Darkest Night - Smoke and Shadows Part 48

Tony waved.

"Victoria?"

"Yes. There's no point in them knocking and knocking and knocking and disturbing everyone on this floor, is there?"

"If you're not home, they can't get in," Julian pointed out archly. "You can't buzz them up."

Moira yapped agreement and Tony wondered how the Shadowlord felt about dogs.

"You and I both know there are ways around that. At the last board meeting you were trying to put more money into security."

"You weren't at the last board meeting."

"I read the minutes. Thank you for your a.s.sistance." The elevator announced its arrival.

"We'll be going now."

Julian followed.

Eyes rolling, Arra shoved Tony inside, turned and hit the "close door" b.u.t.ton.

"Remember: Victoria with Tony," she said as Julian's and Moira's disapproving expressions disappeared.

"Do you think he'll do it?"

"He might."

"Why Victoria?"

"Why not? The farther the shadow-held are from the studio, from where he can call on them for help, the better."

"Will Julian be all right? I mean, will he be in any danger," Tony corrected as Arra's lip curled.

"Hard to say. Depends on whether or not they think he knows more than he's saying.

Do I have to keep repeating that this is war?"

"No."

"Do I have to make the observation about omelets and breaking eggs?"

"G.o.d, no!"

"Good. It's a stupid observation."

Traffic was heavy on Hastings until they cleared Chinatown, then it spread out and started moving a few kilometers above the limit. Tony drummed his fingers against his thigh and tried not to think of what they were heading toward.

War.Broken eggs.

Around Clark Drive South, he frowned. "You were working that light thing out on a laptop."

"So?"

"So we could have been in a moving vehicle all afternoon. I drive, you work."

Arra nodded agreement. "Yes, I thought of that after Keisha arrived."

"And?"

"And then I realized I work best in a familiar environment."

Tony stared at the side of her face. "I had to beat up girls," he said at last.

"That's a bit s.e.xist, don't you think?"

"No."

"And given the results, not entirely accurate. There're still girls at the studio," she added when he didn't respond.

"Your point?"

The brow he could see lifted into a distinctly sardonic arch.

"Never mind." He glanced at his watch. "I'd better call CB. Make sure the Shadowlord's even still at the studio. Maybe he's convinced Mason to take him clubbing."

"I thought CB had arranged to have promo shots done?"

"Yeah. So?"

"So, it would take more than an extraordinarily powerful, evil wizard to keep Mason Reed from having his picture taken."

"Valid point." CB's cell phone rang half a dozen times before he answered. Worried that the boss might be standing where he could be overheard by the enemy, Tony started talking immediately. Safest if he just has to answer yes or no. "Hey, CB, it's Tony. Is he still there?"

"Yes, he is." A dark, smooth voice that caressed each word. Definitely not CB's voice.

"And he's wondering what's taking you so long."

The line went dead.

Tony dropped his phone like it was contaminated. "He's got CB."

"The Shadowlord answered CB's phone?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me exactly what he said." She frowned as Tony told her. "He's posturing. Trying to frighten you. Rattle you."

"News flash. It worked." His palms left damp streaks on his jeans."Yes, but if he'd said nothing at all, you'd have kept talking. Probably said you were with me. Said we were on our way." Her voice trailed off and she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "This isn't like him," she announced three blocks later. "He could have gathered information, but he didn't-he played boogeyman instead. That's just not like him."

"How do you know?"

"I may not have stuck around for the big finish, but I was there for the rest of the war,"

she snapped. "I know him."

"Uh-uh, you knew him," Tony amended. "You knew him when he was conquering. He's conquered. He's been the conqueror' for seven years. He's not the same guy you faced.

Seven years-f.u.c.k, everyone changes over that long a time."

"Your Nightwalker?"

Tony thought of Vicki Nelson's conquest of Vancouver and snickered, amused for the first time in ... well, since girls started smacking him around anyway. "You have no idea."

"No. You have no idea." But it was a playground response and she sounded unsure and Tony figured that shaking up a few of her carved-in-stone opinions about the Shadowlord was probably a good thing.

Probably.

Maybe not.

When Arra turned onto Boundary Road, he closed his eyes for a moment, confronted the fear that had been chewing at him since the call, and said, "Do you think CB's dead?"

"No. He knows too much. He could be too useful. The Shadowlord can't have changed so much he'd throw away that kind of resource."

Which would have been more rea.s.suring had she not so obviously been trying to rea.s.sure herself.

At 8:43 the parking lot was still surprisingly full. Zev's car was gone and so was Amy's- Tony thanked any G.o.ds that might be listening for small mercies-but Lee's bike was still there.

"They're shooting promo stuff," he murmured, realizing. "Lee had to stay."

"Any new shadows will be for control, not information, so he's probably shadow-held."

Again? Oh, that's just f.u.c.king great. The thought of Lee shadow-held came with the memory of Lee's hands on his body, scrambling his responses.

"He survived it the first time," Arra reminded him, misreading his silence.

"Yeah. That's not very comforting."

She shrugged and turned off the engine.

"What do we do now?"

"Right now? We wait for your Nightwalker. No point in going over the battle plan twice."

Seat belt unbuckled, Tony twisted around so that he could see her. She looked unconcerned. Or possibly blank. Nothing showed. He was looking at the last wizard of her order, the one hope to defeat the Shadowlord-he could just as easily have been looking at someone's grandmother, parking and waiting to pick the grandkids up from school. He wanted to know what she was thinking but he couldn't see it on her face."So, does a gate have to be opened in a specific spot?"

"No. Variables are adjusted for location."

"So you could open a gate here?"

She turned very slowly to face him. "I could."

He really, really hoped she'd add, But I won't. But she didn't. "Hey, I just thought of something."

"Don't strain yourself."

She was under a lot of stress, so he'd give her that one. "If you can only affect the gate on the world of origin, how's the Shadowlord going to get home? I mean, sure this is a great world and all, but his stuff's back there and I expect he'll want to go back and forth."

"He probably has the spell set up on the other side ready to go off every twelve hours."

"He's got the gate on a timer?"

"Essentially."

"Cool. Still evil," he clarified as Arra turned to glare at him. "But cool."

"Less cool if he calls through reinforcements."

"Granted."

Henry's BMW pulled into the lot at 8:47. Tony opened his door as he parked and walked around the car to meet him beside Arra. He'd left the-story-so-far on Henry's answering machine and then sent him an e-mail as well as a text message. The whole instantaneous electronic communication thing had very little relevance to Henry-sending multiple copies of things he really needed to know worked best. Things like, CB is holding the Shadowlord at the studio, Mason and most of the crew are shadow-held and we have to take him out tonight. Meet us there as soon as youre up.

They not only had to take him out tonight, they had to take him out before the gate opened at 11:15. They had to take him out before he called through reinforcements.

Tony hadn't asked Arra what kind of reinforcements were likely to be called through. He didn't want to know.

Henry frowned and Tony remembered he was both bruised and bleeding.

"You've been fighting again."

He shrugged, didn't bother hiding the wince as new bruises rose and fell. "I had to take down three of the shadow-held."

"Girls," Arra snorted, getting out of the car. "So." She looked from one to the other.

"What's the plan?"

Tony opened his mouth to protest, but as Henry didn't seem surprised by her a.s.sumption, he closed it again. It was the son of Henry VIII, trained in strategy and tactics and, h.e.l.l, probably the minuet for all Tony knew, who asked: "What do you need us to do?"

"Keep the shadow-held from taking me down." Arra began rolling her shoulders like an old boxer about to go into the ring. "Keep the Shadowlord from preventing my call to the Light of Yeramathia.""Which is?"

Figuring he wouldn't understand the explanation, Tony hadn't bothered to ask.

Arra frowned at Henry's suspicious tone. "The Shadowlord gave himself over to a dark power, this is its opposite."

That was it? Okay, he understood that.

"A G.o.d?" If Henry'd sounded suspicious before, he sounded distinctly unhappy now.

"We've had a little trouble with G.o.ds in the past," Tony explained hurriedly before Arra's frown could deepen. "An ancient Egyptian undead wizard tried to call up his G.o.d from the top of the CN Tower. Oh, and the year before that, we had demons."