“She got here,” Tom said. And up from his memory came the only reason a female shifter suddenly stopped shifting.
Most of the winged shifters took to the sky. Kyrie found clothes for most of the others, even if some of the women had to do with just one large T-shirt. A few of the shifters besides Kyrie and Rafiel had cars. The owner of the park, who turned out to be an elk shifter, dug up an ancient bus from somewhere, and some of the remaining shifters got into it.
“We’ll need to come back,” Rafiel said, looking exhausted, and holding onto Bea’s hand, as though he feared she’d disappear. Bea and Conan were the only winged shifters who’d stayed around, probably because they were with people who couldn’t fly. “I mean, sooner or later someone will find her corpse and call the police.”
“I’ll call,” the owner said. “Later.” Then hesitated. “Can we not have publicity? Look, this is my only income, and I—”
“Sure,” Rafiel said. “We’ll make up some story. Some animal. Komodo dragon has served us in the past. Not murder. Horrible accident.”
“Before I go,” Tom said, “there is a corpse, in the hut, under the bridge. It’s an alligator. Can you wrap it in a sheet and bring it—” He paused confused. “Rafiel, how do we get an alligator cremated?”
“An— Old Joe? Damn.”
“Yeah. He stayed in alligator form, after death.”
“Oh. He shifted to human?”
Tom had nodded and looked at Maduh’s cub, still clinging to him. “Like him,” he said. “It happens when you’re conceived in animal form.”
“Damn,” Rafiel said again.
“Yeah, but I don’t want his corpse merely thrown away.”
“No,” Rafiel said. He looked pensive. “Look, it’s probably breaking all sorts of laws, but my cousin is an undertaker and has a crematorium. I’ll talk to him.”
“Oh, good,” Tom said. “I figured we’d take the ashes to Dinosaur Ridge and let them go.”
Rafiel nodded.
Rya came forward, with Conan and her father. Half of her father’s scalp seemed to be missing, and there was a bloodstain on the T-shirt Kyrie had given him, but he looked at the young shifter and told Tom, “Conan says you made the young man there safe to be around. Conan says he could hear the orders. I couldn’t because, well, I’m not that close to you, but if it’s true, and if you can get him to obey me…” He looked at the young shifter attentively. “Can he learn?”
“I think so,” Tom said. “If he were human it would be too late, but he isn’t. Or not just human. He’s a shifter. It’s just she never tried to teach him. He followed her around, usually in animal form. I think it will be like teaching someone who is impaired, but he has a long time and I think he’ll learn.”
“Would you…do you think you could set it on him to obey me? The condo is awfully large, and I’m retired, and Rya is getting married and moving out, and…what the hell else am I going to do with myself?”
“I thought you were writing a novel?” Tom asked.
The man they had for years called the Poet shrugged. “It can wait. The thing is…shifters live a long time, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, there’s time. And meanwhile, you know, I kind of ran out on raising Rya. My ex convinced me it was better if I left and…didn’t embarrass them. So…this is my chance to raise a kid. It think I’ll name him Mowgli.”
Tom opened his mouth to protest, then thought it was no worse than Conan.
*
Before they left the park, Tom used a very old technique, yet a technique now quite within his abilities, to assemble all the shadow beings and send them back through a thin spot in the veil between worlds, a spot which he then sealed very firmly. But even as he did so, he could tell that it wouldn’t stay sealed, that the Great Sky Dragon had been right. Now the star beings had found them, they were bound to try to get in again. And they had other ready and willing agents among humans. Yet Tom had the power to call all shifters. Which meant…
He swore softly.
Kyrie, who had watched him attentively while he made strange passes midair and did even odder things with his mind as the shadows from other worlds rushed backward through a greater shadow, now said, “How much are you still you?”
“I’m all me. I just know some very odd things. Let’s go home, Kyrie.”
*
Kyrie didn’t want Tom to drive home but he did. She was surprised when he stopped by the drugstore two blocks from their house. They’d found his wallet in the space beneath the dragon ride, but all the same, she was puzzled, when he said, “I’ll be right back,” and dove out of the van.
He came back minutes later, carrying a bag. He took a small velvet box out of the bag and said, “I’ll buy you a better one later, but right now, I want you to have this.” He opened the box to show her an engagement ring in gold-painted plastic, with a cubic zirconia on top.
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re marrying me.”
If she weren’t so tired, she’d have put more force into the outraged, “Thomas Edward Ormson, you—”
“No.” His voice was very tired and very firm. “We own a diner together. We live together. You’re my other half. I can’t imagine living without you. We’re going to get married.”
“You’re supposed to ask,” she said querulously.
“It’s not open to discussion. We’re going to make legal what is already true.”
“Damn it, if it’s true, why bother?”
“Because,” he said, and looked at her, very seriously. “Because I can’t stand that you are not legally my wife. I want everyone to know—triads, clients, suppliers—that we belong together. That I belong to you.”
She wanted to be mad at him, but she couldn’t. She sighed. “You could still ask.”
“Kyrie Grace Smith, will you marry me?”
“Can I say no?”
“No.”
“Okay, fine. Then yes.”
He laughed and kissed her and slid the cheap ring on her finger. Then he looked solemn and handed her the plastic bag. “When we get home, I want you to use that.”
She looked in the bag. It was a pregnancy test.
*
The amazing thing, Rafiel thought, was not that the diner patrons looked very sheepish at nine a.m. the next day. The amazing thing was that neither the local paper nor the local TV stations, nor even one of the local blogs made any mention of the cavalcade of animals that had trooped through downtown.
True, one of the local morning DJs said something about almost getting run down by a bear headed for a bar dumpster, but that happened, anyway, now and then, in the Front Range.
He brought Bea to breakfast at the diner, and noted that Jason looked hungover when he took their order.
“So,” Rafiel told Bea. “I’d like to continue seeing you…”
She looked hesitant. “It’s very far away,” she said. “Long distance relationships…”
“How many years do you have left?” he asked. “In college?”
“One,” she said. “I’m in my senior year.”
“We could get married,” he said. “And I could visit. I have some savings. I can fly up every other weekend.” Hell, judging from how happy his mother had been when he’d brought home a female guest last night, his parents would probably pay for it. He’d seen the glimmer of the hope of grandchildren in his mother’s eye. It was a powerful force.
“We’ve only known each other a couple of days. How can you know—”
“I know,” Rafiel said, and looked into her eyes, and found an echo there. “And so do you.”
“Yes,” she said. And sighed. “But it’s so strange.”
He shrugged. “When it’s right, it’s right. Don’t worry about strange. You can come up here a few times, too. We should look for a place. We can’t live in my parents’ basement.”
He became aware of a shadow over their table and, looking up, became aware of a middle-aged, vaguely A
sian but much too tall and green-eyed man glaring down at them. “Bea,” the man said. “Bea, what in hell do you think you’re doing? I had to trace you out here, and I—”
“It’s okay, Daddy” she said. “This is Rafiel. We’re going to get married.”
“Oh you are, are you?” The man reached down and grabbed the front of Rafiel’s shirt hauling him to his feet. “I suppose this is the price required to leave me alone. Well, you can think again. I’m not going to have my daughter marry some triad member dragon shifter.”
“I should hope not,” Rafiel said primly, looking down at the hand on his shirt as though he were confused about why it was there at all. He looked up and into his future father-in-law’s eyes. “I’m a lion shifter. And a police officer.”
*
It was the sound that made Tom look up—or at least the lack of sound. The entire diner had suddenly fallen silent, and Tom turned to look and saw a middle-aged Chinese man enter. He was bruised, and he looked exhausted, but his glare had clearly caused the silence in the diner. His glare and the sense that he was a larger-than-life personage, which accompanied him even now when, logically, Tom knew he wouldn’t be able to shift.
Tom stared, unmoving, while the Great Sky Dragon pulled himself up onto a stool. The man stayed quiet long enough that the noise in the diner started up again, a babble of voices just a trifle too loud.
He narrowed his eyes at Tom. Tom looked back. He deliberately did not sense the older dragon, did not use any of his new knowledge or his new powers. Internally he was trying to figure out how things would go. He came up with—and discarded—the idea of pretending he had lost all his powers and that the Pearl of Heaven had done nothing. But the Great Sky Dragon would have seen and sensed the call to the fight of every other shifter. And he was not a stupid man.
“How may I help you?” Tom said.
“You may tell me,” the Great Sky Dragon said, “how we stand. Am I still the father of all dragons or—”
For just a second, Tom caught a glimmer of fear in the older dragon’s eyes. Oh, he thought. Aloud, he said, “You are indeed the father of all dragons. I want no power of yours. I went a long way not to have it.”
Dark eyes looked unblinkingly into his. “Why?”
Tom shrugged. “It is not part of my life plan to tell thousands of people how to live. I’d rather live…and be myself.”
The Great Sky Dragon’s mouth twisted to a wry smile. “You might not get to,” he said. “The threat from the stars…that is, from other worlds—”
“Will be dealt with, if it becomes serious again. I understand the people from the stars think in a very long scale. It could be centuries.”
The Great Sky Dragon inclined his head. “So you intend to let power go.”
No, Tom thought. I intend to let it stay. Stay untouched and unclaimed, until I need to claim it. Till then it can abide and let me be Kyrie’s husband and a father. But he just inclined his head in a half affirmative.
“Then,” the Great Sky Dragon said, “we will not interfere with each other.”
Oh, good. A noninterference pact, Tom thought wondering how long it would last. “That suits me.”
“Very well then,” the Great Sky Dragon said. He slid off the stool, heading out the door at a faster pace than his age and recent death should permit.
Tom cleared his throat and saw that Anthony was close by, looking at him with concern. He smiled reassuringly at Anthony and glanced over the diner. “So,” Tom said, “I think that’s Bea’s father.” He nodded towards the man sitting in animated discussion with Rafiel and Bea at a corner table. “I went over to bus the table next to it, and I heard him say something about his moving his vet practice to town.”
“How good that would be,” Anthony said. “It’s not like this lot doesn’t need a vet.” His phone rang, and he fished in his pants. Then he pulled off his apron. “I’m taking three days off. My wife has started contractions.”
“Right,” Tom said, picking up the apron and putting it on. “Good luck.”
He took Anthony’s place at the grill and prepared several platters, then rang the little bell on the counter. Kyrie came to pick up the orders, and Tom smiled at her, “You’re not doing too much, right?”
She glared at him. “I’m pregnant, not sick.”
Tom opened his mouth to say morning sickness might come later, but before he could, a voice from near the counter said, “She’s pregnant?”
Tom looked up and into the stunned face of his father. “Oh. Hi, Dad. Yeah. Kyrie is pregnant, but we were going to get married anyway, so…”
His father sat on one of the bar stools. He was frowning slightly, as though trying to solve a puzzle. “Is that dragon kitties?” he said. “Or kitty dragons? Will it be a litter?”
Tom looked up and down the counter. All three people at it were shifters. He sighed. “No. They’ll be human. Children whose parents are different types of shifters aren’t shifters at all.”
“Oh.” Edward Ormson looked ridiculously disappointed. He sighed. “No wings?”
“No,” Tom said, repressively. “What will you have, Dad?”
His father looked at the menu. “Bowl of red,” he said, following his custom of ordering in old diner lingo.
“Tomato soup? This early in the morning?”
“It’s almost eleven,” Edward Ormson said. “And can I have a grilled cheese sandwich on the side?”
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Noah's Boy-eARC Page 33
