Smoke and Ashes (25 page)

When he regained consciousness, Leah was kneeling beside him and frowning down into his face. “When you heal yourself,” she said softly—not kindly, but softly, “you still experience the same amount of pain you would have had the injury healed normally.”

“I do?”

“Every last bit of it. All at once.”

He supposed he was glad of the explanation. “That totally sucks.”

“It's why most wizards don't do it.”

“Most wizards,” he muttered, pushing himself up into something close to a sitting position. “Right. Why don't we get some of those fuckers to help?”

“Can you stand?”

Since there was only one way to find out, Tony let her help him to his feet. It was a little lopsided, but it was standing. Except that Amy's date was now having hysterics on a chair instead of the floor, nothing looked like it had changed. “How long was I out?”

“Couple of minutes.”

“You really…” It wasn't as easy to mime jumping a demon as he'd expected. “You know, went after it.”

“You destroyed the rune that would have let it damage me back there on the street when you burned
go home
right across it. After that, I was safe enough. Although,” she added pointedly, “it didn't go home. We need to get back to the studio.”

“Hang on.” He shuffled toward Amy who left her date to meet him halfway. The hug nearly knocked him on his ass, but he appreciated the sentiment. “You okay?” he asked as they pulled apart.

“Not really, but I'm faking it well.”

“This is going to need a creative explanation.”

Her eyes regained a bit of sparkle. “I'm all about creative explanations.”

“Good, 'cause we've gotta…”

“Go. I know.” She waved a shaking hand in the general direction of the door. “So go! Kick ass.”

The demon was nowhere in sight as they emerged onto the sidewalk. There was a taxi pulling into the hotel on the corner but no other people in sight. After what had just happened, the whole area seemed strangely quiet. Strangely normal.

Totally devoid of demon.

“We'll never catch it.”

“We don't have to,” Leah reminded him. “We just have to get to the soundstage.” She took him by the shoulders and leaned him up against the side of the nearest building. “I'll go get the car. You wait here.”

As she ran off, Tony concentrated on staying upright. He knew why the
go home
hadn't worked—it had come to him just before he healed himself. Standing out on the street, blinking away the aftereffects of the demon's entry, he hadn't been connected to the universe. Well, no more than usual anyway; not in a round peg/round hole kind of way. Back in the parking lot, panic had pushed him into place. Here, just now, it had been pain. Actually, there'd been pain in the parking lot, too. Pain seemed to be compulsory.

I bleed therefore I am.

To bleed or not to bleed, that is the question.

Ultimate cosmic power! Itty bitty bandages!

This could be the beginning of a beautiful laceration.

Man, I really need a coffee….

“C
LOSED COURSE.
Professional driver. Do not try this at home.”

“What are you muttering about?” Leah demanded as, with a screech of rubber against pavement, she deftly maneuvered the car around a corner at significantly more than the posted speed.

“Nothing.” The best part about the level of exhaustion Tony'd reached: he just didn't care. He didn't care when Leah ran two stop signs and a red light. He didn't care when she passed on the right using four empty parking spaces. He didn't care when she ignored a detour and took a shortcut through some roadwork, fighting the car through six blocks of chewed-up pavement and scraping the undercarriage on an exposed sewer grate. Actually, he cared about the last bit, since he'd be the one paying for repairs, but not enough to do anything about it.

Licking the last of the chocolate donut crumbs off his fingers, he watched the streetlights go by so quickly they were very nearly a continuous blur. If he turned to look through the driver's side window, the cracks in the glass refracted them into a thousand flares of moving light. “When you said before you were a stunt driver…you went to stunt driving school, right?”

“Top of my class.”

“Because you knew you couldn't be hurt?”

“That, and because I really like to drive fast.”

For a Thursday night not long after midnight, the streets were unusually empty. Tony wondered if that was Ryne Cyratane's spell helping to keep his Demongate from dying in a fiery car crash. “So that was a wicked move you made, back in the coffee shop when you used the demon like a vault and flipped up over its head. Where'd you learn to do that?”

“I played second bull dancer in a Greek production of
The Minotaur
once. Except that I wasn't in a loincloth and the demon wasn't tranked out of its little bovine mind, it was essentially the same stunt. With less ouzo, of course.”

“I thought you said the bull was tranked.”

“Him, too.”

That probably made sense in a world where he wasn't so tired his eyes kept crossing. “Do you think we can beat the demon to the studio?”

She snorted. “In
this
car?”

“Since it's the car we're in, yeah.”

“There's a chance. After all, it's not a speed demon.” Snickering, she flashed him a smile. “Speed demon. Get it?”

“Yes.” The chance to fight back had put her in an interesting mood. Using the
may you live in interesting times
definition of the word. “Please watch the road.”

 

With a cop's nose for contraband, Jack had found the deck of cards shoved in the back of a drawer over in the carpentry shop. Wiping the sawdust off them, he whistled softly.

“Now these,” he said, returning to the chaise, cards in hand, “are hard core. You wouldn't be interested,” he added as Henry stood, “it's all man/woman action.”

“Why wouldn't I be interested?”

“I thought you and Tony were…You know.”

“We were. That doesn't prevent me from being interested in women.”

“I thought not being interested in women was the point?”

“For some men. Not for me.”

“Yeah. Thanks for shar…” About halfway through the deck, he froze. “Holy crap. I don't think that's possible!”

Henry leaned around Jack's shoulder for a look. “It's possible, but the second woman has to be very flexible. And his back's going to ache afterward.”

Jack stepped away, turned, and stared at the other man. “How the hell old are you, anyway?”

“Older than I look.”

“Let's hope so.” If he'd been asked an hour ago, he'd have said the guy was Tony's age, early twenties, maybe a couple of years older. Now, he wasn't so sure. There was something strange about him, something more than just being ass-deep into the weird shit that went with having a wizard for an ex. Maybe it was the whole romance writer thing—that was definitely a little creepy. Maybe he'd researched exotic positions for one of his books. More comforting a thought than the possibility he'd spent his teens as a pornographic gymnast. Jack sighed. “You play rummy?”

“Penny a point?”

 

Because he'd noticed that the queen of hearts was unnaturally worn—noticed and then refused to think why—Jack was up forty-two dollars when Henry stiffened and dropped his cards.

“What is it?” Damn if it didn't look like the guy was sniffing the air.

“Something's coming.”

“Something?” Jack tossed his cards aside and stood, pulling his weapon from his shoulder holster. “The something we're here for?”

“Probably.”

To Jack's surprise, Henry flipped the chaise up on its side and shoved it toward the wall. “Get behind that.”

“Up yours.”

“You'll have a place to brace your weapon as well as some small amount of protection.”

“And you'll be where?”

A loop of rope dangled from one hand. “I'll be attempting to…”

A rain of cherries cut him off.

“What the hell?”

Henry looked up and moved just enough to avoid being hit. “It's our warning. The demon is through the wards.”

Jack winced as a cherry bounced off his cheek. “You think?”

And then there was no time for thinking as all at once, tentacles and claws and spikes dangled from the light grid, filling the space between the grid and the floor. It took a moment for the parts to become a whole and when it did, Jack wished it hadn't. Monsters didn't scare him—over the years he'd seen too much of what people could do—but this one gave it the old college try.

With a shriek of rending aluminum, one of the struts tore free and Jack decided that maybe being behind the fancy sofa wasn't such a bad idea. It had seemed solid. Well made. Likely to survive. He dove over the piece of furniture, rolled, and came up on his knees, ready to fire. Suddenly a line of yellow nylon rope was around the bulk of the demon's body. And then around most of the legs, snugging them in tight.

The demon screamed.

Something snarled an answer.

Jack's hindbrain sent up flares.
Fight or flee! And flee seems like the better idea!

Right at the moment, denial seemed like a much better idea, but it was way, way too late for that.

Jack popped off three quick rounds at the demon's…head and held back the fourth when Henry Fitzroy caught a heavily muscled arm in another loop of rope and began fighting it to the demon's side.

It seemed the not very tall man was stronger than the demon.

Stronger.

Faster.

More fucking scary.

“That's not possible.” Under the circumstances, a stupid thing to say, but Jack was having just a little trouble coping.
Romance writer, my ass.

The demon hit the floor with a noise somewhere between a crash and a squelch.

A writhing tentacle-like arm split the air where Henry had been seconds before, twisted around for another blow as a second clawed tentacle came straight up out of the demon's body. No way Henry could avoid both. No way Jack could get off a clear shot. Trying not to think about what he was doing, Jack went over the chaise and tackled the arm.

Pinned under the length of his body, it was warmer than he'd expected.

Warmer, and a little damp.

It took him a moment to realize why it smelled so strongly of crushed cherries.

Heavy muscles bunched up to try and throw him off, and, with the right leverage, Jack was pretty sure it'd be able to toss him across the soundstage.

It shifted within the confining rope.

Suddenly the floor was farther away.

Oh, fuck…

 

Henry had faced a Demonlord and bled to keep an ancient grimoire from falling into the taloned hands of the lesser demon it commanded. In comparison, this creature seemed no more or less than it appeared. Strong. Fast. Other. But not necessarily evil.

If there are, as the Demongate supposes, a multitude of hells
—he slid under a clawed tentacle that would have disemboweled him—
then perhaps, in some of these
—another loop of rope secured the limb—
we name the inhabitants demon based on appearance, not motivations.

As the creature hissed and writhed, he spun about in time to see Jack Elson lifted into the air on the largest of what seemed essentially its arms.

And then the arm flipped over and Constable Elson was heading back toward the concrete floor at high speed.

There were no visible joints to act as weak spots—or rather too many joints to attack in the little time he had. Racing in toward the creature, Henry grabbed the arm just under the front set of claws and kept moving, dragging it—and the constable—around until he could brace himself against the creature's own body.

Teeth bared, he managed to stop the momentum of the limb and snarled, “Let go!”

 

Letting go seemed like a fine idea to Jack. He dropped and rolled and crushed a little fruit, finally turning in time to see Henry drag the tentacle down to the body of the creature and secure it with another loop of the yellow rope.

No one was that fast. Or that strong.

“What the hell
are
you?” he panted, pulling himself up onto his knees.

He knew when Henry looked up and smiled. He couldn't put it into words—hell, he didn't think he could form words right at that moment—but he knew. He knew it in the way the hair rose off the back of his neck, in the way a sudden drop of sweat ran down his side under his shirt, in the way he couldn't seem to catch his breath or hear himself think over the pounding of his heart. He knew it in his bones.

No, in his blood.

And then he fell into dark eyes and he forgot that he knew.

 

“Hey! You guys! There's a demon heading this…” Tony skidded to a stop, dragging Leah, who was half supporting him, to a stop as well. He stared at the demon—which may or may not have been staring back. The eyestalks were flipping around in a way that made it hard to tell. “Never mind.”

“What's with the cherries?” Leah demanded, scraping pulp off the bottom of her high-top.

“Tony's early warning system,” Jack grunted, getting to his feet.

“It made cherries?”

“Apparently.”

She turned to Tony, who shrugged. They had bigger problems than fruit. He shook free of Leah's hand and shuffled carefully toward Henry. Trouble was, when a romance writer slash vampire fought a demon, it wasn't the romance writer that then had to be dealt with. He could see the Hunter in the set of Henry's shoulders. In the way he was standing, his back to them, perfectly, impossibly still.

At Henry's side, he leaned forward, careful not to touch, and murmured, “If you need…”

“Not from you.” A quiet voice. Barely audible. A voice that stroked danger against Tony's skin. “Not after last night.”

Last night. This time, he didn't stop himself from touching the mark on his neck. No wonder he was exhausted; it wasn't just the wizardry. “Then who?” The emotional kickback was as important as the blood and Jack, as he'd been insisting to all and sundry, was straight. Leah was far too dangerous.

“Give me a moment.”

“Sure.” Terror was as valid an emotion as any other and the shadows in Jack's eyes suggested he'd seen something more frightening than the big rubbery monster tied up on the floor. Tony tried not to wonder what would have happened had they got there a little later and had pretty much buried the question by the time Henry turned, the mask of civilization firmly back in place.

Pretty much.

A red-gold brow rose.

Tony shrugged.

“So…” Leah sighed loudly. “…if you two are finished with all the silent communing, you think we could get going on sending Maurice here home?”

“Maurice?” Jack snickered, the sound just this side of hysteria.

She pushed a handful of curls back off her face and smiled, deep dimples appearing in each cheek. “What? You don't think he looks like a Maurice?”

About to tell her to knock it off, Tony realized what she was doing as Jack's shoulders squared and he rubbed a hand back though his hair, standing it up in damp, golden spikes.

“If you're asking, I think he looks like a Barney.”

“Isn't Barney a dinosaur?” Her tongue licked a glistening path along her lower lip.

Jack's eyes half closed. “Barney, Fred's neighbor.”