Smoke and Ashes (44 page)

And a good thing, too, since all three demons had a single, familiar rune etched into their chests. Or the equivalent area.

Tony pointed mini-Ryne toward the battle. “Fight demons!”

Mini-Ryne seemed less than enthused. “Help wizard.”

“Fight demons!”

“Guard gate.”

Left palm flat against the center of his back, Tony shoved him forward. “Fight demons!” Whether the pressure of the rune convinced him or he'd run out of excuses, mini-Ryne finally charged into the fray, and Tony raced for the extension ladder. CB and Jack had been insistent that he not be in the middle of the fight; there were too many demons and if one of them realized he was the wizard, in the absence of the Demongate he'd be the center of all the demonic attention by default.

From the top of the ladder, he crawled out onto the lighting grid. Technically, this was not someplace he should be, but the grid was built to hold hundreds of pounds of lights and sooner or later, every electrician or light tech in the business ended up with his feet off the ladder or scaffold. Since he was neither, it was a good thing CB ran a flexible studio. Had demons been attacking a CBC studio, the world would be screwed.

He burned all four runes into the air beside him before he looked down.

Lime-green-and-tentacles had moved away from the corner. Amy had danced inside the tentacles and was pounding a second, foot-long ash stake into the main bulk of its body. Lee bashed the end of a tentacle against the floor with an antique mace, ducked a second, and slammed a third away from his head at the last minute. Zev stood to one side cocking a crossbow, a length of the yellow nylon rope tied to one end of the quarrel.

They weren't bringing it down, but they were definitely holding it in place.

“Welcome to the set of
Darkest Night
,” he muttered, stretching along the grid. Vampire shows inevitably acquired a lot of interesting weaponry. He dropped the first two runes into place and was ready with the third when Amy screamed, her leg caught in one of the demon's unexpected mouths. Distracted, Lee went down, lime-green coils around his torso.
You don't get to be distracted!
he reminded himself. He was already doing the best thing he could do to help. Third rune down. Placing the fourth rune got tricky until Zev got off his shot, dropped the crossbow and tried to tangle the demon's legs with attached rope. A glancing blow from the chitin-covered demon drove him forward into the grasp of another tentacle. Adjusting for Zev's weight, the demon jerked back against the first three runes. It shrieked as it brushed up against the power. As it charged forward, Tony threw the fourth rune into position.

“And action!”

Light flared.

Amy, Lee, Zev, and a meter of tentacle that had been reaching beyond the area the runes enclosed lay panting on the floor—although strictly speaking the tentacle wasn't panting as much as twitching. Amy had both hands clamped against her thigh, blood seeping between her fingers. Rows of tiny holes in Lee's jeans were beginning to darken. Holding the quarrel with the rope in one hand, Zev crawled toward the crossbow.

Focus on the demons!

Something grabbed his ankle.

He probably should have wrapped both arms around the grid and hung on, but that occurred to him a second late. Turning, Tony caught a glimpse of a familiar mouth with too many rows of black teeth between red scaled lips.

The sixth demon.

And then he was falling.

He curled in the air, landed on his right side, heard a bone snap. Since it wasn't his skull, he was actually okay with that. Arm maybe. No. Higher. Something in his shoulder. It hurt to breathe.

Then it really hurt as red-and-scaly flipped him over and raised a hand, trio of ten-centimeter claws extended. As the claws swung down for a disemboweling stroke, Jack caught the arm, shoved his gun in the demon's armpit, and pulled the trigger.

On a good day, which this wasn't, Tony had no idea how many bullets Jack's gun fired, but it seemed to go on for a while. Five, ten minutes. Or maybe his sense of time had gotten scrambled by the fall because there was no way the demon should have waited that long to bring its tail around and smack Jack off his feet.

On the other hand, its arm flopped uselessly, so who knew?

One arm flopped. The other was working fine. The first strike removed the front of Tony's jacket and most of the T-shirt under it. For some reason, losing a second jean jacket in the line of duty really pissed him off, and as the demon threw back its head and screamed in trumph, Tony cocked his right elbow just enough to raise his hand off the floor.

He'd spoken the first four words of the Powershot when Kate appeared holding two lit flares that she slam-dunked into the demon's gaping, tooth-lined throat.

The explosion was unexpected.

Welcome, but messy.

“Too fucking gross,” Kate muttered as Jack returned, kicked aside a twitching slab of meat and grabbed Tony's raised hand. On the way up onto his feet, Tony discovered he'd broken his collarbone.

“You okay?” Lip curled, Jack flicked a wet, lavender glob off Tony's shoulder.

Lavender?

“Hey! Tony! Are you okay?”

“Sure.” He was standing. He was breathing. Everything from his eyelashes to the ends of broken bone grating in his chest hurt, but he'd deal with that later. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw something long and green whipping toward him. He ducked before he realized the tentacle was no longer attached.

Jack hauled him upright again. “Tony?”

“I'm fine.”

What he first thought was a disbelieving snort turned out to be the sound of another tentacle being ripped free. Mini-Ryne, his horns dripping dark fluids, sat on top of the remaining lime-green demon, removing tentacles and deftly avoiding the many mouths trying to take a piece out of him. His victory would have been more impressive had the demon not been wrapped in so much rope it looked like it had been swept up by some kind of deep-sea fishing net.

This tuna is not demon safe. StarKist doesn't want demons with good taste, they want…

“Tony! Focus!”

Right. Focusing.

“Not the face! Not the face!”

Mason's shrieked protest spun Tony around in time to see the actor flung backward by the chitin demon, the sword he still held bent into a tight vee. Roaring a challenge, the demon charged after him. Mason was seconds from losing his face entirely when CB roared a challenge of his own, pounded across the soundstage, and slammed a shoulder into the demon's middle in a perfect offensive tackle.

The demon went down.

Buildings would have gone down.

Unfortunately, CB went down, too. Worse, the demon bounced back up again dangling ropes like fat yellow streamers. Zev had clearly gotten off a couple more shots with the crossbow and just as clearly no one had been able to take advantage of them. It bent enough for its upper left hand to grab one of CB's ankles, and when it straightened, CB came off the floor.

Which pretty much proved that the demon was as strong as it looked.

The demon swatted Mouse away with its right hands. It seemed obvious that CB's head was about to be slammed into the concrete.

Tony jerked out of Jack's hold, grabbed his right wrist with his left, lifted the right arm to shoulder height then whipped it back and around while screaming out the words for the Powershot. Given the broken collarbone, the screaming was nonnegotiable. As his arm started back down, his right wrist slapped into his left palm, aiming the blast of energy that burned through chitin breastplates.

CB hit the floor with a solid thud, momentarily obscured by clouds of falling ash drifting back and forth.

No, wait. That back and forth, that's me.
Swaying, Tony sank to one knee. “Check CB,” he panted as Jack began to bend. He needed time to recover, and if turned out they were going to have to buy that time, they'd need CB's strength. Fortunately, Jack got the subtext.

Keeping his breathing shallow and his right arm supported by his knee, he turned just his head toward the only surviving demon. Mini-Ryne seemed to have eaten his way through to the life-sustaining bits and was now clearly sitting on nothing but meat.

For a long moment, the loudest noise on the soundstage was enthusiastic chewing and swallowing.

“Did we win?”

All eyes turned to Mason who was crawling out from behind the upturned chaise lounge. When he looked up and realized he was the center of attention, he tried to pull the sleeve of the camouflage jacket up over his bare arm. “Well?” he demanded petulantly as he realized the sleeve wasn't going to stay. “Did we win or not?”

The only demon in the room seemed to be on their side.

“Yeah.” Tony sucked in as much air as he could, hoping for enough volume to carry over the rising tide of sound. “It looks like we did.” The nail on his baby finger curled up, dropped off, and wafted slowly to the floor.

Mason was limping on a wrenched knee but unbloodied. Besides innumerable small cuts, CB had broken three fingers on one hand but ordered Jack away to deal with his own injuries. Mouse's nose had been broken again. Peter, Saleen, and Jack had cracked or broken ribs. Jack also had a split lip and a broken tooth. Amy and Pavin had been bitten. Amy had also got a bit of demon in the eye when Kate had blown it up. Lee, Zev, and Kate had long lines of tiny cuts from teeth in the edge of some of the tentacles. Zev had a line across his back and Kate's went around one arm. Lee's leather jacket had protected most of his torso but his pale jeans were marked with spiral blotches of blood.

“Should've worn your motorcycle chaps,” Amy noted from the floor as Zev cut away the leg of her 100 percent organic hemp cargo pants.

“Good thing he didn't,” Zev snorted. “We needed Tony's mind on the job.”

Tony considered protesting, but it was a fair assessment, so he saved his strength. CB was the only one not coming up in varying shades of purple and black, but that was because CB was the only one too dark for the bruising to show. They were walking wounded, all twelve of them. Emphasis on walking.

“No one died,” he said. And then because it was important, he said it again. Louder. “No one died.”

It was almost funny watching the various gazes tracking around the space, checking to make sure.

Jack pulled his T-shirt down over the binding Kate had just wrapped around his ribs. “Not in here,” he reminded them grimly, “but Geetha told me there were at least seven dead out on the street before this started, plus a shitload of critical injuries. We didn't avoid a body count, not by a fuck of a long shot.”

“No one here died.” CB's tone suggested no one argue this time. “Right now, I think we deserve to celebrate that.”

Tony was thinking about that lawyer, the one with the weak spot in his office and when he caught Amy's eye, he knew she was thinking the same. Nothing they could have done about it then. Nothing they could do about it now. He'd just have to keep telling himself that. He didn't remember sitting down, but since he was on the floor, his back up against the underside of the yellow chaise, he must have. Little bits of broken glass surrounded him like glittering confetti. One of the lights had fallen at some point during the battle; crashed to the floor where every part of it that could shatter, had shattered into the smallest pieces possible. They'd been lucky. If it hadn't hit so hard, they could have added shards of flying glass to the
“things trying to kill us”
list. Tony had no memory of hearing the impact.

“Now then,” CB stepped over the headless body of the red-scaled demon like it was of no consequence, and swept an imperious gaze around his domain, “we can't all hit an emergency room at the same time. Ms. Anderson, you're in the best shape. I want you to drive…” He stared at his crew standing clumped together and came to the obvious decision to save time. “…Peter, Mouse, Saleen, and Pavin to Burnaby General. They're used to the strange accidents of the entertainment industry, and with all the chaos in the area, there should be no problem.”

“What about…” Kate jerked a thumb at mini-Ryne, currently pulling a line of linked opalescent bladders from deep inside the body of his meal.

“I doubt Tony will need all of us if he has to deal with…him.”

Tony expected a protest, but Kate merely rolled her eyes. “Okay, but I can't fit five in my car.”

“We'll take my van.” Peter went to pull the scraps of his shirt back on, sighed, and tossed it on the floor. He waved those mentioned toward the exit. “It seats seven.”

Limping heavily, using his piece of pipe as a cane, Saleen fell into step beside the director. “Dude, why do you have a van that seats seven?”

“Garage band.”

“Seriously?”

“No.”

“Hey!” Tony wasn't sure they heard him—given the distance and the whole about-to-pass-out thing—but all five paused. He needed to say something but wasn't sure what. Finally, he shrugged his one usable shoulder. “Thanks.”