Darkest Night - Smoke and Shadows Part 13

"We've done all we can for him."

"What if the potion didn't work?"

"The potion was all we had."

"But CB . . ."

"Needs Lee Nicholas, doesn't need you."

Unpleasant, but true. Production a.s.sistant was an entry level position and a lot of people were banging on the door to get in. Lee, on the other hand, had a vocal and growing fan base. As much as Tony hated abandoning him, he'd hate to be fired a lot more.

Jamming his shoulder and head under the back edge of the couch, he reached out and lifted the front edge of the slipcover a centimeter off the floor in time to see the circle of light return to illuminate the figure lying in the center of the floor.

Although not entirely certain of what he had expected to see, finding Lee Nicholas flat on his back was not it. When the power had suddenly gone off throughout the building, CB had spent long moments finding his flashlight then- followed by the anguished screams of a writer whose creative genius had swept her right past the concept of saving her prose-he'd made his way to the soundstage.

Security had joined him by the women's washroom and left him again when the sound of voices had drawn him away from his search for the panel.

"Mr. Nicholas."

The actor moaned and drew one knee up.

He closed the distance between them and glared down at the sprawled body. Drunk, definitely. Hopefully, only drunk. Before he could speak, the beam from a 6,000 watt carbon arc lamp burned the words away.

And left a few new ones as the soundstage plunged into darkness again.

"Go to the light board, Mr. Khouri! Turn the largest dimmer all the way to the right, then try the main breaker again!"

The security guard's disembodied voice drifted down out of the darkness. "Yes, sir, CB."By the time the dancing blobs of color had cleared from his vision, Lee Nicholas was sitting up in his own personal spotlight, rubbing his eyes.

"Oh, man, my head!" He peered beyond the flashlight beam. "CB? Is that you?"

"It is."

"What are you doing here?" A tentative swing from left to right of a precariously balanced head. "Forget that, what am I doing here?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing."

"I just . . . that is, I don't . . ." Brows drew in. "I have no idea."

As the younger man rose unsteadily to his feet, Chester Bane's eyes narrowed. "You're in costume."

"I'm in what?" From the panicked look on his face, it was clear he was not expecting to see the conservative clothing of James Taylor Grant, vampire a.s.sociate. Embarra.s.sment quickly followed relief. "I'm shonny . . . shoory . . . sorry, CB."

"Good." It was a reaction that would have piqued the producer's curiosity at any other time but not right now. "Change. Then come to my office; we'll talk."

"Yeah. Sure. Talk."

He swept the flashlight beam around the set, then fell into step beside the actor-fully aware of how intimidating his size had to be. "It must have been some party."

"I don't remember a party." Lee staggered, fell against CB's large and unyielding surface, and hurriedly hauled himself erect.

"I expect tomorrow's tabloids will tell us everything we need to know."

"Oh, G.o.d."

"Prayer is always an option."

The dribble of liquid running down Lee Nicholas' chin had held a line of moving sparkles.

One by one, the tiny lights had dimmed and disappeared. CB had a strong suspicion the tabloids would have even less of a handle on the truth than usual.

Chapter Six.

TONY WAITED for the Translink bus to pull away and then, squinting a little in the early morning sunshine, stared diagonally across the intersection at the studio. It looked like it had on a hundred previous mornings-or at least like it had on the thirty of those hundred mornings when it hadn't been raining. There were no mystical messages indicating that he'd fried the shadow, discouraged the Shadowlord, and stopped an invasion. There were no declarations of surrender. No proffered treaties. Not even a simple, "You win. I quit."

He glanced down at his watch. 7:20. He had about four hours to wait before the gate was scheduled to reopen. Four hours before he found out if the gate was even going to reopen.

And if it did?What then?

He took another look at the studio. Nothing about it gave any indication of what might or might not happen in only four short hours.

Which was too bad, really, because if it had looked different, if physical evidence of either the gate or the Shadowlord had marked the building, he'd be able to take what he knew to the proper authorities. It was the twenty-first century after all; surely someone had plans for dealing with an off-world invasion. Someone, that is, besides people who ran web sites called theyarecoming.com or prob_me.org and who clearly had way too much free time. He made a mental note to scrub that prob_me.org cookie or he'd be getting p.o.r.n spam for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, the only evidence he had supporting an invasion was an invisible gate that made his teeth hurt, a wizard who'd deny everything, and an actor who hadn't remembered being possessed-although one of the tabloids did have a slightly blurry, page 17 shot of him coming out of the main branch of the public library which would certainly strengthen the possession story. Not much in the way of support. Fox Mulder couldn't have made a case out of it.

The light changed and Tony headed across the street, absently rubbing his right thumb across the nearly healed puncture in his left wrist. Spending two nights in a row at Henry's condo hadn't been smart. And that was the problem. He wasn't smart around Henry, he was ... dependent. Sure, running to Henry for help the moment things got weird made a kind of sense-friends with specialized knowledge and all that-but allowing it to go further, supporting that whole vampire everyone I make a connection with is mine att.i.tude-his wrist throbbed-what had he been thinking? Other body parts made a couple of suggestions. He ignored them.

There was no chance of leaving Henry out of things now; if the gate reopened, he'd have to be told. But the next time . . .

Oh, yeah, Tony snorted, stepping up on the curb. Because this sort of thing is likely to happen again.

And anyway, since Arra seemed pretty d.a.m.ned sure they wouldn't survive this time, speculation seemed a bit moot.

Arra.

Tony'd called from Henry's to fill her in and ended up leaving a message on her machine.

He knew she was standing beside the phone, listening, and refusing to become further involved. Too bad. If that gate reopened, he wasn't going to give her a choice.

He wondered if blackmail would work. You help stop the Shadowlord and I won't tell everyone what you really are.

Yeah, that'd work. Tony snorted again. If it came down to his word against Arra's, his story against Arra's, well, he'd put money on people believing the part that didn't involve wizards and dark shadow invasions.

Maybe he'd try guilt. Never mind, you ve been through enough. You just stay home with your cats while the rest of us die. He had to try something because without Arra, it was up to him, and unless it turned out that a 6,000 watt carbon arc lamp was all it took, the world was f.u.c.king doomed.

As he retraced last night's steps to the back door, he glanced over at Lee's bike. Given the amount of vodka they'd poured into him, he'd probably taken a cab home. Lee had told CB he didn't remember anything and that was good. Tony knew his memory of what had happened in the dressing room was going to make it hard enough to face Lee-the last thing he needed added in was Lee's reaction. In his experience, a straight guy with a morning-after memory of copping a feel off a gay guy was more likely to blame the gay guy and get freaked and angry than think, Oops, my hand must've slipped. It was just human nature and Tony was usually fine with that, but it wasn't something he wanted to find out about Lee.For the first time since he'd started working on Darkest Night, he wasn't looking forward to seeing the actor on set.

The problem was, the whole dark wizard, gate, shadow, invasion thing was just a little too big to really get a hold of.

The thing with Lee; that he had a hold of just fine.

Oh, that's just f.u.c.king great. Like I don't have enough going on without mental innuendo.

As usual, most of the early crew stood gathered around the craft services truck nursing coffees and m.u.f.fins. Carpenters talking with electricians, talking with drivers, talking with the props guy, talking with camera operators; the craft services truck was the studio's Switzerland. Neutral ground. By unspoken agreement, arguments were left on the soundstage and a certain level of good manners was carefully maintained-people who regularly worked a seventeen-hour day were willing to do what it took to help facilitate the smooth delivery of carbs and caffeine.

Tony grabbed a coffee and headed inside to pick up his sides. He'd gone chasing off after Lee in such a hurry yesterday afternoon that he hadn't . . .

"Mr. Foster. A word."

Wondering what he'd done, Tony crossed over to where Peter was standing with Sorge and the gaffer by the light board. As he closed the distance, he told himself that the positioning had to be coincidence. Unless he'd dusted for fingerprints, there was no way the director could tell he'd been at the board the night before.

Eyebrows raised high enough that they seemed to be following his receding hairline back up over his skull, Peter held out a set of sides. "I believe these are yours."

He'd gone chasing off after Lee in such a hurry yesterday afternoon, Tony's brain reminded him.

Chasing off after Lee before Peter had called a wrap.

Without even considering what he was doing, he'd just left work.

c.r.a.p.

"I can explain."

"Good."

"Remember how you sent me in to check on Lee? To see if he was all right because he was acting so strangely on the set? Well, he just left, in one h.e.l.l of a hurry, and so I went after him because I didn't know if he was all right." He flashed the smile he'd perfected on Toronto street corners staring up at uniformed cops and had kept around to grease his way through slightly more legal problems with authority. "See?"

"You ran out after Lee because I told you to go check on him?"

"Yes."

"You were so worried about him, you forgot you were still wearing your radio.

Remembered to turn it off, but forgot you were wearing it."

Tony glanced down at the holster riding his hip. "Yeah. I was worried."

"And how was he?"

Controlled by a minion of the Shadowlord.Flat on his a.s.s under a gate leading to another world.

Sloshing with vodka . . .

None of the above.

"I ... uh, I never actually caught up to him."

"So you're saying you left early and still didn't do what I asked you to?"

"Uh, yeah. Sorry."

Peter stared at him for a long moment, then snorted softly. "You just used up all your saved-the-stuntman goodwill, Tony. Next time you run off like that, you can return the radio and keep on going."

"Right. Sorry."

"Tell Alan Wu I need him on set to run over his blocking the moment he's done then hit the office and see if those dialogue changes are ready. And," he raised his voice, "I'd like to get started on time for a change, people! Why aren't those cameras set?"

As Tony hurried for the exit, he heard the soundstage begin to rev up behind him. And the good news, he still had a job. And the bad news, that job was still at ground zero for a Shadowlord invasion.

Unless it wasn't.

Seven fifty-one.

Three and a half hours.

He hated waiting.

Alan Wu, who played Detective Emanuel Chan, Darkest Night's recurring police presence, guaranteed at least one day's work a week, was still in the chair when Tony reached the makeup room.

"Look at this hair, Tony." Everett waved a thick strand of black hair in Tony's general direction without much regard for the head it was attached to. "Don't quote me on this, but is this not beautiful hair?"

"It's the same hair he had last week, Everett." Tony grinned as he moved around so Alan could see him in the mirror. Everett's fascination with Alan's hair and the crew's awareness of it left the actor alternately flattered and embarra.s.sed. "As soon as you're done here, Peter would like to see you on set so that he ..."

"... can run over my blocking. Same old. Same old."

Detective Chan liked to move when he talked, his constant motion in direct and deliberate contrast to Raymond Dark's brooding stillness. It made his scenes harder to shoot, as a stationary actor was easier for both light and sound but, since CB himself had been responsible for that bit of character development, no one argued too loudly against it; they just scheduled extra time and counted on Alan to hit his marks.

Fortunately, twenty years in the business made Alan the closest thing to a sure bet on the set.

The late Catherine's less than loving mom and dad were in the other two chairs being worked on by Everett's a.s.sistant- who worked part-time for CB Productions and part- time at a local funeral parlor. She'd told Tony once that thanks to Six Feet Under, people saw her second job as the more exotic. "But for me-you know, corpses, actors-meat's meat. At least the dead dudes don't complain that natural beige foundation makes them look fat."Lee was in the same scene, but he wasn't due on set until 8:30. Two hours and forty- five minutes before the gate. Tony paused outside his dressing room door, imagined he could hear the rustle of fabric, actually could hear m.u.f.fled profanity, raised his hand to knock, changed his mind, and ran.

Terrified he'd hear Lee's door open before he was out of sight.

Jesus. What are you afraid op He's a guy; it's not like he's going to want to talk about it.

He hit the production office just as Amy, hair and fingernails a matching burgundy, was shrugging out of her jacket. Crossing toward her, he lifted a hand in greeting. "Hey."

"Hey yourself, Kemosabe. You still work here?"