Salt and Silver

by Anna Katherine

  “I think you are a hero,” I say, and this time I don’t let him flinch away. sat, standing behind Ryan like a protective mother bear or something, smiles approvingly. Ištar puts her hand over mine. I can feel it, a little bit, cool and damp. I practically don’t even see them anymore, they are so much a part of him, but this feels weird. Then Ištar takes her hand away, and disappears. When I look for her, she’s standing with sat, standing over us.

  The lioness purrs a little.

  I look down at my hand; the scrape is gone, and there’s not even a scar.

  Add that to the list of crazy things that have been happening.

  “Why do you do it?” he says challengingly, backing away, putting space between us literally and figuratively.

  I repeat back to him what he said to me: “How can I not?”

  “Stan and Amanda don’t.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I look down. “But I have to. It’s my diner. It’s my Door. It was my fault—at least partially. I didn’t stop Amanda from doing her stupid summoning spell. I didn’t . . .” I stop myself. I’m a different person from when this all started, and that means that now, instead of just whining about all the things that I didn’t do, I recognize that not all of this is my fault. Not all of it’s my fault, and I don’t have to take all the responsibility.

  I still feel like shit, though.

  “It’s not all your fault,” says Ryan, as though he read my mind. He smiles at me, a flash of blue-white in the Door light, and then stands up. “And you’re . . . doing pretty good.” He settles his hat on his head, and tugs the brim down so I can’t see his eyes anymore. “Time to get going.”

  I stand up and take a deep breath of the thick minty air. “I’m ready.” I’m not ready at all. I want a nap. I want a chocolate bar. I want my diner. Dawn probably thinks Ryan and I are in some love nest somewhere sexing it up. Close, but not close enough.

  The blue Door leads us into a cave. Note: I do not go first into this Door, because while I can kick a lot of ass, I am also (mostly) not dumb, and my learning curve is pretty damn steep.

  When I follow Roxie, though, there are no immediate demons. But . . . it’s creepy—creepier than the rocks, creepier than anything, because it looks human. The floor is worn smooth, and the walls were carved out of the rock. There are torches in sconces on the walls, flickering with orange fire. I mean, it’s regular-looking fire. It’s orange and yellow like regular fire. It flickers slightly. It’s normal, it’s all normal, in an amusement-park set design kind of way. Normal.

  It is kind of freaking me out.

  I have a drama-free blood drop; the next Door is kind of far, but at least we won’t have to climb to get to it. Christian’s spider legs click on the stone floor of the cave as we walk through it. Ryan’s boots thump, and Roxie’s shitkickers don’t make any noise at all. My shoes make clunking sounds.

  Stan is still wearing tennis shoes. He’s limping, but we’re going to be lucky to get the hell out of these caves without having to fight him.

  “Allie, I’m hungry,” he says, and his voice is husky, too deep and scratchy. “I’m really really hungry.”

  “You can eat soon.” I try to sound reassuring, but I’m pretty sure I just sound scared.

  We pass by a room. When I look in, the firelight reflects off a crystal-encrusted wall, like a giant geode. Pretty. We pass by it, and another cave room appears. It seems to be empty, except for firelight and a short well all the way in the back. On the edge of the well is balanced a full tin cup of water, just asking to be picked up and drunk. I almost go into that one, but this is Hell. I think the odds are good that if I tried to drink from the cup, my face would be eaten off.

  “Minos?” Ryan mutters, and Roxie punches his shoulder. He ignores her and keeps muttering, and I hear a whisper in my head that sounds like Ryan. I’ve been talking with my mental voice, but I haven’t been doing a lot of listening lately, and I am super-curious. I saw that movie once, he’s thinking, what was it, hands holding up candles, monster at the end of the hall? Always monsters. Are these Hells my memories? Hell is what you bring with you. I brought—

  His voice stops, and then instead of words I see . . . I see me. From above, flush and naked and almost kind of pretty. Ryan’s memory. I open my eyes—I didn’t even notice I’d closed them, I am losing points on the secret psychic front—and everyone’s stopped and looking at me.

  Out loud, with sat’s voice, Ryan says, “Stay out of my head, Allie.”

  “Then talk to me,” I request, and I hate how desperate I sound, but I’d like some human interaction that happens out loud and isn’t filled with deep meaning or the end of the world or death. “Talk to me, please.”

  “You couldn’t wait to get me to shut up on the rocks,” he taunts.

  “Please, Ryan,” and I am so appalled to hear my voice break in the middle of his name. “Please.”

  “Ryan,” says Roxie sharply.

  “Come walk with me, Allie,” he says, and I step around Christian to get to Ryan.

  “Tell me about names,” I request. I thread my arm through his. sat and Ištar smile at me approvingly, and the lioness brushes against me with every step we take. I let my newly healed hand down. She’s tall, so it rests on her back as we walk, and I feel more comfortable.

  “Names are . . . magic.” Ryan puts his other hand over mine. It’s warm and dry and anchors me. “It’s a part of you, like your blood. If a demon or a witch gets a part of you—”

  I frown. “Is it contagion magic again? Like with salt?”

  He nods. “It’s related. Doing something to a part of you can be made the same as doing it to you. So names, true names . . . those are something you want to protect.”

  “So does that mean everyone has two names?”

  “No, not everyone. Only people who know that they’re supposed to. That’s why hunters always say, ‘You can call me,’ instead of, ‘My name is . . . ’ ” He pauses but I don’t let him start again.

  “I said my name in front of our Door.”

  “Your real real name?” Ryan asks me sharply. I shake my head, and he lets out a breath. “Good,” he says. “If your true name was spoken in front of the Door, it might be able to . . . do things. And not just your Door—what one Door knows, they all know.”

  I bite my lip. “What about Stan?”

  “He has another name, doesn’t he? The Door doesn’t know his true name, just the one he’s called by.”

  I look down at the floor. The light from the sconces casts strange shadows. There are more shadows than there are hunters; apparently sat and Ištar and the lioness even cast shadows. There’s not a lioness shadow, actually—where hers would be is just another woman.

  I shudder.

  “What about—Amanda. She doesn’t have a second name.” I look up at Ryan, and I can see his eyes under the brim of his hat. I wish I had a hat. All I have are my stupid sunglasses, and all they’re really good for is holding my bangs away from my face.

  “If she doesn’t have a second name, it could go either way. It might be how she conjured up the Door so easily. A true name is a powerful thing. We don’t really understand the mechanism for the creation of Doors—I’m quoting Narnia here, by the way—but there might be something out there that was drawn to that kind of bait . . .” I can hear Ryan shrugging. In my head it feels like a rolling of the shoulders, or maybe like I just rolled my head around on my neck and something popped a little. “It never made sense, how the Door came to you three so quickly, so easily. Just popped right into existence.”

  “Spontaneous vivification,” I say wisely, and he chuckles.

  “I wish I’d never taught you that phrase.” He squeezes my hand before he drops his. “You overuse it.”

  “It’s a great phrase. I love it.” I squeeze his arm once and then take it back. I plunge my hand into the pocket of my coat. My bandanna is in there. It’s the same pink one I was wearing days ago—it feels like weeks already. Maybe time really does mo
ve differently in the Hell dimensions. “Do you think time moves differently in the Hell dimensions?”

  “Maybe.” Ryan shrugs again, mentally. “Maybe not. I guess we’ll find out if we ever get the Hell out of here. Just need to find some damn—” I can kind of hear his mind grinding to a halt, and readjusting, and a sort of flurry of thoughts that end with him saying, “Damn. I knew I knew something about a hand and the waters of life.” He’s excited. “Do you know the story of the Hand of Franklin?” he asks me.

  I shake my head.

  “It’s this Canadian thing. This guy named Franklin was looking for a passage through the Northwest Territories, and his expedition got lost. I don’t remember all the details, but there’s a song about it, about how Franklin’s hand is still reaching toward the Beaufort Sea.”

  “Maybe we’re looking for the Hand of Franklin, then,” I say, teasingly. “Might as well call it something.”

  “Might as well,” he agrees.

  “Do you think that the Hand of Franklin literally is what we’re looking for? I mean, I bet it’s called something completely different, but what if it’s the same kind of thing?”

  “What if we’re looking for a hand that’s reaching toward a sea?” Ryan asks.

  I roll my eyes. “Well, I don’t know. But doesn’t it stand to reason that most stories about water and hands and life would be about the same things?”

  “No, not at all,” he replies, but he grins.

  “So are you Canadian?” I ask, knowing even as I did that he wasn’t going to answer me.

  He grins down at me. “I’m not telling you my name,” he says. “Especially not in Hell.”

  I grin back at him. “That’s okay, I’m not telling you mine either.” I would if he asked, but he wouldn’t ever ask. Maybe he doesn’t care to know.

  I finger my bandanna. Maybe he doesn’t want to know, maybe it would put me in danger, maybe maybe maybe—

  Maybe, whispers something. Maybe—

  Shit, Ryan’s going to kill me if I’m in his head again—but he’s stopping, and so is Roxie. And the whispering doesn’t resolve into words again, it’s just a quiet shushing noise, like a river flowing.

  Roxie holds up her hand, and in the firelight her face is covered in flickering shadows. The shadows can’t hide that she looks scared.

  This is the woman who jumped on a dragon. I do not want to see what scares her. Her snakes are silent and unmoving.

  The shushing is coming from the dark spot in the tunnel ahead of us; by the shape, it’s either another cave room or a new path. A new gross path. There’s no way we can take a route around it, though, unless we turn around, and that’s not an option.

  “Listen,” Christian’s spider says softly. It’s the first thing he’s said in a while. He ignores Roxie’s hand and moves around her, heading toward the noise. Ryan starts to follow, guiding Stan—then Stan stops, and cocks his head to the side.

  “It’s okay,” Stan says. His voice is even deeper than before. Stan, my Stan, is barely there anymore. My guilt is a knot in my stomach. I made him forget. I did this. I can’t ever take it back, or I would.

  Stan, I am so sorry, I think, and I hope that he can hear me, if he’s anywhere at all that he can hear.

  “It’s just some mom singing,” Stan continues. “It’s kind of nice, actually—”

  Ryan twists around Stan just in time to catch Roxie as she makes a run for the shushing, and he wraps his arms around her from behind, making a bear hug she can’t break from. She’s trying like hell, though, and I am seriously impressed with both of their efforts here, even while I am freaking the hell out.

  “Allie,” Ryan—sat—grinds out, “blindfold her—ow.” Roxie fights dirty. And he wants me to help. Great.

  I pull my bandanna out of my pocket, and try to slide sideways toward Roxie. She’s keening now, inhuman, and her snakes . . . they’re dying, and limp on her body. The shushing is getting louder, and Christian is wavering back and forth between going on and turning back to help us with whatever’s going on with Roxie—and Stan’s started walking, hands out, toward Christian and the new cave.

  Roxie flings her head back to break Ryan’s nose, and thank god they’ve sparred together or whatever hunters do to socialize, because his nose isn’t there—my kerchief is. It’s not a great blindfold, but it’s enough—she’s suddenly limp in Ryan’s arms, and breathing shallowly.

  “What the hell is it?” I ask. Ryan gingerly lets Roxie go—she stands on her own, but she’s not steady on her feet.

  “I have a suspicion,” sat says. She’s practically corporeal. So is Ištar. Ryan carefully takes Roxie’s hand and starts moving toward the cave. I grab Stan’s sleeve and follow.

  14

  The cave is wide enough that we can all stand shoulder to shoulder at the entrance, even Christian’s giant spider. I think of that line from Mary Poppins: “Shoulder to shoulder into the fray.” Okay, we’re not suffragettes, but the sentiment stands. There are no sconces on the walls in this cave, just a giant fire in a chasm through the middle. The fire isn’t orange—it’s black. It’s black fire, and it’s so hot, I can feel it from where we’re standing, so many feet away from it.

  Along the far wall, across the chasm, is a giant snake. Except it isn’t a snake—it’s half-snake, half-woman. The snake half has dark, thick skin rather than scales. The woman half has long dark hair that falls in thick curls down its back and pooling around it like a blanket. It—she—the thing’s making that shushing noise that Christian and Stan, our resident part-demons, recognize as actually meaning something.

  Stan said it was a mom singing. Roxie’s Door likes to hum at her—I am starting to wonder if maybe Ryan’s thought before wasn’t wrong: Hell is what you bring with you.

  I am starting to wonder what kind of monster Roxie brought with her that drove her to that kind of madness.

  The thing, still shushing, reaches down into its mass of beautiful hair and lifts a bundle out of the curl of its tail. It cradles it for a moment, whispering and rocking, and then brings it up to its face.

  The thing’s mouth cracks open like a snake’s, and it . . .

  “What’s it eating, Ryan?” I ask quietly. I know what it’s eating. I know. But I have to ask.

  “A baby,” says Ištar, and she starts to cry.

  Roxie, beneath the blindfold, is shaking. I want to turn away—it’s not a real baby, real babies don’t go to Hell, just tell me it isn’t a real baby, Ryan.

  sat says softly, “That’s a lamia.”

  I look down at my coat. I am wearing the skin of a monster that eats babies.

  I want to throw up.

  “They live in caves,” Ryan says. He’s carefully moving Roxie past the doorway, getting her farther down the corridor and away from this abomination. “They come out in hospitals a lot. And parks. And—”

  “Shut up,” I say. I grab hold of Stan’s arm and I’m following Ryan like there’s nothing horrible happening just a few feet away.

  And then, just like that, like it was nothing, we’re past the cave with the fire and the chasm, and we’re back in a corridor with sconces and regular orange fire.

  Except I can still hear the shushing, I can still hear whispers of Roxie’s nightmare.

  And I wonder what I brought with me into Hell.

  I take us through the corridors, closing my eyes every few feet to make sure we’re going in the right direction. We turn left at one fork in the cave, right at another. I feel like we’re going in circles, but we can’t be, because we’re getting closer and closer to a black Door.

  “It’s black,” I murmur to Ryan as soon as I know. He’s put Stan on Christian’s back, and they’re talking to each other. Stan is singing in his head, a song about Little Red Riding Hood, and the wolf who eats her. At the end of the song, the wolf eats her, and she dies. He eats her intestines first, and then her eyeballs.

  It’s fucking gruesome. When the song ends, Stan starts over. That’s what he�
��s doing. He’s not talking—he’s singing.

  “I wish we knew what the colors meant.” Ryan sounds more frustrated than I feel.

  “I fucking hate this,” Roxie chimes in. She’s left the blindfold on, and she’s moving slowly. Her boots still don’t make noise, but the snakes look sick, sick like they’re still dying from being so close to the lamia.

  “Is the lamia an elemental?” I ask. “There’s no way it can be, right, if it makes Roxie sick?”

  “No, it’s just a regular demon.”

  I kick at the floor. If there was a pebble, I would kick it, but there’s nothing here. Just empty corridors of stone. “Why do we wear their skin? Why do we wear the skin of things that, that—”

  “Because it works,” Ryan says quietly. “It’s a demon, it’s a really bad demon, but wearing its skin means we can get out of some fights alive. We do what we have to.”

  Ryan trails a hand along the wall, but is careful not to touch the sconce he’s near. It looks like it would be painful to touch, since it’s kind of on fire and everything. “Sometimes we think something is only folklore, but it turns out to be real. That’s what Narnia says happened with the lamia skin. Some hunter got one to come through her Door, and suddenly a whole new world of protection opens up for us. Then again, sometimes we think something is real, but it turns out to be folklore.”

  “Like zombies, right?” I made that mistake some time in the first month that I knew Ryan. I asked him to teach me how to shoot a gun, in case there was a zombie attack. He laughed at me, and explained that zombies only existed in B-movies and crappy horror novels.

  I like zombies. Mostly because of that. In fact, I watch all the zombie movies I can get my hands on. Okay, that’s not a lot because Blockbuster doesn’t exactly stock a regular supply, but I’ve seen all the Resident Evil movies, and that British movie about the virus, and that really weird Italian one with Rupert Everett that Ryan had me rent one night so we could deconstruct the action.

  Okay, so I’ve seen a couple of zombie movies. They’re still my favorite.