Smoke and Shadows (44 page)

“Sorge?”

The DP glanced up.

“Lee's reaction shots; do we need to relight?”

“I don't think so . . .”

As the DP headed out onto the office set, Peter nodded toward the sides sticking out of Tony's pocket. “You can read him Mason's lines.”

From elation to depression in less than a second. Probably a new record. “I can't.”

“You
can't?”

He couldn't look at Lee while he explained. “I have to do that thing for Arra.”

“Now?”

The feel of the gate powering up was making his eyeballs twitch. He glanced down at his watch. “Three minutes. She, uh, she says timing is everything in special effects.”

“Fine. Whatever. Go. Lee, get out there. Adam . . .”

The 1AD broke off a conversation with a boom operator Tony'd never seen before. Seemed like Hartley hadn't made it in this morning.

“. . . make sure that lot shuts up when I call quiet.”

Trying not to look like he was walking into pain, Tony made his way to the lamp.

Behind him, Peter called, “Quiet please!”

Adam's voice rose over the continuing fannish babble, “If you lot keep quiet until I give the word, Mason'll pose for pictures with you when we're done.”

The babble switched off.

“Rolling!”

Grabbing the rack at the last moment, Constable Elson remained on his feet as he finished his accidental dance with a tattered antediluvian ball gown. “This looks like a fire code violation to me,” he muttered, untangling the distressed gray taffeta from around his legs.

“I assure you, Constable, it is not.”

“There's not a lot of room in this hall.” He stepped back, got poked in the ass by the hilt of a cheap replica cavalry sword, jumped forward, and very nearly tangled with the taffeta again.

“There is, however slight, a clear passageway and the fire marshal has given his approval.” The fire marshal also had a teenage son looking forward to a career in television, but CB saw no point in mentioning that. “The soundstage door is just ahead.”

It was, in fact, a mere dozen paces ahead although impossible to see until the last corner had been rounded and a rack of white hazmat suits passed. He'd picked the suits up cheap from another show's going out of business sale and instructed the writers to make use of them. Their ideas to date had been less than stellar but he knew that eventually one of them would dream up something the show could use—after all, if an infinite number of monkeys could write Hamlet . . .

His hand was actually on the door when the bell rang and the red light went on.

“Why are we stopping?”

“Cameras are rolling,” he said, inclining his head toward Constable Danvers. “We'll have to wait.”

“How long?”

He shrugged. “Until the director feels he has what he needs.”

“Jack . . .” She turned to her partner who shook his head.

“No. I want a look around that soundstage and I want another word with Mr. Foster.”

“We could come back.”

Elson folded his arms. “We're here.”

He translated the female constable's expression to read:
You wouldn't have half as big a bee up your butt if this wasn't television.
She was probably right. Television, invited into homes 24/7 remained a mystery; to add mystery on top of that would be more than such a man could resist. Although the odds of him actually discovering anything were slim; he wouldn't be waiting to enter the soundstage if CB believed otherwise.

Running feet, pounding between the costumes, pulled all three of them back around the way they'd come.

Baseball bat held across her body, Arra stumbled to a halt by the hazmat suits and stared at the red light beside the door. Damn! Had CB been on his own, she'd have taken her chances with a line of bullshit and charged right on in. But with strangers standing there . . .

“Problem, Arra?”

Time.

11:16.

Too late anyway. Tony was on his own. She lowered the bat. “No. No problem.”

“Arra Pelindrake?” The blond man stepped forward. “I'm Constable Jack Elson, RCMP. As long as we're all waiting here, I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

Beyond the constable, CB's expression said much the same thing.

The lamp was in place, a light blanket arranged behind it to prevent any possible leakage into the set in use. All Tony had to do was hit the switch on the lamp itself—the gaffer had plugged him into the board and told him in no uncertain terms that if he came near it, he'd get a light stand up the ass.

Oh, yeah. Things were going well.

He'd seen a PBS special once—or maybe it was a horror movie, details were fuzzy—about this guy who attacked people with vibrations until their eyeballs melted. That was pretty much exactly how he felt. Like his eyeballs were melting.

Definitely time to turn on the last best hope for humankind.
And the part of the hero will be played by a carbon arc lamp.

As his hand moved toward the switch, his shadow surged up his legs.

He had time to jerk back futilely before darkness slammed into his head and he was no longer in control.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It's in me!
Except it hadn't been in him, it had been hiding in his shadow.
How long . . . ?

And then the gate was open and he was walking—being walked—out underneath it.

Déjà vu all over again.

The shadow hadn't taken over so much as pushed him aside. He was in his own mind, he just wasn't there alone. Henry could have pulled him free with a cocked finger, but Henry wasn't here. Arra wasn't here. Just him.

And shadow.

No response. And time was running out. Tony could feel the attention of the man on the other side of the gate. Could feel the pull. Could feel the shadow beginning to separate.

So he reached out and grabbed it. Not physically, of course. Physically, he was still standing like a total doofus in the middle of the set.

He wrapped his mind around the
concept
of shadow.

Contact.

Everyone has dark memories they can't purge. Memories that creep out of mental corners on sleepless nights, perch on the edge of consciousness, and gnaw. Lucky people remembered things they read in newspapers or saw on television; cruelties that didn't involve them personally but still cut deep. People who lived without the security of freedom or justice had darker memories, memories that often fit neatly into the inflamed map of physical scars. Tony had once seen an ancient Egyptian wizard devour the life of a baby while the baby's parents walked on, unaware their child was dead.

The shadows were pieces of the Shadowlord. Dark memories. Memories of a world where those parents would thank the gods that their baby was safely dead.

The shadow had known what he knew from the moment it had entered his body. Now he knew what the shadow knew. It was like seeing a private slide show of atrocities against the front of his skull.

Had Tony been in control of his mouth, he would have screamed.

Then cruel intelligence on the other side of the gate called the shadow home and the slide show stopped.

Somehow, Tony managed to hang on.

“You don't have to go!”
He fed it the memory of being absorbed, of becoming nothing once again. Of losing self.

It sounded like Hartley, the boom operator, had Hartley been able to list “enjoys inflicting torment” as one of his hobbies. It also sounded remarkably like the voice in Tony's head.

He was losing the tug-of-war. He could feel the shadow slipping away.

Its tone went beyond innuendo. Tony shuddered, unable to control his body's visceral response and lost a little more of his grip. Strangely, the rush of blood away from his brain helped clear his mind. If a lack of information was all that was keeping the Shadowlord from attacking . . . He couldn't . . . He had to. Arra could deal with whatever that made him and Henry could call him back from wherever he'd gone and another little bit of shadow slipped free while he tried to work out the consequences. “Yes!”

Too late.

As the shadow roared free and his world became pain, he realized it had been taunting him, that however much it feared the loss of self, it
had
to rejoin the whole. It had just been indulging itself before it went home—offering a glimpse at hope, then snatching it away again.

Tony regained consciousness to see a familiar face bending over him. Green eyes were concerned and a warm hand had a comforting grip on his shoulder.

“Tony?”

He clutched at Lee's voice as dark memories threatened to overwhelm him. Lee being there when he woke up was a bit of a dream come true and he was damned well going to hang onto it. “What . . . ?”

A slightly confused but comforting smile. “You tell me. You yelled and when Adam came over to tell you to shut up, you were on the floor.” He glanced around and the smile faded. “I was on this floor . . .”

Tony struggled to sit up, wondering, if the 1AD had come to check on him, where the hell he'd gone.
Through the gate? No. The
shadow
went through the gate.

As his head cleared the floor, his stomach rebelled and just barely managing to turn away from the actor, he lost what remained of his breakfast and half a dozen strawberry marshmallows all over the fake hardwood floor. Oh, yeah, this was how he dreamed of waking up with Lee . . .

“Eww. Is that real vomit?”

Tony didn't recognize the voice, figured it had to be one of the fans, and briefly considered crawling over and puking on her shoes. In comparison to how he now felt, melting eyeballs had been a good feeling. Coughing out what had to be a piece of his spleen, he managed to gasp, “Arra.”

“You want Arra?”

From the sound of it, Lee had moved away, but he was still closer than anyone else in his extended audience. In between heaves that achieved nothing more than a thin stream of greenish-yellow bile, Tony managed a nod.

“He was doing some work for her.”

Peter's voice. And running footsteps. More than one set.

“Tony!”

“Arra, don't kneel down there!” Peter's voice again. “He's been . . . Never mind. It looks like you missed it.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and . . . something. It settled his stomach, but more importantly it pushed the darkness back to where he could . . . not ignore it but exist with it. Darker than what he was used to existing with, but he'd manage. Not like he had a choice.

Dropping over onto his back, he looked up into the wizard's eyes and felt tears rise in his own.
So much for what's left of my macho image.

“It's all right, Tony . . .”

“It isn't.” He couldn't cope with platitudes, not from her. “He knows.”