by Tanya Huff
“Where the hell did you come from?” Jack asked.
“The original plan?” Henry repeated pointedly to Leah, ignoring Jack’s question.
“Yes, that was the original plan. So?”
“So I’m not sure we shouldn’t return to it.”
“Hello!” Leah’s eye roll was dramatic. “What happened to hunker down, protect Leah, and save the world? I’m not going on walkabout across the lower mainland if demons are coming after me personally.”
“Hang on,” Jack interrupted. “Why are the demons coming after you?”
Tony reviewed various meetings in CB’s office and realized that only he and Henry knew Leah was anything more than a stuntwoman who did demonology as a sideline. CB and Kevin Groves knew demons were coming after her, but Jack, his partner, Amy, Zev, and Lee knew only the basics of the Demonic Convergence. Fuck this; I need a scorecard!
“Maybe they want my recipe for goat cheese pizza,” Leah snapped. “Duh! They’re trying to kill me!”
“Why are they trying to kill you?” Jack was using his “don’t even try to bullshit me” voice now. Interestingly enough, it worked.
“Because I know things and that makes me a threat.”
“How do they know you know things?”
“What difference does it make?”
Jack sighed, ran a hand up through his hair, and took a moment to get comfortable on his end of the chaise. “Until you jokers listen, I’m going to keep repeating that, under the circumstances, I don’t think we should keep secrets from each other.”
“Oh, I see.” Leah’s second eye roll was more sarcastic than dramatic. “You show up with a gun and suddenly we should trust you?”
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think we should keep secrets from each other.”
“It’s the Mountie thing, isn’t it?” she sneered. “How can we not trust the stalwart in red serge?”
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think we should keep secrets from each other.”
She spun around to glare at him, their faces inches apart. “You have only the faintest idea of what’s going on here!”
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think we should keep secrets from each other.”
“Stop saying that!”
“Dinner and a floor show,” Tony snickered quietly, well aware that Henry could hear him even over the sound of shouting. “I’m having a lot more fun than I thought I would.”
“Good.” Henry flashed him an affectionate grin, then turned his attention back to the battle. “But we’re not getting much accomplished.” He stepped closer to the chaise.
Tony didn’t need to see his eyes go dark. He could read the change in the set of Henry’s shoulders. In the stillness that accompanied him. The Hunter was in the building.
“Jack Elson.”
Names held power. Unable to resist the pull, Jack looked up and was caught. Safely behind Henry’s left side, Tony saw his eyes widen, his cheeks pale, and his hands clutch compulsively into fists. Jack would never willingly show his throat, but Henry wasn’t giving him the choice.
“Some secrets are too dangerous to be lightly shared. You know what you need to know. Accept that and move on. And,” he added in a lighter voice, “I’ve changed my mind about the validity of the original plan. Stopping the demons before they emerge now seems to me to be the safest way to deal with them.”
“He has a point,” Jack acknowledged slowly, frowning as though he was searching through the conversation to discover how they’d gotten this far. Tony knew the feeling.
“No, he doesn’t,” Leah argued. “It’s not safe putting me right up next to a hole. It could goad the demon to burst through prematurely.”
“So? Tony’ll be right there.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Tony?” Henry’s use of his name drew all of Tony’s attention. To be fair, he didn’t think Henry could help it. “What do you think?”
So they were going to play that game. Pretend that Tony was making the decisions until he made one Henry didn’t like. Pretend that the wizard was in charge and the vampire was just backup muscle. Fine. Leah and Henry had ditched the original plan when he was asleep. Unconscious. He forced himself not to touch the mark on his throat and realized he’d get absolutely nowhere if he brought any of that up now.
“Leah, how do you find the weak spots?”
She shrugged. “Gut feeling.”
Considering what was on her gut, he’d let that stand. “Can you mark them on a map?”
“It’s not that exact. It’s more like playing hot, warm, cold; the closer I get to them, the stronger the feeling gets.”
“But it should be easier now that there’s not a lot of them, right? Because the convergent energy has to be slamming down on only a couple of spots in order for the holes to be going deep enough for demons to come through,” he tossed to Jack before the awkward questions started.
“Not exactly easier,” Leah began. Paused. Frowned. Sighed. “Okay, easier to find. But harder to close.”
“Harder than facing down the actual demon? These weak spots have teeth? Claws? Other unidentifiable sharp bits?”
“They will if you screw up.”
“No, if when I’m facing an actual demon.” He started pacing. He was onto something. “How many weak spots out there now?”
“I don’t think…”
“Come on, Leah. Try, please.”
“Fine.” She slid a hand under her clothes and closed her eyes.
“I thought she was a demonic consultant?” Jack stage-whispered dramatically.
“She’s consulting,” Tony told him.
“Yeah? Who? Or should I say, what?”
“There.” Leah cut off Tony’s answer. “There’s a strong feeling that way. Deep hole.” She pointed. “And a weaker one, that way. Still nice and shallow. That’s all.”
“So two?”
“Deep. Shallow.” She looked down at the fingers she’d raised as she spoke each word. “Yes, that’s two. Your grasp of higher mathematics makes me feel so much safer.”
“We’ll go to the shallow one first.”
“No.”
Tony turned just enough to frown at Henry. “What?”
“We need to go to the deeper one first because it is closer to expelling its demon. You’ll have more time to close the shallow hole.”
“Except that I’m making the decisions and I say we go to the shallow hole first to see if Leah has an effect. If she does, there’s no chance of a demon getting through immediately. No harm, no foul. If she doesn’t, then we take her near the other one.”
Henry shook his head. “Reckless.”
“I think you’ve forgotten what reckless means,” Leah told him as she stood. “Tony’s playing it safe.”
“Tony risks allowing a demon to break through while no one is here to protect the soundstage.”
“Then you stay.” He tried not to feel pleased about how startled Henry had looked if only for an instant. “Jack, you’d better stay with him.” If this worked, they wouldn’t need muscle out on the street. “Leah says these things are just killing machines, there’s nothing magical about them, so if one does show up, you two ought to be able to knock it on its ass and hold it until I get back.”
“Us two? He’s a romance writer.” Jack shot Henry an incredulous look.
Tony didn’t see the look Henry shot back, but it wiped the incredulous right off Jack’s face. “Unnatural rope’s best for holding them, and there’s a whole lot of the yellow nylon shit over with the carpenter’s gear. Don’t worry about hurting them. Apparently, there’s not much actual damage you can do. Don’t get eaten. You know, by demons,” he added as Henry frowned.
“Eaten.” Not a question, but then Jack had seen the one-armed man.
“Welcome to the wonderful world of the weird and metaphysical,” Tony told him, shrugging into his jacket. “Remember, you’re the one who insisted on playing; I’d have happily kept lying
to you.”
“You’re still lying to me.”
“Yeah, but not happily. And not about anything that counts.” It was important Jack believe that. Tony refused to look away until he nodded an acknowledgment. “Leah, where are you going?”
She sighed as she turned. “In the interests of not having any secrets between us—before we hit the streets, I’m off to the little stuntwoman’s room where I’ll pee and then wash my hands. Maybe I’ll put some lip gloss on while there’s a mirror handy. Or do you need a definitive answer on that?”
“Great,” Tony muttered to Jack as Leah spun on one heel and strode off. “You see what you started?” He jiggled his car keys, stopped when he saw Henry wince. He’d made his point, no need to annoy sensitive ears.
He wanted to say: If something does show up, don’t let Jack be a hero. He breaks easier than you do.
He wanted to say: Don’t you be a hero either. Let Jack shoot it a few times before you move in.
And he wanted to say: Maybe we do have issues, but we also have history, and so we’ve got to work through them. Because you’re not going to let go, and I don’t think I am either.
He settled for saying, “Be careful.”
And was pretty sure Henry heard all the rest.
“So, what do I do?”
“Go west; toward the city. Drive slowly. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
Tony pulled out around an ancient chartreuse minibus covered in lime-green religious slogans. More than one kind of weird ended up on the west coast. “Can I ask you a question, or do you have to concentrate?”
“After thirty-five hundred years, I’ve learned how to multi-task, so ask.”
“Ryne Cyratane’s been doing this from the beginning of the Convergence, right? Directing the energy to where he needs it? So, if you only ever felt a couple of weak spots at a time, why didn’t you expect the first demon that attacked you?”
“Why didn’t I expect a demon to charge out of the sunset swinging an arm on a CBC Movie of the Week location shoot?”
“Yeah.”
“Who the hell would ever expect something like that?”
Tony glanced over to the passenger seat. Leah had her shirt up and her hand resting on the exposed tattoo. “Fair enough.”
They found the shallow hole in an alley off Hastings Street between Gore and Main. The Chinese restaurant along one side was just closing, so they waited while a bored young man in kitchen whites tossed yellow plastic bags of garbage into the Dumpster. Then they waited a moment longer while a pair of Dumpster divers retrieved the edible bits.
“We’re wasting time,” Leah hissed as Tony grabbed her arm and yanked her back into the shadows.
“So we’ll waste a little,” he said quietly, watching the two women who looked middle-aged but were probably younger sort through the restaurant waste. “This might be the only meal they get all day. What?” he asked when she turned to glare at him. “In thirty-five hundred years, you were never hungry?”
The glare softened to impatience. “Maybe once or twice, but…”
“We wait until they’re done. They’ll want to go someplace safe and eat, so it won’t take long.”
It didn’t.
“Why do these kinds of metaphysical things always happen in alleys?” Tony wondered as they walked past the Dumpster. “Why not in the middle of the TransCanada? Or a meter over the sock counter at Sears? Or in someone’s apartment?”
“Who says they don’t?” Leah asked, looking ready to bolt. “All that’s necessary is that something be missing to anchor the convergent energy.” She indicted a rough-edged pothole in a remarkably filthy bit of pavement. “We’re just lucky this one’s where we can get to it.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So are you affecting it?” The pothole didn’t look like it had changed since they arrived. It didn’t look like the weak spot between realities either. It smelled like rotting melon and Kung Pao Shrimp.
Frowning, she prodded the air over the pothole with one foot. “I don’t feel any…Oh, no!” Arms windmilled as her foot slammed down. “It’s got me!”
“Leah!” Tony grabbed her, dragged her back, and nearly dropped her in a particularly pungent bit of rotting garbage when he realized she was laughing.
“Kidding. It’s fine. I don’t feel anything different.” She pulled out of his grip and tucked her hair back behind her ears, still snickering. “You should close it up now.”
“I don’t know how,” he reminded her, folding his arms.
“Oh, cranky.” A raised hand stopped his step toward her. “Okay, okay. Forgive me for being relieved. Before you can close the hole—or, this early in the game, just strengthen the weak spot—you have to see it.”
“I see the pothole.”
“Look harder.”
There wasn’t a lot of light in the alley; a couple of yellowing, bug-speckled bulbs over back doors and the spill from the streetlights. “I can’t see…”
“Yes, you can. Wizards see what’s there.” She sighed and folded her arms, shifting her weight onto one hip. “Look harder.”
“I can see where the smell of Kung Pao Shrimp is coming from,” he said after a minute. “And you’re scraping off your shoe before you get back in the car.”
“But you don’t see the weak spot?”
“No.”
“Okay, don’t look as hard. I guarantee it’s there, in the pothole, a place where the absence of what should be there has left an opening.”
“An absence of what should be there? Dial it back a bit, would…” Tony froze, half turned away from the scum-encrusted bit of pavement in question. From the corner of his eye, he saw a heat shimmer—except, of course, it wasn’t actually a heat shimmer—stretched horizontally across the top of the pothole. “I see it. What now?”
“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?”
&
nbsp; “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.”
