Noah's Boy

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Tom had been forced out of his apartment at sixteen, at night, in the middle of New York City, barefoot and in a robe. His father, a noted criminal lawyer with ties to a triad of dragon shifters had thought, mistakenly, that Tom had caught the shifting from his clients, and had been afraid that if Tom stuck around he, too, might start shifting.

  In retrospect, Kyrie understood both of them—to an extent. She knew Edward Ormson had been terrified. Since reestablishing contact with his son two years ago, Tom’s father had tried to explain himself, and he’d bought them the diner and moved to Denver to be within driving distance and, in his self-absorbed, blinkered way, did his best possible to—belatedly—be a good father. Growing up, Tom had been a difficult child and a difficult teenager, had a string of minor offenses on his record, and had viewed his ability to shift as a superhero thing. Getting pushed out into the street had been the shattering of his comfortable upper-middle-class world and, probably, had saved him from becoming an insufferable adult.

  He’d learned to survive. If asked, he never gave details. He’d say that New York City had services aplenty for runaways, which he could pass as. Besides, at seventeen he’d claimed to be older and signed up for day labor.

  He would say—had said it often—that were it not for his shifting, he would have settled down long before now. He would have become what he was now: a young man of moderate means, with a fixed residence and a comfortable place in the world. But the shifting, and being afraid to shift, and being unable to fully control the shifting had ruled his life until he had met Kyrie at twenty-one and they’d made a pact against the world. Rafiel helped too, as did the other people who came to The George for food, and who changed into various kinds of animals.

  But at this moment Kyrie saw in Tom’s eyes the sort of blank worry, the odd detachment she’d seen in them when she’d first met him, when he’d been drug addicted—another effort at controlling his shifting—and just barely not-homeless.

  “I have a vague memory,” he said. “In those days I could never remember clearly what happened, when I changed. I mean, I had a fuzzy idea, flashes. I remember this guy running after me. I have no idea what he wanted. I couldn’t have looked like I had enough money to rob. He had a knife. I ran, until he cornered me, and then …” He blinked. Then shrugged. “I shifted. I have a memory of blood, of …” He shook his head. “Then there was this gentleman. When I shifted back to human, there was this old man I knew. He sold chestnuts down the block.” He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose in a gesture that seemed to Kyrie must have come from a much younger Tom. “Turned out he was an orangutan shifter but … but his own family didn’t know about it. He had”—wave of the hand—“ten children and a wife, and they were all very kind to me. Took me in for the next day. Gave me clothes. But he wouldn’t tell me what happened to the man confronting me. Always said I didn’t want to know. I’ve wondered if … if I ate the man with the knife.”

  “Well, you probably didn’t eat the knife,” Kyrie said, then regretted her words and sighed. “Look, why would you eat him? Kill him, maybe, if you were really upset. Though I’ll point out you don’t want to know could have meant anything. Like, he was a shifter too. Why torture yourself? You haven’t eaten anyone since; you probably didn’t eat that guy either.”

  Tom gave her a sideways glance. “I might have.”

  “Yeah, well. I was about to say you might also have flown around, but in fact you probably did.” She reached out and touched his cold wrist. “Let it go, Tom. Nothing you can do about it. It’s not much use telling you that a full-grown man with a knife chasing around a half-naked teen probably deserved to get eaten—but it’s still true.”

  He managed a wan smile. “I— It’s just my seeing that kid. It’s like he doesn’t know he shouldn’t eat people.”

  “And he might not, but Tom, you can’t fix everyone and everything. One day one of your … strays is going to hurt you badly.”

  He took a deep breath. “I know. I know.” A glance at the clock on the dashboard and he started the car. “And we’re now all out of time and should get to The George as soon as possible, or Anthony will be late again, and his wife will be upset.”

  Kyrie managed a smile in return, as soon as Tom edged out of the parking lot, kicking up gravel as he went. She cast a worried glance in the direction in which Rafiel had disappeared, pursuing the creature. “When it’s dark,” she said, “and dinner traffic calms down a little, you can go look for Rafiel. If he hasn’t called yet.”

  CHAPTER 6

  They heard the sirens as soon as they turned onto Fairfax Avenue, where The George sat. Definitely fire engine sirens. A scent of smoke came into the car’s air circulation.

  Tom clenched his jaw and told himself that Goldport was a large city. Okay, not massively large, but large enough, particularly during the school year, when students from CUG—Colorado University at Goldport—swelled the numbers of residents to triple its population. Large enough to support several restaurants and a few dozen skyscrapers’ worth of office buildings. Large enough to have its own newspaper and three hotels. Large enough to have a symphony orchestra.

  Large enough for the fire raging somewhere along Fairfax Avenue to be, in fact, anything but a raging inferno in his own diner. But Tom’s jaw clenched and his cheek muscle worked, and in his mind he knew very well where all that screaming of sirens came from. As he got closer, it was obvious they were going in the same direction as the sirens, and he clenched his teeth even harder—so hard it hurt.

  And when, within five blocks of the diner, he saw that the billowing clouds of smoke were coming from about where the diner was, he let out his long-held breath and along with it a wordless curse.

  To Kyrie’s startled glance, he said, still through clenched teeth, “It was the damn fryer. I bet you Anthony forgot the timer again. His wife probably called and he stayed on the phone and … Let’s hope at least it didn’t kill anyone.”

  As they got to the diner, he found the parking lot was so cluttered with fire engines, he had trouble pulling in behind the restaurant. Tom wedged the car on the side of the building, where no official parking place existed, and jumped out, ready to ask the nearest firefighter if anyone had died, when he realized that the smoke came from behind him, and that the only thing wrong with the back door to the diner was that two employees and a lot of customers were pressed against it, gawking out, and would see him as well.

  At his glare, Anthony, the day manager, looked like he’d suddenly remembered something important and ran in, and Tom, a bit calmer, turned around to look at the fire.

  The back parking lot of The George—it didn’t really have a front parking lot, except for a couple of spots on the street, reserved for takeout customers to dart in and out—was a square of asphalt bordered on the west by Pride Street, on the east by a narrow, dark alley that looked onto the backside of a bunch of warehouses and apartment houses. On the north side, there was a huge building. Tom gathered it had once been a rooming house of early twentieth-century vintage.

  Though Tom had only had occasion to use the bed-and-breakfast for a stretch of a few days, and the owner, of course, rarely came to The George, the two establishments maintained the sort of friendly interaction of good neighbors, sharing snow removal expenses and parking lot lighting and a few other expenses that benefitted both of them.

  The woman who owned the bed-and-breakfast, a motherly middle-aged woman, stood between two fire engines, wringing her hands. Not far away, a group of firemen were gathered near the tower, one man talking on a cell phone.

  Tom frowned at the towering structure. There was fire halfway up it, but the top seemed to be untouched, and on a dormer window at the very top, there was a shadow that looked like someone looking out. “Is there someone up there?” he asked Louise Carlson, the owner of the bed-and-breakfast.

  Louise turned around and said, “Oh, it’s you, Tom. Yes, a nice Asian girl. Ms. Ryu. Checked in this morning. I— Oh, damn it, I’m
sure Elmer set this fire. He keeps saying people confuse us with his hotel, which is nonsense, but … damn it.” She ran her hand back through her greying hair. “This is going to take forever to rebuild.”

  Tom ran his eyes over the body of the building, where the fire was almost completely out, extinguished by high pressure water. The tower was proving more difficult. He wondered where the fire had started, but the alley was too narrow to admit the fire trucks parking there, and the water jet was hitting only the brick wall. Considering this, he said, “You have insurance.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Of course. Whether it covers acts of dragons—”

  “Dragons?”

  “Nonsense, isn’t it? But whoever called in this fire said they saw two dragons flying away north and flaming the tower.” Louise gave a nervous giggle. “At least they were right about the fire, even if they were completely drunk.” She twisted her hands together. “The problem is the time it will take to rebuild will wipe me out financially anyway.”

  But Tom was thinking of that girl in the tower. “Why don’t the firefighters climb up and get her out?” he asked.

  “The ladder won’t reach, and she won’t jump. Not that I blame her.”

  Tom didn’t either. The tower was six stories high, sticking up above the neighborhood. The rooms there were more expensive because of the view.

  A group of firefighters came back, stained with soot and looking like they were ready to drop. “We can’t go around,” they said. “Some of the floor on the way to the tower is unstable, and it looks like the tower stairs are gone anyway.”

  Tom started edging away. The thing was that he could save the woman. He didn’t want to do what he would have to to get her, but on the other hand he couldn’t stand the thought of her burning up in there. He edged behind the group of firefighters gathered around the cell phone, and he overheard, “You don’t understand, if we send to Denver for a tall enough ladder, she’ll be dead long before we—”

  Tom slipped into the alley. After looking around to make sure there were no windows overlooking his spot, and seeing that no one was paying any attention here, he stripped with the speed born of habit, folded his clothes and hid them behind a dumpster.

  Then he willed the shift upon him, coughing and writhing and spasming, as daggers of pain pushed into his bone and muscles as they changed shape.

  His face and his arms elongated. From his arms a pair of wings grew as his body became long, serpentine and familiar to those who might recognize the carved prows of Viking ships.

  The dragon took to the sky, retaining enough of the human mind to fly behind the bed-and-breakfast tower, to a spot where no one was likely to see him land.

  CHAPTER 7

  Asphalt under paw pad changed to dirt. A road lined by houses turned to no road, just rock and scrub and dirt. The lion had no idea where he was running or, frankly, why. In his mind it was all dirt and stone, scrub oak and barren expanses, scent and hunt. Around him night fell.

  The thing ahead of him looked like a dog but smelled feline. It also smelled young, undernourished and scared. The lion snarled softly, confident of his victory once he caught the creature. It wasn’t even good sport.

  Rafiel, somewhere within the lion’s mind, was relieved when they left behind populated areas and the road—along with the possibility of a passing car seeing them and reporting them to the police or animal control. Instead, they ran into the border of a national forest, and then out of the trees, onto a slope that must have been torched in the last wildfire and which was now barren, save for a sparse growth of scrub oak. His paws hurt, as did his legs. He’d been at the chase a long time.

  He closed the distance with the young creature fleeing ahead of him. The creature turned around and let out a high cry of distress, the complaint of a hopeless victim. The lion reared triumphant, as the … shifter? animal? … cowered and skittered sideways and whined, a frightfully high, odd whine.

  And then it happened. It was all too fast for the lion brain to follow, even as the lion’s eyes saw it. Out of the shadows, something came, yellow-tawny. It was huge, twice the size of the lion. Its paws hit the ground with so much force that clods of baked-dry earth flew in all directions. It snarled, its lips pulled back from long glimmering fangs.

  Rafiel-the-lion turned away from the cub to face this new menace. With raised hackles, he growled into the snarling face and the tawny yellow eyes.

  Then Rafiel smelled it. The smell rolled over him, like a wave, submerging the lion’s brain and confusing Rafiel.

  She stood growling in front of Rafiel.

  She. No doubt about that. He could smell her, a sweet-spicy tang that indicated a female in heat.

  His brain stopped. Parts of the lion body long ignored came to life and urgency. Rafiel stood smelling her, while at the back of his mind a primeval jungle, a primeval need beckoned.

  She snarled and leapt. Her paw caught him on the side of the face, putting out his eye, taking most of his cheek, sending him flying, then sprawling in an unnatural position. He felt as though his spine had snapped and agony dulled his thoughts while the creature stood over him and growled.

  One snap from those jaws and he’d be dead, his head separated from his body. Such a death blow would mean no coming back.

  *

  Kyrie saw Tom edging around to the alley and knew what he was going to do.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. It smelled of fries and gyros, which had come to mean “home” to her since she and Tom had owned the diner. The smell calmed her a little. She said a general prayer that Tom wouldn’t get caught by a cell phone camera or worse. You’d think he would know better than to shift where there were bound to be people with cameras. But you might as well try to keep Tom from rescuing people as keep him from breathing. She decided at least to minimize the damage to the diner.

  She would make sure fewer people were watching who could talk about mysterious flying dragons. And she’d make sure Anthony didn’t get so carried away he forgot the fryer.

  *

  Bea woke up in a smoke-filled room. For a moment, blinking upward at the black-blue cloud between her and ceiling, she wondered if she were flying. Then she smelled burning. Not just burning wood, as in a fireplace, but the particularly unclean smell of a burning house, and then—

  She ran to the window, which was closed, and looked down at firemen far, far below, holding up one of their jumping rigs. Jumping from here to there would be kind of like jumping from the top of a giant diving board into a washtub like in all those cartoons she’d watched when she was a kid.

  She opened the window, took a lungful of air and yelled down, “No.” Because she couldn’t jump. She just couldn’t. They yelled back, but she couldn’t hear them.

  The worst part of all this was that her mind felt foggy and slow and she couldn’t figure out why she was here, in what appeared to be the prototypical tower for a fairy princess—a tower that was on fire below her. No. Not the prototypical tower. A look around disclosed that she was in a well-appointed room with a canopy bed, a nice armchair, and what looked like an antique desk. There was a bathroom opening off her right. The usual little cards on how to call the concierge gave away this was a hotel room. But where?

  Instructions for what to do in a fire came back from her elementary school days. She ran to the door to the room, and felt it. Burning hot. Well, she wasn’t going to open that door. Instead, she went into the bathroom, soaked one of the towels, and stuffed it under the door.

  This cut down the smoke, and her head cleared a little.

  It still felt too painfully slow, as though she had a cold or were recovering from illness.

  As she pushed the towel under the door with the tip of her toe, she remembered what she’d seen out the back window, across the parking lot. There was a diner there. There was something to do with a diner …

  All of a sudden the voice of the Great Sky Dragon came back to her, telling her that she must meet and marry Tom O
rmson, the co-owner of a diner.

  She’d told him in no uncertain terms that she had no intention of marrying a total stranger—and more, a stranger who was in love with someone else—just because some many-times ancestor of hers decreed it. And she’d withstood his barrage of protest, telling him she wanted nothing to do with this, and she couldn’t understand why it would be more likely that the dragon shifters would obey Tom because he was married to her since she was also not Chinese.

  He’d yelled at her. He’d lapsed into Chinese, or perhaps some even more ancient Asian language. And then she’d turned to leave.

  Her head felt sore, and fingers run gingerly across her scalp disclosed a bump over her left ear.

  Oh, no, he didn’t she thought. But it was clear that the Great Sky Dragon had in fact done something to her. Her head hurt. She was probably concussed. And the idiots had put her here and set the house on fire. Why? Was it dearest many-times great-grand’s attempt at punishing her for not obeying? How nice of him.

  Though to do him justice, perhaps he hadn’t set the house on fire. She went to the window again and saw that few people were watching the window. So, all she needed to do was shift, and then she could fly away from this, and—

  And absolutely nothing. She tried to induce the shifting. Normally the problem was trying not to shift when she was panicked. Now, nothing would happen. Could the Great Sky Dragon take her shifting away? Surely not. He wasn’t magical. She didn’t know what the shifting was, but it wasn’t magic. Not the wave-a-wand type of magic at least.

  She squeezed her hands so tight that she thought she was going to put holes into her palms, but nothing happened.

  Why wasn’t the shift working?

  Had the Great Sky Dragon done something that meant she couldn’t shift? But why? And why put her in this room, behind the diner? What in heaven’s name could he mean by this? And by setting the building on fire? Bea realized she was absolutely sure that he’d done just that, though she couldn’t say why. If only her head didn’t hurt so badly.