Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 26

"Come from your boss, Chester Bane. He order. He pay." She shoved the box into his hands and grinned as his stomach growled. "He say I give you message, too. He say you should answer your d.a.m.ned e-mail."

"Pepperoni, sausage, olives, tomatoes, mushrooms, green pepper, and double cheese; your boss knows how to order a pizza."

Jack pulled a slice from the box and bit off the tip with obvious enjoyment. "None of this good-for-you broccoli c.r.a.p."

"Personally, I could have done without the olives," Leah muttered, flicking a piece off her slice.

There was always someone who b.i.t.c.hed about the toppings, Tony reflected as he chewed. It was practically a requirement of pizza eating. Three people in the group, one person b.i.t.c.hed. Five to seven people, two b.i.t.c.hing. Unless there were anchovies, and then everyone but one person b.i.t.c.hed, regardless of numbers. Of course, in this particular group, the stats were kind of skewed...

"You not having any, Fitzroy?"

"No, thanks. I ate before I came."

Jack shrugged and took another piece. "Great. More for me. Where are you going?"

Barely two steps away from the chaise, Henry turned and smiled at Jack. "Why?"

"Because, I think, given all the weird s.h.i.t going down..." Jack paused to wipe a bit of grease off his chin. "... that if we're going to work together, we shouldn't leave each other in the dark about what's going on."

"Fair enough. I'm going out to the office."

"Why? There's no one there."

Henry's smile grew a little edged. Tony shuffled back just far enough to be out of the line of fire-just in case. Better Jack caught that look than him. "Television people," Henry explained pointedly, "don't keep the same hours as mere mortals. There's probably a few people still working on post-production..."

Post? Tony stiffened.

"... and Chester Bane never leaves his office before midnight."

"You and Mr. Bane friends?"

"We've dined together a few times."

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Tony tossed aside his crust and clawed at the hot cheese and pizza sauce that had slid off it and onto his crotch. By the time he finished sc.r.a.ping and swearing, Henry was gone.

Just as well. Not like I was going to call him on making stupid vampire double entendres in front of Jack. He took another handful of napkins from Leah-who had almost stopped laughing-and scrubbed at the denim.

"You guys have some issues," Jack snorted.

Tony s.n.a.t.c.hed the last piece of pizza out from under his hand. "Do not." Great. Even straight Mounties were noticing.

"Uh-huh. So why here?"

"Why not here?" Leah wondered. "They have issues everywhere else." "No, why are we waiting here?" Jack's gesture took in the immediate area, empty but for two folding chairs, food debris, and the chaise he shared with Leah. "There's a lot more comfortable places to wait in this soundstage, so why specifically here?"

"I did a spell here," Tony told him, gesturing with the pizza crust. "A big one. It left a mark."

"What kind of spell?"

"I'm not sure." Teeth slightly clenched, half a shrug-Tony was a very good liar. "I screwed it up."

"It had something to do with the ceiling?"

Had he looked up? He didn't remember looking up. "Yeah. It had something to do with the ceiling. But the rest is cla.s.sified. If I told you, I'd have to turn you into a frog."

"You can do that?"

He swallowed and smiled. "I could try."

Jack shook his head, but what exactly he was denying wasn't clear. "Like I said to your friend Fitzroy, I don't think we should be keeping secrets."

"Is this a police thing; asking so many questions?" Leah leaned in. Tony figured she'd suddenly remembered she had a few secrets of her own. "Or are you naturally so curious?"

No sign of Ryne Cyratane, so at least Jack had a fighting chance, but Leah on her own, being intense and interested and brushing b.r.e.a.s.t.s against bicep, was enough to attract male attention.

She attracted Jack's. He probably wasn't even aware he'd straightened his shoulders. "It's what cops do, ask questions."

And spout bad cop show dialogue.

Tony cleaned up while they flirted and tried not to think about what was happening in the boss' office. Figures. The one time I could use a little e-mail distraction from a psychotic eight-year-old, I'd never get an uplink. Even if he had a cable, there wasn't a phone jack on this side of the soundstage.

"I was thinking."

Since he'd gotten used to Henry suddenly appearing by his side years ago, Tony enjoyed Jack and Leah's reaction.

"Wasn't your original plan to find the weak points between this world and the h.e.l.ls..." Four-hundred-and-sixty-odd years of Catholicism gave him a little trouble with the plural. "... and have Tony close them before they open and expel a demon?"

"Where the h.e.l.l did you come from?"

"The original plan?" Henry repeated pointedly to Leah, ignoring Jack's question.

"Yes, that was the original plan. So?"

"So I'm not sure we shouldn't return to it."

"h.e.l.lo!" The eye roll was dramatic. "What happened to hunker down, protect Leah, and save the world? I'm not going on walkabout across the lower mainland if demons are coming after me personally."

"Hang on," Jack interrupted. "Why are the demons coming after you?" Tony reviewed various meetings in CB's office and realized that only he and Henry knew Leah was anything more than a stuntwoman who did demonology as a sideline. CB and Kevin Groves knew demons were coming after her, but Jack, his partner, Amy, Zev, and Lee knew only the basics of the Demonic Convergence. f.u.c.k this; I need a scorecard!

"Maybe they want my recipe for goat cheese pizza," Leah snapped. "Duh! They're trying to kill me!"

"Why are they trying to kill you?" Jack was using his "don't even try to bulls.h.i.t me" voice now. Interestingly enough, it worked.

"Because I know things and that makes me a threat."

"How do they know you know things?"

"What difference does it make?"

Jack sighed, ran a hand up through his hair, and took a moment to get comfortable on his end of the chaise. "Until you jokers listen, I'm going to keep repeating that, under the circ.u.mstances, I don't think we should keep secrets from each other."

"Oh, I see." Leah's second eye roll was more sarcastic than dramatic. "You show up with a gun and suddenly we should trust you?"

"Under the circ.u.mstances, I don't think we should keep secrets from each other."

"It's the Mountie thing, isn't it?" she sneered. "How can we not trust the stalwart in red serge?"

"Under the circ.u.mstances, I don't think we should keep secrets from each other."

She spun around to glare at him, their faces inches apart. "You have only the faintest idea of what's going on here!"

"Under the circ.u.mstances, I don't think we should keep secrets from each other."

"Stop saying that!"

"Dinner and a floor show," Tony snickered quietly, well aware that Henry could hear him even over the sound of shouting. "I'm having a lot more fun than I thought I would."

"Good." Henry flashed him an affectionate grin, then turned his attention back to the battle. "But we're not getting much accomplished." He stepped closer to the chaise.

Tony didn't need to see his eyes go dark. He could read the change in the set of Henry's shoulders. In the stillness that accompanied him. The Hunter was in the building.

"Jack Elson."

Names held power. Unable to resist the pull, Jack looked up and was caught. Safely behind Henry's left side, Tony saw his eyes widen, his cheeks pale, and his hands clutch compulsively into fists. Jack would never willingly show his throat, but Henry wasn't giving him the choice.

"Some secrets are too dangerous to be lightly shared. You know what you need to know. Accept that and move on. And," he added in a lighter voice, "I've changed my mind about the validity of the original plan. Stopping the demons before they emerge now seems to me to be the safest way to deal with them."

"He has a point," Jack acknowledged slowly, frowning as though he was searching through the conversation to discover how they'd gotten this far. Tony knew the feeling.

"No, he doesn't," Leah argued. "It's not safe putting me right up next to a hole. It could goad the demon to burst through prematurely." "So? Tony'll be right there."

"I'll be right there."

"Tony?" Henry's use of his name drew all of Tony's attention. To be fair, he didn't think Henry could help it. "What do you think?"

So they were going to play that game. Pretend that Tony was making the decisions until he made one Henry didn't like. Pretend that the wizard was in charge and the vampire was just backup muscle. Fine. Leah and Henry had ditched the original plan when he was asleep. Unconscious. He forced himself not to touch the mark on his throat and realized he'd get absolutely nowhere if he brought any of that up now.

"Leah, how do you find the weak spots?"

She shrugged. "Gut feeling."

Considering what was on her gut, he'd let that stand. "Can you mark them on a map?"

"It's not that exact. It's more like playing hot, warm, cold; the closer I get to them, the stronger the feeling gets."

"But it should be easier now that there's not a lot of them, right? Because the convergent energy has to be slamming down on only a couple of spots in order for the holes to be going deep enough for demons to come through," he tossed to Jack before the awkward questions started.

"Not exactly easier," Leah began. Paused. Frowned. Sighed. "Okay, easier to find. But harder to close."

"Harder than facing down the actual demon? These weak spots have teeth? Claws? Other unidentifiable sharp bits?"

"They will if you screw up."

"No, if when I'm facing an actual demon." He started pacing. He was onto something. "How many weak spots out there now?"

"I don't think..."

"Come on, Leah. Try, please."

"Fine." She slid a hand under her clothes and closed her eyes.

"I thought she was a demonic consultant?" Jack stage-whispered dramatically.

"She's consulting," Tony told him.

"Yeah? Who? Or should I say, what?"

"There." Leah cut off Tony's answer. "There's a strong feeling that way. Deep hole." She pointed. "And a weaker one, that way.

Still nice and shallow. That's all."

"So two?"

"Deep. Shallow." She looked down at the fingers she'd raised as she spoke each word. "Yes, that's two. Your grasp of higher mathematics makes me feel so much safer."

"We'll go to the shallow one first."

"No." Tony turned just enough to frown at Henry. "What?"

"We need to go to the deeper one first because it is closer to expelling its demon. You'll have more time to close the shallow hole."

"Except that I'm making the decisions and I say we go to the shallow hole first to see if Leah has an effect. If she does, there's no chance of a demon getting through immediately. No harm, no foul. If she doesn't, then we take her near the other one."

Henry shook his head. "Reckless."

"I think you've forgotten what reckless means," Leah told him as she stood. "Tony's playing it safe."

"Tony risks allowing a demon to break through while no one is here to protect the soundstage."

"Then you stay." He tried not to feel pleased about how startled Henry had looked if only for an instant. "Jack, you'd better stay with him." If this worked, they wouldn't need muscle out on the street. "Leah says these things are just killing machines, there's nothing magical about them, so if one does show up, you two ought to be able to knock it on its a.s.s and hold it until I get back."

"Us two? He's a romance writer." Jack shot Henry an incredulous look.

Tony didn't see the look Henry shot back, but it wiped the incredulous right off Jack's face. "Unnatural rope's best for holding them, and there's a whole lot of the yellow nylon s.h.i.t over with the carpenter's gear. Don't worry about hurting them. Apparently, there's not much actual damage you can do. Don't get eaten. You know, by demons," he added as Henry frowned.

"Eaten." Not a question, but then Jack had seen the one-armed man.

"Welcome to the wonderful world of the weird and metaphysical," Tony told him, shrugging into his jacket. "Remember, you're the one who insisted on playing; I'd have happily kept lying to you."