Smoke and Ashes

by Tanya Huff

  He pushed chow mein around his plate. “I thought we were going to talk about the naked horny dude.”

  Fortunately, only a little rice went up her nose. When she finished laughing and snorting and blowing her nose on the crumpled handful of toilet paper Tony’d brought from the bathroom, she said, “His name is Ryne Cyratane. It means: He Who Brings Desire and Destruction. He’s a Demonlord.”

  “Oh, man.” The fork bounced as he dropped it on the table. “Not again.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A few years ago, some friends of mine stopped a Demonlord from coming through in Toronto.”

  “Coming through?”

  “Yeah, there was this lesser demon writing the Demonlord’s name on the city in blood and…” He frowned, trying unsuccessfully to remember the specifics Henry had told him about how they’d finally defeated it. “It got complicated, but he didn’t make it.”

  “Obviously.” Her tone went beyond dry to desiccated. “Well, there’s no need for you to worry about this one. I’ve got him contained.” She stood and pulled up her sweater.

  “Nice tat.”

  “Thank you.” It circled her navel, row after row of black glyphs spreading almost up to the edge of her ribs like ripples moving out from the point of impact. “It’s a Demongate. As long as I live, the gate stays closed and my lord is denied reentry to this world.”

  “Your lord?”

  “Long story.”

  “Okay. Reentry?”

  “He was here about four thousand years ago. For almost five hundred years, worshiped as a god, he ruled a territory in what’s now Lebanon. Ish. Same general geography anyway, near as I can figure. He had a temple, he had handmaidens, he had a lot of sex.”

  That would be the desire part, Tony figured.

  “Then something came up—he’s never said what—and he created a gate to return to the hell he came from. It took a lot of power. To get it, he killed everyone in the village and, with their blood, anchored the gate in his sole surviving handmaiden.”

  And that would be the destruction. Tony leaned closer. The tat wasn’t black. Not exactly. It was a very, very dark red-brown. “You’re the handmaiden.”

  “Handmaiden, priestess, lover; I was his…”

  “Girlfriend?” He winced at her expression. “Sorry. I was just channeling Young Frankenstein, you know when Frau Blucher is explaining and…Never mind. Sorry. Totally inappropriate interruption. I’ll just, uh, be quiet now.”

  She waited a moment longer.

  Tony picked up his fork and ate some more rice and tried to look like there was some other idiot in his apartment who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  “I was his most beloved.” Leah continued at last. Her fingertips lightly stroked the edges of the pattern, raising goose bumps on her skin. “He cut the gate into my flesh, glyphs written in the blood of my people, because he intended to return but would be unable to open the gate from the other side. Gates from the hells have to be opened from our side or we’d be overrun by demons in a heartbeat.”

  “And they have to be asked in?” Then he remembered that he’d said he’d be quiet and he shrugged apologetically, but she seemed resigned to the interruption.

  “You’re confused, that’s vampires.”

  It didn’t seem like the right time to correct her. Henry went where he wanted. “Why didn’t this Ryne Citation…”

  “Ryne Cyratane.”

  “Right. Why didn’t he just leave the gate open?”

  “Because that would have been just asking for another Demonlord to come along and try to take it over. And, before you ask, the wizard who had opened the original gate was long dead.”

  “Dead wizard.” Yeah, that sounded encouraging. “Nice.”

  “Probably not. Anyway, Ryne Cyratane figured that I’d be able to stand what he’d done to my people for just long enough for him to finish up his business at home and then grief and guilt would cause me to take my own life. Should I be stronger than my grief, it wouldn’t much matter because time was on his side and a human life is pitifully short to the demon kin—and, back then, pitifully short was even shorter. Unfortunately for his plans, he made a small error—although, to be fair, I was squirming a bit while he incised the protection runes.” She traced the outer ring. “He intended to protect the gate from me, to keep me from defacing the pattern, thus destroying the gate and preventing him from returning, but he ended up writing in a much more powerful and general protection.

  “The gate protects itself and, in protecting itself, protects me. I can’t be injured because that would affect the gate. I can’t age because that would affect the gate. I am held as I was the day he left this world.”

  “Four thousand years ago?” And that would make her…“You’re four thousand years old?”

  She shrugged and sat back down on the end of the bed, retrieving her plate and looking to be in her mid-twenties at the absolute outside. Jeans. Sweater. High-tops. “More or less. Probably closer to thirty-five hundred. You lose track after a while.”

  Given the whole vampires, wizards, other worlds, sentient shadows, trapped ghosts deal, he saw no reason to doubt her. Precedent suggested the world was about a hundred and eighty degrees weirder than most people suspected and, these days, nothing much surprised him. Besides, hers wasn’t the kind of story a sane person would make up. On the other hand, she did fall off buildings and set herself on fire for a living, so perhaps sanity wasn’t a given here.

  “So…” He groped his way back to the beginning of the story. “…this Ryne Cyratane slaughtered everyone you knew?”

  “Every single person. Even called the goatherds in from the hills.”

  “I don’t want to bring up old shit, but…” Tony pushed a cashew around his plate until it slid off the edge, bounced across the table, and off onto the floor. Only then did he look up and meet her gaze. “He slaughtered everyone, and you don’t seem too upset by that.”

  “What do you expect?” Her shrug was perfect twenty-first century ennui. “It happened a very long time ago. I’ve dealt. You should have seen me right afterward, I was a mess.” She widened her eyes, raised both hands, fingers spread, and shook them from side to side. “I was the crazy lady who lived in the wilderness for about three hundred years. One day I was a warning to misbehaving children, next thing I knew I was being fished out of the Nile by the servants of a priest of Thoth. He cleaned me up, brought me back to myself. He was a wizard.” Her eyes unfocused and the corners of her mouth curled into a smile as she examined the memory. “And kind of cute in a shaved head, totally fanatical sort of way.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He got a little too ambitious and the governor fed him to the crocodiles.”

  Crocodiles? Tony wished the threats on his life were so mundane. “Couldn’t have been much of a wizard.”

  “They were very large crocodiles. And there were a lot of them.”

  “What happened to you?”

  Attention snapped back onto Tony’s face. “Do you really want the whole life story? Because until the last couple of centuries, it’s been pretty much centered in and around the beds of powerful men.”

  It’d been more than that—frighteningly more—Tony could see a bloody history lurking behind Leah’s glib comment. But he could also see she didn’t want to share. Not a problem. He didn’t like handing out every detail of his back story either. “So this demon has been trying to get back through the gate for thirty-five hundred years.”

  Dark brows drew in. “No. What makes you say that?”

  “Well, he’s…you know.” He waved at where the translucent image would be and realized it hadn’t been around since Leah’s little orientation “test.”

  “Oh, that. We’re connected, of course, but after all this time he knows I’m not going to kill myself, so he lives his own life. He’s probably hanging around the gate right now because of the Demonic Convergence.”

  “Say what?”

&n
bsp; “The reason I’m here.”

  “Right.”

  “And he’s usually around during sex.”

  Tony raised the fork again.

  She grinned and rolled her eyes. “Stop panicking, we’ve already established that’s not going to happen. But if it did, the energy created while I adjusted your lifestyle would go through the gate and into my lord—as long as he’s close enough to the gate at his end.”

  “The Demonlord gets off through you?” That sounded just a little ethically kinky.

  “Not exactly off. He gains power from sex. Always has. The man/woman variety only, though…” Her voice picked up a slightly mocking tone. “…which seems kind of limiting for a demon powered by sexual energies, but there you go.”

  “You’re feeding him? With sex?” Scratch the qualifier. Tony liked to think he didn’t judge, but there was a definite ethical kink in the stuntwoman’s lifestyle.

  “Well, he was my god,” Leah reminded him pointedly. “And,” she continued before he could respond, “there’ve been benefits on my side over the years. Like…the years. And a certain…” Dark eyes gleamed. “…vitality.”

  “He slaughtered your people!”

  “You’re going to have to let that go,” she sighed.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s ancient history, it’s not important, and we have bigger problems.”

  “Bigger?”

  “The Demonic Convergence.” Tony could hear the capital letters in her voice. “Energies are aligning. Powerful energies. Powerful enough to crack the barriers between here and the hells.”

  He had to agree that didn’t sound good. “Hells? More than one?”

  “Many more.”

  “Well, isn’t that just fucking great?” All at once, Chinese food seemed trivial. He put down his fork. “And these energies are powerful enough to open a Demongate?”

  Her hand dropped to cradle her stomach. It was the same gesture Tony’d seen pregnant women make and in this context that creeped him right out. “Not this gate. Like I said, it’s protected. New gates will be created. Okay, not really gates, more like access points that can be exploited just long enough for something to come through.”

  “One to a customer?” That sounded good.

  She nodded. “But there could be hundreds of them.”

  That didn’t. “Hundreds?”

  “Rough estimate.” When her expression grew reassuring, Tony figured he must have looked as stunned as he felt. “But don’t worry, most of these holes will only go through a few layers, just to the closest hells. The convergent energy has to hit the same spot over and over before we get to anything much bigger than imps.” She got up, walked into the kitchen, and set her empty plate in the sink.

  Empty. She’d kept eating while she was telling him about demons and Demongates and slaughter. I guess she really has gotten over it. It’s just a story to her now. Maybe someday the Shadowlord and the house would be just stories to him. Maybe. Probably not. Thirty-five hundred years was a lot longer than he’d get. He watched her rinse the plate, set it on the counter, and turn to face him.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  Her expression slid from reassuring to impatient. “Don’t you have questions?”

  “Yeah. A couple.” Understatement. He had so many questions he could barely drag one free of the mess. “Okay. Imps. They’re not a problem?”

  “Without a wizard they can be one hell of a problem, pardon the pun, but you should be able to deal with any that manage to get through.”

  “Manage to get through?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Leah’s sudden smile had so much wattage behind it, her Demonlord made a brief, translucent appearance, flickering in and out again before Tony fully realized he was there. “We’ll be smoothing out reality’s potholes before anything can come through. I’ll find them,” she added when he shook his head, “and you’ll close them.”

  “I don’t know how!”

  “I do.” She all but patted him on the head as she passed on her way back to the sofa bed. “I just needed a wizard to implement the knowledge.”

  Just. As far as Tony could tell the word just didn’t belong in any sentence spoken since Leah had walked through his door. Just thirty-five hundred years old. Just got a Demongate on the old tum. Just a Demonic Convergence. Just imps. Just needed a wizard. Wait a minute…“How did you know?”

  “Know?”

  “That I was a wizard?”

  “I felt you use your power when you kept that piece of flying metal from puncturing the bag, of course. Over the years I’ve become attuned.”

  “To power?”

  “Among other things.” Her expression as she looked up from rummaging in her purse was subtly smuttier than anything Tony could have ever managed. He felt his ears grow hot. Hotter when he realized she was doing it on purpose.

  “Stop it.”

  “Sorry. Bad habit. Sugarless gum?”

  “No, thanks.” She seemed more amused than contrite. “Hang on; I thought the…” He waved a hand in the general direction of her stomach. “…the gate thing was supposed to protect you.”

  Her hand slipped under her shirt again. “It does.”

  “Then why did you need me out there saving your ass tonight?”

  “What makes you think that you weren’t there because I needed you to be?” Three and a half millennia of confidence in the question.

  “Well, I…”

  “They tried to burn me at the stake once—well, actually, they tried a number of times, but in this particular instance, it rained for eight days. The wood was too wet to light, and finally one wall of my cell washed away and I escaped.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t just…”

  “Fuck my way free? Devout Dominicans; a little too fond of barbeque but devout. They weren’t interested. So…” She stood and slowly walked over to stand beside his chair, pushing a pile of laundry out of the way with the side of her foot. She wasn’t exactly looming over him—she wasn’t exactly tall—but she was so there that he had to fight the urge to move away from her, to give her space. “…are you going to help me out or not?”

  “Help you close up imp holes made by a Demonic Convergence?” He was amazed he got that sentence out with a straight face.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  Okay. Maybe not entirely a straight face.

  “If a shallow hole isn’t filled in and the convergent energies keep hitting it and making it deeper, then something a lot more demonic could get through. If that happens, people will die.”

  That took care of the smiling. “I figured.” Nikki, Alan, Charlie, Rahal, Tom, Brenda, Hartley…“They always seem to.”

  “Yeah, they do.” Her palm cupped his cheek for a second and he saw thousands of years of people dying while she lived on. He’d have jerked back, but she was gone before he could move, sitting once again on the end of the sofa bed. It had happened so fast he could almost convince himself he’d imagined it. In fact, he had every intention of convincing himself he’d imagined it.

  “So…” She leaned back on her elbows, crossed her legs, and kicked one sneakered foot in the air. “…what happened to your teacher?”

  And here they were back at the beginning. And why not answer? It seemed he owed Leah a confidence or two. “She went back to her own world.”

  “Her own world. Another world?” Leah asked when he nodded. “Not a hell?”

  There were wizards nailed to a blackboard. “Not exactly.”

  “Damn.” Apparently, after living for so long, nothing much surprised her either. Tony appreciated how much that simplified things. “Reality’s getting a little crowded.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Now.” Her foot kicked out and pointed. “Your turn.”

  So he told her. About the Shadowlord because that was tied up with the whole wizard thing but mostly about Arra and how he hadn’t wanted to leave and she hadn’t been able t
o stay. “But she left a lot of information on her laptop about how to be a wizard and I’ve been…” He stopped when Leah raised a hand. “What?”

  “You’re learning how to manipulate cosmic energies from a home study course designed by a wizard from another world?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “What is?”

  “Her cosmic energies aren’t your cosmic energies.”

  “What?”

  “She’s not from this world.”

  “Duh.”

  Gripping the edge of the sofa bed, Leah sat up and leaned toward him. “Okay, I’ll try and make this simple. It’s all about energy, right? This Arra did teach you that?”

  “Yeah.” He tried not to sound defensive and had a feeling he was failing miserably at it.

  “So the energy of her world has to have been different from the energy of this world because the whole…” One hand rose to sketch a circle in the air. “…world is different. Different planet. Different stars. Her energy pattern is therefore different. Following me so far?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, on this world she had to adapt everything she knew to fit a new pattern. To make a square peg—her—fit in a round hole. What worked for her here won’t necessarily work for you. You are not a square peg. You’re a round peg. The hole is also round. You need to find a teacher who knows what’s going on in this world.”

  Beginning to get pissed about the distinctly patronizing tone, Tony reached out for the spray cheese and the container slapped into his hand. “I seem to be managing.”

  “What is that?”

  She sounded more appalled than impressed. Not the reaction he’d expected but then, he reminded himself, she claimed to have met wizards before. “It’s a can of spray cheese.” He turned it so she could see the label. “I was eating it on beef jerky.”

  “On beef jerky?” Leah rummaged around in the blankets, pulled out the open bag of jerky, stared at it, and shuddered. “I can see I’ve got my work cut out for me. Never mind, we’ll deal with your eating habits another time.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one with a demon in my belly!”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, I didn’t eat him! And I certainly didn’t cover him in…” Leaning forward, she snatched the can out of his hand. “…an edible cheese product. Doesn’t it worry you that the manufacturers feel they have to define it as edible?”