Master of Smoke Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  Pise for the Mageverse novels

  MASTER OF DRAGONS

  “Many thanks to Angela Knight for keeping this series sexy and unique.”—Romance Reader at Heart

  MASTER OF SWORDS

  “Fabulous ... A terrific romantic fantasy that spins the Arthurian legend into a different, unique direction.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  MASTER OF WOLVES

  “Grandmaster of the paranormal romantic suspense.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  MASTER OF THE MOON

  “Packs in tons more passion, danger, and sizzling sensuality ... Scorchingly hot.”—Romantic Times

  MASTER OF THE NIGHT

  “A terrific paranormal romantic suspense thriller that never slows down until the final confrontation between good and evil. The action-packed story line moves at a fast clip.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  WARRIOR

  “A wonderful science fiction romantic suspense.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “The character chemistry is gorgeous; the sex is searing hot; the world fascinating and a joy to explore. All in all, a great book!”—Errant Dreams Reviews

  JANE’S WARLORD

  “What an awesome, scintillating, and sexy book! Jane’s Warlord is intriguing, extremely sensuous, and just plain adventurous. A star is born.”—Romantic Times (Top Pick)

  “Chills, thrills, and a superhero and heroine will have readers racing through this sexy tale. Take note, time-travel fans, the future belongs to Knight!”

  —Emma Holly, USA Today bestselling author

  “[Angela Knight’s] world is believable and her plotting fast paced. Knight’s fictional world seems to have a promising future.”—Booklist

  “Solid writing ... sexy love scenes and likable characters. I look forward to [Knight’s] next book.”

  —All About Romance

  “Amusing ... Exciting ... Anyone who enjoys strong women kicking butt ... will enjoy this.” —Midwest Book Review

  “A fantastic story of a love that never died.”

  —A Romance Review

  “Exhilarating ... Delightful.”—The Best Reviews

  Further praise for the novels of Angela Knight

  “Nicely written, quickly paced, and definitely on the erotic side.” —Library Journal

  “The sex scenes were explosive and should have come with a warning for the reader to have a fire extinguisher handy during reading.”—Euro-Reviews

  “Delicious ... Wonderfully crafted ... Angela Knight brings such life to her characters and to the world she’s created for them that readers can’t help but believe in magic.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “If you like alpha heroes, wild rides, and pages that sizzle in your hand, you’re going to love [Angela Knight]!”

  —J. R. Ward, New York Times bestselling author

  “From the first page Ms. Knight has me hook, line, and sinker ... Titillating and action packed.”

  —A Romance Review

  “Exceptionally written, refreshing.”—Fallen Angel Reviews

  “Fresh ... Hot sex. You are sure to enjoy.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Erotic ... The love scenes are steamy and sensuous—some of the best I’ve read.”—SFRA Review

  “Ms. Knight has combined the erotic with the romantic and made a classic tale.”

  —Just Erotic Romance Reviews (Gold Star Rating)

  “[A hero] to make any woman hot with desire.”

  —In the Library Reviews

  Berkley Sensation Titles by Angela Knight

  Mageverse Series

  MASTER OF THE NIGHT

  MASTER OF THE MOON

  MASTER OF WOLVES

  MASTER OF SWORDS

  MASTER OF DRAGONS

  MASTER OF FIRE

  MASTER OF SMOKE

  The Time Hunters Series

  JANE’S WARLORD

  WARRIOR

  GUARDIAN

  CAPTIVE DREAMS

  (with Diane Whiteside)

  MERCENARIES

  Anthologies

  HOT BLOODED

  (with Christine Feehan, Maggie Shayne, and Emma Holly)

  BITE

  (with Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson,

  and Vickie Taylor)

  KICK ASS

  (with Maggie Shayne, MaryJanice Davidson, and Jacey Ford)

  OVER THE MOON

  (with MaryJanice Davidson, Virginia Kantra, and Sunny)

  BEYOND THE DARK

  (with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Diane Whiteside)

  SHIFTER

  (with Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day, and Virginia Kantra)

  HOT FOR THE HOLIDAYS

  (with Lora Leigh, Anya Bast, and Allyson James)

  BURNING UP

  (with Nalini Singh, Virginia Kantra, and Meljean Brook)

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  MASTER OF SMOKE

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / January 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Angela Knight.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eIS
BN : 978-1-101-47676-5

  BERKLEY® SENSATION

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, it took a team to help me get this book whipped into shape, and I want to thank those people for all their hard work. My editor, Cindy Hwang, gave Master of Smoke her usual care and attention to all the things that make a romance work. My critique partners Diane Whiteside, Kate Douglas, Shelby Morgen, Camille Anthony, and Stephanie Burke were an invaluable help and source of ideas. I also want to thank beta readers Virginia Ettel, Linda Kusiolek, Wingednike, Marteeka Karland, and Ani Stubbs for making sure the book doesn’t suck.

  Berkley has a wonderful team of people who work very hard on our books. My thanks to Berkley’s Cover Gods, also known as the art department. Then there’s Cindy’s assistant, Leis Pederson, who is always willing to help me with whatever questions I have.

  And last but certainly not least, I want to thank my wonderful agent, Roberta Brown, who is a constant source of encouragement.

  I would also like to dedicate this book to my new grand-nephews, Charles, William, and Richard Patterson, and my grandniece, Naomi Looper. I envy my sister all her beautiful and brilliant grandbabies!

  ONE

  Boom!

  The psychic rumble seemed to vibrate Eva Roman’s skull. She jumped. “What the heck was that?”

  Her father glanced over at her. “What? I didn’t hear anything.” Bill Roman was a bear of a man with a broad, handsome face and a gray-shot black beard that blended with the salt-and-pepper bristle of his hair.

  The customer he was talking to shook his head and slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I didn’t hear anything either.”

  Eva hadn’t either, but she still felt as though she were sitting next to the amps at a rock concert. Her chest vibrated as if from a deep bass note, and ripples of ice crawled along her spine.

  What was that?

  Something that isn’t making you any money. Unpack the boxes, Eva. Dragging her attention back to the job at hand, she used a box cutter to slice open the cardboard box at her feet, pulled out a stack of books, and started counting. It was Wednesday, and the week’s shipment had arrived, so she needed to check the contents.

  Yep, fifty copies of Amazing Spider-Man, just like the shipping manifest said. She put a check on the list and propped the books up at their assigned spot on the New Releases display rack.

  Ruuuumble. Despite her instinctive jolt, Eva tried to ignore the vibration as she started pulling copies of X-Men out of the box.

  “It was completely out of character.” Her father leaned an elbow on the counter, settling in for his favorite pastime: debating his beloved comics. “Deathrage would never torture anybody, not after what Psicopath did to her in issue 28. It’s like Batman using a gun or Superman beating somebody to death.”

  “The writer’s just trying to take the book in a darker direction.” A tall, handsome blond, Joel Harmon had intense opinions and a love of comics almost as deep as her father’s, which was why Bill loved to argue with him.

  Eva had fallen in love with him for basically the same reasons. At least until she realized what she was doing to him. Or worse, going to do.

  “Darker? Her name’s Deathrage, for God’s sake. How much darker can she get?”

  Rummmmmmmble. Something about that sound gnawed at Eva, gave her the nagging feeling that something was deeply wrong. Something she had to do something about. Stop. Fix. Fight. Something.

  And she had to do it now.

  Dropping the stack of books back into the box, Eva looked over at her father. “Mind if I take off, Dad?”

  He turned around and examined her face. Whatever he saw carved sudden lines of worry around his hazel eyes. “Hey, are you all right?”

  Eva rolled her shoulders uneasily. “I just don’t feel well.” She had to find out what the hell was causing her Spidey sense to tingle.

  She hadn’t even known she had a Spidey sense.

  “Go. I’ve got this.” Bill took the box cutter out of her hand and went to work on the next box of books.

  “Thanks.” She gathered up her purse and headed for the door, striding past massive wooden display racks stacked with comics. “See you tomorrow, Dad.”

  “Bye.” He pulled out a stack of books. “I’m telling you, Deathrage wouldn’t have laid a finger on that guy ...”

  The bell attached to the door jangled merrily as Eva stepped out of the Comix Cave. It was dark, the moon riding the stand of pines that bordered the strip mall’s parking lot. In the distance, dogs barked in a hysterical chorus. Probably at the same thing that was making her crazy.

  She could head into those trees, transform, and go investigate. Might be better to take the car, though. Especially if she needed a quick getaway from whatever was doing ... whatever the hell it was doing. Eva dug her keys out of her purse and clicked the fob to unlock her dark blue Ford Focus.

  Curiosity might have killed the cat, but she hoped it didn’t do anything to werewolves.

  Greendale, South Carolina, was a New South town, which meant it was one big suburb and a small city core that included one or two tall buildings with skyscraper pretensions. The Comix Cave lay on the western outskirts, among ranch houses, subdivisions, and so many trees you had to drive carefully to avoid hitting Bambi. It was mating season, and amorous deer and speeding cars made very bad mix.

  But there was something out there that definitely wasn’t a deer. Driving toward the psychic rumble, Eva tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Should I be doing this? What if it’s dangerous? I could be getting myself in real trouble.

  On the other hand, what if somebody else was in trouble? It certainly felt like trouble, and Eva could handle threats other people couldn’t. If, that is, she could figure out a way to do it without scaring the crap out of the innocent bystanders. Most folks found the sight of a seven-foot werewolf seriously disconcerting.

  That included rapists. There’d been the incident last year when Eva had heard a woman screaming near the shop late one night. When she’d gone to investigate, she’d found four drunken frat boys trying to rape a seventeen-year-old girl.

  Eva was strong enough and fast enough to knock all four of them out before they even knew what hit them. Their victim, however, did see her; in fact, she’d screamed louder at the sight of werewolf Eva than she had during the attack. Eva had told her to shut the hell up and hand over her cell phone. She had, shaking.

  She’d looked thoroughly astonished when Eva simply called 911, handed the phone back, and growled, “You never saw me, right?”

  Not surprisingly, Eva did not make the papers, though the kid did tell the cops a very thin lie about a big guy with a baseball bat who’d rescued her from her attackers.

  To Eva’s satisfaction, all four little bastards had gone to jail—after a stint in the hospital.

  Go, Team Fluffy.

  Too bad somebody hadn’t been able to do the same for Eva five years ago.

  The rumble was coming from the left now. She turned into a neat little middle-class development and drove down the darkened street, following the sensation. The vibration had grown so powerful, she could feel it in her back teeth. Howling instincts insisted something evil was up ahead.

  Not just bad. Mwwwwhahahah evil.

  Looking through the trees bordering the yard just ahead, she saw something glowing blue. Eva pulled over and parked, staring through the windshield at the light. Could be a police car. Except police cars didn’t go Mwwwwhahahah.

  “You are such an idiot,” Eva muttered, swinging the car door open. She was starting to feel like the dumb blond baby-sitter investigating the mysterious sound in the basement.


  Don’t be a wuss. If you run into a knife-wielding psycho, you can always eat him. There was a certain comfort in being able to kick a grizzly’s ass.

  Unfortunately, that sense of Mwwwwhahahah—whatever the hell it was—made her think it was something a hell of a lot worse than a grizzly bear. And that she’d do well to be a lot more careful than she’d been with those rapists.

  Still, she had just as strong a sense that she had to investigate. So one way or another, she was going in.

  Time to pop the claws? Eva started toward the glow, her running shoes padding quietly on the pavement. Deciding her chances of scaring an innocent bystander were a little too high, she veered into the trees for whatever cover they could provide instead. If she’d still been human, she probably wouldn’t have been able to see where she was going.

  Eva slipped through the woods until she found a good view between two trees. She promptly wished she hadn’t.

  There in the driveway of a brick split-level, a man in armor writhed five feet off the ground, suspended in a globe of shimmering energy. Blue bolts of force snaked in and out of his helpless body as the globe grew brighter. He grunted in pain as the energy licked at him.

  Eva stared in sickened horror. It’s torturing him! As if that wasn’t bad enough, a huge, white-furred shape stood bathed in the blue glow. Another werewolf, one even bigger than Eva was when she got fuzzy. He’d plugged his fingers into the globe’s shimmering surface, and streams of energy flowed into his claws, as though he was capturing them.

  A vicious grin stretched his thin black lips, displaying a mouthful of very white, very sharp teeth. His eyes glowed feral and orange. He looked even bigger than the monster who’d attacked Eva five years ago, easily eight feet tall, as brawny as a polar bear. Like the bear, his fur was white, though flecked with crimson splatters. She realized it was the man’s blood.