At some point, Nick had gotten up and gone to the window. He’d mumbled something about Ben, whom Rafiel guessed must be his partner.
But what he’d said, when he’d twitched the curtain was, “What the hell?”
And when Rafiel had gone to take a look, he’d seen them—a lot of men, all of them Asian, dressed in a variety of styles, up front. On the lawn.
It looked like something out of a horror movie, and Rafiel thought, It Came from the Chinese Restaurant, then felt guilty about it. Aloud, he said, “The triads. Okay. Conan, get ready to take Rya—”
He never got any further. The guys up front all jumped as though they’d been poked. Without transition, they went into the coughing, writhing fits of shifting.
As Rafiel watched, his mouth dropping open, they grew wings. One took to the sky. Then another. A car driving down the street stopped suddenly, as the driver, no doubt, doubted his own sobriety and pulled over.
A plate clattered to the tile floor. Nick and Rafiel turned as one. Conan was writhing, coughing, his body contorted in agony.
Rya shouted, “Conan!” and started towards him, but he made a gesture to keep away, and yelled indistinctly, “I’ve been called. Not Tom.”
He flung the door open, ran out. Rafiel ran to the window, and saw Conan shift and fly out with the other dragons.
Before they could say anything, a tall man, with reddish hair and impeccable shirt and tie, stood in the door. He was holding onto the door frame and looked…bug-eyed. He stared at them, found Nick and said, “Nick.” And then, “I saw…there were…dragons?”
Nick rushed forward, “Darling. You were out too late. Dyce took you somewhere funny. Too much coffee? Come in. I’ll get you a drink.”
*
Kyrie saw Bea step back from the grill and bend in two. She looked at the other woman, alarmed. “Are you okay?”
Bea turned towards her a face that was already less than human, elongating into the shape of a dragon muzzle, the eyes slanting oddly, the pupils vertical. “No,” Bea said. “Shifting.”
“What? Why?”
“Being called. Great Sky Dragon. Not Tom. Must… answer.”
Without removing the apron or her clothes, Bea ran out back. When Kyrie followed, she found Anthony standing over a pile of rags, the torn George apron conspicuous among them.
Anthony looked into Kyrie’s eyes. He didn’t look shocked, or even curious. For a moment she wondered what he shifted into. Then he looked at Kyrie and said, “So, that’s what’s been going on, is it? Good to know. I thought I was imagining things.”
“I—” Kyrie said.
“No, not now. I’m going to guess there’s some big emergency afoot? That dragon-girl took off out of here like an express train. Come and show me what’s what and what orders are started, before you too take off on the wing.”
“I don’t—” Kyrie started, then decided there was no point. Either Anthony was a shifter, Anthony knew about shifters, or they’d driven Anthony nuts. Now was not the time to figure out which. “Okay,” she said. “Come on.”
*
Tom saw the dragons rushing towards him. The sky was blue and green and, here and there, golden and red with them. He thought he must take to the sky. He couldn’t allow himself to be trapped down here. True, Maduh didn’t want to kill him, but she would have no objections to having his wings burned off, or his feet bitten off, or both, so he couldn’t escape.
He flapped his wings, to take to the sky, but too late realized he was surrounded by dragons. Dragons above him too.
He landed awkwardly on the nearest perch, the top of the wooden roller coaster—famed throughout the world, the part of him that was still Tom remembered. It creaked and swayed with his weight.
The other dragons clustered, flying around and around, making Tom dizzy. None of them landed on the roller coaster, though, and none of them got too close, because if they did, Tom flamed them.
Unable to get into flaming range, they started flaming the structure itself, trying to make it catch fire. Fortunately the wood was still too wet from the storm, but it would eventually catch.
Tom felt panic rise somewhere within him. He could choose to land, and allow the other dragons to capture him. He could try to fly, and allow the other dragons to pile on him and bring him down. Or he could become dragon flambé, on a bed of roller coaster.
Somewhere in his mind, something gave, something whispered, “Call the other shifters.” And he felt in that direction blindly, like a man who gropes in the dark for a weapon with which to fend off sure death.
And he found that though his connection with the dragons was cut off—not by the Great Sky Dragon’s wakening, but by whatever Maduh had done to the Great Sky Dragon—there was, still inside, a connection to other beings. Somehow, whatever the Pearl had done—was it because it, the artifact, was the last and he the last of such leaders?—had linked him to every shifter on Earth. Every one of them. Including Kyrie, standing by the grill at The George. He could feel her, talking to Anthony. Anthony wasn’t one of them, but most of the diner clientele, over twenty of them, were.
Tom reached out to every shifter within flying, galloping and loping reach. Come, he said, mentally. He knew the call was irresistible. Come to me.
*
Rafiel felt the call. He knew it was Tom. He could even see the scene. Tom, in dragon form, on a roller coaster track—what the hell was Tom doing on a roller coaster?—fending off masses of dragons, most of which were trying to set fire to the roller coaster. Tom needed help. Tom was asking for help.
There was a moment of Rafiel’s body starting to twist and change. Around him, Nick and Cas and Rya were writhing in transformation.
But Rafiel had fought shifting before. And won. And had shifted before in response to a blind imperative and—
The scene of the mating in that glade came back to him, in shades of nausea, and helped steady him, helped his human mind take control. He would not shift.
Yes, Tom needed him. But the horrible blind call and the horrible need to shift weren’t right and reminded him too much of the mating.
If he was right, Tom was at Riverside. Even a lion couldn’t run there that fast. The thing to do was get in the car and drive like hell, then shift—if it warranted it—and help Tom.
“Don’t shift,” he yelled to the other three. “We’ll go by car and we—”
The other three were already shifted, but the canines did stop on the way out the door, and look at him. He sighed. “To the car,” he said. “You guys can ride in the back. We’ll get there faster that way.”
He ran out the door, past Nick’s partner, who was looking white and like he would presently either throw up or pass out. Nick was going to have great fun explaining this one. Rafiel wanted tickets.
But right then, he knew—knew with incontrovertible certainty—that Tom needed him desperately.
Fortunately, policemen could exceed the speed limit in an emergency, he thought, as he opened the back door to his companions. Even if his police car was full of dogs.
*
Kyrie had just told Anthony that they’d need to put another batch of fries in, when she heard the call, loud in her mind. Come, it said. Come to me.
She could see Tom, in her mind, atop a roller coaster, surrounded by hostile dragons, even Conan. It couldn’t be Conan. She refused to believe it was Conan.
Kyrie reached for the apron, started to remove it. It was the middle of the night. There were about twenty people at various tables, but only because people from the nearby warehouse district often stopped by before going to their shift. Jason and James were tending the tables, but had enough time to stop and talking to people.
She could go and—
“Oh, my God,” Anthony said. “Mary, Mother of Jesus.”
He was looking out towards the diner, and now Kyrie looked too. Everyone in the diner—or everyone she could see—was writhing and coughing, twisting and changing and shifting.
; Jason, already in bear form, rushed to the door and hit it full with his body impact, before running, on ursine four down the street.
James ran out the door before shifting, to suddenly explode into the form of a majestic black Pegasus out on the sidewalk, under the corner light, and take to the sky. A car’s brakes shrieked outside, and there was a sound of metal on metal, but Kyrie didn’t even look.
There were wings, feathers, and fur…all of it moving in the same direction, out of the diner and northward.
When it was all over, there was only one old man in the corner, so absorbed in the crossword puzzle in his newspaper that he had seemingly seen nothing.
Perhaps he’s deaf? Kyrie though. And dumb. And blind, her mind added.
The call was still insistent in her mind, but her body wasn’t shifting.
“Aren’t you one of them?” Anthony asked, as he bent to pick up the plate he’d dropped.
“I…” she said. “I thought I was. I’m…I’m a panther, normally.”
“Uh.”
“I haven’t been able to change. I think it’s broken.”
“Uh.”
“But,” she said urgently, “I can feel Tom is in bad trouble. At Riverside Amusement Park. And I must go help him!” The last was almost a wail.
Anthony looked confused. “Well…do you need to shift for that? Why don’t you take a car and go? Seems to me a car would be faster than—”
Kyrie was already running towards the parking lot, but before she went out the door it occurred to her that either way at the end of this, there would be a lot of reverted-to-human-form shifters in need of clothes.
She went back to the storeroom. Once Anthony realized what she was doing—since he only had one customer left to mind—he helped her take the four bins full of used clothes they kept in there for emergencies and put them in the back of the remaining supply van.
She drove out from the parking lot carefully, because she had to avoid a couple of crashes. Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic at this time of night, so there had been only one head-on collision on Pride Street, drivers stunned by the grotesquerie of animal bodies rushing out of the diner.
She drove carefully till she reached the highway to avoid the occasional latecomer—bear, badger, raccoon, rat and a very large and glossy bat flying low—crossing the street in front of her.
*
Tom was trying to pray the rosary, something that would have been much easier had he spent more time in his long-ago Catholic education days paying attention, and less time figuring out how to scam more treats from the elderly nun who ran the class.
The dragon portion of Tom was so panicked that his human mind couldn’t get a fix on anything. The dragon was just flaming in every possible direction, trying to keep the dragons at bay. They wouldn’t dare land, he figured.
But then he heard a creak up the track, and turning, realized that Maduh, in sabertooth form, was loping along the track towards him. And behind him, a smaller form of her, one that also bore some resemblance to the dreaded Dante Dire was zeroing in on him as well. They had him boxed in, and the dragons were above. He’d have to fly down, and then they could burn him at leisure. And then—
And then there were Pegasi. A whole herd of them, in every color a horse could possess. Tom, keeping an eye in front and one behind, could only see them peripherally, grey and pinto, brown and sable, swooping in.
For a moment he was confused about what these newcomers could do exactly, because, after all, the dragons could flame them, and then they would be roast horsemeat.
But the flying equines proved incredibly agile, moving with the ease of smaller things, and—seemingly—always out of reach of the flames, while managing to aim deft kicks at the dragons’ heads. They worked together as though they’d trained at this, cornering the dragons, getting them down.
Which left Tom free to concentrate on Maduh.
She leapt through the air at his throat. He knew, without turning, that her cub would be leaping also. He flapped his wings, and felt the cub’s claws just catch his back leg, while Maduh’s teeth closed on air, and she fell down. For a moment, it seemed she would fall all the way to the ground, but she twisted at the last minute and fell onto the track, turning as Tom flew down to claw at her, and meeting his onslaught with claws that caught his foreleg and teeth that closed on his foot.
He screamed. He wanted to flame. But if he flamed, he was going to set the coaster structure on fire. And if he did that, then Maduh’s cub would die also.
Tom shouldn’t worry about the cub, of course. Even as he thought this, he felt the cub leap and catch his wing, rending it. Beneath them, on the ground, more and more animal shifters came and joined battle with the triad dragons.
Tom had to finish Maduh. He had to. The more he delayed and allowed her to control the dragons, the more casualties there would be.
Even from up here, he could smell the blood and hear the screams of pain. He could kill Maduh now, or risk massive casualties on both sides.
And he had friends on both sides.
Maduh was writhing. She was trying to shift. He thought she judged that Tom couldn’t kill something that looked human. She would have been right—before.
Maybe I’ll make an exception, he thought, as Maduh’s face contorted, and her human-looking eyes stared back at him in challenge.
He thought of Old Joe who, really, had only wanted to continue dumpster diving and walking down memory lane at Dinosaur Ridge.
He thought of the baleful sad eye looking back at him, of the teeth that would no longer clack together with amusement.
He lowered his head and bit through Maduh’s neck.
Her head fell down through the lattices of the roller coaster, completing its transformation from sabertooth to woman as it fell, the long blond hair fluttering in the wind like a flag.
Behind Tom, the cub screamed. Tom turned, just in time, to pin him with a claw across the belly, careful not to pierce the skin, to prevent him from diving down after his dam.
*
Below, the fighting still went on. Tom found that his connection to dragons had been restored and, realizing that he might have to make up a truly spectacular explanation for the Great Sky Dragon later, nonetheless chose to reach down and into the mind of the combatants on both sides. Stand down, he sent as a command. Stand down.
As the fighting stopped, and the two sides backed away from each other, he could see that there were some corpses on the ground. He hoped it wasn’t permanent death for those.
He also could see, among the combatants, dark shadows, cowl-wearing beings, and he thought, The creatures from the stars. And then: They feed on pain.
He found he had shifted and was sitting atop the roller coaster, his arm across the feral shifter cub, who had also shifted, and who was lying on the tracks, looking up at Tom in pure terror.
Tom looked into his eyes, found total fear, then reached into his mind, into preverbal, confused thought, and commanded, Stand down. And also, Hurt no one. No one in human form. And don’t shift unless allowed.
The creature made a pitiful sound of protest. He was no more used to orders than he was to instruction. But Tom had the force of the old shifters behind him, the first to come to Earth and to set order upon the chaos of the primeval world.
The young shifter looked up at him, and made a sound again, one of submission, the sound of a confused young creature with no defenses.
Tom removed his arm carefully, and the young man—he looked all of maybe fourteen—pulled up his legs, shivering, to wrap his arms around them.
Tom stood shakily. One of his legs was torn from thigh to calf and pouring blood, but not fast enough for it to be the femoral artery. There was also a laceration across his chest, and the bite on his hand would probably make it impossible for him to cook for a day or two.
He offered his other hand to the young shifter. “Come on,” he said, and put authority and images behind his words. He showed the shifter the sta
irs, and the way down them, then helped guide him.
The boy’s hand felt calloused and rough and very, very sweaty in his, as Tom—limping—led him to the stairs and down. If he didn’t have to bring the boy down, Tom thought he might just lay up there, on top of the roller coaster, and fall asleep.
But he had to get the boy down.
At the bottom of the stairs, he saw the big black Pegasus, the stallion who had led the pack, shift back into the form of James Stephens.
“Dark Horse?” Tom rasped at him.
James lowered his dark eyebrows defensively. “Yeah. And?”
“Thanks.” Then, as he observed the group of men and women around James, “You know when you talked about the ponies, I always thought they were just…horses. You know, pets?”
James’ face split in a smile. “Oh, there are those too. I own some at a friend’s farm. But these are— We fly on weekends. We…”
“Yeah,” Tom said, and walked past, leading the feral teen.
He walked past Jao, half of whose face was raw flesh, and who had a bite mark out of his shoulder. A bite mark from something big. He stopped. “The Great Sky Dragon is there,” he pointed to the entrance to the space under the dragon ride. “I don’t think he’s very well.”
And then, suddenly, Kyrie was running towards him, hugging him, not caring that he was naked and hurt and covered in blood. He put his free arm awkwardly around her, and she said, “Tom. Oh, damn it, Tom. You were in trouble and I couldn’t change, and—”
“Shh,” he said. “Shh. It’s all right now.”
*
A call to Anthony on Kyrie’s phone, told Tom that everything was all right at The George, kind of slow, though people were straggling in by twos and threes, some of them with big injuries.
“But you’re all right?” Anthony asked Tom.
“Yeah.”
“You sure? Kyrie was awful worried about you and she couldn’t, you know, become whatever it is, cougar or whatnot, and go out to help you.”
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