Salt and Silver

by Anna Katherine

  Well, it has Stan. He’s sitting propped up against the Door, bleeding. Oh, shit, Stan.

  “Oh, shit.” I move away from Ryan. “Stan.” I drop to my knees, and it hurts, the stone under my knees is hard, but—Stan.

  “It hurts, Allie, it hurts,” he says dazedly. His blood is black and looks tacky, and it’s dripping onto the rocks, between Stan’s fingers. He has his hand pressed to his leg; there’s a bite, a big one, and now I know what the pill bugs would’ve done to us if they’d gotten close enough.

  “Do not touch him,” says Ryan. He crouches down on one side, and Roxie on the other. Christian doesn’t give a damn; he just keeps dipping rocks. We will run out soon.

  “I bet it’s painful,” says Ryan finally. He’s just staring at Stan, at the blood dripping through his fingers. A thick droplet forms and hits the rocks—around us, I see Doors abruptly break into light, like when I drop my blood. Except the colors are darker, and the Door that lights up for Stan isn’t the one that lit up for me. It’s green, and damp, and I don’t like it. Ryan doesn’t see it. Instead, he says, “Sorry, Stan.”

  Stan gives a shaky laugh. “Sure, boyfriend.”

  Ryan shrugs and looks at me. “We can’t touch him. You can’t touch him—you have an open wound. If any of his blood gets into you . . .”

  Ryan doesn’t have to finish that thought. If any of Stan’s blood gets into me, that’s it for me, isn’t it? I’m definitely a werewolf after that. And if there isn’t a way to fix Stan, there definitely isn’t a way to fix me.

  “Stan,” Ryan says. “Can you move?”

  “I don’t even know if I can, like, breathe,” he replies, but he starts struggling to his feet, his back moving up against the rocks of the Door slowly. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, and I smell death on him. Now the summer scent is fading. I don’t know how long I’ll still have him.

  “Come on,” says Roxie. “We’ve got a long climb.” She resheathes her knives, and grabs my hand. One quick squeeze, and suddenly I feel a little better. I’ve got Roxie by my side, and she’s got my back. She must like me a little bit, otherwise she’d have killed Stan when she had the chance, in the middle of the battle.

  Ryan jerks his head in Christian’s direction. “You ready, Christian?” That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him address Christian directly, I think, since even before this started.

  Christian just clicks at him. I look at Roxie, and we have a conversation with our eyebrows. I am getting fluent in eyebrow-ese. If Christian doesn’t die before this is over, we’re going to have to kill him; he’s almost entirely demon now.

  “How can an avatar turn into a demon?” I ask softly.

  “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” she replies, and I frown at her.

  “I’m serious.”

  Ryan’s carefully binding up Stan’s leg with Christian’s bandanna. I guess Christian doesn’t really need it anymore. Ryan helps Stan up, then looks at us. “Everybody pick up a rock. Let’s go.”

  “How the hell can we get up there?” I did not bring my spelunking gear, nor had I been informed it would be necessary before I started this trip.

  “We climb,” says Ryan unnecessarily. “With our hands.” He shoots a small grin at me. I think he’s enjoying this.

  “This isn’t fun,” I snap.

  “No, but it’s interesting,” he says, and I scowl at him.

  “Jerk.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Lovebirds,” says Roxie, and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh. She’s not exactly succeeding.

  “Okay—let me—” I sigh, and close my eyes. There are Doors everywhere, mostly up, and as soon as I focus on them, they all pop brightly, and they all want to talk to me.

  Allie!

  Allie!

  Allie!

  The closest one glows blue, and is huge, like four or five times the size of my body, tall, wide. Up.

  I point up and sigh again. “Up, about fifty feet,” I tell them.

  Christian chitters. I turn to look at him. “Listen, you still have hands. Remember how to use them.” Remember how to use them, I order him.

  Ryan sets the pace, something easy for Stan, but constant. He’s talking, I think to distract me from stuff, but I stop listening after a while, because it’s depressing, and I get annoyed when I get depressed. He lectures me on demons, giving me the history of a demon called druj, the Zoroastrian demon of lies. It doesn’t sound too interesting. Blah blah, it lies and turns things into chaos, and can only be combated with the truth. What good is a demon that can’t be fought?

  Roxie climbs near Christian. He clicks and she hisses, and I’m sure it has meaning to them, but it gives me a headache. Stan just feels around, and follows our avatars’ voices, and he’s more quiet than before, and I hear him suck in his breath every once in a while when he moves wrong.

  Climbing the rocks is really difficult, and the further we get from the brown Door, the darker it gets in this dimension, and the louder the buzzing.

  I interrupt Ryan’s explanation of lajabless, a Caribbean demon with a cow foot who lures men to their deaths.

  “What’s with the buzzing?”

  “That’s the flies.” He says it like it’s not the grossest thing in the world. “You didn’t wonder why there’s not any light? The flies block it out.”

  “Now you’re making stuff up.” I slip on a rock, and have to grab it again. Pill bugs and flies and I am getting very disgusted by Hell dimensions in general, oh my god. My hands are sore and I am pretty sure they’re going to start bleeding soon. My shoes, at least, are perfect for this. They have round toes that are strong and dig into the soft rock easily, but the bottoms are wearing off from all the walking, and are getting slippery.

  “Seriously. They don’t bite or anything, they just . . . exist.”

  “Great,” I mutter. “I feel a lot better.”

  “Have you ever heard of the dwen?” he asks me.

  “Nope, is that another Caribbean demon?”

  “It’s from Trinidad. When a child dies before it’s baptized, its feet turn backwards, and it can’t go anywhere.”

  I’m not a child, and I’ve never been baptized. My family is—was—about as far from religious as it comes.

  “Well, I guess I’m screwed then,” I say, and grab another piece of rock, haul myself up, grab a piece of rock, haul myself up.

  13

  I have never been so relieved to see a Door in my life. The soft blue glow is actually comforting. For a few moments, as we climbed, there was nothing but blackness and buzzing, the hissing and clicking from Roxie and Christian, and the noise of rocks breaking off and falling—except no noise of them hitting the ground.

  I collapse in front of the Door, and take a deep breath. Everything smells and tastes blue, icy like wintergreen gum or spearmint tea. No—like toothpaste. The air is like toothpaste, and instead of being thinner so high up, it’s thicker. The Door is on a cliff, facing a deep crevasse. Our glow rocks are starting to fade, but the light from the Door makes up for it.

  “My stomach,” I groan. Have you ever pulled yourself up anywhere? I just used muscles I swear I didn’t even know I had.

  “It doesn’t really hurt,” Ryan tells me. He’s helping Roxie haul Stan up over the edge. “None of this really exists. It’s why you’re not hungry.”

  “Yeah, then how come Stan got hurt? And Christian’s avatar—”

  “Because they’re demons,” hisses Roxie. “They really exist here. We don’t.”

  “This looks like it exists to me,” I say, pointing at the scrape on my hand from earlier. “And look!” I hold out my hands, palms up. “And if he’s Mr. Existence, how did Stan climb the rocks with his leg ripped open?”

  “He did it because he had to. The limits of human—demon—anyone’s endurance . . .” Ryan trails off. “You have no idea what you’re really capable of, Allie. None of us do.”

  “I’m capable of being cranky,” I grouse, and lay
on my back on the rock. It’s pretty smooth, and there are no bugs or anything. Just the blue light from the Door, making everything around it glow. My skin looks almost translucent.

  “Say hello to the Door, Allie.” Roxie crouches beside me and offers up her knife. I shake my head.

  “I don’t need that,” I tell her, and roll over until I’m on my stomach in front of the Door. It dwarfs everything I’ve ever seen before in my life. It is the skyscraper of Doors, for sure. It looks just like the Door at the bottom of the crevasse, though—all rock and stone, like something out of The Lord of the Rings.

  Now Viggo Mortensen . . . He’d perk me right up.

  (Who am I kidding? Ryan is way hotter than Viggo Mortensen, I swear.)

  I pick the scab off one of my old wounds, and smear my finger right outside the Doorway. You know me, you know me, you know me . . .

  You’re so tired, Allie, says the Door. I can fix that. I can help you.

  I don’t want your help.

  That’s a lie. You’re a liar, liar, liar liar, it chants. Liar liar liar.

  Can you help Stan? I demand.

  Nothing can help him now! I swear the Door even cackles.

  Then shut up, I say, and push with my thoughts, and move the Door away from me, move it away. Its voice fades. Thank god.

  “Allie, make the circle.” Ryan holds out another crayon. I take it; it’s brand new, and called “macaroni and cheese.” I raise my eyebrows at him—I’m just saying, I’m getting better at communicating with my eyebrows, seriously!—and he shrugs. “It was as close to flesh as I could get.”

  So gross. I draw out the circle, and, for good measure, drip a little blood where it meets, and then I pull out my salt.

  “Salt?” Roxie’s sitting next to Stan, but not close enough for him to touch her. Christian is on the other side of the circle, as far away from the Door as he can get, and Ryan is standing in the middle, watching me.

  “This Door makes me nervous.”

  “Allie the Door Whisperer says this? That’s . . . not good.” Ryan shakes his head. “Salt.”

  “Salt,” I agree, and shake some out of my leather flask. It fizzes when it hits my blood which, you know, is weird. For good measure, I shake some onto the scrape on the back of my hand. It doesn’t fizz, it just burns. I hiss through my teeth, but don’t say anything.

  The limits of human endurance, and all that.

  We all nap a little. Well, Ryan doesn’t; he’s got his back to all of us, staring over the edge of the cliff back down into the crevasse. It’s hard to keep my eyes closed—the light of the Door burns really brightly, more brightly when my eyes are closed than when they are open.

  I don’t care what Ryan says—I’m exhausted and it’s real.

  I miss my diner. I miss it a lot. I left a note for Dawn, asking her to open and close, and I’m sure she will. It’s not like I am worried about it—except I am totally worried about it.

  I spent three years training with Sally to run the diner. She told me on my second day that as soon as I walked in, she knew I’d either be the one to take over running the diner when she retired, or I’d be a miserable flop.

  Now that I know what I know about the Doors, and how they give you what you want . . . well, I wonder about what was really going on. I think about it a lot, sometimes. I can go for weeks without it ever crossing my mind, but every time I make a mistake, every time the cash register doesn’t balance out, every time I cook an order and get it wrong, I wonder. I wonder if Sally really wanted to leave the diner to me. I wonder if she really wanted to retire to Florida. I don’t own the diner—she still does. I guess I’m just kind of the caretaker, in case she ever comes back.

  Or in case I can ever afford to buy it from her. Which I’ve been saving to do for four years at this point. And I have more money than I should, really, and I wonder if that’s the Door too.

  I feel a tap on my shoulder, and, “Hey.” I roll over and put my back to the Door. It makes me uneasy, but I want to face Ryan, and I know that if anything comes though the Door, he’ll be better than me at taking it down.

  Not that anything’s come through any of the Doors in the Hell dimensions, but it can’t hurt to be careful.

  Ryan is crouched next to me, his women just behind him. They smile creepy smiles. He flows down until he’s sitting cross-legged. Ištar sits next to me, and the lioness curls up carefully so that part of her is touching me and part of her is touching Ryan.

  He acts like he doesn’t notice what they’re doing, just takes off his hat and runs his hand through his hair; it sticks up a little, right at the nape of his neck, and if he was any closer I’d flatten it for him. Because I am not at all obvious.

  sat catches my eye, and smooths the hair at the nape of Ryan’s neck, but she’s not corporeal, so the hair is still sticking up. I appreciate the sentiment, though.

  “I could hear you thinking from all the way over there,” he says.

  “You could hear me?” I ask incredulously. “It’s getting stronger?”

  “No—I meant—” He makes a face. “Sorry. Figure of speech. Might not be a good idea in these parts.”

  “Oh thank god,” I say. And much as I hate to remind him that he probably has better things to do . . . “Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye out for demons and stuff?”

  He hooks a thumb over his shoulder. Behind him, Roxie’s settled at the cliff edge. She’s rubbing her knee. “She likes to do the watch,” he explains quietly.

  I prop my head up on my hand. “I was thinking about my diner,” I confess. “I know I should be thinking about something important, but . . .”

  Ryan nods. “It’s important to keep your mind in the game,” he says. “But it’s also important to remember why we’re doing this. What it’s for. Keep yourself grounded in the real world.”

  “You guys don’t.” I wave my other hand over at Roxie and Christian. “You guys hate the world.”

  “We don’t hate the world.” He frowns; Ištar sighs. “We don’t hate people. You said that before, too, that we disrespect the very people we’re protecting. It’s not true. You won’t find people more focused on keeping a world of mundanes safe. But—the kind of people we are, that we have to be . . . it doesn’t fit nine-to-five. We’re security guards, and truckers, and the bluest collars you ever saw. And a lot of mundanes grew up thinking it was okay to treat working guys like—”

  “Like shit,” I say. It’s what I would’ve done; it’s what I did do, until I jumped the tracks six years back. “You’ve probably saved the lives of hundreds of people, and they have no idea, and they treat you like shit.” I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. We’d climbed a long way up to get here, and I can see where the tunnels keep going up. Or down.

  I guess it depends on which way you’re going. “Why do you do it?” I ask the ceiling.

  He doesn’t say anything. But the tips of his fingers touch the hair behind my left ear. Just a little bit. But. He’s touching my hair.

  “How can’t I?” he says at last. His voice is deep, and he sounds sad, so sad. “I know what’s out there,” he says. “I know what goes bump in the night. How do you think I got started? I didn’t have anyone crashing in to save me in the nick of time.” His touch disappears. “I didn’t have anyone to save the rest of them.”

  Them? “Them?” I ask.

  Ryan’s quiet for a long time, and I wonder if he’s going to finish. I wonder if he would’ve, if I hadn’t opened my mouth about it.

  It’s Ištar’s voice I hear when he says, “When I was younger, in the winter, I used to catch seasonal work, cutting down Christmas trees to send south. A lot of us did it—it was a quick buck, just a couple of weekends’ worth of work. The guys hiring would drive us most of the way, and then we’d hike through the snow up to the tree lot. Not far.”

  He pauses, then: “I was cutting down a tree when it happened. The guys with me all died. I didn’t.”

  I’m almost afraid to say any
thing, but I’ve got to know. “What was it?”

  “A hidebehind. One of the natural demons that shows up without a Door. They move fast and don’t like to be seen; hence the name. But they watch, and they wait, and then they steal loggers away when no one’s looking.” He laughs a little, the kind of laugh people have when they’re saying something sad or horrible, not the laugh of someone actually amused. “I was the last one, and the only reason I didn’t get taken too was because I was the one working with the chainsaw. I was the one who had a giant mass of iron to spin around, and I was the one who cut the thing’s head off before it could move behind me again.”

  He sighs. I can feel his breath touch my skin. “I hiked back to the checkpoint, and then I kept going. The rest of my crew missing, and me with a bloody chainsaw. Not good. So I left.”

  Snow, huh? I wonder about his “Southern” accent, and then realize: Lots of places have a South. “How old were you?” I ask.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Do you have a family? I mean, do they wonder what’s up with you?”

  “Don’t know,” he says. “I’m always afraid to go back.”

  “But—don’t you miss them? Don’t you want to be with your family?” I can’t imagine having family and not wanting to be with them. I can’t—I miss having a family so much. Not that I ever really had a family; can you miss what you never had?

  I can feel Ryan looking at me, so I turn my head and look up at him, and suddenly I can see just how tired he is, how alone, how much he hates being alone, but he feels like he has to, that the people around him always get killed.

  Always except me.

  “You would have saved those men if you could have. You were just a kid. You had no idea what you were up against.” I stretch my hand out to pat his leg, and he flinches, so I let it drop.

  “I killed the thing that got them, and the dead don’t care much about anything anymore. So I’m not a hero. But I couldn’t ever return to the world of the mundanes.”