Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 1

SMOKE AND ASHES.

TANYA HUFF.

For Violette and Paul, who rebuild our house, look after our cats, and are even attempting to teach me how todress. Definitely above and beyond!

Chapter One.

ALTHOUGH BOTH MOON AND stars were hidden behind cloud, the night was not as dark as it could have been. The light from streetlamps bounced off pale concrete, providing illumination enough to make the two men walking along the empty sidewalk clearly visible.

The dark-haired man shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his brown suede jacket. "I know we didn't have much of a choice, but I don't like how that ended."

"It ended the way it had to end," the blond replied with a weary smile. And if his teeth were just a little too white and preternaturally long, there was no one there to note it. They might have been the only two men alive in the entire city. Their footsteps should have echoed... that's how alone they seemed.

"I don't like circ.u.mstances making my choices for me."

"Who does?"

"You don't seem to be having any trouble."

"I've just had a lot more practice at hiding..." His voice trailed off and, frowning, he looked up.

"That's it. Good. Lee, follow his gaze. A woman screams and..."

A plaid flannel body pillow, clearly weighted, dropped down onto the sidewalk about three feet in front of the actors.

"... and the unfortunate lady lands. Cut!" Peter Hudson moved out from behind the monitors, pulling off his headset and tossing it back in the general direction of his black canvas chair. Tina, his script supervisor, reached out and snagged the set just before it hit the pavement, her left hand marking the place she'd stopped lining her copy of the script, her eyes never leaving the page. "Mason, I liked the same old/same old thing you had going during the dialogue," he continued as he reached the pillow. "It was a nice counterpoint to Lee's whole mortal indignation thing."

"Nice?" Mason Reed-aka Raymond Dark, syndicated television's most popular vampire detective and star of Darkest Night- folded his arms, and curled a lip to expose one fake fang. "That's the best you can do?"

"It's after midnight," Peter sighed. "Be thankful I can still come up with nice. Once Angela adds the echoing footsteps in post, I think the scene'll play..." The sound of large machinery revving up reduced the rest of the director's observation to moving lips and SMOKE AND ASHES.

Contents Nextincreasingly emphatic gestures.

Still standing on the top of the ladder from where he'd thrown the body pillow-Peter liked to be certain about lines of sight- Tony Foster caught one of the gestures aimed at him, clambered down, and ran over to the director's side.

"I want one more take before we bring in Padma!" Mouth by Tony's ear, Peter all but screamed to make himself heard. "Deal with it, Mr. Foster!"

"How?"

"Any way that'll get my footage!"

Any way.

Yeah. Tony headed for the construction site. Like he didn't know what that meant.

Promoted back in August from production a.s.sistant to TAD, trainee a.s.sistant director, Tony found himself in October still doing much the same thing he'd been doing as a PA-which surprised no one, him least of all, since Chester Bane, the notoriously frugal head of CB Productions, hadn't yet gotten around to hiring someone to do his old job. Still, TAD meant he was now moving up in the Directors Department with a raise in pay and a clear, union-sanctified path to the director's chair. Not necessarily a short path, but he was on it and that was the main thing. Since he'd been in the business less than a full year, he really had nothing to complain about. Besides, CB's penny-pinching ways ensured that he was learning a lot more than he might have on a show with a larger personnel budget.

And on a show with a larger locations budget, he'd have never learned how to take advantage of roadwork in order to get a normally busy Vancouver street cleared of traffic without having to go through all the ha.s.sles at city hall or pay off-duty police officers to safely keep it that way. Half the permits. Half the money spent. Digging for a sewer line guaranteed empty streets for blocks away from the actual machinery and city hall had been more than willing to halve the inconvenience to Vancouver drivers.

There was, of course, a downside. They'd been working around the noise-construction seemed to follow the same "hurry up and wait" schedule that television did-but that machine...

Backhoe, Tony realized as he drew closer.

... seemed to be settling in for a long roar. Sure, they could remove the sound in post, but Peter hated looping dialogue. Mostly because Mason wasn't particularly good at it, and the results always looked as though a big rubbery monster was due to stomp Tokyo.

Any way didn't include actually talking to the construction crew. The foreman had made it quite clear earlier in the evening that they needn't bother. He had a job to do and no fancy-a.s.sed, la-di-da television show was going to put him off schedule.

With that att.i.tude in mind, Tony stopped about six meters from the backhoe and watched the huge bladed bucket bite through the asphalt. After a moment, he noticed that the operator worked in what was essentially an open cab. Noticed, after a moment more, that her line of sight didn't extend as far down as the keys dangling off to one side of the double bank of bright yellow-and-black levers.

That could work.

Turning on one heel, he started back toward the trailers. There was always the chance the operator might glance down-it was a small chance, but given the size of the biceps on the woman, he wanted to make sure there wasn't the slightest possibility she even began to contemplate the thought of considering him responsible.

Call him a coward, but those arms were the size of his thighs.

Besides, he didn't need to see the key. He knew where it was. Knew the shape it occupied in the universe. Okay, maybe the universe was going a little far, but he had local s.p.a.ce nailed."Mr. Foster?"

He had to strain to hear Peter's voice in his ear jack.

"Any time."

Now seemed good. He concentrated and closed his fingers around a handful of keys as, behind him, the backhoe sputtered to a stop.

Wizardry, according to Arra Pelindrake, the wizard from another world who'd left him a laptop with instructions both detailed and annoyingly obscure, was all about focus. New spells required words or symbols or embarra.s.sing contortions-Tony suspected that the wizards of Arra's world were either double-jointed or had a vicious sense of humor. After a while-where a while generally referred to years of practice-the words, symbols, and contortions could be replaced by the wizard's will.

Back in the summer, Tony had discovered that trying to keep a location crew alive in a haunted house could condense a while into one high-stress night. These days, if he wanted something to come to him, it came. Other spells were a different story. He was still trying to forget what happened the first time he tried a clean cantrip on his bathroom. Nothing said, Hey, I'm a weirdo! like having a date attacked by scrubbing bubbles.

As far as other spells were concerned... Well, there were surprisingly few places in and around the lower mainland to practice Powershots, given population density and the expected explosive results, but just in case he ever had to blast his way out of another haunted house, he had the theory nailed.

He reached the craft services table in time to see Lee-one hand still shoved in the pocket of his leather jacket, the other wrapped around a Styrofoam coffee cup-flirting with Karen, the craft services contractor. As Lee dipped his chin and looked up at her through a fringe of thick, dark lashes, she giggled. Actually giggled. Not a sound Tony'd ever connected to Karen before. Laugh, yes. Also swear like a sailor. But giggle? No. Lee's answering smile and a murmured comment Tony wasn't quite close enough to hear brought a flush to her cheeks, the rosy color under the freckles clearly visible in the double set of halogen spotlights aimed at the table.

"When you're ready, Mr. Nicholas!"

In answer to Peter's summons, Lee winked, drained the cup, and tossed it into the nearer of the two garbage cans, turned, and half smiled as his gaze swept over Tony. Then the gaze kept sweeping, that half smile the only acknowledgment he gave.

Tony watched him walk back to where Mason and Peter were standing by the scene's starting mark. The shadows following hard on the actor's heels were nothing more than the result of solid objects blocking the path of both natural and artificial light. No otherworldly shadow warriors dogged his footsteps. The chill Tony felt on the back of his neck was a fall breeze, a warning that winter, such as winter was in British Columbia, was on its way. If the dead were walking, they weren't walking here. Everything was so aggressively normal it was almost possible to believe he'd imagined Lee screaming, his body tortured from within by an insane dead wizard. Almost possible to believe he'd imagined Lee sitting in the back of an ambulance and admitting that... well, essentially admitting that when he'd kissed him, he'd been fully aware of whose lips were involved.

Of course, he'd also said that the show had to go on.

That had been August. It was now early October. The show had been going on for nearly two months and was getting very good at it. Unlike a lot of actors, Lee had always been friendly with his crew and that "friendly" had always extended to Tony. Nothing about that had changed; he treated Tony no differently than he treated Keisha, the set dresser, or Zev Sero, the music director. The kiss and the confession were safely buried under what Tony thought was one of Lee's better performances.

Since the ladder and the pillow had been moved away from the shot, Tony a.s.sumed that Peter was doing this last take without his a.s.sistance. The backhoe keys slid off his fingertips into the garbage to lie hidden under a half-eaten m.u.f.fin. Watching the boom operator-a skinny middle-aged man named Walter Davis who'd replaced skinny middle-aged Hartley Skenski who hadn't made it out of that haunted house alive-Tony reached for a handful of marshmallow strawberries. "Those things'll kill you, you know."

One of them took a shot at it.

Coughing and blowing bits of soggy pink marshmallow out of his nose, Tony glared up into the amused face of RCMP Constable Jack Elson and contemplated several responses that would get him fifteen to life. When he could talk again, self-preservation prodded him to settle for a merely moderately sarcastic, "Aren't you out of your jurisdiction?"

Constable Elson, like CB Productions, was based in Burnaby-a part of the Greater Vancouver area about ten miles east of the city.

The constable shrugged. "I'm off duty. Heard you lot were out on the streets, thought I'd come down and take a look."

"Quiet, please!" Adam Paelous, the first a.s.sistant director, began the familiar litany. "Let's settle, people!"

Tony jerked his head back toward the trailers and started walking. Smiling slightly, Jack followed, s.n.a.t.c.hing a couple of cookies off the corner of the table as he pa.s.sed. He'd been around often enough in the last month or so that Karen, usually pit bull protective of the show's food, no longer tried to stop him and, even more disturbing, sometime in the last few weeks Tony had started thinking of him as Jack.

"Rolling!"

Half a dozen voices, including Tony's, echoed the word.

"Scene 19a, take three. Mark!"

The crack of the slate bounced off the buildings a couple of times and finally disappeared under the distant profanity of the road crew.

As Peter called action, Tony figured they were far enough away and murmured, "Okay, fine, now you're here, what are you looking for?"

Jack grinned. "It's been almost two months since you were found next to a dead body. I figured you were about due."

He was probably kidding.

The RCMP constable had been unhappy about the verdict of Accidental Death after the Shadowlord had been and gone, but that was nothing on the way he'd felt when Tony'd finally forced open the doors to Caulfield House on that August night. He'd seen the kind of weird-and-wonderful that even television writers would have had a hard time making people believe, and what he'd seen, combined with a good cop's ability to sift out the bulls.h.i.+t, had left him with no choice but to believe Tony's promised explanation.

He'd believed it. He just hadn't liked it much.

Given his adversarial history with the police, Tony still wasn't sure why he'd told Jack and his partner Geetha Danvers the truth about what had happened in the house-slightly edited of personal information and back story. Maybe he'd hoped that it would keep them from hanging around and scowling suspiciously at all and sundry. It had worked on Constable Danvers, not that she'd been the scowling suspiciously sort to begin with, but it had done sweet f.u.c.k all to get Jack Elson out of his life.

"Look at them." The constable gestured with a cookie, including actors and crew in the movement. "They're acting like nothing happened."

They were acting like the backhoe was quiet and that meant they could shoot, that was all they cared about. Except that wasn't what Jack meant. Peter, Adam, Sorge-the director of photography-Mason and Lee; they'd all been in the house. Karen and Ujjal, the genny op, had been outside trying to get in. Or get the others out. The rest of the crew had been involved only to the extent that they'd heard the stories. Tonight they were all working to get the scene in the can as though nothing had happened.

Tony's turn to shrug. "It's been a while."

"That shouldn't matter." Jack had taken to an expanded reality like a fan-girl who knew her favorite actor was in town. Now that he believed, he suspected the supernatural of lurking around every corner. Sometimes he even spotted it. Sometimes he called Tony.

"What's about six centimeters high and can take a bite out of a car b.u.mper?"

"What?"

"I think I saw one in the impound yard. Maybe more than one."

Finally recognizing the voice, Tony'd rolled over and squinted at the clock. "It's three in the morning."

"Does that matter? Do these things only come out between midnight and dawn? What are they?"

"How the h.e.l.l should I know?"

"You're the..." Elson's voice-he'd still been Elson then, not yet Jack-had dropped below eavesdropping level. "... wizard."

"Yeah. Wizard. Not a database for things that go b.u.mp in the night."

"So you won't tell me."

"It's three in the morning, for f.u.c.k's sake!"

"Why do you keep repeating the time?"

He'd sighed. "Because it's three in the morning."

In a just world, Jack would have gotten discouraged by now. Or distracted.

"Bunch of hikers just spotted a Sasquatch up by Hope-probably not a real one," Tony added quickly. "We're old news." A shadow moved just at the edge of the light, and he rolled his eyes. "Well, to everyone but you and him."

Him. Kevin Groves. Their very own tabloid journalist.

Fortunately, after the house incident, Mason had hogged the spotlight, and for Mason it was all about Mason. Unfortunately, Kevin Groves had apparently heard the bits of truth nearly buried under ego.

To his great disappointment, after official statements were taken-and with three dead under mysterious circ.u.mstances official statements were taken-no one really wanted to talk much about what had happened. They seemed almost embarra.s.sed about having been a part of a paranormal experience, given the kind of people to whom those sorts of things generally happened. In the public perception, haunted houses came just under alien a.n.a.l probes and slightly above thousand-year-old lizard babies. Group gestalt insisted on a rational explanation for everything that could possibly be given one and refused to admit to the rest, leaving Kevin Groves lurking unfulfilled around the soundstage and being regularly escorted off location shoots.

Although it was clear that an unwillingness to talk didn't mean that anyone had actually forgotten the experience. No one ever seemed to be under a certain place on the sound-stage between 11:00 and 11:15 AM or PM and Tony's abilities were used whenever they'd save a few moments or dollars. Television people dealt with the surreal on a daily basis and had managed to work a couple more bits in with little difficulty.

It helped that Tony had been a PA back in August, bottom man on the television totem pole, so anything too bizarre coming from his position wasn't exactly hard for them to ignore. "I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss Mr. Groves, if I were you," Jack observed around a final mouthful of oatmeal raisin. "It mostly got lost in all of Mason Reed's posturing, but don't forget that there were interesting things said about your actions that night."

Tony sighed. "Yes, I have vast and incredible powers."

"You talk to dead people."

"So? I also talk to my car and the bank machine."

"Dead people talk to you."

"What, you never caught an episode of Crossing Over back when it was on six or seven times a day? Apparently, dead people talk to everyone."

"You..." He waved a hand.

Tony raised an eyebrow, the movement attaching a certain s.m.u.ttiness to the unspoken part of the constable's observation.

Jack snorted, refusing to be baited. "The word wizard was mentioned."

"Yeah, so were the words ma.s.s hallucination and gas leak. If I'm such a mighty wizard, don't you think I'd have better things to do than stand around on the edge of a construction zone at one o'clock in the morning?"