“Anthony said …” Conan swallowed audibly. “Anthony said that people probably made it go viral because they thought it was funny, because it was so bad.”
“Anthony said that?” Tom asked, shocked, because Anthony was many things but cruel wasn’t one of them.
“Uh … not … he didn’t exactly say that, but he said that people shared all sorts of crap they found funny, and I remembered all those videos people share, people from Hong Kong singing ‘I’m sexy’ and stuff … and I thought …”
“And you thought crazy stuff. Did anyone make fun of it on your page?”
“No. But they wouldn’t, right? Can … can you tell them, please …” Conan looked up at Tom, his eyes immense and fearful. “That you, you know, that you found that … that it’s against regs, or something?”
Tom pulled himself up on the plastic flour barrel next to Conan’s. “I can do that, Conan, if you want me to, but you need to think this through very carefully.”
The blank look in Conan’s face indicated that Conan’s brain was rather like a skittering rabbit, incapable of focusing on anything. Tom tried anyway. “Look, it’s always scary to take a big step to realize our dreams. Do you think I wasn’t scared when my dad said he’d get Kyrie and me this diner? Do you think I wasn’t afraid of screwing it up?”
“That’s different. People weren’t making fun of a video of you running a diner.”
“You don’t know if they are,” Tom said. And paused, not because of hesitating about what to say to Conan, but because of a weird feeling he couldn’t quite pinpoint. It was, he thought, as though something cold and strange had touched his mind for just a minute. “You don’t know,” he started again, “that they’re even making fun of your video. They could very well be enjoying it, and that’s why they told all their friends. Look, Conan, if they were making fun of you, someone would have told you. Rya or someone.”
“I told Rya to go away,” Conan said, as though confessing a crime. “She’s going to be so mad at me.”
“Unlikely. You know, she knows you’re nervous.” The feeling was there, again, stronger this time. Something was touching Tom’s mind, something cold, ice cold. Something alien. He had once had the Great Sky Dragon in his mind, and it hadn’t felt that alien or that cold.
“Look,” he said, ignoring the weird sensation and concentrating on the problem at hand. “You have stage fright. It’s completely natural. You should go out there and face your fears. If you shrink from it now, you’ll never—” There it was again, and now with a stab of near-physical pain. “You’ll never be able to try again. You must go out there now, Conan. You must.”
“Are you okay?” Conan asked, concerned.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I just shifted once too many times tonight and—” and at that moment, the Great Sky Dragon was in Tom’s head, or at least his voice was, loud, unavoidable, I DIDN’T INTEND IT THIS WAY, it said, BUT YOU MUST CARRY MY BURDEN NOW. PROTECT MY PEOPLE.
There was a scream, and Tom wasn’t sure if it came from the Great Sky Dragon or from himself, but it was loud, high-pitched, blotting out all thought, and then … and then unbearable pressure and light, from within.
Damn, I’m going to shift, Tom thought, and his last conscious act was to try to get Conan out of there, before he found himself locked in with a larger dragon out of control. “Go out there, Conan. Go out there and sing. That’s an order.”
His voice seemed to reverberate unnaturally off the walls. He registered that Conan’s terrified face managed to look even more terrified, and then Conan bowed and ran from the room, closing the door behind him.
Tom let himself fall to his knees, under the weight of pain and pressure he could not understand.
And then blackness blotted it all out.
CHAPTER 12
Bea liked the cabin. She’d been expecting something bare, perhaps with bathroom facilities outside. She’d never seen much point in that sort of thing. As far as she was concerned, humans had spent thousands of years getting away from the icky and stinky parts of nature, and it would be an insult to their efforts for her to go back and live like a savage. She liked indoor bathrooms and heated showers.
But she hadn’t been counting on getting them this time, and she was half ready to rough it. After all, it might be a matter of life and death, both for herself and for Rafiel.
And she still couldn’t understand why she felt so comfortable driving through the night next to this heavily mangled man. He’d given her some instructions and then let her drive while he slept. He hadn’t been joking about the healing capacities of shifters.
She knew that she, herself, had always healed fast from the scrapes and hurts of childhood, but she’d never been as injured as Rafiel was. And she could see him healing before her eyes as he slept. She saw the scrapes shrink, grow pink, disappear.
Twice, she had to wake him to ask the way at unmarked intersections. City gave way to countryside with startling suddenness, and they were soon driving a little road up a mountainside, with the only lights distant glimmers.
And she was sure they were going to be in a bare log cabin, with only wood for heat, and only water they could pull up from some well.
But when they approached the end of the directions, and Rafiel woke up, he said, “Down this driveway, there. Yeah. I know it looks like a goat track. Don’t worry. It’s large enough for the car. I often come here when I have to get away because … when I have to get away.”
The driveway wound and wound, and was more than a mile long, but at the end of it, they came to a little clearing in the midst of the tall trees. In the clearing, stood … It was, in fact a log cabin, and not very big. When they approached, the light over the door went on, and it was undeniably electric and brilliant.
“It’s on a sensor,” Rafiel explained. He opened the door and got out, and, as Bea turned off the engine, walked around to open her door. “I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to get your clothes.”
“No. They were in my pickup, and that was in the parking lot of the Three Luck Dragon—”
He held the door open for her, and extended a hand to help her get out. “My mom probably has some stuff in there. Don’t look so outraged. She mostly wears dresses and stuff when she’s out here, so you can probably borrow something. And if not, I have T-shirts. Though I’m afraid my jeans won’t fit you.”
“Your T-shirts would probably be dresses,” she said. Although she was by no means small, certainly not by the standards of most Asian women, as she got out, she felt tiny beside Rafiel, who had to be well over six feet.
He grinned. “Well, there. Problem solved.”
He led her to the door, which he opened. Surprise. The walls were made of logs, just like any log cabin’s, but the floor was modern wood, sealed, probably presealed in the factory. The little hallway they entered had a coat rack and a table.
She followed Rafiel into a central room with a massive fireplace. But it was obvious even to her inexperienced eyes that the fireplace was wired for gas. The walls were covered in bookcases filled with books. Not the pretty-pretty leather-bound books that people bought to look important, but paperback books with colorful covers. This was a place inhabited by serious readers. And they did their reading in spacious brown leather sofas.
Rafiel looked back over his shoulder with a deprecating smile. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that my family has a thing for mysteries. That’s why my mom named me what she did.”
“Raphael?” Bea asked, desperately trying to understand the significance.
“No. Rafiel. After Agatha Christie’s character in Sleeping Murder and—”
“Nemesis,” she completed, smiling.
“I see you read mysteries too.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” she asked. “My dad is a big Christie fan. He read me to sleep with her work.”
“So did my parents. So much so, I almost forgive them for giving me a name that forced me to correct my teachers all through school. Okay, let me show you around.�
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The cabin consisted of two bedrooms in addition to the living room and a sleeping loft which, Rafiel said, “Is where I normally sleep, but you can have it if you want to. It has a skylight and you can look up and see the stars.” When Bea had expressed her admiration for the room, with its broad, quilt-covered bed and its view of the evening sky, Rafiel had insisted she take it. “No,” he said. “Really. We changed the sheets the last time we were here. Mom drilled it into my head it’s always the last thing we do before we leave.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Let me show you something.”
He pressed a button on the wall near the skylight, and it slid open. “Normally I keep it closed,” he said. “But sometimes in the summer, when it’s really warm, it’s worth it to sleep, you know, with the smell of the trees all around. It’s like being in nature, but still having a real bed with clean sheets.”
The other creature comforts of the cabin included not one but two fully equipped, modern bathrooms, and a hot tub out on the balcony that jutted off the loft. “I don’t know if Mom left a bathing suit,” Rafiel said, “but if not, you can try it out next time.”
The weird thing was not that he was talking as though absolutely sure that there would be another time of her coming out here with him, but that she felt as though he was perfectly justified. There would be another time, or possibly many times. They would come out here, together, and spend time even when they weren’t running from anything.
The rational Bea scolded her. There was no way she could know that. Perhaps he always brought girls out here. Perhaps he didn’t like her. And even if he liked her, with the trouble they were in, it would be a miracle if they survived, much less if they got to play house together.
She was being stupid and reverting to middle school. There would be time enough for a game of “he loves me, he loves me not” if they survived this. And if he loved her not, she really hadn’t lost anything.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Rafiel said. “The kitchen is that way.” As though realizing what he’d said, he added, “In case you’re hungry. Why don’t you see if there’s anything you want to eat, and I cook when I come out?”
She grinned. “Good,” she said. “Because I’ve been known to burn water. I’ll go look.”
*
Kyrie heard Tom shout, but didn’t have time to give it much thought, because Conan came running out of the storage room, banging the door behind him. She guessed, as she turned to take orders for coffee and sandwiches from the people seated on folding chairs, that Tom had finally lost patience with Conan and shouted at him.
Well, good. It seemed to have worked.
No one laughed, as Conan scurried to the open space in front of the tables, close to the corner booth with the picture of St. George slaying the dragon over it. Jason put a stool up there, at the last minute, and of course they didn’t have microphones, and so Kyrie hoped that Conan could make himself heard over the low murmur of noise around the diner.
The murmur changed to approval as Conan climbed onto the stool, which was one from the bar, and a little too tall, so his feet didn’t quite touch the floor. He looked like a kid wearing western wear for some play, but no one laughed, which must be a good thing.
She thought he was hiding his face behind his hat, but that was okay, provided he didn’t sing too badly. On the other hand, perhaps his voice, rather soft in normal everyday interaction, wouldn’t carry enough to be heard. Which could be a plus. People would applaud politely, then leave.
This suspicion of what was about to happen was confirmed when Conan said, “My name is Conan Lung, and I’m going to sing my cover of ‘Home.’”
He could barely be heard and only the front row of tables clapped.
Well, okay, Kyrie thought. It won’t be great, but it won’t be a disaster. She sought out Tom in the crowd, and when she failed to find him, assumed he was in the addition, perhaps, taking orders. As busy as they were, it would be all hands on deck.
And then Conan started playing. Kyrie was not an expert, but it clearly was good guitar playing, so that was something.
Then he sang. It was a shock. The voice that came out of the little Asian man in funny clothes was at least three times as large as his speaking voice, large enough to fill the entire diner. He was a tenor, but his range was … magnificent. Kyrie stepped backwards, as the rich voice enveloped her, singing of going home, of the longing for home. The song was of course familiar, but the voice—that voice. It wrapped around the diner, it echoed with emotion, it reached in and touched something in the mind and the heart.
The diner had gone absolutely quiet, so quiet it was as though people had stopped breathing. The only sound other than the singing was the hiss of frying oil behind the counter, and it took all of Kyrie’s presence of mind to realize that if the song had affected Anthony as it had affected her, then he’d be in danger of burning something. It took willpower too, to move behind the counter and remove the fries from the oil and into the draining vat, then put another batch in.
As though her movement had awakened him, Anthony lurched to life, and started taking care of things, asking her in a whisper, “Where is Tom?”
“I don’t know. He must be waiting tables.”
“I don’t think so. He hasn’t brought me any orders.”
“Well, he must—”
The song finished and talking became impossible over the storm of applause. In the center of it, Conan tilted his hat back and looked in shocked surprise at the crowd. Slowly, a dark red color suffused his cheeks. “Uh … You … You think …” He cleared his throat. He took his guitar up properly again and played a few chords. The crowd quieted immediately.
Conan smiled at them. “The next song is one I wrote, and it’s dedicated to a really special woman, Rya. Rya, if you’re out there, I was a jerk, and I wrote this for you.”
For a moment, Kyrie was afraid. Just because the man had a voice like golden syrup pouring on the perfect stack of pancakes, it didn’t mean he could write songs.
But the chords he played were slow and sad, and coherent, and when he started singing … Well, her first impulse was to dart up front, hit him on the head, make him stop singing.
Not that it was a bad song. On the contrary. It was a beautiful poem about wishing one could fly away from all one’s cares and mistakes. It was called “If I Could Fly to You.”
The problem was exactly that. Kyrie thought anyone would know this was about the experience of being a dragon shifter. And it took all her not inconsiderable self-control to hold back and allow herself to realize that while the lyrics were plain to her, they wouldn’t be to anyone else. She needed to shut up and let the man play.
She’d been accustomed to thinking of Conan as a boy, perhaps because of how he behaved with Tom, but it was obvious he was a man. His voice made him so, and she could see the shyness and the deference drop away from him as he sang, the people in the crowd clearly drinking in his voice and his words.
As he started a third song, after a storm of applause, Anthony said in a whisper in the sudden silence, “I’m fairly sure Tom is still in the storage room, Kyrie. And that’s just not normal. He knows we’d need him out here and besides, you know … he’s not … he’s not that trusting, and he wouldn’t trust me with this load of frying if he were all right. He would be out here to check on me by now.”
Kyrie wished she could say otherwise. But Anthony had a point.
Except … except maybe Tom had gone into the storage room to avoid making Conan nervous? No. That made no sense. Tom had gone into the storage room because Conan was nervous.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’ll go.” She stepped out to the pass-through, and down the hallway to the door to the storage room.
From within she could hear someone groaning, but it didn’t at all sound like Tom. She called out “Tom?” And then she pushed the door open.
*
He had too many legs. That was the first thing Tom thought, followed shortly by
the unavoidable fact that he had too many arms. In fact, he also had too many eyes. The eyes were everywhere, looking at everything from full daylight to darkest night. The arms and legs were here and there, picking things, moving things, walking, running.
Some of his bodies appeared to be fighting. Others were sleeping. But he was all of them. He was everywhere.
No. Nonsense. I am Tom Ormson. I am in Goldport, Colorado, in the storage room of a diner called The George.
This was absolutely and undeniably true. But it wasn’t the whole truth. He was also Johnny Li, a teenager in New Jersey, involved in a street fight, and trying very hard not to shift into a dragon. He had only shifted twice before, and he didn’t have a lot of self-control. He didn’t know how to avoid it.
Tom sent a firming thought Johnny’s way, with the admonition not to shift, but the moment of clarity, of identifying that as one of his bodies, had already passed. In its place was the feeling of being everywhere and everyone at once.
He knelt on the floor of the storage room, and pressed his fists to his forehead, trying to calm a myriad of sensory impressions that he knew were not coming from his body, but which were, nonetheless, as real and immediate as though they were.
Eternity seemed to pass, and all he could manage was maintaining the certainty that his principal part, his principal and most important body, was Tom, here, in the storage room, kneeling on the floor.
But with this self-possession came a call—a need in many voices. All those people, all those bodies he was and yet wasn’t, were calling him. He must be the dragon. He must be seen. He must let the most important of them come and pay him homage. He must let the nearer ones assemble and recognize that the tribe of dragons had a new head, that the slain Great Sky Dragon lived again.
He understood enough of the call, of the need, of the mess in his head, to know what had happened, and what he was in for. He staggered to his feet, and stood, shaking, “I don’t want it,” he said to the clear air around him. “Someone else should take it. I’m not even Asian, let alone Chinese. And I’m not the head of any triad.”
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