by Dana Fredsti
If this had been Sean’s kind of production—one aware of their supernatural hires and/or one where my uncle was running the stunt show and could handle second unit shooting with a small, select crew—we probably would’ve used Dion, our fire gag expert. He was human-phoenix and there is nothing like that particular combo to achieve some kickass practical effects. It’s also cheaper and quicker in the long run because you don’t need the gel, Nomex, or fire extinguishers. Dion would just go all “flame on” in a spectacular ball of fire or a slow burn, depending on what was desired, and then calmly emerge from the ashes when the take was over. Dragon Druid Mages, however, was a NSA (non supe aware) production, so we’d do the stunt the old-fashioned way and I’d get the small pay bump that came with the dangers of being covered in goo and getting set on fire.
This was my last day on the film and as soon as the fire gag was completed, I was officially done. After two weeks of fourteen-hour days, I was ready for a break, but I’d had a blast. The cast and crew knew they weren’t making art and it was a fun shoot. Even better, I did not have to work with an asshole Priaptic demon and there were no shadows with teeth and claws slaughtering people.
Be grateful for the little things, right?
“You ready, Lee?” Norris, the stunt coordinator, stood by with a plastic pitcher full of gasoline. His assistants, Mark and Mikey, both held blowtorches.
I nodded. “Light me up and put me out.”
Norris grinned. “Let’s go.”
He doused the robes, covering my arms, legs, and back with the gasoline. I wrinkled my nose as the acrid fumes rose into my nostrils and then hopped back up on the platform, where a gel-soaked furniture pad had been placed to prevent an actual conflagration and to give me a semi-protected place to land when it was time to be extinguished.
“And… action!”
Raising my arms above my head, I intoned, “I invoke Breath of the Dragon!”
Whoosh!
Flames rose on either side of me, running up my arms and down my body, the fire dancing over my body without any real sense of heat. The fire crackled and snapped as it followed the path laid by the gasoline. The heat suddenly penetrated the protective layers, slamming into me like a super-heated punch from behind. I fell to my knees and then forward onto the pad, hearing the welcome hiss of fire extinguishers as Mark and Mikey put out the flames.
“Great job, Lee. How ya feeling?” Norris grinned down at me. I gave him a gooey thumbs-up.
“I wouldn’t say no to a beer.”
* * *
If anyone had ever told Celia that a tattoo would kill her, she would’ve laughed it off. It sounded like the kind of urban legend parents liked to feed their kids. Get them to behave by freaking them out. Shitty parenting.
Sure, she’d heard of some people getting staph infections. Having to have pieces of their flesh cut out to save the rest of a limb. But they’d gone to questionable parlors, had their tattoos done by people who didn’t clean the needles. Stuff like that.
LeRoy’s Ink Shop had been totally recommended by more than one of her friends. Well, at least one of them. Or maybe it was her boyfriend. She couldn’t quite remember. Whatever, the place had been clean and there’d been nothing hinky about it at all.
Celia had the idea that she’d get a tattoo like the cloisonné butterfly on her favorite necklace so that when she wore her low-cut jeans, the wings would emerge partway. Something pretty and feminine. Maybe in pale pinks and tangerine. The head tattoo artist—LeRoy himself, and, wow, he was hunky for a man who had to be at least thirty—had liked the idea, but talked her into a butterfly with iridescent purple and blue wings. He’d pulled a portfolio out from behind the counter, something he didn’t leave out for just anyone to see.
“Special people deserve special ink,” he’d said with a smile.
Celia felt very special at that moment. Not like she usually did, with her friends. They weren’t exactly mean girls—well, Tiffany was—but they were cheerleaders and prom queens, the kind of girls who never paid for their own drinks. Whose boyfriends bought them expensive jewelry. Friends who lived in expensive mansions in the center of New Orleans’ Garden District, not at the edge of it in a small raised cottage, like Celia’s family. Friends who sometimes forgot to include her in their plans.
No, she was getting something special. Because she was special. She just knew once she showed it to the gang, they’d all want one too.
LeRoy had shunted off other customers to the other tattooists in the shop. There were three of them, all women. Two could have been twins—maybe they were—with large liquid green eyes the color of swamp water, almost snub noses, wide mouths and receding chins. Celia couldn’t decide if they were pretty or freakish. They sure were different. The third looked to be about her age, petite and kind of goth-y, but really nice. She smiled at Celia and complimented her necklace.
When it was all over, LeRoy had given her a jar of ointment that he said would help promote the healing process, prevent flaking, and minimize scabbing. That way she wouldn’t have to come back for touch-ups. He also told her that it would itch. That it would feel like a mild sunburn on and around the site of the tattoo.
This felt like the mother of all sunburns. She’d been burned badly in her teens, when she and her friends had gone to a tanning salon. The girl working that day had been new and let her stay in for too long. Celia had gone from deep pink to angry red to almost purple, unable to stand even the lightest cloth on her body. Within two days, the skin started peeling off her butt and breasts, which had gotten the worst of it. Instead of strutting around in her bikini with a golden tan, she had spent a few weeks of enforced indoor time, slathering lotion on raw, peeling skin.
That had hurt, had, in fact, been some of the worst pain she’d ever experienced—until now. This was worse. He hadn’t said it would itch and burn straight down to the bone, like acid eating its way into her bloodstream. Like something was burrowing in there, biting her, plucking on the nerve endings. He hadn’t said that it would feel like the skin was peeling off and acid was dripping onto each point of the tattoo.
No, LeRoy hadn’t warned her about that.
Finally, she went into her mom’s bathroom, grabbed the Valium out of the cornucopia of prescription meds, took two, and went back to bed. After a while, she drifted off and dreamed of insects drilling into her spine.
CHAPTER TWO
Randy and I sat on his couch, drinking beer and watching a bad movie on his big-ass flat-screen television. The TV took up most of one wall of the living room in his Encino apartment. The other walls sported a few John Carpenter movie posters—The Thing, They Live, Big Trouble in Little China—and a very tasty poster-sized photo of Randy with his shirt off. While he wasn’t quite as buff as, say, Thor or some of the other Avengers, he was in good enough shape that he could probably get there pretty quickly if the right job came along.
The movie—Marauders: Grid Wars—was what you’d get if you took Avengers and The Matrix, mashed them together with none of the humor of the former and no red pill option to escape the latter. The busty heroine, Anya—dressed in a low-cut corset, matching thong, sexy garter belt, black stockings and four-inch heels—was currently in the grip of two cyber-thugs in black suits, several others lurking in the background. The villain, Evon, stood in front of her, exuding low-budget sexual menace. Anya’s face was totally serene, the result of too much Botox on the part of the actress playing her.
EVON
It doesn’t have to be this way, Anya. Tell me where Osprey is hiding, and I’ll let you go.
Randy snorted. “Osprey?”
“At least they didn’t call him Pigeon or Hummer. Now listen or you’ll miss really important dialogue.”
That got another snort.
ANYA
You know that will never happen, Evon. The Marauders are going to take down the Grid. It’s only a matter of time.
“Does she ever move her upper lip?” Randy said.
I shook my head. “I don’t think she can. Now hush.”
EVON
You and I have something, Anya. Something real. You can see it in the air between us!
He reaches out, and CGI electricity visibly crackles in the air between them.
Randy and I both giggled.
EVON
Can you really throw this away?
On “this” he touches Anya’s face and she closes her eyes, visibly stirred.
At least as visibly stirred as the actress could convey without working facial muscles.
ANYA
(softly, with regret)
There’s nothing real in the Grid, Evon. Not even us.
Anya suddenly explodes in a flurry of movement, knocking Evon back with a brutal kick to his solar plexus. He falls backwards, winded. Anya’s hands, arms, legs and feet, her entire body, become deadly weapons as she takes out the cyber-thugs holding her. Others whip out weapons and fire. Time SLOWS DOWN and Anya leans into an impossibly deep back bend, twisting to one side to let the cyber-bullets flow past her and—
“How the hell do you gals do that shit in those heels?” Randy asked, staring in bemusement at the scene playing out.
I shrugged, the gesture barely moving Randy’s muscular arm, which was draped around my shoulders. “It’s a definite skill set,” I said. “One that most of us would rather not have to utilize quite so often.”
“So… what’s the deal? They think the higher the heels, the more kickass the heroine?”
Awww, bless his little lycanthropic heart…
“Below a certain budget level, yeah. Ooh, check it out.” I leaned forward. “This is the bit where Jan sprained her ankle because the goddamn director wouldn’t back down on the stupid heels.”
“He made her do the whole fight scene in four-inch heels?”
“It’s a Crazy Casa film.”
“Ah,” Randy said. “Say no more.”
Crazy Casa Productions is known for cheap knock-offs of high-budget films and even cheaper original movies with mutant monster combos. Think Pandaconda. They pay for shit. As in they hardly pay anything, and they get exactly what they pay for. They also go through actors way too fast—what I not-so-nicely refer to as Barbies and Kens. They have an in-house stunt coordinator who cycles through young and eager stunt players almost as quickly. If you survived more than one Crazy Casa production as a stunt player, you were either really good at your job or had the luck of the Irish with a shit-ton of four-leaf clovers on the side. And, until you proved yourself under a reputable stunt coordinator, you were also considered potentially dangerous.
I hadn’t worked on Grid Wars, but I knew Jan, the stuntwoman doubling Anya, and she’d fought the good fight against heels, and lost. I felt for her. The director I’d worked for before Dragon Druid Mages had pushed for the female police officer in his micro-budget movie Woman in a Blue Dress Uniform to wear high-heeled boots when she was on duty, including during an extensive chase sequence culminating in a fight against six muscular thugs. Said director was shouted down by the lead actress with my full support as her stunt double. I’d shaken my head and said, “Ain’t gonna happen.”
And it hadn’t, but Jan was getting a lot more work than I was these days.
Dragon Druid Mages was only my fourth job since healing from my fall on the high-budget piece o’ poo, Vampshee: The Netherworld Chronicles. It had taken me half a year to recover from the injuries to the point where I could get back to work, and I was still dealing with a newly formed—and highly inconvenient—fear of heights.
The first job, Steel Legions, barely paid for my gas driving back-and-forth to set. It had been, however, the first stunt work I’d gotten since my accident, and despite dealing with Axel—the aforementioned Priaptic demon who’d played the villain—it hadn’t been all bad. It had been Randy’s first job as stunt coordinator and I’d gotten to know him as more than an irritating newbie at the Katz Ranch and discovered that underneath an annoyingly cocky veneer, he was actually a nice guy.
He’d stunt-doubled a variety of generically good-looking actors—the ones that were probably cloned in a vat somewhere and then dispersed to the various television networks to populate their shows. I’d never found the type particularly compelling and hadn’t thought too much of Randy when he first showed up to train at the Ranch with Sean’s crew. There was a lot more to him than first met the eye, however, including an unexpected dash of shifter. He’d never talked to me about his heritage, and I didn’t want to be nosy. Information offered was one thing, but digging for it was another—in the supe community, it wasn’t considered polite.
A lot of supernaturals flock to places like Los Angeles because the entertainment industry makes it easier for them to make a living without having to hide in the shadows all the time. Unfortunately, there are purebloods among the various races with major attitude problems, like Death Eaters in the Potterverse. That bullshit didn’t play with Sean Katz. As long as you could do the job—whatever that job might be from one day to the next—he didn’t care if you were, say, a vampire-banshee hybrid, a were-bunny, or a zombie.
Okay, maybe not zombies. Way too much cleanup involved if they took any sort of impact, not to mention the risk of infection. There’d been a scandal a few years back when zombie movies were all the rage and some idiot producer on a low-budget film had gotten into major trouble for using them as expendable extras. Careless cleanup had led to an outbreak on the set, luckily contained by the isolated filming location and a weapons handler with a cache of firearms, live ammo, and great aim.
Randy and I continued to watch Grid Wars, washing the badness down with excellent craft beer. “Did you know,” I said conversationally, “that the director originally wanted to call it Dark Noir Night?”
“Uh, doesn’t that translate to Dark Black Night?”
“Uh huh. Kind of like Manos, Hands of Fate translates to Hands, Hands of Fate.”
“Wow.”
Grid Wars took itself as seriously as Man of Steel. Anya and Evon continued their battle, transitioning from the slow-mo backbends to some uninspired aerial moves. Flying kicks, flips, the usual. Nothing that hadn’t already been done to death. Yawn.
“Jeez, this is stale,” Randy said dismissively. “I remember when the wirework in Big Trouble in Little China was a big deal.”
“How do you remember that?” I peered up at him skeptically from my comfy position under his arm. “Were you even born when that was released? I don’t think so.”
“How old do you think I am?” he retorted. “My sister and I saw that in the theater at least a half dozen times when it came out.”
“I stand corrected, Methuselah.”
We finished watching Grid Wars and I got up to stretch, shutting my eyes as I rolled my head in slow circles to loosen the muscles in my neck. I opened my eyes and caught Randy looking at me, his brow furrowed. When he saw that I’d noticed, his forehead straightened out as if a magic wrinkle remover had been applied.
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay, Squid, what’s up? You’re looking at me funny.”
“Everything’s good,” he replied. “I was just wondering if everything was okay.” He scratched his head and looked uncomfortable.
O-kay…
“Why wouldn’t it be? I mean, bad movies, good pizza, great beer. What’s not to like?”
“You’re sure you’re feeling all right? No headaches or anything?”
My eyes narrowed. “Did Sean tell you to keep an eye on me and make sure that I’m not gonna go into convulsions or something? Even though I’m seeing a neurologist and haven’t had any kind of seizure since the accident?”
Randy took a big chug of beer to hide his embarrassed expression. “Yeah, he kind of did, but I would’ve done that anyway. Just because you haven’t had any kind of seizure or whatever doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you on my watch.”
I did my best to hide the fact that I was more than a little touched by his wo
rds even though they also made me nervous. I wasn’t ready to settle down with anyone and I liked the casualness of our friendship. It made me comfortable in a way that intense emotions and commitment did not.
“You’re not getting all mushy on me, are you?”
Randy’s face flushed just a little bit. He shook his head vigorously. “Hell, no.” He drank more beer. “I know better than that.”
I guess he did. He’d told me before that he really liked me, but he didn’t expect anything more than friendship with benefits. I knew he wouldn’t mind seeing where things went if I were onboard, but he didn’t want me to run screaming in the other direction. I didn’t know if he was dating anyone else and I didn’t ask. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I was just a big fat weenie who couldn’t handle emotions but still wanted everything my own way.
Thanks for that, brain.
“So…” Randy trailed off, giving his beer bottle an inordinate amount of attention. I mean, he wasn’t drinking from it, he was just staring at the label.
“What?”
“Sean say anything about you and me?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Oh.” His tone was flat. He was still studying the beer bottle.
“Trust me, that’s a good thing,” I said, poking Randy in his well-muscled stomach. Not a lot of give there in either his abdomen or his expression. “Seriously,” I reassured him. “Sean doesn’t say much about my personal life unless he’s got an issue with it.”
Point of fact, Sean had been conspicuously quiet about my dating Randy, other than a response to a pithy comment I’d overheard Seth make about some of my late nights. Sean’s brief reply had been, “Be thankful, why don’t you? Randy’s at least a few steps up from her last choice in men.”
