Smoke and Ashes (39 page)

No window ledge either.

Porch roof, though.

And then a bush.

A bush that turned out to be just a little sturdier than he was.

Oh, that's just fucking great,
he thought, rolling out onto the lawn, breathing fast and shallow through his teeth so as not to scream.
Four days of fighting demons, and I get taken out by shrubbery.

Lying there and bleeding seemed like his best option, but unless they wanted to deal with more questions than he was prepared to answer, he had to get away from Mrs. Chin before he fell over. More specifically, he had to stand up and then get away from Mrs. Chin before he could fall over again.

Bright side, nothing was broken.

Nothing important anyway.

Thankful he seemed to be in marginally better shape than the bush, he staggered up the porch steps and peered into the front hall. Leah was sitting on a wooden chair, head in her hands. Mrs. Chin was nowhere in sight. Opening the door, he waved Leah quiet and moved as quickly as he could to her side as Mrs. Chin came from the back of the house with a glass of water.

“Oh, there you are,” she snapped, her gaze flicking to the stairs as she handed Leah the glass. She obviously thought he'd just come down them and just as obviously disapproved of his lack of concern for his companion. “This young woman should be taken to the hospital.”

Hospital? Was the spell no longer protecting her? “Are you hurt?”

“She fell down the stairs,” Mrs. Chin told him grimly. “There could be all sorts of internal damage and I am not responsible. Those stairs are safe. I wasn't near her when she fell. I gave her a glass of water.”

“Of course not.”

“If you try to sue me, that's what I'll tell the judge.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Maybe you're right about the hospital.” Leah stood and handed back the glass. “We should go now.”

Tony was all in favor of that. Left arm pressed tight against his side, he extended his right. “I'll help you out to the car.”

Somehow Leah managed to support most of his weight and still make it look like he was helping her. A lot of stunties were better actors than the industry gave them credit for, he acknowledged silently as he thanked Mrs. Chin for her time and the two of them moved as quickly as possible toward the street.

Leah tipped her head toward his. “You fell out the window?”

“What was your first clue?”

“Could have been the way you were upstairs and then came in through the front door. Or it could have been the crash you made as you hit the porch roof.”

“Mrs. Chin…?”

“Kitchen's in the back of the house. She might not have heard it.”

“Is she still watching?”

Clothing rustled as Leah half turned. “Yes.”

“Then let's move a little faster before she comes outside and sees what I did to her bush.”

“You damaged one of her bushes!”

“The damage was mutual.”

“If I let you go, can you lean on the car until I get the door open?”

“Sure.” Or not so sure. The adrenaline was wearing off, he hurt in more places than he cared to catalog, and the world was beginning to tilt again. Fuck that. Tilted world had got him into this mess. Mess. Messed. Missed. Didn't miss that damned bush. Wouldn't miss it. It could just lay there and well, rot.

“Come on, Tony. Into the car.”

Leah's voice seemed to come from very far away and she seemed taller. Or he had gotten shorter. And that would suck.

“God fucking damn it!” Cracking his head on the edge of the car roof helped him focus. He collapsed into the seat and whimpered a little as Leah buckled him in.
You know what needs seat belts? Fucking window ledges, that's what.

“This isn't good.”

She was sitting beside him in the driver's seat and, since he couldn't remember her going around the car, it seemed he'd lost a few minutes somewhere. She was looking at a dark stain on the palm of her hand.

“Shit. You're bleeding!”

“No, Tony.
You're
bleeding. It's soaking into your jacket. That's why I didn't see it before. How badly are you hurt?”

“I can't feel the fingers of my left hand.” When he lifted them up into the light of the streetlamp, they looked kind of like sausages. “But that's good I can't feel them,” he added. “Because when I could feel them, they hurt like fuck.”

“Let me see where you're bleeding.”

“I'm bleeding? Oh that's just great. Henry's going to kill me. He hates it when I waste…Um…” The word just wasn't there. And then a good chunk of the world wasn't there. Then what was left started beeping.

 

Henry pulled up behind Tony's car and was out of his own almost before the engine stopped.

“The supplies you asked for are in the backseat,” he snarled, pushing past the Demongate and yanking open the passenger side door. The blood scent, no longer confined but spilling out to almost overwhelm the night, would have been dangerous had his anger at the circumstances not been so great.

Scooping Tony up into his arms, he led the way into the apartment building.

 

“Hey, Henry. I was just thinking about you.”

“Were you?” Henry sat on the edge of the bed, his cool fingers gently gripping Tony's jaw.

“Yeah. I was thinking you'd…uh…” Interesting that it hurt so much to frown. “I don't remember. But you were there.” His gaze flicked up over Henry's shoulder to Leah and he snorted. “And you were there. And there was a wizard. Oh, wait. That was me.”

Smiling, Henry released him. “Don't frighten me like that again.”

“You're frightened of me misquoting
The Wizard of Oz?
”

“You've been in and out of delirium for the last two hours. We were just discussing whether or not we should take you to a hospital.”

“What happened?”

“Apparently, you fell out a window.”

It all came rushing painfully back. The window. The bush. The bleeding.

And now?

He was in his own bed, in his own apartment. His left arm was on top of the covers, forearm wrapped in a tensor bandage, the fingers an ugly shade of grayish purple and still sausagelike. With his right hand, he explored the gauze corset wrapped around his torso. If he hadn't been to a hospital…

“Leah does a decent field dressing,” Henry said, reading the question off his face. “We don't think the wrist is broken, but you won't be able to use the hand for a few days. What happened?”

Duh. “I fell out a window.”

“He got careless,” Leah muttered, stomping to the kitchen.

“I didn't.” Was her bad mood because she cared, or was that just lingering delirium talking? “The world tilted.”

“I thought as much.”

A little surprised, Tony turned his attention back to Henry. “You expected a tilted world? What? It was part of the whole Demonic Convergence thing? Next time, warn a guy.”

“I expected something
like
this to happen. Not this specifically.”

“Cryptic much. I thought you'd be more pissed.”

“Oh, he was.” Leah reappeared holding a mug. “The anger and the yelling and the accusing me of trying to kill you went on for a while. Henry, lift him into a sitting position.”

Tony wasn't given a chance to protest, and it didn't hurt as much as he expected it to.

“Now, drink this.”

Henry had to help him get his working arm out from under the covers, but once he had his fingers wrapped around the mug, they seemed to be holding. His mouth filled with saliva as he breathed in the meaty scent of the soup and he had to swallow spit before he could get to the good stuff. Since he didn't think he'd survive another alphabet noodle out the nose, he drank slowly without being told.

No one said anything until he finished.

“There's more.”

“Good.” He passed Leah the mug. “I'm starving.”

“Literally.”

And back to Henry again. “What?”

“You are literally starving. Your body is not up to the demands you've been making on it. That we've
all
been making on it.”

“You haven't been…” Cool fingers brushed the scar on his throat. “Yeah, okay, maybe a couple.”

“We've been forcing a couch potato to run a marathon,” Leah told him handing him the refilled mug. “For the last four days, you've been using your power almost constantly. You're not in good enough shape for this.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm serious. The world didn't tilt, Tony. You fainted. Well, almost fainted,” she qualified, stepping back from the bed and folding her arms. “That's why you fell.”

“I almost fainted?”

“Yes.”

“That was remarkably unbutch of me.”

“This isn't something to joke about, Tony.” Henry pressed his palm against the gauze. “You need to rest, regain your strength, heal.”

Tony glanced down at Henry's hand. The gentle pressure remained just this side of pain. He was either saying,
I don't want you getting hurt.
Or
I'll hurt you if you try to get up.
Tony wasn't sure which. “How long do you want me to rest?”

“For as long as it takes.”

“I can't…”

“You don't have a choice,” Leah pointed out, sounding no happier about it than Tony felt. “Your body is setting the agenda now.”

“Yeah, but there's still two dozen demons coming through.”

“Tomorrow,” Henry told him in a tone that suggested he not bother arguing, “Leah and Jack will go out and get detailed information on as many of the weak points as they can.”

“Doesn't Jack have a job?”

“He has Sunday off. Amy will be here, sitting with you. Making sure you sleep and eat and don't do anything stupid.”

“
Amy
will be making sure
I
don't do anything stupid? She attacked a demon with a candle.”

Henry smiled. “Which is why we assume she can handle you. As soon as you can use your left hand again, you'll be driven to the easier points. You'll leave those in more difficult positions until you're in better shape and, hopefully, by then they'll be less difficult. CB thought using a location search to gain access to private property was a good idea. When we find out where the weak spots are, exactly, he'll call in some favors if he has to. Lee's willing to use his celebrity as a distraction when there's no stairs for Leah to fall down.”

“You've got everything planned.” Didn't mention Kevin Groves, but Tony wasn't going to remind him. He could think of a use for a man who knew a lie when he heard it and didn't want that use to occur to Henry.

He drank his soup. He slept for a bit. He ate a plate of eggs when he woke up. And he complained just enough to keep Henry from getting suspicious.

 

On his way out of the bathroom some hours later, having stumbled out of bed and to the toilet without actually opening his eyes, he realized the apartment smelled like lasagna and patchouli. That gave him enough warning that he didn't embarrass himself when Amy rose up out of his single armchair like the shark from
Jaws
rising out of the sea. Except it was a great white and she was all in pink-and-black plaid and…Okay, it wasn't a very good metaphor, but he'd just woken up so tough.

“Hey.”

One of the kitchen chairs was closest to hand, so he sat on that before he fell down. “Hey, back.”

“You look like crap.”

“Funny, that.” His wrist ached, he had enough bruises he looked like the one hundred and second Dalmatian, and his stomach felt as if it was lying flat against his spine.

Amy handed him a bunch of bananas and dropped into the other chair. “Henry said I'm supposed to keep feeding you whenever you wake up, but the lasagna isn't ready so you'll have to eat something healthy. Should you be sitting?”

“Instead of?”

“Lying down.”

“Up is good for a while.” That was the best banana…best
two
bananas he'd ever eaten.

“You're not chewing.”

“It's a banana,” he protested around a third. “You made lasagna?”

“Please,” she snorted. “I bought lasagna; family-sized and frozen. You fell out a window?”

By the time he finished telling her the adventures of Wizardman and Stuntwoman, the food was ready. By the time he finished eating, he could barely keep his eyes open.