Smoke and Shadows

by Tanya Huff

Constant. Babies dying. Rotting. And he was the only one who could see it. Their parents kissed and hugged and played with the tiny corpses until bits started falling off. “You’ve got to wake her up.”

  Arra snorted. “And do what? Smack her on the head with a frying pan? You can’t knock someone unconscious without doing damage, Tony. There’s no such thing as a Vulcan neck pinch or any other tidy television solution. This is war—not everyone comes out . . .”

  The only sound for a long time was Keisha’s labored breathing.

  “. . . whole.” Turning on one heel, Arra headed back to the dining room. “Put her on my bed. She won’t wake up until I tell her to.”

  At 5:57, Carol from the lighting crew showed up.

  “If another shadow-held shows up searching for me, you’ll have to let them in. They’re just as likely to grab one of my neighbors and gouge an eye or something out in front of the peephole in order to get a reaction. With my luck, they’d probably grab the wrong neighbor.”

  “Why don’t you let them in? Open the door and nighty-night them?”

  “Because they’ll see me and he’ll know where I am. He’ll have something in them set to my power signature.”

  “Keisha . . .”

  “Didn’t see me. You distracted her.”

  “Yeah, and she sure as hell saw me!”

  “Didn’t you tell me that he doesn’t care about you? Now go away and let me finish this. Try putting your brains on ice if they’re still not working.”

  Tony sighed. Carol had a black belt in some kind of martial art. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to the overheard conversation to know exactly which martial art but, bottom line, it didn’t much matter since he had equivalent training in absolutely nothing. Plastering a fake smile on his face, he opened the door. “Hey. What’s happening?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” she snapped, pushing past him.

  “All right.” He grabbed her shoulder, spun her back around, and threw the contents of his mug in her face. The coffee wasn’t exactly hot, but it distracted her just long enough for him to sweep her legs out from under her and send her crashing to the floor.

  Really close contact kept her from landing any serious blows, but she still beat the crap out of him.

  “What took you so long?” he gasped, not being at all careful of anything but aching ribs as he crawled off of Carol’s sleeping body.

  “Time is relative. There’s one of those gel cold packs in the freezer. Maybe you’d better use it.”

  “You think?” His voice already sounded higher. The way things were going, by the end of the night only dogs would be able to hear him.

  At 7:02, it was Elaine from craft services.

  Keisha, Carol, and Elaine—the three women who’d run to comfort Lee. Wiping up his spills, holding his hand, offering comfort, and making it quite clear there was more being offered . . . Tony had to wonder if this was a message to him from the Shadowlord. If his nose was being rubbed in Lee’s obvious unavailability.

  A sudden chill ghosted down Tony’s spine. Or was the message that Lee was at the studio with the Shadowlord, unprotected?

  Elaine knocked again.

  And, nice change, she went for his eyes not his balls.

  “Put her on the bed with the others.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, patting the bleeding scratch on his cheek. “What did your last servant die of?”

  Arra’s eyes lost their focus for a moment. “One of my order killed him while shadow-held. She melted his bones and left him lying in a fleshy puddle in the great hall. Without structure enough to scream, he died gurgling.”

  Fighting the urge to vomit, Tony reached down and tucked his hands in Elaine’s armpits. He had a vague memory of deliberately not asking that question earlier. Apparently, his instincts had temporarily deserted him. Smart instincts. If he didn’t have to be around, he wouldn’t be. “You suck as a motivational speaker. You know that, right?”

  “You asked.”

  He laid Elaine out as comfortably as he could beside Carol and Keisha and stared down at them for a moment, hating to leave them trapped. Tormented. Keisha had cried out half a dozen times. Carol’s head almost continually jerked from side to side on the pillow. Unfortunately, if even the glare of light in the elevator hadn’t been enough to destroy his hitchhiker, there was no way anything in the entire co-op would affect, let alone destroy, these shadows. Well, nothing except Arra and she was saving herself for the final battle. At least, that was the benefit of the doubt explanation.

  “I’m sorry,” he told them, as Elaine began to tremble. “It’s just . . .” Just what? He sighed. “It’s just, I’m sorry.”

  Arra was packing up her laptop as he came out of the bedroom, “Have you worked it out, then?” he asked her, as she slid it into the case. “The light thing?”

  “Yes, I have. I charged the potion while you were in with the girls; seal it up and let’s get going.”

  “It’s still early. Henry won’t be awake for another forty minutes.”

  “You told him to meet us at the studio?”

  “Well, yeah, but . . .”

  “I won’t be using any power during the drive. We’ll be moving more slowly than usual.”

  That was the best news Tony’d had in days.

  “And,” Arra continued, swinging her laptop case over her shoulder, “the shadow-held will have a lot more trouble finding us if we’re in a moving vehicle. Charging the potions may have created enough of an energy blip to alert him.”

  Made sense, they were anti-shadow potions and if he was the Shadowlord, he’d be watching for something like that. Tony sealed up the four thermoses—they’d bought two new ones with the groceries—and packed them quickly away in his backpack. Then he went for the elevator while Arra locked up and set wards.

  “Think of a ward like a spiderweb made of energy,” she’d explained earlier when he’d asked. “Some webs warn the spider there’s prey nearby, some capture it.”

  “And you’re the spider?”

  She’d snorted impatiently. “No, I’m the walrus. I thought I told you to put those on ice?”

  The elevator was taking its own sweet time arriving. A door opened. A familiar yap drove through his eardrums and straight into his brain.

  “Julian . . .”

  Tony spun around, ready to intervene, but the wizard was smiling almost benignly across the hall toward her neighbor. “Would you mind telling anyone you hear knocking on my door that I’ve gone to Victoria? With Tony.” She gestured.

  Julian and Moira leaned out of the doorway to look.

  Tony waved.

  “Victoria?”

  “Yes. There’s no point in them knocking and knocking and knocking and disturbing everyone on this floor, is there?”

  “If you’re not home, they can’t get in,” Julian pointed out archly. “You can’t buzz them up.”

  Moira yapped agreement and Tony wondered how the Shadowlord felt about dogs.

  “You and I both know there are ways around that. At the last board meeting you were trying to put more money into security.”

  “You weren’t at the last board meeting.”

  “I read the minutes. Thank you for your assistance.” The elevator announced its arrival. “We’ll be going now.”

  Julian followed.

  Eyes rolling, Arra shoved Tony inside, turned and hit the “close door” button. “Remember: Victoria with Tony,” she said as Julian’s and Moira’s disapproving expressions disappeared.

  “Do you think he’ll do it?”

  “He might.”

  “Why Victoria?”

  “Why not? The farther the shadow-held are from the studio, from where he can call on them for help, the better.”

  “Will Julian be all right? I mean, will he be in any danger,” Tony corrected as Arra’s lip curled.

  “Hard to say. Depends on whether or not they think he knows more than he’s saying. Do I have to keep repeating that this is w
ar?”

  “No.”

  “Do I have to make the observation about omelets and breaking eggs?”

  “God, no!”

  “Good. It’s a stupid observation.”

  Traffic was heavy on Hastings until they cleared Chinatown, then it spread out and started moving a few kilometers above the limit. Tony drummed his fingers against his thigh and tried not to think of what they were heading toward.

  War.

  Broken eggs.

  Around Clark Drive South, he frowned. “You were working that light thing out on a laptop.”

  “So?”

  “So we could have been in a moving vehicle all afternoon. I drive, you work.”

  Arra nodded agreement. “Yes, I thought of that after Keisha arrived.”

  “And?”

  “And then I realized I work best in a familiar environment.”

  Tony stared at the side of her face. “I had to beat up girls,” he said at last.

  “That’s a bit sexist, don’t you think?”

  “No.”

  “And given the results, not entirely accurate. There’re still girls at the studio,” she added when he didn’t respond.

  “Your point?”

  The brow he could see lifted into a distinctly sardonic arch.

  “Never mind.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d better call CB. Make sure the Shadowlord’s even still at the studio. Maybe he’s convinced Mason to take him clubbing.”

  “I thought CB had arranged to have promo shots done?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So, it would take more than an extraordinarily powerful, evil wizard to keep Mason Reed from having his picture taken.”

  “Valid point.” CB’s cell phone rang half a dozen times before he answered. Worried that the boss might be standing where he could be overheard by the enemy, Tony started talking immediately. Safest if he just has to answer yes or no. “Hey, CB, it’s Tony. Is he still there?”

  “Yes, he is.” A dark, smooth voice that caressed each word. Definitely not CB’s voice. “And he’s wondering what’s taking you so long.”

  The line went dead.

  Tony dropped his phone like it was contaminated. “He’s got CB.”

  “The Shadowlord answered CB’s phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me exactly what he said.” She frowned as Tony told her. “He’s posturing. Trying to frighten you. Rattle you.”

  “News flash. It worked.” His palms left damp streaks on his jeans.

  “Yes, but if he’d said nothing at all, you’d have kept talking. Probably said you were with me. Said we were on our way.” Her voice trailed off and she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “This isn’t like him,” she announced three blocks later. “He could have gathered information, but he didn’t—he played boogeyman instead. That’s just not like him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I may not have stuck around for the big finish, but I was there for the rest of the war,” she snapped. “I know him.”

  “Uh-uh, you knew him,” Tony amended. “You knew him when he was conquering. He’s conquered. He’s been ‘the conqueror’ for seven years. He’s not the same guy you faced. Seven years—fuck, everyone changes over that long a time.”

  “Your Nightwalker?”

  Tony thought of Vicki Nelson’s conquest of Vancouver and snickered, amused for the first time in . . . well, since girls started smacking him around anyway. “You have no idea.”

  “No. You have no idea.” But it was a playground response and she sounded unsure and Tony figured that shaking up a few of her carved-in-stone opinions about the Shadowlord was probably a good thing.

  Probably.

  Maybe not.

  When Arra turned onto Boundary Road, he closed his eyes for a moment, confronted the fear that had been chewing at him since the call, and said, “Do you think CB’s dead?”

  “No. He knows too much. He could be too useful. The Shadowlord can’t have changed so much he’d throw away that kind of resource.”

  Which would have been more reassuring had she not so obviously been trying to reassure herself.

  At 8:43 the parking lot was still surprisingly full. Zev’s car was gone and so was Amy’s—Tony thanked any gods that might be listening for small mercies—but Lee’s bike was still there.

  “They’re shooting promo stuff,” he murmured, realizing. “Lee had to stay.”

  “Any new shadows will be for control, not information, so he’s probably shadow-held.”

  Again? Oh, that’s just fucking great. The thought of Lee shadow-held came with the memory of Lee’s hands on his body, scrambling his responses.

  “He survived it the first time,” Arra reminded him, misreading his silence.

  “Yeah. That’s not very comforting.”

  She shrugged and turned off the engine.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Right now? We wait for your Nightwalker. No point in going over the battle plan twice.”

  Seat belt unbuckled, Tony twisted around so that he could see her. She looked unconcerned. Or possibly blank. Nothing showed. He was looking at the last wizard of her order, the one hope to defeat the Shadowlord—he could just as easily have been looking at someone’s grandmother, parking and waiting to pick the grandkids up from school. He wanted to know what she was thinking but he couldn’t see it on her face.

  “So, does a gate have to be opened in a specific spot?”

  “No. Variables are adjusted for location.”

  “So you could open a gate here?”

  She turned very slowly to face him. “I could.”

  He really, really hoped she’d add, But I won’t. But she didn’t. “Hey, I just thought of something.”

  “Don’t strain yourself.”

  She was under a lot of stress, so he’d give her that one. “If you can only affect the gate on the world of origin, how’s the Shadowlord going to get home? I mean, sure this is a great world and all, but his stuff’s back there and I expect he’ll want to go back and forth.”

  “He probably has the spell set up on the other side ready to go off every twelve hours.”

  “He’s got the gate on a timer?”

  “Essentially.”

  “Cool. Still evil,” he clarified as Arra turned to glare at him. “But cool.”

  “Less cool if he calls through reinforcements.”

  “Granted.”

  Henry’s BMW pulled into the lot at 8:47. Tony opened his door as he parked and walked around the car to meet him beside Arra. He’d left the-story-so-far on Henry’s answering machine and then sent him an e-mail as well as a text message. The whole instantaneous electronic communication thing had very little relevance to Henry—sending multiple copies of things he really needed to know worked best. Things like, CB is holding the Shadowlord at the studio, Mason and most of the crew are shadow-held and we have to take him out tonight. Meet us there as soon as you’re up.

  They not only had to take him out tonight, they had to take him out before the gate opened at 11:15. They had to take him out before he called through reinforcements. Tony hadn’t asked Arra what kind of reinforcements were likely to be called through. He didn’t want to know.

  Henry frowned and Tony remembered he was both bruised and bleeding.

  “You’ve been fighting again.”

  He shrugged, didn’t bother hiding the wince as new bruises rose and fell. “I had to take down three of the shadow-held.”

  “Girls,” Arra snorted, getting out of the car. “So.” She looked from one to the other. “What’s the plan?”

  Tony opened his mouth to protest, but as Henry didn’t seem surprised by her assumption, he closed it again. It was the son of Henry VIII, trained in strategy and tactics and, hell, probably the minuet for all Tony knew, who asked: “What do you need us to do?”

  “Keep the shadow-held from taking me down.” Arra began rolling her shoulders like an old boxer about to go into
the ring. “Keep the Shadowlord from preventing my call to the Light of Yeramathia.”

  “Which is?”

  Figuring he wouldn’t understand the explanation, Tony hadn’t bothered to ask.

  Arra frowned at Henry’s suspicious tone. “The Shadowlord gave himself over to a dark power, this is its opposite.”

  That was it? Okay, he understood that.

  “A god?” If Henry’d sounded suspicious before, he sounded distinctly unhappy now.

  “We’ve had a little trouble with gods in the past,” Tony explained hurriedly before Arra’s frown could deepen. “An ancient Egyptian undead wizard tried to call up his god from the top of the CN Tower. Oh, and the year before that, we had demons.”

  “You never thought to mention that?”

  He shrugged. “It didn’t seem relevant.”

  “It isn’t. But you had no way of knowing that.” She turned her attention back to Henry. “Yeramathia is neither god nor demon, only a power. We need to attract its attention. I will draw the calling in the air; the Shadowlord will try and stop me. The only things he controls in this world are the shadows and the shadow-held, but there are plenty of the former and the latter will fight you to the death.”

  “How much time will you need?”

  “As long as it takes to draw the calling.”

  Tony rolled his eyes. Right. More obscure. “And that’ll be how long?”

  “Well, it’s not a 1-800 number,” Arra snapped.

  Henry’s hand closed over Tony’s shoulder before the snapping could escalate. “And if it answers?”

  “When it answers,” Tony muttered.

  “We hope it destroys the minion of its ancient enemy.”

  “Hope?” Tony began, but Henry’s fingers tightened.

  “If and hope,” Henry said softly as though trying the words on for size. “Battles have been won with less. Do you believe we can win?”

  With both of them staring at her, Arra shrugged. “Tony does.”

  And then they both moved to stare at him.

  Oh, crap. No, I don’t. I just think that if you have to fight—which we do—there’s no percentage in going in believing you’re going to lose. It’s not like if we lose we can try again later. This is it. All or nothing. One final roll of the dice. The big chimichanga. And that’s just fucking great, now I’m out of clichés.