Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 15

"Okay." He remembered Arra creating golden lines of power as she called on light to banish shadow. "I don't actually know how to do that."

"Everything in here is about energy. There's just nothing specifically about energy."

"Well, that's useless." Leah pushed a curl away from her face and tried to shove Tony away from the laptop. "Look up drawing." Tony flicked the same curl away from his face and refused to be shoved as he scrolled up the file list.

Drawing, of the Dark.

Vaguely familiar but not helpful.

Drawing, Down the Moon.

Also familiar. He opened the file.

This is woman's magic. You don't need to know it.

Then why the h.e.l.l did you list it, you crazy old...

Drawing, Blood.

"What did she think she was training," Leah snorted, "a wizard or a paramedic?"

"So she was a bit rushed when she put this together."

"A bit rushed? Da Vinci was a bit rushed when he was finishing the Mona Lisa. This wizard of yours seems more like a complete incompetent." Her breath hit the side of his head, warm and impatient. "You scroll; I'll stop you if I see anything useful."

Storms, Calming.

Poison, Checking for.

Water, Purifying.

Demons, Banishing.

"Hold on. Right there." One fingertip tapped the screen. "You have a spell to banish demons." The fingertip moved to tap him on the forehead. Hard. "You think maybe you should have mentioned that? Just in pa.s.sing, perhaps?"

"I forgot it was there." He jerked away before she could tap him again and opened the file.

Calling demons is among the stupider things you can do with your power. I am inclined to allow stupidity to be its own reward; however, it is possible that someday you may need to clean up another's mess. Begin by drawing six drops of blood from the idiot who called the demon. Do it quickly before the corpse cools.

"This is useless." Leah straightened, turned, and dropped onto the edge of the table. "These demons weren't called, they're being sent. There's nothing we can use in there..."

"It says we should use an unnatural rope to hold the fiend."

"And then do what with it? Why don't I just kill myself and save them the bother?" Dragging both hands back through her hair, she began to pace. "I can't believe this wizard of yours would leave out something so basic."

Tony scrolled up and down the list one more time and frowned. "h.e.l.l, if it's all that basic, maybe there's something about it in the instructions."

The sudden silence was so complete, he could hear the traffic pa.s.sing on the TransCanada six stories down and almost a half a kilometer away. He twisted around on his chair to find Leah staring at him from across the room. "What?"

"There's instructions?" "Yeah. I didn't read them, but..."

"You didn't read the instructions? Of course you didn't," she continued before he could answer. "You just opened the spell list and started trying things out, didn't you?" While he was thinking about denying it, she closed the distance between them and smacked him on the back of the head. "Men!"

"Hey!"

Leaning back she flashed him a narrow-eyed glare. "Hey, what?"

"Nothing." It just seemed like a bad time to go into the whole gender stereotyping thing.

"Good. Now then..."

He could feel every one of those thirty-five hundred years leaning over his shoulder with her.

"... let's have a look at the instructions, shall we?"

Power, Responsibilities of.

Power, the Focusing of.

Her finger touched the screen. "That's got subdirectories."

"On it." The next layer down had been divided into basic, intermediate, and advanced. As Tony moved the cursor onto advanced, Leah's hand closed around his wrist and moved it back to basic. "I thought we were in a hurry."

"We are. But as much as I don't want to be killed by a demon, I'd also rather not be killed by you. Start at the beginning. Read fast."

Fortunately, the lesson was, well, basic and it seemed he'd been instinctively doing most of it already. The rest of it seemed simple enough. When he mentioned that to Leah, she snorted.

"Lots of things seem simple when you read the instructions, but it's an entirely different story when you actually try to hook up the DVD player."

Fair point. "It doesn't seem that complicated, though. Mostly, I just have to shift my internal focus to external."

"Do you even know what that means?"

Tony pushed his chair out from the table and stood, forcing her to take a couple of steps back. "It's sort of like choking up on the Powershot."

"Choking up on the Powershot?" Muttering under her breath, she moved around until she stood behind him. "Your keen grasp of description fills me with confidence."

"I need to practice."

"You think? Make it fast and don't destroy my apartment."

"Your faith is underwhelming," he muttered, bouncing lightly on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet and shaking the tension out of his arms. He could do this. He called things to his hand by knowing where they were, by being aware of the s.p.a.ce they defined. According to Arra's notes, focus meant being aware of the s.p.a.ce he defined and pulling in energy to fill it. That was the part he'd been doing instinctively.Once he had the energy, all he had to do was pick a spot outside his body, shift the focus to that spot, and re-form the energy in his chosen pattern. Like writing with sparklers only the images would stick around longer. Arra's notes suggested he practice with a neutral symbol, something that could only be what it was.

Okay.

Right index finger extended-best not toss the scar on his left hand into the mix until he had a better grip on what he was doing-he picked a point about halfway to the window, refocused until his right eye started to water, and began burning his chosen symbol onto the air.

Leah's curtains caught fire.

c.r.a.p! That wasn't supposed to happen. Glancing down at the laptop, he checked the screen. No, definitely not supposed to happen.

He opened his left hand. The fire arced toward it.

The curtains separated at the char line, the lower third dropping to the floor.

Tony coughed, smoke pluming out on his breath. Back in his teens, although he couldn't afford the habit, he'd b.u.mmed the occasional cigarette from other guys on the street. The coolest guys could always make the biggest plumes of smoke. Apparently, for wizards, the cigarette had become optional-although he wasn't sure that the present circ.u.mstances were any healthier.

He was sure blowing out a nice big plume, though.

Leah crossed the room and picked up the burned fabric. Ash crumbed off between her fingers, drifting to lie like dirty snow on the hardwood floor. She stared at the ash, at the curtain, and finally at Tony. "d.a.m.n. What did you do?"

"It was an accident."

"After the accident. When you put the fire out."

"Oh." He coughed again. There was a little less smoke this time. "I called it to me."

"The fire?" Still holding the piece of curtain, she started back toward him. "You called the fire toward you?"

"It's just another kind of energy, right?"

"Yeah. Right." Her fingers left dark gray smudges behind when she patted his arm. "You just keep believing that, okay?" A wave of the ruined curtain for emphasis. "Try dialing it back this time."

"It?" One last puff of smoke as punctuation. "You want me to do it again?"

"Curtains can be replaced," she reminded him as she returned to her place out of the line of fire, "I can't. Once more, with less feeling."

"I don't think..."

"Good. You think too much and we're running out of time. Do what you just did, only less."

"Less. Right." Tony wiped damp palms on his thighs, extended his finger again, and very carefully refocused. To his surprise, a bright blue light burned in approximately the right position and then went out. Okay, almost there. He needed less less. That's more, right? Licking dry lips, he tried again. The blue light burned longer. A little more. And again. This time the light maintained; became a line; the line bent into a circle; the edges of the circle sputtered, but the shape held. Within the circle, two dots of power for eyes. The curve of a smile.It was slightly lopsided but recognizable.

"What is it?"

Or not.

"It's a happy face." Even when he turned away, the power he'd used to create the symbol hung in the air. It was bone useless but way cool. "I told you it would be..." His voice trailed off as the sound of laughter filled the condo.

Tony whirled around, both hands up, expecting some kind of demonic clown charging in from the balcony. There was only his happy face, all blue and glowing and hanging in the air. Given the way it was laughing, it seemed to be very, very happy indeed.

"Simple," Leah said, raising her voice enough to be heard. "You said it would be simple. I think you meant to tell me that you were simple. And when I say simple, I don't mean that you're easy, I mean that you're..."

The Darkest Night theme joined the laughter to drown out her last word.

Since he couldn't think anything else to do, Tony answered his phone.

"Tony! There's something in the soundstage! It's ripping the place apart. There's crashing and screaming and..."

"Lee!"

"No, it's Amy, you a.s.s!"

He knew that. "I meant..."

"I don't give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n what you meant! Get in here!"

"What..."

But there was only the dial tone. Over by the window, the happy face kept laughing.

Shoving the phone back in his backpack, Tony hung it over one shoulder as he ran for the door. "The demon's at the studio!"

"Tony! Wait!"

"Forget it, Leah. You want your body guarded, you come with me."

"I intend to." She grabbed his backpack and dragged him around. "But you can't leave that thing hanging in my condo!"

The happy face kept laughing.

Tony stretched out his left arm and sucked the energy back through the scar. He had the giggles all the way to the underground garage.

Leah's driving made it difficult to practice the four runes he needed to know. He'd taken half a dozen pictures of the tattoo with the camera on his phone and, with his knees pressed against the dash and the phone open on his knees, he tried to memorize the swoops and curls as he sketched.

Tried to sketch."Leah!"

"You want to get there in time or what?" Considerably over the 100K limit, she cut in and out of westbound traffic in order to maintain her speed.

The TransCanada was a slightly less direct route back to the studio, but it had no lights and they were making amazing time-even considering the amount of lateral movement. Flung right then left, Tony wondered again why every time something metaphysical came down, he ended up in a car with people who drove like complete maniacs. Henry, Arra, Mouse, Jack, Leah...

"Hey!" The car started to hydroplane on the wet pavement, the back end fishtailing for about thirty meters before Leah got it under control. Tony caught the phone before it hit the floor but lost his pencil. "We're not all immortal here!"

"Trust me. I'm a professional stunt driver."

"They aren't!" The drivers of a late '90s Buick and a little imported hybrid flipped them off in quick succession. Hoping Leah's protective coating would work against road rage, he bent to find the pencil. He'd just about decided to take off his shoulder belt when he heard the siren and straightened so quickly he cracked his head on the dash. "s.h.i.t. Is that for us?"

"Seems to be. Are you crying?"

"No. My eyes are watering, I hit my head. You're not stopping!"

"Neither is the demon at the soundstage."

Good point. He wasn't looking forward to explaining it to the police but, still, a good point.

"If it is a demon." She slid between two transports, pa.s.sed on the right shoulder, and somehow ended up back in the left lane.

"What do you mean if?" Tony demanded.