Master of Smoke

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