by Tanya Huff
“You need your fucking head—BUS!—head examined! And you need to look at this.”
Another half block before he could take his eyes off the road long enough to glance her way. The way Leah was holding the map, he could see six pinholes where the light showed through. Six weak points burned through. Six demons in the city. One of them was theoretically on their side, but somehow that didn’t make him feel any better.
“Call CB, tell him to empty the studio. Then call Jack and Henry.”
“Sun’s not down. BIKE!”
He missed the cyclist by millimeters. “Leave a message.”
“I have a better idea.” Her fingernails had left half moon cuts in his dashboard. “Why don’t you pull into that strip mall, then you can make the calls and I can get us to the studio alive?”
Tony hesitated just for a second then bounced up over the curb and into the strip mall parking lot. This was not the time to let machismo get in the way of a professional stunt driver. Their odds would improve with stunt drivers in the surrounding cars, but he’d take what he could get. As he dove back into the passenger side and buckled up, he glanced at the clock. 5:07. More than an hour and a half until sunset.
As Leah stomped on the gas, he reached for the phone.
They’d be starting before Henry woke for the night. Then he’d have to drive out to Burnaby. They’d be fighting multiple demons without his strength and speed, and it was entirely possible they’d be finished without him. Fucking weak spots might as well have torn open at noon. “TAXI!”
“Please. I saw it. You know, we still have time to get on a plane and haul ass out of here.”
Suspicion tightened his chest. “Was that why you wanted to drive?”
“No, no, I’m doing the responsible thing.”
“ONE-WAY STREET!”
Leah snorted and drove half a block on the sidewalk. “You know, Tony, if you’re going to save the world tonight, you really need to pace yourself.”
Fifteen
FIGHTING TO KEEP THE nutritional supplement pouring into his mouth instead of spraying around the inside of the car, Tony watched in amazement as Leah forced every possible ounce of power from the elderly engine, took a few highly illegal shortcuts, and beat the demons back to the soundstage. The previous two trips they’d taken had clearly been nothing more than a rehearsal for this.
“Bonus that there’s never a cop around when you need one,” he ground out through clenched teeth, really hoping he wasn’t going to hurl as they bounced over the back curb of the CB Productions lot.
“We weren’t on a major highway this time, so I doubt anyone called us in.”
“You doubt?” His voice went up embarrassingly high on the second word. “You went the wrong way down a Tim Horton’s drive-through!”
“Please, in this area…” Leah yanked the wheel hard to the left and skidded to a stop, spraying gravel over the craft services truck. “…they probably thought we were filming.”
She had a point. A month earlier, Vancouverites had applauded an armed bank robbery; bank security hadn’t intervened, apparently waiting for someone to yell “Cut!”
“There’re too many vehicles still in the lot,” Tony grumbled, getting out of the car. Sure they’d been speedy, but he’d seen CB clear the building in less time. When the big guy said go, it took a stupidly reckless man to linger.
Leah grabbed his arm. “Hang on.” Dragging him around to face her, she licked the edge of a tissue and scrubbed at his upper lip.
“What the…”
“Supplement mustache. Sets a bad example for the troops.”
“We don’t have any troops!”
“And the demons will laugh at you.” One final swipe. “There.”
“Thank you.” It was as sarcastic an appreciation as he could manage. “Do I look like I should be taken seriously now?” he demanded as they raced for the rear door.
“Not so much, no.”
Big surprise. Not. Maybe he should get a pointy hat. Or a big sword. Or his head examined.
Charging down the center aisle, he jumped cables, dodged around equipment, stopped dead as he emerged out into the open area by Adam’s desk. “What the…?” He whirled to glare at Leah. “Did you know this was going to happen?”
She spread her hands. “Hey, I’m as surprised as you are.”
“You mentioned troops!”
“I was being facetious.”
“They want to help,” CB explained, stepping forward,
“Help?” Tony moved his attention from Leah to his boss. “What did you tell them?”
“That the battle would be joined tonight. Not as part of a general announcement, but to those who knew enough to ask.”
Zev, Amy, Lee—no surprise, although Tony would rather they were all somewhere safe, like New Zealand—Mouse, Peter…
“Sorge and Adam and Tina have kids,” Peter said, one thigh propped on Adam’s desk next to a half-full box of flares last used in episode seven. “Kids who actually live with them,” he amended. “We sent them home.”
…Saleen, Pavin, and Kate.
They’d all been in the house last summer. They’d survived Creighton Caulfield and they’d heard about what had happened in the spring with the Shadowlord. They knew what Tony was, and they thought they knew what he could do.
“Your fan club seems to be growing,” Leah murmured, warm breath lifting the hair on the back of his neck.
Yeah, right. Kate had never liked him.
“Guys, there’s half a dozen demons on their way. Demons. Just like in the most clichéd screenplay; all claws and horns and tentacles and bad attitude. Ask Zev, ask Amy, ask CB, they’ve all seen them. Well, one.” He frowned. “Okay, I think CB saw a couple of them, but…”
“Shut up,” Kate snarled. “We asked. We know.” She snapped the loops of yellow nylon rope between her hands. “We need to knock them down and tie them up so you can send them back right? It’s a physical fight—slam, bam, kick a little demonic ass?”
“It’s not that easy…”
“Did I say it was going to be easy? We get that they’re big and strong. What we don’t get is how you thought you could take them out with only the boss and a Mountie at your side.”
“Hey!” Amy protested. “Lee and I were always staying!”
“Yeah, an actor and a receptionist, that’ll make a lot of difference,” Saleen muttered. The grip slapped a length of steel pipe into his left hand. “These things have no special powers, right?”
“Well, they…”
“No,” Leah interrupted. “They’re just big and strong.”
“And ugly,” Zev snorted, fingering the sleeve of his sweater.
“Then it’s time we get some of our own back.”
“Some of your own back from what?” Tony demanded, wondering when he’d lost control of the situation. The words “stupidly reckless” were repeating on a background loop in his head.
“The Shadowlord. Creighton Caulfield.” Mouse never said much, so the big cameraman’s words carried a deliberate weight.
“They’re not doing this for you, Tony.” Lee crossed to stand barely an arm’s length away. “They’re fighting for themselves. Because this time, they can.”
They’re not? They? The next obvious question had to be What about you? or maybe Who writes your dialogue? But he knew the answer to the second and this wasn’t the time to hear the answer to the first, and anyway, there were half a dozen demons making tracks to the studio. He took a deep breath and one step to the side so that the others could see him. Everyone accounted for but Mason, and Mason’s absence was hardly sur…
“Goddamned thing got buried in the closet!” Clutching the double-handed broadsword from episode twelve and wearing the slightly squibbed camouflage jacket from episode sixteen, Mason rocked to a stop by CB’s side. “What did I miss?”
“Tony questioning our right to be here,” Kate deadpanned.
Mason snorted. “Tony questioning? Who’s t
he star of this show, him or me?”
“Heads up, people!” Jack charged into the group, glanced around, and obviously decided not to ask. “I just got off the phone with Geetha. There’re six kinds of hell breaking lose and heading this way.”
“You’ve been waiting your whole career to say that, haven’t you?” Amy asked, snickering.
He flashed her a broad smile. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Okay.” It wouldn’t be in a few minutes, but right now it was. When they all turned to look at him, Tony said it again just because he liked the sound of it. “Okay. Jack, help Leah and CB position the troops. Pavin, bring one of the Fresnos to the back. I’m going to try and stop a demon at the door.” He ran for the back without waiting for an answer. If they wanted to help, they could damned well be helpful.
He’d finished burning the first two runes by the time Pavin wrestled one of the small spotlights over from the office set. “Does light hurt them?”
“No. Set up here. Aim the beam through that pattern and right out the door.”
“Blinding it?” Pavin asked, remarkably blasé about bright blue squiggles just hanging in the air. He used the knob on the back of the casing to adjust the beam. “So it can’t see what you wrote?”
Let’s hear it for tech support. “Yeah. That’s the idea.” He stepped out into the parking lot and drew the third rune with his eyes nearly squinted shut. “You’d better get back with the others.”
The light blazed out the open door, significantly brighter than the late afternoon sun and definitely blinding. He couldn’t see the rune from any angle that would get him through the door. Hopefully, the demon didn’t know how this world worked, so it wouldn’t realize the light was too bright. If they were lucky, it might wonder about the sudden change in illumination and pause in the doorway giving him time to get the final rune in place. With a little more luck, it wouldn’t be Ryne Cyratane’s arjh who showed up, wasting a perfectly good trap or trapping one of their best chances of surviving this.
Good idea, Tony, use up all your luck before the fight even starts.
As he burned the fourth rune, he realized there was something not quite right about the ambient noise. The familiar background sounds of the city were less familiar than they should be. He’d nearly finished when those sounds separated into squealing tires and breaking glass. Less screaming than he’d expected, but there’d likely be time for that later.
Half a Honda Civic rolled past the edge of the building. Tony slapped the last curl on the fourth rune and dove behind the garbage can at the craft services truck, rune clutched in his left hand. The demon charged around the corner still holding the other half of the car.
What I’m holding beats what you’re holding……unless you decide to throw the car at me. Crap!
The twisted hunk of metal crashed into the gravel right in front of the garbage can, covering Tony in glittering bits of safety glass and slamming the can into his shoulder.
He didn’t think he made much of a noise, but when the dust settled, the demon stood just outside the beam of light, eyestalks turned toward him, the bit on its face that corresponded to a nose twitching and testing the air.
Not good on a couple of levels.
The runes wouldn’t hang forever and a little experimentation over the last few days had proved that the longer they were in place, the less kick ass they became.
Also, the plan was to avoid the ultimate wizard and demon one on one for as long as possible. A Powershot would knock him on his ass and out of the fight, so if it turned out to be inevitable it had to happen late in the game.
From inside the soundstage, a girlie shriek. It sounded like Mason.
The demon’s head went up, exposing the get-Leah rune cut into its chest. Hard to tell, given the arrangement of its features, but it looked embarrassed. Maybe not Mason, then. Maybe some demons were less demonic than others. Grumbling under its breath, it stepped into the light, hissed and reared back, eyestalks withdrawing into the top of its head.
Tony had started moving as the demon moved. As it reared, he shoved the fourth rune into position.
It had time for only a truncated howl before the runes flared and it disappeared.
“Yes! One down!” He’d just started breathing normally for what seemed like the first time in half an hour when a clawed hand closed on his bruised shoulder.
There were only three entrances to the soundstage.
Three entrances. Six demons. Basic math.
Crap.
And fucking OW!
“Wizard.”
Talking? That was new.
Ignoring the blood dribbling down from the points of the claws, Tony twisted as far as he could in the demon’s grip. It looked sort of like a miniature Ryne Cyratane, although more Texas longhorn than Bambi’s dad, and it wore the most obvious of the Arjh Lord’s attributes sheathed up like a dog’s. Unlike the single rune on the chest of the first demon, the black runes carved into mini-Ryne’s chest were oozing blood over a pattern very nearly as complex as Leah’s. It seemed that slipping an arjh into another lord’s plan took more than a fake mustache, but since Sye Mckaseeh seemed to recruit from farther out on the horror show spectrum, that wasn’t really surprising.
“Help wizard.”
“Yeah. Fine. Release wizard!” The claws hurt as much on the way out as they had on the way in. “All right, if you’re going to…never mind.” The completely blank expression suggested he keep it simple. “Follow wizard!”
It’s a little like live action Zork, he thought as he ran into the soundstage, the demon hard on his heels. Eat snake. Thank you, that was delicious. I can’t believe Henry still has that game on his system. And not a good time for silent babbling, Tony. Pull it togeth—Fuck.
Three of the other four demons had arrived.
There wasn’t room for all three of them directly under the gate, so they’d spread out within the confines of the set, turning the entire area into a seething mass of multicolored flesh and weaponry. Kate and Pavin were trying to loop a tentacled lime-green demon in rope while Saleen whaled on any bits he could get close to with his pipe. Amy, Lee, and Zev had another cornered. No, it had Zev cornered. No, they had it cornered. Jack was down on one knee, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Mason was fighting sword to claw with the upper right arm of another of the chitin-covered demons yelling something that sounded like “Parry, thrust, riposte!” while Mouse silently fought the lower right, and CB dealt with the left side. Peter sagged against the wall, gasping for breath, arms wrapped around his torso. Leah was nowhere in sight. Since the point of this exercise from the invaders’ perspective was to open the Demongate, CB had stashed Leah somewhere safe.
And a good thing, too, since all three demons had a single, familiar rune etched into their chests. Or the equivalent area.
Tony pointed mini-Ryne toward the battle. “Fight demons!”
Mini-Ryne seemed less than enthused. “Help wizard.”
“Fight demons!”
“Guard gate.”
Left palm flat against the center of his back, Tony shoved him forward. “Fight demons!” Whether the pressure of the rune convinced him or he’d run out of excuses, mini-Ryne finally charged into the fray, and Tony raced for the extension ladder. CB and Jack had been insistent that he not be in the middle of the fight; there were too many demons and if one of them realized he was the wizard, in the absence of the Demongate he’d be the center of all the demonic attention by default.
From the top of the ladder, he crawled out onto the lighting grid. Technically, this was not someplace he should be, but the grid was built to hold hundreds of pounds of lights and sooner or later, every electrician or light tech in the business ended up with his feet off the ladder or scaffold. Since he was neither, it was a good thing CB ran a flexible studio. Had demons been attacking a CBC studio, the world would be screwed.
He burned all four runes into the air beside him before he looked down.
L
ime-green-and-tentacles had moved away from the corner. Amy had danced inside the tentacles and was pounding a second, foot-long ash stake into the main bulk of its body. Lee bashed the end of a tentacle against the floor with an antique mace, ducked a second, and slammed a third away from his head at the last minute. Zev stood to one side cocking a crossbow, a length of the yellow nylon rope tied to one end of the quarrel.
They weren’t bringing it down, but they were definitely holding it in place.
“Welcome to the set of Darkest Night,” he muttered, stretching along the grid. Vampire shows inevitably acquired a lot of interesting weaponry. He dropped the first two runes into place and was ready with the third when Amy screamed, her leg caught in one of the demon’s unexpected mouths. Distracted, Lee went down, lime-green coils around his torso. You don’t get to be distracted! he reminded himself. He was already doing the best thing he could do to help. Third rune down. Placing the fourth rune got tricky until Zev got off his shot, dropped the crossbow and tried to tangle the demon’s legs with attached rope. A glancing blow from the chitin-covered demon drove him forward into the grasp of another tentacle. Adjusting for Zev’s weight, the demon jerked back against the first three runes. It shrieked as it brushed up against the power. As it charged forward, Tony threw the fourth rune into position.
“And action!”
Light flared.
Amy, Lee, Zev, and a meter of tentacle that had been reaching beyond the area the runes enclosed lay panting on the floor—although strictly speaking the tentacle wasn’t panting as much as twitching. Amy had both hands clamped against her thigh, blood seeping between her fingers. Rows of tiny holes in Lee’s jeans were beginning to darken. Holding the quarrel with the rope in one hand, Zev crawled toward the crossbow.
Focus on the demons!
Something grabbed his ankle.
He probably should have wrapped both arms around the grid and hung on, but that occurred to him a second late. Turning, Tony caught a glimpse of a familiar mouth with too many rows of black teeth between red scaled lips.
The sixth demon.
And then he was falling.