Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 21

No time to get this wrong!

He wiped out half the glowing symbol, realized it now looked sort of like the word go...

Palm against gla.s.s. A louder crack. More screaming.... and went with plan B. The rune on his left hand grabbed ghosts. Ghosts were energy left over when flesh rotted. Therefore, the rune should allow him to grab this energy.

Grab it and throw it.

The glowing blue go hit the demon between the shoulder blades and sucked into the scaled skin with a disconcerting sizzle.

The demon spun around...

H.

... shifted its weight onto two different legs...

0.

... and charged.

M.

Tony didn't have to keep throwing the letters. The demon charged through them, no longer sneering, clearly intent on ripping apart this puny mortal who dared to interfere.

Puny mortal? Where the h.e.l.l had that come from?

Sizzle.

Sizzle.

Sizzle.

Too close!

The world had not gone into slow motion. Too bad because he could have used a bit more time. Eyes locked on the charging demon, his breath coming fast and shallow; he was only going to get one chance. Panic lending speed, more focused than he'd ever been in his life, he scrawled the last letter in the air.

E.

Not so much a sizzle as a ZAP. Like the world's biggest bug hitting the world's biggest bug zapper.

The impact threw Tony backward as the demon flared a brilliant lime green and disappeared, leaving nothing behind him but a piece of smoking pavement and the smell of charred fish. It was over before his a.s.s. .h.i.t the parking lot; a large, deep puddle absorbing most of the impact.

"What was that all about?"

He could feel power racing over his skin as he peered up through the afterimages at Leah. "You're welcome."

"It was kind of hard to see what you were doing..." Her voice grew shriller with every word. "... but those weren't the right runes!"

"They worked."

"They shouldn't have!" Tony would have shrugged, but his shoulder hurt way too much and, from the line of warmth dribbling down his chest, he had a feeling the bandage had come loose. He should have felt like c.r.a.p, but he didn't. He felt invincible. It was like the way he knew where things were when he reached for them except... more. He knew where the whole world was. He knew where he was in the world. No. More still. He was the world. Just him, no backup singers.

It was the most incredible feeling. There was nothing he couldn't do, and no one could stop him. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he healed the puncture wounds in his shoulder.

And was amazed by the new and exciting levels of pain.

"Sonofaf.u.c.kingb.i.t.c.h!"

Then world was a big ball of rock again, and his place in it involved a puddle and a parking lot.

"Tony!" Leah was right in his face. "What did you do to the demon?"

"I told it to go home."

Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. She took a step away. "Go home?"

"Yeah." Even on the lower mainland, October rain was cold. As the water soaked through the cheap polyester, his b.a.l.l.s tried to climb up and sit on his lap. "You said it yourself, the demons don't belong here. I sent it back where it belonged."

"It's not that easy!"

"It is if I want it to be." Teeth clenched, he checked to make sure his arm still worked, then he got to his feet. "This is my world, not his." No need to define the p.r.o.noun. "He may need to slaughter whole villages and draw complicated esoteric symbols, I don't."

Rain ran under his collar and down his back. "Intent is nine tenths of the law."

"No, it isn't!"

"It is," he repeated slowly and deliberately, "if I want it to be." He could feel the world waiting for him. What was it Leah had said earlier? He was the round peg in the round hole and, here and now, it was a perfect fit.

She shook her head, rain flinging from the ends of dripping curls. "It isn't..."

"Is."

"No."

"He's telling the truth."

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" Leah snarled as Kevin Groves and her umbrella emerged from behind a parked van and joined them.

Tony smiled. This might be fun. "Leah Burnett, Kevin Groves. Kevin is a reporter for the Western Star."

"The press? You brought in the press?" She grabbed a double handful of white and red and yanked the umbrella out of the reporter's hands. "This is mine! Why does he have it?"

"So my hands were free and I could save your a.s.s. Again."

"Save my a.s.s?" Her eyes widened and her posture changed subtly, her focus shifting from him to Kevin. "From a special effect?

Don't be silly."

"It wasn't a... a special effect." Kevin scrubbed his palms against his suit. Kind of pointless given that the suit was soaking wet, but Tony had to admire the fact that he was still thinking for himself. No other straight boy had managed as much when Leah turned it on.

"Of course it was." She moved a little closer. Tony amused himself by watching Kevin's Adam's apple bob up and down as he reacted to Leah's proximity. "What else could it have been?"

"D... demon."

Speaking of demons, Leah's Demonlord seemed more present than usual. He noticed Kevin, frowned, and dismissed him- although Tony wasn't sure how he knew that since Ryne Cyratane hadn't actually focused on anything in this world. There was just something in the way he stared through the s.p.a.ce Kevin was occupying that said, I know you and you mean nothing. Then the antlered head went up and his nostrils flared as he searched for...

Me.

He's searching for the power that sent his demon home.

But the Demonlord's-attention?-slid right past him.

Like I'm not even here...

And he wasn't, Tony realized suddenly, not according to the Leah-filter Ryne Cyratane experienced the world through. He wasn't reacting to Leah's I'm an enormous metaphysical s.l.u.t performance, so to the Demonlord he didn't exist. Except that he obviously did since there was a demon back home blubbering about the big mean wizard who'd kicked demon b.u.t.t. The Demonlord had come looking for the wizard but wasn't finding him.

Two possibilities.

Straight woman. Gay man. In the far end of both options where there was no attraction at all to what Leah was offering.

A kind of strangled moan jerked his attention back to the here and now. Offer accepted; lip lock commencing.

"For crying out loud, get a room, you two!" Rolling his eyes at such blatant and public heteros.e.xuality, Tony took four steps back and yanked open the side door of the van Kevin had been hiding behind. Peter never locked it. He was hoping some lowlife would jack it so that he could replace it with wheels a little less suburban.

It wouldn't be comfortable, but it would be private. Privater. More private?

Leah, in spite of being quite clearly in the midst of giving a fairly thorough tonsillectomy with her tongue, acknowledged the open door, gave Kevin a shove, steered him through half a dozen stumbling steps, pushed him into the van, climbed in after him, and pulled the door closed.

Let's hear it for centuries of practice.

Kevin yelped once, the m.u.f.fled sound verging on desperate.

All that adrenaline had to go somewhere, Tony figured, walking away. Leah probably just wanted to forget she'd been attacked by yet another demon and, more importantly, she wanted Kevin to forget the demon entirely. It was a more physical solution than Arra's memory erase spell, but both parties involved had to be enjoying it more.

He hadn't even reached the back door of the soundstage when a shout stopped him in his tracks and he turned to see Leah emerging, adjusting her clothes.

"That was fast," he observed when she joined him. Not that he'd been moving particularly quickly or anything since every step sent reminders of extraordinary pain up from his feet to his skull, but still... "Tell me about it." But she looked happier. Grounded. The familiarity of s.e.x erasing the terror evoked by the possibility of death and dismemberment.

Jesus, that's profound.

"He still knows what happened," he said, nodding past her to Kevin who was hoisting his backpack up over one shoulder and looking a little happier himself.

Leah glanced over her shoulder and looked smug. "He knows what I told him."

"And you told him it was special effects." Tony waited until Kevin had crossed the parking lot, antic.i.p.ating what was about to happen with a certain amount of petty glee. "So, Kevin, what did you think about those special effects? Not Leah's special effects,"

he clarified hurriedly, "before that, in the parking lot."

The reporter shrugged and, at Tony's gesture, blushed and zipped up. "It was a demon."

Tony leaned against the building where he was out of the rain and less likely to fall over. "He has a power," he explained before the astounded immortal Demongate found her voice. "He knows the truth."

Leah frowned at him. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

Turned and frowned at Kevin. "Seriously?"

"Yes."

Back to Tony; still frowning. "So, what? You got yourself a sidekick?"

Wizardman and Reporterboy!

That was wrong on so many levels.

The glee evaporated as he looked up and realized the shooting light was on and they were stuck outside. Only a few meters to the back door and warmth and coffee and it might as well be in Alberta. "No," he told her flatly, "I got myself someone who may know how long the Demonic Convergence is going to last."

"Wait a minute, the Western Star." Leah's fingers closed around Kevin's wrist and she hauled him around to face her. "You know someone's lying and you still print c.r.a.p like 'I was impregnated by a Sasquatch'?"

He chewed on a corner of his lower lip. "Who says that was a lie?"

"And you're going to report on all this?"

"I don't..." More chewing. Tony thought he seemed torn. He was inside the story now, he'd had a look at what Tony could do, and had to believe Tony's threat about stuffing him back outside with his nose pressed against the gla.s.s. But demons, actual demons and wizards, that was a byline on the front page. "I mean, if someone noticed..."

"No one noticed," Tony a.s.sured him. "And if anyone did, they'll think it was a special effect. Even without Leah's...

reinforcement."

Kevin stared at him like he had oatmeal coming out his ears. "They'd think a charging demon disappearing in a flash of lime-green light was a special effect?"

"You should see what the guys at Bridge get up to in their parking lot," Tony snorted as he pushed off the wall. The demon had obviously rattled him more than he'd thought. The craft services truck was parked no more than three meters from the back door-he didn't have to go inside for sustenance, he could go to the source. He paused on the metal stairs that led into the back of the truck and glanced down at the other two who were watching him like he might do something interesting. Like blow something up. Or fall over. Or fall over while blowing something up.

"You guys want a coffee?"

"Are you sure you should be touching stimulants?" Leah asked.

"Yes."

"Okay, then. Double cream, no sugar."

"Kevin?"

"I'm good."

Tony didn't quite hear what Leah muttered as he went inside and he was just as happy not to given that, when he came out holding the two coffees with a m.u.f.fin in his pocket, Kevin was still blushing.

"All right," he said, pushing back in under the scant overhang. "When we go in, you guys go straight through to CB's office. Leah, tell him what happened. Kevin." He held up a hand for emphasis. "Don't talk to anyone in the soundsta... What?"