright against the pull of gravity. But it’s all right because the bike rights itself one more time, and then slows, and the surface under the tires changes from the steady rumble of asphalt to a soft crunch of gravel.

He opens his eyes and sees it looming above him, the old Rogers house. But not as it was when he and Abe took the boat out as teenagers and went over the water late in the day, too late in the day, and arrived on the island as the sun was setting, when the foxes were shrieking and when the whole place seemed to sag like a palsied face, and the door gaped and terrified them. It’s not like that now.

Now it’s perfect, painted spotless white like the china of a dinner service, with glossy black trim around the windows and portico, standing where once had been a hole like a mouth full of rotten teeth.

Yuko pilots the bike along and parks beside the truck that had carried Gabe away. She toes the kickstand down and tips the bike to rest. He straightens up and takes off his helmet, glad of the afternoon air cooling the sweat on his neck. Then it occurs to him that Yuko didn’t bring Rob’s truck, which has three seats. She’s brought her bike and two helmets. He looks at her.

“I’m not leaving without him,” he says.

She looks back at him. “You’re probably not leaving,” she says and sets her helmet on the seat. “At least, not for a while.”

He nods. He’s aware that he probably ought to be frightened, but his head hurts and his jaw hurts and all he wants, all he can think about, is the dark, hot taste of bourbon or the sweet syrup of the whiskey he left in the motel room.

Yuko’s looking at him, thoughtful and frowning.

“What?” he asks.

“You’re in a bad way.”

“Yeah,” he admits.

“This… might be easier for both of us if you let me drive,” she says.

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean drive you.” She’s not smiling. “If you’re willing, I’ll command you into the place, and I’ll talk with Skinny Mary and the Baron.”

He looks at her a long time; then he nods. “Okay,” he says softly. He shrugs. “Middle name’s Thomas.”

Her mouth drops open. “Wow,” she says. “Rob said he thought you were suicidal.”

“I’m not,” he says quietly. “It’s just, you don’t have to be a genius to see that an upset, beaten-up alcoholic slipping rapidly toward DTs shouldn’t try dealing with the heads of the sidhe. Not a very good plan. At all. Please take the wheel.”

She smiles a little. It might be the first time she’s ever given him a look that was on the friendly end of the spectrum. “You are one strange guy, James Thomas van Helsing,” she murmurs.

HE’S NEVER
been commanded before, though he’s heard about it. He falls fast, since he hasn’t got any iron and he hasn’t got any salt. He moves like an automaton, like a puppet. From a distance it would probably look as if he was walking under his own power, stiff-legged but moving. He’s aware of the command in his brain, as if the greater part of him had been crowded into the back of his skull and all its tendons cut. He goes with her, through the sunbaked gravel parking lot, between the bike and the battered old blue GMC that he recognizes from Gabe’s capture. When he sees it, anger rushes up in him. Yuko looks over at him.

“No,” she says softly, “this sort of thing is difficult enough without that. Don’t fight.”

He tries to calm himself, but it isn’t easy. They brought Gabe out like the dead. Wrapped in the white hotel sheet, passed overhead, hand to hand, and raised up and settled in the back of the truck, while James lay on the blacktop, lungs spasming and blood banging in his ears. He wanted to scream that Gabe’s not dead, how
dare
they. He wanted to cover him over and keep him safe, but he couldn’t even make his lungs work.

“James, nod if you want me to stop.”

His mouth parts like a rusted hinge. “No,” he says, and the effort to make the sound saps him.

“Okay, then you need to calm down. I need you to relax.”

Relax
, he tells himself.
Relax.
Like he’s not walking into a sidhe court, like Gabe hasn’t been turned into a monster, like his world isn’t ending. Relax.

“Good,” Yuko whispers. “Now go under, James Thomas van Helsing. Go deep and stop fighting.”

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath to settle himself, turns his mind away from the now, thinks of the heat coming up off the ground and the cool of the breeze coming off the water, and when he goes under her command, he goes completely.

MAYBE SHE
put him out the way they put Gabe out, because when he gets his head back, he’s gazing at a white wall. He blinks. A white wall with a window in it, and the window hung with dainty, lacy curtains, and the curtains moving just a little.

He can smell water, feel the cool, wet breeze on his face. He’s sweating, covered by crisp, white sheets trimmed with little ribbons, and a quilted blanket on top of that. Gabe’s lying beside him, eyes closed, mouth open just a fraction, breath coming slow and steady and calm and gusting gently across James’s face.

He sits up, and the springs in the old bed groan, but Gabe doesn’t stir. He gets to his feet, and Gabe shifts where he lies, on his side, and stills again.
Thank God
, he thinks and then looks out the window.

The river rolls by, wide and sluggish and brown. Mist hangs over the water, and the air is gray. It’s either very early, very late, or there’s a thick storm coming in, or maybe some combination of all three. He’s so tired he can’t even guess the time.

He looks down at the yard below him, but there’s not much to see. The land runs about fifteen feet and then slopes down to a jetty of weathered gray wood that juts like a finger bone into the river, but there aren’t any boats tied up there. A trampled, brown path cuts between the bushes, and the trees are heavy with moss and vines. So this is Shadow. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but not this.

He looks around the room. His shoes are by the door, beside Gabe’s shoes, and they’ve both been buffed to a shine. There’s a tray of grooming things on the short little dresser near the door, and on the table,
oh God bless
, there’s a little bottle of bourbon and a glass.

He pours out a little and tries hard to take his time with it, sipping, watching Gabe sleeping in the bed. The blankets are thin and heavy. Gabe’s outline is easy to see. The front of him is normal. He’s curled up a little, hands tucked under his chin, knees drawn up. His back is not right. The curve of his shoulders is wrong, and that side of the bed, he realizes, finishing the bourbon in his glass, that side of the bed looks wrong, shadowed, dark. He goes to it, mostly to see if the light changes when he moves, but it doesn’t. He reaches down. He knows he shouldn’t touch; he knows it hurts. But he touches Gabe’s shoulder anyway and feels the warm wetness of the coverlet under his fingers.

He touches the darker, more discolored place. Wet. Sticky. “Gabe,” he whispers, but Gabe doesn’t move. He crouches, whispering, “Hey, Gabe,” and when Gabe doesn’t respond, he peels back the soaked blanket and looks and wishes desperately that he hadn’t.

A whiskey-yellow fluid pools where the bed dips under Gabe’s weight. James peels the sheet back farther. Gabe’s stripped to the waist, and his back, his back is a mess. It’s split open, and there’s something hanging out of the wound. The fluid that stained the bedclothes hangs like sap from those things. They’re… maybe they are branches. They’re brown, knobbly like oak limbs but jointed like bones.

He can hear his own breath sawing in and out of his mouth, feel the numb panic rising in him.
Do not freak out
, he tells himself.
Gabe needs you.
Do not freak out.

He covers the mess of Gabe’s back up again and lurches back, back to the table where the bourbon is, and drops into the chair there. He covers his head with his hands, like maybe he can hide from all of this. He gulps air until he realizes he’s going to throw up if he swallows any more of it. He uncorks the bottle and pours another drink. He downs it.

Once he’s steady, he goes to the bed again, to Gabe’s front side, not his back. “Hey,” he whispers, and Gabe stirs again, but he doesn’t wake. Gabe has never been a heavy sleeper. James figures he’s either exhausted from the transformation or faking or somebody’s keeping him inert like this. In two out of those three scenarios, he might be able to hear James. So maybe it’s worth saying something.

“Hey, Gabe, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m going out. I’m… I won’t be long. I’ll be back soon, okay? Don’t….” He can’t think of what he would want in Gabe’s place. Blind, shifting, body not his own anymore. Father dead, dead himself if James can’t find a way to cure him. Maybe he can hide Gabe from the Firm, but he’s not going to be able to keep an unseelie from the other sidhe.

He sighs and tries to think. He’d want a drink; that’s for sure. And at least that he can provide. He goes over to the table, grabs the bottle and the glass and puts it on the nightstand.

“There’s a bottle of bourbon on the bedside table,” he tells Gabe. “If you need it. If your back still hurts. And I’m coming back.”

He slides a finger over Gabe’s forehead where there’s a streak of dirt. Gabe stirs and groans and burrows deeper into the bed. He still looks like Gabe. His face is the same, even if his body is changing. James can’t reconcile Gabe’s sleeping face with what’s going to happen, what’s already happening to him.

“I’m coming back soon. I promise I’m coming back. I know I fuck up a lot, but I’m gonna get this right, okay?”

Gabe doesn’t respond, and James doesn’t really expect him to. He gets up, goes to the door, slides his feet into his newly polished shoes, and lets himself out of the room.

OUTSIDE IS
not a hall but a mezzanine. A banister runs the circumference of the space, and meets and then goes plunging like a dog’s tongue down into the foyer floored in marble and dotted with ornate couches, potted palms, freestanding brass ashtrays, and in the middle of the place there’s a tall, freestanding thing like some sort of ornate hitching post, but flickering with little flames.

The air smells of tobacco and of coffee, of mold and river water, of bacon cooking, and the people below look up at him. He knows some of them. Brett and Yuko both are standing to one side of the room among a group of sidhe. Brett looks up.

“Good morning, beautiful,” she hollers, and anyone who wasn’t looking at him is now. “I heard you made it. Damn, but you are stubborn. Yuko was just going to come get you, since if you slept much later you’d miss breakfast.”

He leans on the white banister. “What did they give Gabe?”

Yuko frowns at him. “
We
put him to sleep,” she says.

“Don’t cry,” Brett says cheerfully. “It’s a mercy. You think it’s comfortable, growing half a dozen pairs of wings overnight?”

Well that explains that. He swallows something rising in his throat.

“Anyway, how do you want your eggs?” she asks. “Yuko’s a smooth talker. Turns out we’re feeding you and everything.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, wishing in that instant that he’d maybe had just one more drink. Then he pushes away from the railing and heads for the stairs. Brett comes halfway up to meet him.

“C’mon, the eggs, man. Skinny Mary doesn’t like to see people go hungry. So?”

He rubs his forehead between his eyes. “Is he okay?”

She goes sober and nods. “It’s better if he sleeps through this part,” she says. “Honestly. I’ve never seen an unseelie turning, but I hear it isn’t nice. I wasn’t kidding about it being kindness. Yuko looked after it, if that makes you feel any better.”

He nods. “It does,” he says softly. “I was scared before. I….” He laughs. “I guess I’m still scared, but that’s no reason to be rude. I’m sorry. And thanks.”

She inclines her head. Yuko’s coming up the stairs behind her.

“You feeling okay?” she asks.

He nods. “Did I sleep long?”

She and Brett laugh, as if that’s hilarious. Brett nudges him hard in the ribs. “And here I thought you were such a serious boy. You drink too much bourbon and get all maudlin.”

“You drink too much everything,” Yuko says.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters.

“Now c’mon, the eggs, man. Or you’re getting them raw.”

“You seriously cooking breakfast?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Gotta feed our guests, don’t we?”

He laughs. “I guess. Over easy?”

“At
last
. Like pulling teeth. Go sit your ass down and I’ll bring it out.”

MAYBE IT’S
because it’s daylight, or because he’s in Shadow, or maybe it’s just because the Baron does what the Baron does, but today the Baron is fox-faced and androgynous-looking. He’s dressed in an immaculate black suit with a white linen napkin tucked into the starched white collar of his shirt, using golden cutlery with hands heavy with gold skull rings. Skinny Mary’s sitting opposite him at the table, impeccably dressed in a morning suit, cigarillo in one hand. He still can’t see her eyes, but he’s pretty sure she’s looking at him.