Master of Smoke Page 8
“Yes,” he said icily, “I noticed.”
“You had no right! Okay, yeah, I used to sleep with him.” She dropped her voice to a low hiss, in case Joel came back in. “I stopped because I’m a freaking werewolf, and I didn’t want to turn him into a werewolf. So we’re not lovers anymore, but even if we were, one night does not give you the right to threaten the poor man!”
David drew himself up to his full height, looming impressively. She was seriously tempted to turn into Fluffy so she could loom back. “If you think I will be content with one night ...”
“You’ll be content with whatever I give you! I decide who I sleep with!”
“Of course you do, but ...”
She was in no mood to be placated. “I already hurt him once. Now I’ve hurt him again, and he doesn’t deserve it!”
“He’s not worthy of you.” David’s strong jaw jutted stubbornly. “He’s a coward.”
“He is not!” She gestured at his slit pupils. “You just intimidated him with the freaky eye-thing you do when you’re pissed.”
“Had it been me, I would not have backed down. I would have fought for you.” His lids veiled a hot stare. “A woman like you is worth the risk.”
Eva felt her anger deflate. Well, hell. What was she supposed to say to that?
His head lowered toward hers. She watched his lips as her heartbeat leaped into a gallop.
Joel Harmon started to get into his candy apple red Pontiac, only to discover his hands were shaking so hard, the keys jangled. Okay, obviously he needed time to calm down. Maybe he should grab a bite from the coffee shop and chill.
Jesus, Eva’s new boyfriend had the weirdest eyes he’d ever seen. Must have been wearing some kind of contacts.
Still shaking a little, Joel walked down to Sandwiched In, three doors down the strip mall from the Comix Cave. He and Eva used to go there for lunch all the time while they were dating. The menu included a decent ham and cheese panini, but it was the caramel frappe that was his favorite guilty indulgence.
After his encounter with Eva’s new boyfriend, Joel figured he owed himself a splurge. He’d run an extra couple of miles in the morning to make up for the calories.
He was waiting in line when Eva’s dad walked in. Joel mentally cringed. He’d known Bill Roman since he’d started reading comics when he was nine years old. The man loved to talk, but just now, Joel wasn’t in the mood.
Sure enough, Bill stepped in line behind him. “Hey, kid. How’s it goin’?”
Joel pasted a smile on his face and turned. “Great. Met Eva’s new boyfriend at the shop. He’s really good with that sword. You definitely got your money’s worth.”
Bill blinked, looking honestly astonished. “Boyfriend? Since when? And ... money?” His graying brows drew down.
Wait, he didn’t know? Way to go, Joel. Eva’s gonna kill me. “Ah ... Well. Apparently she’s dating that stuntman you hired.”
“Stuntman?”
Oh, shit. Eva’s really gonna kill me—if her new stud doesn’t do it for her.
Eva had no idea how she’d ended up in David’s arms. One minute she’d been screaming at him in a howling That Time of the Year rage. The next, they were playing tonsil hockey.
God, he could kiss.
One massive arm was wrapped around her, and she was plastered against every hard ridge of his powerful chest. He filled her senses with potent masculinity—his scent, his taste, his hands. He simply overwhelmed her, and she went under with a sigh.
Lost in him.
His big hands stroked away the last of her anger with tender skill. The last of her rage wafted away like a curl of smoke from a bonfire. He smelled of clean sweat and steel and a fizzing whiff of magic.
Eva had never wanted any man so much.
So of course, cue Daddy.
SIX
The door jingled a manic note before banging shut loud enough to make Eva jump. “What the hell is going on?” her father roared.
Eva tore out of David’s arms as though he’d scalded her. She met Bill Roman’s hot gaze and felt a furious blush roll to her hairline. “Uh ... Hi, Dad.”
He stalked toward them, his muscular shoulders tense with under the black fabric of his Batman T-shirt. “This is the stuntman ‘we’ hired?”
“I guess you ran into Joel.” Eva smiled weakly.
“Who are you?” One scalding look took in David’s long black hair and bare, sweating chest. “And what the hell are you doing kissing my daughter?”
“I am David.” He straightened, stepping a bit in front of her as if to protect her from her father’s anger.
“You got a last name, David?”
For a moment, Eva’s mind went completely blank as she struggled to remember what she’d told Joel. “Feral! His name is David Feral.”
Bill shot her a cold look. “What, he can’t speak for himself ?”
“I can speak.” David studied her father, eyes narrowed.
“How long have you known my daughter?”
“Since yesterday.”
Bill rocked back on his heels in surprise. “And you’re already kissing her like that?”
Fluffy promptly started snarling. “Wait a minute, Dad. How is that any of your business? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not sixteen anymore.”
Bill ignored her, staring hard into David’s face. “Are you wearing some kind of contacts, or what?”
Oh, hell, this situation was skidding right off the cliff. “Look, David, would you mind taking a walk and letting me discuss this with my father?”
He gave her a little dip of his head. “Of course.” Still carrying the sword, he walked out, shirtless.
“What the hell is going on?” her father exploded. “Who is that guy? Where’d he come from?”
Eva rubbed the ache throbbing between her eyebrows and wondered how she was going to talk her way out of this one.
It went against the grain to leave Eva to confront her father alone, but David knew anything he said would only inflame the situation. Apparently Bill Roman did not know his daughter was a werewolf, so she would have to lie to explain how they’d met. Any lies of his could inadvertently contradict hers.
He strode down the sidewalk away from the shop, just walking, taking in the surrounding neighborhood—shops, a few houses, a car or two cruising past in a cloud of fumes that made his nose wrinkle. The sun was just disappearing behind the trees, edging the purpling clouds in blood red. David absently played with the dull sword, rotating his wrist to spin it as he walked and brooded.
It galled him, having to lean so heavily on a woman for his very survival. He should be the one supporting her. Instead, he was only making her life more difficult.
Perhaps he should leave. Get out of her life and find some way to support himself until his memory returned.
Assuming it did. If it didn’t ...
Well, even if he had no past, he did have a present—and a future he would have to deal with. He ...
David froze as a terrible awareness suddenly rolled over him.
His enemy. Suddenly he could feel the other like an intense pressure crushing down on his skull, all black power and malevolence.
And if he could sense his enemy ...
David whirled and ran back toward the shop. He had to get Eva and her father to safety—whether they liked it or not.
The squirrel raced up the tree trunk in a panic, its furry little legs a blur of effort.
For all the good it did.
The laser-thin bolt of magic hit the tiny creature right in one beady eye. It tumbled off the tree and hit the ground, a charred corpse.
Warlock pivoted, drew a bead on a robin sitting in frozen terror, and blasted it, too. The tiny blackened body hit the leafy forest floor with a papery rustle.
The Dire Wolf grunted, dissatisfied. He was making progress, but not fast enough to suit him. He scented a rabbit, and turned. The animal broke from cover, moving in desperate bounds.
He drilled it
through the skull in mid-leap. It went down, its fur still soft and gray, no visible injury to explain its death.
Better. Much better.
A familiar presence burst into his consciousness, and he froze in blind instinct and an instant’s fear.
Smoke. Gods and devils!
Then realization kicked in, and he knew he had only seconds. He cast the location spell with a flick of his clawed fingers. An instant later, he had pinpointed the Demigod’s location.
A slight, cold smile curved his thin black lips, and he reached out to Skoll team.
He had the bastard now.
“We met through one of those online dating sites,” Eva told her father, her mind working frantically. “David’s a movie stuntman specializing in swordplay. Flew in yesterday to meet me. I didn’t want to leave him alone all day, so I brought him in to work. He was just showing me his latest choreography ...”
“With his mouth?” Her father folded his beefy arms and glowered.
“And like I said, that really isn’t any of your business.” A bead of sweat rolled down her back, itching furiously. She ground her teeth and ignored it.
“This guy could be some kind of psycho for all you know. People have ended up murdered by men they met online.”
“The site makes everybody pass a background check.” Eva hated lying to her father. He knew her too well. They’d always been close, even during her rebellious teenage years when she and her mother had fought like two cats in a very small sack.
“I just don’t understand why you never mentioned this guy. Not even to your mother. I called her, and she didn’t know a damn thing about him either.” Was that a hint of hurt in his hazel eyes?
She winced. “Well, at first, I wasn’t sure it was going to work. But now I am. I was planning to introduce you today, but Joel came in and ...”
“Another thing—isn’t this guy awfully damned possessive for somebody you met online?” Bill leaned one brawny forearm on the shop counter, worry in his eyes. “And he’s a big guy. What if he turns out to be some kind of nutball? You could find yourself in real trouble.”
“He’s not like that.” She put a hand on her father’s shoulder and gave him her best earnest look. “Dad, trust me. It’s going to be fine.”
Bill glowered at her for another long moment before he sighed, his expression turning resigned. “You’re a grown woman, Eva, so I can’t tell you how to run your love life.” His gaze sharpened. “But if he gives you any trouble, let me know and I’ll kick his ass.”
And he would, too. Or he’d try, anyway. Smiling, Eva stood on her toes to kiss his bearded cheek. “I won’t have to. He’s a good guy, Dad.”
Bill grunted. “Tell him to put on a shirt, would you? He’s scaring the customers.”
Eva was just about to ease her father out the door when it banged open with a furious jangle. She and Bill took a step back as David barged through, the prop sword in one hand, his expression grim. “My enemy has sensed me. We must go.”
Dad gave him the kind of wary look reserved for people in tinfoil hats. Eva wanted to smack David upside his oblivious head. All her hard work, undone with one loony-tunes sentence. “Enemy? What the hell are you talking about?” Bill snapped.
“There is no time for explanations.” He clamped his left hand over her father’s shoulder, pivoted, and started pushing the smaller man out the door, still carrying the prop sword in his right. The bell jangled a discordant note as the door hit the back wall. “We must go now.”
“Dammit, I’m not going anywhere. This is my shop.” Bill tried to set his feet, but David switched his grip to his upper arm and hoisted, forcing him to walk on his toes or be carried. “Cut it out! That hurts. Are you nuts?”
“Where is his vehicle?” David demanded.
Eva stared at him, alarm streaking through her irritation. If the white werewolf really was on the way, David was right. They had to get the hell away from the area as fast as possible.
She pointed over Bill’s thick shoulder toward the line of cars parked nose to the curb. “That red Tahoe. Dad, it would probably be best if we left.”
“Screw that.” He glared at them both. “You and your pet nutjob can leave if you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
In the living room of a seedy little house on the outskirts of Chicago, two Dire Wolves circled, lips peeled back from teeth, growls rumbling. They were in full wolf form, big as ponies, one charcoal gray with white markings, the other red as a fox’s fur. As if obeying some inner signal, they exploded toward each other in a chorus of snarls and snaps. The gray’s fangs sank into the red-furred one’s flank, and the big beast yelped.
Blood flew, splashing across the sketch Tom Danvers was studying. “Goddammit! Cut that shit out! I’m trying to work here.”
The two wolves froze, wide eyes flying guiltily to Danvers as he glared at them. They immediately separated, the gray tearing his fangs from the flank of the other as they slunk in opposite directions, heads down, tails low. The two headed up the stairs to the den, claws clicking on the wooden steps. One beast nosed the door open, and they slipped out. It closed behind them again with a quiet click, leaving the basement in silence.
Danvers watched them go with grim satisfaction. Three months ago, he’d have had to Change and rip into them, but he’d successfully established who was in charge.
“Fuckin’ idiots,” Steve Miller muttered from the other side of the battered Ping-Pong table. A sixty-watt bulb hung over his head, casting his craggy face in deep shadows. The smoke from his cigarette floated in a lazy blue haze over the cinder-block room.
“Yeah.” Danvers returned his attention to the sketch he’d drawn after casing FBW Savings and Loan that afternoon. He tapped the door he’d drawn in rough, slashing lines. “You, me, and Frank will go in here. Jim’ll be in the Hummer outside. The tellers will cave right in when they see the shotguns ...”
Miller’s eyes gleamed, yellow and cold. “’Specially if we shoot one of ’em first.”
“Right. We’ll ...” He jerked up from the schematic as his Direkind senses detected a burst of magic. “Oh, fuck.”
Warlock stepped through the dimensional gate, eight feet of white fur and gleaming black claws. They had never seen him in human form. Tom wasn’t sure he had one. “Go to your vehicles and prepare to gate out. I’ve found the cat.”
Hiding his irritation—Warlock’s idea of discipline was even bloodier than his own—Danvers tossed the pencil on the table and reached for his keys.
Eva looked into her father’s irritated hazel eyes, knowing she’d better talk fast. Preferably with at least a kernel of truth. “David and I had a little run-in with Ronnie Gordon last night. He’d beaten the heck out of Shelly and hit Terry a couple of times. Terry came banging on the door in hysterics, so David and I went over there. Ronnie pulled a gun on us, but David backed him down.”
“And he’s on the way now,” David said, right on cue. “He is armed. He seeks revenge.”
Bill gave him a long, cool look before transferring it to Eva. “Who writes your boyfriend’s dialog? I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with a guy who talked just like that.”
“He’s getting in character for a movie role. Please, Dad. Mom would kill me if I got you shot.”
Bill lowered his head like a bull. “I am not running from Ronnie Gordon. He needs his ass kicked.”
“Dad, you are not faster than a speeding bullet.” Eva hauled the Tahoe’s door open. The dome light came on, spilling light over the darkening parking lot. “Look, you can pound Ronnie when he’s not armed to the teeth. Right now, go home.”
David lifted his head and looked across the street. With a mutter that sounded like some exotic curse, he literally lifted her father off his feet and stuffed him into the Jeep.
“Dammit, get off!” Going red, Bill plowed a fist right into David’s face with a crack of bone on bone.
Eva’s heart catapulted into her throat. Oh, holy God, that tears it ...
Bill’s rage-narrowed eyes widened as the shot struck home. He glowered at David as Eva held her breath. Finally he threw up his hands. “Fine. I’m gone. Take her and get out of here. I’ll deal with that bastard later.” He threw the Jeep into gear as Eva slammed the driver’s door with a grunt of relief. The Tahoe’s big tires screeched as he backed up and tore out of the parking lot, almost hitting a pair of motorcycles and a Hummer.
“Oh, man.” Eva shook her head as she watched the Tahoe’s taillights disappear up the street. “I hope that doesn’t blow up in our faces. I think Ronnie’s still in the county jail.”
“Your father is the least of our worries.” He jerked his chin toward the Harley-Davidson motorcycles and the Hummer. All three vehicles had pulled over onto the side of the road. A street lamp illuminated the motorcyclists as they dismounted. Two others piled out of the Hummer. “Those men smell like were.”
He was right. The scent of werewolf rode the cool night breeze: fur and magic and a trace of old blood. Claws, ripping into her guts, fanged jaws opening over her face, dripping hot saliva, the flash of yellow eyes ...
“In the car!” Big hands closed over her shoulders. She cried out in terror, swinging wildly, but a fierce shake snapped her out of the flashback. “We don’t have time for that. Get in the car!” David snarled, jerking the driver’s door open and bundling her inside. “Drive!”
He vaulted over the hood in one astonishing leap, jerked the passenger door open, tossed the blunt sword inside, and dove after it even as Eva started the car and threw it into reverse. She stomped the accelerator and sent the Focus shooting backward, tires squealing, forcing the two big men directly behind it to scatter. As she put the car in drive, she saw all four race across the parking lot after them. She floored it.