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Authors: Angela Knight

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BOOK: Master of Smoke
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The tall Champion of the United States and his Maja wife passed among the ranks of their pupils, stopping here to correct a grip, there to demonstrate the proper technique of a parry. Belle saw Reece pause beside Davon Fredericks and take the surgeon by the wrist, correcting the way he held his sword.
“Poor Davon,” Belle murmured. “He’s used to being the best at everything he does. This must be hard for him.”
Tristan curled his lip. “After his ... association with you, he should be used to having things hard.”
She shot him a poisonous smile. “Why, Tris—that almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Better luck next time.” Before he could fire off the retort he was no doubt brewing, she nodded across the field. “There’s Logan.”
Not surprisingly, the ex-cop seemed to be instructing his opponent rather than fighting him. When Arthur Pendragon is your father, you know how to use a sword before they take the training wheels off your bike. Logan could probably have taught the class almost as well as Reece, though the other vampire was a good two centuries older.
Tristan waved to attract his attention, but with everything going on, Logan didn’t appear to notice. “Hey, kid!”
“Even a vampire couldn’t hear you in all this.” Belle stuck two fingers in her mouth and blew a piercing note that made everyone look toward them in surprise. She gestured Logan over. “And Tris—if you say one word about me and blow jobs, I swear I’m turning you into a frog.”
He gave her a smirk. “Sensitive, darling?”
She returned the smirk with interest. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Watching Logan jog toward them, Belle thought again how incredibly glad she was that Arthur’s son had fallen for Giada Shepherd.
When he was just twelve years old, Logan had had a violent crush on Belle. He’d even said he wanted her to give him the Gift when he grew up. She’d rather have been waterboarded than tell him how that prospect horrified her. It was one thing to seduce young studs she didn’t know, but she’d changed Logan’s diapers. He might have grown into a handsome, brilliant man, but she had no desire whatsoever to sleep with him.
Unlike, say, Tristan
.
Shut up,
she told that treacherously honest inner voice.
“What’s up?” Logan asked after he and Tristan exchanged backslapping greetings.
“I think I’ve found Smoke,” Belle told him. “Or at least, I’ve found the general area he’s in. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’s still alive.”
Logan’s dark eyes, so like his father’s, lit with joy. “Thank God! Where is he?”
Belle described the burst of magic she’d sensed. “I think he’s still somewhere in Greendale County.” Which was where he’d disappeared the week before. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to sense him since that burst. It’s as if something’s blocking me.”
Logan nodded. “Yeah, Mom and Giada said the same thing. Even Morgana had no luck.”
Belle frowned. That didn’t sound good; Morgana was one of the Magekind’s most powerful witches. But still ... “I thought if you had some object of his, I could use it to create a tracking spell.”
Logan frowned as he considered the question. “Well, there’s the little pewter cat he gave me when I was a kid. It’s got a communication spell on it so I could call him, but when I tried it last week, it didn’t work. If you think you can use it, it’s yours.”
“Worth a try, especially if it already has a spell of his on it. If he pops up again, maybe I could establish a connection with it.” Belle frowned. “Sounds like I’ll need to build a pretty powerful spell, though.”
“Probably.” Logan turned his gaze across the field to meet that of his lovely blond lover. The woman nodded and summoned a gate, then disappeared through it. “Giada’s gone to pick it up.”
“Enjoying your Truebond?” Tristan asked, referring to the psychic link the couple had obviously formed.
“Oh, yeah.” Logan’s handsome face lit with a grin. “Giada’s amazing. She’s so fucking brilliant ...”
“And you love her for her mind.” Tristan’s smile was gently mocking.
Logan laughed. “Among other things.”
A moment later, another swirling dimensional gate opened, and Giada stepped through. The tall, stunningly beautiful witch extended a tiny cat statue between tapered fingers. “One pewter kitty, as ordered.”
“Thanks, Giada,” Belle said, accepting the cat. Its moonstone eyes glinted in the field’s lighting, and she could feel power humming through it. She smiled, encouraged. “This should work nicely.”
“I hope so.” Giada linked an arm with her fiancé. “We’ve both been so worried about Smoke. He’s a good friend.”
“And he practically raised me,” Logan said. “I was going nuts thinking that bastard Warlock killed him.” A muscle flexed in her jaw. “We really need to end that fucker.”
“If we can figure out a way to do it without triggering a war with the Direkind.” Tristan shrugged.
“I’d better get to work on that spell,” Belle told them, opening a gate back to her home, where she kept the magical tools she’d need. “I want to have it ready if he surfaces again.”
“Not without me,” Tristan growled, grabbing her wrist before she could step through it. “You’ll go off on your own and get yourself killed.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “Tristan, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
He sneered. “Yeah. Sure.”
But she let him follow her through the gate anyway.
 
David hunkered down
on the coffee table, his eyes shuttered as he attempted to contact the godling hidden somewhere inside himself.
He had to escape this form before he ended up costing Eva her life. Unfortunately, so far all he had for his pains was a savage headache.
“David?” Eva crouched in front of the coffee table, putting herself at his eye level. She looked impossibly huge, as if she’d transformed into a giant. But then, everything else looked wrong, too, blown completely out of scale. For a moment he had the horrifying sense he was about to disappear, that he’d shrink until he vanished. He gritted his small jaws and fought rising panic.
Eva’s lovely brown eyes pleaded with his. “David, talk to me, dammit. Please.”
He ignored her, focused on his ferocious need to transform into something that could defend her. Even if it wasn’t human. Even if it was the tiger form he’d seen in his dream, that would be better than this utterly
useless
creature.
Eva rose and began to pace the living room, frustration in her voice. “Look, I know you’re pissed, but dammit, what would you do if our positions were reversed? If I’d been turned into a toy poodle, you wouldn’t let me go out and get eaten either.”
“That’s different,” he growled, unable to resist the topic.
“Why?”
“Because I’m the male.” David knew the argument was irrational, but he really didn’t give a damn. “I’m supposed to be the protector. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.”
He opened his eyes to find that Eva had stopped in her tracks to stare at him. “That is such
total
bullshit. I ...”
Someone rapped knuckles against the front door. “Eva? Are you in there?”
“Oh, hell, it’s Mom!” Before he had time to twitch an ear, she pounced, snatching him into her arms.
“Let me go!” When he tried to struggle, she grabbed the scruff of his neck, holding him helplessly immobile while she wrapped one arm securely around him.
“Forget it,” she hissed. “I’m damned if I’m going to let you race outside.”
“Eva?” her mother asked again.
She got the door open before he could decide whether to sink his fangs into her wrist. Stepping back to let her mother in, Eva forced a smile, hoping it didn’t look too frantic, as she tried to maintain her grip on David. “Hi, Mom!”
Charlotte Roman strolled in, a slim and youthful figure in a cream pantsuit and peach blouse. Atypically, she wore a frown as she glanced around the room. “Who were you talking to? I thought I heard a man’s voice.”
“It was the TV, Mom.” Eva kicked the door closed and prayed David would keep his muzzle shut. All she needed was to be outted by a talking cat. “What brings you over? And where’s Dad?”
“It’s Saturday—he’s running his Magic tournament.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.” Magic the Gathering was a collectable card game; Dad had been holding weekly tournaments at the Comix Cave for years. He also sold the wide variety of Magic card decks, so it was good for business all around. “So you decided to stop by and kill some time.”
“It’s not killing time, it’s spending quality time with my baby girl.” But Charlotte’s attention was focused on David, her brows raised. “I didn’t know you had a cat. I didn’t even think you liked cats anymore.”
“This one kind of followed me home.” The door safely shut, she put David down. He gave her a dirty look, the tip of his tail flicking in offended rage. She winced.
Her mother crouched, extending a hand to him. To Eva’s surprise, he sniffed delicately at her fingers, and permitted himself to be picked up. “You’re a beauty, you are. What unusual coloring! I’ve never seen a cat with markings like this. Usually, if a cat is striped, it’s over his entire body.”
“He’s not your typical cat.” Boy, that was an understatement.
Charlotte walked over to the couch and settled down on it, then proceeded to give David’s ears a good scratch. Judging by the way his eyes shuttered in pleasure, he liked it. “What’s his name?”
“Uh. ...” Fang would
not
do. He’d probably shred her curtains in revenge. Or her ankles, in his current rotten mood. “T’Challa.” Which was the secret identity of an obscure Marvel superhero named Black Panther.
Charlotte shot her a look. “I should have known. You’re such a geek, darling.”
“Hey, you knew who it was. What does that make you?”
“I’ve been married to your father for three decades. Of course I’m a geek.”
Eva laughed as she headed for the kitchen and the bottle of white Zin stashed in the refrigerator. After spending the day trying to convince David not to commit suicide by werewolf, she was in desperate need of alcohol. “Would you like a glass of wine, Mom?”
“That would be wonderful. I’ve been grading papers all day, and I’ve got a horrible headache.” She taught English at Steve Ditko High, a thankless job if ever there was one. “My students think if you can text it to somebody, it’s perfectly acceptable use in a term paper. If I see ‘you’ spelled as the letter ‘u’ one more time, I’m going to start foaming at the mouth.”
Still stroking David absently, Charlotte rose and followed her daughter into the kitchen. Eva got a pair of glasses from the cabinet and put them on the counter, then went to work on the wine bottle and its cork. It yielded easily; there were some advantages to being a werewolf.
“Eva, is something wrong?” Her mother’s gaze was a bit too acute.
More than I’ve got time to list
. She concentrated on pouring the wine. “No, why do you ask?”
Intelligent brown eyes studied her with obvious concern. “Maybe because I’ve known you all your life, and I can tell when you’re hurting.”
Eva handed her mother one of the glasses and summoned her best everything’s-cool smile. She’d gotten good at it after five years as a lying werewolf. “Everything’s fine, Ma. I just had an argument with David, that’s all.” Which at least was the truth.
“Where is he, anyway?” Charlotte sipped her wine, still cuddling David’s small furry body in the other arm.
Eva managed a shrug. “Like I said, we had a fight. He stalked out in a huff.”
Or at least, he would if I let him.
“Your father said he’s very handsome,” Charlotte said, scratching him under his furry jaw. “Not to mention partially naked, at least when Bill met him. He works in movies?”
“No—” Eva remembered she’d said he was a stuntman. Keeping her lies straight was becoming a problem. She really needed to make them less complicated. She took another sip of her wine to give herself time to think. “Oh. Yeah. He specializes in sword work. He was in
Kor the King
.” So much for simplifying the lies.
Shut up now, Eva.
Charlotte took another contemplative sip as she cuddled David/T’Challa. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to look for a boyfriend on one of those Internet dating sites?”
“Well, all I’m meeting at the Comix Cave are geeks.”
“I know, darling, but you
are
a geek, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Besides, I married a geek, and that turned out rather well.”
“Ah. Yes. Good point.” Without thinking, Eva picked up her own glass and drained it in one long swallow.
Charlotte put down her glass and dropped David, who landed like a—well, cat—then promptly streaked across the living room and under the couch.
Eva, watching him in worry, was startled when Charlotte cupped her face in both cool, slender hands. “Something
is
wrong.”
BOOK: Master of Smoke
3.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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