Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 10

Leah had a lot less of the same things.

"So," she said at last when he set the gnawed bone on the plate and sat back with a satisfied sigh, "you got lucky."

"Lucky?" Maybe wizards had a second stomach. He should have felt sick, but he only felt comfortably full. In fact, he felt like dessert. He yawned. And a nap.

"You got lucky with your first Powershot. You didn't blow off your hand."

"And I saved your a.s.s," he reminded her, through another yawn. "Stress the negatives much?"

"Sorry." The dimples flashed. "You did, indeed, save my a.s.s. You got lucky."

"Isn't that what happens around you? My day ends early enough to let the only person who can save you arrive in time to save you?"

"Yes, but..."

"I see no buts."

"You've just eaten enough for two people..."

"Why is that bad?"

"You needed to replace the energy you used."

"But that's normal for a wizard, right? It's not bad. Demons running around VanTerm are bad. But, like you said, I dealt, so that's good."

"Fine." She rolled her eyes. "If you want bad, I have a hole in my favorite hoodie!"

Tony grinned as Leah shoved her hand through the hole and waved it at him. "You're right, that's..."

He stopped grinning.

She frowned. "What?"

"Your T-s.h.i.+rt."

She twisted and looked down, pulling the yellow fabric aside. There was a smaller hole in the T-s.h.i.+rt.

And under that, the very tip of the demon's claw had lightly scratched Leah's skin. Her finger shook as she traced the tiny burgundy beads of dried blood on the centimeter-long scratch. "No. That's impossible. I can't be hurt."

"That's not exactly hurt," Tony began but she cut him off.

"You don't understand. That's blood!"

The scratch was barely visible from across the table. "Not much..."

"My blood!" Leah spat the words out through clenched teeth. "I haven't seen my blood in thirty-five hundred years!"

"You must have..."

"No!"

Other people in the restaurant were beginning to turn and stare. "Come on. We need to go."

"Where?"

"Back to my place." All of a sudden he didn't feel like dessert. Her eyes were wild and he wondered just how close the "crazy lady in the desert" was to the surface.

"What are we going to do about this there?"

Good question. Too bad he didn't have an answer. Wait... "We can start by reading your fortune cookie."

Chapter Four.

"I HAVE TO SAY THAT I'm not surprised you lost the fortune cookie in this mess."

Tony sat back on his heels in time to see Leah shake her head at the pair of boxer-briefs dangling between thumb and forefinger, then toss them to one side. She'd calmed down a lot in the car, and by the time they got to the apartment, she'd either got a handle on things or slid so deeply into denial she was living in Egypt. Tony wasn't sure which, but that was okay because he didn't care which. Whatever worked. "I told you, I was sorting laundry."

She prodded a pile of jeans with the toe of one sneaker.

Previous Contents Next"Historically, most people sort laundry in order to do laundry."

"I was going to get to it."

"When you get down to a pair of paint-stained sweats and a T-s.h.i.+rt you got free from a promo guy?"

"Pretty much, yeah." He smothered a yawn with the back of his hand and nodded toward the kitchen. "The garbage is under the sink. Try there."

"You said you didn't throw it out."

"I didn't throw it out on purpose." Shoving a pile of old newspapers out of the way, he dropped to his belly to look under the sofa bed. Dead batteries. Firefly disk two. Blue silk tie. One dress shoe. Where the h.e.l.l was the other one? a.s.sorted balled-up socks. Empty Timbit box. Three issues of Cinefex. As the cheap parquet floor warmed under him, it got harder and harder to stay focused. Empty sample bottle of guava-flavored lube. Empty beer bottle. Unopened can of generic cola. No fortune cookie.

Clutching the can of cola, he shuffled backward until his head cleared the bed frame, dragged himself up onto his knees with a handful of mattress, and allowed his upper body to collapse onto the bed.

Something crinkled.

Setting the can aside, Tony rummaged in the tangle of sheets. "Found it."

Leah stared down at him in disbelief as she turned from the sink. "You slept with it?"

"Calm down, we're just good friends." Although the packaging had maintained physical integrity, the cookie within had been crushed. He got himself up on his feet just long enough to shuffle around and sit down on the edge of the bed. Then he reached out and dropped it into her hand.

Her other hand moved to cover the scratch on her side. "This is foolish."

"Maybe."

"Yours could have meant anything. It didn't have to refer to the demon; that could have been coincidence."

"Could have. But I doubt it. Wizard," he added with a shrug when she glanced at him.

Crumbs whispered against each other as she shook the package, the motion hiding the way her fingers had started to tremble.

"Yeah, but this is my cookie, and I'm no wizard."

He understood why she was delaying; a certainty she had held for her whole life had changed and, given the length of her life, that was saying something. Change could be terrifying. He understood; he just didn't have a lot of patience with it since these days his life changed every twenty minutes. "Would you just open the d.a.m.ned thing!"

She hesitated a moment longer, then caught the edge of the plastic between her teeth and ripped. A small strip of paper spilled out of the pile of amber crumbs on her palm.

"Ambitious change requires help; timing is everything. Oh, yes, very clear and extraordinarily anticlimactic." Eyes rolling, she dusted the crumbs off into the sink. "That could mean anything."

"It could mean that your Demonlord is getting ambitious and is using the Demonic Convergence to send through minions with the ability to kill you so that the gate opens and he can come through."

"Minions?"

"Demonic minions." "Yes, I got that." She sat beside him on the bed, dark brows drawn in. "The rest of it, though-you're really reaching."

"I'm really not." Grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes only blurred his vision. The steak seemed to be wearing off. Tony patted the blanket until he found the cola, popped the tab, and took a long swallow. "When you were attacked," he told her, feeling the sugar and caffeine hit his bloodstream, "when that demon drew blood-such as it was-he was there, Ryne Cyratane. I saw him."

"So? I told you last night he'd be close because of the Convergence." Her hand went back to her side. "He had nothing to do with this."

"He likes s.e.x, he hates water. You were with me so that takes care of the s.e.x, or lack of s.e.x, and you were still close to lots of water. He had to be in that parking lot with you for another reason."

"Tony..." The paper crinkled slightly as she waved it. "... this is a fortune cookie fortune. It's a ma.s.s-produced plat.i.tude.

Ambitious change could mean anything."

"You said he made a mistake on the spell. He's had thirty-five hundred years to figure out how to fix it. He can't get through himself..."

"Why not?"

"How the h.e.l.l should I know? He can't because he didn't, but he can send..."

"Minions?"

"Yeah. He's got motive and opportunity, and all the pieces fit."

"Based on a fortune cookie."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from her, crumpled it up, and threw it at a pile of T-s.h.i.+rts. "Wizards see what's there."

"You're learning to be a wizard from a correspondence course. Did it ever occur to you that you're seeing the wrong thing?"

"Okay. Fine. What do you think's going on?" They were sitting side by side. Not looking at each other.

"Ryne Cyratane would have nothing to do with this."

"With hurting you?" When she didn't answer-and given that the Demonlord had carved those runes into her flesh using the blood of her people, Tony figured she didn't really have an answer-he asked, "Would he let another Demonlord use the gate?"

"No."

No question there.

"Then since he's still around, he's got to be the one trying to open it. He probably figured out a way to direct the convergent energy to one spot."

"Okay, fine, you have all the answers..." Leah twisted around to face him, eyes narrowed. "Why did that demon bite the construction worker's arm off?"

Tony sighed. "Duh. Demon."

He downed half the can of cola while she thought about it."It explains everything."

"Yeah."

"I bet you're feeling pretty smug about figuring this out," she muttered at the toes of her high-tops.

He a.s.sumed she was actually talking to him. "Not really. It was kind of obvious." For a long moment the soft squeak of his fingers rubbing the cola can was the only noise in the apartment. "I guess you're feeling kind of betrayed."

"Well, yes!" After contemplating her shoes a while longer, she lifted her head and pushed her hair back off her face. "And no." Her laugh was a bit shaky, but to Tony's surprise, it wasn't faked. "I mean, he is a Demonlord, after all. He did slaughter everyone I knew, so this isn't exactly out of character for him. It just took him a while to make his next move."

"Maybe time runs differently where he is."

"Probably not. He was never very bright." One hand slid under her clothes to stroke the tattoo, and she smiled. "The s.e.x was great, though."

Tony stared at her with as much astonishment as he had the energy for. "And that makes everything okay?"

"Well, no, not okay; but it puts it in perspective, doesn't it? So," she continued before Tony could respond, "a.s.suming that he'll try it again as soon as he's used the convergent energy to open a new hole, how do we keep these minions of his from killing me?"

"And releasing a Demonlord into the world."

"That's part two. You'll excuse me..." Her hand moved around from the tattoo to the scratch. "... but I'm more concerned about part one."

Since keeping Leah alive would keep the Demonlord out, Tony decided there was no point in calling her on that. They needed a plan. And while they were planning... "Can he hear us?"

"No. He says he gets impressions of my life, but our only real conduit is s.e.xual energy."

"Good." Hang on. "He says? You have conversations?"

"Sometimes, when he's right up by the gate, I enter a meditative state and we talk."

"Sometimes?"

"Postcoital."