Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 30

She spread her hands. "I rest my case." Before anyone could demand to know what that meant, she added, "And with that kind of power he was probably an untrained wizard."

"Not likely," Henry snorted.

"Outsider?"

"Yes, but..."

"It's been my experience..." A twitch of her sweater hem directed attention to her abdomen and the physical evidence of that experience. "... that potential isn't particularly rare. Actually accomplis.h.i.+ng something with it, now that's unusual. If Tony here hadn't met Arra, he wouldn't be fighting demons today. Heroes rise when we need them."

Tony let the observation pa.s.s without responding as he finished off the third rune, going over the last curve three times before it stopped sputtering. The buzz from the cola had burned off and it was getting harder and harder to focus."Tony?"

A cool, familiar touch against his wrist. He blinked a couple of times in Henry's general direction. "I'm okay."

"Can you finish?"

"Do I have a choice?" The demon was writhing again, bulging around the rope. "Why doesn't it make any noise?"

"Perhaps it communicates by motion."

"No, it made a noise before. Although..." weak sneaker-against-tile noise could have easily been made by rubbing demon against asphalt. "So we've tied and gagged it." He snickered, but he didn't really think it was funny. It was just easier to laugh than run screaming from the room. Besides, he was starting to feel sorry for the big squishy thing. That burned in go home looked painful.

"Tony."

"I'm okay."

"Look at me."

"Henry, I'm..." Henry's eyes were dark and the masks were gone. Hunger. Danger. Tony felt his heart race and a sudden wave of energy flood his body. He jerked back, blinked, and Henry's eyes were hazel again.

"Can you finish now?"

"Oh, yeah. Word up for adrenaline."

The red-gold brows dipped. "I have no idea what that..." A silent pivot toward the soundstage door. "Someone's coming."

"Tony? You around?"

"Zev?" d.a.m.n. It was Thursday. Zev left midafternoon Fridays, so he always worked late Thursday.

"Good, you're still here. I was finis.h.i.+ng up the score on that last episode, and I just wondered if you were on the sound-stage."

Rising volume suggested he was walking toward them. "You know, given the possibility of demons and all. I've got this great complicated harp piece and..." His eyes widened as he came around the corner of the set and he stopped so quickly he rocked back and forth. "... never mind. So." The pause extended almost a beat too long. "That's a demon?"

No reason to deny it. "Yeah."

"Really? Okay. It's, uh, you know, big." He frowned, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, shoved his hands into his front pockets, and took a bravado-inspired step forward. Then glanced down at the floor. "What's with all the cherries?"

"They're part of the early warning system," Jack said dryly, picking one up and flicking it into the wall.

"They must have cost a fortune. They're out of season," he added when it became obvious no one got the point. "Apples would have been significantly more cosahhhhh!" Yanked off his feet by the tentacle around his ankle, he screamed as he slid along a path of crushed fruit toward the demon.

"Don't shoot!" Tony grabbed for Jack's arm as Henry grabbed for the tentacle.

Still screaming, Zev slapped into the demon's side.

Henry twisted a loop into the excess flesh, tightened it, and shoved the music director away with the side of his foot as the demon went after more immediate prey, driving the end of the tentacle spikelike toward Henry's head. The possibility of the demon getting free, not to mention eating his ex, added a whole new burst of adrenaline. Tony sketched the fourth rune. "c.r.a.p!" Erased the last line. Drew it again.

There was a sudden, intense smell of sulfur and Henry hit the floor beside Zev and a tangle of yellow nylon rope as the demon disappeared. Fortunately, the runes only worked on creatures not native to this reality.

Fortunately.

Really, really fortunately. Tony wiped sweaty palms on his thighs and tried to remember if he knew that.

"I a.s.sume there's a reason for all the noise?"

Swaying, he fought to focus on CB's face. "Demon."

"Screaming?"

"That was me!" Zev scrambled to his feet and thrust his arm toward his boss. "It had a mouth in its side! In its side! Not its face! It bit a hole in my sleeve!"

"How fortunate it didn't remove your arm." As Zev absorbed the truth of that, CB stepped forward and caught Tony as his knees unlocked and he began to topple. "And the smell of sulfur?"

"Tradition?"

"Are you asking me?"

Tony sneezed. "No."

"And the cherries?"

"Long story."

"I see. Mr. Fitzroy, if you could place the chaise upright again, please. Constable Elson, there should be food of some kind in the office kitchen."

Tony managed to remain on his feet as they crossed the set, but he suspected that had more to do with the grip CB maintained on his arm rather than any macho s.h.i.+t on his part. Although the chaise looked hard and lumpy, it was the most comfortable piece of furniture he'd ever collapsed on. No need for anyone to worry; he was just going to take a few minutes to recover the feeling in his extremities.

A little easier to do, actually, after CB let him go and moved away.

"Ms. Burnett, I thought your technique of dealing with the demons would use less energy and leave Mr. Foster on his feet."

"It did use less energy," Leah protested indignantly. "After the day he's had, any other way-his whole mano a mano way, for instance-would have killed him."

Yeah, yeah. Deja vu all over again.

"We'll have to take your word for that. Mr. Groves is in my office with the page of demonology he found. If you could bring him here, I'd appreciate it."

"Kevin Groves?" Tony lifted his head to check if the disapproval he could hear in Henry's voice matched his expression. It did.

"The tabloid reporter who's been hanging about the show?" "That's the one." Leah answered, walking backward toward the exit. "It turns out he knows about the Demonic Convergence and may have primary source information."

"How does someone like that get hold of primary source information?"

"The easy way," she snorted, one hand against her belly as she turned and left.

"She's an odd one," Zev muttered. He had a plastic broom in his hand, the kind with a sc.r.a.per along one edge. "Even for a stuntie."

"He's right," CB murmured, stepping closer to Henry as Zev began sweeping up the cherries. Tony strained to hear him; this was not a conversation he was going to miss. "There's something about that young lady that's... different. Unusual."

No s.h.i.+t.

Fortunately for Leah, Henry had secrets of his own. "She studies demons; that's got to skew things a little."

And again, no s.h.i.+t.

"It seems to be time," CB said, still talking quietly to Henry, "for Mr. Foster to put some serious work into that memory erase spell of Arra's."

Henry glanced down at Tony and then up at CB. "It's like you're reading my mind."

"It wouldn't be the strangest thing that happened today."

"Word." Tony snickered at their expressions, or at as much of their expressions as he could see through eyes that kept sliding closed. "You two need to get out more."

"Mr. Foster?"

"Let him sleep."

"Are you certain he's sleeping?"

Henry laid a hand gently against Tony's chest, listened to his heart beating slow and sure. "I'm certain."

"I've never seen anyone eat that fast. I mean, that was almost a whole carton of potato salad and almost a liter of milk, gone between one blink and the next." Jack brought his hands together, crus.h.i.+ng the empty milk carton. "I don't know why he didn't choke. Or puke. Or both. You know, choke and puke. Especially considering it was potato salad and milk, for Christ's sake."

Henry exchanged a glance with CB.

"Are you all right, Constable Elson?"

"Me?" Jack's chin lifted and his chest went out. Henry hid a smile. Although the RCMP officer wasn't a small man, there was no way he could avoid being dominated by CB's bulk. "I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"

"You have been exposed today to not one, but two demons."

"So have you." "Yes, but I'm in television."

Jack jerked his head toward Zev who was sweeping up the last of the cherries in the immediate area and muttering quietly. "He's in television and he's freaked."

"He was nearly eaten."

"Yeah, well, I'm fine." Arms folded, he swept a scowl around the soundstage. "I'd be better if I knew how that thing got in."

"That's easy enough to answer; we left the door to the carpentry shop unlocked. I didn't want any more of my property destroyed," CB added as the constable's scowl lit on him.

"We wanted it in here," Henry reminded him, coiling the yellow nylon rope, "so it could be taken down without risking innocent lives."

"Right. We wanted it in here." A glance toward the place where the demon had lain. "Okay. Then tell me this? If we knew it was coming in a specific door, why did Tony put his warning thing around the whole place?"

"For the same reason we're ankle-deep in fake fruit," Leah snorted coming around the edge of the set, Kevin Groves following behind like a puppy. "Tony doesn't know what he's doing. He's making things up as he goes along."

Jack s.h.i.+fted slightly so that he was between Leah and Tony. Familiar with the protective instincts of the police, Henry decided to let it pa.s.s. It was interesting that on some instinctive level the constable thought Tony needed protecting from Leah. "He's doing fine."

Stopped about two meters away, Leah folded her arms, metaphysical seductress buried under indignation. "Well, according to you, everything's fine. You're fine, Tony's fine. Everything is not fine. We have demons..."

"Who don't always use doors," Henry interjected. "Leaving a door open does not guarantee they'll go through it. Tony laid out his wards wide enough to take that into account."

"And the cherries?" she asked, kicking at a piece of fruit Zev had missed.

Henry waited until it rolled to a stop. "I'm not saying he doesn't need to refine his technique."

"Perhaps it would be a good idea..." CB's tone had nothing of perhaps about it. "... if we move to another part of the soundstage and leave Mr. Foster to his rest."

Jack shook his head. "We shouldn't leave him alone."

"No, we shouldn't."

"I'll stay with him," Zev offered, stepping carefully over the pile of fruit he'd collected and walking to the chaise. "You guys can go make plans for dealing with demons and just leave me out of them."

"If you're sure, Mr. Sero."

"Oh, yeah." He held the broom across his body like a weapon. "I'm sure."

"If you hear or see anything, anything at all..."

"Trust me. I'll yell." Henry had always liked Raymond Dark's office. It was, he thought, the kind of office a vampire should have-all dark wood and heavy velvet curtains and shelves of ancient knick-knacks. It had weight. Authority. It wasn't anything like his office, which tended toward beech veneer, piles of research books, and stacks of author's copies he hadn't been able to give away, but that was the difference between artifice and reality.

The black leather desk chair creaked as CB lowered himself carefully into it. "Now then, Mr. Groves; your doc.u.mentation."

But Kevin Groves was staring at Henry. He swallowed once, punctuated by his Adam's apple rising and falling in the column of his throat. "You're not... I mean, you're..."

"He's what?" Jack asked from where he leaned against the corner of the set, positioned so that he could see both the desk and a bit of Tony's head on the upper end of the distant chaise.

"Good question." Frowning, Henry caught Kevin's gaze and held it. The Hunger had been buried deep, the masks were in place disguising the Hunter, and yet this reporter knew exactly what he was-which was both disturbing and useful. He smiled and then a little more broadly as, behind his gla.s.ses, Kevin's left eye began to twitch. "I'm what?"

"Nothing." Kevin started to shake as his muscles tensed for a flight not permitted to him. He stank of fear. Fear and...

Henry's attention flicked for an instant to Leah, tucked up in one corner of the red velvet sofa. That explained why it had taken her those extra moments to retrieve the reporter from the office.

She blew him a one finger kiss.

"Nothing," Kevin repeated as he staggered, released but still unable to run. "You're nothing."