Vancouver Port - Friday, August 7 - Sunset
Aug. 7th, 2009 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wantstodirectTony hadn’t expected to be done with work by sunset let alone have time to get from the studio to VanTerm before Leah finished her stunt. But at 5:50, almost an hour before the sun actually went down, he was in his car and heading west on Hastings. He was glad he made it. Leah’s dive off the stern of one of the ships in port was damned impressive and more of a stunt than CB would ever be willing to pay for.
He met Leah after the stunt at her trailer, where she changed out of her wig and costume into a yellow hoodie and jeans.
“Come on, Tony, I’ve got to sign off, then we can go. Hell of a way to make a living, eh?”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Are you kidding? It’s the most fun I’ve had with immortality since the thirteenth century.” She raised a hand. “Don’t ask. And the money’s nothing to sneeze at. I mean we’re talking $500 a day base rate plus, for this shoot, the CBC increase of 25 percent. I get called for a big budget movie and the increase can be as high as 130 percent—you should maybe learn some basic physical protections and think about it.”
“No, thanks, I want to direct.”
“Of course you do. Hey, I’m starving. The moment I finish the paperwork, let’s head for some food.”
“We’re eating?”
“And talking. I think you proved last night you can handle both.”
Last night. Right. “Where’s… ?” He gestured at the space over her head.
“Ryne Cyratane? Probably as far from the gate as he can get. He’s like a cat, hates water. Shit. Shoelace. Hang on.”
Tony who’d taken a couple of extra steps, turned as she dropped to one knee. The sunset was behind her, the last of the light unexpectedly bright. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, and saw something move. At first he thought it was the Demonlord, then he realized it was significantly solider and swinging a human arm directly through the space Leah’s head had just occupied.
She dropped flat, warned by the swish or the smell or both, and rolled away from a kick that would have disemboweled her had the claws made contact.
Disemboweled anyone else.
As Leah rose to her knees, he thought he saw a familiar breadth of translucent bare shoulders behind her although with the sun in his eyes it was hard to tell for certain. “Do something!”
“Do what?” There were scales and horns and whoa! Teeth!
“Wizard it!”
Right.
He folded the middle two fingers of his right hand in and swung his right arm back and then around and over his head. He was supposed to shout the eleven words of the spell clearly and distinctly, but clear and distinct got dumped in favor of speed. Things that were mostly serrated edged were fucking motivating! As long as the arm motion and the words finished as the same time it should…
Energy surged up from his feet, roared through his body, and blew out of his outstretched arm, arcing between forefinger and little finger then blasting forward.
The sudden flash was impressive.
“Tony?” Leah scrambled across the asphalt toward him. “Are you all right?”
Good question. Bits hurt. Hardly surprising since the spell had knocked him back on his ass. He blinked away brilliant blue afterimages. “I think I broke my tailbone.”
“Yeah…” She slipped an arm behind his shoulders and levered him up. Fortunately, her Demonlord seemed to have taken a powder because being cuddled by them both would have been too weird. “… and your fingernails are smoking.”
One last narrow wisp of smoke drifted off into the twilight from the ends of both blackened nails. “Ow.”
“Well put. What do you call that?”
“Arra called it a Powershot.” His fingers felt scalded, but he could use his hand. He’d memorized the spell recently, but Vancouver didn’t have a whole lot of places where he could safely practice explosive magic, so this was the first time he’d actually tried it.
“What the hell was that thing?”
“That was a demon.”
“A demon? Like a Demonic Convergence demon? Like nothing to worry about because we’ll only have to deal with imps? That kind of a demon?”
“It shouldn’t be here!”
“No shit!”
Still supporting most of his weight, she glared down at him. From this close, Tony could see a tiny scar at the edge of her right eyebrow. “Quit yelling at me! It’s not helping!”
He could also see that she was really most sincerely freaked and that threatened to send him into strong hysterics. When thirty-five-hundred-year-old immortal stuntwomen got freaked, it was time for the rest of the world to fucking lose it. Fortunately—for some weird definition of fortunately he didn’t want to go into right now—he was too exhausted to start up the whole oh, my God, we’re all going to die thing. After a couple of deep breaths, he managed a fairly calm, “What happened to it?”
“Ash.”
“And the arm?”
Leah nodded toward a long, narrow lump of black on the pavement. “It got just a little overcooked.”
“But the demon is ash?”
“The demon was other, the arm was flesh.”
That almost made sense. Tony struggled to sit up a little straighter, but someone seemed to have snuck into his body and replaced all his muscles with marshmallows. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Considering the way you just blew your wad, I’m not surprised.”
“Nice imagery.”
“Thank you. Can you…” Approaching voices cut her off and suddenly it became necessary he sit up on his own as Leah withdrew her arm and stood. “Oh, no, here comes the cavalry. They must’ve seen the flash. You get that arm packed up and let me deal with them.”
Deal? Tony managed to brace himself on one hand and turn enough to see three men approaching from the jetty. Then Leah crossed into his line of sight, hips moving to an ancient rhythm. She laughed in answer to something one of the men said, a low, throaty sound that held heated suggestion.
And if even he could feel the heat, the odds were very high that none of the three men were now paying any attention to anything else.
Tony got a plastic bag from the makeup trailer. It wasn’t easy finding the remains of the arm. The banks of overhead lights shining down on the stacks of containers created nearly impenetrable shadow and, half blind, he almost tripped over it before he saw it. It looked like a long lump of charcoal roughly carved into the shape of an arm—a slight bend in the black where the elbow might be and little stubby fingers on one end. Given that the construction worker’s other hand had been relatively normal, he had to assume the stubbiness occurred after death. Had the Powershot burned the fingers away? Or had the demon snacked on the end of his weapon?
“Demon snacks. Right. Why can’t I ever spend time thinking about cars or getting laid, like a normal guy?” He sighed as he shook out the garbage bag. It was one of the small white ones made for garbage pails under the sink and it smelled vaguely of mint.
The scar on the palm of his left hand twitched as he dropped heavily to one knee beside the arm, and he hesitated, fingers spread out about five centimeters over the burned flesh.
“Problem?” Leah’s voice behind his right shoulder.
“The last time I picked up an arm, it wasn’t… fun.” Hello, understatement.
“Well, this one’s pretty much pure carbon, so I don’t imagine it’ll give you any… Oh, my God! The fingers moved!” She snickered as he threw himself back so quickly he toppled over and pulled the garbage bag from his hand. “Kidding. Here, I’ll get it.”
“You seem to be feeling better,” he muttered from the asphalt.
“There’s nothing like a little slap and tickle to remind a girl of what’s important.” Slipping the bag over her hand, Leah bent and scooped up the arm like she was scooping an enormous turd. An enormous burned turd. With fingers. Stubby fingers. “I’m going to be feeling better than you will for a while,” she added, straightening. “You just ripped that energy right out of your guts, didn’t you?”
“I guess.” Feet, legs, guts eventually. Tony rolled up onto his knees as Leah closed the bag and reached into his pocket for the twist tie Hama had given him. A narrow piece of paper fluttered to the ground, a small line of white against the dark asphalt.
“What’s that?”
“Fortune from last night’s cookie.” He picked it up and turned it over, leaning back just a little to bring it out of shadow. “The blow from sunlight is more unexpected than the blow from darkness. That demon just attacked you in the last of the sunlight,” he said slowly as he got to his feet. “And I’d say that was unexpected.”
Leah rolled her eyes. “You got a fortune cookie that really tells the future?”
“You’ve got a tattoo that’s a Demongate.”
“So you’re saying stranger things have happened?”
“You’re holding an arm.”
She glanced down at the bag. “Good point.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
It took almost more effort than he had available to pull his car keys out of his jacket pocket. “Can you drive?”
[Once again lifted from chapter three of Smoke and Ashes by the marvelous Tanya Huff with some edits.]
He met Leah after the stunt at her trailer, where she changed out of her wig and costume into a yellow hoodie and jeans.
“Come on, Tony, I’ve got to sign off, then we can go. Hell of a way to make a living, eh?”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Are you kidding? It’s the most fun I’ve had with immortality since the thirteenth century.” She raised a hand. “Don’t ask. And the money’s nothing to sneeze at. I mean we’re talking $500 a day base rate plus, for this shoot, the CBC increase of 25 percent. I get called for a big budget movie and the increase can be as high as 130 percent—you should maybe learn some basic physical protections and think about it.”
“No, thanks, I want to direct.”
“Of course you do. Hey, I’m starving. The moment I finish the paperwork, let’s head for some food.”
“We’re eating?”
“And talking. I think you proved last night you can handle both.”
Last night. Right. “Where’s… ?” He gestured at the space over her head.
“Ryne Cyratane? Probably as far from the gate as he can get. He’s like a cat, hates water. Shit. Shoelace. Hang on.”
Tony who’d taken a couple of extra steps, turned as she dropped to one knee. The sunset was behind her, the last of the light unexpectedly bright. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, and saw something move. At first he thought it was the Demonlord, then he realized it was significantly solider and swinging a human arm directly through the space Leah’s head had just occupied.
She dropped flat, warned by the swish or the smell or both, and rolled away from a kick that would have disemboweled her had the claws made contact.
Disemboweled anyone else.
As Leah rose to her knees, he thought he saw a familiar breadth of translucent bare shoulders behind her although with the sun in his eyes it was hard to tell for certain. “Do something!”
“Do what?” There were scales and horns and whoa! Teeth!
“Wizard it!”
Right.
He folded the middle two fingers of his right hand in and swung his right arm back and then around and over his head. He was supposed to shout the eleven words of the spell clearly and distinctly, but clear and distinct got dumped in favor of speed. Things that were mostly serrated edged were fucking motivating! As long as the arm motion and the words finished as the same time it should…
Energy surged up from his feet, roared through his body, and blew out of his outstretched arm, arcing between forefinger and little finger then blasting forward.
The sudden flash was impressive.
“Tony?” Leah scrambled across the asphalt toward him. “Are you all right?”
Good question. Bits hurt. Hardly surprising since the spell had knocked him back on his ass. He blinked away brilliant blue afterimages. “I think I broke my tailbone.”
“Yeah…” She slipped an arm behind his shoulders and levered him up. Fortunately, her Demonlord seemed to have taken a powder because being cuddled by them both would have been too weird. “… and your fingernails are smoking.”
One last narrow wisp of smoke drifted off into the twilight from the ends of both blackened nails. “Ow.”
“Well put. What do you call that?”
“Arra called it a Powershot.” His fingers felt scalded, but he could use his hand. He’d memorized the spell recently, but Vancouver didn’t have a whole lot of places where he could safely practice explosive magic, so this was the first time he’d actually tried it.
“What the hell was that thing?”
“That was a demon.”
“A demon? Like a Demonic Convergence demon? Like nothing to worry about because we’ll only have to deal with imps? That kind of a demon?”
“It shouldn’t be here!”
“No shit!”
Still supporting most of his weight, she glared down at him. From this close, Tony could see a tiny scar at the edge of her right eyebrow. “Quit yelling at me! It’s not helping!”
He could also see that she was really most sincerely freaked and that threatened to send him into strong hysterics. When thirty-five-hundred-year-old immortal stuntwomen got freaked, it was time for the rest of the world to fucking lose it. Fortunately—for some weird definition of fortunately he didn’t want to go into right now—he was too exhausted to start up the whole oh, my God, we’re all going to die thing. After a couple of deep breaths, he managed a fairly calm, “What happened to it?”
“Ash.”
“And the arm?”
Leah nodded toward a long, narrow lump of black on the pavement. “It got just a little overcooked.”
“But the demon is ash?”
“The demon was other, the arm was flesh.”
That almost made sense. Tony struggled to sit up a little straighter, but someone seemed to have snuck into his body and replaced all his muscles with marshmallows. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Considering the way you just blew your wad, I’m not surprised.”
“Nice imagery.”
“Thank you. Can you…” Approaching voices cut her off and suddenly it became necessary he sit up on his own as Leah withdrew her arm and stood. “Oh, no, here comes the cavalry. They must’ve seen the flash. You get that arm packed up and let me deal with them.”
Deal? Tony managed to brace himself on one hand and turn enough to see three men approaching from the jetty. Then Leah crossed into his line of sight, hips moving to an ancient rhythm. She laughed in answer to something one of the men said, a low, throaty sound that held heated suggestion.
And if even he could feel the heat, the odds were very high that none of the three men were now paying any attention to anything else.
Tony got a plastic bag from the makeup trailer. It wasn’t easy finding the remains of the arm. The banks of overhead lights shining down on the stacks of containers created nearly impenetrable shadow and, half blind, he almost tripped over it before he saw it. It looked like a long lump of charcoal roughly carved into the shape of an arm—a slight bend in the black where the elbow might be and little stubby fingers on one end. Given that the construction worker’s other hand had been relatively normal, he had to assume the stubbiness occurred after death. Had the Powershot burned the fingers away? Or had the demon snacked on the end of his weapon?
“Demon snacks. Right. Why can’t I ever spend time thinking about cars or getting laid, like a normal guy?” He sighed as he shook out the garbage bag. It was one of the small white ones made for garbage pails under the sink and it smelled vaguely of mint.
The scar on the palm of his left hand twitched as he dropped heavily to one knee beside the arm, and he hesitated, fingers spread out about five centimeters over the burned flesh.
“Problem?” Leah’s voice behind his right shoulder.
“The last time I picked up an arm, it wasn’t… fun.” Hello, understatement.
“Well, this one’s pretty much pure carbon, so I don’t imagine it’ll give you any… Oh, my God! The fingers moved!” She snickered as he threw himself back so quickly he toppled over and pulled the garbage bag from his hand. “Kidding. Here, I’ll get it.”
“You seem to be feeling better,” he muttered from the asphalt.
“There’s nothing like a little slap and tickle to remind a girl of what’s important.” Slipping the bag over her hand, Leah bent and scooped up the arm like she was scooping an enormous turd. An enormous burned turd. With fingers. Stubby fingers. “I’m going to be feeling better than you will for a while,” she added, straightening. “You just ripped that energy right out of your guts, didn’t you?”
“I guess.” Feet, legs, guts eventually. Tony rolled up onto his knees as Leah closed the bag and reached into his pocket for the twist tie Hama had given him. A narrow piece of paper fluttered to the ground, a small line of white against the dark asphalt.
“What’s that?”
“Fortune from last night’s cookie.” He picked it up and turned it over, leaning back just a little to bring it out of shadow. “The blow from sunlight is more unexpected than the blow from darkness. That demon just attacked you in the last of the sunlight,” he said slowly as he got to his feet. “And I’d say that was unexpected.”
Leah rolled her eyes. “You got a fortune cookie that really tells the future?”
“You’ve got a tattoo that’s a Demongate.”
“So you’re saying stranger things have happened?”
“You’re holding an arm.”
She glanced down at the bag. “Good point.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
It took almost more effort than he had available to pull his car keys out of his jacket pocket. “Can you drive?”
[Once again lifted from chapter three of Smoke and Ashes by the marvelous Tanya Huff with some edits.]
