Smoke and Ashes (40 page)

“Hey, have Lee send Donna a signed picture, care of Seanix Tech, okay?”

“For the third and final time,” she sighed as she lowered him onto the sofa bed, “okay.”

The next time he woke up, his apartment smelled like chicken, and Amy was watching
The Princess Diaries III.
He must have made some kind of noise because without turning she said, “Yes, I enjoy movies made for teenage girls. Before you make something of it, remember that in your weakened state I can kick your ass.”

Figuring he had enough going on with two dozen demons, he staggered silently to the bathroom.

“How long was I out?” he asked, returning to his kitchen chair.

“Almost three hours. I was just going to take the chicken out of the oven. Leah said this time you'd need food more than sleep.”

“You cooked a chicken?”

“Like it's hard. The oven does all the work. You didn't have a roasting pan, though, so I had to make one out of three aluminum pie plates, half a roll of aluminum foil and the lid off the jar of pickles.”

He didn't really want to know.

“Jack called,” she told him while he ate. “They—not him but you know, they the cops—found the leg of that guard from out on Eastlake Drive halfway to the studio.”

“The whole leg?”

“Most of it.” She plopped another spoonful of instant mashed potatoes onto his plate. “I guess the demon got tired of carrying it. What do you figure; snack or weapon?”

“Either. Both.”

“Yeah. So you're not going to have time to close all those new weak spots, are you?”

“Not if I have to lie around here much longer.” Since he couldn't walk to the can and back without holding the walls, lying around seemed like the best bet.

“If you don't take time to recover, Henry says you'll die and then where will we be? At least with you alive when they come through, we have a chance. What do you think they'll look like?”

“Who?”

She rolled her eyes. “The new demons, dipshit.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I'm curious, okay?”

“Leah says the more human evil looks the more dangerous it is.”

“More dangerous than that one we chased from the coffee shop? Damned thing had tentacles and claws and spikes and mouths in weird places and…”

He held up a hand to cut short the litany. “Maybe it works better as a metaphor in this case.”

“Ooooo, metaphors.” Burgundy lips pursed. “Someone doesn't want to be a TAD all his life.”

“I want to direct.”

“You and half the lower mainland. Come on, sleepyhead, back to bed.”

Next time he woke up, he definitely felt stronger. Still punctured, bruised, and unable to use his left hand, but stronger. There was a bit of blood soaked through the dressing on his side, but he could walk without holding the walls and he remembered to chew his food—at least as much as he ever did. He was back in control of his body instead of the other way around. But what would it hurt to give Jack and Leah the day to detail the weak spots? It
would
probably speed things up when he got back out there wizarding.

While Amy spooned red Jell-O into bowls, Tony phoned Zev because he wanted to talk about something that wasn't demonic, something normal. Too soon, he found he had almost nothing to say.

Depressing?

No shit, Sherlock.

As the apartment grew dark, he realized he was running out of time.

“I know that look.”

“What look?”

She cocked her head and snorted. “The ‘I'm about to do something stupid' look. Henry said I'm not to give you your laptop.”

It didn't matter; he could call it to his hand no matter where it was.

It didn't matter; he didn't want it.

“I'm just going to lie down again.”

“And sleep.”

“Sure.”

He closed his eyes. Concentrated. Twenty-four soon-to-be-arriving demons had a way of focusing the mind.

He needed to find the square hole to his square peg.

Or was he a round peg in a round hole?

He couldn't remember and wasn't sure it mattered.

If pain was a compulsory part of defining his place in the universe, he had it to spare. His wrist ached. Add it to the definition. His side hurt. Add it to the definition. His nose itched. What the hell…

The universe began to take shape around him.

There.

No.

There!

This is pain. This is me. The part that doesn't hurt, that isn't me.

And this is how those parts fit together.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are the world.

He really didn't have much time, but a quick look around from this vantage point might pick up some useful insights. Allowing his consciousness to move out from his body, he brushed against Amy and smiled to see her spirit as a blazing tower of light. Kind of like six or seven of those big opening night searchlights all shining up at the same point.

His wards were a gleaming crimson cage around the apartment, promising safety and danger simultaneously. Tony hoped they were supposed to, but what the hell did he know? Way too many of the last few scenes were being shot on the fly.

Beyond the wards, another tower of light blazed so brilliantly he didn't need contact to see it.

Henry.

Weird that a Nightwalker's spirit would be so bright.

Not weird at all considering it was Henry's.

Henry.

Crap.

No more time to play tourist.

No more time to be an invalid.

Sinking back into his own body, he took a calming breath and forced himself to relax into his place in the universe, his square and/or round hole.

Hesitated.

Remembered.

Bad idea.

Trying not to brace against the anticipated pain, he healed his wrist and the wounds the shrubbery had gouged in his side.

And then he rode that distilled pain deeper. He could see the contradiction in using magic to heal the damage the use of magic had caused. He could also see how to get around it.

His back bowed until only his head and his heels were touching the mattress. Just before he lost consciousness, he heard Henry's voice and was glad Amy wouldn't have to explain the screaming on her own.

T
ONY WAS HEARING VOICES.
All things considered, that hardly seemed worth getting worked up about, so he lay there, drifting just below consciousness, and listened to the rhythmic rise and fall of sound. After a while, he realized there were words involved.

Loud words.

“I said he was no use to us injured; that doesn't mean I told him to heal himself, and it doesn't mean he'd listen to me if I
had
told him, so just back off.”

A woman's voice. He knew that voice.

Leah.

“I don't see the downside, guys.” He knew that voice, too. Knew it better. Trusted it more. Amy. “Okay, he's gonna have to pig out again and get his strength back, but then he'll be good to go, and that'll happen a lot faster than it would have taken for his arm to heal.”

His point exactly.

“Thank you,” Leah agreed.

“This doesn't mean I'm on your side,” Amy snorted. “I'm just saying.”

“And what if, in his weakened state, his heart had given out? Or a blood vessel had burst in his brain? You couldn't hear his body fighting to survive what he'd done to it. I could.” A new voice. A man's voice. A really, really pissed-off voice. Tony had been thinking about maybe trying to open his eyes, but it suddenly seemed smarter to wait until Henry had calmed down a little.

Leah sighed. “The point is, Henry, he did survive. He gambled and he won.”

“He had no idea of what the stakes were.”

“He's trying to keep the world from being overrun by demons. He's trying to prevent a mass slaughter of innocents. He knows how high the stakes are.”

“And how could he have done that if he killed himself?”

“But he didn't kill himself! Have you always been such a pessimist?”

Oh, yeah. That was going to calm him right down. Realizing that if he waited for Henry he'd be lying here all night, he forced his eyes open. Leah and Henry were facing off by the table. Amy stood a careful distance away, leaning on the counter.

“Hey.” It came out less like a word and more like a cough, but it was enough to get the attention of everyone in the room. “I smell honey garlic…” He needed a second breath to finish. “…ribs.”

Amy grinned. “Leah stopped for Chinese. You hungry?”

“Star…” Catching sight of Henry's expression, Tony decided that admitting he was starving might not be the best response. “I could eat…a horse.”

“That's too bad; she stopped at the good place.” Grabbing a towel off the counter, Amy opened the oven door. “I stuck it in here to keep it warm.”

“How domestic.”

“Oh, about this much. It's a mess in here by the way. You should clean your oven.”

“I figured I'd just…move.”

“Men are disgusting,” Leah announced stepping over to the bed. She pulled a can of nutritional supplement out of her shoulder bag, popped the tab, and held it out. “Drink this first. It'll take the edge off and keep you from choking.”

Although nothing hurt, he was embarrassingly weak and just starting to wonder about sitting up when Henry's arm slid under his back and lifted him up to lean against the pile of rearranged pillows. “You're good at that.”

“Too much practice.”

“It was my choice, Henry.”

The vampire's eyes were shadowed. “I know. But she suspected you'd try a healing when you were strong enough. She could have warned me or stopped you.”

“She is the cat's mother,” Leah muttered.

“My grandma used to say that.” Amy appeared beside her holding a plate of food. “So you shouldn't. And you…” She switched her attention to Tony. “…should drink that so you can eat, so you can get your strength back, so you can get back out there and kick demon ass.”

Henry watched him while he drank. The supplement was supposed to taste like chocolate. It didn't. It tasted the way people who'd never had chocolate thought chocolate might taste based on descriptions of the cheap waxy shit they sculpted into rabbits at Easter.

Henry watched him while Leah quickly unwound the bandage on his left wrist and he flexed the fingers, checking that everything worked the way it was supposed to.

Henry watched him while he forked Chinese food into his mouth. Actually, all three of them watched, but Henry's gaze was the heaviest. Leah kept her expression neutral—probably so as not to provoke Henry—and Amy made pig noises.

“Want more?” she asked when he finished. “Never mind.” She took the empty plate before he could reply. “Stupid question.”

Beginning to feel better, Tony sat up straight and Leah leaned in to remove the gauze wrapped around his torso. Henry's hands were there first. She backed up, her own raised in exaggerated surrender.

Tony shivered as cool fingers touched his skin, checking that the punctures had healed and the bruises were gone. They lingered last against his throat where the bite mark had been. This time it was gone. The skin was smooth.

“Your choice,” Henry said softly and straightened.

“What just happened?” Amy demanded as she set another filled plate of food on Tony's lap.

“Our little boy just grew up.”

Pausing just long enough to glare in Leah's direction, Tony dug in as Amy snorted.

“As if.”

 

Just after three, Tony dropped Amy off at her apartment.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked as she leaned back into the car.

“Me? I'm fine. Why?”

“You've got to be up in three hours for work.”

“I sit on my ass most of the day, I'll be fine. Besides, I've never needed a lot of sleep. What about you?”

“Me?
I'm
fine.” He'd damned well better be 'cause that whole healing thing had fucking hurt.

“Uh-huh.” She looked as though she was planning to argue but thought better of it. “Just be careful, okay? And thanks for letting me help. This stuff is, you know, real.”

He frowned, not sure he understood. “Real?”

“We're saving the world from demons who want to slaughter and enslave us, Tony, and it doesn't get more real than that.” Straightening, she hung her
Vampire Princess Miju
backpack over one shoulder. “Keep me in the loop or it's chow mein noodles under the fingernails,” she growled and quietly closed the car door.

Real demons. Two words guaranteed not to show up in the same sentence in most lives. Tony watched Amy trot into her building, waiting until he saw the light go on in her apartment before he turned the engine back on and put the car in gear. It was chivalry she wouldn't thank him for, but tough. Demons weren't the only metaphysical creatures wandering around the lower mainland, and she had a big “I believe” stamped on her forehead.

Henry pulled out right behind him.

Tony'd slept all day and hadn't wanted to waste any more time, so the moment the calories kicked in, he left Leah asleep in his apartment and headed for the one easy access weak spot of the six she'd mapped out with Jack.

Separate cars because Henry had his own inflexible timetable.

New Westminster had been replacing old water mains for some time now. According to Leah, Mckaseeh had plans to pop a demon through in the trench on Fader Street. Tony drove past and stopped at the Hume Park end of the road.

“In case an insomniac across from where I'm working glances out the window and reports something hinky going on,” he explained to Henry's raised eyebrow as the vampire got out of his car.

Henry made a noncommittal noise.

“It could happen,” Tony muttered as they walked back.

“Is there no security on the site?”

“Just the kind that drives by every couple of hours. If they show up while I'm wizarding, you can go talk to them.” He sketched a set of air quotes around the word talk.

“Thank you for letting me help.”

Sarcasm? Tony didn't think so. Henry sounded just as sincere as Amy had and, come to think of it, just as sincere as Lee had earlier. He frowned. Why would people be grateful for a chance to die by demon? Because no one likes to sit around with their thumb up their butt when the world is ending, feeling help
less.

Whoa. Epiphany. In a time of crisis no one wanted to feel they were less than they were.

He wasn't just sending his friends and coworkers out into danger, he was empowering them. Okay, except for Henry who was about as empowered as it got all on his own. This didn't mean he could thoughtlessly thrust them into danger, but he could stop feeling so friggin' guilty about the danger they were in.

I wonder if I will…

The Arjh Lord's weak point was at the bottom of the trench, the shimmer nearly indistinguishable in the dark patterns of turned earth and old pipes.

Tony peered down into the construction site, his weight sending a small avalanche of dirt off the crumbling edge. “If I burn the rune then tip it on its side, then shove it out over the trench, and you hold me in place, I could push it down into the pit without having to climb down there.”

A red-gold brow rose.

“Not going to happen, is it?”

Henry pointed along the trench. “I think you'll be safest climbing down there at the end where the new pipe has been laid. It's a gentler slope.”

For not particularly large values of gentle.

Surfing the last meter on a wave of rubble, Tony hit bottom buried knee-deep in dirt. He glanced back at the new angle and sighed. Getting out was going to be fun.

But first the fun of dragging his lower legs free and then the fun of getting to the weak spot without breaking his neck.

Cocking his head, he could see the shimmer, but he couldn't see his footing.

Memo to self. Next time, bring a flashlight.

First, buy a flashlight since he didn't own one.

Because he didn't need one…

The first couple of weeks after the haunted house, he'd practiced the Wizard's Lamp spell obsessively, but it had been months and he wasn't 100 percent positive he remembered the wording.

Or, as it happened, how much juice to give it.

Any possibility of developing night vision was obliterated in the sudden flare of brilliant white light which broke his concentration so completely that it shut off again almost immediately.

“That was unpleasant,” Henry snarled.

Tony peered up through the afterimages at where he thought Henry might be standing. “Sorry.”

“Just do what you came to do and do it quickly before someone arrives to investigate that flare.”

“You think someone saw it?”

“I think they saw it in Alberta.”

He didn't so much find the shimmer as trip and fall into it. He expected it to feel unpleasant, but it actually felt anticipatory. A moment spent considering who was doing the anticipating added in the unpleasant.

After burning the first rune, he realized that they shed enough light for him to find a path.

“I should've just dragged a rune along with me,” he muttered, shoving it through the weak point.

“Yes, you should have.” Henry had, of course, been able to hear him. He wasn't sure why he could hear Henry, whether it was a vampire thing or a wizard thing or Henry just didn't care who he woke up, figuring he could handle anything that lived in New Westminster. “There's a car coming,” he continued, breaking into Tony's musing. “If it stops, I'll deal with it.”

“Sure.” The musing was new. He never used to muse.

The car stopped right about the time Tony was pushing through the second rune. He waited until he heard Henry's quiet, “Can I help you, Officer?” and then burned the third rune on the air.

The car pulled away as he finished and he drew a two foot W—
Because today's show is brought to you by the words
wizard
and
whatever—to light his way out of the pit.

Almost out of the pit.

The slope began to crumble. “Henry!”

Strong fingers closed around his wrist and yanked, defying gravity and slamming him into the reassuringly solid barrier of Henry's chest.

“Do you have to make even the easy ones difficult?” the vampire murmured, the words cool against the back of his neck.

“I didn't make it difficult,” Tony panted. “It was in a pit! What did the cop want?” he asked, pulling far enough away to see Henry's face.

“He wanted to know about the light.”

“What did you tell him?”

A flash of teeth. “That he didn't want to know about the light.”