by Baen Books
“Shift,” I said, but didn’t ask what that meant. The question answered itself. She had the good sense to ignore me. She’d risen on her knees and took a quick peek out of the side window. She dropped down again into her protective stance. “If you turn right ahead, then left, we’ll be on Fairfax Avenue. There’s a diner there, the George. At this hour the parking lot will be pretty busy.”
I did as she told me. When the world is completely insane, acting as though it all were perfectly logical is your only defense.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I realized that there was a problem with a public place and a naked girl. I could ask her to change back into a dog, of course. But then she couldn’t talk. My eyes scanning the parking lot for any approaching stream of dubious characters, my mind jumped to the obvious conclusion. “Go in the back,” I said. “There’s a space to get back there between the seats.” She gave me an apprehensive look, and I explained. “There’s a duffle bag back there. Open it. You’ll find a bunch of clothes, and there should be a grey sweat suit. Put it on, and bring me the hiking boots.”
She didn’t argue. A good thing when a young woman didn’t argue, in a situation that was already crazy. I caught glimpses of grey cloth in the mirror, then she squeezed between the seats, wearing my suit and extending me the hiking boots. as if she thought I might bite. I put the van in park, put my shoes on and handed her the flip flops.
“You haven’t turned the ignition off,” she said.
“No, in case we need to take off,” I said, as I looked again one way and another in the parking lot. It was a large parking lot behind a diner, with a busy street on one side, an alley on the other, and facing a huge brick Victorian at the back. A car came into the parking lot and pulled up, but the people that came out of it, a man and a woman, middle aged, laughing together, didn’t seem the type to be involved with the roughs who’d chased after the hound. I noticed my companion tensed slightly and followed them with her eyes, but when I asked her, “Do you know them? Is there any reason we should avoid them?” she shook her head. She still followed them with her eyes, and her forehead was slightly wrinkled.
I said, “Well, come on. We’ll talk where it’s public.”
She got out of the van, looking both ways and darted as close to the diner as possible, in full view of the windows. I followed. The place looked Greek by way of mid-century America. It was clearly a small home that had been expanded with a glassed-in annex. Inside, as we came in to a tinkle from the bell on the door, into a smell of hot frying oil and souvlaki, it was homey and somehow familiar in the way stereotypical places have of being familiar. There were stools along the shiny chrome counter, a row of booths against each wall, tables in the center and tables in the annex. My companion made like a shot for the back of the diner, and a corner booth that looked too small for normal human beings. She scooted in under a gruesome picture of St. George slaying a dragon, which had been drawn mostly in red and by someone obsessed with bloodshed. This was so far from the normal pictures of Greece in a place like this, that I stared, remembering that outside over the door there had been something in neon, flipping pancakes, and I’d almost swear it was a dragon.
More confirmation was on the wall to my left where The George, with a logo of a dragon in a chef’s hat flipping pancakes, was awarded Best Place for a Midnight Breakfast and Best Place for Saturday Brunch by a newspaper that sounded like one of the free rags given away in college towns.
I looked at the painting again. Curiouser and curioser. Was this a place for dragon haters? Or merely people obsessed with dragons? In my head, I saw the dragon picture as real and these people right here as the dragon hunters, chasing down dragons relentlessly and—
“What will it be?” a voice asked, and I realized a woman stood beside me. She was very pretty. At least that was my first impression. Slim and somewhat darker than olive skinned, racially unplaceable and probably one of those mixes that exist only in America, with long hair down to the middle of her back dyed in complex layers that made an ever changing tapestry of earth tones as she moved.
I sat down and looked up at her. She was wearing a green apron with The George on the chest, and a red feather earring. She smiled at me and set down two menus, one in front of me and one in front of my guest. Was it my impression that she seemed to look twice at the young woman? Well. The young woman was dressed like… she was wearing my clothes. Which in fact she was. But she looked up and managed a smile at the waitress, while she put a hand on top of the menu. “Just coffee, please.”
I ordered a coffee too, but kept the menu. The smell of souvlaki and gyros made me realize how hungry I was, but the menu appeared to be written in a foreign language. I blinked in confusion at things called “Draw One in the Dark,” “Noah’s Boy,” “Bowl of Red,” and “Gentleman Takes a Chance” before realizing that there were the real names for the foods written underneath: black coffee, ham sandwich, tomato soup, hash.
Still it seemed very odd, and I was relieved to find a side of the menu labeled “specialties” that was mercifully free of this strange speak. It listed things like “The George’s Platter” which consisted of salad, gyro strips, pork and chicken souvlaki, olives and dolmades. I wondered how big it was, but at $15, how big could it be?
I ordered it when the waitress brought our coffee, and five minutes later had the answer. Big. As in, really, really big. It was a tray, piled high with salad and meat. She brought two plates with it, one for me and one for my guest, and then, with a look over her shoulder at my guest, she left us.
My guest daintily helped herself to an olive and a slice of tomato, and I told her, “Please. You have to help me eat this. I didn’t realize I was ordering enough for a family of four.”
She looked up and smiled, tensely, and I realized – don’t ask me how – that she was very hungry, an impression confirmed moments later when she started tucking into the food with a will.
“How—” I stopped short of asking her how old she was. I’d guess short of my own age. Instead I asked, “What should I call you?”
She paused towards munching on souvlaki – excellent, I’d tasted two pieces – and looked up, blinking. “Jane,” she said, much too hastily, and then as though she sought to make things clearer, “Smith.”
“I see,” I said. “And you… you… shift? Into an Afghan hound?”
She stopped shoveling meat into her mouth at a prodigious rate, and nodded, once. Then she set the fork down and said, “Look, look… I… If I tell you, you won’t give me away, will you? I mean, I—”
“I’d be very careful what you tell him,” a man said. As he spoke, he slid into the seat next to me, forcing me to slide over. I looked at him in some alarm. He didn’t look like one of the guys who’d chased the dog… Well, chased Jane, whatever her real name was. I was fairly sure I’d have noticed a guy with a reddish-blond mane wearing a Hawaiian shirt and khakis.
On the other hand, he was tall and powerfully built, and his casual comment wasn’t filling me with confidence. “Who—” I said.
He flipped ID at me. “Rafiel Trall. Officer of the Serious Crime Unit, Goldport.”
I turned sideways and blinked. “Oh.” I relaxed a little. “Is anything wrong?”
He made a face. “You work for a website about cryptids?”
“Is anything wrong with working for—” I asked, even as I registered, out of the corner of my eye, that Jane started to rise up out of the booth.
“Depends. Would you be intending to cause trouble?” the policeman asked, even as, deftly, he put a hand out to stop Jane leaving. “Rumors of shape shifters could really ruin this town’s tourism and—” He stopped because I’d snorted.
“Have you looked at the site?” I asked. “In eleven years of operation, we have yet to find a true cryptid. And if we did, I’m not sure our public would believe it.” I paused. “Hell, I’m not sure I believe it, and I saw it, with my own eyes.”
He turned half sideways to look at me, and I
realized he was looking at me very intently. More alarmingly, the waitress was back, and standing very near the table. Next to her was a man maybe two inches shorter than her, but for that not unimpressive. He had the chest of a fanatical weight lifter, not rendered less alarming by his wearing a George apron that must have been customized because under the dragon logo it said “Beware of Flames.” He wore his hair long, confined in a bandana, and he carried a spatula. Don’t ask me how, but that spatula looked lethal. Next to him, completely closing off that side of the table, so that neither I nor Jane could leave, was a small Chinese man, wearing jeans, a checkered shirt, a bolo tie, and a determined expression. They were all glaring at me, though they also seemed to prevent Jane from moving. She’d started panting, and the Chinese man touched her on the shoulder. “Don’t,” he said. “Shifting here would be a bad idea.” She looked scared, but stopped the panting.
“Would you care to tell me when you saw shifting? I presume you mean shape shifting?” the police officer said. “And how you met this young woman?”
I told him. As I said, when things get crazy enough you act like they’re perfectly sane. Sometimes that’s the only way to survive. So I told everything from the time I’d driven into town and seen a beautiful dog escaping a bunch of rough looking characters.
He listened to it all to the end, in silence, though I expected snorts of derision or confusion, at any moment. Instead I got “I see,” as I finished.
“So you’re probably not the one who did it,” the waitress said.
“Who did what?” I asked.
Instead of answering me, Officer Trall turned to Jane. “Your name really is Naomi Howland, right?”
For a moment, I thought Jane would bolt, and since her way was blocked, she would do it by jumping over myself and Officer Trall, and running out the door atop tables, booths and people’s heads. Instead, the wild look of panic in her face subsided, and she said, “Yes,” in the tiniest voice, followed by “I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t.”
I registered surprise from all the people around us. Then Trall said, “Why would you go to jail?”
“I stole… I was left at the pound… various places… I was to make up to… rich people, and then when they were gone call a number and… open the door to…”
“To your kidnappers?” Rafiel asked. “But my dear, that’s not your fault. You were what? Twelve, when you were taken? Coercion and Stockholm syndrome. Besides, how do you think the police would prove that? Could we show in court that you changed into a dog and back? Do you think anyone would believe it? And if they did, think what it would do to our lives. At best, we’d all end up as experiment subjects in some lab.”
Her eyes were very big. Tears shone in them. I said, “You’re upsetting her,” and was surprised at the defensiveness in my tone.
But she shook her head. “You see,” she said, her voice very small. “I had just started shifting. I was afraid… afraid my parents would… find out, and kill me or something. And then...”
“Yes?”
“These men… One of the boys at school talked to me. He shifted too, so I thought I was safe, and he said his dad could cure me and…” She shook her head. “They took me to this place, in the mountains. It used to be a miner’s shack. There were a dozen of them. They said they’d told my parents and my parents didn’t want me. They showed me a letter—” She paused. “And then they made me do the scam, you know, being the cute puppy and getting adopted and then…” She shook her head. “For ten years. Five houses a year, because it took a while for people to feel like they could trust a new dog loose in the house. And they said if I told, I’d be arrested too. Then they came back to Goldport, and I heard them talk. They were going to take me to the pound, but they said we’d have to be careful because this diner was a center of shifters, and some of you weren’t cool. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I thought they were afraid of you, and I should… I wanted to come here and ask for help.”
“You did the right thing. We’ve been looking for you for ten years,” Rafiel said. “The entire force has. When this man came in with you, Kyrie spotted that something was wrong.” He nodded to the waitress. “And of course we could tell you were a shape shifter, and he wasn’t. We could smell it. So we ran the van ID and we thought we’d figured it out, that he’d kidnapped you to create cryptid incidents or smell out other shifters, or something.”
“Now, really,” I said. “What kind of a cryptid incident is an Afghan Hound?”
Rafiel gave me a fleeting smile. “Not a great one,” he said. “Well, not for a website. But it happens. Believe it or not we have a were-basset hound too.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“Good. Willingness to believe it would make me fear for your sanity,” the policeman said. Then he turned to the young woman, “Look, Miss Howland, your parents have been looking for you for ten years. I imagine you’re anxious to reunite with them—”
Jane-Naomi looked anguished. “Yes, but… but… what will they think… I mean…”
“I think they’ll think they’re very happy to get you back. Your mom might want to tell you some things you don’t know about your grandfather. But meanwhile… that ring is still out there. I take it they’re all shifters?”
She nodded. “Coyotes mostly,” she said. “And a fox. They can’t get adopted, see? When they met me—”
“Yes, but now they’ll be looking for another young shifter to kidnap and if you escape…”
Her eyes were very big. “I just want to get away,” she said. “I just want to go home. I’ve had put up with them for ten years. I’ve worked their scam. I’ve been fed dog food and visited every humane society in Colorado, always in danger of being put down if they have too many dogs. And there was… other stuff… What more can I do?”
Now the waitress pushed in, to sitting beside Naomi, and held her hands. “Listen,” she said. “I understand where you’re coming from. And you don’t owe anything to anyone. If you want us to call your mom right now, we’ll take you home, and I’ll tell Rafiel to stuff it. For most people that’s how it would work, except for a court date to identify your kidnappers. But we’re not most people. We’re born with the ability to shift.” She must have seen my widening eyes because she gave me a small smile. “And we heal faster, are stronger, and live longer than normal humans. But the price we pay is that we exist outside normal human society. We can’t just go to the courts and say these men exploited a young, fearful female shifter. That’s not how life works for us. We live with the threat of our secret being exposed at any minute, and normal humans turning on us. There are a lot of us in Goldport. There are reasons for that. Maybe we’ll tell you some day.” She gave me another smile. “But we’re very few in the whole world. We’d be at best curiosities and at worse destroyed.” She squeezed Naomi’s hands. “The problem is that we come in all human varieties. And those that are bad are very, very bad. If those men continue to do what they do, if they find another victim, sooner or later they’re going to get caught. And then we’ll all be caught. Besides—” She paused. “Would you like what happened to you to happen to any other twelve year old?”
Naomi formed “No,” soundlessly, and shook her head. Then she cleared her throat. “No,” she said, in her little raspy voice. “What do I do?”
“We should take this to the back room,” the short man in the bandana and custom apron said. “He’s not one of us. He might talk.”
Naomi looked at me. It was a quick, considering look. Then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “No. He’s not of us, but he helped me when I needed it. He gave me the clothes off his back. Well, off his duffle-bag. While the ones who were shifters…” She shook her head again. “I feel safe with him here.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling humbled.
The policeman next to me chuckled. “One picture, cryptid man. One word in your infernal website and they’ll be wondering what made those big bite marks on your corpse.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “I’d never do anything to hurt Naomi.”
“Good,” Rafiel Trall said. “Because I think the ruse will work best if you’re in on it.”
The plan unrolled. It was simple. She was to call them and tell them that I wanted to take her prisoner, to make her reveal other cryptids to me. She was scared. She’d heard me call my associates, and on the way out of town tomorrow evening, we were going to stop for dinner at a place called Three Luck Dragon. She wanted them to rescue her.
Naomi played her part word-perfect. She called from the back room – a storage room filled with bins of flour and racks of paper napkins – because it was quieter than the diner, and we didn’t want them to trace us. Meanwhile, the police changed my license plate, just in case. I was starting to get a feeling this was a very unusual town. I definitely had the feeling that these people were all shifters. I wondered into what and if one of them was the dragon in the picture. It didn’t seem worth it to ask. After all, what could I do? I’d never thought, when setting out to be cryptid hunter, that cryptids would have law-and-order problems or be policemen. Or young kidnapped females who turned into Afghan hounds.
They found some clothes for Naomi. The people in the diner seemed to have an endless supply of clothes in various sizes. “It is a side effect of our condition,” Kyrie, the waitress, and apparently co-owner of the diner said. “That we end up naked a lot.” It was one of the many problems I’d never considered for shape shifters. After all, in novels, they are always sexy naked or something, or have these little minimal bondage-like outfits that end up staying on throughout.
At any rate, the nakedness in stories comes with a lot of sex. I was getting a feeling there might or might not be sex for real shifters, but it wasn’t the entire reason for their lives. And being naked in public would be inconvenient. For one, being naked in public makes people stare. For another… for another it’s really hard to get help or food or anything when mother-naked, without a really good story.
