Darkest Night - Smoke and Shadows Part 51

Where the h.e.l.l 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 a.s.s."

*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 b.i.t.c.h!"

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 hoa.r.s.e 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 London 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 d.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 f.u.c.king 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 h.e.l.l 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 ca.n.a.ls."

Arra sighed, reached into the pocket of her hooded sweats.h.i.+rt, and handed Henry a twenty. "I still say it was worth a shot. He's an annoying little s.h.i.+t, 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 a.s.sistant 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 c.o.c.ktail-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 fas.h.i.+on, 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.