Smoke and Ashes (4 page)

“Scene 19b, high fall, take one. Mark!”

“Action.”

Far enough away now, Daniel's voice sounded in Tony's ear jack.
“On three, Leah. One…”

Up on the roof, Sam would be echoing the count, fingers flicking up to give visual cues.

A gust of wind blew a bit of dirt in Tony's eye. He ducked his head just in time to see that same gust about to fling a ten-centimeter piece of aluminum with a wickedly pointed end into the bag.

“Two.”

Impact wouldn't make anything as simple as a hole. At that angle, at that speed, it was going to be a gash. And a big one.

“Three.”

The
wham whoosh
of impact and applause from the crew covered the sound of aluminum slapping into Tony's palm. The jagged piece of debris had probably blown down from the construction site.
Revenge of the backhoe.

“Cut!”

He looked up as Leah climbed down off the bag, Daniel, grinning broadly, reaching out a hand to steady her. The fall had clearly not been a problem; the high heels, on the other hand, were giving her a little trouble. She was smiling, definitely happy, but less overtly euphoric than a lot of stuntees were after nailing a four-story fall.

She didn't look like Padma. She looked like a stuntwoman wearing the same costume over some strategic padding.

So much for the magic of television.

It took a moment for Tony to realize she was staring at him.

No, not at him. At the piece of aluminum still in his hand.

As though she'd suddenly become aware of his attention, she lifted her head. Lifted one dark, inquiring brow.

Even the see-through guy with horns sharing her space seemed interested.

N
IGHT SHOOTS ALWAYS THREW
Tony's sleeping patterns out of whack. When a guy his age got off work, he was supposed to go out and do things. He wasn't supposed to drive straight home and fall over. It wasn't just wrong, it was old. It was what old guys did.

Except there wasn't a whole lot to do at 2:30 on a Thursday morning in beautiful downtown Burnaby.

Cradling a bag of overpriced groceries from the 7-Eleven, Tony kicked the door to his apartment closed and shuffled into the tiny kitchen. The shuffling was necessary because he'd started sorting laundry back on Monday, hadn't quite finished yet, and didn't want to start again from scratch because he'd mixed the piles. The bread and milk went into the fridge. He tucked the bottle of apple juice under his arm and carried the bag of beef jerky and the spray cheese into the living room—where
living room
was defined as the part of the long rectangle that contained an unmade sofa bed instead of a stove, a fridge, and a sink.

The television remote was not in the pizza box under the couch. It finally turned up on top of the bookcase by the window, half buried in the pot with the dead geranium. Raising it in triumph, he settled back against the pillows, sprayed some cheese on a piece of jerky, and started channel surfing with the mute on.

Replay of a hockey game on TSN, end of hurricane season on
Outdoor Life
, remake of
Smokey and the Bandit
…

“Which after
The Longest Yard
and
The Dukes of Hazzard
pretty much proves there is no God,” he muttered, jabbing his thumb at the remote.

…some guy eating a bug on either the Learning Channel or FOOD—he didn't stay long enough to see if it came with a lecture on habitat or a raspberry vinaigrette—three movies he'd already seen, two he didn't want to see, a bug eating some guy on either Discovery or Space, someone knocking at the door…

His thumb stilled.

Someone knocking at
his
door. Carefully. Specifically. Trying not to wake the neighbors.

It didn't sound like Henry's knock. He checked his watch: 2:57. Besides the vampire, who did he know who'd be up at this hour? Even tabloid journalists eventually crawled back under their rocks for a nap. It wasn't Jack Elson or his partner; the police had a
very
distinctive knock.

Might be Conner, that friend of Everett's he'd met while visiting the makeup artist in the hospital. They'd gone for coffee but hadn't been able to hook up since—Conner worked in the props shop at one of the other Burnaby studios, and his hours were as insane as Tony's. Maybe their schedules had finally matched up.

Of course, Conner'd have no way of knowing that.

Unless Everett had told him.

Hell, if he was going to imagine hot guys, why not drop all the way into fairy-tale land and assume it was Lee, no longer conflicted and unable to deny the blistering passion between them? Okay, for passion substitute a couple of possessed kisses—but they'd been pretty damned hot.

Another knock.

Of course, I could just get off my ass, walk a few meters, and find out.
Dropping the spray cheese down in a pile of blankets by the jerky, Tony headed for the door.

There was a spell on the laptop called “Spy Hole” that allowed the wizard to see through solid objects. The first time Tony'd tried it, he'd given it a little too much juice and gotten way too good a look at Mr. Chansky across the hall in apartment eleven. Talk about being scared straight. The experience had convinced him that sometimes the old ways were the best. Leaning forward, he peered through the security peephole.

Leah Burnett.

And the translucent overlay of the big guy with antlers.

She grinned up at the lens and lifted a bag of Chinese food into Tony's field of vision.

All right. She had his attention.

Stepping back, he opened the door.

“Hey.” She waved the bag. “I thought we should talk.”

“All three of us?”

“Three? If you have company…”

“No.” He just moved enough to stay solidly in her line of sight, blocking her view of the apartment. “You, me, and the guy sharing your space.”

Dark eyes widened. “Guy?”

“Big guy.” He held his hand about half a meter over her head.

“Really? What does this
guy
look like?”

“Hard to say, he's a little fuzzy. Got a rack on him like Bambi's dad, though.”

“And you can see him right now?”

“Not right now. He kind of comes and goes.”

“Uh-huh.” A quick glance up and down the hall. “Maybe we should discuss this inside.”

“Got something to hide?”

“Just trying to keep you out of trouble with your neighbors.”

That seemed fair. Besides, there were precautions in place in case he was actually in any danger from her. Them. Although, given the Chinese food and all, he doubted it. Opening the door all the way, Tony tucked himself up against the wall and beckoned the stuntwoman in.

The glyphs painted across the threshold were supposed to flare red and create an impenetrable barrier if danger approached—it had taken days of fine-tuning to stop them from going off for the pizza girl, Mr. Chansky, and the elderly cat who lived at the end of the hall. As Leah stepped into the apartment, they flared white, then orange, then green, then a couple of colors Tony suspected the human eye shouldn't actually be able to see. The pattern slammed out to fill the doorway, turned gray, and fluttered to the floor.

Leah brushed at the shoulder of her jacket, the pale ash smearing across the damp fabric. “Sorry about that.” Her nose wrinkled as the smell of burned cherries momentarily overwhelmed the smell of the Chinese food. “What did you paint those on with, cherry cough syrup?”

“Yeah.” When she stared up at him in astonishment, he shrugged. Carefully. His head felt like he'd just been hit repeatedly with a rubber mallet. “Cherry was the only flavor that worked. And,” he added, hoping he sounded like he believed it was possible, “I will fireball your ass if you try anything.”

“Like what?”

“Sorry?”

She pulled the door out of his hand and closed it. “What are you expecting me to try?”

He had no idea, so he followed her farther into the apartment.

“I suppose I should be impressed that a guy your age actually sorts his laundry,” she muttered stepping over a pile of jeans and up to the kitchen counter where she set the bag down, shrugged out of her jacket, and started opening cupboards. “Ah. Plates.” And a moment later, “Cutlery?”

“In the drawer by the fridge.”

“Right. It's mostly plastic.”

“They were free.”

“Fair enough.” She handed him a full plate and stepped over socks and underwear and stood staring at the rest of the apartment. “Daniel told me you were gay.”

“Yeah.”

“Way to work against the stereotype.”

“What?”

Her gesture took in the walls, the floor, and most of his furniture. “It's beige.”

“It was beige when I got here.”

“You have a flag tacked up over the window.”

“I'm a patriotic kind of guy.”

“The only thing on the wall is a poster for
Darkest Night
.”

“It was free.”

“I figured. You seem to have spent everything you've made in the last year on that entertainment center.”

“Look…” Tony pushed the laptop to one side and set his plate down on the small square table. “…if you're here on some weird makeover thing, I don't want my apartment redecorated or my life rearranged.”

“You sure?”

Her smile changed the whole shape of her face. Made her look years younger. Made her eyes sparkle. Made her look like someone he'd like to get to know. Really well. Made him want to slide the sweater off her shoulders, push back the dark curls and…

…he suddenly noticed that the translucent antlered guy looked a lot more solid. Except for the horns, and the weird way his eyes had no whites, he seemed to be human. His skin tone was a little deeper than Leah's—a regular coffee instead of a double double—he had a lot of long dark hair twisted into dreads, and he was naked. And, although it was difficult to tell for certain, given that he and Leah were still sharing the same space, remarkably well hung.

What the fuck?

Tony shook his head and Leah was once again just a not very tall stuntwoman eating chow mein in his living room. Alone. No overlay of antlered guy. Eyes narrowed, he took a step back and raised the plastic fork. “What was that?”

“A test.” She caught a bean sprout before it fell off the edge of her plate. “Ninety percent of men fail it.”

Tony did the math. “Well, good for me. I'm really most sincerely gay.”

“And yet you still can't afford a gallon of periwinkle paint?”

“Yeah, well here's a thought…” He moved a pile of old sides—the half-size sheets with all the background information for each day's shoot as well as the necessary script pages—and sat on the steadier of his two folding chairs. “…unless that guy is your inner interior decorator, how about you let the beige thing go and tell me what the hell is going on?”

She thought about it for a moment, then nodded and sat on the edge of his bed. “You're a wizard.”

Tony just barely managed to resist coming back with,
I know I am, but what are you?
It was just past three in the morning, for fuck's sake. He was a little punchy. He swallowed a mouthful of beef fried rice and said: “You're…?”

“Not.” A wave of her fork, dangling a piece of overcooked bok choi, cut off his reply. “It's complicated. Maybe you should call your teacher, and I'll only have to go through it once.”

“My teacher?”

“Mentor. Whatever you call the senior wizard in charge of your education.” Dark eyes sparkled again. “I'm assuming that in this brave new millennium you don't use the word master.”

“What makes you think I have a teacher?”

Leah sighed. “You're young. Far too young to be on your own.”

“Surprise.” He spread his hands.

Brows rose. “What happened to your teacher?”

He pushed chow mein around his plate. “I thought we were going to talk about the naked horny dude.”

Fortunately, only a little rice went up her nose. When she finished laughing and snorting and blowing her nose on the crumpled handful of toilet paper Tony'd brought from the bathroom, she said, “His name is Ryne Cyratane. It means: He Who Brings Desire and Destruction. He's a Demonlord.”

“Oh, man.” The fork bounced as he dropped it on the table. “Not again.”

“Excuse me?”

“A few years ago, some friends of mine stopped a Demonlord from coming through in Toronto.”

“Coming through?”

“Yeah, there was this lesser demon writing the Demonlord's name on the city in blood and…” He frowned, trying unsuccessfully to remember the specifics Henry had told him about how they'd finally defeated it. “It got complicated, but he didn't make it.”

“Obviously.” Her tone went beyond dry to desiccated. “Well, there's no need for you to worry about this one. I've got him contained.” She stood and pulled up her sweater.

“Nice tat.”

“Thank you.” It circled her navel, row after row of black glyphs spreading almost up to the edge of her ribs like ripples moving out from the point of impact. “It's a Demongate. As long as I live, the gate stays closed and my lord is denied reentry to this world.”

“Your lord?”

“Long story.”

“Okay. Reentry?”

“He was here about four thousand years ago. For almost five hundred years, worshiped as a god, he ruled a territory in what's now Lebanon. Ish. Same general geography anyway, near as I can figure. He had a temple, he had handmaidens, he had a lot of sex.”

That would be the desire part, Tony figured.

“Then something came up—he's never said what—and he created a gate to return to the hell he came from. It took a lot of power. To get it, he killed everyone in the village and, with their blood, anchored the gate in his sole surviving handmaiden.”

And that would be the destruction. Tony leaned closer. The tat wasn't black. Not exactly. It was a very, very dark red-brown. “You're the handmaiden.”

“Handmaiden, priestess, lover; I was his…”

“Girlfriend?” He winced at her expression. “Sorry. I was just channeling
Young Frankenstein
, you know when Frau Blucher is explaining and…Never mind. Sorry. Totally inappropriate interruption. I'll just, uh, be quiet now.”