Master of Smoke Read online

  Miranda stared up at her towering mother, and the defiance bled away from the set of her shoulders. “Yes, I know exactly what he’d do.” She turned to Belle and pressed the communication gem into the witch’s hand. “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t leave my mother. Her husband would kill her. And that’s not a figure of speech.”

  “Miranda!” Calista sounded scandalized. “We don’t share our business with outsiders!”

  “Her husband? Not your father?” Suddenly two plus two clicked together in Belle’s mind. “Warlock is your father, isn’t he?”

  Joelle grabbed her daughter’s shoulder and pushed her toward the door. “We have to go, Miranda.”

  “We can protect you.” Tristan started after them in that fluid swordsman’s stride. “Both of you, even against Warlock.”

  “There is no Warlock!” Calista’s voice rose, going shrill and insistent. “He’s just a legend! Tell them, Miranda!”

  They all ignored her. “Let’s go,” Joelle insisted. “This isn’t safe for either of us. If Gerald gets wind of it ...”

  “Mrs. Drake, let us transport you both to Avalon,” Tristan interrupted. “No one will be able to attack you through the city’s wards.”

  “And trigger a war?” Joelle snapped. “Do you really want a war with the Direkind? Personally, I don’t need that much blood on my conscience, so no, I’m not going anywhere with you.” She turned a demanding gaze on her daughter. “Warlock would declare war on Avalon to get you back. You can’t go with them either.”

  “You’re right.” The girl’s mouth twisted as her shoulders slumped. “I can’t leave her. Thanks, but—I just can’t.” And as Belle and Tristan watched helplessly, she let her mother hustle her out the door.

  TWELVE

  In the dream, three dragons surrounded the human child: a brawny gold and a pair of blues, one sleek and well fed, the other wiry as a snakedog with small, cruel eyes. They weren’t particularly big dragons, being not long out of the egg themselves, but they towered over the little boy as they surrounded him. Smoke thought him no more than ten or so, his build slim, with enormous brown eyes that dominated his elfin face under a disordered thatch of dark hair. He smelled of terror, but he held himself erect, chin up and defiant as he faced his tormentors.

  “Let’s eat him,” hissed the snakedog, creeping closer and staring at the boy as if he were a fat stag. “He trespasses.”

  The gold frowned. “We are not to eat these creatures. Cachamwri himself commanded it.” The god of the dragons had befriended the Sidhe millennia before, and he insisted his people observe the peace he’d declared.

  “He said we are not to eat the Sidhe,” the well-fed blue corrected. “This one is not Sidhe. He is a mortal with no magic at all.”

  “Interloper!” snarled the snakedog, examining the child with greedy interest, his tail lashing. “I want a bite of him. He will crunch. And then we will throw his bones into the human city as a warning, and they will leave our world.”

  Rage drew Smoke’s lips off his great fangs as he gathered himself and leaped, landing between the child and the snakedog. He’d learned the dragon tongue long before the death of his people, and the words spilled from his mouth on a river of fury. “Touch him and die, egg sucker.”

  The snakedog drew back from his bared fangs, confused, his thin tail whipping in agitation. “It speaks? But it looks like a ciardha.”

  This fight could go badly. The dragons might be young, but they towered over Smoke. Still, the gold took a cautious step away. “’Tis no ordinary ciardha. Look at its aura—it’s inhabited by an elemental. And something else ...” The creature lowered his head for a closer look, then jerked back as Smoke slashed a warning paw at his nose. Iridescent eyes widened in puzzled surprise. “Sidhe. Its soul is Sidhe.”

  “Aye, and I claim this boy as one of mine.” Smoke crouched, tail lashing. “You will not touch him.”

  “We saw him first!” the snakedog objected.

  Smoke roared even as he sent power thrusting at the cloudy sky. Thunder rolled in deafening reply, and lightning forked the ground, so close the dragons ducked. The boy screamed and dropped to his knees, curling into a tight ball with his thin arms over his head. He was evidently unaware that Smoke had surrounded him with a shield to protect him from the charge.

  “The next bolt lands between your beady eyes, lizard!” Smoke snarled.

  “Keep him, then!” Thoroughly spooked, the snakedog leaped into the air and flapped away, his fat brother blue following with an awkward hop.

  “We did not realize he was yours, Great One,” the gold said, dipping his muzzle in a shallow bow.

  “It should not have mattered if he was or not,” Smoke snapped, thoroughly incensed. “You do not eat sentient creatures, hatchling. I know Cachamwri, and he would not approve, whether the boy is Sidhe or not. Don’t allow those fools to lead you into sin.”

  “I will not, Great One,” the gold promised. With another dip of his scaled head, he took to the air, his wings blowing a storm of leaves and dust around Smoke and the boy.

  When the dragons were no more than black specks among fat gray clouds, Smoke turned his attention to the child. He still lay huddled on the ground, eyes squeezed shut, shivering in waves as tears wet his dirty cheeks.

  Smoke tried a few words in all the Sidhe tongues he knew, but the child did not respond. With a sigh, the cat reached into the boy’s thoughts, spinning a delicate magical connection between them so that he could absorb the child’s language. Smoke went slowly, for if he wasn’t careful, he would burn out the boy’s mind with the ancient power of his own. So the cat was exquisitely careful as he plucked grammar and vocabulary and syntax like a village maiden gathering fat sweet berries that would bruise with a harsh touch.

  With them came other knowledge: the boy’s name was Logan, and his parents were Arthur and Guinevere Pendragon, a vampire and a witch respectively, both warriors sworn to protect the humans of an Earth that was twin to this one.

  Unfortunately, the child was also thoroughly terrified of Smoke’s huge cat self. With a mental sigh, the cat searched the child’s thoughts for a form he would find more reassuring.

  It didn’t take long to find it. He reached for his magic and shifted.

  “Logan?” Smoke said in his newfound English. “You’re safe now.”

  The child only shuddered, squeezing his eyes tighter with a sob that made the cat’s chest ache. Moving closer, Smoke extended his head, and rasped his small pink tongue over the dirt-smeared little face.

  Brown eyes sprang open, and the child jerked back, sitting up to frown down at him. “Hey, kitty.” Peering around in confusion, he scooped Smoke into his arms and scrambled hastily to his feet. “What are you doing here? Something’s gonna eat you. They’ve sure been trying to eat me.”

  “Yes, well, I put a stop to that,” Smoke said, settling comfortably into child’s arms.

  The boy stiffened and stared down at him in astonishment. “You talk?”

  “Among many other skills, such as tossing lightning bolts at homicidal young dragons.” He angled his head to the side in invitation. “Would you mind? I seem to have an itch just behind my right ear ... Ah, yes, that’s it. What are you doing here, child?” He knew perfectly well, of course, but it would be better if the boy told him.

  “I went exploring and got lost.” Logan sighed, still scratching gently behind Smoke’s pointed housecat ear. “Mama’s gonna kill me for sneaking off.”

  “Better your mother than other candidates for the job.” Flicking the end of his tail, he opened a gate to the magical city he’d seen in the child’s mind. “Let’s get you home, shall we?”

  David, dreaming, had no idea that he’d just called his magic.

  “That girl’s going to die,” Belle growled, and sucked down another swallow of her rum and Coke.

  “She’s mortal,” Tristan pointed out. “Dying goes with the territory.” He tipped up his bottle of Corona and drained half of it.


  “Yes, but being murdered by a werewolf doesn’t!” Across the polished surface of the bar, the bartender looked over at her, eyes going wide. Belle curled a disgusted lip and cast a quick spell. He blinked and shook his head, deciding he must have misheard. Collecting her drink, Belle headed for a booth on the other side of the Peach Pit, Tristan striding in her wake.

  They’d both switched their magical armor for jeans and cotton shirts, though the fabric wasn’t anywhere near as comfortable.

  “What is it with those people?” Belle slipped across the cracked red vinyl seat. Sweeping a pile of peanut shells out of the way, she plunked down her glass. “Merlin chose them for the Great Mission just as he did us. He and Nimue would never have tolerated the abuse of women, especially not by the same warriors who should be protecting them. And yet those bimbo Chosen seem to regard submitting to those bastards as their duty.”

  “Makes no sense to me, either.” His expression brooding, Tristan began absently peeling the label off his bottle. “I spoke to Diana ...”

  “King Llyr’s wife?” The lord of the Sidhe had met and married the pretty werewolf a couple of years before.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, she said the Chosen were the Direkind’s version of an aristocracy. Apparently, these guys can trace their lineage back to the original Saxon warriors Merlin chose to make Direkind.”

  Belle nipped a cherry off the end of a cocktail skewer. “What about the rest of them?”

  “They’re descendents of the Bitten, people those original warriors bit in order to give them Merlin’s Curse ...”

  She lifted her brows. “Merlin’s Curse?”

  “Don’t look at me—that’s what they call it. Anyway, the Chosen seem to have gotten a little inbred and squirrelly over the past fifteen hundred years. Some of them are members of what Diana described as a religious cult, but she didn’t know much about the cult leader.”

  “Warlock?”

  “That’s my guess. Evidently there are a whole lot of legends and not much fact about him. The story is that Merlin gave Warlock the ability to work magic in case the Direkind should ever need to go into battle against us.”

  Belle frowned. “Why just one werewolf? Why not all of them?”

  Tristan shrugged powerful shoulders inside the blue oxford cloth shirt that brought out the color of his eyes. “Apparently Merlin wanted them to be immune to magic, and you can’t be immune to magic and work it at the same time.”

  “What I don’t understand is why he thought he needed somebody to fight us to begin with,” Belle took another sip, enjoying the pleasant buzz that was beginning to erode her furious tension.

  “Evidently, his chosen warriors on another planet went a little power-mad and destroyed the very people they were supposed to protect.” His expression brooding, Tristan started feeding pieces of his Corona label to the jar candle on the table. “So he created the Direkind just in case.”

  “Yeah, but who keeps them in line?”

  “We do, I suppose.”

  Belle frowned. “And what if we can’t?”

  “Then we’re screwed.”

  “Along with the rest of humanity. I ...” Magic bloomed in her awareness, a cool dancing wind she instantly recognized.

  Smoke.

  Belle sucked in a breath and grabbed for that spurt of power, sending a spell after it as she tried to track it back to its source. Unfortunately, she lost the trail as it disappeared like a Roman candle shooting into the night. “Merlin curse it!”

  “What? What do you see?”

  She blinked and became aware of Tristan’s intent green gaze. She felt her nipples peak. Oh, cut that out, she told them, sitting back in the booth with a disgusted flounce. “For a minute there, I sensed a burst of magic that felt like Smoke. Unfortunately, it vanished before I could home in on it.”

  Tristan grinned in genuine delight. “At least we know the fuzzy little bastard’s alive. I always liked him.”

  “And he’s a damned good man to have on our side. Or kitty cat, or god, or whatever the hell he is this week.” Belle raked a hand through her curls. “But where is he?”

  Eva woke to the sound of David purring in that feline in-and-out rumble she’d come to associate with great sex. She smiled a little, blinked sleepily, and rolled over. “Hi, love ... What the fuck are you doing here?”

  There was a house cat lying next to her. David was nowhere to be seen.

  Fluffy hated cats, and cats hated her right back. This left Eva caught in the middle, trying to keep Fluffy from eating the cats and the cats from clawing any part of her they could reach.

  Eva lifted her voice, eyeing the furry interloper in irritation. “David, why did you let a cat in here?”

  The cat opened familiar crystalline blue eyes and said, “What cat?”

  “Ahhhhhh!” Springing off the bed, she slapped the wall with her back. Horrified, Eva stared wide-eyed at the seven-pound black housecat occupying the center of the mattress. “David?”

  “Why are you looking at me like ...” He broke off, his eyes widening as they fell on the paws stretched out in front of him. He leaped to all four feet in astonishment. “Oh, gods, what now?”

  Eva did what she always did when she was upset: she cooked.

  Her knife thunked against the wooden cutting board as she sliced a bell pepper into fragrant emerald slices. She’d already diced tomatoes, ham, pepper jack cheese, and mushrooms for the huge omelet she had in mind. Not that she was particularly hungry. She’d feed it to David, but it probably weighed more than his entire body—including fur.

  Make him turn back, Fluffy growled. We can’t fuck him like this.

  He’s been trying to turn back. For the past hour, in fact, in between telling her about that weird dream he’d had. It didn’t work.

  He needs to try harder. He’s a cat. That’s just wrong on too many levels to count.

  Eva glanced up to watch David pace along the counter-top, his tail lashing in agitation. He was a beautiful little beast, his fur so black its highlights looked blue. Silver striped his haunches and shoulders in a pattern she’d never seen in a house cat’s fur. He did, however, look exactly like the tiger-creature she’d seen in her dream, except smaller.

  Much, much smaller.

  And how the fuck is he supposed to fight werewolves like this? She felt sick.

  Abruptly he stopped pacing and sat down in front of the cutting board, coiling his tail neatly over his feet. Lifting his elegant little head, he looked her in the eye. “I must leave.”

  She considered the idea. “Under the circumstances, that might be smart. Where are we going?” Eva lifted an egg and prepared to crack it into a mixing bowl.

  “You’re not coming.” He said it in a flat tone, his blue eyes narrowing.

  Eva’s fingers tightened convulsively, crushing the egg and raining yolk and shell fragments into the bowl. “What?”

  “As I am now, I can’t protect you. If I left, you’d be safe from Warlock’s assassins.”

  “Forget it.” Eva started plucking bits of shell out of the yolk with short, agitated gestures. “I might as well roll you into a burrito and serve you to the bastard. He’d snack the minute he found you. No way in hell is that going to happen if I have anything to say about it.”

  David peeled his lips off dainty fangs. Those crystalline eyes were the only part of him that looked familiar. But wrong, so wrong, in that tiny triangular head. “Do you seriously think you can stop him? You can barely face down your own reflection!”

  Eva stared at him in astonished hurt. “Thanks a fuckin’ hell of a lot, David!” She picked the bowl up and dumped its contents down the garbage disposal. No way would she be eating anything now.

  “I do not want to die knowing I have doomed you!”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want to live knowing I let you die!” She leaned down until she was nose to tiny black nose with him. “I repeat: not happening!”

  He lifted his chin with regal pr
ide. “I may be small, but I’m fast. I can hide from Warlock until I can shift back to my proper form and defend myself.”

  “And you can hide just as well right here, so drop the melodramatic bullshit.”

  “What if he sends another team of assassins? They will butcher us both. At least alone, I may be able to elude them.”

  “You couldn’t elude the neighbor’s poodle right now, and you know it.”

  “I may be in cat form, but I still have my intelligence. And you have no right to keep me here.”

  “There’s the door.” She pointed a shaking finger at it. “Go!”

  “I can’t turn the doorknob!” he roared, his voice startlingly loud coming from such a small body.

  “Then how the hell do you think you’re going to fight off fucking werewolves?”

  With a snarl of rage, he leaped off the counter and headed for the door, crouched, and began to stare at it as if he could will it to open.

  Blinking burning eyes, Eva picked up her cutting board and began raking the makings for the omelet into the trash.

  Dogs lazed in the shade of the woods behind the Drayton Apartments. There was a huge red Great Dane, a black Doberman, a German shepherd, and a muscular pit bull with curly steel gray fur. They scratched at fleas, panted, chased squirrels, and terrorized a fat Persian cat who was lucky to get away with her life.

  But they never strayed far from Building Five. Periodically one or the other of the dogs would get up and stroll around the building, stopping only long enough to lift a leg at the shrubbery.

  If anyone had bothered to look more closely, they might have noticed that the animals seemed fascinated by the second floor. Yet they kept a careful distance, as if wary of drawing attention.

  And all four came to quivering attention whenever anyone went up or down the stairs, only to subside when they got a good look at whoever it was.

  But they were, after all, only dogs, so nobody paid much attention to them.