Smoke and Ashes (10 page)

“No shit!”

Still supporting most of his weight, she glared down at him. From this close, Tony could see a tiny scar at the edge of her right eyebrow. “Quit yelling at me! It's not helping!”

He could also see that she was really most sincerely freaked and that threatened to send him into strong hysterics. When thirty-five-hundred-year-old immortal stuntwomen got freaked, it was time for the rest of the world to fucking lose it. Fortunately—for some weird definition of fortunately he didn't want to go into right now—he was too exhausted to start up the whole
oh, my God, we're all going to die
thing. After a couple of deep breaths, he managed a fairly calm, “What happened to it?”

“Ash.”

“And the arm?”

Leah nodded toward a long, narrow lump of black on the pavement. “It got just a little overcooked.”

“But the demon is ash?”

“The demon was other, the arm was flesh.”

That almost made sense. Tony struggled to sit up a little straighter, but someone seemed to have snuck into his body and replaced all his muscles with marshmallows. “I don't feel so good.”

“Considering the way you just blew your wad, I'm not surprised.”

“Nice imagery.”

“Thank you. Can you…” Approaching voices cut her off and suddenly it became necessary he sit up on his own as Leah withdrew her arm and stood. “Oh, no, here comes the cavalry. They must've seen the flash. You get that arm packed up and let me deal with them.”

Deal? Tony managed to brace himself on one hand and turn enough to see three men approaching from the jetty. Then Leah crossed into his line of sight, hips moving to an ancient rhythm. She laughed in answer to something one of the men said, a low, throaty sound that held heated suggestion.

And if even he could feel the heat, the odds were very high that none of the three men were now paying any attention to anything else.

You get that arm packed up.

Yeah. Right. Like that was the sort of thing he did every day. Well, actually, given the content of
Darkest Night
, he'd done it a couple of times helping out the set dresser. He rolled up onto his feet, swayed for a moment, and staggered back to the makeup trailer where he begged a garbage bag from the box on the counter.

“Are you feeling all right?” Hama asked as she handed it over. “You don't look so good.” Her eyes narrowed. “You should be a medium beige and you're down to a light ivory.”

“I'm fine. Just a little tired.”

“You need more protein and less pizza. Especially if you're going to spend time with Leah.”

“I'm not spending that kind of time with her.” He'd just rest for a moment longer against the open door.

“Uh-huh.”

“I'm gay.”

“I'm generally fairly cheerful myself,” she said dryly. “Trust me about Leah and red meat. Now close the door and go; you're letting cold air in.”

It wasn't easy finding the remains of the arm. The banks of overhead lights shining down on the stacks of containers created nearly impenetrable shadow and, half blind, he almost tripped over it before he saw it. It looked like a long lump of charcoal roughly carved into the shape of an arm—a slight bend in the black where the elbow might be and little stubby fingers on one end. Given that the construction worker's other hand had been relatively normal, he had to assume the stubbiness occurred after death. Had the Powershot burned the fingers away? Or had the demon snacked on the end of his weapon?

“Demon snacks. Right. Why can't I ever spend time thinking about cars or getting laid, like a normal guy?” He sighed as he shook out the garbage bag. It was one of the small white ones made for garbage pails under the sink and it smelled vaguely of mint.

The scar on the palm of his left hand twitched as he dropped heavily to one knee beside the arm, and he hesitated, fingers spread out about five centimeters over the burned flesh.

“Problem?” Leah's voice behind his right shoulder.

“The last time I picked up an arm, it wasn't…fun.” Hello, understatement.

“Well, this one's pretty much pure carbon, so I don't imagine it'll give you any…Oh, my God! The fingers moved!” She snickered as he threw himself back so quickly he toppled over and pulled the garbage bag from his hand. “Kidding. Here, I'll get it.”

“You seem to be feeling better,” he muttered from the asphalt.

“There's nothing like a little slap and tickle to remind a girl of what's important.” Slipping the bag over her hand, Leah bent and scooped up the arm like she was scooping an enormous turd. An enormous burned turd. With fingers. Stubby fingers. “I'm going to be feeling better than you will for a while,” she added, straightening. “You just ripped that energy right out of your guts, didn't you?”

“I guess.” Feet, legs, guts eventually. Tony rolled up onto his knees as Leah closed the bag and reached into his pocket for the twist tie Hama had given him. A narrow piece of paper fluttered to the ground, a small line of white against the dark asphalt.

“What's that?”

“Fortune from last night's cookie.” He picked it up and turned it over, leaning back just a little to bring it out of shadow. “
The blow from sunlight is more unexpected than the blow from darkness
. That demon just attacked you in the last of the sunlight,” he said slowly as he got to his feet. “And I'd say that was unexpected.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “You got a fortune cookie that really tells the future?”

“You've got a tattoo that's a Demongate.”

“So you're saying stranger things have happened?”

“You're holding an arm.”

She glanced down at the bag. “Good point.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

It took almost more effort than he had available to pull his car keys out of his jacket pocket. “Can you drive?”

 

Tony didn't notice the rip in the side of her hoodie until they were going into the steak house and he stumbled. Leah turned to steady him, and he saw the fabric gape. “Looks like that demon almost got you.”

She glanced down at the sweater and shrugged. “It's the
almost
that matters; I can't be hurt, remember? Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to my clothes. The important thing is that I ducked at exactly the right moment and you were there in time to blast the little bugger into dust.”

“Not so little,” Tony grunted. “And not an imp!”

“Would you let that go?” She maneuvered them around a table, toward the back of the restaurant. “So there was a lot of convergent energy hitting the same spot early on, and something a little bigger than an imp got through. It happens.”

“Is it likely to happen again?”

She flashed him a sunny smile. “Well, if it does, you'll be there to deal with it, won't you?”

“You said imps,” he muttered. “That wasn't an imp.”

“And speaking of how much size matters…” She waited until she'd helped him into a high booth against the back wall and they were holding laminated menus before she continued. “…you might want to dial your Powershot down a bit. I think you're going to lose those nails.”

The nail on his pinkie had begun to curl. It wasn't painful when he poked it, but it wasn't a pleasant feeling. Sort of a condensed memory of the energy surge.

When he looked up, Leah was shaking her head. “You don't know how to dial it down, do you?”

Tony thought about lying, but there was an arm in his trunk, and transporting detached, carbonated body parts made lying seem a little pointless. “That was the first I ever did. I'll get better with practice.”

“Uh-huh. He'll have the sixteen-ounce T-bone,” she told the waitress.

“I can't eat a…”

Both women turned to stare at him. Leah's gaze flicked down to his fingernails.

He had the sixteen-ounce T-bone.

All of it.

And two baked potatoes with sour cream and chives.

And a side of creamed corn.

And a side of fried mushrooms.

And three huge pumpernickel rolls with butter.

And two beers.

Once he got started, he barely paused to breathe.

Leah had a lot less of the same things.

“So,” she said at last when he set the gnawed bone on the plate and sat back with a satisfied sigh, “you got lucky.”

“Lucky?” Maybe wizards had a second stomach. He should have felt sick, but he only felt comfortably full. In fact, he felt like dessert. He yawned. And a nap.

“You got lucky with your first Powershot. You didn't blow off your hand.”

“And I saved your ass,” he reminded her, through another yawn. “Stress the negatives much?”

“Sorry.” The dimples flashed. “You did, indeed, save my ass. You got lucky.”

“Isn't that what happens around you? My day ends early enough to let the only person who can save you arrive in time to save you?”

“Yes, but…”

“I see no buts.”

“You've just eaten enough for two people…”

“Why is that bad?”

“You needed to replace the energy you used.”

“But that's normal for a wizard, right? It's not bad. Demons running around VanTerm are bad. But, like you said, I dealt, so that's good.”

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “If you want bad, I have a hole in my favorite hoodie!”

Tony grinned as Leah shoved her hand through the hole and waved it at him. “You're right, that's…”

He stopped grinning.

She frowned. “What?”

“Your T-shirt.”

She twisted and looked down, pulling the yellow fabric aside. There was a smaller hole in the T-shirt.

And under that, the very tip of the demon's claw had lightly scratched Leah's skin. Her finger shook as she traced the tiny burgundy beads of dried blood on the centimeter-long scratch. “No. That's impossible. I can't be hurt.”

“That's not exactly
hurt,
” Tony began but she cut him off.

“You don't understand. That's blood!”

The scratch was barely visible from across the table. “Not much…”

“My blood!” Leah spat the words out through clenched teeth. “I haven't seen my blood in thirty-five hundred years!”

“You must have…”

“No!”

Other people in the restaurant were beginning to turn and stare. “Come on. We need to go.”

“Where?”

“Back to my place.” All of a sudden he didn't feel like dessert. Her eyes were wild and he wondered just how close the “crazy lady in the desert” was to the surface.

“What are we going to do about this there?”

Good question. Too bad he didn't have an answer. Wait…“We can start by reading
your
fortune cookie.”

“I
HAVE TO SAY THAT
I'm not surprised you lost the fortune cookie in this mess.”

Tony sat back on his heels in time to see Leah shake her head at the pair of boxer-briefs dangling between thumb and forefinger, then toss them to one side. She'd calmed down a lot in the car, and by the time they got to the apartment, she'd either got a handle on things or slid so deeply into denial she was living in Egypt. Tony wasn't sure which, but that was okay because he didn't care which. Whatever worked. “I told you, I was sorting laundry.”

She prodded a pile of jeans with the toe of one sneaker. “Historically, most people sort laundry in order to do laundry.”

“I was going to get to it.”

“When you get down to a pair of paint-stained sweats and a T-shirt you got free from a promo guy?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” He smothered a yawn with the back of his hand and nodded toward the kitchen. “The garbage is under the sink. Try there.”

“You said you didn't throw it out.”

“I didn't throw it out on purpose.” Shoving a pile of old newspapers out of the way, he dropped to his belly to look under the sofa bed. Dead batteries.
Firefly
disk two. Blue silk tie. One dress shoe.
Where the hell was the other one?
Assorted balled-up socks. Empty Timbit box. Three issues of
Cinefex.
As the cheap parquet floor warmed under him, it got harder and harder to stay focused. Empty sample bottle of guava-flavored lube. Empty beer bottle. Unopened can of generic cola. No fortune cookie.

Clutching the can of cola, he shuffled backward until his head cleared the bed frame, dragged himself up onto his knees with a handful of mattress, and allowed his upper body to collapse onto the bed.

Something crinkled.

Setting the can aside, Tony rummaged in the tangle of sheets. “Found it.”

Leah stared down at him in disbelief as she turned from the sink. “You slept with it?”

“Calm down, we're just good friends.” Although the packaging had maintained physical integrity, the cookie within had been crushed. He got himself up on his feet just long enough to shuffle around and sit down on the edge of the bed. Then he reached out and dropped it into her hand.

Her other hand moved to cover the scratch on her side. “This is foolish.”

“Maybe.”

“Yours could have meant anything. It didn't have to refer to the demon; that could have been coincidence.”

“Could have. But I doubt it. Wizard,” he added with a shrug when she glanced at him.

Crumbs whispered against each other as she shook the package, the motion hiding the way her fingers had started to tremble. “Yeah, but this is my cookie, and I'm no wizard.”

He understood why she was delaying; a certainty she had held for her whole life had changed and, given the length of her life, that was saying something. Change could be terrifying. He understood; he just didn't have a lot of patience with it since these days his life changed every twenty minutes. “Would you just open the damned thing?”

She hesitated a moment longer, then caught the edge of the plastic between her teeth and ripped. A small strip of paper spilled out of the pile of amber crumbs on her palm.

“
Ambitious change requires help; timing is everything
. Oh, yes, very clear and extraordinarily anticlimactic.” Eyes rolling, she dusted the crumbs off into the sink. “That could mean anything.”

“It could mean that your Demonlord is getting ambitious and is using the Demonic Convergence to send through minions with the ability to kill you so that the gate opens and he can come through.”

“Minions?”

“Demonic minions.”

“Yes, I got that.” She sat beside him on the bed, dark brows drawn in. “The rest of it, though—you're really reaching.”

“I'm really not.” Grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes only blurred his vision. The steak seemed to be wearing off. Tony patted the blanket until he found the cola, popped the tab, and took a long swallow. “When you were attacked,” he told her, feeling the sugar and caffeine hit his bloodstream, “when that demon drew blood—such as it was—he was there, Ryne Cyratane. I saw him.”

“So? I told you last night he'd be close because of the Convergence.” Her hand went back to her side. “He had nothing to do with this.”

“He likes sex, he hates water. You were with me so that takes care of the sex, or lack of sex, and you were still close to lots of water. He had to be in that parking lot with you for another reason.”

“Tony…” The paper crinkled slightly as she waved it. “…this is a fortune cookie fortune. It's a mass-produced platitude. Ambitious change could mean anything.”

“You said he made a mistake on the spell. He's had thirty-five hundred years to figure out how to fix it. He can't get through himself…”

“Why not?”

“How the hell should I know? He can't because he didn't, but he can send…”

“Minions?”

“Yeah. He's got motive
and
opportunity, and all the pieces fit.”

“Based on a fortune cookie.”

He snatched the paper from her, crumpled it up, and threw it at a pile of T-shirts. “Wizards see what's there.”

“You're learning to be a wizard from a correspondence course. Did it ever occur to you that you're seeing the wrong thing?”

“Okay. Fine. What do you think's going on?” They were sitting side by side. Not looking at each other.

“Ryne Cyratane would have nothing to do with this.”

“With hurting you?” When she didn't answer—and given that the Demonlord had carved those runes into her flesh using the blood of her people, Tony figured she didn't really have an answer—he asked, “Would he let another Demonlord use the gate?”

“No.”

No question there.

“Then since he's still around, he's got to be the one trying to open it. He probably figured out a way to direct the convergent energy to one spot.”

“Okay, fine, you have all the answers…” Leah twisted around to face him, eyes narrowed. “Why did that demon bite the construction worker's arm off?”

Tony sighed. “Duh. Demon.”

He downed half the can of cola while she thought about it.

“It explains everything.”

“Yeah.”

“I bet you're feeling pretty smug about figuring this out,” she muttered at the toes of her high-tops.

He assumed she was actually talking to him. “Not really. It was kind of obvious.” For a long moment the soft squeak of his fingers rubbing the cola can was the only noise in the apartment. “I guess you're feeling kind of betrayed.”

“Well, yes!” After contemplating her shoes a while longer, she lifted her head and pushed her hair back off her face. “And no.” Her laugh was a bit shaky, but to Tony's surprise, it wasn't faked. “I mean, he is a Demonlord, after all. He did slaughter everyone I knew, so this isn't exactly out of character for him. It just took him a while to make his next move.”

“Maybe time runs differently where he is.”

“Probably not. He was never very bright.” One hand slid under her clothes to stroke the tattoo, and she smiled. “The sex was great, though.”

Tony stared at her with as much astonishment as he had the energy for. “And that makes everything okay?”

“Well, no, not okay; but it puts it in perspective, doesn't it? So,” she continued before Tony could respond, “assuming that he'll try it again as soon as he's used the convergent energy to open a new hole, how do we keep these minions of his from killing me?”

“And releasing a Demonlord into the world.”

“That's part two. You'll excuse me…” Her hand moved around from the tattoo to the scratch. “…but I'm more concerned about part one.”

Since keeping Leah alive would keep the Demonlord out, Tony decided there was no point in calling her on that. They needed a plan. And while they were planning…“Can he hear us?”

“No. He says he gets impressions of my life, but our only real conduit is sexual energy.”

“Good.” Hang on. “He
says?
You have conversations?”

“Sometimes, when he's right up by the gate, I enter a meditative state and we talk.”

“Sometimes?”

“Postcoital.”

Why did he even ask? “All right, we're not totally helpless; I dusted the demon with the arm.”

“And got knocked on your ass,” Leah reminded him. “It's been what? Three and a half hours, and you're still too wiped to get it up again.”

“I could so…” Actually, no, he couldn't. Not even thinking of Lee in his motorcycle jacket and chaps got a response.

“That was a metaphor, Tony.”

Her expression suggested she knew what he'd been thinking. He could feel his ears go red. “It doesn't matter. I've got time to recover…for another Powershot,” he added hurriedly as she grinned. “It'll take him a while to get another minion through, right? So we just have to stick with the original plan. We find out where the weak spot is, and you teach me how to close it down.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“If Ryne Cyratane is sending demons through to kill me, my going anywhere near the weak spot would be like waving a steak outside a lion's cage. It might provide enough incentive for a breakout—resulting in a really bad time for the steak.”

Tony fought his way through this second metaphor—which was, at least, not about sex. “Fine, you don't have to go near the weak spot. You tell me where it is, teach me what to do, and I'll deal.”

“It's not that simple.”

He sighed. “It never is. All right, what do we do? How do we stop your Demonlord from opening the gate?”

“We keep me alive.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Seriously, that's all we have to do.” She reached out and touched his arm. “I teach you how to send the demons back without destroying yourself, and every time one shows up, you zap it.”

“That sounds simple. Or not,” he amended when her expression threatened bodily harm.

“One question: what'll the demon be doing while I'm zapping?”

“Trying to kill me.” Her expression added a clear and succinct
You idiot.

“Or trying to kill me, and you can't stop it because, guess what—oh, yeah—it can kill you, too. I'm thinking we need some backup.” Leaning forward, he could just barely reach his jacket hung over the back of a kitchen chair. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, turned to Leah, and grinned. “Who you gonna call?”

She looked confused. “I'm not calling anyone.”

He sighed. “No one watches the classics anymore.”

 

“Nelson.”

“Nice phone manner, Victory. You always bark at your clients?”

“Good to hear you've regained consciousness, Tony.”

“I wasn't…”

“You weren't? Then you had another reason for not calling?”

“I was…”

“Busy? Hang on a sec.” Her voice faded slightly as she moved the phone from her mouth. “Drop the pins and step away from the doll.”

“Vicki?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you working?” Victory Nelson had once been a much-decorated Toronto cop; now she was a vampire P.I.—just like Raymond Dark only without the sidekick, the contrived plots, and the need to keep the violence under PG-13. Tony heard a couple of muffled thuds and some moaning.

“It's no big. These guys are total wannabes. What can I do for you?”

“I have a friend with a bit of a problem.”

“Is this friend another wizard?”

Oh, crap. She knew. He hadn't called because he hadn't known how to tell her and make it sound believable. “How…?”

“Henry told me, idiot.”

Right. Because Henry still considered Tony's life to be his. His Henry's, not his Tony's. God, he was too tired for this. “No, she's not a wizard. She's a stuntwoman and an immortal Demongate.”

“Cool.”

“Not really.” He outlined the problem.

Vicki let him talk without interruption. “Okay,” she said when he finished. “Here's what you do…You listening?”

“Yeah. I'm listening.”

“Stop acting like an ass and call Henry.”

“I'm not…”

“Bullshit. Look, I'm not saying he's not indulging in a bit of testosterone-fueled assness as well, but one, he's out there in Vancouver and I'm not. Two, he owns a grimoire. Maybe more than one. He understands the whole demon thing. And, three, he needs to know what's going on, unless you'd rather he found out that you were dealing with demons in his territory and didn't tell him.”