Smoke and Shadows (54 page)

The release hurt almost as much as the initial grab and he yowled again as blood flowed suddenly back into abused tissue. Bright side, he hardly felt the back of Keisha's fist drive the edge of his lower lip in over his teeth reopening the cut he'd received during his earlier dance with Mouse. Her hips canted up between his thighs, throwing him forward, off-balance. Barely managing to keep from kissing the linoleum, his weight slammed down on his elbow.

“The master says we can't kill you,” she growled, her teeth closing around his ear. “But we can hurt you.”

If he yanked his head away, he'd lose a piece of his ear.

If he
didn't,
he'd lose a piece of his ear.

Tony could feel warm and wet running down his neck and he really hoped Keisha was drooling.

Something was making a strange half growling, half howling noise. He didn't think it was Keisha. He punched her in the stomach. She grunted and grabbed his wrist. Small bones ground together. The noise continued uninterrupted. Nope, not Keisha. Him?

“Keisha!”

A small eraser bounced off the set dresser's close-cropped hair and hit him on the cheek.

“Go to sleep!”

Her mouth separated from his ear with a wet slurp. Her left leg settled slowly toward the floor. Her hand fell from his wrist. Tony clamped it immediately on his ear.

“Stop being such a baby.” Arra's voice sounded both muffled and annoyed. “It seems a little over the top after you had someone deliberately jab a hole through your eyebrow.”

“Not the same thing,” he muttered, checking his palm. Damp but not bloody. As Keisha sighed under him, he pushed himself carefully up onto his knees.

“Zazu, be quiet!”

The growling howl stopped.

Reaching behind him, Tony untangled a long leg from around his. The moment he was clear, he fell to one side, crawling away until he could brace his back against the wall, cradling all his injured bits close. “Is she . . . ?”

“She's fine,” Arra told him as she stared down at the younger woman. “Physically anyway. Unless you did damage.”

“I
took
damage.” And as soon as he got the chance, he was heading for the bathroom to check things out. They still fucking hurt!

“The shadow-held aren't stronger than they were before, but they have no inhibitions. They have no fear of injury, so they hold nothing back.”

He picked the eraser up off the floor. “So what was this for?”

“To get her attention.”

“Right.” And then he remembered. “You said she's physically fine. What isn't?”

“What isn't what?”

“Fine.”

“Ah. Yes.” Arra pressed her lips together into a thin line, all color leaching out. “It's like this,” she began just as Tony thought she wasn't going to answer him. “Putting Keisha to sleep involved her energies only—it's undetectable at a distance. The shadow is still in there, confined. If I destroy it, the Shadowlord will know immediately where I am and I am not yet ready for him.”

“You've destroyed shadows before.”

“So it's true, then. Men really do think with those?” She nodded toward his crotch and he covered it instinctively. “Because you're not thinking now. The Shadowlord wasn't on this world, wasn't part of this world's energy flow before. She'll have to hold the shadow until we defeat him once and for all. And if we don't, well, she'll have worse problems than a few nightmares.”

“A few nightmares?” Now he knew to look, he could see Keisha's eyes moving behind her closed lids.

“Constant nightmares.”

Constant. Babies dying. Rotting. And he was the only one who could see it. Their parents kissed and hugged and played with the tiny corpses until bits started falling off. “You've got to wake her up.”

Arra snorted. “And do what? Smack her on the head with a frying pan? You can't knock someone unconscious without doing damage, Tony. There's no such thing as a Vulcan neck pinch or any other tidy television solution. This is war—not everyone comes out . . .”

The only sound for a long time was Keisha's labored breathing.

“. . . whole.” Turning on one heel, Arra headed back to the dining room. “Put her on my bed. She won't wake up until I tell her to.”

At 5:57, Carol from the lighting crew showed up.

Tony sighed. Carol had a black belt in some kind of martial art. He hadn't been paying enough attention to the overheard conversation to know exactly which martial art but, bottom line, it didn't much matter since he had equivalent training in absolutely nothing. Plastering a fake smile on his face, he opened the door. “Hey. What's happening?”

“Don't play dumb,” she snapped, pushing past him.

“All right.” He grabbed her shoulder, spun her back around, and threw the contents of his mug in her face. The coffee wasn't exactly hot, but it distracted her just long enough for him to sweep her legs out from under her and send her crashing to the floor.

Really close contact kept her from landing any serious blows, but she still beat the crap out of him.

“What took you so long?” he gasped, not being at all careful of anything but aching ribs as he crawled off of Carol's sleeping body.

“Time is relative. There's one of those gel cold packs in the freezer. Maybe you'd better use it.”

“You think?” His voice already sounded higher. The way things were going, by the end of the night only dogs would be able to hear him.

At 7:02, it was Elaine from craft services.

Keisha, Carol, and Elaine—the three women who'd run to comfort Lee. Wiping up his spills, holding his hand, offering comfort, and making it quite clear there was more being offered . . . Tony had to wonder if this was a message to him from the Shadowlord. If his nose was being rubbed in Lee's obvious unavailability.

A sudden chill ghosted down Tony's spine. Or was the message that Lee was at the studio with the Shadowlord, unprotected?

Elaine knocked again.

And, nice change, she went for his eyes not his balls.

“Put her on the bed with the others.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, patting the bleeding scratch on his cheek. “What did your last servant die of?”

Arra's eyes lost their focus for a moment. “One of my order killed him while shadow-held. She melted his bones and left him lying in a fleshy puddle in the great hall. Without structure enough to scream, he died gurgling.”

Fighting the urge to vomit, Tony reached down and tucked his hands in Elaine's armpits. He had a vague memory of deliberately not asking that question earlier. Apparently, his instincts had temporarily deserted him. Smart instincts. If he didn't
have
to be around, he wouldn't be. “You suck as a motivational speaker. You know that, right?”

“You asked.”

He laid Elaine out as comfortably as he could beside Carol and Keisha and stared down at them for a moment, hating to leave them trapped. Tormented. Keisha had cried out half a dozen times. Carol's head almost continually jerked from side to side on the pillow. Unfortunately, if even the glare of light in the elevator hadn't been enough to destroy his hitchhiker, there was no way anything in the entire co-op would affect, let alone destroy, these shadows. Well, nothing except Arra and she was saving herself for the final battle. At least, that was the benefit of the doubt explanation.

“I'm sorry,” he told them, as Elaine began to tremble. “It's just . . .” Just what? He sighed. “It's just, I'm sorry.”

Arra was packing up her laptop as he came out of the bedroom, “Have you worked it out, then?” he asked her, as she slid it into the case. “The light thing?”

“Yes, I have. I charged the potion while you were in with the girls; seal it up and let's get going.”

“It's still early. Henry won't be awake for another forty minutes.”

“You told him to meet us at the studio?”

“Well, yeah, but . . .”

“I won't be using any power during the drive. We'll be moving more slowly than usual.”

That was the best news Tony'd had in days.

“And,” Arra continued, swinging her laptop case over her shoulder, “the shadow-held will have a lot more trouble finding us if we're in a moving vehicle. Charging the potions may have created enough of an energy blip to alert him.”

Made sense, they were anti-shadow potions and if
he
was the Shadowlord, he'd be watching for something like that. Tony sealed up the four thermoses—they'd bought two new ones with the groceries—and packed them quickly away in his backpack. Then he went for the elevator while Arra locked up and set wards.

“Think of a ward like a spiderweb made of energy,”
she'd explained earlier when he'd asked.
“Some webs warn the spider there's prey nearby, some capture it.”

She'd snorted impatiently.
“No, I'm the walrus. I thought I told you to put those on ice?”

The elevator was taking its own sweet time arriving. A door opened. A familiar yap drove through his eardrums and straight into his brain.

“Julian . . .”

Tony spun around, ready to intervene, but the wizard was smiling almost benignly across the hall toward her neighbor. “Would you mind telling anyone you hear knocking on my door that I've gone to Victoria? With Tony.” She gestured.

Julian and Moira leaned out of the doorway to look.

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 assistance.” The elevator announced its arrival. “We'll be going now.”

Julian followed.

Eyes rolling, Arra shoved Tony inside, turned and hit the “close door” button. “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?”