Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 9

"We're just..." Then he paused. What were they? Friends? Not yet. Metaphysical accidents? Closer, but hard to explain.

"We're compatriots," Leah declared emerging from behind the screen in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a yellow hoodie, dress dripping from one hand and a pair of yellow high-tops in the other. "Partners in crime. Paesano!" She dropped back into the chair and drew her feet up to lace on the sneakers as Hama took the pins out of her hair. Released, it fell in thick black curls reaching just below her shoulders.

"Your mouth is open," she snickered, looking up from tying her second shoe. "What?"

"How the h.e.l.l do you fit all that hair..." He waved at the wig on the counter. "... under that?" "Magic."

Tony believed her.

Bouncing out of the chair, she zipped up the hoodie and turned just far enough to kiss Hama on the cheek. "You are a wizard of the makeup chair. I've stair falls next week, will I see you there?"

"You will."

"Bueno!" She scooped the strap of a plaid shoulder bag up and over her shoulder, and grabbed his arm, not quite dragging him out the door. "Come on, Tony, I've got to sign off, then we can go."

"The stair falls for the same movie?"

"Yep. h.e.l.l of a way to make a living, eh?"

"Then why do you do it?"

"Are you kidding? It's the most fun I've had with immortality since the thirteenth century." She raised a hand. "Don't ask. And the money's nothing to sneeze at. I mean we're talking $500 a day base rate plus, for this shoot, the CBC increase of 25 percent. I get called for a big budget movie and the increase can be as high as 130 percent-you should maybe learn some basic physical protections and think about it."

"No, thanks, I want to direct."

"Of course you do. Hey, I'm starving. The moment I finish the paperwork, let's head for some food."

"We're eating?"

"And talking. I think you proved last night you can handle both."

Last night. Right. "Where's... ?" He gestured at the s.p.a.ce over her head.

"Ryne Cyratane? Probably as far from the gate as he can get. He's like a cat, hates water. s.h.i.t. Shoelace. Hang on."

Tony who'd taken a couple of extra steps, turned as she dropped to one knee. The sunset was behind her, the last of the light unexpectedly bright. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, and saw something move. At first he thought it was the Demonlord, then he realized it was significantly solider and swinging a human arm directly through the s.p.a.ce Leah's head had just occupied.

She dropped flat, warned by the swish or the smell or both, and rolled away from a kick that would have disemboweled her had the claws made contact.

Disemboweled anyone else.

As Leah rose to her knees, he thought he saw a familiar breadth of translucent bare shoulders behind her although with the sun in his eyes it was hard to tell for certain. "Do something!"

"Do what?" There were scales and horns and whoa! Teeth!

"Wizard it!"

Right.

He folded the middle two fingers of his right hand in and swung his right arm back and then around and over his head. He was supposed to shout the eleven words of the spell clearly and distinctly, but clear and distinct got dumped in favor of speed. Things that were mostly serrated edged were f.u.c.king motivating! As long as the arm motion and the words finished as the same time it should...

Energy surged up from his feet, roared through his body, and blew out of his outstretched arm, arcing between forefinger and little finger then blasting forward.

The sudden flash was impressive.

"Tony?" Leah scrambled across the asphalt toward him. "Are you all right?"

Good question. Bits hurt. Hardly surprising since the spell had knocked him back on his a.s.s. He blinked away brilliant blue afterimages. "I think I broke my tailbone."

"Yeah..." She slipped an arm behind his shoulders and levered him up. Fortunately, her Demonlord seemed to have taken a powder because being cuddled by them both would have been too weird. "... and your fingernails are smoking."

One last narrow wisp of smoke drifted off into the twilight from the ends of both blackened nails. "Ow."

"Well put. What do you call that?"

"Arra called it a Powershot." His fingers felt scalded, but he could use his hand. "What the h.e.l.l was that thing?"

"That was a demon."

"A demon? Like a Demonic Convergence demon? Like nothing to worry about because we'll only have to deal with imps? That kind of a demon?"

"It shouldn't be here!"

"No s.h.i.t!"

Still supporting most of his weight, she glared down at him. From this close, Tony could see a tiny scar at the edge of her right eyebrow. "Quit yelling at me! It's not helping!"

He could also see that she was really most sincerely freaked and that threatened to send him into strong hysterics. When thirty-five- hundred-year-old immortal stuntwomen got freaked, it was time for the rest of the world to f.u.c.king lose it. Fortunately-for some weird definition of fortunately he didn't want to go into right now-he was too exhausted to start up the whole oh, my G.o.d, we're all going to die thing. After a couple of deep breaths, he managed a fairly calm, "What happened to it?"

"Ash."

"And the arm?"

Leah nodded toward a long, narrow lump of black on the pavement. "It got just a little overcooked."

"But the demon is ash?"

"The demon was other, the arm was flesh."

That almost made sense. Tony struggled to sit up a little straighter, but someone seemed to have snuck into his body and replaced all his muscles with marshmallows. "I don't feel so good."

"Considering the way you just blew your wad, I'm not surprised."

"Nice imagery." "Thank you. Can you..." Approaching voices cut her off and suddenly it became necessary he sit up on his own as Leah withdrew her arm and stood. "Oh, no, here comes the cavalry. They must've seen the flash. You get that arm packed up and let me deal with them."

Deal? Tony managed to brace himself on one hand and turn enough to see three men approaching from the jetty. Then Leah crossed into his line of sight, hips moving to an ancient rhythm. She laughed in answer to something one of the men said, a low, throaty sound that held heated suggestion.

And if even he could feel the heat, the odds were very high that none of the three men were now paying any attention to anything else.

You get that arm packed up.

Yeah. Right. Like that was the sort of thing he did every day. Well, actually, given the content of Darkest Night, he'd done it a couple of times helping out the set dresser. He rolled up onto his feet, swayed for a moment, and staggered back to the makeup trailer where he begged a garbage bag from the box on the counter.

"Are you feeling all right?" Hama asked as she handed it over. "You don't look so good." Her eyes narrowed. "You should be a medium beige and you're down to a light ivory."

"I'm fine. Just a little tired."

"You need more protein and less pizza. Especially if you're going to spend time with Leah."

"I'm not spending that kind of time with her." He'd just rest for a moment longer against the open door.

"Uh-huh."

"I'm gay."

"I'm generally fairly cheerful myself," she said dryly. "Trust me about Leah and red meat. Now close the door and go; you're letting cold air in."

It wasn't easy finding the remains of the arm. The banks of overhead lights shining down on the stacks of containers created nearly impenetrable shadow and, half blind, he almost tripped over it before he saw it. It looked like a long lump of charcoal roughly carved into the shape of an arm-a slight bend in the black where the elbow might be and little stubby fingers on one end. Given that the construction worker's other hand had been relatively normal, he had to a.s.sume the stubbiness occurred after death. Had the Powershot burned the fingers away? Or had the demon snacked on the end of his weapon?

"Demon snacks. Right. Why can't I ever spend time thinking about cars or getting laid, like a normal guy?" He sighed as he shook out the garbage bag. It was one of the small white ones made for garbage pails under the sink and it smelled vaguely of mint.

The scar on the palm of his left hand twitched as he dropped heavily to one knee beside the arm, and he hesitated, fingers spread out about five centimeters over the burned flesh.

"Problem?" Leah's voice behind his right shoulder.

"The last time I picked up an arm, it wasn't... fun." h.e.l.lo, understatement.

"Well, this one's pretty much pure carbon, so I don't imagine it'll give you any... Oh, my G.o.d! The fingers moved!" She snickered as he threw himself back so quickly he toppled over and pulled the garbage bag from his hand. "Kidding. Here, I'll get it."

"You seem to be feeling better," he muttered from the asphalt.

"There's nothing like a little slap and tickle to remind a girl of what's important." Slipping the bag over her hand, Leah bent and scooped up the arm like she was scooping an enormous t.u.r.d. An enormous burned t.u.r.d. With fingers. Stubby fingers. "I'm going to be feeling better than you will for a while," she added, straightening. "You just ripped that energy right out of your guts, didn't you?"

"I guess." Feet, legs, guts eventually. Tony rolled up onto his knees as Leah closed the bag and reached into his pocket for the twist tie Hama had given him. A narrow piece of paper fluttered to the ground, a small line of white against the dark asphalt.

"What's that?"

"Fortune from last night's cookie." He picked it up and turned it over, leaning back just a little to bring it out of shadow. "The blow from sunlight is more unexpected than the blow from darkness. That demon just attacked you in the last of the sunlight," he said slowly as he got to his feet. "And I'd say that was unexpected."

Leah rolled her eyes. "You got a fortune cookie that really tells the future?"

"You've got a tattoo that's a Demongate."

"So you're saying stranger things have happened?"

"You're holding an arm."

She glanced down at the bag. "Good point."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

It took almost more effort than he had available to pull his car keys out of his jacket pocket. "Can you drive?"

Tony didn't notice the rip in the side of her hoodie until they were going into the steak house and he stumbled. Leah turned to steady him, and he saw the fabric gape. "Looks like that demon almost got you."

She glanced down at the sweater and shrugged. "It's the almost that matters; I can't be hurt, remember? Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to my clothes. The important thing is that I ducked at exactly the right moment and you were there in time to blast the little b.u.g.g.e.r into dust."

"Not so little," Tony grunted. "And not an imp!"

"Would you let that go?" She maneuvered them around a table, toward the back of the restaurant. "So there was a lot of convergent energy hitting the same spot early on, and something a little bigger than an imp got through. It happens."

"Is it likely to happen again?"

She flashed him a sunny smile. "Well, if it does, you'll be there to deal with it, won't you?"

"You said imps," he muttered. "That wasn't an imp."

"And speaking of how much size matters..." She waited until she'd helped him into a high booth against the back wall and they were holding laminated menus before she continued. "... you might want to dial your Powershot down a bit. I think you're going to lose those nails."

The nail on his pinkie had begun to curl. It wasn't painful when he poked it, but it wasn't a pleasant feeling. Sort of a condensed memory of the energy surge.

When he looked up, Leah was shaking her head. "You don't know how to dial it down, do you?"

Tony thought about lying, but there was an arm in his trunk and transporting detached, carbonated body parts made lying seem a little pointless. "That was the first I ever did. I'll get better with practice."

"Uh-huh. He'll have the sixteen-ounce T-bone," she told the waitress.

"I can't eat a..."

Both women turned to stare at him. Leah's gaze flicked down to his fingernails.

He had the sixteen-ounce T-bone.

All of it.

And two baked potatoes with sour cream and chives.

And a side of creamed corn.

And a side of fried mushrooms.

And three huge pumpernickel rolls with b.u.t.ter.

And two beers.

Once he got started, he barely paused to breathe.