And yet, Old Joe managed it and seemed to still enjoy life. He looked up, his brown eyes seeming to laugh at Tom. “So, dragon boy?” he said. “Worried?”
“Yes,” Tom said. He had found long ago that Old Joe was not nearly as simple as he seemed, and he was certainly not simpleminded. After several thousand years of watching people dissemble and change, the old shifter knew very well when he was being lied to. Stood to reason, you would. Practice made perfect and one thing that Old Joe had lots of practice with was humans.
Old Joe laughed, a rattling sound in his throat, and opened his mouth, displaying sparse teeth. He clucked his tongue behind those teeth. “I thought you’d be. You’re not stupid, you. And dragon egg would worry anyone that isn’t stupid.” He sobered up, but his eyes narrowed, as though studying Tom. “You know, stupid people would think dragon egg is power.”
“Yes,” Tom said. Then he tried to put into words what he felt about what he was being offered. “It is knowledge. Perhaps more knowledge than anyone has in the world today? And they say knowledge is power. But it comes with … obligations. It might, because of the way dragons are, allow you to control several thousands of people all over the world. But that kind of power over people …” He tried to make sense of it enough to put into words. “That kind of power over people means that they have power over you, too. Like … You know Rafiel, my policeman friend?”
Old Joe nodded. “Cat boy,” he said, and shoved three strips of bacon into his mouth.
“Yes, well. He’s a police officer, which means he has a certain amount of power. He can charge people, and he can arrest them, and if nothing else, he can make people’s lives very uncomfortable. But at the same time, that means he has a duty. Particularly since he is the only shifter member of the police force, it means he must be involved in every shifter-related crime, and keep people from finding out what and who we are. It comes with a duty. He can’t just shrug off … well, like the young feral shifter killing people out at the amusement park.”
The moment the words were out of his lips, he realized he was giving Old Joe information the alligator shifter hadn’t had before. The man sat up, and his eyes opened wide. “Feral shifter? Like Joe? Free of clans? Free of associations?”
“No,” Tom said. He felt his voice was dryer than he meant it to be. “Feral as in doesn’t speak. Not human. He’s a skinny kid. Teenager. And he’s feral.”
“Skinny kid? Boy? Yea tall?” Joe got up and indicated a height above himself.
“Uh. Yeah. About that.”
Joe fell back on the seat so bonelessly that the sound of his sitting down made people turn to look at him. His mouth dropped open. He closed it with an effort. “Her son,” he said. “Where her son is, she is.”
“She?”
“She … Maduh. When I knew her, Maduh. She. You know …” Looking up he was faced with the fact that Tom didn’t, in fact, know. “You know, Dante, the … the sabertooth. She’s his mate, his …” He lifted a hand with two fingers together. “She’s his half, his other.”
“His wife?” Tom asked. He seemed to remember that the sabertooth who’d come to town determined to kill them all, the sabertooth that had tried to seduce Kyrie, had seemed remarkably single.
Old Joe bit at his lower lip. “Well … In a way, maybe, but not … No. It’s different. It was … a long, long time ago. They’re one. They stayed together …” He shook his head as if trying to go beyond where words could go. “I don’t know how to explain, but she and him, could sense each other and …”
“You mean, she’s come to avenge him?” This seemed to lose Old Joe, but Tom was thinking of the female who had attacked Rafiel. “And that the young one is her son?”
Old Joe nodded. He made a gesture with his fingers, waggling them as if to indicate something. “He—boy—was born in other form. Beast form. He—”
“You mean, he’s a human shifter? He shifts into human? Like others shift into animals?”
Old Joe gave a grunt of assent, and Tom tried to think. What did that mean exactly? What was the difference? Except perhaps that he hadn’t spent much time in human form. He looked over his shoulder, but the entire area around the corner booth was empty. “This is what Kyrie and I are afraid of and why we decided we shall never have children.”
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Old Joe erupted into laughter. He laughed so hard that Tom thought he’d gone mad. There was something a little repulsive in that unbridled guffawing, and all Tom could do was stare. Trying to talk to Old Joe would fall on deaf ears just then. Perhaps the old man had gone mad? He had reason enough. Besides, it could be argued he was always, at best, on the short end of sanity.
But the laugh died down, and he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hands, and then with the paper napkin. Looking at Tom caused him to jiggle with amusement still. “Dragon boy,” he said, in the indulgent tone someone might talk to a small child, “you can’t have shifter babies with cat girl. Not happen. Different seed, that. Not pass on. That is why daddy dragon’s people are so upset. No kitty dragons. Not exist.”
Tom opened his mouth, closed it. “You’re saying any children Kyrie and I have will either be cats or dragons? Or that they won’t be shifters?”
Old Joe shook his head. “No shifters. Human only. Seed in blood. Might come out in time, if they find nice dragon or cat girl or boy, but they won’t change. Human only.”
“Oh,” Tom said, and filed it away to talk to Dr. Roberts about. Seemed … possible, if not plausible. It was entirely possible that the genetics that created either cat or dragon shifters could not possibly create a mix. “But what about those who are born shifted?” he asked. “Beast side.”
“Not yours,” Old Joe said. “Not with cat girl.”
“Okay, not with Kyrie. But, if Kyrie were to run off with Rafiel—” He saw Old Joe’s eyes acquire a mutinous look and said, “I know, not possible, but suppose it was. Could they have a child who was a lion and only changed to human now and then?”
Old Joe inclined his head. “Only if they made child while beast. Can’t shift while … Female can’t shift while carrying.”
This too made a grim biological kind of sense. “So you’re saying Dante and … Maduh had … that they made the child while shifted, and so the poor bast— The kid can only shift to human when a teen …”
“Yeah. I think. Used to happen. Sometimes. Most don’t live … long. But Maduh defends her cub.”
Tom really didn’t like the sound of this, but he tried to wrench his thoughts back to what he’d meant to ask Old Joe. He knew the reason his mind kept straying to things like Kyrie and I could have children, was that he was too tired to think straight. Right now he needed to know how to deal with the triads, which would allow him to then think of these other matters, to plan his life. “What I meant to ask you,” Tom said, “has nothing to do with this. What I wanted to ask was about the dragon egg and the Pearl—”
Old Joe nodded, as though he’d been expecting this all along. “The artifact,” he said. “You’re supposed to use the artifact to unlock the dragon egg.” He looked up at Tom, and said, as though it should clear everything, “Like key. The artifact allows you to control it.”
“But how?” Tom said.
Old Joe shrugged. “How do you unlock dragon egg? Don’t know.”
“But …” Tom frowned. “If they have Great Sky Dragon, if they can make him open the gates, why would they need the Pearl too …”
Old Joe looked at Tom a long time, as though studying him. He made a face, with his mouth slightly open, his tongue lolling out, which made Tom think very much of the alligator, with its mouth half open, waiting for prey. “I don’t know,” he said. “Can’t tell you. Not dragon. But—”
“But?” Tom said.
“But I think the dragons don’t know how to use the artifact anymore. I think it got passed one time, and the knowledge of how to use it didn’t. Like … something like now, but with the final death. A son son of a dragon’s son
, one not raised as dragon, inherited, and he didn’t know how to use the Pearl, and he thought it was just mystical, uh stuff, like crown, and he never unlocked dragon egg, because he couldn’t so he never found better. He only had little bit, like what you have. Locked dragon egg lets you see bits, and living he learned the rest, but he could never open it. I don’t think …” He clacked his teeth together in the way the gator did. “I think last two dragon daddies didn’t know how to, maybe more. The dragon clan has not been as powerful as it was.”
“I see,” Tom said. He narrowed his eyes again. “So, you’re saying that the Great Sky Dragon …” And in response to Old Joe’s look, he specified, “The other Great Sky Dragon never learned how to open interworld gates, never learned how to do any of the things that the Pearl should allow him to do, and because of that, someone had to take both him and the Pearl? But that would mean that whoever took him—”
“Knows how to unlock dragon egg?” Old Joe said. “I think so. I think that whoever took daddy dragon has been talking to star people. People from other worlds. I think they know everything they need to do.” He looked at Tom, his eyes suddenly tragic. “And unless you find out where daddy dragon is, and stop it, or unless daddy dragon returns stronger than people do from death, they’re going to open the world gates and invite the people of the stars over.”
“Are they bad?” Tom asked. “I mean, really bad? I know the dragons—”
“Not the dragons,” Old Joe said. “All our people say they’re bad. My grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather said they’re bad. They don’t like …” He made the sound of hitting his teeth together again, thinking. “They don’t like people in flesh. They think people in flesh bad. They think …”
Tom didn’t say anything. He could see in Old Joe’s eyes the remembered terror of a child who had heard about this unspeakable enemy. Was it true? Or was it the legend passed by descendants of a persecuted people? Who knew? And could he risk it? If you’re not sure if the man outside your home is a robber or not, the best thing to do is keep that door closed, not throw it open and ask him in and offer him the best chair.
Tom would prefer to determine who these people were before he considered whether to let them in. Besides, he thought, if this person or persons, whoever this was, had attacked the Great Sky Dragon and intended to make him open the world gates by force, it wasn’t the work of honorable people. Though, of course, the Great Sky Dragon was, in many ways, despicable, at least by Tom’s lights.
But then Tom had a strong feeling that his morals and his views on the world were quite different from those of people who lived thousands of years. He’d still believe his morals and his sense of the world over theirs, but he could see how that might change if he lived several thousand years. He didn’t have the same sense of morals as his father, and though … well, he wasn’t sure his father had any sense of morals. This didn’t mean Tom didn’t love him, no matter how strange things could get. After all, it probably wasn’t his father’s fault he was a lawyer.
How much more different would be the morals and the minds of those people from other worlds? It wasn’t that he believed the nonsense that people kept spouting about all cultures being equally valid. Tom was fairly sure that cultures where your wife was a possession and your neighbor’s possessions yours for the taking if you could muster enough firepower were inferior to American culture. But other cultures existed. It was no use denying that different places and times shaped people differently. As nice as Old Joe was most of the time, he had tried to eat Not Dinner, and had probably eaten a lot of cats and dogs over the centuries. Which just went to show—
And that was Earth, and someone who had lived at least some time in Western civilization. Invaders from the stars … well … The question was not if Old Joe was right or if they were good or bad. They were probably so different that they’d be bad news in either case.
Besides, he thought, the whole New Age idea that no one would travel across space to start a fight was the purest nonsense. In fact, starting a fight was the only reason people were ever likely to travel that far. Why else do it? If you didn’t want to steal something or take over the space, why make the effort to open a locked door? Tom kept coming to that. People rarely broke into a house in order to clean the floor and leave a nice set of matched cutlery behind.
“Right,” he said. “And how can I figure out where they took the Great Sky Dragon?”
Old Joe shrugged. “Don’t know. You should have … When he came into your mind? When you got dragon egg? There should be a feeling with it? A … perhaps words?”
“Not that I can—” Tom started. At that moment, his cell phone rang. He fished it out of his jean pocket. Earlier, Conan had rescued it from his clothes in the alley.
The window of the phone showed Kyrie’s number.
Tom pressed answer, and said, “Hi. Are you coming in?”
*
Kyrie was in the dark. There was an overpoweringly sweet smell in her nostrils, something like perfume, but not, something that made her stomach clench and turn. She had a vague idea it was something that had made her lose consciousness, or perhaps that kept her unconscious.
She remembered the dart in her arm. Who would use a tranquilizer dart to kidnap her? Why? Unless they knew she was a shifter and likely to change shapes.
Okay, so people who knew that were likely to use a tranquilizer dart to kidnap her. But why would they kidnap her at all? And where was she?
After a while her eyes adjusted, and she could see that she was in a room of some sort.
Not that she’d been absolutely sure what to expect, but in her mind when people kidnapped you, they were supposed to put you in some kind of cell, or hole. This was a small room. The floor felt like carpet. There was a single bed against the wall, and Kyrie was lying on it. She was not tied or confined. She thought there was a table against the wall, or at least it looked like that, from the contours of deeper shadow in that area.
Kyrie got up and felt around the walls. There was a door. She tried it. It was closed. Going the other way, she came to a board on the wall, which she would bet was a boarded-up window. She could feel the corners where the board was nailed to the wall. A small window. From the way it was high up on the wall, she guessed it was a basement window.
Another careful inspection both of the wall and the objects in the room—yes, a bed and a table, as she’d thought—revealed that there was no lamp on the small table—though there was a chair—and no light switch in the wall. Interesting. Did they intend to keep her in the dark forever?
Kyrie briefly considered shifting into the panther, which had better night vision. But then the panther had truly horrible standing-still vision. It worked much better with things that were moving. And besides, she thought, the panther was not something she needed to unleash in this closed space. If anything, she should congratulate herself on not panic-shifting at finding herself imprisoned. Yes, it was quite possible that the panther would be able to rip through the door or that board over the window in a moment, but the problem was doing it quietly. Kyrie suspected any great amount of noise, any great display of aggression would bring about a tranquilizer dart.
No. She must think how to get out of here, and she must do it carefully. Whoever had kidnapped her—she had no idea who it might be, though she could formulate suspicions as well as the next person—had waited in ambush for her, and had been provided with a tranquilizer dart. Since these weren’t normally used on women, this must mean that they thought she might shift.
Which meant they’d be ready for the panther. And they’d taken care to enclose her in a place where, unless she guessed wrong, the window would be very hard for the panther to get out of. But not the woman. Not if Kyrie had felt the dimensions right. They wanted her to shift …
She sat on the bed and drew her knees up, encircling them demurely with her arms. Then, on second thought, she checked her pockets. She’d transferred her phone and keys to the dress she borrowed fr
om Bea. Well, from what the Chinese had meant for Bea.
The keys were still there, but the phone was gone. Right, so it wasn’t going to be that easy. But she had her keys.
CHAPTER 18
For a moment no one answered Tom’s question, but then a voice came on, and it was definitely not Kyrie’s but a man’s. It was a whisper but still identifiably male.
“Mr. Ormson?” the man said.
“Who is this?” Tom asked. He was aware that he’d spoken too loudly. Though this part of the diner was mostly empty, he could feel Conan turning around to stare at him.
“That is unimportant, Mr. Ormson. What you want to know, rather, is who we have, and what you must do to get her back, right?”
Tom bit back a cry of “Kyrie.” It was quite clear this wasn’t Kyrie at the other end of the phone, and calling her would do nothing more than to tell whoever was on the other end that she was important to him, or that they’d scored a hit. No. They would know she was important to him. But the fact was that he didn’t even know they had her. Maybe they didn’t. All he knew was that they had her phone. “Who is this?” he repeated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
This seemed to disconcert his interlocutor. There was a moment of silence and a distinct, noisy throat clearing, and then, “We have Kyrie Smith. If you want to see her alive again, you will step up to your duties as the leader of the dragon people. That is all. As soon as you do what is required of you, and secure descendants for the dragon with your chosen and suitable bride, we will let her go. But not before.”
The phone clicked off. Tom dialed back immediately, instinctively, but no one answered. He then dialed home. Kyrie had probably dropped her phone back at the Three Luck Dragon. That was probably all that had happened. He’d call home and wake her and—
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