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wantstodirect[Continued from here]
Leah drove while Tony tried to memorize the runes for the spell send the demon home. She broke more than a few laws trying to get to the studio quickly. Fortunately, the cops that showed up were Constable Elson and his partner.
The cars fishtailed off the ramp onto Boundary, squealed tires through the gate of the industrial complex, and sprayed gravel in tandem as they pulled up in the parking lot at CB Productions.
Elson was out of the car, gun in his hand, before the gravel hit the ground again. “When they called in your plates, I figured something was up. What is it?” he demanded falling into step as Tony sprinted for the building.
Tony hesitated, wondering if Elson had kept his partner in the loop. Television cops never kept secrets from their partners. “There’s a demon ripping up the soundstage!” he said, running into the studio.
The Demonic Convergence was happening on the lower mainland because Leah and the oldest spell in the world currently lived here. But she didn’t have the only spell around. It might not even be the strongest. It sure as hell wasn’t the freshest.
Looking for that nice, fresh demonic feeling?
Oh, man, I seriously need some downtime with my brain.
In the last few weeks, the set under the gate that had brought Arra Pelindrake into this world and then taken her out again had been the living room of grieving parents, a medieval dining hall, and a veterinary office—anything they could fit into the space without moving the walls or windows. CB disapproved of unnecessary rebuilding.
The end wall had been reduced to a jagged bit of framing and a dangling piece of plywood. Standing surrounded by debris, one sleeve ripped from his suit Elsonet and the exposed arm hanging limp by his side, CB shook a length of pipe up at the lighting grid. “Get your scaly red ass down here so I can kick it back to whatever overblown special effect it crawled out of!”
A shriek of tortured metal from above.
One of the big lamps plummeted toward the floor.
Time was supposed to slow as certain death approached. That was the theory. Total bullshit as far as Tony was concerned. The lamp exploded against the painted concrete floor, CB dove out of the way, swinging the pipe to deflect a shard of glass away from his leg, and Tony barely had time enough to realize he should do something. No time at all to think of just what he should do.
The sound of another lamp ripped from the grid made one thing clear; he had to get the demon down.
Tony held out his hand and called.
The demon was about the size of a ten-year-old but remarkably heavy for all that. The impact knocked the breath from them both and for a moment they sprawled together on the concrete, arms and legs tangled in interspecies intimacy. Then it blinked orange eyes, and a mouth, far too wide for the face that held it, opened.
Black teeth.
Shiny and black like that lava rock Tony could never remember the name of.
Lots and lots of black teeth!
Pain flared in his left shoulder, something squeezed around his right leg, and the demon’s head snapped forward.
Fuck! Teeth!
Four shots jerked it back far enough for Tony to get his left leg free. He kicked out, hard. It reared back, hissing and snarling, still attached by the tail wrapped around Tony’s leg. He kicked it again, a little lower, and black claws on the hind legs shredded his jeans below the knee.
Elson took another shot. The tail whipped away. Danvers grabbed his shoulders, dragging him up onto his feet.
“Why are you wrestling with it?” Leah screamed, crouched behind a yellow chaise lounge. “Get those runes in the air!”
Tony ducked as the demon launched itself over him, heading for Leah. Ducked a little lower as it returned the other way, arms and legs flailing as CB yanked it back by the tail.
It folded back on itself, squirmed free, and leaped straight up.
If it regained the high ground…
No way in hell he remembered the runes.
So we stick with what we know.
Miraculously still standing, Tony made a mental note that a Powershot released inside was blinding. Hopefully, temporarily blinding.
“Mr. Foster!”
Patterns of blue light danced across the inside of Tony’s lids. At least, he thought he had his eyes closed. “Yeah, Boss?”
“Was that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hit it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is anyone being disemboweled?” Sarcasm dripped from Leah’s voice.
It seemed that no one was.
“Well, isn’t that lucky.” Not so much dripping now as flowing freely.
“What was that?” Elson’s voice, demanding an answer.
“The demon? Or Tony’s pyrotechnical answer to the demon?”
“Hey!” He turned toward where Leah’s voice put her. “We were all screwed if it got back into the light grid.”
“Damned right.” Danvers this time. Nice that someone understood.
A hand closed around his arm and by blinking rapidly he could almost make out the silhouette of the person attached to the hand. At least he hoped it was the person attached to the hand.
“You’re bleeding.” Danvers again.
“He should count his blessings he’s alive to bleed.” Leah, closer now, sounded distinctly unsympathetic. “What happened to the plan, Tony?”
“You guys had a plan?” Elson didn’t sound like he believed her.
“There’s a way to send the demons back where they came from without wiping out our best defense.”
“If this ash is all that remains of the demon, he’s out of the picture.” CB. From near the floor. “Except for a few minor punctures, I believe Mr. Foster—who, I assume, you were referring to as our best line of defense—is fine.”
“Tony, can you see yet?” Leah. Right in his face.
He could sort of make out shapes, but he got a little dizzy when he turned his head. “Uh…”
“No. He can’t. We can. He can’t.” Probably Leah’s hand on his cheek. The fingers were trembling a little. “Someone had better grab him before he cracks his skull open on the floor.”
On cue, Tony felt his knees buckle.
“I’ve got you, kid.” A dark Elson-shape with blond highlights.
“These holes look clean, and they’re not as deep as they could be.” Danvers, as she pulled his shirt off and started working on the punctures in his shoulder. Tony was starting to really like her. “Damp denim seems to make decent body armor. I don’t think he did much damage to your leg either. Is there a first aid—Thanks.”
No mistaking CB’s presence up close and personal. There was a sudden lack of open space in the immediate area.
Elson shifted his grip to give Danvers a better angle on the shoulder. “So what’s wrong with him?”
“You mean besides the holes? It was the Powershot. Not the smartest thing to do.”
Elson answered Leah’s question with one of his own. “Who are you?”
He’d keep asking until he got an answer, like the world’s biggest, red serge-wearing terrier. Given Leah’s earlier opinion of all and sundry, and given that Elson was definitely one of the sundry, the odds were good she wasn’t going to tell him. The trick was figuring out how much of the truth would shut him up.
“She’s a demonic consultant,” Tony told him, trying not to think about what Elson’s partner was doing to his shoulder.
“A what?”
“Demonic consul… OW!”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” And it was. The flash of white light accompanying the pain seemed to have cleared his vision. Where cleared meant he could see people standing around him and pretty much figure out who they were. Beyond about three meters, things were still a little fuzzy—like his focus had been pulled so he had no depth of field—which likely meant there’d be something with teeth and scales charging in from the fuzzy any minute now.
“Tony?”
Or not.
Lee gradually came into focus as he came closer. Then came into focus a lot faster as he broke into a run and dropped to one knee.
“What happened?” he demanded, his hand closing around Tony’s wrist.
Tony opened his mouth, but Elson filled the words in. “It’s the aftereffects of frying a demon.”
“You’re hurt!”
“It’s uh…” He glanced over at the blood-soaked pad in the RCMP officer’s hand and decided not to bother with the whole manly denial thing. “Yeah.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Danvers’ matter-of-fact tone made it convincing. Given that it was his blood, Tony wasn’t entirely convinced, but Lee seemed to be.
Seemed to be glaring at Elson.
Who still held Tony cradled against his body while Danvers finished with his shoulder.
Lee was glaring?
Tony had no idea how Elson was responding, but something in the way his grip shifted and the way muscles moved in his chest, made Tony think he felt amused.
“How are the others, Mr. Nicholas?” CB’s bulk reappeared like a mahogany wall at the end of Tony’s feet, the force of his personality enough to break through Lee’s… well, to break through whatever the hell was up with Lee.
“Fine. They’re good.” The actor sat back and turned, visibly distancing himself from the scene on the floor—although his fingers maintained their grip. “Mouse thinks the gaffer’s nose might be broken.”
“And Mason?”
“Would be on the phone to his agent if there was a phone around to be on.”
“I’ll speak with him in a moment.”
“I can’t say that I blame him, CB.”
“Demons.” Elson ignored Lee’s reinstated glare, but there was nothing that suggested amusement this time. He shifted Tony’s weight onto his partner, who caught it, steadied it, and raised a skeptical eyebrow when Tony muttered, “I can sit on my own.”
“What about them?” CB demanded as Elson got slowly to his feet.
“She said demons. As in more than one. They had a plan to send the demons back where they came from. That…”
All eyes turned with his gesture to the smear of ash on the floor. Tony could just barely make it out. “… isn’t the end of this. Is it?”
And all eyes turned to Leah.
Who looked at him.
His stomach growled.
* * *
Explanations took some time, even when leaving out the part about Leah being a Demongate. There was a brief debate over whether to keep the studio open while demons were likely to attack. If the studio stayed open, everyone who worked there was in physical danger. If it closed, Darkest Night wouldn't be shot on time, the show would get cancelled and everyone would lose their jobs. Keeping the studio open won. Not much was scarier than unemployment these days.
Tony missed part of the argument when he passed out on the floor of CB's office.
* * *
He woke up a bit later, sucked down some alphabet soup and got filled in on the plan. Since the demons were heading for the studio, not Leah, his job was to guard the gate and send back any demons that showed up.
Leah had gone to her apartment to get his laundry. Tony went across the street for lunch - poutine and milk, totally food. Walking back to the studio, he noticed that there was a spot by the entrance to the parking lot where the rain wasn’t quite falling. As if something occupied that space. Shit.
He could see his car back in the far end of the lot and thought he could see Leah twisted around, rummaging in the back seat. Then the driver’s side door opened and an enormous white-and-red umbrella emerged, tipped down to keep the rain from blowing up under the outer edge. Unfortunately, tipped down, it was also keeping Leah from spotting the anomaly moving across the parking lot toward her.
Lifting his left hand, Tony called the umbrella. The demon appeared as nylon and wire and wood passed through the same space it was occupying, and Leah, mouth open to demand answers, had just enough time to fling herself back inside the car as claws struck sparks off the closing door. For a heartbeat the car filled with a translucent, naked, and very pissed-off Demonlord, then it was only Leah.
Yeah, well, I’d be pissed, too, if my way back into the world kept ducking at the last minute.
Fortunately, the demon was intent on peeling his quarry out of her strange new shell. Where fortunately didn’t refer to the damage being done to his car. As he started focusing energy, Tony realized he’d pretty much run out of options. Another Powershot would use all the energy he’d regained and then some—the “and then some” was the worrying bit. He’d done a little gaming in his day and he knew what happened when stats fell into negative numbers. Leah’s runes were his best chance. He was pretty sure he could remember the first one and then, with any luck, the others would fall into line behind it.
Except he couldn’t quite remember the first rune.
Curves here. Crosses back. And there’s sort of a circle thing…
Crap!
The demon shot him a disdainful sneer over one shoulder—given the excessive teeth and the glowing yellow eyes, it was a pretty damned effective sneer—and then slammed its palm down on the window. The window cracked.
He could hear Leah screaming.
Fuck!
No time to get this wrong!
He wiped out half the glowing symbol, realized it now looked sort of like the word go…
Palm against glass. A louder crack. More screaming.
… and went with plan B. The rune on his left hand grabbed ghosts. Ghosts were energy left over when flesh rotted. Therefore, the rune should allow him to grab this energy.
Grab it and throw it.
The glowing blue go hit the demon between the shoulder blades and sucked into the scaled skin with a disconcerting sizzle.
The demon spun around…
H
… shifted its weight onto two different legs…
0
… and charged.
M
Tony didn’t have to keep throwing the letters. The demon charged through them, no longer sneering, clearly intent on ripping apart this puny mortal who dared to interfere.
Puny mortal? Where the hell had that come from?
Sizzle.
Sizzle.
Sizzle.
Too close!
The world had not gone into slow motion. Too bad because he could have used a bit more time. Eyes locked on the charging demon, his breath coming fast and shallow; he was only going to get one chance. Panic lending speed, more focused than he’d ever been in his life, he scrawled the last letter in the air.
E
Not so much a sizzle as a ZAP. Like the world’s biggest bug hitting the world’s biggest bug zapper.
The impact threw Tony backward as the demon flared a brilliant lime green and disappeared, leaving nothing behind him but a piece of smoking pavement and the smell of charred fish. It was over before his ass hit the parking lot; a large, deep puddle absorbing most of the impact.
“What was that all about?”
He could feel power racing over his skin as he peered up through the afterimages at Leah. “You’re welcome.”
“It was kind of hard to see what you were doing…” Her voice grew shriller with every word. “… but those weren’t the right runes!”
“They worked.”
“They shouldn’t have!”
Tony would have shrugged, but his shoulder hurt way too much and, from the line of warmth dribbling down his chest, he had a feeling the bandage had come loose. He should have felt like crap, but he didn’t. He felt invincible. It was like the way he knew where things were when he reached for them except… more. He knew where the whole world was. He knew where he was in the world. No. More still. He was the world. Just him, no backup singers.
It was the most incredible feeling. There was nothing he couldn’t do, and no one could stop him. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he healed the puncture wounds in his shoulder.
And was amazed by the new and exciting levels of pain.
“SonofafuckingBITCH!”
Then world was a big ball of rock again, and his place in it involved a puddle and a parking lot.
“Tony!” Leah was right in his face. “What did you do to the demon?”
“I told it to go home.”
Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. She took a step away. “Go home?”
“Yeah.” The warm August rain soaked through his pants. “You said it yourself, the demons don’t belong here. I sent it back where it belonged.”
“It’s not that easy!”
“It is if I want it to be.” Teeth clenched, he checked to make sure his arm still worked, then he got to his feet. “This is my world, not his.” No need to define the pronoun. “He may need to slaughter whole villages and draw complicated esoteric symbols, I don’t.” Rain ran under his collar and down his back. “Intent is nine tenths of the law.”
“No, it isn’t!”
“It is,” he repeated slowly and deliberately, “if I want it to be.”
Leah’s Demonlord seemed more present than usual. The antlered head went up and his nostrils flared as he searched for…
Me.
He’s searching for the power that sent his demon home.
But the Demonlord’s—attention?—slid right past him.
Like I’m not even here…
And he wasn’t, Tony realized suddenly, not according to the Leah-filter Ryne Cyratane experienced the world through. He wasn’t reacting to Leah’s I’m an enormous metaphysical slut performance, so to the Demonlord he didn’t exist. Except that he obviously did since there was a demon back home blubbering about the big mean wizard who’d kicked demon butt. The Demonlord had come looking for the wizard but wasn’t finding him.
Two possibilities.
Straight woman. Gay man. In the far end of both options where there was no attraction at all to what Leah was offering.
He got Leah and himself coffee and muffins from craft services and they went inside the studio. The demon had a rune burned into his hand. If the demons were coming from Ryne Cyratane, why would he be marking them? “He’s marking them so they can hurt you,” he said at last. “Slipping them between the runes in the existing spell.”
“Yeah.” Leah brushed crumbs off her sleeve. “I got that.”
Tony thought about it while he finished his coffee, then put it aside and went out to get his laundry from his car. Battling a Demonlord would be easier when he wasn't distracted by wet underwear.
[Pulled from chapters six and seven of Smoke and Ashes.]
Leah drove while Tony tried to memorize the runes for the spell send the demon home. She broke more than a few laws trying to get to the studio quickly. Fortunately, the cops that showed up were Constable Elson and his partner.
The cars fishtailed off the ramp onto Boundary, squealed tires through the gate of the industrial complex, and sprayed gravel in tandem as they pulled up in the parking lot at CB Productions.
Elson was out of the car, gun in his hand, before the gravel hit the ground again. “When they called in your plates, I figured something was up. What is it?” he demanded falling into step as Tony sprinted for the building.
Tony hesitated, wondering if Elson had kept his partner in the loop. Television cops never kept secrets from their partners. “There’s a demon ripping up the soundstage!” he said, running into the studio.
The Demonic Convergence was happening on the lower mainland because Leah and the oldest spell in the world currently lived here. But she didn’t have the only spell around. It might not even be the strongest. It sure as hell wasn’t the freshest.
Looking for that nice, fresh demonic feeling?
Oh, man, I seriously need some downtime with my brain.
In the last few weeks, the set under the gate that had brought Arra Pelindrake into this world and then taken her out again had been the living room of grieving parents, a medieval dining hall, and a veterinary office—anything they could fit into the space without moving the walls or windows. CB disapproved of unnecessary rebuilding.
The end wall had been reduced to a jagged bit of framing and a dangling piece of plywood. Standing surrounded by debris, one sleeve ripped from his suit Elsonet and the exposed arm hanging limp by his side, CB shook a length of pipe up at the lighting grid. “Get your scaly red ass down here so I can kick it back to whatever overblown special effect it crawled out of!”
A shriek of tortured metal from above.
One of the big lamps plummeted toward the floor.
Time was supposed to slow as certain death approached. That was the theory. Total bullshit as far as Tony was concerned. The lamp exploded against the painted concrete floor, CB dove out of the way, swinging the pipe to deflect a shard of glass away from his leg, and Tony barely had time enough to realize he should do something. No time at all to think of just what he should do.
The sound of another lamp ripped from the grid made one thing clear; he had to get the demon down.
Tony held out his hand and called.
The demon was about the size of a ten-year-old but remarkably heavy for all that. The impact knocked the breath from them both and for a moment they sprawled together on the concrete, arms and legs tangled in interspecies intimacy. Then it blinked orange eyes, and a mouth, far too wide for the face that held it, opened.
Black teeth.
Shiny and black like that lava rock Tony could never remember the name of.
Lots and lots of black teeth!
Pain flared in his left shoulder, something squeezed around his right leg, and the demon’s head snapped forward.
Fuck! Teeth!
Four shots jerked it back far enough for Tony to get his left leg free. He kicked out, hard. It reared back, hissing and snarling, still attached by the tail wrapped around Tony’s leg. He kicked it again, a little lower, and black claws on the hind legs shredded his jeans below the knee.
Elson took another shot. The tail whipped away. Danvers grabbed his shoulders, dragging him up onto his feet.
“Why are you wrestling with it?” Leah screamed, crouched behind a yellow chaise lounge. “Get those runes in the air!”
Tony ducked as the demon launched itself over him, heading for Leah. Ducked a little lower as it returned the other way, arms and legs flailing as CB yanked it back by the tail.
It folded back on itself, squirmed free, and leaped straight up.
If it regained the high ground…
No way in hell he remembered the runes.
So we stick with what we know.
Miraculously still standing, Tony made a mental note that a Powershot released inside was blinding. Hopefully, temporarily blinding.
“Mr. Foster!”
Patterns of blue light danced across the inside of Tony’s lids. At least, he thought he had his eyes closed. “Yeah, Boss?”
“Was that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hit it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is anyone being disemboweled?” Sarcasm dripped from Leah’s voice.
It seemed that no one was.
“Well, isn’t that lucky.” Not so much dripping now as flowing freely.
“What was that?” Elson’s voice, demanding an answer.
“The demon? Or Tony’s pyrotechnical answer to the demon?”
“Hey!” He turned toward where Leah’s voice put her. “We were all screwed if it got back into the light grid.”
“Damned right.” Danvers this time. Nice that someone understood.
A hand closed around his arm and by blinking rapidly he could almost make out the silhouette of the person attached to the hand. At least he hoped it was the person attached to the hand.
“You’re bleeding.” Danvers again.
“He should count his blessings he’s alive to bleed.” Leah, closer now, sounded distinctly unsympathetic. “What happened to the plan, Tony?”
“You guys had a plan?” Elson didn’t sound like he believed her.
“There’s a way to send the demons back where they came from without wiping out our best defense.”
“If this ash is all that remains of the demon, he’s out of the picture.” CB. From near the floor. “Except for a few minor punctures, I believe Mr. Foster—who, I assume, you were referring to as our best line of defense—is fine.”
“Tony, can you see yet?” Leah. Right in his face.
He could sort of make out shapes, but he got a little dizzy when he turned his head. “Uh…”
“No. He can’t. We can. He can’t.” Probably Leah’s hand on his cheek. The fingers were trembling a little. “Someone had better grab him before he cracks his skull open on the floor.”
On cue, Tony felt his knees buckle.
“I’ve got you, kid.” A dark Elson-shape with blond highlights.
“These holes look clean, and they’re not as deep as they could be.” Danvers, as she pulled his shirt off and started working on the punctures in his shoulder. Tony was starting to really like her. “Damp denim seems to make decent body armor. I don’t think he did much damage to your leg either. Is there a first aid—Thanks.”
No mistaking CB’s presence up close and personal. There was a sudden lack of open space in the immediate area.
Elson shifted his grip to give Danvers a better angle on the shoulder. “So what’s wrong with him?”
“You mean besides the holes? It was the Powershot. Not the smartest thing to do.”
Elson answered Leah’s question with one of his own. “Who are you?”
He’d keep asking until he got an answer, like the world’s biggest, red serge-wearing terrier. Given Leah’s earlier opinion of all and sundry, and given that Elson was definitely one of the sundry, the odds were good she wasn’t going to tell him. The trick was figuring out how much of the truth would shut him up.
“She’s a demonic consultant,” Tony told him, trying not to think about what Elson’s partner was doing to his shoulder.
“A what?”
“Demonic consul… OW!”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” And it was. The flash of white light accompanying the pain seemed to have cleared his vision. Where cleared meant he could see people standing around him and pretty much figure out who they were. Beyond about three meters, things were still a little fuzzy—like his focus had been pulled so he had no depth of field—which likely meant there’d be something with teeth and scales charging in from the fuzzy any minute now.
“Tony?”
Or not.
Lee gradually came into focus as he came closer. Then came into focus a lot faster as he broke into a run and dropped to one knee.
“What happened?” he demanded, his hand closing around Tony’s wrist.
Tony opened his mouth, but Elson filled the words in. “It’s the aftereffects of frying a demon.”
“You’re hurt!”
“It’s uh…” He glanced over at the blood-soaked pad in the RCMP officer’s hand and decided not to bother with the whole manly denial thing. “Yeah.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Danvers’ matter-of-fact tone made it convincing. Given that it was his blood, Tony wasn’t entirely convinced, but Lee seemed to be.
Seemed to be glaring at Elson.
Who still held Tony cradled against his body while Danvers finished with his shoulder.
Lee was glaring?
Tony had no idea how Elson was responding, but something in the way his grip shifted and the way muscles moved in his chest, made Tony think he felt amused.
“How are the others, Mr. Nicholas?” CB’s bulk reappeared like a mahogany wall at the end of Tony’s feet, the force of his personality enough to break through Lee’s… well, to break through whatever the hell was up with Lee.
“Fine. They’re good.” The actor sat back and turned, visibly distancing himself from the scene on the floor—although his fingers maintained their grip. “Mouse thinks the gaffer’s nose might be broken.”
“And Mason?”
“Would be on the phone to his agent if there was a phone around to be on.”
“I’ll speak with him in a moment.”
“I can’t say that I blame him, CB.”
“Demons.” Elson ignored Lee’s reinstated glare, but there was nothing that suggested amusement this time. He shifted Tony’s weight onto his partner, who caught it, steadied it, and raised a skeptical eyebrow when Tony muttered, “I can sit on my own.”
“What about them?” CB demanded as Elson got slowly to his feet.
“She said demons. As in more than one. They had a plan to send the demons back where they came from. That…”
All eyes turned with his gesture to the smear of ash on the floor. Tony could just barely make it out. “… isn’t the end of this. Is it?”
And all eyes turned to Leah.
Who looked at him.
His stomach growled.
* * *
Explanations took some time, even when leaving out the part about Leah being a Demongate. There was a brief debate over whether to keep the studio open while demons were likely to attack. If the studio stayed open, everyone who worked there was in physical danger. If it closed, Darkest Night wouldn't be shot on time, the show would get cancelled and everyone would lose their jobs. Keeping the studio open won. Not much was scarier than unemployment these days.
Tony missed part of the argument when he passed out on the floor of CB's office.
* * *
He woke up a bit later, sucked down some alphabet soup and got filled in on the plan. Since the demons were heading for the studio, not Leah, his job was to guard the gate and send back any demons that showed up.
Leah had gone to her apartment to get his laundry. Tony went across the street for lunch - poutine and milk, totally food. Walking back to the studio, he noticed that there was a spot by the entrance to the parking lot where the rain wasn’t quite falling. As if something occupied that space. Shit.
He could see his car back in the far end of the lot and thought he could see Leah twisted around, rummaging in the back seat. Then the driver’s side door opened and an enormous white-and-red umbrella emerged, tipped down to keep the rain from blowing up under the outer edge. Unfortunately, tipped down, it was also keeping Leah from spotting the anomaly moving across the parking lot toward her.
Lifting his left hand, Tony called the umbrella. The demon appeared as nylon and wire and wood passed through the same space it was occupying, and Leah, mouth open to demand answers, had just enough time to fling herself back inside the car as claws struck sparks off the closing door. For a heartbeat the car filled with a translucent, naked, and very pissed-off Demonlord, then it was only Leah.
Yeah, well, I’d be pissed, too, if my way back into the world kept ducking at the last minute.
Fortunately, the demon was intent on peeling his quarry out of her strange new shell. Where fortunately didn’t refer to the damage being done to his car. As he started focusing energy, Tony realized he’d pretty much run out of options. Another Powershot would use all the energy he’d regained and then some—the “and then some” was the worrying bit. He’d done a little gaming in his day and he knew what happened when stats fell into negative numbers. Leah’s runes were his best chance. He was pretty sure he could remember the first one and then, with any luck, the others would fall into line behind it.
Except he couldn’t quite remember the first rune.
Curves here. Crosses back. And there’s sort of a circle thing…
Crap!
The demon shot him a disdainful sneer over one shoulder—given the excessive teeth and the glowing yellow eyes, it was a pretty damned effective sneer—and then slammed its palm down on the window. The window cracked.
He could hear Leah screaming.
Fuck!
No time to get this wrong!
He wiped out half the glowing symbol, realized it now looked sort of like the word go…
Palm against glass. A louder crack. More screaming.
… and went with plan B. The rune on his left hand grabbed ghosts. Ghosts were energy left over when flesh rotted. Therefore, the rune should allow him to grab this energy.
Grab it and throw it.
The glowing blue go hit the demon between the shoulder blades and sucked into the scaled skin with a disconcerting sizzle.
The demon spun around…
H
… shifted its weight onto two different legs…
0
… and charged.
M
Tony didn’t have to keep throwing the letters. The demon charged through them, no longer sneering, clearly intent on ripping apart this puny mortal who dared to interfere.
Puny mortal? Where the hell had that come from?
Sizzle.
Sizzle.
Sizzle.
Too close!
The world had not gone into slow motion. Too bad because he could have used a bit more time. Eyes locked on the charging demon, his breath coming fast and shallow; he was only going to get one chance. Panic lending speed, more focused than he’d ever been in his life, he scrawled the last letter in the air.
E
Not so much a sizzle as a ZAP. Like the world’s biggest bug hitting the world’s biggest bug zapper.
The impact threw Tony backward as the demon flared a brilliant lime green and disappeared, leaving nothing behind him but a piece of smoking pavement and the smell of charred fish. It was over before his ass hit the parking lot; a large, deep puddle absorbing most of the impact.
“What was that all about?”
He could feel power racing over his skin as he peered up through the afterimages at Leah. “You’re welcome.”
“It was kind of hard to see what you were doing…” Her voice grew shriller with every word. “… but those weren’t the right runes!”
“They worked.”
“They shouldn’t have!”
Tony would have shrugged, but his shoulder hurt way too much and, from the line of warmth dribbling down his chest, he had a feeling the bandage had come loose. He should have felt like crap, but he didn’t. He felt invincible. It was like the way he knew where things were when he reached for them except… more. He knew where the whole world was. He knew where he was in the world. No. More still. He was the world. Just him, no backup singers.
It was the most incredible feeling. There was nothing he couldn’t do, and no one could stop him. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he healed the puncture wounds in his shoulder.
And was amazed by the new and exciting levels of pain.
“SonofafuckingBITCH!”
Then world was a big ball of rock again, and his place in it involved a puddle and a parking lot.
“Tony!” Leah was right in his face. “What did you do to the demon?”
“I told it to go home.”
Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. She took a step away. “Go home?”
“Yeah.” The warm August rain soaked through his pants. “You said it yourself, the demons don’t belong here. I sent it back where it belonged.”
“It’s not that easy!”
“It is if I want it to be.” Teeth clenched, he checked to make sure his arm still worked, then he got to his feet. “This is my world, not his.” No need to define the pronoun. “He may need to slaughter whole villages and draw complicated esoteric symbols, I don’t.” Rain ran under his collar and down his back. “Intent is nine tenths of the law.”
“No, it isn’t!”
“It is,” he repeated slowly and deliberately, “if I want it to be.”
Leah’s Demonlord seemed more present than usual. The antlered head went up and his nostrils flared as he searched for…
Me.
He’s searching for the power that sent his demon home.
But the Demonlord’s—attention?—slid right past him.
Like I’m not even here…
And he wasn’t, Tony realized suddenly, not according to the Leah-filter Ryne Cyratane experienced the world through. He wasn’t reacting to Leah’s I’m an enormous metaphysical slut performance, so to the Demonlord he didn’t exist. Except that he obviously did since there was a demon back home blubbering about the big mean wizard who’d kicked demon butt. The Demonlord had come looking for the wizard but wasn’t finding him.
Two possibilities.
Straight woman. Gay man. In the far end of both options where there was no attraction at all to what Leah was offering.
He got Leah and himself coffee and muffins from craft services and they went inside the studio. The demon had a rune burned into his hand. If the demons were coming from Ryne Cyratane, why would he be marking them? “He’s marking them so they can hurt you,” he said at last. “Slipping them between the runes in the existing spell.”
“Yeah.” Leah brushed crumbs off her sleeve. “I got that.”
Tony thought about it while he finished his coffee, then put it aside and went out to get his laundry from his car. Battling a Demonlord would be easier when he wasn't distracted by wet underwear.
[Pulled from chapters six and seven of Smoke and Ashes.]
