Master of Smoke

let that creature back into his mind again. He’d come far too close to being destroyed. He wouldn’t court death that way again.
    What he needed was a power source that did not have so many teeth. One unprotected by ruthless will and feral intelligence. Unfortunately, he knew of no such power source.
    But Smoke might.
    When he’d first realized that maintaining control of the cat’s memory and powers might not be as simple as it seemed, Warlock had set to work creating a backup of sorts, in case the beast stole his memories back.
    Now he rose from the spell circle and padded over to the workshop table where he’d spent so many nights of late. In the center of that table sat a book flipped open to reveal pages of notes. He no longer remembered exactly what he’d written, but he intended to find out.
    Warlock smiled in grim satisfaction, then grimaced as he scented himself.
    First, however, he was in desperate need of a bath.

    The bell over the Comix Cave door gave its habitual merry jingle as Eva walked in. “Hi, Dad, I’m ...”
    The shop was splashed in red paint. Great swaths of it cut across the new arrivals racks, splashed the walls and the expensive hero statues. Oh, shit, she thought. The stock is ruined. Dad’s gonna have a stroke. Who the hell did ...
    She saw them.
    They lay in a tangle on the floor, Bill Roman huddled over Charlotte as if trying to protect her from the claws that had ripped into them both. Her father’s throat was gone, his empty eyes staring in horror. Her mother had no face at all.

    “Mom! Dad!” Eva woke changing, her voice spiraling from a scream of horror to a roar of agony. She rolled to her feet on the blanket where they’d made love yet again before drifting off into sated sleep. “Daddy!” It was a shriek that made the bushes sway.
    “Gods and demons!” David sprang upward and came down with a sword materializing in his hand, hard eyes scanning the clearing for whatever had torn that sound out of her. “What the seven hells was that?” As he caught sight of her face, his voice dropped to a more soothing register. “Did you have another nightmare?”
    “I hope that was all it was.” She started to push her tangled mane out of her eyes and winced as her talons sliced her forehead. “Dammit!”
    “You cut yourself.” He stepped over to her and caught the side of her head to draw her muzzle down and examine the wound. “It’s not deep. You need to watch those claws, Eva. What did you dream?”
    “I walked into the shop. Mom and Dad were dead. Warlock had ...” She couldn’t say it. As it was, she had to swallow hard as her stomach heaved at the gory memory. “David, we’ve got to check on them. What if it was some kind of prophetic dream?” An equally unsettling thought pierced her fear. “Warlock’s first set of flunkies found us at the shop, so he must know where it is. And if he tracked us down, he could find my folks just as easily.”
    David frowned up at her. “It’s possible. And Warlock likes to strike at family. I’ll open a gate and we’ll go check.”
    She nodded, feeling sick with anxiety. “I’d better change back. If they’re all right, I don’t want to scare the hell out of them.”
    “We’ll need to take them somewhere safe.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw in thought. “Arthur has safe houses on Mortal Earth that are heavily warded against magic. We built them during the Vampire Wars a couple of years ago. I’m sure he’d let us use one.”
    “The problem will be convincing Dad to go. He’s not going to want to leave the shop.” Still, she could burn that bridge when she came to it. She needed to make sure her parents were all right.

    David opened his gate in the alley behind the shop. It was Sunday, which meant the Comix Cave would be closed so Charlotte could drag Bill to church. Afterward there’d be televised golf—not his beloved football, not this time of year, but Dad loved sports. Or at least, he loved drinking beer and eating buffalo wings while somebody knocked a ball around on his giant high-def screen.
    But Eva couldn’t get that dream out of her mind. She had to check the shop.
    David at her back, she strode around the building to the Comix Cave’s front door. Pausing, Eva gathered her courage, before she unlocked the door and opened it. The bell jingled cheerily as she flicked on the light.
    The store was empty. The hard knot in her stomach loosened just a bit. Blowing out a breath, Eva turned