Smoke Bitten

by Patricia Briggs

  “Mercy, it’s three in the afternoon,” he responded with stentorian disapproval.

  I had been trying not to pay attention to the time.

  “Okay,” I said. I would not apologize for being late, I thought, all but squirming in fresh embarrassment. I own the shop. If I don’t come in, no one will fire me. Which was sometimes hard to remember, since I’d worked for Zee for years before I bought the garage from him—and both he and Tad (more rarely) gave me orders instead of the other way around.

  I locked the house and headed out to my car.

  “Sorry,” I said despite myself.

  Tad laughed. “Dad dropped by with an early lunch and stayed. If you get the parts here by four, we should be able to knock out those two cars that are waiting for them and we’ll be all caught up until the next disaster strikes.”

  “Super,” I said. I paused by the door of my car and turned in a slow circle, inhaling slowly to give myself time to process the scents around me. No strange wolves. No jackrabbits. The scent of Wulfe lingered a bit, but it was an old scent. It was coming from the hood of my car. He’d spent some time sitting on it last night.

  I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t have done anything to it.

  “Mercy?”

  “Sorry, got distracted.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “I got your warning—thank you, by the way, for being vague. I always appreciate vague warnings.” More seriously he said, “Jesse also said that something went down last night, but I’d have to ask you about it because she wasn’t sure what was top secret hush-hush and what wasn’t.”

  “You talked to Jesse a lot today,” I said, suddenly struck.

  “She stopped by with some friends—including that poor girl who can’t do anything but look at me, blush, and giggle. Unless Jesse just wanted to pass on her version of vague warnings, I don’t actually know why they stopped. I am very much afraid it was so the silly girl could giggle at me.”

  He sounded exasperated. Yes, I thought, Jesse’s friend’s crush was doomed.

  “I’ll fill you in when I get to the garage,” I said.

  He growled at me.

  “I have to go,” I told him. “The most advanced technology my car has is a tape deck and it doesn’t work. So I can’t talk and drive.”

  “Mercy,” said Tad. “I have been really patient.”

  I took another deep breath—still no strange werewolves, no jackrabbits, no fresh vampire scent. Yes, it was still daytime. Yes, vampires do not go out in the daytime. But as I’d told Adam, I wouldn’t trust the light of day to stop Wulfe. The wind was breezy—if there had been something around, I’d have smelled it. I popped open the car door and stuck my head in. No scents that shouldn’t be there.

  So I told Tad, succinctly, about the werewolves and the possible escapee from Underhill. I left out Wulfe because it was as embarrassing as it was terrifying—and because I couldn’t see how it would impact Tad’s or Zee’s safety.

  “Underhill put a gate to the Fair Lands in your backyard?” said Tad, sounding nonplussed. Behind him, I heard Zee say something in German about Underhill. I didn’t catch it all but it didn’t sound complimentary.

  “Has to stay for a year and a day,” I told them—because Zee could hear what I was saying. His ears were nearly as good as mine, maybe better. “I don’t know how she managed it—or why she agreed to take it down at all.”

  “Aiden is a member of your household,” said Tad.

  “Yes?” I inquired. Aiden would never have allowed a door to Underhill so close to him if he could have prevented it. I believed that the same way I believed the sun would rise in the sky tomorrow.

  “Oh, I don’t think he did anything on purpose,” Tad said. “She just used him to gain permission somehow. A polite ‘I wish I could see you more often’ might have done it. I’m a little surprised it didn’t happen sooner—but Aiden survived her reign for a long time. It probably took her a while to elicit exactly the right response.”

  I thought about Aiden’s guilt. No doubt Tad was right.

  “Well,” I said, “we knew he was dangerous when we invited him to stay.”

  Zee said something. I could hear it quite clearly, but it was in German and I wasn’t up to translating anything that complex.

  “Dad says he doesn’t remember a creature that fits your description or that was called a smoke demon or smoke beast—other than a Japanese spirit. And he can’t see what a Japanese demon—as in a being from a different plane of existence, not a Christian demon . . .” He paused and asked, “Sag mal Dad, hatte die alte katholische Kirche eigentlich Recht mit dem, was sie über Dämonen sagte?”

  “Ja,” answered Zee. “Mehr oder weniger. Aber nicht auf die Weise, wie sie glaubten.”

  “Huh,” said Tad. “That’s interesting.”

  “Did he just confirm the existence of demons as espoused by the medieval Catholic church?” I asked.

  They had it right, Zee had said. More or less. But not in the way they believed.

  Those demons weren’t only the property of the medieval church—there were churches now that believed in them. Demon stories had appeared in the Bible and various apocrypha, too. But it had been the medieval church that had built castes and characters based upon the biblical references, cataloging and defining demons. And using the existence of demons to cement the church’s power.

  I’d run into a demon once, but it hadn’t . . . I didn’t think it had been one of those.

  “That’s off topic,” Tad said before I could ask for clarification. “Dad doesn’t know of anything that quite fits your jackrabbit. But it could be something that lived only in Underhill—and he didn’t go there much.”

  A spate of German interrupted him.

  “Though he says it could be that you just don’t know enough about it yet. Or it could be that he’s forgotten and it will take a while for him to remember. He’ll also ask around. If it is something that was imprisoned in Underhill—and it would be useful to know for certain—maybe Uncle Mike or some of the other fae will remember.”

  “It would be useful,” I said. Thanking Zee was safe enough, I was sure, but it worried him that I might forget and thank some other fae. So I tried not to do it.

  There was a hesitation and then Tad said, “Did Jesse talk to you about Gabriel’s note?”

  “No. Did she talk to you?” I asked.

  “She let me read it.” He swallowed. “Look, I think it helped Jesse, but now I’m worried about Gabriel.”

  “When did he leave the letter?” I asked.

  “He didn’t date it,” he told me. “But some of the things he said made it clear that he put it there the day he moved all of his stuff out.”

  “He has a new girlfriend,” I told him. “As of two weeks after he left that letter.” Close to that by my reckoning.

  Tad swore softly. “Bastard didn’t waste any time mending his heart.” I guess he wasn’t worried about Gabriel anymore.

  “Heartbreak can be like that, boy,” said Zee heavily. “Healthy pain invites healing. Gabriel is a good boy; he’ll be a good man. Not all relationships that end are failures.”

  Then his voice became brisk as if he’d embarrassed himself by being too sentimental. “Mercy, you will have to hurry to get the parts here in time for us to fix those cars. Otherwise they will have to wait until morning.”

  “I have to hang up before I can get going,” I told them both. “Talk to you soon.”

  I disconnected, got in my car, and drove.

  6

  The shop where the parts had been dropped off was in east Pasco, a couple of miles from Uncle Mike’s Tavern, where the fae tended to congregate. It hadn’t been a bad drive from the shop or my house when the Cable Bridge had been up and running. But a troll, with the help of one of the Gray Lords of the fae, had destroyed it.

 
Construction had begun just a few days ago on a new bridge—by popular demand, a copy of the old bridge, which had been something of a landmark. It would be a year or more before it was functional, though, and in the meantime the shortest way to Pasco was over the Blue Bridge.

  For everyone.

  Before the Cable Bridge had been destroyed, I’d avoided the Blue Bridge as much as possible because of the heavy traffic. Now it was miserable, but my options were that or driving all the way through Kennewick and crossing the river on the interstate bridge and driving all the way back through Pasco.

  I took the Blue Bridge and crossed it, with all the rest of the traffic, at a walking pace. Not too bad, considering.

  Once I turned off onto Lewis Street, the main east-west artery in this part of Pasco, traffic returned to normal speeds. I wondered, briefly, if I should stop in and see if Uncle Mike would talk to me about our jackrabbit. We still weren’t sure it was the creature that Aiden thought it might be—we weren’t even sure that it was an escapee from Underhill. We were just operating on best guesses.

  I decided half a block before the turn that would take me to Uncle Mike’s not to go. If that old fae knew something, he was more likely to talk to Zee than he was to me. So I stayed on Lewis and headed toward Oregon Avenue, where a host of industrial businesses were located: heavy farm and construction machinery sales and services, metalworks, industrial fasteners, agricultural irrigation—and the auto shop where the people had dropped off our parts.

  A block or so before Oregon Avenue, a collection of train tracks crossed Lewis—and all other east-west traffic in Pasco. The trains were active here and stopped traffic on a regular basis.

  Lewis Street was the major thoroughfare on the east side of Pasco because of the short tunnel that dropped under the railroad tracks to allow the free flow of traffic from the city to Oregon Avenue.

  The tunnel itself, built around World War II, was . . . odd. Lewis Street narrowed from four lanes to two lanes and dropped below ground level before burrowing under the tracks with pedestrian walkways on either side. That narrowing was the root cause of the accidents that happened around the tunnel.

  The pedestrian walkways in the tunnel were creepy. They were unlit, and the decorative concrete barricades with pillars that kept the walkways safe from traffic also kept them safe from light. Even on the brightest summer day, those walkways were an invitation to trouble.

  The weirdest thing about the tunnel was the way it was just plopped into the middle of the intersection with South Tacoma Street. On the south side of the old intersection, South Tacoma took an awkward ninety-degree turn to parallel the tunnel traffic and rejoin Lewis, where it broadened to four lanes again.

  On the north side, South Tacoma dead-ended at the tunnel—which wasn’t too surprising. However, the dead end was announced by shabby but movable wooden barricades flanked by orange cones—after seventy years of not being a through street. It was as though they put in the tunnel and then forgot about finishing the project so that it looked like it belonged there—forgot about it for decades.

  Like everyone else still traveling down Lewis, I had planned on taking the tunnel to Oregon Avenue, but it was blocked off with police cars and yellow tape—and what looked like a semi that had tried to jump into the tunnel rather than take that ninety-degree turn onto Tacoma. I wasn’t sure a semi could have taken that ninety-degree turn.

  I slowed, with the rest of the traffic, with the intention of taking another, much longer route—and I would have except that my Jetta had no air conditioning. Nights might be starting to cool off, but it was ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon so I had the windows down. And through those open windows I scented the magic I’d first found on Dennis Cather.

  I pulled out of the line of traffic and looked for a parking spot. This part of Pasco was on the edge of the only-Spanish-spoken-here business district where bakeries, restaurants, and clothing shops sporting quinceañera and First Communion dresses in the windows all prospered. I parallel parked in a tight space in front of a Mexican bakery, which was emitting delicious smells that almost drowned out the scent I’d caught nearer the tunnel.

  I still didn’t have the locks working properly on my Jetta, but it looked disreputable enough that I didn’t think anyone would bother breaking into it. Towing it as an eyesore was a possibility, but not breaking into it.

  I hurried over to the mess at the tunnel and wondered how I was going to talk my way into the area—and saw a familiar face. It must be a pretty bad accident if George was here, because traffic wasn’t his usual job. And if he had been working at five in the morning . . .

  A wave of magic washed over me and the bite mark the jackrabbit had left on my neck burned uncomfortably. I clamped a hand to my neck and quit trying to work out George’s schedule because there were more important things to worry about.

  I waited, but I didn’t feel any homicidal or suicidal urges and my breathing was unhindered. But my head felt pressurized, there was a faint ringing in my ears—and the scent of the magic was powerful.

  Deciding that scaring myself was unproductive, I dropped my hand off my neck (because that wasn’t making it hurt any less) and started for the tunnel bridge again. I gave a sharp whistle before I got close enough for the officer directing traffic to send me on my way. George looked up and I met his gaze. He said something to the uniformed officer he was standing next to and jogged over.

  “It’s okay,” he told the traffic officer, with a hand on his shoulder. “She’s with me.”

  The officer took a second look at my face and his eyes widened. Being the wife of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack made me something of a celebrity.

  “Of course,” he said. Then he turned his attention back to his job.

  “Did anyone catch you up on the meeting this morning?” I asked him as we walked past the police line.

  “Werewolves and a demonic jackrabbit,” he said. “And you banged happy back into our Alpha—for which not only the pack but everyone who works for him is very grateful. That last I have from both Carlos and Elliot.”

  I rolled my eyes and ignored my blush. I was getting better at that—better at ignoring the blush. “Well, the scent of that jackrabbit’s magic is all over this place.”

  “Yeah, color me not surprised,” George said, “because what we have here is an abnormal incident. I just got through texting Adam some photos.”

  “Lots of police,” I commented, looking around.

  “Yep, people are safe to speed anywhere in Pasco at the moment,” George said. “I’m off duty—and I’m not the only off-duty cop here, either. When the sheriff’s department and the fire department hear about this, we’ll be drowning in them, too.”

  The burning sensation in my neck was growing.

  “Hey, George,” I said casually.

  “Yes?”

  “If I suddenly quit breathing or”—heaven help me—“start to act really weird, throw me in the river, would you?”

  “Sure thing,” he said without hesitation. “I heard you got bitten.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I am working under the assumption that this magic is one of those that have bounced up against my coyote weirdness and failed. But still, if I try to hurt someone who doesn’t obviously deserve it—”

  “The river,” George finished for me. “I’ve got it.”

  “Okay.”

  We rounded the trailer portion, which looked pretty normal, and I got my first good look at the tractor, which had climbed up the decoratively functional concrete barrier. It hung, tilted awkwardly, the front four feet of the rig over the open roadway below. But the tractor wasn’t in any danger of falling—the bottom half of the big rig had literally melted into the concrete barrier.

  I touched the top part of the tire, which was level with my chin and somehow still holding air. I ran my fingers down the rubber and
paused over the transition between rubber and concrete.

  “Huh,” I said.

  “‘Huh’ is right,” agreed George. “The accident probably happened because the guy driving the rig is high as a kite. He claims he hit the barrier to avoid killing a bunch of kids. Says his girlfriend grabbed the wheel and aimed at the kids. After the truck wrecked, she said, ‘Good luck with your beloved truck.’ Expletives deleted. Then she took off.”

  “Witnesses?” I asked.

  “Yes. We’ve got two ladies who were heading into the bakery to order a wedding cake who saw the whole thing. Truck looked like it was going to go down the tunnel—suddenly swerved to the right—and there was a group of maybe six kids walking across the street. Ladies thought for sure that truck was going to hit them, when it jerked suddenly and impacted the barricade where so many other vehicles have met their doom. They did not see the girlfriend.”

  “So do we believe the girlfriend exists?” I asked.

  “And did she have a bite mark?” He paused dramatically. “Yes, yes, she did. Our driver, who did not know his own girlfriend’s name on account of him picking her up at a gas station in Finley, said she had a—and I quote—‘weird-ass mark on her arm, man—like she’d been bitten by a vampire’—unquote.”

  It fit. Everything except the way the truck had melded with the barricade, anyway. It didn’t seem like the mind-control stuff went together with changing the bottom of a semi tractor into concrete. But my nose didn’t lie—the smoke beast had been here.

  “Is the driver still here?” I asked.

  “Nope, they took him in for questioning.”

  I’d been casually looking around. Funny how easy it was to tell the cops, in uniform and out, from everyone else—and there were a few onlookers now. It was a subtle thing—an in-crowd, out-crowd. Pasco wasn’t that big—all of the police officers knew each other and their body language gave it away.

  My eyes caught on one of the onlookers. A dark-complexioned girl wearing shorts and a pink tank top—and her expression was wrong. She was looking at the wrecked vehicle and she didn’t look amazed or worried or excited like everyone else. She looked smug.