Master of Smoke

fact, in between telling her about that weird dream he’d had. It didn’t work.
    He needs to try harder. He’s a cat. That’s just wrong on too many levels to count.
    Eva glanced up to watch David pace along the counter-top, his tail lashing in agitation. He was a beautiful little beast, his fur so black its highlights looked blue. Silver striped his haunches and shoulders in a pattern she’d never seen in a house cat’s fur. He did, however, look exactly like the tiger-creature she’d seen in her dream, except smaller.
    Much, much smaller.
    And how the fuck is he supposed to fight werewolves like this? She felt sick.
    Abruptly he stopped pacing and sat down in front of the cutting board, coiling his tail neatly over his feet. Lifting his elegant little head, he looked her in the eye. “I must leave.”
    She considered the idea. “Under the circumstances, that might be smart. Where are we going?” Eva lifted an egg and prepared to crack it into a mixing bowl.
    “You’re not coming.” He said it in a flat tone, his blue eyes narrowing.
    Eva’s fingers tightened convulsively, crushing the egg and raining yolk and shell fragments into the bowl. “What?”
    “As I am now, I can’t protect you. If I left, you’d be safe from Warlock’s assassins.”
    “Forget it.” Eva started plucking bits of shell out of the yolk with short, agitated gestures. “I might as well roll you into a burrito and serve you to the bastard. He’d snack the minute he found you. No way in hell is that going to happen if I have anything to say about it.”
    David peeled his lips off dainty fangs. Those crystalline eyes were the only part of him that looked familiar. But wrong, so wrong, in that tiny triangular head. “Do you seriously think you can stop him? You can barely face down your own reflection!”
    Eva stared at him in astonished hurt. “Thanks a fuckin’ hell of a lot, David!” She picked the bowl up and dumped its contents down the garbage disposal. No way would she be eating anything now.
    “I do not want to die knowing I have doomed you!”
    “Yeah, well, I don’t want to live knowing I let you die!” She leaned down until she was nose to tiny black nose with him. “I repeat: not happening!”
    He lifted his chin with regal pride. “I may be small, but I’m fast. I can hide from Warlock until I can shift back to my proper form and defend myself.”
    “And you can hide just as well right here, so drop the melodramatic bullshit.”
    “What if he sends another team of assassins? They will butcher us both. At least alone, I may be able to elude them.”
    “You couldn’t elude the neighbor’s poodle right now, and you know it.”
    “I may be in cat form, but I still have my intelligence. And you have no right to keep me here.”
    “There’s the door.” She pointed a shaking finger at it. “Go!”
    “I can’t turn the doorknob!” he roared, his voice startlingly loud coming from such a small body.
    “Then how the hell do you think you’re going to fight off fucking werewolves?”
    With a snarl of rage, he leaped off the counter and headed for the door, crouched, and began to stare at it as if he could will it to open.
    Blinking burning eyes, Eva picked up her cutting board and began raking the makings for the omelet into the trash.

    Dogs lazed in the shade of the woods behind the Drayton Apartments. There was a huge red Great Dane, a black Doberman, a German shepherd, and a muscular pit bull with curly steel gray fur. They scratched at fleas, panted, chased squirrels, and terrorized a fat Persian cat who was lucky to get away with her life.
    But they never strayed far from Building Five. Periodically one or the other of the dogs would get up and stroll around the building, stopping only long enough to lift a leg at the shrubbery.
    If anyone had bothered to look more closely, they might have noticed that the animals seemed fascinated by the second floor. Yet they kept a careful distance, as if wary of drawing attention.
    And all four came to quivering attention whenever anyone went up or down the stairs, only to subside when they got a good look at whoever it was.
    But they were, after all, only dogs, so nobody paid much attention to them.

    Tension rode like a nauseating weight in Gerald Drake’s belly as he stood at attention in Warlock’s inner sanctum.
    What kind of lunatic has an inner sanctum?
    He stifled the thought as soon as it flitted through his brain. The last thing he needed was