Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(90)

The darkened edges of the circle began to fill with smoke, covering the ground in folded layers that grew thicker and rounder until they reminded me of the rolled-up dough for a cinnamon roll before you cut it, or . . . the coils of a snake.

The smoke had left a little area around Adam’s group and another around James’s rock. I didn’t like the look of them separated.

“Kids,” I called, “get closer to Adam.”

Jesse and Aiden tried, but the smoke between them thickened and grew taller. Just before I lost sight of them in the smoke, I saw Luke make a rolling leap over the top of the coils. Hopefully he made it to Jesse and Aiden. I believed that Kent and Li Qiang had meant it when they told me they would guard my family, but I felt better having one of the pack with them.

I now had a smallish area to stand in, about ten feet around, but clear, more or less to the top of the dome—though even the surface of that dome was darkening. Meanwhile, the layers and layers of coils were becoming more real, and solid. Giant silver scales glinted iridescently in the filtered light that drifted through the smoke.

“Smoke dragon,” I said.

Beauclaire had called him that. There was evidently some truth in the appellation, though I thought that “wyvern” or even “serpent” might have been more accurate. The only dragon I had seen had had four legs and wings.

I supposed that there could be more than one kind of dragon, but this creature did not carry the amount of magic that dragons were reputed to have. While I didn’t see limbs, there might have been wings in the mists of smoke that filled the space not occupied by the smoke weaver.

The coils stirred, as if the weaver had heard me name him. One of the coils nearby moved and a giant, reptilian head slid over the mounds of his body to look at me through eyes that might have been fist-sized gemstones.

The head was as tall as I was, but still it seemed small for the size of his body. It didn’t look exactly like a snake’s head, but it resembled that more than a dragon’s. The weaver’s muzzle was long and almost delicate.

He snorted and a salty, watery gel covered me.

I wiped my face off impatiently. Coyote mates of Alpha werewolves don’t care if smoke dragons cover them in snot. We certainly wouldn’t squeal.

Instead, I asked him, in what I felt was a reasonably calm tone, “Why the show?”

There is not enough magic in your world to allow me to take my true shape, the smoke weaver said, though he wasn’t really talking. There was sound, it was a voice—but it wasn’t coming from the serpent’s mouth. I must make a place where I can gather it sufficiently. This takes time.

“It is an acceptable inconvenience,” I told him, not untruthfully. I didn’t care about circles—I cared about the time. Joel, I reminded myself, against two werewolves. If Fiona, “equally dangerous” as Charles, weren’t one of them, I wouldn’t have even worried.

I am here, the smoke weaver told me, in blood and bone.

He seemed to be waiting for something, so I said, “Yes, you have thus fulfilled the first part of this bargain.”

I don’t know why I used forsoothly speech; it just seemed the right thing to do—and when I had no clue, I tended to go with my instincts.

I was still musing about language when he bit me. The strike came without warning. My reactions were fast, but I didn’t have time to even flinch. He clamped his teeth over my left shoulder and the upper part of my chest.

I made an involuntary sound, as much of surprise as hurt—and it did hurt. It felt as though someone had stabbed me with something hot. That pain burned, and when he pulled his head back, the breaks in my skin where his teeth had been had trickles of smoke coming from them.

“Mercy,” Adam said.

“He surprised me,” I said back. “I am fine.” But I could have saved my breath.

As if it had been difficult for the smoke weaver to hold on to his enormous shape, the coils dissolved into grayish smoke that covered the globe of the circle so that we could not see out nor anyone outside see in. Then the inner part of the circle cleared until nothing lay between me and the others except for a dozen yards of driveway pavement.

Adam could see for himself that I was fine—so far.

A piece of smoke dropped from over my head, darkening as it fell. It hit the ground in front of me with an audible thump. The smoke drifted away and left a man no more than four feet high. Or someone who looked vaguely like a man, anyway.

He was hairy and very ugly—as if someone had taken a rock and chipped away at it with a crowbar until they made something humanoid, and turned that into a living creature. Then, deciding they hadn’t quite managed to make him look human, they covered him with a great beard that fell to the ground. The hair on his head, about the color of cinnamon, was neatly braided and was also floor-length. But there was hair in his ears, and his eyebrows were unusually thick. There was not much room on his face for eyes and nose, and his mouth was lost under a prodigious mustache.

We stared at each other. Smoke still curled out of my burning wounds, but neither the smoke nor the pain or burning sensation increased.

Nothing happened.

I remembered the way the smoke had choked me the first time he had bitten me. That had been a worry. He had already proven he could simply kill me. But the night he’d taken Ben, Ben had told me what the weaver most wanted. Killing me was vital—but it was still secondary to finding out why he could not use Tilly’s gift to take me over.