And then Tom said to Jao, within Jao’s mind, Come.
It was more than that. It was more like pulling a tether; more like reeling in a fish. It was an unavoidable command. Tom knew it had the same force of the command that had, instinctively and unavoidably, called every dragon within wing reach to pay his respects to the new Great Sky Dragon.
Come, he said, and forced it. And behind it, he could hear Jao say “Come” as though relaying the command, or perhaps tasting it. He didn’t know which.
But the dice were cast, and now all he could do was wait.
*
Halfway to the door of the amusement park, Bea heard a noise behind her, like something—it didn’t sound like someone—running. She turned a little, looking over her shoulder just in time to see two dogs go by her. No, not dogs.
She’d never seen wolves like this before. All her experience of wolves came from nature specials and from visits to zoos, and in the first, wolves were never running full tilt, one on either side of her. And in the latter, wolves tended to lounge around, with the ease of predators who had been shown they’d get food three times a day, regardless of what they did.
But once this pair ran past her, and then ahead of her, side by side, in easy, long strides, she realized that they were in fact grey wolves, a matched pair, shiny and well-cared for. Not like wild wolves should be at all, something at the back of her mind said.
Which was silly, because she had no idea what wolves should be like.
It didn’t stop her. She sped up and ran just as fast, behind the wolves, who disappeared into the park, running.
Part of her thought they had to be shifters, of course. And maybe they were, but didn’t Colorado have a native population of wolves and coyotes and such?
The funny thing was that even though she thought all this, she didn’t even slow down, running after the wolves into the darkened entrance of the park.
There was a stile of the sort that is supposed to count people as they go through and, in the normal way of things, it would have stopped her—at least if there were anyone in the tower next to it, with the window for paying and collecting tickets.
But Rafiel had gone this way and obviously hadn’t stopped. The dog-wolves didn’t stop either, running wildly one after the other under the stile. And she went after them, ducking. It was a good thing that she wasn’t a very big woman, because she only just got under, nearly bent double, and almost touching the sides.
Once inside she found herself on a slope, and there really wasn’t any way of knowing which way to run. To her left was the hippodrome, closed and boarded up, and now festooned all around the entrance with yellow tape proclaiming it a “crime scene.”
She ran past it, thinking of what Rafiel had told her about human remains in there. Quite suddenly she found herself in front of a dry fountain—at least it looked like it had been a fountain, done in a quite daring style, for the seventies—and made up of jutting planes, bits of metal and a cement shelf.
From that point, she had a view of the whole park, which seemed to be filled with crisscrossing paths, lined with rides of various kinds, all of them looking like odd, silent shapes in the failing light. In fact, if she squinted, she could imagine she was in some kind of odd Jurassic party, where ancient creatures reached out, in glistening tones of green and black, extending arms that looked armored and bits that looked clawed.
She knew it was nonsense, but it made her feel very lost. The warm breeze, bringing with it a scent of decay, didn’t help at all.
The problem was that she didn’t know where to go. She didn’t know where Rafiel was, or where that scream had come from. She didn’t even know where the wolves had gone, in their trotting pant full of exuberant dogginess.
She squinted at the landscape, the long shadows, the odd shapes. She’d seen darker shapes come in here, shapes she couldn’t tell were human or animal. Now, squinting, she seemed to see the same shapes. No. It was too much to call them shapes. They were more like…Yes, they were more like movement. She’d never have believed it, if anyone had told her that she could see movement without seeing whatever made it. But in this case, that was exactly what she was seeing: there was movement, but nothing behind it. Like…like wind was movement felt but not seen. If you squinted just right, you could see movement of leaves and grass as though something had passed, but you couldn’t see what, you couldn’t hear it, and you felt no breeze from that side.
The movements were stronger near an arching bridge that went over a concession stand, and then down towards the water. Squinting harder and moving sideways, she could see a dock in the water and moored boats. So the bridge probably led there. Well. And the movement was there. Whatever was happening, Rafiel had come here to investigate the shapes coming into the park, and the movement must be related to that. Which meant that Rafiel must be where the movement was. And—she remembered the animal scream she’d heard—he was in dire trouble.
She went trotting down the slope, taking the path to the bridge. The question was whether she could hide at all, while on that high arched bridge. But she hadn’t seen any movement on the bridge itself, only around it. Fine.
As she got closer, she moderated her running, and studied the path. There were trees by the roadside, and they led pretty much to the place under the bridge where the movement was.
She plunged into the trees, and behind the first irregular row of them, which would screen her from view of whatever the movement was. Oh, it was entirely possible that the movement was not sentient nor capable of sight. But what if it were? No reason risking it. And yes, in normal circumstances, she would say it was impossible for invisible movement to be sentient. But then she shifted into a dragon on demand. Perhaps other people shifted into invisible forms.
What she knew was that she must save Rafiel.
She was walking as rapidly as she dared behind the row of trees, when she found herself grabbed by strong arms. A large hand covered the mouth she opened to scream.
*
The doorbell rang loudly, startling Tom and making Old Joe and Conan jump. Before Tom could move to open the door, a fist pounded on it, loudly.
By then Tom had recovered enough of his wits to know that he should not open the door. So much about his dealings with the triad was appearance and protocol. Or at least they’d expect appearance and protocol. The fact that Tom couldn’t care less for either of those made remarkably little difference. He would have to impress his authority upon them, in the way that the Great Sky Dragon had. And that meant he didn’t open doors, and he didn’t do the running around. He remembered the huge, gaudily decorated room. He was supposed to be some sort of hereditary royalty, and not merely a common man—or a common dragon, for that matter.
He motioned for Conan to open the door, while he sat on the chaise, to the side of the sofa. He wouldn’t go so far as trying to look regal, but he did try to look as though the pounding, which had reached levels where he feared it would smash down the door, didn’t trouble him at all.
Conan rushed to open the door, then stood aside.
The oddness started with the fact that Jao was stark naked. Perhaps that shouldn’t have surprised Tom, since he had sent a strong and absolute command to come, and he supposed in dragons, or to dragons older than himself, that would translate into “shift into dragon and fly there with all possible speed.”
But it did surprise Tom all the same, partly because Jao looked more stern and reserved in his nudity, standing there with his arms crossed, than he would have if he’d been wearing a suit, or for that matter a royal medieval outfit.
And partly because, behind Jao, were two other men, equally naked.
A delegation of dragons, Tom thought, and raised his eyebrows at them, saying nothing.
“You summoned us,” Jao said, not making a step over the threshold.
“I summoned you,” Tom said. “I wish to ask you some questions.” He considered using again the summon to come, but he had a sudden and all-too-v
ivid image of Jao changing shape right there, at the threshold. It had been hard enough to pay for replacing the bathroom after Tom had shifted in it, breaking all the fixtures to bits, stripping the tile from the wall, and bending the piping in on itself. They had to fix it, of course, and improve it, and then make some excuse to the landlord about having wished to remodel. Nothing else would have explained that damage, except perhaps claiming a bomb had exploded in the bathroom.
Explaining that they wished to remodel the front door or, worse, the front wall of the house, would be somewhat harder. And besides, if Jao got stuck half-in, half-out, it was quite possible he would be too agitated to shift back, and what would the neighbors think?
So Tom refrained from saying Come with the same force he had before, but he reached for Jao’s mind and said I wish to speak to you about matters that shouldn’t be discussed in front of strangers.
Jao looked pointedly at Old Joe, sitting on the sofa, clacking his teeth, but he didn’t say anything, and came into the house, step by step, his entrance having the air of both a royal procession and of his doing Tom an enormous favor. Tom remained sitting. It put him at the disadvantage of having to look up at Jao. On the other hand, it conveyed the idea that he was not some underling to get up at Jao’s approach, and also that he was not in any way afraid of Jao or what Jao could do. Which was almost true. He was not afraid of what Jao might do to himself.
But he’d fallen in love with Kyrie and he couldn’t bear the thought that Jao would do something to Kyrie because of the way Tom treated him.
Jao stood in the same stance he had adopted at the door, legs just slightly parted, as though balancing himself to receive a punch, arms crossed on the chest.
“I want to know what you did with Kyrie,” Tom said.
Strangely, he caught Jao off guard. They hadn’t expected Tom to know they had taken Kyrie. Tom was sure of that. Jao was good at the bluffing game of power, and probably had played it since well before Tom was alive, and truth be told, since before Tom’s father or grandfather were born. But he couldn’t avoid a momentary start of surprise, and Tom saw that. He saw the minimal widening of the eyes, the head thrown back just a little, the bracing legs bracing harder. And the two men—dragons, almost for sure—behind Jao were even more transparent. Probably they were no older than their apparent age, which was about the same as Tom’s.
Jao had recovered though, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” Tom said. He supposed he should be circuitous and ceremonial, but he didn’t know how to be either, and he’d just about run out of patience. “I saw it in your mind.”
Jao opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “You could not have.”
Tom raised his eyebrows. “I could have,” he said. “But you’re right, you’d have known if I’d forced your secrets open and looked at the thoughts you try to hide from me. I didn’t do that, but it was enough to know there was a secret place which you were guarding with the whole force of your personality, and also that it was somehow related to Kyrie, which I could sense quite well.”
Jao compressed his lips, until they looked like one thin, twisted line. He might have posed for the part of villain in some pantomime. Well, probably not naked. He glared at Tom. “I will not tell you anything.”
“Oh, I think you will,” Tom said, his voice steady and reasonable. Inside, he wished he felt that he was being steady and reasonable. “Because the alternative is to have me riffle through your mind to find the information, and I don’t think you want me to do that.”
Jao looked at him. He huffed a little. “You’re not—” he started, then took a deep breath. “You wouldn’t do that. He will come back. He would avenge me. You know that as well as I do.”
“Avenge you?” Tom asked, and arched his eyebrows. “I do not intend to kill you. Just to find what you have done, against my express will, to force my hand in matters that do not concern you.”
Jao was quiet a long time. When he spoke, his voice had an unpleasant tone of an adult talking to a child. “I’ve served the Great Sky Dragon all my life,” he said, “which is longer than yours, young man, and perhaps longer than you can conceive of.” He paused, and Tom would very much have liked to know how a naked man could invest himself of so much dignity and power. He looked at Tom, not a glare, but worse, an evaluating appraising look, something he might give those vegetables he bought for the Three Luck Dragon, looking them over to see what might be made of them. “There is an honor in serving him. I know that I’m doing what my ancestors would want, what I was designed and created to do, carrying on traditions that are important and things that mere mortals never hear about.” A haughty shrug of the shoulders. “The long life, the power to fly, all those are compensations, but hardly needed. Neither my father nor my mother were dragons, but when I was revealed to be one, they gave me over to the people of the dragon—at the time there was a whole city near the village of my birth—and the people of the dragon raised me to know what to do. I was nimble and smart, and in time, the Great Sky Dragon himself chose me as one of his wings, one of his close advisors.” He frowned slightly. “He expects—expected immediate and complete obedience, of course, and he punishes with death the slightest deviation from his plans, or the slightest balking at his will. It would seem to someone like you, raised in this undisciplined time, as though I were little more than a slave. But there is a…mutual duty in my service. The Great Sky Dragon will not hesitate to kill me, if that’s what it takes to make others see the price of disobeying him, and the price of substituting my judgment for his. On the other hand, he too is bound. He does not do what very well pleases me, but what is needed for the good of our people—for the good of all dragons. It is a duty he learned young, though he came to his post quite unprepared. His mind always dwells on what is good for the dragons. Do you think he wanted you for his successor, or was pleased that the only one to ascend to the throne of dragons was a young man from a quite alien background, on whom no one ever impressed his duty to serve?
“He did not. And though his testing of you showed you less unworthy than he feared, that only changed how he treated you. If you’d been as unworthy as he feared, a coward with no self-control and seeking only your own pleasure, he’d have forced you, I think, or bribed you to create children for the dragon throne, and then disposed of you. But he thought there was in you a spark, a…something that might be made into a good Great Sky Dragon.” Jao frowned slightly, and his shrug was less majestic this time. “At any rate, he feared that an emergency such as the one that happened would befall him and make you Great Sky Dragon long before any children of yours were able to do more than mewl and crawl. So he tried to preserve you, and he got us to swear that we’d protect you and serve you once he was gone.
“But he forgot something—he forgot that you can’t and won’t put dragonkind first. And so, we must do it for you. We’ll protect you and we’ll serve you because he told us to, but if you won’t do what you must, then we’ll do it for you. Bea Ryu was picked as your bride because she has the best chance of giving you dragon sons. But if you don’t like her, we’ll pick another. The thing is—”
“No,” Tom said. “The thing is that I have absolutely no obligation to dragonkind, as you put it. I don’t know what obligation you imagine I have, but no one of my family ever felt the need to look out for dragons in—”
“Not true. You are descended from dragons on both sides, from both kinds of dragons. If you think that neither of them carried about dragonkind—”
“I meant, of course, that no relative I knew ever changed into a dragon, and that I have no reason to be loyal to a group of people just because they do. My association with your charming group has involved threats and attempts to coerce me. Why should I?”
“Why?” Jao looked like he would like to take Tom over his knee, and as though, had Tom been ten years younger, he would do just that. “Does it not matter to you that you are our kin
d? Does like not call to like?”
Tom allowed his lip to curl upward in the disdain he felt. “Where I come from,” he said, “racism is frowned upon, and to cleave to a group of people simply because they look like you or share a characteristic with you is considered both weak and a sign of bigger character problems.”
“Pah. A young civilization, with nothing to recommend it.” Jao made a gesture that seemed to signify something dissolving into thin air. “Who knows how long it will last? But the way of mankind is always for like to cleave to like, and if you don’t cleave to us, of whom the rest of humanity is in dread, who’ll protect you when they come for you?”
The thought did stab at Tom, now and then, in the dark of the night. Sometime, long ago, sometime between that night when his father had turned him out of the house in his robe and bare feet, and the Tom who had found Kyrie and a semblance of normal life, he’d become very aware of how different he was, how odd. If he were all alone— If people found out what he was—
The best prognosis he could think of was secret labs somewhere in the bowels of some military installation, but he suspected that was a dream of thriller—or perhaps comic book—writers. On the few occasions when normal people had seen him or one of the other shifters, Tom had become acquainted with the human tendency to ignore and deny what they couldn’t accept. And people changing between humans and animals was something most people couldn’t accept. Tom, as far as he’d been a normal human for over half of his life, and insofar as he still tried to think as one, would very much like to believe such a change was impossible, too.
What normal people tried to do with something impossible was to destroy it and bury it, so that they could then feel it had never happened and never existed.
And sometimes, still, Tom woke up in the middle of the night—or more likely, given his hours, early morning—beside the sleeping Kyrie, and stared at the ceiling and imagined what people who were truly terrified might do. To him. To them.
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