I don’t deserve this, Tom thought, and it occurred to him that it applied just as well to the unfortunate fact of being the Great Sky Dragon’s heir, as to Anthony’s loyalty. He didn’t deserve any of it, but he was glad he didn’t have to have one without the other. He looked over at Anthony, “Thank you,” he said. “Really.”
Anthony flashed him a smile, and punched him on the upper arm, “Hey, what are friends for? If things get ugly, call me. My uncle Pete … Well, you’ll see. Very resourceful man, with tons of descendants and employees.”
And then he was gone, ducking under the pass-through and out. And Tom’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He fished for it, saw Rafiel’s number, and almost swore under his breath. Instead, he turned it on, took it to his ear and said, “Yeah.”
“We’re coming over,” Rafiel said.
“We?”
“Bea and I, and … well, two of my colleagues appear to be shifters.”
“Two of—”
“Cas and Nick. We should have known, considering they’re regulars, but— Never mind. We have information you have to hear. We’ll be there in twenty minutes or so.” And then, as though belatedly wondering, “Where are you?”
“Diner. Me, Kyrie, Conan, Old Joe.”
“Old Joe?”
“He’s sticking close,” Tom said. “He tried to leave once, but I told him no, and either he thinks the orders apply forever, or he thinks that …” Tom’s voice trailed off at the thought that Old Joe might be in as much risk as the rest of them. Or at least as the rest of his associates. He’d be at risk that the triads would capture him and keep him to make Tom obey. They’d gone for Kyrie first, but they might think that Old Joe—or the hapless Conan—was a better choice.
Tom looked around, locating each of the people who were associated with him in the triads’ mind. Old Joe had slipped into the back booth. Tom would have to take him a plate of meat. That would keep him still until Tom could figure out what to do to keep him safe. Conan was cleaning a table and taking the order of one of the women who worked in the warehouse down the street. She was built like a tank, but for some reason that Tom couldn’t put his finger on, he’d always thought she turned into a raccoon. She smelled shifter, but he’d never had the chance to see her shifted. On the other hand, she was a motherly woman and took an unusual amount of interest in the relationships between what she called the young people in the diner.
Right then, part of what she was telling Conan floated up to Tom, “Quite an extraordinary voice, my dear. You should make something of it.”
Conan smiled delightedly and said, “I’m going to try. And now? What will you have?”
“Oh, the usual. And bring me a pot of coffee. I just can’t seem to get awake today.”
Tom had waited on her enough that he knew what her usual was. Nothing that involved him. Pie from the freezer, or perhaps fresh, since Laura usually baked in the late afternoon and did the prep work for the next morning. If it was frozen, Conan knew well enough to warm it and put on a dollop of cream before giving it to the woman, so he didn’t need Tom. And Kyrie—
For a moment Tom panicked, not seeing Kyrie at any of the tables. Then he realized that was because she was standing by the counter, handing him a sheaf of orders. “Well, at least it’s good for business,” she told him.
He made a face as he went over the orders. First he piled a plate with gyro meat and told her, “Take this to Old Joe; that will keep him still. I have a weird feeling we’re going to need his expertise.”
“Expertise?” Kyrie said.
“What he understands about the old stuff,” Tom said, and by way of explanation, “Rafiel and Bea and two of Rafiel’s colleagues he said are shifters are coming over. They say there is something I must know.”
Kyrie sighed. “Tonight is about to get really eventful, even by comparison to today, isn’t it?”
He laughed, kissed her, and said, “Yeah. Yeah. I think so.”
He’d started preparing the other orders, when someone cleared his throat from one of the bar stools on the other side of the counter. Tom turned around. It was James Stephens, a man with frowning brows and the sort of forbidding expression that would make you shy away from him if you met him in a dark corner. Like Tom he favored heavy work boots and a black leather jacket, but Tom had an idea he worked at the hospital and not, as it looked, in contract killing. He also knew that James was one of those people who often offered to wait tables, and it came to Tom, like a sudden flash, that he’d need backup waiters. He could see Jason Cordova in the annex, attending to a table. How was it possible, Tom wondered, that in a diner full of Asian men, Jason had managed to find the one table packed chock-full of Colorado University at Goldport co-eds? Well, at least one of them was Asian, but the other five were a perfect rainbow of colors. And all were giggling at Jason. Tom envied him heartily, then turned to James Stephens, who’d said, “I was wondering—”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “If you want to wait tables, for some spare money or—” He stopped. He knew the man wasn’t exactly well-off, but he always paid his bills, and when he volunteered to help, he volunteered to help and didn’t ask for pay. Tom was the one who offered to pay him. “I mean,” Tom said, “we could use some help with the tables tonight.”
The dark eyebrows came down harder over the dark eyes. Tom had a vague memory of one of the man’s cronies who identified himself as coming from some bar or other greeting James Stephens as “Dark Horse.” The name seemed to apply now, to that ferociously scowling face, the eyebrows like dark wings over his eyes.
“What I mean,” Tom said, “is that we’re really going to need help tonight. It’s quite possible that Kyrie and I will have to go out, and maybe even Conan, too, and there will be only Jason, and I … Well, I’ll turn the fryer off, if Anthony can’t be here, but the dinner hour rush doesn’t seem to be stopping, and I think we’ll need someone to help with the tables. We’ll gladly pay the usual rate.”
James dismissed the rate and the working with a wave of the hand. “Yeah. It’s my night off. If you need me … sure. I can always use the money for horse feed. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”
Tom looked at him. “Uh … what did you want to tell me?”
“There’s trouble, right? I can feel it. I just wanted to tell you that if it comes to trouble, you can always call me. I will do what I can. This diner is my home away from home. Sometimes I think it’s the only home I really have.”
Tom blinked. “Are you related to Anthony?”
“Anthony?” James said. “The cook? I don’t think so. Why?”
“Never mind. I don’t think … I mean, what kind of trouble do you expect?”
To his surprise, James didn’t point to the tables near them, or to the Asian men who seemed to have come in for the express purpose of glaring at Tom all through the night. Instead, he frowned harder. “I can’t tell you, right? When— I just know I can feel it, right? They say that horses can sense when there’s a big storm coming, or an earthquake, or something. Well, they say it about all animals, even cats, but I know it’s true with horses. It’s kind of like that. I feel this prickling, crackling energy in the air, and the horse sense has kicked in, and I know there’s going to be trouble. Big trouble. So I wanted to tell you, if there’s trouble, call on me, right?”
“You’re … a horse … ?” Tom asked.
The eyebrows went lower over the eyes, until it looked like they’d have to merge with them and disappear, but then unexpectedly they climbed again, and the eyes beneath them sparked with mischief. “Not exactly. You’ll see.” He grinned at what must have been Tom’s puzzled expression. “Now, let me grab that apron and start busing tables. And do you mean to burn that hamburger? I hope the customer wants it well done.”
*
“We know where the Pearl of Heaven is,” Rafiel said. If he’d said that he’d just found convincing proof of the zombie apocalypse, he couldn’t have surprised Tom more. He’d installed Bea an
d the other two guys at the corner table with Old Joe, and come behind the counter to talk to Tom, which was as good a way to do it as any, since the diner was way too full to speak comfortably even at the corner table.
Tom registered that Bea was looking around scared at the crowd. He didn’t blame her. She had as much reason to fear them as he did. Maybe more. The syringes to extract her eggs would be far bigger than anything they might poke into him.
He looked at Rafiel, as he pulled a batch of fries out of the oil and put them in the draining basket. “Bea told you it was missing?”
Rafiel nodded. “She told me the whole story. But I wasn’t looking for the Pearl.” He told Tom about going to the parking lot of Riverside to get his car, having forgotten that he’d lost the keys in the shift. How he’d had to call Cas and Nick and how, while waiting for them, they’d seen the suspicious movement.
When Rafiel got to the story of what he’d actually seen in the little cottage at the park, his voice grew thick. And then he backed up his narrative and told Tom about what had happened earlier, in the woods, about the creature having followed him, about the mating, about— “Sorry,” he said, as his voice got pasty and strange. “Sorry. I don’t know why I let it affect me so much.”
Tom clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. He couldn’t help it. “Rape victims usually do get upset,” he said. He arranged plates, put them on the counter, rang the bell for people to pick them up.
Rafiel looked shocked. “I wasn’t raped. I mean, I lost all control, but—”
“I think,” Tom said, “you were ambushed and that pheromones, possibly pheromones released at will, were employed to make you lose control and the ability to think. I fail to see,” he said, his mind on Kyrie’s idea they would use rape drugs, “what the difference is between that and rape drugs.” And then he thought maybe that’s what the triad meant to use. Some form of pheromones he couldn’t resist. He wondered if there was one such for dragons, the same as for lions, and thought probably there was, and wondered if he’d also lose all control. That would be bad. Very bad.
Rafiel sighed. “Maybe you’re right. But if she set out to look for me …” He paused. “I wonder why.”
“Well, I wonder why too,” Tom said. “And I’m very afraid we’ll end up finding out. Now, about the Pearl of Heaven—”
*
They gathered in the storage room. Tom and Kyrie, Bea, the three policemen, Old Joe. Conan did not join them, because he said someone needed to stay out and keep an eye on things. “I’ll man the fryer too,” he told Tom, “but I don’t feel quite comfortable with all of them out there.” He ducked behind the counter, when Tom had called him, and spoke in the sort of loud whisper mostly drowned out by the sound of the fryer.
Tom said, “What if there’s anything I need you to help us with?”
Conan looked up. Something in his expression gave Tom the idea that Conan didn’t know what he could possibly help with. Tom wondered if all the loyalty had gone out of Conan on realizing that, no, Tom couldn’t put dragon shifters before everyone else. Tom didn’t think so. Surely Conan was the last person to think that you should follow your preordained path in life, just because you were born something or other. Surely. But there was no getting around that Conan seemed miserable.
He appeared to notice Tom’s expression, because he smiled a little and shook his head. “It’s just that I thought Rya would be here,” he said. “I am not paying a lot of attention to her, what with—”
Tom almost laughed at the mundane concern. It seemed so sane, so reassuring. He patted Conan on the shoulder. “I don’t think Rya is going to throw you over just because you’re kind of busy and aren’t fawning on her.”
“No, that’s not it,” Conan said. “Something feels … off.”
That Tom could agree with. Perhaps it was that sense of a storm gathering that James Stephens had mentioned. Perhaps it was the sense of something approaching. After all, they had many odd senses because of their condition. Why wouldn’t this be one of them?
All he could say, as they all gathered in the storage room, was that something was very definitely off. Really, he and Kyrie should have chairs here, and maybe a sofa, or a sleeper. He thought of the inflatable mattresses they’d brought and put in the back of one of the vans, in case they needed to sleep somewhere they wouldn’t be easily found by the triads. He had a crawling feeling at the back of his neck, a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, a certainty that they would be sleeping very little if at all tonight. Because a storm was gathering.
And just as he reached that point in his thoughts, a thunderclap shook the whole diner.
Everyone jumped, and Tom thought maybe it was this electrical feel in the air. But somehow, he knew it wasn’t. Somehow, even as the rain came crashing in waves upon the flat roof of the diner, he could feel the other, bigger storm still gathering and growing, like a wave climbing ever taller before it must fall.
“It needed only that,” Rafiel said, looking up.
But Old Joe narrowed his eyes, and looked at Tom and said, “So, you can’t fly, dragon boy, and you must drive, but you must go get Pearl of Heaven. Pearl of Heaven is yours, not Maduh. You must get Pearl from Maduh. Pearl is only artifact left. In the whole world, only artifact left. And if people from the stars are coming, someone must know how to lock gates.” He thought about it a while. “You’re our only hope.”
Tom did a double take, then looked up at Rafiel, trying to silently ask if there was any way that Old Joe had ever watched the movie. All he got in response was a shrug.
“So this person is Maduh?” Tom asked. “And she’s a shifter?”
“She’s a sabertooth tiger. Like Dante. Dante’s mate.”
Tom, conscious of having killed Dante, wondered if Maduh knew this, if the whole thing was some kind of deranged revenge, and he felt a great wish that this revenge and counterrevenge would stop. How could they stop the killing among shifters, the killing of shifter by shifter, and the killing of humans by shifters, if all it did was start a chain of vendettas, because shifters were loyal to their own kind and only their own kind?
He didn’t realize he had said anything aloud until he saw the two policemen, Nick and Cas exchange a look, and then Cas said soothingly, “It’s just human tribalism. It’s not even a characteristic of shifters. You just feel safer around your own kind, of course, and from there to caring only about them is a step. Peace. I’m not defending it, I’m only stating that it is a normal human characteristic. We’re no more guilty of it than anyone else. And, truth be told, no more immune.”
“Yes, but … It’s going to kill us all, it’s going to reveal us and destroy us, if we don’t defeat it,” Tom said.
Rafiel just inclined his head, but Old Joe said, “No, it’s going to kill all humans. And everyone on Earth. They will come through, and they don’t like fleshy bodies.” He thought about it a moment, then said, “Not even plant bodies.”
Tom groaned, and midgroan—even as, above, the rain redoubled in intensity, in the way that Colorado rains did, coming out of nowhere and turning into a deluge—he felt something.
It was … like the smell of ozone in the air after rain, like the foreshock of an earthquake, only what Tom felt was … something moving in his mind. Something …
He got a feeling it was a stirring of the Great Sky Dragon, as though the ancient creature were wakening or coming to life. And he remembered their conference at the Three Luck Dragon. If it was true that the Great Sky Dragon was wakening, that what Tom sensed in his mind was like the first grope of a sleeper towards awakening, then it was bad news. He remembered the idea that the killing of the Great Sky Dragon had hinged on bringing him back unable to shift, and then forcing him—somehow—to open the world gates using the Pearl of Heaven.
Almost in self-defense, against the hair rising on the nape of his neck, against the tightening of his muscles, Tom said, “But Maduh—if this is her—said that the Great Sky Dragon wouldn’t be able to
open the world gates, right?”
“No,” Rafiel said. “The … things, told her that they couldn’t show her how to activate the Pearl of Heaven and also that the … old dragon wouldn’t be able to do what she wanted, that he had never managed to use the Pearl of Heaven to activate the deeper knowledge. We knew that.”
Old Joe had been on the outskirts, but now pushed his way to the center of the circle, hands flailing in agitation, “Can still open world gates. Yes, we knew old dragon, daddy dragon never came into full power. I think he thinks he did, but the artifact working on his dragon egg only released dragon knowledge, not all knowledge. He’s strong in dragon knowledge, but not … not what he could be. But”—the hands fluttered up and wavered in the air—“but still strong enough to open the world gates. And you can’t let him open the world gates. He’s wakening, dragon boy. He’s wakening. How do you stop him opening the world gates?”
“I have to find him,” Tom said.
“You have to get the Pearl,” Old Joe said. “It will help you find the old one. It will.”
Tom couldn’t see how. He said, “I can feel him stirring, too. I can feel him wakening. Shouldn’t I get to him first, while someone else gets the Pearl of Heaven?”
There was a short, ghastly silence, and then Bea said, “Like whom? I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t volunteer if you haven’t seen the creature, and if you’ve seen the creature … She has twice defeated Rafiel. She seems to have some sort of control—perhaps mind control—though it might be only pheromones—”
“Dante, her mate according to Old Joe,” Kyrie said slowly, “could project illusions. He used them to entrap us.”
“Against that, which of us can do anything?”
“I can,” Tom said, “I think.”
“Like hell you’re going alone,” Kyrie said.
And Tom felt both exasperation and gratitude, because when it came to that, he didn’t want to go alone, but the last thing, the very last thing he wanted was to put Kyrie into danger.
Noah's Boy Page 27
