Master of Smoke

by Angela Knight

  Brakes squealed and a horn blared as the little Focus shot into traffic. Eva spun the wheel, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a Toyota. Somehow she got the car into the proper lane and floored it again. “Fasten your seat belt, David!” With one hand, she hauled her own belt out and fumbled until it snapped home.

  Darting a glance into the rearview mirror, Eva saw the four werewolves racing for the Hummer and their Harleys. They were still in human form, but she knew that wouldn’t last. And once they changed ...

  “You’re panicking,” David growled. “Calm down and drive.”

  Eva jolted, hearing herself chanting, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” in a mindless stream of profanity. She clamped her teeth shut and concentrated on dragging every possible ounce of speed out of the laboring Ford. Spotting a side street, she whipped down it, then took another left, then a right, glancing in the rearview mirror every few minutes as she drove, in the blind hope she’d shake the wolves.

  The two Harleys stayed stubbornly on her tail, their headlights bright in her mirror, the Hummer roaring after, its lights riding higher. If she couldn’t lose them ...

  Fangs ripped into her belly. Blood sprayed. Hot, bright agony. Oh, Christ, Oh, Jesus, he’s eating me ...!

  “Eva!” David’s roar snapped her back to full awareness just as the car’s right tires left the road, bumping over the thick grass of the shoulder. She jerked the wheel, overcorrected, and almost ran off the road on the left. Somehow she got the car back under control and tromped the accelerator again.

  Fighting terror, she blindly took turn after turn along the narrow county roads, trying to lose their pursuers. Yet the two bikes stayed stubbornly on her tail, hanging back just far enough not to lose sight of the Focus, sometimes whipping into oncoming traffic despite blaring horns and swerving cars.

  Dammit, where the hell were the cops? She’d be happy to get a ticket, if only a set of blue lights would show up to force those furry bastards to back off.

  Swallowing bile, she jerked the wheel for another tire-shrieking turn, ran a stop sign, and ignored the furious blare of a horn. “Call the fucking cops!” she spat at her rearview mirror.

  Which wasn’t a bad idea, if only her cell phone wasn’t buried somewhere in her purse. Which was God knew where. Had she even put it in the car, or had she driven off without it? She’d be lucky if some jerk didn’t make off with her bank cards ...

  I’ll be lucky if one of those damned werewolves doesn’t eat me.

  “They’re getting closer.” David sat sideways in his seat as he calmly watched their pursuit.

  “I know that!” The steering wheel creaked in her frantic grip, and she loosened her hold, afraid she’d break it in a burst of terror-fueled werewolf strength. Her mouth tasted brassy, and her heart felt as if it were trying to pound its way out of her chest. She swallowed hard. You’re going to get David killed if you don’t get it together.

  The thought hit her like a slap, stiffening her spine, narrowing her widened eyes. I am not going to get David killed.

  An image flashed through her mind: David, braced over her on sweating, muscled arms, his gorgeous eyes lost and blue as he filled her so impossibly full with those long, delicious strokes.

  Her beautiful lover. She set her teeth. He’s not going to die today. Not because I lost it and turned into a werewolf in the fucking car.

  She whipped the Ford into another turn. This time her hands were controlled and sure on the wheel. Spotting another turn, she took it.

  Eva cursed. The road stretched before her, a straight shot, moonlit fields and woods to either side. And not another turnoff to be seen.

  David lifted his blunt sword. “They’re going to catch us.”

  She flicked a glance toward the rearview mirror—and saw the Hummer’s headlights filling it. “Shit!” Eva stomped harder on the gas, but the accelerator was already floored, the engine whining as it labored for more speed.

  The Hummer hit the Focus’s bumper on one side in a precisely controlled bump. Eva felt the wheel jerk out of her hands. Heart in her throat, she grabbed for it and fought it with all her strength as the car spun out.

  The Focus rammed the ditch in a crunching crash of metal and a furious pop of deploying air bags. The back end of the car lifted as the hood crumpled. Eva yelped in pain as her body hit the unyielding seat belt and the air bag smacked her nose.

  “Out!” David roared, shouldering the passenger door open before the car had even jolted to a complete stop. “Get out and run!”

  Eva clawed at the belt, managed to unlock it. The driver’s door jerked open, startling her into a scream, but it was David. One big tanned hand grabbed hers and pulled her out of the car. “Run!” he gritted, giving her a shove toward the woods that lay across an expanse of kudzu-covered field.

  “’Fraid it’s a bit late for that.” The voice sounded unnaturally deep, rasping, more growl than anything else. Eva spun.

  Four werewolves moved toward them, muscular and obviously male. They’d already transformed, and they were all well over eight feet tall. Which made them considerably bigger than she was.

  The biggest of the four rumbled speech again. “If you surrender quietly, Cat, we’ll let the girl live.”

  But the others grinned at her, eyes glowing yellow, reflecting the wrecked car’s taillights. One of them had a hard-on that jutted from his furry groin.

  Magic rolled over Eva before she was consciously aware she’d called it, a hot, tingling wave that sheered rapidly into agony. Her clothing simply vanished as it always did, bone and muscle twisting, jerking, fur rushing across her skin in an itching tide. It was all she could do not to scream.

  David opened his mouth to snarl what he thought of the werewolf’s offer of quarter. An offer he might have accepted for Eva’s sake, had it not been so obviously a lie.

  He was going to kill the one with the erection first.

  But before he could step forward with his useless, blunted sword, Eva seemed to explode in a magical detonation. One minute she was lovely and a little dazed and very, very terrified. When the light faded an instant later, she towered next to him, seven feet of glossy sable fur, fangs, and curving claws. Her hair had become a lovely mane that fell to her shoulders, while a sleek pelt covered the rest of her body. Her face had lengthened and contorted into a wolflike muzzle, and she stood on two legs that curved backward, more like those of a wolf than a human’s. She snarled at the werewolves and spoke, her voice startlingly deep and savage. “Fuck. You!”

  Yet despite the intimidating length of her fangs, he could feel her terror, scent it flooding the air, bitter and acrid.

  And the werewolves laughed.

  It was an ugly sound, edged in a whipping chain-saw snarl. Studying them, David realized they were much bigger than Eva, even after her magical transformation. Muscle bulked beneath thick fur, and three-inch claws tipped their big hands. Judging from the grins on their fanged faces, they smelled Eva’s terror as clearly as he did.

  And it amused them.

  “What a pussy,” a hulking ginger wolf said to their evident leader. “She’s about to piss herself.”

  The leader shrugged powerful shoulders covered in a honey brown ruff. “She’s female.” To David, he added, “Looks like she won’t be much protection, Cat. Might as well surrender now. I may not be in the mood to be so nice later.”

  Eva’s snarl broke off, and she seemed to shrink from their mocking laughter.

  Protective rage screamed over David’s mind, so hot and intense his consciousness went white. He heard a sound in his mind, a furious roar, coming closer, growing louder, until it plowed into him like a physical thing that rocked him on his feet.

  Power blazed down his arm and into the blunt sword, igniting a blaze of golden light that raced along the blade from hilt to point, sharpening the weapon to a razor edge. The roar exploded from his lips as he swung the weapon up and leaped, an impossible bound that surprised even him as he cleared the ten feet t
o the dark-furred werewolf with the erection.

  His sword arced downward. The werewolf threw up a hand to knock away the blade.

  The sword cleaved the clawed fingers off the werewolf’s hand and buried itself in a thick, furred shoulder. He howled, more in horrified astonishment than agony.

  David hit the ground like the cat they’d called him, ripping the blade out of the werewolf’s body as the monster staggered backward. The werewolf grabbed his maimed, bleeding hand with his whole one. “You son of a—!”

  David spun, whipping his sword around in a furious stroke that cleaved through the werewolf’s neck. The creature’s head went flying, body keeling over to land in a heap of slack, furry limbs.

  “Shit!” yelled one of the surviving werewolves, a cry as much of astonishment as of rage.

  The leader’s lips peeled back from long yellow fangs, and his eyes flashed red in the darkness. “You’re going to die for that, fucker.”

  And they charged.

  SEVEN

  Eva watched in frozen disbelief as David roared a battle cry and slammed into the werewolves, his sword carving flesh, sending one wolf reeling back with a howl of pain. But another lunged for his throat, jaws snapping in vicious, toothy clicks.

  David ducked, dropping to one knee to shove his sword right through his attacker’s black-furred belly. The monster reeled back as David jerked the blade out and attacked the leader, forcing the big werewolf into an incredible upward leap to avoid the lethal stroke.

  The one David had gutted transformed in a flash of light, becoming a four-legged wolf the size of a black bear. The gut wound disappeared with the change. Eva blinked in astonishment. Despite the dream she’d shared with David, she hadn’t known becoming a wolf-wolf was really possible. She stored the idea away to try later.

  Assuming there was a later.

  Right now, she had to get her paralyzed body moving before those bastards turned David into Puppy Chow. The shame of their laughter stung, but even that wasn’t enough to break the paralysis.

  Then the four-legged wolf lunged at David, jaws wide, obviously intending to hamstring him.

  Eva’s paralysis snapped like a guitar string, and she charged.

  David leaped away from the snapping teeth as Eva reached down, grabbed the wolf by the scruff, jerked him up, and flung him twenty feet through the air as he yipped like a puppy.

  I probably should have eaten him, she thought, watching him sail into the moonlit kudzu. Nah. I’d just get hair balls.

  “You should have stayed out of it, bitch.”

  She turned to see the leader swinging three-inch claws at her face.

  Warlock had been pacing his lab when it hit—a wave of weakness that cut his legs out from under him and knocked him to all fours.

  He blinked at a line of gleaming silver cutting across the gray stone of the floor. It took his dazed mind far too long to realize it was part of the silver spell circle inlaid on the tiles.

  Something’s wrong with me. The thought felt fuzzy, as weak as the arms and legs that shook under him in wracking shudders. Finally dazed realization slid through his crippled mind. Smoke’s done it again. The bastard’s draining me.

  Warlock shook his head hard, fighting the effect, trying to clear his thoughts enough to cast a spell to drag the power back. Yet his mind remained clouded, and he felt a stab of fear.

  The fear instantly triggered a flash of rage that cleared the fog from his mind. He didn’t do fear. Other people feared him.

  Big hands curled until his claws cut his palms. I’m going to kill that God-cursed Cat.

  Eva jerked back, but she wasn’t quite fast enough. The leader’s claws raked her muzzle, and she yelped at the blinding pain. She jumped backward, hooked a heel on a jutting stick, and fell flat on her ass. He laughed, a sound more bark than humor, and leaped, claws lifted to disembowel. Her mind gibbered in panic as she remembered the ripping scarlet agony of her rapist’s attack. Oh, God, not again!

  The werewolf was still in midair when David slammed into his side like an NFL lineman sacking a quarterback. The force of the tackle drove the huge werewolf sideways so that he slammed into the ground beside Eva instead of on top of her. The leader yowled, half rage, half pain.

  David bounded to his feet, jerking up something bright red that flung drops of blood into the air. He chopped downward with it over and over like a berserk Iron Chef. Eva realized the red thing was the prop sword.

  That damned sword didn’t even have an edge. How the hell was he killing werewolves with it?

  Eva rolled to her feet, staring with sick horror as he minced the leader of the assassins into hamburger. A line from The Wizard of Oz shot through her mind, paraphrased in a flash of lunatic humor: “He’s really most sincerely dead.” The werewolf’s head was no longer even attached, but David kept right on hacking, bared teeth and wide eyes shining white from the twisted mask of red that was his blood-covered face.

  She’d read Wolverine often enough to know a berserker rage when she saw one.

  A sound snapped her head around. The last of the werewolves bounded for David’s unprotected back in a streak of ginger fur, stiletto fangs gleaming in the moonlight, claws reaching.

  Eva didn’t even think. She stepped into the werewolf’s path and swung both fists into the right side of his head like A-Rod going for a homer. Something cracked, and the werewolf flew backward. She hissed as pain radiated from her abused hands all the way to her shoulders.

  The assassin landed in the kudzu with a crackling crash. He didn’t get up. Eva blinked at the clump of broken vegetation. Did I do that?

  “Wow,” she whispered in astonishment. “I hit him.”

  Not only had she hit him, she’d knocked him fifteen feet. And since he had to weigh a good four or five hundred pounds—most of it claws—that was saying something.

  I didn’t even know I was that strong.

  Warily, she crept closer, afraid he was faking it. She really didn’t want him to explode out of the kudzu and carve her into sushi.

  There was no sound except a steady drip drip drip coming from God only knew where.

  One step. Two.

  Heart in her throat, Eva rose on her clawed toes and craned her neck until she could look down into the big green leaves, at the fallen monster.

  Well, he definitely ain’t faking that.

  The werewolf lay in a boneless heap, head flopped over at a thoroughly unnatural angle. She’d snapped his neck like a breadstick.

  Eva swallowed hard and dragged her eyes away before her lunch could hit escape velocity.

  Plop. Plop. Rustle.

  “AHHHH!” She jerked around, her heart catapulting into her throat. She sighed in relief as she recognized the source of the noise.

  It was only David, walking toward her with the bloody sword, his eyes fixed on her, glowing blue, catlike and intent in the dark.

  He slipped silently closer. Suddenly Eva thought of Snowball, the neighbor’s cat, who often crept up on unsuspecting birds wearing an identical murderous gleam.

  Which was when she realized David had just killed three werewolves in a berserker rage.

  And she was a werewolf.

  Oh, shit. He doesn’t know who I am.

  “David, it’s me!” Holding up both hands in a warding gesture, she shrank backward. “It’s Eva!” But even as she spoke, she noticed her werewolf voice rumbled a full octave lower than her human voice. No wonder he didn’t know who the hell she was.

  David lifted the sword and took another step closer. He was six inches shorter than she was in werewolf form, but he was also covered in blood and wearing an expression that reminded her of Mel Gibson killing people in way too many movies.

  Eva knew she could hit him upside the head—which had worked once today, but was likely to end really badly no matter what—or she could grow a pair of ovaries and take a really big chance.

  Blue eyes glittered. The sword lifted, ready to swing.

  Eva grabbe
d for the magic and changed.

  When the blue glow faded, her jeans and T-shirt had returned from wherever they went when she shifted. And she was looking up at David, who loomed over her with that big blade dripping blood. She tried to square her shoulders and meet his gaze with the fearless courage of Lois Lane staring down Lex Luthor.

  Unfortunately, a cowardly squeak emerged from her lips and blew the whole effect.

  He blinked. Took a step back and lowered the sword, looking confused.

  She gave him a broad, totally unnatural smile. “It’s me, David. It’s Eva.” Voice dropping, she added on a mutter, “Please don’t chop me into teeny tiny bits.”

  He blinked again and frowned, as if coming back to himself from a very long way away. “They were going to kill you.” His voice growled around the consonants in a way that didn’t sound like him at all.

  “But you stopped them, didn’t you?” Boy, did you. The coroner won’t even know what species they are. Good thing, too. Werewolves on the front page would be bad.

  David’s gaze turned catlike and intent again, but this time his mood was visibly more horny than homicidal. He reached for her.

  “If you kiss me covered in blood,” she informed him with brutal honesty, “I’m going to yark on your shoes.”

  David froze. His face worked, expressions flashing over it too fast for her to be entirely sure what they were.

  And he ... changed. His shoulders drew back, his head came up, and something shifted in his eyes. He blinked, a long, slow drop and rise of his lids, and when he met her gaze, something new looked out of his eyes. Something ancient and intelligent she didn’t recognize.

  “Well. We can’t have that, can we?” He made an intricate, graceful gesture with the hand that wasn’t holding the sword. Sparks shimmered above his head, spiraling down his body in a glittering double helix. When the glow vanished, so did the blood. His clothes were wrinkle-free, as if freshly laundered, and his hair lay smooth and dark over his broad shoulders, clean enough to gleam in the moonlight. Even his formerly gory sword was bright and shining again.