Smoke and Shadows (15 page)

Tony could hear that loss in her voice. The anger. The pain. The screaming.

“Then close the gate. You opened it originally,” Henry reminded her. “Surely you can close it.”

“I've been over this with him.” She jerked her head at Tony, who muttered,
“He is the cat's father.”
Wizard and vampire ignored him. “I can't affect the gate from this side. Only from the world of origin.”

“Then, when it opens, go through it and
affect
it.”

“If I go through it, I die, Nightwalker, and we've agreed—you and I—that I'm not yet ready to die.”

“So basically,” Tony said as Henry considered that last bit of information, “what you're saying is, now that he knows about us, about this world, we have no hope.”

The smile she turned on him was so bleak it closed around his chest and squeezed. “Now, you've got it. Still, look at the bright side.” Lifting the jam jar off the counter, she placed it in his hands. “You might get Lee back in one piece.” A quick glance at the clock on the microwave. “If you hurry.”

She followed them to the door, all but pushing them from the apartment.

Once in the hall, Tony headed straight for the elevator but Henry paused, turned, and said, “The spell you put on Tony, the one that took away his memory?”

“Yes,” she answered warily, unsure of where the question was.

“It only lasted one night. I'm just wondering if maybe it failed because you didn't want it to last.”

“You think I wanted to be threatened in my own home?”

“I think that, deep down, you wanted other people to know what was going on.”

Her brows rose. “So you're a psychiatrist now? You have no idea what I want, Nightwalker!”

And the door slammed shut.

Tony parked Lee's motorcycle in its usual spot, pulled off the helmet, and stared at the cinder-block building that housed CB Productions. It was dark, deserted looking, but since the greater portion of it was windowless, that was hardly surprising. The exterior security lights around the office windows made it hard to tell for certain if anyone remained in the building.

At only 10:50, it was highly likely that the geeks in post were still at their consoles and entirely possible that at least some of the writing staff were hanging around the bull pen—although Tony wasn't entirely clear about what the latter might be doing at that hour besides drinking CB's coffee.

Chester Bane, the man himself, might be a problem. Rumor had it that he wandered the sets at night, in the dark.

Not entirely believable, considering the source, but CB on set, for whatever reason, would be a problem.

One they'd have no choice but to deal with, Tony acknowledged as Henry parked his BMW in Mason Reed's reserved spot. Still, if worse came to worst, Henry could always do the vampire mind whammy on him.

“There's a door in the back,” he said quietly as Henry came up beside him holding the jar of potion in both hands. “It's got one of those electronic security locks on it, but I know the code.” Catching sight of Henry's expression, his face illuminated by the light coming off the liquid, Tony smiled tightly. “No, I'm
not
supposed to have the code, but I watched the key grip open up one morning and it kind of stuck in my head.”

“Useful.”

“Yeah. That's what I thought at the time.”

Tony steered clear of the shadows as they hurried toward the back of the building. He told himself that skulking through them would scream “people up to no good” should a cop car or the private security hired by the industrial park happen to pass by. Two guys walking to the back door, well, that was obviously two guys who were there for legitimate reasons. That's what he told himself, and it was an accurate enough observation. But it
wasn't
why he was staying out of the shadows.

“Don't codes get changed on occasion, to prevent this very thing?” Henry asked as they reached the door.

Tony flipped up the cover on the keypad. “Yes.”

“And if they have?”

“Then we're screwed. Unless you can climb up onto the roof, go down a ventilation shaft, and open the door from the inside.”

Henry looked at his watch. “In less than twenty minutes? I'd rather not.”

“Then I guess it's a good thing they haven't changed the code.” He pulled the door open, slowly and carefully, and only far enough for them to slip inside.

“Does Lee Nicholas know the code?”

Frowning, Tony paused, the door almost shut. “I doubt it.”

“Then you'd better leave it unlocked. He's going to have to get into the building and it would be better for all concerned if he did it quietly.”

Arra hadn't been entirely certain where the gate would open.

The jar of potion shed enough light for Tony to find an alcove that would hold them both, giving them a clear line of sight to the door and along the closest thing to a central aisle the soundstage had. Once inside, pressed shoulder to shoulder, Henry tucked the jar in under his coat.

The darkness was nearly absolute, the dim red of the exit sign barely enough for Tony to orient himself. “He'd better make some noise,” he murmured, “or we'll never see him arrive.”

“I will.”

“Oh . . . yeah.” The darkness was nearly absolute to
human
eyes.

Tony tried not to fidget, but he'd never been much good at waiting. “Henry? Are you still going to try and stop that shadow?”

It took so long for the vampire to answer, Tony began to think he hadn't been heard. Which was stupid because Henry could hear his heart beating. Although, at the moment, it wasn't so much beating as pounding.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I don't know. The wizard may be right; now that the Shadowlord has found this world we have no chance, no hope, but I choose to think differently.”

“Because no one messes with what's yours?”

He could feel Henry's smile in the darkness. Knew how it would look, sharp and cold like a knife.

“Something like that.”

A sudden line of gray below the exit sign warned them that the door was opening. For barely an instant, a body stood silhouetted against the night, then an arm reached in and around to the right. Way up above the heavy steel grids where the grips hung the heavy kliegs, banks of low-level fluorescents came on.

It made sense. Shadows needed light to survive.

Tony shrank back into the alcove as Lee hurried by. He looked like he had when he left that afternoon and that was a good thing. Probably. It meant the shadow was still there, but it also meant it had done no visible damage. He let Henry slip out first, knowing the vampire could stay close without being spotted—standard operating procedure for Raymond Dark and
his
sidekick. When Lee and Henry disappeared around one of the walls defining Raymond Dark's office, he followed, eventually catching up to Henry by the video village on the edge of the new living room set.

Lee stood near the couch, looking up toward the ceiling and trembling.

There was—although had Tony not known what he knew, it would have been easy enough to convince himself he wasn't seeing it—an arc of shadow rising up above the actor's head.

“The shadow's separating,” Henry murmured, mouth close to Tony's ear. “But it seems to be taking some time.”

“Yeah, it took some time getting in. Henry!” He'd set the potion on the seat of Peter's canvas chair and was walking across the set. “Where are you going?”

Henry stopped an arm's length from Lee and leaned forward, nostrils flaring. The possessed actor didn't move, didn't twitch, didn't acknowledge his presence in any way. “The separation seems to be keeping all senses occupied.”

“It wasn't like that going in. Except . . .” Tony frowned, remembering. “Except that going in took most of the afternoon.”

Henry glanced up. “If the gate's about to open, it doesn't have that kind of time. Nor, when leaving, does it need to fit itself into a complex template.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Tony glanced up as well. He swept his gaze across and back, up and down, over and out but couldn't see anything resembling a gate. He
could
see . . . “Henry. What destroys shadow?”

“Light.”

He pointed.

“Arra's people would have tried something like that.”

“Maybe.” His lips pulled off his teeth in a pseudo smile, a smile he'd learned from Henry as it happened. “But they didn't have one of those babies.” Not really caring if Henry thought it would work, he ran for the light board.

Sorge, the gaffer, and the key grip had completed a rough setup for the next day's shoot. The script called for a meeting in this living room on a bright, sunny afternoon. Bright sunny afternoons in the middle of box warehouses required a lot of light. Most shows would use a couple of 10-K lamps, but at some point CB had acquired a high intensity 6,000 watt carbon arc lamp—speculation among the crew was that he'd won a bet—and the gaffer liked to use it for high contrast between daylight shots and the creature-of-the-night lighting they usually used. The actors hated it since it cranked up the temperature on the set. Lee had been heard to say, “To hell with Raymond Dark,
I'm
about to burst into fucking flames.” But it had been a major contributor to the “look” of
Darkest Night
.

Critics were split on whether or not that was a good thing.

As it was far too powerful for the enclosed space, the gaffer had rigged it with its own dimmer; planning on starting low and then cranking it up until Sorge stopped him. His hands sweating so badly that he left damp prints on the plastic, Tony spun the dimmer around as far to the left as he could then hooked one finger behind the switch.

Turning, he could see only the outside wall of the living room. Crap. “Henry, let me know the instant the shadow's out of Lee.”

“I'm not sure . . .”

“I am. And you'd better get under cover.”

“That had occurred to me.”

It wasn't sunlight, but Henry's eyes were sensitive and . . . “What was that?” It felt as though his fillings were vibrating loose.

“I can't see anything, but I suspect it's the gate opening.”

“The shadow?”

“Not quite free. Almost.”

Needing to act or scream, Tony started counting the pulse pounding in his temples.
One-two. Three-four. Five-six. Seven . . .

“Now!”

He didn't so much flip the switch as bring it along with him when Henry's voice jerked him forward.

Without fill lamps to soften its edges, the light slammed through the set like a battering ram. Even behind the beam, Tony's eyes watered.

Then the soundstage plunged into total darkness.

For a moment, Tony was afraid he'd gone blind. A moment later he realized it was only a tripped breaker and began stumbling back toward the set. Once he cleared the wall—not hard to find after slamming face first into it—the light from Arra's potion guided him to the two men in the center of the fake hardwood floor.

“Get his shoulders up,” Henry instructed as Tony dropped to his knees. “We've got to get this down him.”

Tony slipped an arm behind leather-clad shoulders and lifted. Lee was heavier than he thought he should be, as though some of the shadow lingered, weighing him down.
Don't be such a dumb ass. He's a big guy, that's all.
He looked like hell, but that was probably the fault of the light source. Tony didn't need Everett to tell him that green and glowing complimented no one's complexion. Case in point: pouring the potion down Lee's throat, Henry looked demonic.

“Did it work? Did it destroy the shadow?”

“I don't know.” Continuing to pour, the vampire managed a shallow shrug. “I wasn't looking into the light.”