Noah's Boy-eARC

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  *

  The dragons vanished much too quickly, and Tom, almost dropping from tiredness, found himself shifting back and being alone in the parking lot, except for two middle-aged Chinese gentlemen behind him, Conan to his right side and…He frowned at the girl at the other end of the parking lot. She looked eerily familiar. “Bea,” he said.

  “Bea Bao Ryu,” Conan said. “We spent years investigating her family…back when I was…that is, when…”

  Tom understood Conan was suddenly afraid of saying that this had happened when he was working for the Great Sky Dragon, because now Tom was the Great Sky Dragon, and so Conan must be working for the triad again. Tom sighed and looked sidelong at Conan, “You know you’re free, right? To do whatever you please, and pursue your bliss with that damned guitar and that ridiculous ten-gallon-hat of yours?”

  Conan gave him a smile, but then the corners of his mouth shook and he looked even more tired than Tom felt. “It’s not that…simple…uh…sire?”

  Tom laughed at that, impossible not to. “If you call me your reverence or something like that, I swear I’ll hurt you.”

  Conan’s eyes went out to the two corpses on the parking lot. “Like you did them?”

  “No.” Tom had almost forgotten what he’d done, but now he shuddered at it, a shudder made worse by his being covered in blood. “No. Conan, I had to do it. Do you think I had a choice?”

  “No. I know you didn’t. And I think I know more about this than you do,” Conan said, his voice low, steady, but filled with an odd vibrating tone. “And if I’m right, all of us are going to find ourselves rather short on choices.”

  Tom was going to ask Conan what he meant, but at that moment one of the middle-aged Chinese men behind him said, “Sir, if you would.”

  Tom turned around. He vaguely remembered meeting the one who spoke, at a get-together of owners of local eateries when they’d planned the last “Eat Goldport” weekend, at which people could buy a coupon book then sample several eateries at discounted prices during the weekend. The speaker was the owner of record of the Three Luck Dragon. A careful search of his memory disclosed the first name Kevin and the family name Jao. Tom said, “Mr. Jao,” and raised his eyebrows.

  The man bowed again. “We have quarters prepared for you…and your bride, and we will tell you the whole situation as we know it. What happened to…to your revered ancestor and…” He looked at Conan. “If you trust him, he can join our councils. We gather you trust him, since he’s long been your henchman.”

  Tom looked at Conan. “I trust him. But I have no bride. At least no bride here.”

  The man beside Mr. Jao cleared his throat, and looked intently at the other side of the parking lot. “Miss Ryu will more than adequately provide dragon—”

  “No,” Tom said, with near-horror. Not that he had anything against Bea Ryu, of course. She seemed okay. But she suffered from the terrible handicap of not being Kyrie, and that was insurmountable in his view.

  “Uh,” Mr. Jao said. He spoke perfectly unaccented English, which Tom found fascinating, since at the dinner of restaurant owners he’s spoken like a stereotypical Chinese immigrant. Wheels within wheels. He supposed the man would now tell him to whom he was lying and for whom. Maybe. But he didn’t want to know. He had a strong feeling the triad was into far more shady business than drug running, murder for hire or even hunting down innocent dragon shifters. He had a feeling the business of the triad was far bigger and more dangerous and dirtier than anything he could have imagined. That feeling was partly from his gathered impressions, while he was in everyone’s mind for that brief moment after…

  After what? After the Great Sky Dragon had died? He didn’t know. Instead, what he knew with absolute certainty was that he wanted no part of any of this.

  Jao raised his voice and called, “Miss Ryu.”

  She came. She was good to look at naked. Tom could think that, even while being aware that he’d rather die a thousand deaths than marry her or anyone but Kyrie.

  Bea was slim and shapely, but she walked towards them like a beaten dog. He suddenly remembered she’d just come back from death, and wondered what had managed to make her change and come here. What could have been a strong enough impulse?

  Then he thought that, of course, the call had been that strong. But she must be famished and half dead. He was famished and half dead. He needed protein to recover from his shift. So would all of them. He turned to look at the men. Well, they’d have to get help from them. And he supposed listening to them wouldn’t hurt either, since he wanted to know what had got him in this predicament, to figure out how to get out of it. “Meat,” he said. “We’ll need protein. We all shifted.”

  “Of course. If you come to your apartments with your bride and your…assistant, we’ll provide food and clothes.” He looked up and must have read Tom’s resistance to the whole bride thing in Tom’s eyes, because he said, “We’ll explain why it is your duty to all dragons to do what you must do.”

  *

  “Tom,” Kyrie said, as she slammed the brakes on, and ran out of the car. She was hugging him before she realized he was smeared in blood, and stepped back and said, “Ew” at the smears of blood on her clothes. Tom looked whole, so the blood…

  “Whose blood?” she asked.

  Tom looked tired, so tired. He turned to one of the older men in the group and said, “Would you see to the Liu brothers, and put them somewhere until they…recover.”

  The man looked like he was going to say something, then sighed. “The one who is…limbless will…”

  “Take longer, yes.” Now in addition to tired, Tom looked vaguely embarrassed. “But I’m sure his brother will be back before that and can look after him.”

  Again the man looked like he was going to speak, but only nodded. And looked disapprovingly at Kyrie. But Kyrie had possessed herself of Tom’s hand, and even though the man glared at their hands, together, he said nothing.

  However, as Old Joe, whom Kyrie had decided to bring along, also shambled out of the car and walked towards them, clacking his teeth, the man looked at him, and then at Tom and said, “That, no.”

  Tom looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled a tired smile at Old Joe. “He’s a friend,” he told the man, his voice full of sudden hauteur and command.

  “He can’t be a friend. He is—”

  “A friend,” Tom insisted.

  The man looked like he was on his last nerve. How someone could look that disapproving while completely naked, and showing off a little middle-age belly and a lot of white chest hair, Kyrie didn’t know. But he did.

  “Very well. It is always as the Great One wishes, of course. Though we’re not used to that rapid a change in policy without knowing all that lies behind it.” He bowed to Tom and led them into the restaurant. It was closed of course. It must be…

  Kyrie could not remember, but she knew it was well past midnight. The restaurant had that look the diner only had once a year, when they closed the day after New Year’s and things got really cleaned. It always spooked Kyrie a little. It was like entering a place that had been alive and full of people and finding a silent tomb.

  The Three Luck Dragon had the same empty feeling, like eye sockets devoid of eyes, like a house with all the curtains closed, and the rooms dimly lit. The dim lighting was true. There were what appeared to be nightlights burning along the restaurant, here and there, enough to allow them to avoid tables and furniture while following Jao.

  He took them to a small room across from the kitchen. In it was a table and two chairs, as though disposed for an interview. He walked past the furniture to the opposite wall and lifted up a picture of several fat children playing on a dragon. Behind the picture was a lever which he pulled.

  The entire wall slid away, revealing a sliding door designed to look like wallboard.

  Tom stopped just ahead of Kyrie and said, “Whoa.” Which was about what she was thinking. It was something like what a hotel casino called the Forbidden
City might look like, in the center of Vegas, or at least what its honeymoon suite might look like.

  For one, there was entirely too much red. Red dripped in tassels from elaborate chandeliers painted with more scenes of dragons and children. It made Kyrie wonder if it was a desire for fertility or a meal setting. Red draped the bed in the middle of the room, red was the color of the silk carpet that covered the floor and the walls were lacquered red, gold and black, in a shiny, polished look. Was it possible to sleep in this room and not dream of blood? Was that a plus?

  Kyrie blinked at it. Fortunately the light was somewhat dimmed to mood lighting. Then again, perhaps that was not fortunate. The bed was large enough to accommodate ten people who didn’t need to be really close friends, either. What had the Great Sky Dragon done for amusement? She glared at the pictures of happy dragons and happy children, one of which was in a mural, occupying most of the wall.

  “Cozy,” Tom said, in a definitely dry tone.

  Jao didn’t seem to catch the irony. Instead, he said, “It is not your primary residence, but only the place where you—where he—where Himself stayed when he was in town. Lately that was, of course, often, because he wished—” He gave a look towards Tom and another at Bea and seemed to run out of steam. In a rather less fluent way, he led Tom to the closet and showed him clothes, in his size.

  Kyrie noted most of them were exactly the sort of thing Tom wore most of the time: T-shirts, jeans, though there appeared to be a tux at the back, and there was definitely a suit. But on the extreme right of the closet were what appeared to be traditional Chinese attire from before the revolution. The sort of thing one expected to see in movies about China in the nineteenth century. She quirked her mouth slightly, wondering what Tom would look like in those, and knowing there was no chance in hell of ever finding out.

  When Jao opened a door to the side of the closet, which like everything else around here seemed to be a trick door hidden in paneling, she could barely glimpse a bathroom within. But Tom turned around and said, “Bea, if you wish to wash first?”

  Jao gave Tom a wounded look. “Sire,” he said. Then turned to Bea, “I’ll show the lady her bathing room.” It apparently came with a closet of its own, filled with rather a greater variety of clothes than Tom’s side.

  How nice, Kyrie thought. His and hers. And felt rather dizzy and a bit nauseated. She had an impression that the expectations of the triad would be more difficult to defeat than she expected.

  Servers swarmed in, setting up little tables with bowls of food on them. It did not improve her mood.

  *

  Tom leaned back under the water, feeling it soothe him, deriving great comfort from its immediacy, its warmth. He didn’t look down until he was reasonably sure no blood would be running down.

  He should be used to blood by now. It wasn’t the first time he’d been covered in blood. Many times, it was even his. But he wasn’t used to it. Didn’t want to be used to it. He wanted blood to remain something alien, as it was to most people. As it hadn’t been to him since the night he’d been kicked out of the house. He still remembered the bloodstains on the sidewalk, blood sprays staining the walls and the elderly orangutan shifter telling him that, really, he didn’t want to know. He still had nightmares about that night sometimes, but whatever had happened remained locked in his memory and inaccessible.

  When he was sure that the water was running clear, he washed his hair and body. They had exactly what he used, including Mane and Tail shampoo, and he thought that it was impossible the Great Sky Dragon had used the same products he had. So they must have stocked for him, and they knew him far better than he was comfortable with.

  He came out of the shower, still not sure what to do. He had a strong feeling that he should—if he wanted to keep power in the triad—marry Bea. But he didn’t want power in the triad. Of course, the question was if he could give up power in the triad and stay alive. As in despotic government systems, the alternative to being the heir to the throne was not being allowed to go your merry way—it was being dead, so that whoever took the throne didn’t feel threatened by you.

  There was a white terry robe behind the door to the bathroom, and he could have wrapped himself in it, but that seemed a little too intimate. He was going to have to go out there and have a conversation with all those people, including Jao and Old Joe. Any gathering in which Old Joe seemed to be the sanest noninvolved participant was enough to give a man cold sweats.

  So, instead, he dried himself, then dressed in the clothes he’d brought in with him: jeans, a clean T-shirt that he only realized afterwards had the saying DRAGONS ARE FIERY LOVERS. He wondered who’d picked it. In normal life, it was the sort of sly humor that might have appealed to him, but just now it didn’t seem nearly as funny.

  He tied his hair back with a ribbon provided, and made a face at himself in the mirror. Where had those dark circles come from? He suspected Kyrie had thought he was having a stroke in the storage room. Perhaps he’d had one. Perhaps he was now lying in a coma and all this was a hallucination. It made as much sense as anything else.

  When he came out of the bathroom, things made even less sense. Apparently the war council was going to take place at the foot of the bed, with everyone sitting on cushions on the floor and partaking from the food on tables around the room, using little bowls and porcelain spoons also distributed around the room. The only person who looked…well, not right, because he never looked right, but moderately natural in that situation, was Old Joe who was merrily eating with his hands out of a little bowl, while clacking his teeth and clutching something—was it an extremely dirty trench coat?—to him like some sort of security blanket.

  Kyrie and Bea were sitting side by side and seemed to have formed some sort of united front. Part of it, Tom noted, was that Kyrie was wearing a dress, which had to have come from Bea’s closet. The disapproval of this action was written in Jao’s face as he glared at Kyrie, and the mulish stubbornness of Bea’s look told him she wasn’t about to take much of this.

  Which at least was good, right? It meant he had an ally, right?

  Tom took a clean bowl, wishing it were much bigger, and piled it high with meat from a nearby serving bowl.

  Jao and his counterpart sat opposite Kyrie and Bea. Old Joe sat facing the bed. The only spot open was with his back to the bed, but Tom decided it had been a long time since kindergarten, and he was not going to sit on a cushion on the floor. Besides, if he settled himself above the others, on a physical plane as well, perhaps he’d have more command over the outcome of this.

  *

  Bea’s doubts about Tom got worse, as he came in, walked straight past them, got food—how could he eat food after tearing people to shreds?—and sat on the bed, staring down at them as if they were unruly children and eating with scrupulous manners.

  Yeah, okay, so the idea of taking pillows off the bed, and sitting on them on the floor might have been stupid, but this room didn’t have any chairs for people meeting here, and she’d be damned if she was going to sit on the bed with all these people, or if she was going to stand while the two Chinese guys sat on the bed and glared at her.

  It was bad enough that they’d thrown a fit when she’d lent a dress to Kyrie. Yeah, okay, so that dress was probably never going to be usable by Bea after this. It only fit Kyrie at all because it was stretchy material, but the points at which their figures differed were likely to be stretched out of shape forever. On the other hand…

  On the other hand, Kyrie had been blood-smeared from hugging Tom, and she wanted to change, and Bea didn’t understand why she shouldn’t lend Kyrie clothes. It wasn’t as though Bea had chosen, paid for, or had any interest in the clothes in the closet, even if their mimicking of her taste had been deadly accurate.

  But they clearly thought this was Bea’s room and Kyrie was an intruder. Bea shivered. Out there, in the cabin in the forest, she’d been getting used to the idea that there might have been a man for her. Oh, it wasn’t love
yet, not even a crush, but being with Rafiel felt right. She liked spending time with him, and was more comfortable with him after a day’s acquaintance than she’d ever felt with a man.

  For one, she didn’t need to make excuses for her shifting. And yet, he wasn’t a dragon, or part of the dragon hierarchy, and she didn’t need to worry he belonged to a whole mysterious world she’d never understand.

  Which, beyond the fact that this man was taken, and that she wasn’t sure she liked him all that much, was the big problem with Tom. He walked in, sure of himself, as though he knew rules she didn’t, between the people sitting on the floor, and plopped himself down on the edge of the bed.

  He looked over them, with an amused glance, then said, in a dry voice, “Who cares to start telling me what this is all about?”

  Jao started first, hesitatingly, “Your revered ancestor…That is, for some time now, he’s been aware that he’s been in danger, grave danger of the sort that— That is, he knew there was a good chance he might die, and therefore he…made preparations, so that if you stayed behind you’d have dragon descendants who might follow your footsteps, and the line that came all the way from the stars wouldn’t die with you.”

  “The stars?” Tom asked, with a lifting of the eyebrows. “I take it you don’t mean Hollywood.”

  Jao scowled but hesitated. “It is not stars stars, though that’s what we’ve always called them. I mean, our legends do not talk of traveling through space in the sense that you might understand it, though there are legends of sailing the ocean of time, we’re not sure that’s time travel, either. It’s just that…Worlds Dragons might be more accurate, as we think they came from other worlds.”

  Tom raised his eyebrows further. Was he trying to put them off making him their leader by acting as arrogant as possible? Bea had a feeling that wouldn’t work. These people struck her as the sort of people who would positively enjoy being stepped on and made to behave like underlings.