Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 27

"You're still lying to me."

"Yeah, but not happily. And not about anything that counts." It was important Jack believe that. Tony refused to look away until he nodded an acknowledgment. "Leah, where are you going?"

She sighed as she turned. "In the interests of not having any secrets between us-before we hit the streets, I'm off to the little stuntwoman's room where I'll pee and then wash my hands. Maybe I'll put some lip gloss on while there's a mirror handy. Or do you need a definitive answer on that?"

"Great," Tony muttered to Jack as Leah spun on one heel and strode off. "You see what you started?" He jiggled his car keys, stopped when he saw Henry wince. He'd made his point, no need to annoy sensitive ears.

He wanted to say: If something does show up, don't let Jack be a hero. He breaks easier than you do.

He wanted to say: Don't you be a hero either. Let Jack shoot it a few times before you move in.

And he wanted to say: Maybe we do have issues, but we also have history, and so we've got to work through them. Because you're not going to let go, and I don't think I am either.

He settled for saying, "Be careful."

And was pretty sure Henry heard all the rest."So, what do I do?"

"Go west; toward the city. Drive slowly. I'll tell you when to turn."

Tony pulled out around an ancient chartreuse minibus covered in lime-green religious slogans. More than one kind of weird ended up on the west coast. "Can I ask you a question, or do you have to concentrate?"

"After thirty-five hundred years, I've learned how to mult.i.task, so ask."

"Ryne Cyratane's been doing this from the beginning of the Convergence, right? Directing the energy to where he needs it? So, if you only ever felt a couple of weak spots at a time, why didn't you expect the first demon that attacked you?"

"Why didn't I expect a demon to charge out of the sunset swinging an arm on a CBC Movie of the Week location shoot?"

"Yeah."

"Who the h.e.l.l would ever expect something like that?"

Tony glanced over to the pa.s.senger seat. Leah had her shirt up and her hand resting on the exposed tattoo. "Fair enough."

They found the shallow hole in an alley off Hastings Street between Gore and Main. The Chinese restaurant along one side was just closing, so they waited while a bored young man in kitchen whites tossed yellow plastic bags of garbage into the Dumpster. Then they waited a moment longer while a pair of Dumpster divers retrieved the edible bits.

"We're wasting time," Leah hissed as Tony grabbed her arm and yanked her back into the shadows.

"So we'll waste a little," he said quietly, watching the two women who looked middle-aged but were probably younger sort through the restaurant waste. "This might be the only meal they get all day. What?" he asked when she turned to glare at him. "In thirty-five hundred years, you were never hungry?"

The glare softened to impatience. "Maybe once or twice, but..."

"We wait until they're done. They'll want to go someplace safe and eat, so it won't take long."

It didn't.

"Why do these kinds of metaphysical things always happen in alleys," Tony wondered as they walked past the Dumpster.

"Why not in the middle of the TransCanada? Or a meter over the sock counter at Sears? Or in someone's apartment?"

"Who says they don't?" Leah asked, looking ready to bolt. "All that's necessary is that something be missing to anchor the convergent energy." She indicted a rough-edged pothole in a remarkably filthy bit of pavement. "We're just lucky this one's where we can get to it."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So are you affecting it?" The pothole didn't look like it had changed since they arrived. It didn't look like the weak spot between realities either. It smelled like rotting melon and Kung Pao Shrimp.Frowning, she prodded the air over the pothole with one foot. "I don't feel any... Oh, no!" Arms windmilled as her foot slammed down. "It's got me!"

"Leah!" Tony grabbed her, dragged her back, and nearly dropped her in a particularly pungent bit of rotting garbage when he realized she was laughing.

"Kidding. It's fine. I don't feel anything different." She pulled out of his grip and tucked her hair back behind her ears, still snickering. "You should close it up now."

"I don't know how," he reminded her, folding his arms.

"Oh, cranky." A raised hand stopped his step toward her. "Okay, okay. Forgive me for being relieved. Before you can close the hole-or, this early in the game, just strengthen the weak spot-you have to see it."

"I see the pothole."

"Look harder."

There wasn't a lot of light in the alley; a couple of yellowing, bug-speckled bulbs over back doors and the spill from the streetlights.

"I can't see..."

"Yes, you can. Wizards see what's there." She sighed and folded her arms, shifting her weight onto one hip. "Look harder."

"I can see where the smell of Kung Pao Shrimp is coming from," he said after a minute. "And you're sc.r.a.ping off your shoe before you get back in the car."

"But you don't see the weak spot?"

"No."

"Okay, don't look as hard. I guarantee it's there, in the pothole, a place where the absence of what should be there has left an opening."

"An absence of what should be there? Dial it back a bit, would..." Tony froze, half turned away from the sc.u.m encrusted bit of pavement in question. From the corner of his eye, he saw a heat shimmer-except, of course, it wasn't actually a heat shimmer- stretched horizontally across the top of the pothole. "I see it. What now?"

"Burn the runes one at a time and push them through the weak spot."

"Through?" Even cracked, the pavement seemed pretty d.a.m.ned solid. "Right. Why don't I just burn close up or keep out?"

"Tony, use the runes."

He shifted his foot a little farther away from a particularly nasty bit of melon. "Why? Go home worked fine on that charging demon."

"I know. It shouldn't have."

"But it did." He was definitely taking his turn to be smug.

"But it shouldn't have."

"But it did."

"Yes, it did. It shouldn't have, but it did. And is this the time to be experimenting with new techniques that may or may not work?

That may or may not make things worse? No. The fate of the world is at stake. You risk my life and everyone else's on a whim!" "But it worked!" Wasn't that the important bit?

"That time. Under those circ.u.mstances!" A deep breath, both hands against the clothing over the tattoo. When she spoke again, she wasn't shouting and she sounded sincere. "I promise you that the runes will work every time. Under any circ.u.mstances."

Tony wasn't sure how to take sincere. "Swear this isn't just part of your whole control issue thing."

"You want swearing?" Garbage squelched under her sneakers as Leah stepped toward him. "I'll give you thirty-five hundred years of swearing in a minute! Write the runes and push them through!"

"One at a time?"

"Now you're being deliberately provoking."

Yeah. He was. "If it means that much to you, I'll do it your way."

"Sometime soon!"

"What's the hurry?" The shimmer was kind of pretty in an "entrance to h.e.l.l" sort of way. "You said this one was shallow."

"It was when we got here," she snorted. "Why are you standing like that?"

He'd shifted to stand angled at the pothole, facing Leah, eyeb.a.l.l.s rolled into the lower left corner of each socket. "I can see it better if I don't look at it straight on."

"You know where it is; do you have to see it?"

"I guess not." He turned to face the pothole, rubbing his eyes. "Problem. I don't think I remember..."

"I know you don't," Leah interrupted, pulling four sheets of folded paper out of the back pocket of her track pants. "So I brought your cheat notes."

Considering how tight she wore the upper part of those pants, fitting four sheets of folded paper in the back pocket was one of the most impressive things Tony'd seen all day.

He ended up shoving the runes through physically with the scar on his left hand, ignoring his companion's sotto voice commentary about cheating. "Is it cheating for a basketball player to use their height?"

Okay. Maybe not so much ignoring.

"You're not a basketball player, you're a wizard."

"And I'm using what I have. It's not my fault other wizards haven't had it."

"You should be moving them with power."

"Why?"

"Because that's how it's done."

Since he was the wizard and she wasn't, he decided to ignore her. As the last line of energy vanished, there was a soft, almost soggy pop that lifted all the hair on the back of his neck. The skin around his eyebrow ring suddenly began to burn.

"I wouldn't touch your face with that hand," Leah cautioned. His left hand had been pressed flat against the pavement. Or more specifically, flat against elderly grease and rat droppings and more recently deposited bits of chow mein. "Gross..." He wiped it on his jeans as he stood. One knee was damp and he smelled like rotting bean sprouts. By no means as wiped as he would have been after a Powershot, he still felt a little hungry. "So, on to the next one or back to the studio?" he yawned.

"Why is that my decision?"

He shrugged. "You're taking the biggest risk."

Her fingers stroked the edges of the tattoo and she smiled. The smile said we can beat this, and for the moment at least she completely believed it.

Tony smiled the same smile back at her.

"Let's close the second one," she said.

"Great. You're driving. And I need something to eat." As they pa.s.sed the Dumpster, he swerved to miss a small pile of suspiciously moving rice. "But not Chinese."

At a quarter after midnight, they were in Richmond, driving slowly south on No. 3 Road past the old Canadian Pacific Railway lands.

"Feeling's getting stronger," Leah murmured, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel. "It feels like I have slugs writhing in my navel."

Tony hurriedly chewed and swallowed his eleventh glazed chocolate Timbit. "Thank you for that image."

"Any time." She turned left on Alexandra, slowing further. "We're close."

They found the weak spot halfway up the side of a building, anch.o.r.ed on a crack in the masonry. There were a few taxis down the street by a hotel, but other than that, the street was empty. Quiet. Once they parked, nothing moved.

"Is this because of the weak spot?" Tony wondered as they crossed the street. All the empty was beginning to creep him out.

"No, it's because it's Thursday night and the bars don't let out for a couple of hours."

"Right." Head c.o.c.ked to one side, eyes rolled up and over, Tony frowned and lost sight of the blazing line of energy spilling out of the crack as his face realigned.

"See, this is why you learn to do it properly." Hands on her hips, Leah glared up at the building. "Unless we break and enter and dangle you out the third-floor window-which I'm not philosophically against-you're going to have a little trouble just shoving the runes through this one."

Feeling he should protest, more on princ.i.p.al than because he actually had something valid to say, Tony squinted the crack back into alignment. "This one's a lot brighter than the last one."

"It's a lot deeper. Better hurry."

"I could probably throw them into it."

"Whatever. Just do it." Her tone, bordering on panic, pulled his attention off the weak spot and that, he realized as he took Leah with him to the ground was probably all that kept him from being blinded as light flared brilliantly purple and something big burst out of the crack.

She slapped the asphalt on impact, grunting as Tony's weight drove the air out of her lungs. "Get! Off!"

"You're welcome!" As the light show from the building dimmed, he rolled off, scrambled to one knee, and aimed his left hand down the road, blinking away afterimages and breathing heavily. He wouldn't be able to see the cheat sheets through the sparkly purple blotches, so he'd have to do this his way.

Not that sparkly purple blotches suggested imminent danger.

On the other hand, the large asymmetrical shape in the middle of the road did.

Bright side, large was easier to hit.