by Tanya Huff
At the far end of the set, a golden pattern shimmered in the air. As they watched, frozen in place, a new line of light curved around the outer edge.
Tony hit the floor, thrown aside hard enough to slide until he slammed up against the wall. Palms leaving damp prints against the painted plywood, he hand-walked to his feet. When he turned, Mason stood in front of him.
A quick glance showed CB struggling with three of the construction crew and Lee nowhere in sight.
Ducking a swing, Tony tripped on something in the fog. He managed a reasonably coherent, Not again! just before impact, then the mist folded over him. A hand closed around the back of his belt as his hand closed around a backpack.
What the . . . ?
Not a backpack, the photographer’s camera bag.
As Mason hauled him up, he ripped through the camera bag, finding what he needed by touch. Finally clearing the fog, he squirmed around and triggered the photographer’s flash.
The shadow had been in Mason Reed since Friday morning, absorbing all that Mason was. Mason had never met a flashbulb he didn’t love. Yesterday, the fan club had delayed him with pictures and it worked again now. Mason’s grip loosened, Tony fell free, got his feet under him, and, continually thumbing the flash, kneed the actor in the nuts.
He could almost hear his own giving a little cheer at getting some back.
As Mason dropped down out of sight, Tony ran for the other end of the set, ducking and weaving through the ongoing battle Henry and CB were fighting with the shadow-held. His feet thumped into bodies he couldn’t see. Didn’t want to see.
The pattern hadn’t grown in the last few moments because Arra, laptop open and balanced on one hand, was holding the Shadowlord in place with the other.
“You’re only delaying the inevitable, old woman,” he snarled as Tony ducked under a flying can of hair spray and slid between them.
“Let him go, Arra. I’ve got him.”
“You?” Simultaneous. From both wizards.
Eyes locked with the one, he snarled, “Fucking bite me! Let him go and finish!” at the other.
He was almost surprised when she did.
But not quite as surprised as the Shadowlord.
“And what can you do?” he mocked, stepping forward.
Tony slid his hands around the other man’s face, laced them behind his head, and locked their mouths together. His lips were cool, but Tony was used to that. He changed the angle, made it wetter, more . . . carnal. We could have the Shadowlord had said. We.
The protective spell didn’t kick in.
Hands locked on his waist hard enough to leave new bruises.
Son of a bitch; it is my ass.
Under other circumstances, he’d have found that gratifying. Although, even if evil wizards had been his type, any swelling crotch-side tonight was likely to be edema. Passion, pain—fortunately, all moaning sounded remarkably alike.
As a distraction, it worked because it was unexpected, but it didn’t work long.
Darkness flared and Tony found himself on the floor again, his skull cracking hard enough against the concrete to cause stars.
Okay, stars are new.
When they didn’t go away, he realized it wasn’t stars he was seeing; it was Arra’s pattern through the refraction of the fog. Which was dissipating. Either the foggers were empty or the sound stage was just too big.
On the bright side, the Shadowlord seemed to be caught on the lines of light like a fly in a web. That brief bout of tonsil hockey must’ve given Arra enough time to finish.
Yay, me.
And then again . . .
Torso tight against the light, the Shadowlord flung out his arms, fingers extended. Streamers of darkness began to flow into them. He was calling back the shadows. Releasing the shadow-held. Tony could hear bodies hitting the floor.
He was calling back pieces of himself.
He was getting stronger.
In another moment, he’d be free of the pattern.
Where the hell was Yerma-whoever?
It wasn’t working. Arra knew it wouldn’t work. Knew it. Had known it. Had always known it. She checked the pattern on the laptop, checked the pattern drawn on the air . . . They were identical. It wasn’t her fault.
*All your fault.*
Caught on the other side of the light, the Shadowlord smiled.
*They died because of you,* the shadows whispered. *They die when you leave. They die when you stay. They die because you fail them. All of them.*
“Shut up!” A world lived in shadow because she couldn’t stop him. This world would fall to shadow because she couldn’t stop him. He was right. It was all her fault.
The light wavered.
His smile broadened and he jerked back.
*You should never have come here. You doomed this world.*
She shouldn’t have. And she had. Her heart was pounding and her vision began to blur.
*At least this time you’ll die with them.*
Kiril. Sarn. Haryain. Tevora. Mai-Sim. Pettryn. So many others, all dead.
Reflecting back the pattern, his eyes glittered in triumph and she realized he knew the names of the dead as well as she did.
*Charlie. Chester. Henry. Tony.*
“They’re not dead!” All right, from what she’d seen, Charlie very probably was, but the others . . . CB and Henry still fought. Tony was down, true, but moving. Struggling.
*They’re not dead yet.*
She could see Tony. He was close enough to the pattern that the gold tinted his skin and hair. He was trying to sit up.
“You’re right. They’re not dead yet and neither am I.” Snapping the laptop closed, she tossed it aside and spread her arms, a mirror image of the wizard on the other side of the light, pulling her own power in to support the pattern. “And if I die, I’m going out kicking your skinny ass.”
*If you die?*
Shadow laughter danced cold air up and down her spine.
A little over seven days spent in Tony’s company gave her the words she needed. “Bite me, you son of a bitch!”
Teeth gleaming gold, the Shadowlord jerked back again, far enough this time to find his own voice. “Maybe later.”
Fighting for focus, Tony rose up on one elbow and stared at the lines. He was right. It was the pattern that had been drawn on the blackboard in another world seven years earlier. The wizards had been nailed here . . .
. . . and here.
But here . . .
He shook his head, trying to clear it, and nearly puked.
But here . . . the line was wrong.
The Shadowlord cried out in victory.
Tony reached out and tugged a line of light a few centimeters to the right.
Golden light flowed out of the pattern. It covered his skin, ran up under his clothing, and drifted past each individual hair on his head. It felt like . . .
Like . . .
Pain.
As he fell, writhing, he realized he wasn’t the only one screaming.
The screams didn’t quite hide a familiar soft sputz.
Back arched to the point where bone had to be protesting, the Shadowlord rose up into the air. One by one, shadows were wrenched from him and destroyed.
Tony screamed a little louder as the bit of him went. It looked no different than the others, but he felt its loss.
By the time the last of the shadows were gone, Tony’s voice had faded to a hoarse rasp, but the Shadowlord’s agony continued to fill the soundstage. With the shadows gone, there wasn’t much of him left. A translucent figure of a man with golden patterns etched into his skin, his eyes and mouth dark holes in a distorted face.
Flare.
And nothing.
When Tony opened his eyes, he was lying on the couch in Raymond Dark’s office. It was a comfortable couch; he’d crashed out on it more than once during seventeen-hour shoots.
Golden flecks of light danced across his vision. He remembered fog.
Right. The L
ondon street flashback. Had they finished shooting it?
Then he tried to sit up. Memory rode in with the pain.
Henry’s arm was around his shoulder a heartbeat later, supporting his weight. Tony blinked and managed to focus on the vampire. His throat hurt, reducing his voice to a rough whisper. “Is that a black eye?”
“Yes. I ducked a crowbar and your makeup artist nailed me with a can of hair spray.”
Frowning hurt, too, so Tony stopped doing it. “Sort of remember seeing one fly by.”
“It was an interesting battle. Interesting finish.” Henry hadn’t been able to get to Tony until the light faded. He’d had to stand, surrounded by the fallen, fighting restraining hands, unable to do anything while Tony screamed. Yeramathia, whatever or whoever Yeramathia was, didn’t give a damn what he considered his. “What else do you remember?”
“Golden light. The Shadowlord . . .” He waved a trembling hand. There weren’t really words for having seen a man dissolve in light. “I remember pain.”
“That’s because you were touching the pattern when Yeramathia answered.” Arra’s voice cut through the memory. She stood, arms folded, by Raymond Dark’s desk. Apparently, frowning caused her no trouble at all. “What were you thinking, boy? Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
Tony shifted in Henry’s grip until he faced her. “I was thinking that your pattern was wrong.”
“My pattern?”
“Yeah. Your pattern. I’ve seen it more recently and it was wrong. So I fixed it.”
“You fixed it?”
“Yeah.” Her expression had begun to worry him. “No big. I just tugged one line over a bit.”
“You just tugged one line over a bit?” She was staring at him again, only this time her mouth was open. As Tony was about to point it out, she closed it with a snap. “Right. Well. Next time . . .”
“No.” He’d gotten his definite back. “There isn’t going to be a next time. We barely survived this time. Go home, Arra, you know you want to. Go home when the timer goes off and start a new order or raise chickens, I don’t fucking care.” Head throbbing, he let himself sag against Henry’s shoulder for a moment. Plenty of time to be butch later. “Just go home and close the gate after you.”
“Come with me.”
“What?” So much for sagging.
“Be the start of my new order. The Shadowlord has been destroyed, but there remains much work to do on the other side. I could use the help of someone who does not run away from a fight. The help of someone who will not let others run away.”
“What?” He squirmed around and looked at Henry who didn’t seem all that surprised. “What the hell is she talking about?”
“She’s telling you that you can be a wizard, Tony. If you want to.”
“Me?”
“You,” Arra answered. “You see what others do not. You reach out where others fear to. You are able to touch power and mold it to your use.”
The lack of contractions was beginning to seriously freak him out.
“I saw this in you from the beginning. There is great potential in you. You could become . . .” She paused, snorted, and rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m not promising anything but you could become competent with training and practice.”
“Me?”
“We’ll work on articulate as well.”
“She’s serious?”
Henry nodded. “And abrasive. But I believe her.”
He could go through a magical gate to another world and become a wizard. He could learn to work the energy of that world, bend it and mold it to his own ends. He touched the memory of the Shadowlord; he could learn to command shadow.
His throat was dry.
Tony swallowed, dragged his tongue across his lips, and got slowly to his feet. Henry helped rather a lot with the latter.
“Arra.” A deep breath. “I’d rather have perpetual root canals.”
Arra sighed, reached into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt, and handed Henry a twenty. “I still say it was worth a shot. He’s an annoying little shit, but I hate to see that kind of potential wasted.”
“He’s not wasting it,” Henry told her as he pocketed the money.
“Bull. He’s a production assistant at a third-rate . . .” CB cleared his throat from the doorway and Arra adjusted for his presence. “. . . second-rate production house.”
“Yeah, now,” Tony protested.
“He can go far here as well,” CB added. “Eventually. Right now, it’s 11:12. If you’re right about the timer, the gate’s about to open.”
There were people sprawled up against every solid surface on the set. Most of them were drinking a familiar smelling cocktail—Tony noticed that every prop capable of holding liquid as well as the coffee cups from the office kitchen had been put in service. People looked confused but docile, content to suck back the potion—the potion that he’d made—and stare around them with wide, bruised eyes. A few of the crew were sprawled but not drinking, their eyes closed and their arms lying limp by their sides.
Consequences.
“Are they . . . ?”
“No,” Henry told him. “Just unconscious. Probably a couple of concussions. Arra said she’d take care of them.”
“Is anyone . . .”
“Charlie Harris and Rahal Singh.”
One for the Shadowlord. “Did you . . . ?”
“Yes.”
And one for Henry. “Are you okay?”
The corner of Henry’s mouth that Tony could see curved up into something not quite a smile. “I’ve killed before, Tony.”
“I know.” He tightened his grip on the vampire’s arm, not because he was in danger of falling but because he needed Henry to understand that he did know. Even if, in true guy fashion, they weren’t going to talk about it. Big difference between killing for food or for vengeance or even caught up in Darkness and killing without intending to or wanting to. “You up for comfort food later?”
That evoked an actual smile and an incredulous laugh. “If you are.”
“Date.” As Arra made her way around the edges of the set, stepping over arms and legs and cables, he noticed a complex pattern drawn in chalk in the center of the floor. “What’s that?”
“Memories,” CB rumbled from behind him. “Ready to be erased. You and I,” he raised his voice to the point where Arra turned toward them, “are not a part of it.”
She rolled her eyes. “We’ve been over this.”
“Precedent suggests we have no reason to trust you.”
“Does precedent suggest what I have to say to that?”
Then the gate opened and Tony’s knees buckled. Fortunately, Henry caught him before he reached the floor. He figured he’d used up his lifetime allotment of smacking into horizontal surfaces.
“You shouldn’t be so close.”
He struggled back into what was more or less a vertical position. “I need to see this.”
As darkness roiled down from an empty place by the ceiling—the Shadowlord’s reinforcements coming without being called—Arra lifted both arms over her head and rapidly sketched another pattern in the air. She looked like she always did, but she looked like a wizard, too. Acceptance, Tony realized suddenly. She looked like she’d accepted what she was and what that meant.
Pattern complete, she pushed it forward. There was a sizzle and flash when it hit the darkness. A hiss and a flash as it hit the gate. A distant scream as it disappeared and there was a flashback through the gate so bright Henry threw both arms in front of his eyes. Tony sagged back against CB’s momentarily comforting bulk.
He felt the gate snap closed. Arra was still standing there. He must have tensed because CB murmured, “She’ll go another time. There are things here that need taking care of.”
Right. Of course. “The cats.”
“Also the cats.” Chester Bane looked out over the soundstage and realized he had been a part of something remarkable. The defeat of an invading evil. The more significant d
efeat of personal demons. The discovery of a hero in an unlikely place. And the whole damned thing had put them seriously behind schedule. Still, he allowed reluctantly, it could have been worse. They could also be over budget. “Mr. Fitzroy, if you could assist me with . . .”
The bodies, Tony filled in silently.
Blinking away what must have been painful afterimages, Henry nodded at CB and turned again to Tony. “Will you be all right?”
Tony slid sideways until his weight was against the lid of Raymond Dark’s coffin. “I’ll be fine.”
Eventually.
As the two men moved away, another moved in.
Cradling his left arm against his body, Lee stared at Tony for a long moment. Did people always do this much staring or am I just noticing it now? He blinked, then asked himself, “Why not?” and stared back.
“That was . . .” The actor’s brows nearly met over his nose. “There were . . .” He swallowed and, looking as though he was maybe thirty seconds from a total meltdown, jerked his head toward the place where the gate had been. “There was light. What the hell was that?”
“This is television.” Tony swept his arm around in a gesture expansive enough to take in both cameras still pointed toward the center of the set. “It was a special effect.”
“Bullshit. I’m not stupid, Tony. Or blind. What’s going on.” He took a step closer, well within Tony’s personal space. “Talk to me.”
“All right.” He raised a hand to cut off any immediate questions. “But not tonight.” He touched his throat. “Hurts. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Green eyes narrowed. Wrong color but otherwise a dead man’s expression. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
An easy promise to make since Arra was already erasing the chalk memories drawn on the floor.
“No, CB says Mason’s fine.”
Arra snorted as they crossed the soundstage. “I can’t say that I’m really surprised. If anyone had ego enough to cope with being shadow-held for so long, it would be Mason Reed.” She nodded toward the stepladder. “It’s almost time. If there’s anything you want to know . . .”
She wanted him to ask about meaning-of-life stuff. She’d been rediscovering her wizard roots over the last three days and wanted him in on it. Tony started to shrug but cut the motion off short as Whitby protested the movement. Both cats had been protesting the indignity of the cat carriers since they’d left the co-op.