Bea was still looking at him, her eyes wide open. He had a moment of fear that she would think he was a wimp, complaining like this, but she put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure out something, and that it will be the best possible solution. Meanwhile, you can always talk to me, you know?”
And after a minimal pause, she continued, “Why is there so much activity in the park? Isn’t it supposed to be closed?”
*
The shocks Tom felt as he pulled up his driveway started with seeing Kyrie’s car in the driveway, the door still open. He looked inside. Her purse was on the floor of the passenger seat. Nothing else was disturbed. He didn’t see or smell blood anywhere. There was no blood on the driveway either—Tom couldn’t have sworn to what he’d have done if there had been blood.
The back door hadn’t been opened. There were no signs of a scuffle. Maybe Kyrie hadn’t been kidnapped, he thought, knowing he was being foolish and trying to console himself with a vain hope. Maybe all that had happened was that she’d dropped her phone and someone else had picked it up.
But she’d dropped her phone on the way to what? What would cause Kyrie to drop her phone and not find another way to communicate with Tom? What would cause Kyrie to leave the car open in the driveway? Not just unlocked. Open.
True, their neighborhood had almost no crime, but Kyrie had not grown up in this kind of neighborhood. Tom might forget to lock the car, but Kyrie never would, and she checked front and back door twice before going to bed, and had insisted on putting a cat door on the back porch window, rather than just leaving the window slightly ajar, so the cat could go in and out. That meant they would have to replace the entire pane of glass when they moved out, but Kyrie felt safer that way.
No, Kyrie would never leave the car door wide open and go somewhere. She wouldn’t even leave it unlocked.
Tom sighed. Nothing for it but to deal with the fact that Kyrie was missing, that it was the doing of the triads—at least if what he felt in the secretive place in Jao’s mind was accurate—and that he would have to punish them in a horrible way.
The problem was … No, not that he felt bad about visiting fire and blood on the dragon shifters. He didn’t. Emotionally, the thought that they might have hurt Kyrie made him want to go on a rampage and kill them all, slowly and in interesting ways, but intellectually, he felt as though that would be a betrayal of everything he and his friends stood for.
Sure, they’d killed shifters before, but they’d done it only in self-defense. Well, most of them had done it only in self-defense.
Tom had, with malice aforethought, killed a sabertooth, Dante Dire. He wasn’t sure that could be considered self-defense, exactly, since he’d found Dire, and killed him, and made sure body and head were well apart and hidden. He was sure if Rafiel ever found out about that he would be very conflicted on whether or not to punish Tom. But the truth was not that clear. Tom had known, with absolute certainty, that as long as Dante Dire lived, neither he nor Kyrie would be safe. Had he been alone, had he had no Kyrie, no friends, no one else affected, he’d probably have left town to avoid the confrontation, and kept moving ahead of Dire. But realizing that if he simply disappeared Dire could go after his friends made it all different. In Tom’s mind the killilng was self-defense. He had had to slay Dire to keep himself and his own safe.
He only wished he were sure Rafiel would agree with him. And—this was important—Tom was almost absolutely sure that were he to kill half the triad to punish them for interfering with Kyrie, and to make them take his authority seriously, Rafiel would view that as a very bad thing.
While the world was full of shifters’ organizations who killed normal mortals without a second thought, Tom and the others had decided early on that they were humans among humans. If they were different, and if they had to hide that difference, it didn’t exempt them from the duties of common humanity.
But what did that mean when it came to his taking control of an ancient organization that behaved according to very different rules?
It meant Tom had an ache in the front of his head, right in the center of his forehead, and he didn’t know what he could do. He knew he had to make an impression. And he had to get Kyrie back. Above all he must get Kyrie back.
As he opened the door to the kitchen, the big orange tomcat, Not Dinner, came sauntering up, then smelled Old Joe and arched, hissing. Tom reached down and petted him, almost absently, “Old Joe won’t eat you, Notty,” he said. Not Dinner still clung to Tom’s ankles, weaving in and out. From habit, Tom got the bag of kibble, and filled Notty’s bowl, then blocked that area with his arm, as he led Conan and Old Joe to the living room. He gestured for them to sit on the sofa, and noticed—approvingly—that Conan was keeping an eye on Old Joe.
Good. He didn’t think the old shifter, with more important things on his mind, was going to shift into an alligator and eat Tom’s cat, but you never knew. And if Old Joe ate Notty, Kyrie would … probably kill Tom. Maybe not permanently. If he was lucky.
He had to get Kyrie back.
Old Joe was making a clack-clack sound with his teeth. Conan was sitting at the edge of the sofa, leaning forward, looking at Tom intently. Tom had to do something. He had friends, and he had allies, but he was the one who had to do something.
Like it or not, for the time being—and he would make very sure it was for no more than the time being—he was the Great Sky Dragon and must make sure they feared him as such.
Conan was leaning forward on the sofa. He said, “Summon him.”
*
“I wonder what they’re doing in there,” Bea said. With the motor turned off, sitting in the car beside Rafiel, she’d been looking around idly—anything but to think of Rafiel right there, next to her. She wasn’t afraid that she’d suddenly feel a need to tear his clothes off or something, though she did spare a moment to imagine him with his clothes off when he wasn’t out of his mind with shock. No, she was afraid of something far more material. She was afraid she’d start talking to him. Honestly, she couldn’t seem to go a few minutes without some nonsensical thought coming up, like, “I wonder what our kids would look like?” or “What if he works too hard to have a proper family life?” or even, “Would it be a good idea, with both of us being shifters?” She was very much afraid if she started talking, one of those questions would come out.
So instead, she looked around, and after a while it hit her that though the parking lot was empty—the truck rocked a little under the impact of a warm wind—there seemed to be a lot of activity in the amusement park itself. At least, lights came on in there now and then, seemingly erratically, and twice, Bea saw something or someone slink in through the gate.
It was hard to know if it was something or someone, because it was little more than a shadow, very fast, then gone.
Rafiel responded to her question about the park casually, “It’s probably just maintenance of something.” But his features were anything but casual, locked in the sort of frown that brought his blond eyebrows low over his eyes. She didn’t know him well, of course, and yet she thought that the expression was the one he wore when he was trying to tell his back brain not to worry about something he clearly did worry about.
He drummed his fingers under the window, then he lowered the window a little and—to Bea’s surprise—sniffed the air. He made a face. The drumming fingers turned into a fist, rhythmically hitting the place under the window.
After a while, he turned to her, “Look … we found a bunch of mauled bodies in here.” He told her the story of finding corpses and the feral teen shifter. “It was that feral shifter I was following when I—when you met me.” The frown intensified, and she thought that it served to hide stronger emotions, in this case probably embarrassment. “So … so … I was … that is, he might be here again. I’d like to go take a look, but I … Promise me you’ll lock the car, and put the windows up. And don’t open for anyone but me or two guys who look Greek and who likely will be driving a rest
ored convertible.” To what must have been her look of sheer confusion: “Cas and Nick restore old cars in their free time, and at least one of them drives the car around for a year before selling it.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I don’t remember what they’re driving now, but it being summer, it’s probably a convertible. Likely something from the fifties.”
“Right,” she said. Her mind seemed to be stuck on the idea that it wasn’t fair for him to go and risk himself alone. On the other hand, he was a police officer and she wasn’t, right? He was paid to take risks to protect people, while she wasn’t paid for anything, frankly.
And what he was asking her, she realized, was that she not add to his worries by going into danger when she wasn’t prepared to handle it.
She looked up at him, and arranged her features to the most compliant she could manage. “Sure,” she said. “Just … be careful.”
He looked over his shoulder, as he was about to open the door of the truck and then, unexpectedly, a smile broke out. With the scars across his face still visible—would they vanish?—he looked piratical.
She was quite unprepared for what he did, grabbing her hand and kissing it. His lips pressed against the back of her hand, hot and pliable, and somehow, indefinably, very intimate. “I will,” he said, and his voice was oddly husky.
And then he was out of the truck, walking in long, easy strides towards the gate to the park. She locked the car and ran up the window, and then she watched intently as he slipped into the shadows near the gate and went in, melding with the darker shadow. Through the open gate, she could glimpse, in cool green shadow, a bunch of kiddy rides, including something that looked like a huge frog holding a basket.
She heard the sound of metal hitting metal, distant and forlorn like wind-driven noise can be. She leaned back with her head on the seat rest. Rafiel was a sensible man. He would go and see what was going on, and then he’d come back.
She’d just reached this point in her thoughts when she heard the scream. It was an animal scream—no human throat could make that noise—and it was loud and insane.
And before she knew what she meant to do, she was pulling the keys out of the car and sticking them in her pocket, then running towards the sound of trouble.
*
Kyrie was hot and thirsty and tired. How weird it was that a distance she could cover in the car without noticing, seemed so long while on foot.
Of course, part of it was the fact that when you walked anywhere near the Tomahawk Motel you were assumed to be walking the streets for a living. Kyrie had come around the park and onto the sidewalk near the main street, on the assumption that if anyone tried to kidnap her from the public sidewalk, she could scream the place down, and there was at least some chance one or more people would stop and either come to help or pay attention to who was dragging her away.
Sierra Street, which ran parallel to Fairfax and about eight long blocks away, might not be the best area of town, but it was well traveled, which, in the circumstances, meant an abundance of witnesses to keep her more or less safe.
But in the meantime, and possibly because—damn it—she was wearing Bea’s too-tight dress, she got cars slowing down next to her, and even guys calling hopefully, “Hey, hey,” and in one case, with misguided courtesy, “Miss? Miss?”
She was tired enough to almost consider answering one of them and scaring him into taking her home. But scaring one of them took shifting, and once she shifted, as hot and hungry and thirsty as she was, there was no telling what she would do.
She had tried to shift, in fact, down by the river, on the idea that sightings of black cats weren’t even rare, and, after all, the panther could run a heck of a lot faster than a human. But though she tried with all her might, the shift wouldn’t come. She figured it was some sort of psychological block. She knew if she shifted she would be dangerous.
And so she walked on in the heat, breathing the fumes of cars.
Three blocks away from The George, she considered that perhaps she should just go there and bully someone into driving her home. Heck, Tom might very well still be there.
But she had a bad feeling about going there, about that empty parking lot where, not so long ago, she and Tom had discovered bodies. Besides, two of the blocks between Sierra and Fairfax, where The George sat, were lined with deserted warehouses. She didn’t know who had kidnapped her or why—though she could make some guesses—but she knew they had hid near her house and used a tranquilizer dart on her. That meant they probably were organized and financed by someone, not street gangsters in a spur-of-the-moment thing. More, they’d locked her in a semisecure room, which meant that they’d been planning to hand her over to someone.
It reeked of the triad, frankly, which meant they had more than enough people to have a group lurking in each of the warehouses. And though most of their foot soldiers were not what you’d call bright, they were all dragon shifters. Kyrie could hold her own against dragons. At least the panther could. She could fight one or two of them. But if there were more than that …
She walked along the sidewalk, footsore and hot, wishing that she’d thought to wear better shoes. You never think you’re going to have to walk four miles suddenly. From now on, she’d wear walking shoes all the time. Even while naked in bed.
The idea made her smile despite herself, and she gritted her teeth and pushed on. If she had brought a phone or money … but those were in her purse. Maybe she should start following Rafiel’s lead and strap gear to her thigh.
As she passed the intersection nearest The George, it seemed as though she heard the sound of wings unfurling above, the sound of dragons passing. It was a sound she knew all too well, from her time with Tom. She looked up, hoping it was Tom, hoping he was looking for her.
But the glimpse of wings above was a bright, iridescent blue, nothing like Tom. The body shape, too, seemed more sinuous, more Chinese dragon than Nordic one.
Were they looking for her? Quite likely, she thought. They had always been one of the contenders if not the main contender for who had kidnapped her.
She knit herself with the shadows of buildings, trying to look inconspicuous. It seemed to her that other dragons passed overhead. How many? And why? Was the entire triad out, looking for her?
CHAPTER 19
Tom looked at Old Joe and Conan sitting at the edge of the sofa, waiting. He wondered if they knew how little of their expressions, how little of their body posture showed any sort of confidence that he could handle this challenge. He wondered if they knew how scared they looked.
He doubted it. But maybe they did. Conan licked his lips and said, “You should call him now.”
Tom nodded. Things he could not explain to his friends—and to Old Joe, whom he refused to quite call a friend though he supposed the old alligator was somewhere between a mentor and an advisor—included how difficult it was to access the dragon knowledge.
Not difficult in the unlocking it and looking inside sense. That was easy enough. In fact, sometimes, he had to keep the … dragon egg, for lack of a better word, from prompting him with things he really did not need to know or wish to know.
But it was difficult to unlock just a little, to see just a little, and not to be prompted by the rest of this weight of knowledge in his mind. It was much like carrying a whole group of people in his mind, people who, objectively, were older and probably more knowledgeable than him. It wasn’t easy to ignore their promptings, their ideas, the fact that they were there.
And now he had to reach in, to deliberately think how to reach for one of his subordinates, to open the locked knowledge in his mind. What if he couldn’t close his mind to it again? What if he … what if the power to summon his subordinates erupted, or became addictive, or—
Part of him thought he was being ridiculous. The other part of him could remember what had happened in the parking lot and under the Three Luck Dragon, where he’d reached into the guards’ minds. There was a feeling that thi
s sense of power, the sense of being able to command other people might very well become addictive.
Yet there was Kyrie, and no, he didn’t think he could get Kyrie back by simply asking nicely. Those people who said that everything could be resolved with negotiation had never gone to kindergarten, or at least not to the same kindergarten Tom had gone. Things could be solved with negotiation between reasonable people, of course. But what that had to do with solving things with people who wanted to hog all the animal crackers, or with people who wanted you to marry a girl you’d never seen until yesterday, was beyond Tom.
In this case, what he was trying to do was not merely show two low-ranking dragons that he could reach into their minds and force them to move aside. No. What he had to do involved bending one of the higher ranking dragons—perhaps the highest ranking one, besides the Great Sky Dragon—to his will. To think it would be easy was nonsense. And to think that once having conquered the power he would be able to give it up easily was even sillier.
Yet, for Kyrie, Tom would do quite a lot more than risk becoming addicted to the power of the Great Sky Dragon to summon his people.
He went into his mind, into those same depths that had poured on him, like a submerging flood, when the Great Sky Dragon died. It felt much the same for a moment—as though he had many arms, many legs, as though he was many people in a variety of situations, and all he could do was hold on tight to the idea that there was still a Tom there—a person, immutable, at the heart of the storm.
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