Smoke and Ashes

by Tanya Huff

  Lee took a step forward, chin up. “He’s a civilian!”

  “He’s a wizard!”

  “He has no secrets,” Tony sighed. “Leah?” He didn’t need her permission, but he didn’t want a fight either.

  She dropped to the end of the chaise and crossed her legs. “Fine. Whatever.”

  “Ryne Cyratane’s a Demonlord who used Leah as a part of a gate spell more than three thousand years ago and, if he kills her, he gets to come back.”

  Jack turned toward the chaise. “You’re three thousand years old?”

  Her turn to sigh. “More or less.”

  “You look great!”

  The dimples made a brief appearance. “Thank you.”

  “If he kills you, he gets to come back?”

  She spread her hands. “The gate opens.”

  “I’m guessing it’s going to take more than a yellow rope to hold this guy?”

  Tony shrugged. “From what I’ve seen, it depends on what part you’re holding.”

  Eleven

  “ALL RIGHT, THIS is what we’re going to do.” They’d moved across the soundstage to Adam’s office—three wooden stacking tables arranged in an L shape, a home for unavoidable union forms, the battery chargers, and a decapitated head from episode three that the 1AD had grown inexplicably fond of. Tony carefully moved a stack of ACTRA forms and spread out the map. “These three spots…” He tapped the darker burns. “…have to be closed fast, so I can get as many of the rest shut before the shit hits the fan. The Demonlord knows there’s a wizard on this side, but he doesn’t know about you lot and he doesn’t know that the residue in the studio is drawing his demons. Those two things might give us an edge.”

  He glanced around at the world’s best chance to remain demon free. CB and Amy, Lee, Jack, and Leah. And Leah was pulling double duty as probable cause. They were watching him like he knew what he was doing, and he could only hope they weren’t delusional.

  “We’ll break up into three teams. Amy and CB, Jack and Lee. Leah stays with me because she’s safest there even if it turns out this lot’s not after her, just here for general, all-purpose mahem. We’ll go to this spot here…” He tapped the map. “…closest to the studio and shut it down. The rest of you, you’re my eyes and ears. CB, you and Amy will go here, due south down Boundary to North Fraser Way.”

  “South to north,” Amy snickered. When everyone turned to stare, she shrugged. “Well, I thought it was funny.”

  Amy had come from the office with CB and refused to leave. “Either I’m in or not, and after last night, the train to not has left the station.” Reluctantly, after he’d figured out what the hell she was talking about, Tony’d agreed.

  “Jack, you and Lee are heading out almost to Simon Fraser.” It was insane, completely and absolutely insane for Lee to be a part of this given that metaphysical energy looking for a home seemed to consider his body prime real estate. It really pissed Tony off that his I don’t want you involved had been canceled by one you should stick around from Leah. He was trying to keep Lee safe. She just liked having attractive men around. And, okay, he liked looking up and seeing Lee on the other side of the table, too, but he’d also seen Lee on his knees screaming, tortured by the dead to force him to cooperate, and he never wanted to see that again. He’d stuff Lee into a closet and lock the door—fuck the symbolism—if it was up to him. But it wasn’t.

  “The burn’s showing in this industrial park here off Eastlake Drive. It’s late enough that there shouldn’t be anyone around.”

  “So no one out there except us to get eaten,” Jack put in.

  “No one gets eaten,” Tony snapped. “It’s entirely possible that nothing will happen tonight, but…” He raised a hand and cut Amy off before she could speak. “…if it does, get clear and then call me, and I’ll haul ass back to the studio instead of heading out to the next weak spot.”

  “We’ll all haul ass back to the studio.”

  Heads nodded at Jack’s statement.

  “Fine.” A grudging admission that he couldn’t stop them. “But don’t go charging in until I’m here. Jack, you know how hard it is to take one of these things down.” Jack nodded reluctantly as Tony continued. “We go after them with everything we have, or we leave them alone. You go in without metaphysical backup, and these things could take you out like that!” He snapped his fingers and something large hit the floor on the far side of the soundstage with a sustained crash.

  After a long moment of silence, CB folded his arms. “Mr. Foster.”

  “I didn’t do it!” He frowned. “At least I don’t think I did it.”

  “Well, this is filling me with confidence,” Leah muttered as Jack pulled his gun and moved to check it out.

  “Maybe I should…”

  CB laid a heavy hand on Amy’s shoulder. “You should let the police handle it.”

  “Chairs!” Jack called, heading back. “A pile of those metal folding chairs fell over.”

  “They were stacked pretty high,” Lee recalled. “Last couple of days, Adam’s been talking about restacking them before they fell.”

  “Coincidence,” Amy snorted. “No boogeymen in the shadows?” she asked as Jack rejoined them at the map.

  “Not that I saw.”

  “But you wouldn’t see them, would you? Was I the only one who heard skittering?” She glanced around the group. “Okay, I guess I was.”

  “Can we just deal with the trouble we know we have instead of looking for more?” Tony sighed. “Or are three demons not enough for you?”

  Lee raised his hand. “Enough for me.”

  “Thank you. When Leah and I finish closing the first weak spot, we’ll join CB and Amy and then, when we’re done there, head east. Remember, if anything happens, don’t try and be a hero, just call me.”

  “The whole ‘you shall not pass’ thing always ends badly,” Amy added, shrugging a plaid plastic raincoat on over a black hoodie.

  “Isn’t that what you’re telling these things, Tony? That they shall not pass?” Lee asked.

  He turned to Lee, intending to deny it, and heard himself say, “Yeah.”

  “And if it ends badly for you?”

  “I’m hoping for weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Joke,” he added when no one seemed to appreciate the humor. “If it ends badly for me, throw everything you have at keeping Leah alive. The hell with secrets, the hell with not causing mass panic. Mass panic sucks less than mass slaughter.”

  “Do we know there’ll be mass slaughter?” CB asked.

  He sounded as though he was requesting confirmation so that he could hire enough extras to make mass a valid description, but it was still a good question. Tony let Leah answer it.

  “Demons gain power from each life they take, and there are a lot of lives crammed onto the lower mainland.” Her right hand lay against the tattoo; her left pushed her hair back off her face, tucking it behind her ear. “Enough lives for a satisfactory number of worshipers with plenty left over to spend on other things. Also,” she added, the words gaining emphasis, “since any mass slaughter will start with my slaughter, I’m all in favor of stopping it.”

  “Start with?” Amy was on the words like a terrier.

  Right. Amy didn’t know that Leah was the Demongate.

  “CB.”

  The producer nodded. “I’ll give her the new information in the car.”

  Jack folded his arms, leather jacket creaking as he ignored the exchange, his attention locked on Leah. “People are a lot more powerful than they used to be,” he pointed out flatly.

  “True,” she acknowledged. “And you may have powerful enough weapons to stop him, but don’t think for a moment that with this many lives to feed on, he’ll be the only one coming through an open gate. The last time, he was called and the gate was destroyed behind him. This time, he’ll control it.”

  “And we already know that Demonlords have demon minions,” Amy put in, shifting her weight back and forth, heel to toe. “He c
ould, like, throw them at the military while he feeds and gets too strong to stop. Then the only option would be a surgical nuke. Pow! Hundreds of thousands more die, radiation spreads, one of his minions escapes the blast and absorbs the radiation and mutates so that nothing…

  CB returned his hand to her shoulder, cutting off the flow of words. “I don’t like the thought of leaving the studio unprotected,” he growled.

  Tony didn’t much like the thought either. Even if he knew where to send the bill, it seemed ethically questionable to charge for saving the world, so he’d really like a job to come back to on Monday morning. However, if he had to choose between a building and warm bodies…“I don’t want anyone out there alone.”

  “Perhaps I can help with that.”

  Lee, Amy, and Jack jumped; Jack’s hand dropped to his gun. Leah looked like nothing much surprised her anymore. CB looked unimpressed. Tony tried not to give in to nerves and snicker.

  “Where the hell did he come from?” Jack demanded as Henry walked up to the table and studied the map. “No one moves that quietly.”

  “Clearly, someone does,” CB told him as Tony started in on the highlights of what Henry had missed.

  When he finished, Henry nodded. “I’ll stay here. If unnatural rope works on all demons, I can work on securing anything that might show up until Tony arrives to deal with it.”

  “More metaphysical backup,” Jack announced almost too quietly to hear. And then he point-blank refused to explain what he meant, cheeks flushing as Henry caught his eye.

  Tony could see that CB wanted to say he’d stay behind. It was his studio, and he was, in his own way, as possessive as Henry. But he was smart enough to know he couldn’t do what Henry could, and so he said nothing. That pretty much proved he knew what Henry was, but Tony found he didn’t much care. Sometime in the last couple of days, he’d gotten over it. Hell, if CB wasn’t big enough for them to share, no one was.

  “Let’s go.” He folded the map and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “Those three holes were almost burned through. We don’t have much time.”

  “I thought you said that nothing should happen tonight?” Amy reminded him.

  “Yeah, well.” Tony shrugged. “I was trying to raise morale. And nothing should. Maybe. But we probably still don’t have much time.”

  “Have you any idea of what’s going on?”

  “Bite me.”

  Amy flipped him off and headed for the door. “Be vewy vewy quiet,” she muttered as Jack fell into step beside her. “We’eh hunting demons.”

  Jack did a passable Elmer Fudd laugh.

  “Mr. Groves will be by later,” CB told Henry as he followed.

  Lee opened his mouth. Closed it. Sighed and finally said, “I’d be better at this if I had a script.”

  Since that was pretty much a given, Tony said nothing.

  “Look, I just want…I mean. Fuck it. Be careful, okay?”

  “Yeah. You, too.”

  He nodded and hurried after the others.

  “You know,” Leah said thoughtfully as she zipped up her jacket, “I was thinking it was just you, but I was wrong. You’re both pathetic.”

  “Leah…”

  “Don’t bother saying it. I’ll meet you in the car.”

  Tony listened to the soft sound of her footsteps die away. He shrugged a backpack strap up onto one shoulder and looked Henry in the eye. “Vicki told me to call you. You know, back when this started.”

  Henry smiled. “I know.”

  “You’re a hard man to be separate from.” Tony wasn’t sure he understood that, but Henry seemed to.

  “I know.”

  “With any luck, I’ll close those three spots before they open, and you’ll have a quiet night.” Didn’t cost any more to look on the bright side.

  “Good luck, then.”

  Cool fingers rested for a moment against his cheek and, just for a moment, Tony longed for the days when he was the sidekick. “Yeah. You, too.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t know how to pick locks,” Leah muttered, one hand flat against the steel door, the other working the pair of straightened bobby pins back and forth.

  “Why would I know how to pick locks?” Tony demanded quietly.

  “Well, you’re clearly a man with a past.”

  “And my entire B&E career consisted of heaving a brick through a grocery store window and then sprinting two blocks carrying a watermelon.”

  “Two blocks?”

  “Ran into a cop. Big guy. Splat. Knocked me flat on my ass.”

  “Hmmm.”

  The noise may have been in response to his story or to the lock on the apartment door, Tony wasn’t sure. He glanced down at the open laptop, silently ran over the words to the Notice Me Not one more time, and hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. Not only because new magic was always an exciting crapshoot, but also because he needed to hoard as much personal energy as possible given what the immediate future was likely to hold. Although he’d topped the tank with a double bacon cheeseburger and large fries on the way to the first site, he had no idea how long that would last. He probably should have bought a second milkshake, just to be on the safe side.

  Leah’s dimples had gained them access to the high-rise as an elderly gentleman was leaving. Ignoring Tony entirely, he’d held the door open and waved her through, making a rather explicit suggestion that Tony very much doubted he—or any man over sixty—would have the stamina to carry out, little blue pills or no little blue pills.

  Dude, if yours are lasting more than four hours, someone should check for rigor mortis.

  Finding the right floor had been simple. They’d taken the elevator up one floor at a time until Leah’s gut had pinged. Finding the actual weak spot had been a little trickier, but they were about 90 percent certain it was inside apartment 708. Unfortunately, it seemed the tenants weren’t.

  Or fortunately, given how little he’d been looking forward to explaining what was going on.

  “You’d think it’d be in apartment 666, wouldn’t you?”

  “Like I keep telling the vampire,” Leah snorted. “Wrong kind of demons.”

  “Hey!”

  “I’m picking a lock here, Tony. If someone hears us, the words vampire and demon will be the least of our problems.”

  She had a point.

  He could hear at least one television—maybe two—and a couple of different kinds of music, but at just after nine on a Friday night, most of the people who lived on the seventh floor seemed to still be out. Or they were sitting silently in the dark behind their locked doors. Tony had no intention of ruling the latter out.

  The hall smelled like sausages and a spice that bounced around the back of his nose like a pinecone, doing multiple points of damage with every landing.

  “That’s it.” Leah rocked back off her knees and stood, reaching for the door handle. “But if there’s a chain…”

  There was. It was dangling down inside the door, unlocked.

  “Nice to see they’re taking home security so seriously.”

  “You come home drunk and the chain’s a pain in the ass to get open,” Tony explained as they moved inside and closed the door behind them. “And why do you know how to pick locks?”

  “I hang around with a bad crowd in the fifties.”

  “You mean hung around.”

  “No. I mean that every century, I hang around with a bad crowd in the fifties. I like having a schedule.” She didn’t sound like she was kidding. Reaching back, she flipped on the lights. “Good lord.”

  Tony snapped his laptop closed and raised his left hand, palm out, rune in defensive position. “What!”

  “It looks like your place: beige walls, cheap furniture, and an overpriced entertainment system.”

  “That was it? I thought you saw something dangerous.” He started breathing again and his heart rate began to slow.

  “No, just bland.” Walking out into the living room, she shook her head. “And if it wasn’t so
bland, the similarities would be frightening.”

  “First of all,” Tony muttered, sliding his laptop into the backpack, “that’s a sheet on the window, not a flag, and second, this has a separate bedroom.”

  “Which is probably beige.”

  “Hey, he has a set of RexTeck speakers—3-D sound effects and an awesome bass boost.” Leah’s silence pulled him around. “What? I’ve heard great things about them.”

  “Heard great things about demons taking over the city?”

  Oh, sure. But she could take the time to discuss interior decorating. Half turned from examining the speakers, he paused. “The weak spot’s right there.” He could see the shimmer hanging just in front of the floor-to-ceiling shelves of DVDs. “But I thought there had to be something missing?”

  Leah moved closer and examined the shelves. “He’s missing the third Aliens movie.”

  “He’s not missing much.”

  “And Star Trek: The Motion Picture although he has all the rest.”

  “Motionless picture,” Tony grunted.

  “Oh, my God, he’s got a copy of The Princess Diaries. One and Two!”

  “Maybe I should just close this up before he comes home and finds you dissing Julie Andrews.” Setting the backpack on the floor, he wiped damp palms on his thighs and pointed a finger to start the first rune. A horrible groan came from the far wall. “What the hell was that?”

  “The elevator.”

  “Is it…?”

  “Him?” Her gesture made it clear she meant the usual occupant of the apartment. “How should I know? Just wiz.”

  “Wiz?”

  “Wiz!”

  The first rune went through the wall of DVDs with no problem. So did the second. The third got stuck.

  “Stuck?” Leah moved away from her listening post by the door and glared at him. “It can’t get stuck if you’ve done it right.”

  “It’s right.”

  “Are you sure? Check the cheat sheet.”

  “I didn’t bring it.”

  “Oh, for…” She came farther into the apartment, and hauled up her track jacket and the shirt under it. “Check the original, then.”

  Tony gave the rune another ineffective shove and dropped to his knees, thumbs hooked behind the waistband of Leah’s track pants to pull them low enough to see the rune. Head cocked to one side, squinting a little, he moved so close he could feel the air between them warm.