by Tanya Huff
“Couldn’t you just hand us over to the evening staff?” Amy asked.
“No. You’re my responsibility, and the evening staff has work of their own to do. What do you need?”
“Well…”
“We need a place where something’s missing.” Tony stepped into Amy’s pause.
The librarian frowned, stared at him for a long moment, and said, “There’s a cushion missing off one of the seats in the reading room. Someone walked off with it last week.”
“That’s a good place to start. If you could…” He gestured and waited.
She stared at him for a moment longer and then shrugged, the barest lifting of one worsted shoulder. “This way.”
Eight down; nineteen to go.
“Talk about a hot seat,” Amy snickered. “Some guy’s sitting there, reading a newspaper and pow, demon up the ass.”
Tony suppressed any thought of Ryne Cyratane in that context.
“I called the office when you were closing that last one because Ms. Wong didn’t need to be distracted, and CB says the next one is another private house and Lee’s going to meet us there at seven.”
“Why?”
“Teenage daughters.”
Okay. “Why at seven?”
“Because you’ve got to eat. And,” she added before he could suggest they hit a drive-through and eat in the car, “because CB’s estimating another half hour before Peter’s through with Lee for the day.”
“Oh, for…” Tony accelerated through a yellow light. “I think saving the world from demons is more important than getting Lee’s last shot.”
Amy snorted. “No, you don’t.”
No, he didn’t.
“So why’d you just tell that librarian you needed a place where something was missing?”
Good question. “Honesty is the best policy?”
“As if.”
“I thought she’d understand. She looked like she’d been…” He searched desperately for a less PAX TV way of saying it and couldn’t find one. “…touched by magic.”
Folding her knees up by her chest, Amy propped her boots on the dashboard. “Touched by who?”
“I don’t know.”
But she was a good-looking woman and he knew Henry Hunted in that part of the city.
“That sounds absolutely fascinating, ladies.”
Tony could hear the smile in Lee’s voice and knew that Mom and both girls were basking in full-on Lee Nicholas charm. There’d been shrieking when the door had first been opened and constantly babbling as the whole group of them headed upstairs. When it looked like the babbling might ease up, Lee merely asked a question or made a comment and they were off again.
Dad had retreated behind a copy of the Vancouver Sun pretty much immediately.
Tony faced the five closed doors at the top of the stairs and pointed toward the northeast corner where Leah had placed the weak spot. “That room.”
“Oh, my God!” The fourteen-year-old grabbed at Lee’s sleeve. “That’s my room.”
“May I see it?”
Tony would have shown him anything if asked in that tone. If the renewed shrieking was any indication, he wasn’t the only one. Fourteen raced in to tidy up while her sixteen-year-old sister tried to convince Lee that her room was infinitely better. Mom pointed out that he’d find the master suite not only bigger but more comfortable. The wink, wink, nudge, nudge was strongly implied.
Once in fourteen’s bedroom, after his vision adjusted to the Day-Glo That ‘70s Show decorating, Tony discovered that the closet door was missing, replaced by a curtain of multicolored beads. The weak spot filled the space. With any luck, it was practice making the shimmer easier to see, not the imminent arrival of a host of demons.
“I might need to look at the other bedrooms,” Lee said thoughtfully, when Tony gave him the sign.
More shrieking.
It suddenly became clear why Lee was willing to face demons. Demons were quieter.
Nine down. Eighteen demons were still eighteen demons too many.
“Where to after this?” Lee asked sotto voce as they walked side by side down the porch stairs. This prime space had opened up when Mom had been forced to physically intervene before an argument over who’d walk beside Lee to the curb had come to blows.
“I’m meeting Henry at a construction site,” Tony told him as, behind them, fourteen accused sixteen of having been in her face her entire life. “You’re okay driving Amy home?”
“Sure. You’ll get some sleep? I mean, later.”
“I don’t need much.”
“I have to admit you look better than you did.” Lee’s gaze skittered across the side of Tony’s face and ended up locked on the path. “Better in a medical sense. We’re all worried about you.”
Tony took a few seconds to examine and abandon several possible responses before sticking with tradition. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve lost a lot of weight.”
“When this is over…” He paused as sixteen threw in an oh, grow up too vehement to talk over. “…I’ll gain it back.”
“I’m not saying you’re looking less studly; I’m saying you look a bit thin is all.”
Studly? Tony tripped over a bit of concrete edging. Lee grabbed his arm and yanked him roughly back onto his feet.
“Guys!” Amy’s voice cut through the October evening like a siren. “We’ve got incoming fen!”
Fourteen and sixteen buried the hatchet and began yelling at their friends to hurry.
Several voices shrieked, “Oh, my God, it’s Lee Nicholas!”
Several more shrieked, “Lee, I love you!”
Tony’s car was across the street and half a dozen houses down. Lee had found a spot barely twenty meters away. “Run!” Tony gave him a shove. “You can make it to your car!”
“What about you?” Lee demanded as the shrieking lost vocabulary and degenerated into a primal fannish keen.
“Don’t worry about me, once you’re gone, they’ll calm down.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Damn it, Lee, run!” Just for a second, Tony was sure he heard an overwrought soundtrack, then Lee turned and sprinted for his car, digging out his keys as he ran.
A chime as the doors of the new Mercedes SUV unlocked.
“Amy!”
“Already here.” She glared across the hood as Lee raced for the driver’s door. “And do you have any idea how much gas one of these things uses?”
“It’s bio-diesel!”
“No shit?” Half in, she leaned out for another look and nearly went flying as Lee pulled away from the curb. She dragged herself in and as the door closed, Tony heard Lee getting an earful of Spanish profanity.
At least Tony thought it was profanity. He didn’t speak Spanish.
News to him that Amy did.
As the crowd realized they’d lost a chance to get up close and personal with the actor second billed in the opening credits of the highest rated vampire detective show on syndicated television, they turned their nearly hysterical, thwarted gaze on Tony. Just in case Lee hadn’t been impressive on his own, Tony was wearing his show jacket to impress the homeowners.
The crowd didn’t know who he was or what he did, but they knew he was with the show.
They were between him and his car.
He’d never make it.
This was not the time for discretion.
Bright side, no one would believe this lot anyway.
Tony grabbed for his focus, reached for his fly, and snapped out the Notice Me Not.
There was a security guard on duty at the first construction site. A six-foot-four ex-cop from Ghana, he was studying to be an EMT. With an exam coming up, the odds were good he’d have never noticed a quiet visit tucked in between his appointed rounds, but Henry leaned just enough to raise the odds a little more and then went out to meet Tony.
Although the last of the evening’s commuters kept the traffic fairly heavy over on Norland Avenue, Ledger A
venue—where the condominium complex was being built—was nearly empty. Henry heard Tony’s car before he saw it. Even knowing it was there, it was nearly impossible to keep his attention on it. He found himself distracted by the hearts beating all around him; by the scent of blood, warm and contained; by the hundreds of thousand of lives that could be his for the Hunting.
Snarling, he forced himself to watch as the car stopped and the driver’s side door opened and…
There was a woman singing in a third-floor apartment across the road. The song was melancholy, and it told him he’d be welcomed should his Hunt take him to her door.
A touch on his shoulder.
He whirled, grabbed a fistful of fabric, and slammed someone, something to the pavement—the familiar scent registering a moment too late.
“Fucking ow, Henry! That hurt!”
“Tony.” Lying at his feet. Heart racing. Glaring up at him as if this was somehow his fault. “I see. You used the Notice Me Not again.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Tony grunted, accepting Henry’s hand and allowing himself to be lifted to his feet. “There was this horde of Darkest Night fans ready to tear me limb from limb.”
A red-gold brow rose. “The show has enough fans to make up a horde?”
“Small horde,” he admitted, checking to make sure everything worked. “More like a mob, really. Very feisty, though. And pissed. So, are you planning to apologize for dumping me on my ass?” Which felt distinctly bruised.
Henry smiled. “Your spell distracted me with thoughts of the Hunt.”
“So you’re saying I’m lucky I only got dumped on my ass?”
“Essentially.”
“Okay, works for me.” He turned to study the steel skeletons of the three towers. “Leah’s notes say this one’s tucked up in that first structure.”
Tony knew Henry wouldn’t drop him. Knew it without question. His hindbrain however, currently dangling four stories up supported only by a vampire’s grip on his ankles, was having none of that. As far as his hindbrain was concerned, they were going to die.
Painfully.
Messily.
On impact.
The hysterical background babbling of OH, MY GOD! was annoying. And distracting.
“I don’t want to rush you, Tony, but the moon has risen and we’re not exactly invisible up here. If a resident living on the upper floors of any of those buildings across the way should happen to glance out their window…”
“Yeah. I get it. We’d be screwed. Sorry.”
The orientation of the runes didn’t seem to matter.
Good fucking thing, too, because I don’t think I could draw them upside down.
Right side up. I’m upside down.
OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!
Ten down. Seventeen to go.
The second weak spot of the night wasn’t so much in a construction site as an excavation.
“What’s with the attraction to holes in the ground?” Tony muttered as they walked down the packed dirt ramp left for the excavation equipment.
“They are creatures of hell. They would feel at home in a pit.”
“It’s not that kind of a hell, Henry.”
“Would a man spend his time there in eternal torment?”
“I guess.” Based on what they’d seen of the inhabitants, it seemed a fair assumption. Although eternal might be thinking a bit too long term.
“Then it’s close enough for me.”
Eleven to sixteen.
“Oh, no,” Tony protested, backing away even though Henry had made no move in his direction. “There’ll be time enough to sleep when this is over.”
“If you could finish it tonight, I’d agree with you, but you can’t and you’re becoming visibly exhausted. When you’re tired, you make mistakes. When you make mistakes, you get hurt. When you get hurt, you heal yourself and, as your body becomes progressively more worn down, there is always the chance you won’t survive the process.”
“There’s not much room for argument when you put it like that.”
Henry smiled his most irritating Prince of Man smile. “Which is why I put it like that.”
Television meant early mornings and habit got Tony to the studio by seven, a mere ten minutes after sunrise even though Henry had set his alarm for eight before he left. CB and Leah and Jack were already in the office. Amy arrived minutes after Tony, and Lee minutes after that, carrying a tray of coffee.
“You may be wondering why I’ve called you all here,” Jack muttered.
Only Amy laughed.
One hand up under the edge of her sweater, Leah stared down at the map spread out over CB’s desk. “Well, that confirms it. The tears are deeper than they were.”
Sixteen of the burns on the map were noticeably darker.
The good news was, Leah had recognized Ryne Cyratane’s ownership of the arjh coming through in the middle of the Willingdon overpass. And the bad news involved the Telus overpass and another weak spot.
While Tony and Lee had been dodging teenagers, CB had spent a couple of hours on the phone and called in some favors.
At exactly 9:45, an RCMP patrol car, lights flashing, pulled out into the middle lane of the Kingsway and parked just out from under the Telus overpass. Morning rush hour traffic, finally having dropped from insanely busy to annoyingly crowded began to flow around it. When the uniformed constable stopped traffic entirely, Tony helped manhandle the rented telescoping platform out under the overpass. As the guy who’d come with the platform locked it down, he set out orange traffic cones.
When CB had laid out the plan, Tony had stared at him in disbelief. “What am I supposed to do while they’re setting up?” he’d demanded.
“I suggest, Mr. Foster, that you do your job. Unless there happens to be a spell to turn straw into gold on that laptop of yours, in which case you may do whatever you please.”
As traffic began to move again, now including the area the platform occupied in their detour, he followed the steadicam operator up the short ladder and clutched the steel railing as the platform rose.
They were directly under the weak spot. He could burn the runes in the air just below it and then shove them quickly up and through. The steadicam operator had his back to Tony as he shot the traffic moving under the overpass. The occupants of the cars, used to having to accommodate a dozen studios plus visiting productions, didn’t even look up.
He was finished in just under ten minutes.
“Okay, let’s go.”
“I don’t think so, kid. Chester Bane is paying me for twenty minutes of brand spanking new stock footage and that’s what I’m going to shoot for him.”
“But…”
“Do I look stupid enough to cross Chester Bane, kid?”
Fair question. And no, he didn’t. “Then just let me down.”
“We have this spot for half an hour, kid, no more. That’s bloody close to not enough time so, again, no.”
He couldn’t climb down; dangling then dropping made him think of broken legs and Henry’s reaction. “I’m trying to save the fucking world here!”
“Yeah, well, I only have your word for that whereas I know what’ll happen if Chester Bane pays for twenty minutes and gets nineteen fifty-nine. The end of the world will seem tame in comparison.”
Since Tony didn’t have an argument for that, he folded his arms and fumed.
With the easy places already taken care of, he only got two closed that day and one closed after dark.
Fourteen to thirteen. They’d pulled ahead by one. Two if he put Ryne Cyratane’s marked arjh on their side of the count.
As Tony fell into a fitful sleep, he held tight to the hope that they might have a shot at winning this after all.
Three closed the next day.
Seventeen to ten.
Only two the day after that, though, and the second was nearly a disaster.
“What the hell is he doing? Does he paint graffiti on the pool? I see him paint something! I don
’t believe you come from vampire television. You stay! You stay right there! I call the 911!”
The Notice Me Not kept him from getting arrested, but it also kept him from interacting with anything until long after sunset, when Henry finally found him. The longer the spell was on, the harder it was to get off.
Nineteen to eight.
Twenty to seven.
Twenty-one to six.
Those last two had gone relatively easily, but now he was stuck in traffic with Leah singing along to the latest from Radiogram. They were a local band who’d recently rocketed off local playlists and into the international music scene. Tony liked the band and their music, but Leah’s smug I followed them before they were famous attitude was driving him up the wall. She even sang along smugly.
Like I don’t have enough to do without sitting here and listening to her…
Hang on. Had Radiogram worked the Darkest Night theme into their latest release?
No. That was his phone.
“Leah.”
“I’m on it.” She stretched an arm behind his seat, snagged his backpack, freed his phone, and stuffed it into the dock.
“Tony, it’s Kevin Groves. I just got a call from one of our regulars. She says she saw something big with horns blow apart the Willingdon overpass.”
Tony eased into the curb lane while he waited for the other shoe to drop.
“She wasn’t lying.”
And there it was.
“Thanks, Kevin. Hang up.” The phone clicked off. He needed to get to the studio. He needed to get turned around. Diagonally through a gas station, out the other side, over a median strip, and into the left turn lane to more or less catch the final seconds of the advance green.
Half a block. Picking up speed. Cutting between two SUVs.
Sliding sideways on damp pavement, Tony fought the car back onto four tires. “Keep that map down. I need to see out that window!”
