Fall of Light (24 page)

The altar stone, still damp from being cleaned of special effects blood, vibrated with enticing energy. A sweet taste thrummed on Opal's tongue. She reached, for what she didn't know; she only knew something invited her, promising things.

“Open to me,” it whispered. “I will be your strength. I will be your spine. I will be your friend and protector. I will be your wings.”

She flattened her hands against the altar stone, felt the surge of a warm sea of power under her palms. Only Flint's shield kept it separate from the sea inside her. She could make the shield retreat, bare her skin, wrap herself in that warmth, finally find something that would take care of her instead of her taking care of everyone else—

“What are you doing?” asked someone behind her.

She blinked, glanced back. Phrixos stood silent a foot behind her, his hood up, his face shadowed in the black robe of his character. She was startled. She hadn't known he was there.

He was not the one who had spoken. Beyond him stood Erika, frowning, no cameras raised, curiosity marking her face.

“What?”

“Something special about the rock?” Erika asked.

“I'm sorry?” Opal said.

Erika came forward, stared at the altar stone. She sucked in her lower lip, then touched the stone. “Ow!” Her hand jerked, a drop of blood spilling free of her finger to splash on the rock. “What? How'd that happen?”

The music streaming from the rock rose from a single voice to an orchestra, full of ominous chords, woodwinds, and triumph, strings singing, deep notes of percussion.

Erika froze. Then her hand lowered, drops of blood welling from her fingertip and dripping on the stone, where they wet the surface and vanished. She set both hands against the stone, leaned on them, her shoulders hunching.

Manipulating her arms as though she were a rag doll, Phrixos gently stripped the cameras and her shoulder bag from her, then lifted her and laid her on her back on the stone. She stared up at him, only her eyes moving. “What,” she said, her voice a thread now as the music of power lapped at her, loudest where her blood fed the rock. “Don't,” she said. Her hand jerked, though, pressed the bleeding finger to the rock, pressed the palm, and then the wrist. “Stop it,” she whispered.

Opal stood, battered by wild waves of energy coming from the rock, from the ground below. Even the grass was dancing. Phrixos stood beside her, an absence of light and sound. Before her on the altar stone, Erika closed her eyes, her face drawn into a grimace. As her blood dripped into the stone, something flowed from the stone into her finger, a trickle of blue green energy Opal could not quite see but could sense. It sparked up Erika's arm, seeped through her torso, climbed her spine, and burst into her brain. Erika jerked again, and Opal woke out of the trance the music had put her in.

She stepped forward, lifted Erika's wounded hand from the stone, and broke the connection. Erika's body stiffened, all muscles tight, then relaxed. The music faded, still present but not so overpowering.

“Hey!” yelled someone from behind them. “What are you doing?”

“Are you okay?” Opal asked Erika.

“No,” Erika said. Her voice was strained, as though her throat had closed around the word and didn't want to let it escape. Her hand encircled Opal's forearm, the grip hard enough to hurt. “Yes. No! Help me!”

Opal helped Erika sit up, supported her as she slid off the altar stone. Phrixos stood silent, while Neil stumped across the clearing toward them. “You people know better than to mess with the set between shots! Have you gone mad?”

Opal lifted Erika's arm over her shoulder and snaked an arm around her waist to help her walk. Phrixos still held Erika's camera bags and shoulder bag. He followed.

“What the fuck is this?” Neil cried. “Someone better answer me, or there'll be hell to pay.”

Phrixos halted beside him and stared into his face from under that dark hood.

“Don't you play a part with me, you great lurching golem. I admire what the camera does with your image, but I was against hiring you from the start, and I haven't changed my mind yet—what's that look? What? Stop that! Stop . . .”

Opal left them both behind. Erika's muscles had been stiff when she came off the altar, but they loosened as she walked, and her breathing eased, opened. “What happened?” she asked.

“You tell me,” said Opal.

“I don't know. I feel like I walked into an electric fence. Everything in my head is still going
kabong
.” She lifted the hand she had bled from, stared at her finger. “Can a rock be a vampire? What's wrong with this shoot, Opal?”

“You're the professional observer,” Opal said. She was relieved Erika was talking like a person with sense after whatever had happened to her on the rock. It didn't make her feel like sharing anything with a woman who had been nothing but an irritation in her life so far.

“Yes, but you're the one with all the secrets.”

“Let me know when you decide to respect my privacy,” Opal said. “Until then, I'm not telling you a thing.”

“But I—but—” Erika gripped her forehead with her free hand. “My head hurts.”

The crew had finished devouring all the sandwiches, and most were on their feet again, leaving behind wads of plastic wrap, dented aluminum cans, crumpled paper napkins, and crumbs on the folding tables the caterers had set up for lunch.

Magenta rose from the table. “I saved you a cheese sandwich. Something happen?”

Opal glanced behind her. Phrixos had his palm on Neil's forehead now, and the director wasn't fighting him anymore; his eyes were closed.

“I think it's bad,” she muttered.

Magenta looked where Opal was looking. “Uh-oh. What's D.G. doing to our director? What's with Flashbulb here?”

“She bled on the altar stone. Then Dark God put her on it.”

“That does sound bad,” Magenta said.

“Whyever would you say that?” Erika asked. “Because that shambling monster as good as assaulted me? Or because the rock bit me, then Tasered me, and Miss Too-Big-for-Her-Britches let it happen?”

“What?” Magenta asked Opal. “This was going on and you just stood there?”

“I was sort of—in a trance myself.”

“The rock Tasered Erika?”

“I touched it and it paralyzed me! It drank my blood! Then that giant goon laid me out on it like a sacrifice, and”—she put her hand to her forehead, gripped it as though she could squeeze a memory out—“and I'm not sure what happened next, except it hurt, and I feel really weird. Kind of—not alone.”

“Opal,” said Magenta.

The first assistant director called, “All right, people. We're burning daylight. Let's get back to it. Stand-ins, we need to check the lighting again. Cast, go to Makeup for repairs. Crew, assume the position!”

The pull of work tugged them back to their stations. Erika, her cameras once again draped around her, trailed Magenta and Opal back to the trailer, but Rod turned her back at the door. Her screeches of rage in response were only halfhearted, trailing off with one last nonspecific, “I'll get you, bitch!” before Rod shut the door in her face.

Phrixos sat in his chair with his hood down, his eyes burning, looking like some wild thing captured against its will and ready to attack. Bettina and Gemma waited in their chairs, both pale and unhappy. Doreen hovered near Gemma, though technically she wasn't supposed to be in the trailer during makeup unless there was trouble. Rod had already gone to work on Ariadne. No one spoke, the sign of a truly troubled shoot.

Opal stood at her workstation facing the mirrored wall, her back to the trailer. She could see the others reflected as they went to work. She placed her palms flat on the counter. The tools of her trade were around her, and she pulled together the identity she had built for herself since she left home: skilled, respected, solid and reliable, invisible, accomplished, creative, resourceful, inspired.

Not enough,
she thought, and remembered the new people she had become on this particular project: witch friend to Lauren and Magenta, Corvus's girlfriend, Phrixos's walking nourishment supply, information collector.

Not enough,
she thought again. She closed her eyes and found her inner study. Some of Flint's energy still floated there, a bumbling fireball.
Come
, she whispered to it.
Help me open to my shadow self
.

Obedient, the fire seeped through her, sent bright warmth into all her dark corners, found the door she had shut on the self who knew how to manipulate and hurt other people, the part of her that most resembled Phrixos. Fire formed the key to pick the lock for her, but she had to turn the doorknob herself. She reached out and did it, pulled the door open and stepped through.

A skin of darkness settled over her, snugged against her in every expanse, crease, recess, every fine hair and blemish. It seeped under her surface. She twitched, settling it, then scratched an elbow. The new self itched!
Hey, hey,
it said,
what have I missed? Whoa, lots of life! Wow, what's going on here? How neat is that?

She lifted her eyelids and stared at herself in the mirror, saw darkness staring back. She closed her eyes and asked herself what the hell she had just done.
What I needed to,
she decided, and shuddered. She studied herself again, smiled, and saw the extra intensity darkness gave her, the beckoning that said,
Come closer. I have such interesting things to tell you.

Hey,
said her second self,
show me the guy.

She turned. Phrixos stared at her, his face unreadable beneath its overcoat of leaves and glitter. He sat up straighter. “What have you done?” he asked.

She felt wings at her back, flames at her fingertips, a blaze behind her eyes. All defenses, because her second self could tell how dangerous Phrixos was. She smiled at him, too, because second self felt the pull of attraction between them. It wasn't Corvus her second self wanted.

“Ready?” asked one of the production assistants from the trailer door.

“She never even touched him,” Bettina said, pointing to Opal and Phrixos.

“He doesn't need any help,” said Opal. “He's perfect.”

“You didn't even look at the photos,” said Bettina. “You're a total slacker.”

Opal raised her brows and looked at Bettina with the glare of an older sister who can do things to you while you're asleep if you piss her off. Bettina lost color. She leapt to her feet and fled the trailer.

“How'd you do that?” Gemma asked, rising from her chair as Magenta tried to pat her cheek with a powder puff.

“I'll demonstrate, if you bother me,” Opal said. Her voice had deepened just a little.

Everyone in the trailer turned to look at her. In the resulting silence, the P.A. said, “We needed you ten minutes ago, people! Come on!”

Phrixos rose, tipped Opal's chin up, and kissed her. Instead of letting him draw from her, she drew from him, sucked off a draught of his energy. He tasted sweet and sour, smoky and sharp, scary. He tried to move into her as his essence crossed her tongue, but Evil Opal knew how to drag all of him out of Corvus's body. Something in her spun darkness to wrap him tighter and deeper in a cocoon of night, though she couldn't paralyze him; she felt him struggling, and countered with more until at last he lay silent.

Corvus staggered when he let her go. She stared up at him and saw that Phrixos's green glow had faded from his eyes. “What?” he said in Corvus's voice.

She smiled. “Well, that's a handy trick. You're wanted on the set, Corr.”

“I am?”

She turned him and aimed him toward the door. “I'm right behind you.” She felt drunk and a little staggery herself. The taste of the banished god was still on her tongue, intoxicating to her second self. She grabbed her bag and followed Corvus down the steps in the wake of Ariadne, the two girls, their Makeup and Wardrobe people, the mother, and the guardian.

“Which scene are we doing?” Corvus asked Opal as they rounded the backdrop and headed for the altar.

“Mom's death scene. You studied it last night with Lauren at the restaurant, remember?”

“Vaguely,” he said.

“So far it hasn't been working out very well. Everybody's in a mood, especially Neil. We spent six hours getting it wrong, and then we broke for lunch.”

“How did I get to be me in the middle of the day? I'd pretty much given up on that.”

“I forced it,” said Opal.

“You did?” He studied her as they walked. “How?”