Smoke and Shadows

by Tanya Huff

  The time it took him to clear the chair gave her a bit of a breathing space, a chance to collect her thoughts.

  Tony Foster had seen the shadows. More importantly, he had seen her.

  He wanted to know what he had seen.

  Fair enough.

  Curiosity had been the driving force behind the rise—and fall—of innumerable civilizations. It prodded creation and destruction equally. And once let off the leash, there was no catching it again until it was satiated. This left Arra only one option.

  Well, actually, two options; although the odds of her taking the second were so infinitesimally small she felt it could safely be ignored.

  As he settled himself, she leaned back, crossed her legs, and steepled her fingers. When those pale blue eyes—eyes with the rare ability to see the world as it was without the usual filters of disbelief and denial—fastened on her face, she began. “I came to this world from another seven years ago.”

  Fingers stopped worrying at a faded patch of denim. “From another world?”

  “Yes.” She waited, but he only indicated she should continue, his expression suggesting he’d merely asked for clarification in case he’d misheard. “My people were about to lose a war they had been fighting for many years. The enemy was at the gate and the gate had fallen and hope was dead. As it happened, hope had been dying for days—the last battalions of the army had been destroyed and nothing remained of our defenses save terrified men and women fighting individual losing battles against the shadows. I stood on the city wall, I watched the darkness advance, and I realized it was over. Certain I was about to die, I retreated to my workroom. It would only be a matter of moments before the enemy found me. In desperation, I tried something believed impossible. I tried to open a gate between my world and . . . and any world. My order had long insisted that the number of worlds were as infinite as the possibilities, but all previous attempts to break the barriers between them had failed.

  “I don’t know why I succeeded that day. Perhaps because failure would not result in a scholar’s footnote but rather a shallow grave. That kind of certainty tends to give one . . .” She could still feel the panic clawing at her; still taste the bile in the back of her throat. A drop of sweat rolled down her side, pebbling a line of flesh as she fought to keep her voice from trembling. “. . . encouragement. Perhaps I succeeded because for the first time a world—this world—was close enough to reach. I don’t know. I’ll probably never know. The gate opened up into an empty cardboard box factory just as Chester Bane was investigating its potential as a home for his production company.”

  “So CB knows about . . . ?” A disapproving flick of pale fingers served to indicate the general situation.

  “Not all of it. He hasn’t seen the shadows.”

  “Why haven’t you told him?”

  Easy to hear the subtext—Why haven’t you told him so he could’ve done something?

  “There’s nothing CB can do.” This was the absolute truth. If not all of it.

  The boy seemed to consider that for a moment, brows drawn in, a fold of his lower lip caught up between his teeth, then: “So, in this other world, you were a scientist?”

  “A what?” Arra hurriedly revisited everything she’d just said and snorted. “No, in this other world, I was a wizard.” She waited, but the comment about robes and pointy hats and Harry Potter never came. Upon reflection, hardly surprising. She very much doubted that Tony’s friend the Nightwalker slept in a crypt on a layer of his native earth. Their relationship—whatever it was and she was certainly in no position to judge—would have dealt speedily with cliché or it wouldn’t have lasted long enough to develop the bonds so obvious between them. “Our enemy was also a wizard. Naturally powerful, he had . . . It’s difficult to describe exactly what he had and what he did without indulging in excessively purple description.”

  “Yeah, well, too late.” From the sudden flush, it was obvious the comment had slipped out accidentally. Arra decided to ignore it—and not only because she had a strong suspicion it was accurate. The story was difficult to tell without falling into the cadences of home.

  “Wizards, like most people, are neither good nor evil, they merely are. This wizard, the enemy wizard, made a conscious decision in his search for ever more power to turn to the darkness and, in return for that power, accept its mantle.”

  “The mantle of darkness?”

  “Yes. It sounds like the title of a bad fantasy novel, doesn’t it?”

  A sudden grin. “I didn’t want to say . . .”

  “He had a name once, but he came to be called the Shadowlord.”

  The grin disappeared. “He’s found the gate and he’s followed you through.”

  Arra blinked. That was unexpected. “Has anyone ever accused you of leaping to unwarranted conclusions?”

  “Unwarranted?” Tony’s eyes narrowed and Arra found herself surprised by the intensity of his emotion. She had expected astonishment, wonder, even, in spite of all he’d seen, disbelief. Perhaps fear when he finally realized what her story meant. But rage? No. She’d forgotten that anger was the first response of the young; the gods knew she’d seen the evidence of that often enough in the past. His left hand raised, one finger flicked up into the air. “You opened a gate from another world where . . .” A second finger. “. . . you were fighting an evil wizard called the Shadowlord and, hey . . .” A third and final finger. “. . . the shadows around here are suddenly Twilight Zoned!” All three fingers folded into a fist. Not threatening, but definitely challenging. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Was there any point in denying it? Maintaining a carefully neutral expression—her emotional responses were hers alone—she picked up a pad of drawing paper and pencil. “Not entirely, no. He hasn’t found the gate. It only remained open for a brief time after I arrived. He’s used the research I left behind to reopen it. And the Shadowlord himself hasn’t dared to cross over. He’s merely sent shadows—minions—through the gate to see what he might find on the other side.”

  “Merely? There’s no merely!” Anger pulled him up off the chair. “Nikki Waugh is dead!”

  “And there’s nothing you can do about it. Rage will not return the dead to life.” The pencil moved over the center of the page with enough pressure to indent the lines into the paper. “Neither will sorrow.” The lead broke and Arra laid the pencil down, exerting all her will to keep her hand from shaking. When she finally looked up, it was to see Tony staring down at her. “Neither will guilt,” she continued as though there’d been no pencil, no pause. “Trust me that I know this, Tony Foster.”

  “All right. Fine. You know.” He whirled around, walked three steps away, whirled again, and walked two steps back, hands opening and closing by his sides. “What are you going to do to stop it from happening again?”

  Ah, yes, the sixty-four thousand dollar question, unadjusted for inflation. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Why the fuck not? You’re a wizard!”

  He said the word like it was an answer. Or a weapon. Stretching out an arm, she scooped a square art eraser up out of the clutter in her desk drawer. “Weren’t you listening? We lost. The Shadowlord cannot be defeated. Now he has tasted this world. The next shadow he sends will have more purpose.” The pattern she’d been doodling began to disappear. “It will find a host and use that host to gather specific information.”

  “A host? What does that mean?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like. The shadows are his spies, his advance scouts. They’re simple creations at first, but he uses the information they bring him to make each successive sending more complex. Nikki Waugh’s death will allow him to tailor a very complex shadow indeed.”

  Tony’s brow furrowed. “He can make a shadow that can take over a person?”

  “Yes.”

  “A person here?”

  “Yes. Here is where the gate is and these shadows—unlike the simpler versions—can’t travel far.”

  “Close t
he gate permanently.”

  “Research seems to indicate that the gate can only be manipulated from the originating world.”

  “Research seems to indicate?” he repeated incredulously.

  Fair enough, that had sounded a bit pompous. “It was one of the few things my order discovered that they were certain of,” she clarified.

  “All right. Fine. If you can’t close the gate, then stop the shadow!”

  Arra sighed. She lifted her head, met his gaze squarely, and, although it would weaken what she hoped to accomplish here, lied. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?”

  “The Shadowlord was not affected by anything we threw at him.” And back to the truth. Such a small lie, like a single dropped stitch, could hopefully be ignored. Not that hope was something she had in great supply of late. The important thing was that all of Tony Foster’s questions be answered. That his curiosity be satisfied.

  “I have to do something.”

  “I’m getting that impression.” The pencil lines were gone and nothing remained on the paper but a little pile of eraser leavings, dark with lifted graphite.

  “I’m going to do something!” Pivoting on one rubber heel, he stomped back toward the stairs—young, defiant, and dead sooner rather than later if he interfered.

  At least that was the reason she gave herself as she carefully lifted the sketch pad toward her mouth. And paused.

  There was always the chance that his friend, the Nightwalker, would notice her work. Although it was coming to an end, she liked the life she’d built for herself here in this new world and the last thing she wanted was to be noticed by those who lived in Mystery.

  Well, actually not the last thing she wanted . . .

  One step from the top of the basement stairs, as his hand reached out for the door handle, Arra murmured, “Forget,” and blew the top sheet of paper clean.

  Tony stood by the basement door and realized he felt a lot better about things. The questions that had been gnawing at him seemed to have lost their teeth. Nikki Waugh was still dead and that truly sucked, but there was nothing he could do to bring her back so maybe, just maybe, he should let her go.

  “Hey!”

  He let Amy’s beckoning finger pull him across the office.

  “What were you doing downstairs?”

  “Downstairs?”

  She rolled her eyes. “In the basement. The dungeon. The wizard’s workshop.”

  “Wizard?” Something waved from the edge of memory; gone when he tried to work out exactly what it was.

  “Duh. CB’s own special effects wizard. Arra. Short old broad who blows things up.” Artificially dark brows drew in. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’m . . .”

  The shrill demand of the phone cut him off. “Don’t go anywhere,” Amy ordered as she lifted the receiver. “We’re not done. CB Productions.” Her voice dropped nearly an octave. “Where the hell are you? It does matter, Gerald, because you were supposed to deliver that replacement coffin pillow today!”

  Shaking his head, Tony propped a hip on her desk. Welcome to the macabre world of vampire television.

  “Hey, Tony!”

  He jumped as Adam’s voice blared from his ear jack and bounced around his skull a couple of times. Cheeks flushed—he hadn’t overreacted like that since his first week on the job—he reached for his radio muttering, “The volume control on this thing is totally fucked,” just in case Amy or anyone else in the office had seen. Then, dropping his mouth to the microphone: “Go ahead, Adam.”

  “If Lee’s up to it, we’re ready for him on the set.”

  Tony glanced at his watch. Nikki’s body had been out of the building for just over an hour. An hour? That seemed . . .

  “Tony! Thumb out of your ass, man!”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Uh, what if Lee’s not up to it?”

  The 1AD snorted. “Peter says you’re to get him up to it but I’m not touching that. Just do what you can to get him back out here. Losing a day won’t bring Nikki back.”

  “The show must go on?”

  “Yeah, like I haven’t heard that a hundred times in the last hour. Hustle up, we’re burning money.”

  Death came, death went, and it was amazing how fast everything got back to normal. He waved a hand in front of Amy’s face and pointed toward the exit.

  She nodded. “No, we don’t need it immediately, but that’s not the point . . .”

  Shadow following, Tony headed for the dressing rooms.

  For all his bulk, Chester Bane knew how to remain unnoticed. If being Chester Bane meant bluster, then a lack of bluster meant a lack of Chester Bane. He stood silently just inside his open door and watched the door leading out of the production office swing closed.

  Tony Foster had been in the basement.

  The one good thing about finding a dead body was that the rest of the day, no matter how mired in suckage, could only get better. That was the theory anyway, but by quitting time, Tony figured no one could prove it by him. He had to talk to someone about this.

  Someone.

  Yeah. Right. There was only one person he could talk to about this.

  Although he hadn’t lived at the condo for almost eighteen months, he still had his keys. He’d tried to give them back, to cut the final tie but Henry, his eyes dark, had refused to take them.

  “Many people have keys to their friends’ apartments.”

  “Well, yeah, but you’re . . .”

  “Your friend. Whatever else I may have been, whatever else I am, I will always be your friend.”

  “That’s uh . . .”

  “Yeah, I know. Way over the top.”

  The place was a little neater without him, but nothing else had changed since he’d left. “Henry?”

  “Bedroom.”

  Henry slept in the smallest of the three bedrooms, the easiest one to close off with painted plywood and heavy curtains against the day. He wasn’t there now, so Tony continued down the hall. Henry slept in the smallest bedroom but he kept his clothes in the walk-in closet attached to the master suite. For a dead guy, Henry Fitzroy had a lot of clothes.

  He paused in the doorway and watched the vampire preen in front of the mirror. Popular culture had gotten a few minor details wrong. Vampires had reflections and, if Henry was any indication, they spent a significant slice of eternity checking them out. “The pants are great, but strawberry blonds can’t wear that shade of red. The shirt doesn’t work.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Trust me. I’m gay.”

  “You have a gold ring through your eyebrow.”

  “And it clashes with nothing.”

  “You’re wearing plaid flannel.”

  “I’m getting in touch with my inner lesbian.” Tony pointed toward the discarded clothing on the bed. “Try the blue.”

  Henry stripped off the shirt, yanked a cream-colored sweater off the pile, and dragged it over his head.

  “Or not.” Grinning, Tony backed away from the door so Henry could leave. Feeling better than he had in hours, he fell into step beside the shorter man. Feeling grounded. Which said something about the entertainment industry when he turned to a vampire for grounding. Or maybe it just said something about him.

  “You sounded upset when you called.”

  And the ground disappeared again. Once the show had stopped going on, once he was on his way home from the studio, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what had happened. He’d found himself thumbing in Henry’s number before he came to a conscious decision to pull out his phone.

  “Someone died at work today.”

  Henry paused at the end of the hall, turning to look at him. “The stuntman?”

  What stuntman? It took Tony a moment to remember that Henry had been at the second unit shoot. “Daniel? No, those guys are hard to kill; knock them down and they just bounce back. Daniel’s fine. It was the victim of the week. On the show,” he added hurriedly as Henry’s eyes widened. “There’s alwa
ys a body; I mean there has to be, right? The show’s about a vampire detective. But this was a real body.” He swallowed although his mouth had gone so dry it didn’t help. “I sort of found it.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Mason Reed was with me. He yanked open her dressing room door and she fell out.” One hand dragged back through his hair. “Dead.”

  Cool fingers on his elbow, Henry steered him over to the green leather sofa and gently pushed him into a sitting position before dropping down next to him. “You okay?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “But you don’t think you should be.”

  “It’s not that she’s dead. That’s bad, but it’s not what’s got me so . . . I don’t know, freaked, I guess.” Resting his forearms on his thighs, hands dangling, Tony laced and unlaced his fingers, not really seeing the patterns they made. Trying not to see Nikki’s face. “Just for a moment, before her head hit the floor, she looked terrified. You’ve seen a lot of bodies, Henry. Why would she look terrified? Never mind, don’t answer that. Obviously something frightened her. But she was alone in the dressing room. I mean, of course she was alone; those things are so small most actors can barely fit their egos in with them, but she was alone . . .”

  “I’ve left a lot of people alone in locked rooms.”

  “Well, it wasn’t you, so you’re saying . . .” Twisting around, he raised a hand as Henry opened his mouth to reply. “Oh, don’t give me that fucking ‘more things in heaven and Earth’ quote. You’re saying it was something like you. Something not of this world . . .” Not of this world. Not this world. Fuck! He almost had it.

  “Tony?”

  “I feel like I’ve put down the last bit of toast and now I can’t find it. I know I haven’t eaten it, but it’s gone and that unfinished feeling is driving me bugfuck!” Unable to remain still, he leaped to his feet and walked over to the window. He laid one hand against the glass and stared out at the lights of Vancouver. “She shouldn’t be dead.”

  “People die, Tony. They die for a lot of reasons. Sometimes, it seems like they die for no reason at all.”