But she wondered if everyone else was like that. Clearly Tom Ormson was. But was that normal or just part of being a descendent of the Great Sky Dragon?
“Okay, here we go,” Kyrie said, as Tom took to the skies, unbelievable in his look of archaic fantasy, flying over a land crisscrossed by highways and lighted by electricity.
Bea shivered a little. “I’ve always wondered,” she said, “why none of us is photographed. I mean…when I had little control, I was flying over this Atlanta suburb.”
Kyrie shrugged. “My form? I change into a panther. I’ve often wondered if we’re responsible for all the sightings of great black cats. And if other shifters account for all the out-of-place animals seen here and there. But with dragons and other…less normal forms, I suspect the thing is partly that no one believes it. People don’t fully believe what they’re seeing. Other people look at pictures and think what a clever Photoshop job. I’ve told Tom we could make a great deal of money on the side by taking pictures of him and Conan flying over the city and making a calendar. Everyone would think it was made up.”
Bea turned the idea in her mind. “Except that over time it might give people the idea that…well, that it exists.”
“That’s what Tom says, though you know, dragons shifters are not just a genetic impossibility. They’re a physical impossibility. Those wings of yours shouldn’t be able to hold you up.”
The road bumped under them, and Bea held onto the seat with both hands, despite the seat belt across her middle. Kyrie turned willy-nilly onto something that couldn’t possibly be a road, only a bumpy sort of track amid a burned landscape. Ahead, Tom descended towards a field where Bea’s eyes couldn’t discern much more than thorns and rocks.
“Are you saying we don’t exist?” Bea said.
“How can I?” Kyrie turned off the ignition. “I’m saying that you are impossible, but, hey. I live with Tom. He very much exists. Come on.”
They got out of the van and closed it. Bea looked for the huge form of the dragon ahead but couldn’t see it. It took her a moment to realize that Tom had shifted and in fact stood nearby, putting his shoes on. She wondered if he’d carried his clothes. That was control she’d never quite managed.
Then she realized there was someone at Tom’s feet and stopped suddenly with a gasp.
Chapter 11
Her first thought was that the man was dead. He lay on the ground, naked, covered in blood. There was blood on the ground around him too—Bea could sort of see it, but more importantly, she could smell it. Something that she was more sensitive to than normal humans, no matter what her form, was the smell of blood. It made the dragon stir within her and get hungry.
Then she realized the pale, blood-smeared chest was rising and falling, and that Kyrie had brought something else out of the van. Kyrie squatted by the man, and told him, “Come on, Rafiel, drink.” From the unholy blue fluorescence of it, the drink she was tilting towards the man’s lips was one of those sports drinks sold to exercise fanatics that were supposed to replace electrolytes.
From the man’s slight movement and the sounds of his drinking, he had to be alive or at least trying to be. As Kyrie withdrew the drink, he said in a raspy voice, “There was a mama. I mean, the creature…I think it’s a juvenile. It has a mother. It—”
“Don’t talk about that now.” This was Tom who had come back and stood at the man’s other side. “Can you sit up? I have no intention of hand-feeding you.”
Something like a chuckle from the man, and then he dragged himself to a sitting position. A trick of moonlight gave Bea a full view of his face. It ought to have horrified her. To an extent it did horrify her.
His left eye was a congealed mass of blood, and there were deep-cut claw marks from his nose to his temple, perhaps all the way to his scalp, because the blond hair on that side was matted with dried blood.
He turned his right eye to her, though, and it was dark brown and filled with unholy amusement. “Hello,” he said. “Tom? Kyrie?”
“Oh, this is Bea. We’ll explain later. Don’t worry. She’s a dragon. One of us,” Tom said.
The man’s mouth twitched and it should have looked horrible, but it felt friendly and relaxed. “Oh, sure. You always introduce the pretty girls to me when I’m just back from the dead.” He accepted the box of takeout meat and a plastic fork from Tom and started eating with manners that, Bea suspected, were due to her presence. Tom wasn’t making that much of an effort. He was shoveling food into his face from the other takeout box. Kyrie got up and went back to the van.
“Did you…did you die?” Bea asked, afraid that she would sound like an idiot.
“I don’t think so,” the man said. “I might have though. It felt like she snapped my spine, but that must have been wrong, or I wouldn’t be able to sit up. My eye hasn’t healed yet, so I assume—”
“It will heal?”
“Probably,” Rafiel said. “We seem to have a regenerative capacity that evades other humans.” The single brown eye was still laughing at her. And the meat, as he ate, seemed to visibly make him feel better. “Coming back from the dead usually takes days, anyway. Not that I’ve ever done it, but Tom has, and from what we understand from…ah, our older shifter friends, that’s a shifter thing, not a dragon thing. If we can trust our sources, at least.”
“Which is a stretch, considering that our sources most of the time are elderly, addled, often homeless, and occasionally aligatorish,” Tom said. “But at least the explanation makes sense.”
“So, I don’t think I was dead, no, ma’am…Bea. But yes, I think my eye will come back and…the wounds will heal, probably by tomorrow.”
Kyrie came back, and handed the man who had finished his takeout container, a folded bundle.
In the end, Tom had to help Rafiel dress—in jogging pants and a shirt, and had to more carry him to the van than help him walk, though Bea noticed Tom was careful to preserve the appearance that he was only assisting.
They strapped Rafiel in the back, in the seat next to hers, though there was a space in between. He looked groggy, half awake, except when that bright right eye turned in her direction. It should have discomfited her, given what a wreck he looked, but it didn’t. There was humor in his glance, and he smiled a little.
“So, why is Bea along?”
Tom explained.
“Ah, I sensed we had a lot in common. You died. I almost died.”
“More importantly,” Kyrie said gravely, “it brings us to ask—where are you two going to go? You might not be safe in town, either of you.”
“Go?” Bea asked.
“Well,” Kyrie said. “Someone might try to kill you again, Bea—particularly if the Great Sky Dragon knows you have no intention of obeying, and as for Rafiel…he can’t heal like this in public. You have to see that. Too many explanations. We heal really fast. People will wonder. He can’t hide his face.”
Rafiel seemed immersed in thought for a long time. “My parents’ cabin,” he said at last. “I left my car out in Riverside. If you take me there, I will drive us out.” He took a deep breath. “My parents have a cabin in the mountains, south of here. Middle of nowhere. I have the keys in my car. I can go there while I recover and while we find out how to keep Miss Ryu safe.”
Bea should have been offended at his presumption or perhaps suspicious of this plan to throw her into a cabin all alone with a guy she barely knew. Instead, she felt perfectly safe and oddly relaxed about it.
True, she hardly knew Rafiel, and yet she felt that she’d known him for a long, long time. It wasn’t so much that she liked him, but she felt she belonged around him—like they’d known each other such a long time she needn’t worry about what impression she was making or how he felt. He just was and she just was. If it weren’t such a comfortable feeling, it would be downright scary.
*
“You know,” Tom said. “If you’d told me I would send a young and innocent girl off with Rafiel like that, just a day ago, I’d hav
e told you that you were insane.”
“We have no proof that she’s innocent,” Kyrie said.
Tom smiled at her. “Probably too innocent for love-them-and-leave-them Rafiel.”
“Who by his own admission is more leave them and less love them. I’m more worried about Rafiel than her,” Kyrie said. They were driving back from Riverside, starting to hit the heavy traffic on Fairfax. “Notice she already made sure she got to drive, not him.”
“Um,” Tom said, as he avoided a large heating-and-plumbing service truck hell bent on changing lanes on top of him. “Considering for now at least Rafiel has only one working eye, I’m glad she did. Sensible of her.”
A sly, sideways look from Kyrie, and she said, “You like her.”
“Oh yes. Unless she’s a very carefully contrived plant, that girl has—what did they use to call it? Moxie. Almost as much as you.” He reached and squeezed her hand. “And you must admit this whole thing has to be fairly bewildering for someone like her, born and raised American—you know…”
“Yeah, unlike Conan Lung whose parents more or less told him he now belonged to the Great Sky Dragon the very first time he shifted and whose parents at least have the full expectation of belonging to someone in a feudal sense, Bea grew up thinking of herself as free,” Kyrie said. “So knowing a many-times ancestor has decided her marriage had to come as a shock. And speaking of Conan—”
“For all you shift into a panther, you’re rather like a bulldog, aren’t you? Once you get hold of something, you just won’t let go.”
“Well…Tom, what if it damages the reputation of the diner? What if people stop coming?”
“No one will be there to hear it. Note we didn’t even put a poster up. No one knows. And I set it for eight p.m., so the dinner rush will be done. It will just be a dozen regulars, and they won’t hold it against us if Conan sounds like the unfortunate encounter between a tin cutter and a cat in heat. And if he’s that terrible, I won’t let him do it again.”
“Okay,” Kyrie said, seemingly appeased. “As long as there aren’t too many people in attendance.”
*
There were way too many people there, Kyrie thought. The parking lot was so full they had to drive up the cross street that ran along the side of The George. And even Pride Street was parked almost bumper to bumper, so it was some blocks before they found a place to park.
They hurried back in silence, except for Tom’s saying, in a plaintive tone, “But there weren’t even any posters.”
Only there was now a banner stretched across the front of the diner, announcing, TONIGHT, THE DEBUT OF CONAN LUNG. SIX-STRING DRAGON! YOU AIN’T HEARD NOTHING YET.
“Tom!” Kyrie said, in a strangled voice. How had this happened? How had one of Tom’s projects got so out of hand?
“Well…it’s…er…I mean, at least he said “heard,” right, so people can’t think he’s a stripper.”
“Tom!”
“Right. What do you expect me to do? I mean, all these people are here for it, clearly. Look, we’ll sell some souvlaki or…or whatever…and if it’s terrible, we’ll promise not to let him sing again, and then it will be all right.”
Kyrie just shook her head, but her mouth was twitching upwards. Tom was…irrepressible, she decided. It had been a long, long time since she had been able to get mad at him. This was stupid, but it was such a Tom stupidity that she couldn’t help smiling. “Idiot,” she said.
“Come on,” he said. “How bad can he be?”
“Six-string dragon!” she said, and broke into giggles.
“Okay…bad. But let’s give him a chance, shall we?”
*
The diner was packed as they came in. Kyrie noted with approval that beyond the normal tables, which had been packed into as small a space as possible, there had been rows of foldable chairs set up.
“We got them from my church,” Anthony said. “I called and sent Jason over.”
“But how did all these people know?” Tom asked, from behind Kyrie.
“Well, seems like Conan put up a video of himself singing on facebook, and it went viral.”
Kyrie swallowed hard, feeling as though her heart had dropped somewhere around her knees. “Oh, no. They’re here to mock him, right? It’s like that guy on that show whose audition tape was so bad.”
“I don’t know,” Anthony said. “He might think that though. He’s gone and locked himself in the storage room in the back.”
“Uh…” Kyrie said. Great. The only thing worse than having Conan sing and be absolutely terrible at it, was, of course, not to have Conan sing at all. That would get them eaten alive—metaphorically—by the patrons of The George. With all her heart she hoped it was metaphorically. Scanning the crowd she could see enough faces that turned into something fanged or carnivorous not to be absolutely sure. “Has Rya—”
Rya, a fox shifter attending CUG was Conan’s…well, maybe not precisely girlfriend. Kyrie didn’t think Conan had enough confidence to ask anyone out, but they were known to hang out together and, occasionally, go out for coffee or to shows.
“She was here, yeah. She’s still here somewhere, I think. She pounded on the door to the storage room and asked to be let in, but he wouldn’t.”
“Oh, lord,” Tom said. “I’ll handle it.” He already had his apron and bandana on, and he looked hesitatingly at Kyrie. “Can you take care of it here, while I go and get Conan out of the storage room.”
“His master’s voice?” Kyrie asked, and regretted it immediately as Tom gave her an injured look back.
*
Tom didn’t like the implication that he had some sort of power over Conan. Oh, he knew it was true, to an extent. When you’ve been browbeaten into becoming a slave, it’s easier to become the slave of yet someone else than to spring free and be your own person. He’d freed Conan, but he was aware that was one-sided. Conan still looked to him for guidance…to put it mildly.
He walked down the hallway and knocked at the door to the back storage room, because he couldn’t imagine even Conan in a snit locking himself in the freezer room. Also, from inside this storage room came forlorn plucking at the guitar strings.
Tom knocked again. For a moment, only more forlorn plucking answered him, then Conan’s voice, wavering and thin, “Yeah?”
“It’s Tom. Open up.”
“I can’t. I have laryngitis. I can’t sing.”
“Oh, for the love— Conan. Open this damn door or I kick it in, and then I make you pay for the new one.”
There was a shuffle-shuffle sound from the other side and then the sound of the lock sliding. Tom opened the door, while telling himself that they really needed to get rid of the deadbolt on the inside of the storage room. And they would have, by now, if it weren’t for the fact that the storage room was where he and Kyrie and other shifters in their confidence retreated to change clothes, or to put clothes on, when their clothes had been lost to an unfortunate shifting episode. It was also where they retreated when they absolutely must discuss something the nonshifting employees couldn’t know.
The room looked as usual: vast metal shelves held up supplies of paper products, barrels of flour were stacked against one wall, and vats of condiments against another. Despite the irregular use to which it was put, the room was kept scrupulously clean. It was the rule around here that if you used the room you must make it perfectly clean afterwards.
In the middle of the shiny linoleum, Conan stood irresolutely. He was, Tom thought, preposterously attired. Not that Conan was ever much for clothes. Normally he made do with jeans and T-shirt. But now…but now he’d got himself wearing what—probably in his own mind—a country-western star should wear.
That is, he had probably gone to that stupid touristy store downtown, the one that had the huge plastic cow on the roof, and he’d bought everything that was thrust at him. Which meant he was wearing a shirt in giant blue-and-white checks with big, bejeweled mother-of pearl buttons, jeans with rivets so large th
ey probably hurt, a vest with fringe on the pockets, a bolo tie—a bolo tie, for heaven’s sake—and the biggest cowboy hat that Tom had ever had the misfortune of seeing.
In his everyday persona, Conan was not a bad-looking man. He was small, thin, Asian, with hair that insisted on falling in front of his eyes. But his thinness was wiry rather than undernourished, and his eyes tended to crinkle at the corners when he smiled. He had certainly made an impression with Rya, and there were probably several other young women in the diner who would have given him a chance.
But now he disappeared inside those preposterous clothes, and had to tilt his hat up for Tom to see his face. That face was so pale that Conan looked like he was made of wax. His wide eyes were fixed in terror that Tom couldn’t remember seeing, even when he and Conan had fought side by side against overwhelming odds.
“What is this now?” Tom said, more softly than he’d meant to. “People are out there to hear you, Conan.”
Conan backed up to sit on one of the flour barrels. His guitar was propped up against it. “I know,” he said softly. “I was such an idiot. I thought if I put it on my facebook page, a few of my friends might come.”
“I’d say—”
“No, you don’t understand. I was all excited, and I made the banner and everything—”
“Six-string dragon, Conan?”
A pallid smile. “Well, seemed like a good idea, okay?”
“Yeah? And why is it not now?”
“Anthony said…” Conan swallowed audibly. “Anthony said that people probably made it go viral because they thought it was funny, because it was so bad.”
“Anthony said that?” Tom asked, shocked, because Anthony was many things but cruel wasn’t one of them.
“Uh…not…he didn’t exactly say that, but he said that people shared all sorts of crap they found funny, and I remembered all those videos people share, people from Hong Kong singing ‘I’m sexy’ and stuff…and I thought…”
“And you thought crazy stuff. Did anyone make fun of it on your page?”
“No. But they wouldn’t, right? Can…can you tell them, please…” Conan looked up at Tom, his eyes immense and fearful. “That you, you know, that you found that…that it’s against regs, or something?”
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