Smoke Bitten

by Patricia Briggs

  * * *

  • • •

  We settled Ben in the cage with a mattress on the floor and the chains and cuffs off.

  Releasing him from the cuffs had almost resulted in disaster. If Kyle hadn’t been carrying a stun gun and been unafraid to use it, Ben would have broken free.

  Adam called Marsilia and she confirmed what Wulfe had told us. The beast had indeed gotten Stefan, though when asked, she said the bite marks on his shoulder were more akin to a big snake—a very big snake—than to a rabbit. She sent photos. Two red marks, the size of a dime, marred the white flesh of his left shoulder. According to the measuring tape, the marks were four and three quarters of an inch apart.

  “That’s the size of a horse’s mouth,” Warren said. “More or less.”

  “Does he know what bit him?” Adam asked.

  “He has not been able to share coherent information with us,” said Marsilia. “We can keep him . . . indefinitely, I suppose. But I would not keep anyone I cared about in this state for long.”

  “No,” agreed Adam, watching Ben, who stared back at him with eyes that were not Ben’s. “But we are working on it.”

  “Except for Wulfe—with whom it is not practical—I have brought all of my people and their flocks to our seethe and locked us in,” Marsilia said. “I understand that you think that you need to do something about this, but I advise you to do the same. Think about what the news organizations will do when one of your wolves is bitten and goes on a killing spree.”

  “Is that what Stefan did?” I asked. Then I had a panicked thought: “What about his people?”

  Vampire hearing was good, too. She said, “All of his sheep are safe.”

  I did not add “those who survived,” but I wanted to. Marsilia had killed some of Stefan’s people (he had never, in my hearing, referred to them as sheep or his flock) in order to perpetrate some desperate scheme or other. He had never forgiven her.

  She blamed me. Not for her having to kill his people, but for his lack of forgiveness. It didn’t make sense, but emotions don’t have to make sense.

  “How did you discover what had happened?” Adam asked.

  “Wulfe brought him in,” she said. “It was not pretty—and there was no doubt that something or someone else was controlling him. He did not try to blend in. At all.”

  “Thank you for the information,” Adam said. “If we find out anything useful, I’ll make sure you get word.”

  “I would appreciate that,” Marsilia told him.

  Warren and Kyle left to go home and sleep. Darryl settled in as our guard, since Ben had been retired from the field. Adam and Darryl were still discussing how to patrol safely when I went up to bed. I was pretty sure that Adam wouldn’t come up to bed until I was safely asleep, so I left them talking and went upstairs.

  I paused in front of Jesse’s door, then gave in to my need to see someone safe tonight and cracked the door. She was curled up on the bed with a stuffed elephant that I knew Gabriel had gotten her. I shut the door again and left her to her dreams.

  I was just pulling the bedding up to my chin when my phone rang. Caller ID said the number was unavailable. I hesitated—but it was the wrong time of night for a robocall.

  “Mercedes,” said Beauclaire, son of Lugh and Gray Lord of the fae. “Uncle Mike asked me to call you tonight. A few days ago, he informed me that Underhill created a door to her realm in your backyard and in the process, she released a predator, one that Aiden told you was called the smoke beast.”

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “I know of that one,” Beauclaire told me, and I felt a shiver of relief.

  Beauclaire knew things about the creature who held Ben and Stefan. He would know what to do about it so we could save Ben, and save Stefan.

  “You know that Marsilia has locked down her seethe because Stefan was taken.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Did you hear about the accident on Highway 240? The terrible tragic accident where a tanker sideswiped two other cars? All three drivers and their passengers died. Eight people in all.”

  That accident had happened the same night that Kyle had shot one of the werewolves. It had made the front page and relegated Kyle and Warren’s encounter to the Public Records section of the newspaper.

  “Yes,” I said, sick to my stomach because Marsilia was fond of using car wrecks or house fires to account for “problem bodies” that needed to be explained. She had told me that Stefan’s people were safe, but she had not answered my first question about a killing spree—and I hadn’t noticed until just now.

  “A few hours ago, one of the fae, not a Gray Lord, but one who had power and skill, walked into Uncle Mike’s with a sword and used it and her magic to kill as many as she could. Fourteen fae died and also three humans and two goblins. Uncle Mike was on other business so he was not present. Had Larry the goblin king and the snow elf not been there, more people would have died.”

  There was no such thing, as far as I knew, as a snow elf. It was just what our resident frost giant liked to be called. I thought about how powerful a fae had to be if it took both the goblin king and a frost giant to subdue.

  “Some of those who died were very old and very powerful beings,” Beauclaire told me. “Uncle Mike says that your previous encounters with the smoke beast seemed to indicate that it was having difficulty acquiring power. I thought you should be warned that, as of tonight, that is no longer the case.”

  “I see,” I said. I no longer was hopeful that Beauclaire was going to provide me with an easy way to save my friends.

  “Because of tonight’s incident—and because of the problems the vampires have experienced—I have called all the fae in the area back to the reservation, including Siebold Adelbertsmiter and his son.” There was a bite to Zee’s full name. Zee had killed Beauclaire’s father a zillion years ago—but the fae have long memories.

  “Is there anything that you can tell me that would help us defeat it?” I asked.

  “Yes.” A pause, as if Beauclaire was being careful with his words. More careful than usual. “I cannot tell you who he is.”

  And that was important or it wouldn’t have been the first thing he said in answer to my question.

  “Cannot,” I said. “As opposed to will not. Like a geas?”

  “To you, perhaps that is the best way to explain it. It is a quirk of his nature. I can tell you a few, very few things about him.”

  “Please,” I said, tightening my grip on the phone.

  “In addition to ‘smoke beast,’ some call him ‘smoke weaver’ or ‘smoke dragon,’ all three referring to his nature—none of them are his name or bear any resemblance to his name.”

  “Because you cannot speak his name,” I said, to tell him that I caught the import of what he was telling me.

  “That is so,” he said. “Long ago he was captured by Underhill, a result of a bargain he made with her. He needed to bargain, as a part of the nature of the creature he was. A human woman gained the upper hand that somehow triggered the terms of his bargain with Underhill. Underhill swallowed him and we . . . I had thought him safely caught up in her nets for all these years.”

  “Needed,” I said. “As in no longer needs.”

  He didn’t answer me right away. “Any answer I make to you may be misleading,” he said.

  “We think Underhill let him out on purpose,” I told him.

  “Do you?” he asked, but more as if he found the idea interesting. “To what purpose, I wonder? And why at the door in your backyard instead of in one of those in the reservation where his prey would be so much more interesting, where he could cause so much more death?”

  “And become so much more powerful?” I half asked, half stated. Then I had a worrying realization. “As he did tonight at Uncle Mike’s?”

  “I am speculating now,” Beauclaire sai
d in apology—or as close to an apology as a Gray Lord was comfortable giving. It was a matter of tone rather than words. “I do not know why Underhill does what she does. But it is interesting that the first thing that happened when she put a door in your yard was that the smoke beast escaped.”

  “Do you know what he wants? What his goal is?” I asked. “He seems to be sticking around here.”

  “I don’t know what he wants,” said Beauclaire, and again there was an apology in his tone. “I myself never met him personally. But he can take any of the fae—”

  “He said he couldn’t,” I interrupted him. “To me. He’s taken one of our wolves. He said he could take all but the most powerful of the fae lords.”

  “Interesting,” said Beauclaire. “But we cannot risk it. The one he took tonight was powerful. Our gates are closed indefinitely.”

  “How do I save them?” I asked. “My friends who he has taken?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. And he was fae, so it had to be true. “But I will ask if any do. Should I gain that knowledge, I will see that you are told.”

  “How many can he take and hold at a time?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that, either. Likely that depends upon the power he amasses.”

  In other words, more people now than he could have controlled before tonight.

  “How do I kill him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that, either,” he answered. “No one has managed to do so yet. I do know that he can only be harmed in his own form, whatever shape he wears, not in the bodies of those he takes. That his own form shifts to smoke as he wills, so he cannot be easily imprisoned. Underhill managed—you might speak to her.” He paused. “There is a story about him. And it has to do with bargains.” He stopped again. “My incomplete knowledge of the smoke weaver—and creatures of his ilk—makes me leery of telling you more than this—”

  His voice changed, deepened, and developed an odd resonance. It sounded more feminine—and that voice was familiar. “The key to his undoing is in his basic nature. Do not pay attention to smoke and appearances.”

  “Baba Yaga?” I asked.

  Beauclaire sighed. “She will have her games,” he said. “But her advice is good.”

  He disconnected. I set my phone on the bedside table—and then realized that Adam was standing in the doorway. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. There was something . . . alien in his eyes that reminded me of the night we’d had the fight over Jesse’s school.

  “How much of that did you hear?” I asked cautiously.

  “I came up when the phone rang,” he said. “I wonder why Beauclaire called you instead of me.” There was an edge of anger in his voice. Probably, I decided, that was because Ben was locked up in a cage, possessed by an escapee from Underhill, and we couldn’t do anything about it.

  “I don’t know,” I said. And that was true. He could have called Adam. I wondered if Beauclaire’s calling me instead was a message, too. The fae could be very subtle creatures.

  Adam’s jaw tightened at my reply, but he didn’t say anything. He just shut the door and went back downstairs. I waited for him for a while, but it was nearing one in the morning and I was going to have to get up early to post a Closed until Further Notice sign on my business and call everyone who had an appointment at the shop.

  Without Tad or Zee, the shop made me a target. Not just for invading werewolves or escaped prisoners of Underhill, but also any crackpot, supernatural or not, who wanted to launch an attack on our pack. Most people, even most preternatural people, thought I was a mundane human. That I could turn into a coyote was pretty cool—but it didn’t make me a superhero.

  I set my alarm, pulled the covers over my head, and closed my eyes, but I didn’t really go to sleep until I felt the mattress sink under Adam’s weight. For whatever reason, he hadn’t gone to the spare room to sleep tonight, and I was grateful.

  * * *

  • • •

  I woke up facedown on my pillow with the urgent feeling that I was under threat. I could feel eyes on me, feel the hunt engaged with me as its target. I lay very still and breathed shallowly through my mouth.

  Was it Wulfe? I couldn’t smell anyone but Adam and me in the room.

  Adam moved on the bed and the feeling gradually faded. Probably it was the leftover of a very bad dream. I rolled until I could touch Adam—and my fingers slid through his fur. I was pretty sure that he’d been in his human form when he’d come to bed, but I’d been mostly asleep so I could have been wrong.

  I buried my face in the fur at his neck, and the scent and feel of him brushed away the last of that paranoid feeling that had awoken me. I was very tired, so it didn’t take long to start drifting back to sleep.

  “Good night,” I murmured.

  Sleep, the wolf told me through our bond, the threat is over for tonight.

  8

  Adam was gone when my alarm woke me up. Downstairs, Darryl had been replaced by George, who was taking his coffee down to keep watch over Ben.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “Not good,” said George, pausing halfway to the basement. “He’s himself this morning, but he says that thing still has a hold on him.” He hesitated. “He doesn’t want you down there. He says that thing in his head wants to kill you in the worst way.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. The urge to go down and watch over him was a pain in my heart. He was my friend and in trouble that he’d gotten into following my wishes. But if the thing was leaving him alone, more or less, as long as I was out of reach, I wasn’t going to make matters worse for him. The image of him crying on the bank of the river last night was a strong one.

  I didn’t have any comment on Ben’s situation that I wished to share out loud. So I said, “Beauclaire called me last night.” I needed a sounding board, but Adam had obviously not wanted to talk to me about the call; who better to talk to than George, who solved crimes for a living.

  “So I heard,” George said. “Adam talked to Darryl, Darryl told me.” He frowned at me, then said, “Darryl said Beauclaire didn’t have much to say.” He glanced downstairs and then started walking toward Adam’s office. “But both Adam and Darryl indicated that all important conversations should happen in the upstairs bedrooms with the doors shut or in Adam’s office.”

  So Ben wouldn’t overhear us.

  George took the fancy chair; I closed the office door and took my usual seat on Adam’s desk.

  “Did Adam and Darryl have their conversation in here or out there?” I asked.

  “In here,” George said, his eyes shrewd.

  I felt sick. Beauclaire had been subtle, but Adam understood subtle better than I did. Reading between the lines was admittedly dangerous with the fae. But Beauclaire did not want to keep his people locked up in the reservation. Without Underhill being a safe refuge for the fae—which she decidedly was not—the reservation was a limited-time solution. If all the fae remained trapped inside those walls, they would start feeding upon each other—in both a figurative and literal sense. Beauclaire had already proven that his primary goal was the survival of his people, and his people were all of the fae.

  Beauclaire had been subtle, for sure. But he’d given me a lot of information. That Adam hadn’t seen it scared me.

  “Beauclaire thinks that there is a reason Underhill let the smoke beast escape in our yard instead of the reservation, where it could have had access to fae who could kill hundreds if not thousands of people in very short order.” And that last was why Beauclaire had pulled all of his people to safety. It was also why Marsilia had sealed her people in, too.

  “So she didn’t want to create chaos or kill lots of fae,” said George.

  “Right,” I agreed. “When Aiden discovered the door, Underhill told him, ‘I need a door to Mercy’s backyard. I miss you. The fae aren’t playing nice.’” I frowned, t
rying to remember exactly what Aiden had told me. There had been something about not wanting to owe the fae anything.

  But George said, “She meant those statements to be put together.” He’d seen what I had. “That she wanted a door to your backyard so she could see Aiden—because she didn’t trust the fae with him, or they were using his visits as bargaining chips or some such thing.”

  I nodded. “But why would she need to let him go in my backyard? She likes Adam better than me. She could have said Adam’s backyard. And Aiden lives here—so she could have said your backyard.”

  “The smoke beast bit you,” George said. “And it couldn’t control you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I think that is significant. And later she told Aiden something about me being good at killing monsters.” I grabbed a small spiral notebook out of Adam’s top drawer, ruthlessly ripped out all the pages with writing on them, and shoved them back in the drawer. Then I wrote:

  Underhill released smoke beast here because of me. Smoke beast’s bite doesn’t let him control me.

  “It still almost killed you,” he reminded me.

  “Why didn’t it just turn me into concrete like it did that semi?” I asked him. “Or, for that matter, why didn’t it just turn you and me both into concrete?”

  “Because we’re living?” George postulated.

  I shook my head. “Zee says that for fae magic—transformation is transformation.”

  “Power,” suggested George—that was what Zee had concluded as well. “She said that she killed things for power. And she hadn’t been able to kill those kids crossing the road. Maybe she used all her power transforming the semi—and that’s why the whole semi wasn’t concrete when we got there. I’ve been wondering why, when she was mad at the driver, she only transformed part of the semi. What if she was trying to transform the whole thing, driver and all, but didn’t have the juice to do it? She took Dennis—and Dennis killed Anna, but didn’t kill anyone else. You didn’t kill anyone or die yourself. She took this poor hitchhiker and still didn’t manage to kill anyone—that we know of. That’s a lot of power outlay.”