Master of Smoke (34 page)

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Authors: Angela Knight

BOOK: Master of Smoke
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“
Actually, she’s trying to decide if she’ll have me.
” He pulled himself out of the pool and grinned as he swept his soaked and streaming hair out of his eyes. “
How goes it with you?
”
“
Well enough. The dragons have grown no more fleet of wing and claw, thank the gods. The hellhounds, too, chase me still, just enough to keep my horns sharp.
” The stag eyed Eva as she cautiously climbed from the pool to stand just behind David. “
And you, girl
.” He extended his elegant head to give her a sniff. He smelled of forest shadows and magic so strong, she found herself taking a wary step back. From the glint in his intelligent gaze, she suspected she had amused him. “
You are wolf.
”
“Umm, yeah. I guess,” Eva said out loud, having no idea how to project her thoughts as they were doing. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“
And you. He needs such a one as you to run with
.”
“
And you do not?
” David retorted. “
You should seek some Sidhe warrior to bond with, that you may take a bride of your own among them.
” He’d fallen back into more formal speech again.
The stag looked away, off into the distance. Sadness darkened his great blue eyes. “
It is too late for that, my friend.
”
David stiffened. “
What do you mean? What have you seen?
” He took a step closer and caught his friend by the horns, pulling the great head around to face him. “
If you need help, you know I’ll fight for you. I always have. I drove that Dark One away, remember?
”
“
I could not forget such courage, my friend. The demon would have devoured me had you not killed it first, at great cost to yourself.
” Gently, the stag twisted his head, pulling his antlers from David’s light grip. “
But everything has an end time. Even immortals. And I fear I have come to mine.
”
Before David could say anything more, the stag whirled away and leaped across the pool in one long, soaring bound. With the rapid thump of hooves on the loam, he vanished into the trees, leaving a trail of sparks in his wake.
“Wow.” Eva scraped her dripping hair back and stared, but there was no sign of the stag. “He’s really ...” She searched for a word and had to settle for “Powerful.”
“In many ways, yes.” David frowned after his friend as if troubled. “But remaining a deer has limited him. Even with Zephyr’s magic, that stag doesn’t have the brain power he needs.”
“What do you mean?”
“The host form contributes a great deal of will and intelligence to shape the elemental’s magic. Deer are not particularly bright to begin with, and they are prey animals. He needs a large predator at the very least.” He sighed heavily. “The warriors of my tribe would have fought for the honor of hosting him, but he’s always preferred to be as he is. I don’t think he wanted to share his mind the way I do.”
“Why?” Eva wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. Something about the conversation chilled her.
“He saw what happened to me when I lost my people. He said he did not want the grief.” David noticed her quiver and stepped closer, running one big hand down her back. Instantly a thick towel appeared around her shoulders. He picked it up and began to dry her off. “Unfortunately, I know him well enough to know he’s too damn stubborn to let me help him. Short of chasing him through the woods for the next year—assuming he’d even let me—there’s nothing I can do.”
 
Warlock woke sprawled
across the center of the spell circle, Kevin Wheeler’s cold body lying beside him. He was covered in the Dire Wolf’s dried blood, his white fur matted with great sticky brown smears and sprays of it. He felt sick and weak, scarcely able to think at all.
Worst of all, he felt powerless. The cat had taken his stolen abilities back. True, Warlock had driven Smoke out before the creature could kill him, but that was all he’d accomplished.
Still, he lived. One does not survive as long as Warlock had without tasting the occasional defeat, and he knew living meant he still had the opportunity to regain the power to avenge himself.
Rolling onto his back, Warlock considered the ceiling through narrowed orange eyes. His first thought was to attack Smoke yet again, but that sounded far too much like the definition of madness: attempting the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.
So no. He would not let that creature back into his mind again. He’d come far too close to being destroyed. He wouldn’t court death that way again.
What he needed was a power source that did not have so many teeth. One unprotected by ruthless will and feral intelligence. Unfortunately, he knew of no such power source.
But Smoke might.
When he’d first realized that maintaining control of the cat’s memory and powers might not be as simple as it seemed, Warlock had set to work creating a backup of sorts, in case the beast stole his memories back.
Now he rose from the spell circle and padded over to the workshop table where he’d spent so many nights of late. In the center of that table sat a book flipped open to reveal pages of notes. He no longer remembered exactly what he’d written, but he intended to find out.
Warlock smiled in grim satisfaction, then grimaced as he scented himself.
First, however, he was in desperate need of a bath.
 
The bell over the Comix Cave door gave its habitual merry jingle as Eva walked in. “Hi, Dad, I’m ...”
The shop was splashed in red paint. Great swaths of it cut across the new arrivals racks, splashed the walls and the expensive hero statues.
Oh, shit,
she thought.
The stock is ruined. Dad’s gonna have a stroke. Who the hell did ...
She saw them.
They lay in a tangle on the floor, Bill Roman huddled over Charlotte as if trying to protect her from the claws that had ripped into them both. Her father’s throat was gone, his empty eyes staring in horror. Her mother had no face at all.
 
 
“Mom! Dad!” Eva
woke changing, her voice spiraling from a scream of horror to a roar of agony. She rolled to her feet on the blanket where they’d made love yet again before drifting off into sated sleep. “Daddy!” It was a shriek that made the bushes sway.
“Gods and demons!” David sprang upward and came down with a sword materializing in his hand, hard eyes scanning the clearing for whatever had torn that sound out of her. “What the seven hells was that?” As he caught sight of her face, his voice dropped to a more soothing register. “Did you have another nightmare?”
“I hope that was all it was.” She started to push her tangled mane out of her eyes and winced as her talons sliced her forehead. “Dammit!”
“You cut yourself.” He stepped over to her and caught the side of her head to draw her muzzle down and examine the wound. “It’s not deep. You need to watch those claws, Eva. What did you dream?”
“I walked into the shop. Mom and Dad were dead. Warlock had ...” She couldn’t say it. As it was, she had to swallow hard as her stomach heaved at the gory memory. “David, we’ve got to check on them. What if it was some kind of prophetic dream?” An equally unsettling thought pierced her fear. “Warlock’s first set of flunkies found us at the shop, so he must know where it is. And if he tracked us down, he could find my folks just as easily.”
David frowned up at her. “It’s possible. And Warlock likes to strike at family. I’ll open a gate and we’ll go check.”
She nodded, feeling sick with anxiety. “I’d better change back. If they’re all right, I don’t want to scare the hell out of them.”
“We’ll need to take them somewhere safe.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw in thought. “Arthur has safe houses on Mortal Earth that are heavily warded against magic. We built them during the Vampire Wars a couple of years ago. I’m sure he’d let us use one.”
“The problem will be convincing Dad to go. He’s not going to want to leave the shop.” Still, she could burn that bridge when she came to it. She needed to make sure her parents were all right.
 
David opened his
gate in the alley behind the shop. It was Sunday, which meant the Comix Cave would be closed so Charlotte could drag Bill to church. Afterward there’d be televised golf—not his beloved football, not this time of year, but Dad loved sports. Or at least, he loved drinking beer and eating buffalo wings while somebody knocked a ball around on his giant high-def screen.
But Eva couldn’t get that dream out of her mind. She had to check the shop.
David at her back, she strode around the building to the Comix Cave’s front door. Pausing, Eva gathered her courage, before she unlocked the door and opened it. The bell jingled cheerily as she flicked on the light.
The store was empty. The hard knot in her stomach loosened just a bit. Blowing out a breath, Eva turned to David. “Can you open a gate to their house if I give you the address?”
“Of course.” He shot a glance over his shoulder. “But let’s get inside first. We’ll gate from there.”
 
Charlotte and Bill
Roman owned a two-story home with beige vinyl siding and white trim in a comfortably middle-class development. The lawn was green and well tended, the better to showcase her mother’s lovingly tended azaleas, which surrounded the house in a brilliant profusion of white and pink blooms.
David and Eva stepped through his gate into the thick spring woods that lay behind the house. She managed not to break into a run as they crossed the lawn and climbed the brick steps to the porch, but it took all the self-control she had. Stomach knotted, Eva threw David an agonized look and knocked. Heart in her throat, she listened with every bit of werewolf acuity she had.
Footsteps. Thank God. Unless it was a werewolf ...
Charlotte opened the door, her smile of welcome turning to a frown of concern as she took in Eva’s pale face. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Hi, Mom. Mind if we come in?” It was all she could do not to leap on her mother in relief.
“Sure. This is still your home, Eva. You know that.” Charlotte opened the door wider and called, “Bill, Eva and David are here.” She looked past them as they walked in. “Dear, where’s your car?”
“Car trouble,” David said smoothly. “We had a friend drop us over.”
“Oh. Do you need to call a tow truck?”
Dammit, she should have thought to bring the car, but she’d been in such a tearing hurry ...
“No need.” David gave her mother a smile so charming, Charlotte blinked and looked just slightly dazzled. “I’ll take a look at it in the morning. I’m pretty good with engines.”
Finally realizing the two hadn’t actually met, Eva performed the introductions as they walked into the living room, where Bill—surprise—was indeed watching a golf game. Her father shot David a narrow-eyed look that was just shy of hostile, before reluctantly rising to offer his hand.
“What brings you two by?” Bill asked as Eva and David settled on the gold-striped love seat that stood at an angle to the couch.
Charlotte shot him a quelling look at his cool tone. “May I get you two anything to drink?”
“Got any wine?” At least it would give her something to do with her hands.
“There’s a Riesling in the fridge.”
Eva managed another smile. She had to get them out of here. Somehow. “Sounds great.”
David looked at the bottle of Coors on the coffee table. “I’d like a beer.” He probably suspected that asking for wine would cost him masculinity points with Bill. And he was right.
An uncomfortable silence fell as Charlotte bustled out.
“Have you read the new
Scarlet Reaper
?” her father asked.
Eva usually made a point of reading damn near everything that came into the store so she could discuss comics with her customers. “I haven’t had a chance.”
I’ve been too busy trying not to get killed.
“That new writer’s an idiot. If he retcons one more character out of existence, I’m dropping the book.” Retroactive continuity—declaring that something which had happened in a previous issue had never happened at all—irritated Bill no end.
Silence fell again. Bill glowered at David. David gave him a polite smile in return. Eva dropped a hand on David’s knee by way of silently telling her father to dial back his disapproving daddy act.
How the hell were they going to persuade her parents to go to Arthur’s safe house?
“Eva and I have been talking,” David began after Charlotte had served the drinks and curled up next to her husband. “Mr. Roman, I realize I got off on the wrong foot with you the other day, and I’d like a chance to get to know you both better. A friend of mine has a beach house on the coast. It’s a private beach. Eva and I were planning an impromptu week’s vacation, and we thought we’d ask you to join us while Mrs. Roman is on spring break.”
Bill frowned, his puzzled gaze flicking to Eva’s face. “We can’t close the shop, Eva, particularly not for a week. Not with the economy in the tank. We need every sale we can get. You know that.”

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