Smoke Bitten

by Patricia Briggs

  “How do you know that the rabbit we’ve been chasing is the jackrabbit you saw?” asked Aiden reasonably. “It could be any old rabbit. Do you smell magic? I don’t feel any.”

  I shook my head. He was right.

  “Even if it was that rabbit, Mercy . . . there is not, right now, any proof that the jackrabbit had anything to do with the killing of your friends. Though parts of Underhill are infested with jackrabbits—and the creatures that feed upon them—I don’t know of any killer bunnies.”

  I gave him a narrow look. “Is that a reference to Monty Python?”

  He grinned. “I like Monty Python. I understand the jokes. So if there is danger out here that isn’t related to whatever it is that attacked your friends, maybe we should listen to Adam and go home to regroup.”

  “Three wolves,” I muttered, though I knew better. “I’m not worried.”

  Adam gave me a look and I threw up my hands. “Yes, all right. Okay. I know. Where there are three, there could be more. We could be looking at a pack. And yes, I don’t want to meet a hostile pack when it is just you, me, and the firebrand.” I glanced out toward the river in the direction that the rabbit we’d been trailing had run. “But the rabbit we’ve been following isn’t acting like a normal rabbit and I want to know why.”

  Adam sneezed.

  “Home,” I told Aiden, resigned.

  Back in coyote form, I led the way home with Aiden in the middle and Adam following from behind. We took a more straightforward way home, but since we also went by road instead of through fields and backyards, I wasn’t sure it was any faster.

  “Do you feel that?” asked Aiden almost soundlessly. “Someone is watching us.”

  By the pricking of my thumbs, I thought, though in this form I didn’t really have thumbs. But Aiden was right, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck spark with the feeling that we were being observed. I glanced upward but didn’t see anything in the night sky except for stars.

  Adam huffed agreement and pushed us into a jog. We weren’t running away, but the faster pace might force the person or people—or rabbits—following us to break cover. It was harder to stay hidden at speed.

  We turned down the road that led to our house, and whatever or whoever was following us was still behind us. Adam waited until a small grove of big old trees hugged the road, and he disappeared into the shadows there without a sound. He must have pulled a little more pack magic out, because the ground around the trees was covered with crackling-dry leaves and even Adam wasn’t good enough to get through those without making some noise.

  Aiden and I kept to our jogging pace as if nothing were wrong—and a jackrabbit leaped out of the bushes and bit me on the neck, really sinking its teeth in.

  I snapped back at it and missed but gave chase as it bolted through the underbrush and into an alfalfa field. We both tunneled through the bushy stuff using the furrows where the alfalfa grew thinner. A werewolf—I could hear Adam crashing behind me—wouldn’t be able to run through this at the same rate.

  Jackrabbits are built for speed. They can run as fast as an ordinary coyote. I was not an ordinary coyote—and I was determined this rabbit wasn’t going to get away from me. I felt, faintly, as though there were a pressure on my head—like an incipient headache—but the sensation was lost in the greater drive of the hunt.

  I pounced and snapped my teeth on flesh and fur. I had it between my teeth, though it didn’t feel or taste quite right, not like a rabbit. And then it was gone. Not run away—gone. It turned from flesh into smoke in my mouth, an acrid-vinegary smoke that burned my lungs and tasted like the magic that had filled Dennis’s body.

  I dropped to the ground gasping and choking. My eyes burned and my throat felt like I’d tried to swallow a hot coal, and I curled up into a ball with the force of my coughing. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t . . .

  Cold arms picked me up and began running with me slung over a shoulder. I heard a wolf growl—and the vampire carrying me growled, too, and said words I was not able to pay attention to. I didn’t have a clue where the vampire had come from and I was too busy trying to breathe to care.

  The next thing I knew I was flung through the air and cold water closed over my head. It should have made everything worse—water not being conducive to breathing, either—but as soon as it surrounded me, the burning went away.

  Survival instincts kicked in and I started trying to swim—and a wolf shoved his head under me and tossed me out of the water. We must not have been too deep because although he didn’t get me all the way out of the river, I landed on solid ground with only a few inches of water rushing around my legs. And I could breathe.

  I stood there for I don’t know how long—probably not as long as it felt—just letting the sweet cool air rush in and out of my lungs as water swirled around my paws and dripped off my fur. Adam stalked out of the river to stand beside me, his teeth bared in a snarl aimed at the vampire standing on dry ground.

  “Don’t be dramatic,” said the vampire. “I was just saving her life. You should be thanking me.” He gave a sad sigh. “I am afraid that Marsilia is correct when she says that good manners are a casualty of this modern age.”

  “Why the river?” asked Aiden in a mild tone. He was standing on the shore, but he was wet, so he must have jumped in after me, too. I hadn’t noticed.

  “Everyone who ever read Washington Irving knows that running water can wash away magic,” said the vampire. “Or is that story the one that says evil can’t cross running water? I forget.”

  “Huh,” said Aiden, keeping a wary eye on Wulfe. “How fortunate that you were here.”

  Wulfe was the scariest vampire I had ever met—and I’d met Bonarata, he who ruled Europe. But Bonarata was predictable to a certain extent—which Wulfe was not. I’d known that Wulfe could work magic, too, that he was a wizard—able to manipulate nonliving things with magic. I had known he could do a little of other sorts of magic, but I’d always assumed that it was something to do with being a vampire, a very old vampire. And all that might be so, but I’d recently learned that he was also a witch.

  I was afraid of witches. I was afraid of vampires. I was very, very afraid of Wulfe.

  The night all the witches had died, I’d used my affinity with the dead to lay an army of zombies to rest. I’d gathered them up in my magic and told them, “Be at peace.” They’d all been released from the hold the witches had bound them with. As one, they had dropped to the ground and left their corpses behind. Wulfe had been touching me at the time—and he’d dropped to the ground, too.

  I’d been worried that I’d killed him . . . destroyed him. I needed to figure out a word that encompassed what happened when a vampire ceased to exist. “Dead-dead,” maybe? An end to living death? But Wulfe had recovered, leaving me caught between relief (he had been there because he was helping me) and worry—Wulfe alive was a lot more of a problem than the guilt I’d have felt for inadvertently ending his vampiric existence.

  Whatever it was I had done had interested him very much. Ever since the night of the witches, I’d been catching his scent around our yard when there was no reason for him to be there. I’d even caught a glimpse of him now and then, when he wanted me to know he was nearby.

  I’d treated him as I preferred to treat ghosts. If I didn’t pay attention to him, maybe he’d go away.

  “Not fortunate,” demurred Wulfe, answering Aiden with a coyness that would have been more appropriate from a Southern belle in an old movie. In old movies, overacting was standard fare. “Not mere luck. I am stalking Mercy. Of course I was around, because that’s what stalkers do, or so I’ve read. It’s my new hobby.”

  I stared at him, and then I coughed up some river water, which felt a lot better than that smoke had but was still not fun. Then I stared at him some more—and started shivering. It might have been the water and the night air.

 
With his words, Wulfe had destroyed my ability to ignore his lurking. Stalking. My friend Stefan, who was also a vampire, had warned me that Wulfe thought I was interesting. And that had been before I’d done whatever I’d done to him.

  Wulfe smiled at me. To someone who didn’t know him, hadn’t seen him with enslaved victims he was slowly killing, that smile might have been sweet. But I knew better. His expression sent cold chills into my chest. There was intent in his eyes. He was hunting and I was his prey.

  When I get scared, it sometimes manifests as anger. I wanted very badly to shift back to human so I could tell him what I thought about his hobby. I didn’t, though. I didn’t want to be naked in front of him. It wasn’t modesty. Naked is vulnerable in front of predators like Wulfe.

  Adam moved between me and Wulfe and met the vampire’s gaze. It wasn’t something I’d have advised; vampire powers work just fine on werewolves. But I could feel Adam draw on the pack ties, so he must have done it as a deliberate show of power. I hoped he was right, that the pack had enough juice to neutralize the vampire’s magic.

  Wulfe raised an eyebrow and his smile grew sharper. He stared at my mate. It felt to me as though it might have been hours, but I think it was less than ten seconds before Wulfe looked down. He was still smiling.

  “Oh goodness,” he said. “A challenge. What fun.” He looked at me. “Are you going to live? You’ll have to tell me how you ran into a field chasing a rabbit and ended up enspelled and dying.” His smile widened. “And then I saved you. You owe me for your life.”

  “You will leave her alone,” said Aiden, and his voice was no longer mild.

  I looked over. Aiden might be dripping with water, but he didn’t look cold, though the night air had an edge of chill that preceded true autumn. In fact, as I watched, steam was starting to rise off him. He was standing much, much too close to the vampire.

  Wulfe’s eyelids lowered and he smiled. “Make me, Fire Touched. Make me.”

  Aiden was too close to the vampire, too far away from Adam and me for either of us to prevent what happened next. Aiden reached out and touched the vampire’s arm, and Wulfe was engulfed in fire.

  The vampire screamed, a high-pitched, terrified sound, his body so bright with fire that it hurt to look at. He flailed his arms as if trying to put the flames out—or trying to fly. He stumbled backward, away from Aiden. Sparks started drifting from his burning body, landing among the dry leaves and weeds, which started to burn.

  Still screaming, Wulfe rolled on the ground, but it did no good; the flames continued undaunted. His flesh bubbled up and blackened—the air began to smell like someone was holding a barbecue. The warmth from the fire brushed my skin.

  Unlike a gunshot, screams were not common around here, but no lights went on and no dogs barked. I realized that Adam must still be holding on to the pack magic that kept people from noticing us.

  And still Wulfe burned.

  Adam climbed onto the bank and bumped his shoulder lightly into Aiden’s side and the boy reached over (not down, because Adam is a werewolf and Aiden is not very tall) and put his hand on Adam’s back, closing his fingers on Adam’s fur. Other than that, the boy looked unmoved by the gruesome sight of Wulfe burning.

  I came up on Aiden’s other side more slowly.

  Wulfe rose to his knees and reached out as if to touch Aiden—but lacked the strength to close the distance between him and us. “Please,” he said. “Please. I don’t want to die . . .”

  And he lied. I had become much better at telling truth from falsehood. It used to be that vampires were difficult. It used to be that I needed scent to smell the lie. But now, sometimes, I could hear it.

  I took a step forward, ignoring Adam’s growl.

  Wulfe dropped to the dirt, facedown. He stopped moving, but his body still burned, flesh blackened and smelling like burned fat.

  Then he turned his head and looked up at me. In an entirely normal voice he said, “Too much, right?”

  The flames around him died, leaving us all in the dark as Wulfe bounced up to his feet.

  I had never seen something that Aiden could not burn. I’d seen him melt metal and crack stone with his fire. A vampire was not metal or stone. Vampires are vulnerable to fire.

  There were not a lot of ways to kill a vampire. Fire was the best one I knew of. I had trouble pulling air into my lungs again, but this time it wasn’t magic that caused my difficulties—it was fear. I would not have thought that anything could make Wulfe more terrifying to me before this moment. I had been wrong.

  The skin and burned muscle tissue reknit itself as Wulfe dusted off the remnants of his clothing, which seemed to have fared a lot better than they should have, given all the burning that had been going on. His pants were nearly intact, if blackened and smelly. He looked at Aiden and the smile died away from his face. Aiden stepped closer to Adam.

  “Child,” he said. “I gave you your chance. I won’t give you another.”

  He looked at me, hugged himself, and rocked back and forth to the rhythm of my heartbeat because creepy was what Wulfe did. In a fade-away voice he said, “Well, boys and girl, I think my stalking is done for tonight. This was much more exciting than I thought it would be. Ta.”

  He waved a hand, then turned on his heel and walked back down the road. We all watched him go. I didn’t think it was an accident that, at the same bunch of trees that Adam had used to disappear, before the rabbit had bitten me, Wulfe blended into the shadows and was gone.

  In high-alert mode, Adam pushed us all back down the road toward home. Nothing more tried to kill us before we made it into the kitchen.

  I made a beeline for Adam’s office. Emerging a few minutes later, wearing my clothes and in human form, I found Aiden waiting for me at the table. Like mine, his hair was still wet.

  “Adam went upstairs,” Aiden said. “I think he’s going to change and come back down. I told him that I needed to talk.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He laughed, sounding tired. “I am never okay, Mercy. But some days I am more okay than others. This is one of the ‘other’ days. Wulfe did something to me. Look.”

  He held up his hand and nothing happened. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at.

  “Since Underhill made me, Mercy, I have never not been able to call up fire.” He wiggled his empty fingers and put them back down on the table. In a small voice he said, “I’m not even sure how I feel about that. I can’t protect myself. But at the same time, it might be good to be just . . . ordinary.”

  “Don’t get used to it,” I warned him. “If Wulfe did something permanent, I’m pretty sure he would have bragged about it.”

  “Is that what you wanted to talk about, Aiden?” asked Adam, entering the kitchen still buttoning his shirt. His skin was flushed from the change and he was barefoot.

  Jeez, he was sexy.

  Aiden shook his head. “I know what killed Mercy’s friends,” he said. “And it is bad.”

  Adam pulled up a chair opposite Aiden, all business. “What can you tell us?”

  “Did you see her wounds?” Aiden asked Adam. “Before Wulfe threw her in the river.”

  Adam started to shake his head—then stopped. “I thought it was a trick of light. But it looked like there was steam rising from the bite on her neck.”

  Aiden shook his head. “Not steam. Smoke.

  “When I lived with my friends in Underhill”—before they all died, he meant—“there were places we knew not to go. Sometimes it was because one of us saw something—or one of us died. But mostly Tilly would warn us about them. This was before we knew what she was—though we sometimes wondered where she learned all the things she knew. One of the places Tilly warned us about was a cave where a beast lived. If it bit you, it could take your body over. Eventually it would tire of playing with you—and it would kill you. But when i
t bit you, the smoke that was its magic would fill you up and leak from your wounds. And once you were dead, it could take on your shape and go after your friends.” He shivered a little more, as if he couldn’t get warm. “She liked to tell those kinds of stories when we were huddled in the dark, already afraid. She called this creature the smoke beast.” He bit off the word, shook his head, and looked a little ill.

  I recognized that look. When he’d escaped Underhill into the ungentle hands of the fae, they’d gifted him with a translation spell. Even the most finely crafted translation spells, I’d been told, are traumatic. They ruffle through memory and thought for the meaning of the word that needs translation. And the one they’d imposed upon Aiden had been of the quick-and-dirty variety.

  “That’s not quite the right word,” he said. “Maybe ‘smoke demon’ is a better translation.” His mouth tightened again. “Though not a demon as you understand it. Evidently there is not an adequate word for it in English. I don’t know if it was one of a kind or if there are more of its kind loose in the world. I haven’t heard anyone saying anything about it.” He shook his head. “Anyway—supposedly it can become anyone or any living thing.”

  “The fae can do that,” observed Adam.

  Aiden nodded. “Yes. Which makes it interesting that its ability to shapeshift was one of the things Tilly warned us about. Maybe it wasn’t fae—but she didn’t say that. But the main thing she warned us about was that if he bites you, he takes over your body. I have the distinct impression, though I don’t remember why, if it takes you over, your death is inevitable.”

  Something had bitten Dennis, I thought. And he had killed Anna and then himself. I remembered the tight feeling in my head, just before I’d gotten my jaws around that rabbit.

  I have a limited and unpredictable resistance to magic. Maybe this was one of those kinds of magic that didn’t affect me. I felt a chill of retroactive relief at not being some sort of mind slave to the jackrabbit smoke beast who had bitten me.

  “What does it want?” I asked.

  Aiden shook his head. “That’s all I know about it. Other than that it was dangerous enough that Tilly warned me to stay away. I’ll ask Tilly what she knows—but you might also ask Lugh’s son if he knows anything. It was imprisoned in a territory of Underhill that his family controlled.”