Smoke and Ashes (24 page)

“Burn the runes one at a time and push them through the weak spot.”

“Through?” Even cracked, the pavement seemed pretty damned solid. “Right. Why don't I just burn
close up
or
keep out?
”

“Tony, use the runes.”

He shifted his foot a little farther away from a particularly nasty bit of melon. “Why?
Go home
worked fine on that charging demon.”

“I know. It shouldn't have.”

“But it did.” He was definitely taking his turn to be smug.

“But it shouldn't have.”

“But it did.”

“Yes, it did. It shouldn't have, but it did. And is this the time to be experimenting with new techniques that may or may not work? That may or may not make things worse? No. The fate of the world is at stake. You risk my life and everyone else's on a whim!”

“But it worked!” Wasn't that the important bit?

“That time. Under those circumstances!” A deep breath, both hands against the clothing over the tattoo. When she spoke again, she wasn't shouting and she sounded sincere. “I promise you that the runes will work every time. Under any circumstances.”

Tony wasn't sure how to take sincere. “Swear this isn't just part of your whole control issue thing?”

“You want swearing?” Garbage squelched under her sneakers as Leah stepped toward him. “I'll give you thirty-five hundred years of swearing in a minute! Write the runes and push them through!”

“One at a time?”

“Now you're being deliberately provoking.”

Yeah. He was. “If it means that much to you, I'll do it your way.”

“Sometime soon!”

“What's the hurry?” The shimmer was kind of pretty in an “entrance to hell” sort of way. “You said this one was shallow.”

“It was when we got here,” she snorted. “Why are you standing like that?”

He'd shifted to stand angled at the pothole, facing Leah, eyeballs rolled into the lower left corner of each socket. “I can see it better if I don't look at it straight on.”

“You know where it is; do you have to see it?”

“I guess not.” He turned to face the pothole, rubbing his eyes. “Problem. I don't think I remember…”

“I know you don't,” Leah interrupted, pulling four sheets of folded paper out of the back pocket of her track pants. “So I brought your cheat notes.”

Considering how tight she wore the upper part of those pants, fitting four sheets of folded paper in the back pocket was one of the most impressive things Tony'd seen all day.

He ended up shoving the runes through physically with the scar on his left hand, ignoring his companion's sotto voice commentary about cheating. “Is it cheating for a basketball player to use their height?”

Okay. Maybe not so much ignoring.

“You're not a basketball player, you're a wizard.”

“And I'm using what I have. It's not my fault other wizards haven't had it.”

“You should be moving them with power.”

“Why?”

“Because that's how it's done.”

Since he was the wizard and she wasn't, he decided to ignore her. As the last line of energy vanished, there was a soft, almost soggy
pop
that lifted all the hair on the back of his neck. The skin around his eyebrow ring suddenly began to burn.

“I wouldn't touch your face with that hand,” Leah cautioned.

His left hand had been pressed flat against the pavement. Or more specifically, flat against elderly grease and rat droppings and more recently deposited bits of chow mein. “Gross…” He wiped it on his jeans as he stood. One knee was damp and he smelled like rotting bean sprouts. By no means as wiped as he would have been after a Powershot, he still felt a little hungry. “So, on to the next one or back to the studio?” he yawned.

“Why is that my decision?”

He shrugged. “You're taking the biggest risk.”

Her fingers stroked the edges of the tattoo and she smiled. The smile said
we can beat this,
and for the moment at least she completely believed it.

Tony smiled the same smile back at her.

“Let's close the second one,” she said.

“Great. You're driving. And I need something to eat.” As they passed the Dumpster, he swerved to miss a small pile of suspiciously moving rice. “But not Chinese.”

 

At a quarter after midnight, they were in Richmond, driving slowly south on No. 3 Road past the old Canadian Pacific Railway lands.

“Feeling's getting stronger,” Leah murmured, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel. “It feels like I have slugs writhing in my navel.”

Tony hurriedly chewed and swallowed his eleventh glazed chocolate Timbit. “Thank you for that image.”

“Any time.” She turned left on Alexandra, slowing further. “We're close.”

They found the weak spot halfway up the side of a building, anchored on a crack in the masonry. There were a few taxis down the street by a hotel, but other than that, the street was empty. Quiet. Once they parked, nothing moved.

“Is this because of the weak spot?” Tony wondered as they crossed the street. All the empty was beginning to creep him out.

“No, it's because it's Thursday night and the bars don't let out for a couple of hours.”

“Right.” Head cocked to one side, eyes rolled up and over, Tony frowned and lost sight of the blazing line of energy spilling out of the crack as his face realigned.

“See, this is why you learn to do it properly.” Hands on her hips, Leah glared up at the building. “Unless we break and enter and dangle you out the third-floor window—which I'm not philosophically against—you're going to have a little trouble just shoving the runes through this one.”

Feeling he should protest, more on principal than because he actually had something valid to say, Tony squinted the crack back into alignment. “This one's a lot brighter than the last one.”

“It's a lot deeper. Better hurry.”

“I could probably throw them into it.”

“Whatever. Just do it.”

Her tone, bordering on panic, pulled his attention off the weak spot and that, he realized as he took Leah with him to the ground was probably all that kept him from being blinded as light flared brilliantly purple and something big burst out of the crack.

She slapped the asphalt on impact, grunting as Tony's weight drove the air out of her lungs. “Get! Off!”

“You're welcome!” As the light show from the building dimmed, he rolled off, scrambled to one knee, and aimed his left hand down the road, blinking away afterimages and breathing heavily. He wouldn't be able to see the cheat sheets through the sparkly purple blotches, so he'd have to do this his way.

Not that sparkly purple blotches suggested imminent danger.

On the other hand, the large asymmetrical shape in the middle of the road did.

Bright side, large was easier to hit.

Eyes watering, he scrawled a very quick
go home
and threw it.

Blue sparks on impact.

Blue sparks, purple blotches. It's like demonic Lucky Charms.

A sound like wet sneaker tread dragged against tile. A giant wet sneaker tread.

“What have you done?”

“I told it to go home!” He grabbed Leah's hand and dragged her with him as he rose to his feet.

“It didn't work!”

“I know!” Rapid blinking brought the street into partial focus. The demon still looked a little blurry around the edges, but Tony had a bad feeling that wasn't his eyes.

“I told you it wouldn't work!”

“You're not helping! Just stay behind me and…” He squinted. “I must've done some damage, it's…” Running seemed as close a description as he was going to get. “…running away.”

Leah grabbed for his sleeve as he started moving. “Where are you going?”

“After it. To stop it from killing people who aren't you,” he added when she didn't seem to understand. “Come on. It's not going that fast.” Mostly because bits of it seemed to be moving in opposite directions.

Her fingers tightened to the edge of pain. “What part of ‘if I die the world ends' are you still missing?”

“The part where it's not after you.” When attempting to jerk free only proved that Leah was stronger than she looked, he waved his free hand toward the demon. “Hello! You're here, it's there!”

She frowned. “Right.” And let go. And smiled. Well, showed teeth. “Come on!”

They were no more than three meters behind it as they rounded the corner onto the section of Alexandra that curved to meet up with Alderbridge Way. The demon turned an eyestalk toward them, put on a surprising burst of speed, and crashed through a poster-covered door into the only lit building on that end of the street.

Ginger Joe's.

“Raise your hand everyone who's surprised by this,” Tony grunted as they ran after it.

“According to Chekhov,” Leah panted, “you should never hang a coffee shop on the wall unless you plan on using it.”

“Chekhov? The navigator with the bad wig on classic
Trek?
”

Leah took a moment to sneer. “Read a book.” She paused as they reached Ginger Joe's. “Didn't this used to be the Café Cats Escape?”

“How would I know?” Tony asked her. “For that matter, how do you know?”

Inside the coffee shop, cymbals crashed and someone screamed.

“Never mind.”

They jumped the debris of the door together and skidded to a stop. The demon had gotten tangled in a drum kit left on the small stage when the night's live music had ended and lay half sprawled across two tables—although since it still had two legs on the floor, it wasn't exactly lying. Just past the wreckage a young man crouched, leather-kilted butt in the air, head to the floor, hands over his head, the chrome studs on his heavy leather wristbands gleaming in the dim light. Tony could just barely make out two more pale faces up against the back wall, their terror lending the whole Goth look a certain authenticity.

It took him another agonizingly long moment to find Amy because the demon's bulk blocked his view. A meaty squelch gave her position away just before she danced into sight, black-rimmed eyes locked on the enemy, the hand holding the skull shaped candle holder raised to land another blow.

“Enough staring already!” Leah snapped, racing by him. Seemed that the relief of not being the target was making her a little reckless. “Make with the runes!”

Tony pulled the papers out of his jacket pocket as Leah went up and over the demon, planting her hands between the spikes and flipping in the air to land on her feet on the coffin-shaped bar. Possibly not just coffin-
shaped
…

The first rune formed as Amy smacked the demon again while Leah kicked it in the head.

It roared, lunged at Leah, got tangled in the snare drum stand, and stumbled, allowing her to leap over the clawed tentacle whipped around toward her.

The world rearranged itself in Leah's favor.

Amy wasn't so protected.

As Tony threw the last loop on the second rune, it wrapped a hand—or whatever the hell it was on the end of its arm—around Amy's neck and squeezed.

Screw the runes!

One more Powershot probably wouldn't kill him.

As he pulled his right arm back, Amy reached behind her, scrambled amid the debris, grabbed a full cup of coffee, and threw it in the demon's eyes.

It shrieked.

Dropped her.

And charged for the door.

One meaty appendage smacked Tony in the chest, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the side wall. He spent a moment really,
really
hoping the crack was one of the fixtures and not a rib, then spent the moment after that trying not to scream.

He could sort of hear Amy yelling that the demon had broken into the wrong damned coffee shop as he raised his left hand and sucked the two runes he'd finished back into his body. It wasn't exactly hard to find his place in the universe now given how well pain seemed to be defining it.

This is me.

This is everything else.

Everything else doesn't hurt.

I do.

Turned out the crack hadn't come from one of the fixtures.

Breathing shallowly, he focused his attention on the broken ribs, smoothing the jagged halves. Pain exploded into a thousand razor-edged shards.