Darkest Night - Smoke and Shadows Part 9

There was something wrong with shadows in general.

". . . nothing remained of our defenses save terrified men and women fighting individual losing battles against the shadows."

CB worked carefully, methodically, quickly; stroking a line of graphite along the imprinted pattern.

"The Shadowlord cannot be defeated. Now he has tasted this world. The next shadow he sends will have more purpose."

Tony jerked back against the door, partially because of the sudden rush of memory.

Partially because of what Lee was doing. Wondering how a guy got selected for sainthood, he twisted away and gasped, "You're a minion of the Shadowlord!"

Which sounded so incredibly stupid, he regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.

Lee stared at him for a long moment, blinked once, and started to laugh. "I'm a what?"

Oh, c.r.a.p. Now he was going to have to repeat it because there really wasn't any variation on this particular theme. "You're a minion of the Shadowlord."

"That's what I thought you said." Scooping his s.h.i.+rt up off the floor, Lee shrugged into it, still chuckling. "You know, you're a very weird guy."

Tony merely pointed.

Lee's shadow appeared to be investigating a pile of shadow magazines.

It was a cheesy effect on screen and unexpectedly terrifying in real life.

The actor sighed, reached out, and slapped Tony lightly on one cheek. "Who's going to believe you? You're n.o.body. I'm a star."

Tony cleared his throat. "You're a costar."The second slap was considerably harder and almost seemed to have more of Lee in it than shadow. "f.u.c.k you."

"You're not leaving this room."

"Is this supposed to be where I strike a dramatic pose and tell you that you can't stop me?" Lee leaned closer, his position a parody of his earlier seduction. "Guess what? You can't."

And he couldn't.

The shadow dropped the magazine and swept across the room, holding him against the wall. Tony couldn't move, he couldn't speak, and most importantly, he couldn't breathe.

It was like being trapped under a pliable sheet of cold charcoal-gray rubber that covered him from head to foot like a second skin, curving to fit up each nostril and into his mouth.

Obscenely intimate.

As the door closed behind the thing controlling Lee's body, the shadow flexed, flopped away from him, and slipped through the final millimeter of open s.p.a.ce.

Bent over, sucking his lungs full of stale, makeup redolent, slightly moldy, but glorious air, Tony spent a moment or two concentrating on breathing before straightening and staggering toward the door.

He had to stop Lee before he left the building.

He should never have let him leave the dressing room.

He should never have gone into the dressing room.

I should have figured something was up when the straight guy started coming on to me.

And hard on the heels of that thought, came a second.

If that thing's in Lee's head, then Lee knows how I... what I... want.

And a third.

This just keeps getting better . . .

Completely redrawn, the pattern appeared to be a random squiggle. A pointless collection of curves. Nothing had happened when the final line had been retraced. The pencil set aside, a hand laid flat on each side of the paper, CB stared down at the nondesign and wondered exactly what he thought would happen.

How could he recognize the answers when he didn't know the questions?

"CB?" Rachel's voice over the intercom broke into his fruitless speculation. "Mark Asquith from the network is here."

He swept the paper into the trash. "Send him in."

Tony pounded out into the middle of the production office and realized his quarry was nowhere in sight. Had he guessed wrong? Had the thing gone through the soundstage instead? He took the half-dozen extra steps to Amy's desk. "Have you seen Lee?"

"Yeah. He's gone."

"What do you mean gone?"

"I mean, gone. As in not here." She snorted derisively. "As in was an a.s.s to Zev and strutted out. As in Elvis has left the building. As in ..."

"I get it." Gone. But maybe not too far gone. "He didn't take his helmet."

Amy shrugged. " Cause he didn't go for a ride on his motorcycle. He walked out the front door and grabbed the network guy's cab."

"Oh that's just f.u.c.king great." That thing had Lee's wallet, Lee's credit cards; if it got to the airport, it could go anywhere in the world.

"You got a message for him from Peter?" Amy picked up the phone before he could answer. "No problem. I'll just call his cell."

"That's not . . ."He frowned. "Do you hear a phone ringing?"

She glanced down at the flas.h.i.+ng light and back up at Tony as the office line rang again.

"Duh."

"No, in the distance." He turned slowly, trying to make it out. "It's in the dressing room."

The sound could have been coming from any one of half a dozen small rooms behind the thin interior walls, but Lee's phone had been in the charger on the coffee table. "He didn't take it with him."

"An actor without a phone." Heavily penciled eyebrows rose dramatically. "Isn't that against some kind of..."

"Amy!" Rachel's bellow cut her off. "Would you answer that d.a.m.ned thing, I'm on another line!"

As the familiar "CB Productions" sounded behind him, Tony ran for the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs.

Arra. The wizard. She'd know how to stop him. It. How to stop the shadow and get Lee back.

Except that Arra wasn't in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Tony stared at the empty chair, at the bank of monitors, and fought a sudden urge to smash something. The b.i.t.c.h had screwed with his memories. Made him forget. Made him forget the shadows, and the Shadowlord, and the danger they were all in.

He'd told her he was going to do something and she'd stopped him.

Maybe even stopped him from protecting Lee.

Heart pounding, he took the stairs back up to the production office three at a time, slamming the door behind him hard enough to pull curious glances from the surrounding smaller offices. Even Zev reemerged from post, a set of headphones slung around his neck like a stethoscope.

"If you'll excuse me a moment." As his visitor nodded a confused a.s.sent, CB surged to his feet and walked over to his open door. He considered himself to be a lenient employer, but petty displays of unnecessary noise were among the few things he refused to put up with. If it was one of the writers overreacting to script changes again, he would not be pleased.

He reached the doorway in time to see Tony Foster race across the production office.

"Where's Arra?"

Amy slammed a staple through a set of sides and frowned up at him. "What?"

"Arra!"

"I'm not deaf, dipwad. She's with Daniel, checking out cliffs for a new car-blows-up-in- midair-releases-a-fire-demon-into-the-world shot."

"Where?"

"Somewhere along the coast, I guess. She said she was heading home after; that just because we're running obscenely late, there was no point in her hauling a.s.s all the way back out here." The frown became more questioning than accusatory. "Why?"

Tony shook his head. "Where does she live?"

"I'd have to look it up."

"A co-op on Nelson," Zev put in unexpectedly, crossing to the desk. "Downtown Vancouver, across from the Coast Plaza Hotel. What's the problem?"

Already turning, Tony paused. An evil wizard is about to come through a gate between worlds and kick a.s.s. No. Not a good idea. That just wasn't the kind of news that most people took well. "Let's just say it's none of your business." It came out sharper than he'd intended and he regretted the sudden hurt on the music director's face, but he didn't have time to regret it for long. He had to find Lee.

"Man, you're two for two on a.s.sholes today," he heard Amy murmur as he ran for the door.

Returning to his desk, CB bent down and plucked the piece of drawing paper out of the trash. He slipped it under the edge of his desk blotter and settled back into the large leather chair, smiling across at his network visitor. "You were saying?"

He needed wheels. Riding transit, no matter how environmentally sound, was just not going to cut it. Fortunately, he knew where there were wheels to be had.

Lee's helmet was in the dressing room. So was his biker jacket. He'd left wearing his costume; gone out into the world as James Taylor Grant. And the only good thing about that was, given their latest numbers, the odds were high no one would recognize him.Bike keys were in the jacket pocket.

One hand gripping the smooth leather, Tony had a sudden flashback to the feel of smooth skin.

It wasnt really Lee, he reminded himself, shrugging into the jacket. It doesn't count.

He hadn't been on a bike in years and never one so powerful. As he guided the big machine into the city, Tony prayed that the cops were busy busting more deserving heads. If he got pulled over, he was totally screwed.

He'd never had a license. But he had to get to Arra and this was the fastest way. He had to force her to help him. Help him find Lee. Help him free Lee. Then they'd talk about the whole forgetting thing.

Except. . .

She could just make him forget again. She was a wizard.

And she blew things up for a living.

He was just a PA for a third rate production company. How could he stop her?

Roaring past a late 70s pickup, he squinted into the red and gold of a brilliant sunset over the distant towers of the downtown core and smiled.