Gentleman Takes a Chance

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Tom looked down. By the Italian sports car stood a slim, dark-haired man, his head thrown back in defiance. He was naked, but he didn't seem to either realize it or care. He wore his nudity like others wore expensive suits. His head tilted up, he favored Tom with a wide and feral smile. What is it, little one? Afraid of me? I'll take you in fair combat. As fair as it can be when pitting an adult against an infant.

  Tom wasn't afraid—at least the dragon Tom had become wasn't afraid. The human, locked within the dragon's mind was not afraid either, or not exactly. He was not afraid of that creature down there, even if he was the vaunted executioner. For all he knew, the man would also change into a dragon, and come after him. And then he might be afraid. And then he might find a reason to kill this creature. But not yet.

  And he didn't react to the voice in his head, as he had first reacted to a similar intrusion by the Great Sky Dragon. Finding someone in your mind once—like any other type of event that is supposed to be impossible but isn't—could hurtle anyone into a panic. The human mind was an amazing instrument, though. The second time of someone speaking in his mind didn't make Tom feel as violated, or as scared. It was just a voice. Just a voice in his mind. Nothing more.

  He took a slow pass over the parking lot, looking down at the person standing by the car. All too human and weak-looking. If Tom was worried about anything, it was not the possibility this person might kill him. No, it was the fear that he might kill this person.

  For years, while Tom was a transient, without friends or a fixed place, one fear had pursued Tom relentlessly: the fear that he would shift and lose self-control, and kill someone. It had been his first fear when he'd shifted into a dragon.

  And he'd managed to control it—most of the time. The only people he'd ever killed were shifters who were trying to kill him. And even then, if there had been another way, he'd have used another way to stop them. He didn't think he'd ever eaten anyone—not even in the drug-haze days of his past.

  He didn't want to kill anyone now. Not even this creature—whether or not he was the executioner that Old Joe had gone on about. Tom swooped again, around the man, slightly lower, trying to think of what to do.

  His instincts told him he should leave now, but if he did he would leave Kyrie and Rafiel unprotected. That he couldn't do. That would negate his coming here to protect them. He had to, at least, warn them.

  He swooped down again, closer. There had to be something he could do, without killing the man. Grab him by an arm and throw him away from the aquarium, perhaps. Then, while he took time to return—or while he shifted into a dragon and came after Tom, Tom would have a chance to warn Kyrie and Rafiel.

  But as Tom got close, he saw the man was smoking a cigarette, completely impassive, disregarding the huge dragon closing in on him.

  Tom could have bit off his head with a single motion. He could have rent it from his body with his claws. But he couldn't do either, not to a defenseless-seeming human.

  Instead, he flew by so close the tip of his wing almost touched the man, but he sheared off, sharply, and executed a circle, coming back, still aware that he couldn't kill the man—that his own self-control wouldn't allow it—but hoping, hoping against hope that the man would be scared.

  Oh, are we playing a game? a laughing voice asked in his mind. And suddenly Tom had no control over his body. None. He fell from the sky, like a pebble, unable to stop himself.

  Hurtling towards the parking lot, Tom saw the man shift. Not into a dragon. The creature who stood in the parking lot hadn't been seen on Earth for millennia uncountable. Tom recognized it, immediately, from its display in Denver's Natural History Museum, though. It was a dire wolf: tall of shoulder, massive of bone, its teeth huge, unwieldy daggers flashing in the light.

  And in that moment he regained control of his body, enough control at least, to tumble to an ungraceful semi-stop, skidding on his tail on the frozen ground.

  The creature sprang, with a lightness that belied his size. A sharp pain stabbed into Tom's awareness, and his wing was seized and ripped. He turned, claw raised, ready to strike, but the dire wolf had moved, quickly, more quickly than should be possible, and bit hard on Tom's wrist. Only Tom's last-second recoil prevented him from ripping out Tom's throat. The yellow eyes of the monster shone with unholy glee amid grey fur, and Tom would have flown away—maimed wing and blood-dripping paw. But he couldn't. Kyrie and Rafiel were in there. They could be coming out any moment. What would this monster do to them?

  * * *

  "What the—!" Kyrie said, as she came through the door, and saw Tom being attacked by a creature out of a museum's diorama. For a moment that was all she could think, her mind seemingly frozen on that point—wondering if she was dreaming, if all those visits to the museum had finally affected her sanity, as she told Tom they were bound to. The museum was his favorite haunt, when they took a day off to go to Denver, and sometimes she felt as though she could have drawn every display from memory—including the broken places in the bassilosaurus skeleton.

  She heard a soft growl at her side. Rafiel. A look at the policeman showed him, by touch, without even seeming to notice, stripping off his clothes.

  And Kyrie, feeling the shift shudder through her, as she stared at the unlikely creature striking at her boyfriend, thought that this creature moved like nothing she'd ever seen. His movement was like a special effect, where the movie editors cut and pasted frames without regard, so that they displaced someone from one place to the other, without moving them the intervening distance. She was sure this was not what was happening, but the effect was rather as though the creature teleported from one place to the next instantly. And it was biting, rounding on Tom, and slashing, rending, always attacking.

  Rafiel, already in lion form—tawny and sleek and large, though not half the size of the creature battling Tom—rushed into the battle, his mane snow-flecked. And Kyrie charged, right behind.

  It was folly, her human mind said, sheer folly, to rush like this into battle with a creature that seemed supernatural in its movements. But what else could she do?

  The creature teleported towards Rafiel—materializing right in front of him, Tom's blood dripping from the huge dagger teeth, a look of unholy amusement in the slitlike yellow eyes. It lunged at Rafiel and it was clear from the movement that it meant to take Rafiel by the throat, or perhaps to bite his neck in two, killing him in one of the few ways a shifter could be killed.

  But as the massive-fanged mouth opened, Tom leapt, and bit the creature sharply on the hind quarters, causing it to close its jaws just above Rafiel's neck, barely touching him with its fangs.

  And now Tom was raking what seemed to be a badly bleeding paw across the creature's flanks and making a high, insane hiss of challenge.

  And Kyrie, who could see that the creature's eyes were—startlingly—more amused than scared, jumped in, her fur ruffled, growling low in the back of her throat.

  The creature rounded on her, ignoring Tom's attack on its exposed flank and pinning Rafiel, casually, beneath a massive paw. It sniffed at Kyrie and the slitted yellow eyes looked more unholy and more amused than ever. Hello, pretty kitten girl. It would be a shame to kill you, wouldn't it?

  The voice, in her mind, made her jump. She knew it was this creature in front of her, and not the Great Sky Dragon, but she suddenly understood why Tom had reacted as he did to the dragon in his mind. She heard a keen of not quite pain escape the panther's throat and she felt what seemed like a dirty finger rifling quickly through her mind. Interesting mind, Kitten. Better defended than Lion Boy's. The feel of unholy laughter. But not by much.

  And then, suddenly, there was a streak of red from above, and a thing that looked much like a falling boulder through the snow resolved itself into Red Dragon, flying in.

  It roared something that sounded much like "No," or as close to the word "no" as a dragon's mouth could form. And in the next moment it landed in front of the dire wolf. Kyrie expected the wolf to port away or to a
ttack, but he didn't do either. Instead, he stood in place, looking confused.

  Red Dragon let out a stream of flame at the dire wolf, just as Kyrie wondered why Tom hadn't done so. And the dire wolf wasn't there.

  What sounded much like "spoilsport," echoed in her mind, and the dire wolf seemed to be quite gone, though they couldn't tell where. Moments later, a sound that seemed disturbingly like human laughter floated from the place where it had retreated.

  * * *

  For Tom it all went too fast. First, he was fighting a creature that seemed to be everywhere at once. His only hope was to take to the sky, but before he could—his bleeding wing, hurting every time he moved, threw off his balance—the creature struck him again. And again. At both front paws, and back paw.

  And slowly it dawned on Tom that if the dire wolf could strike him like this, at will, and wherever it chose, then it could have killed him. That it wasn't killing him should have been a relief, but it wasn't. Because he had a feeling that the creature was playing with him the way cats play with mice.

  And then there was Rafiel, who seemed to appear out of nowhere, and Tom wanted to yell at him and Kyrie to run, but the dragon throat didn't work properly and he couldn't give them the warning in a way that they could understand. And the only thing for it was for him to intervene and save Rafiel from the dire wolf, even though it probably would mean Tom would die for it. But he'd come to save Kyrie and Rafiel, and he was going to do it, if it was his last action on Earth.

  He launched himself at the dire wolf, biting and scratching where he could reach. And then . . .

  And then the creature sniffed Kyrie—at least it seemed like that to Tom, through the red mist his vision had become—and then . . . and then there was Conan. Conan had flamed towards the dire wolf, making Tom wonder why he, himself, hadn't. What was wrong with him? He'd sat here and let the creature maul him, with hardly any attempt at defense. Certainly without using his main weapon. Why?

  And then the creature fled and there had been a suggestion of mocking laughter in Tom's mind. He stood, under the snow, bleeding, shivering, wondering if the creature was gone for good, or it was waiting for Tom to shift, if it was waiting for Tom to become more vulnerable, if—

  "Shift, Tom," Kyrie said. "Now. You can't get in the car as a dragon."

  "You left without me—" Conan was saying, clearly already shifted. "You left without me. Do you know what Himself would have done to me if you had died?"

  "Shut up, Conan," Kyrie's voice, curt. "Tom, shift now."

  And Tom realized Conan and Rafiel and Kyrie were in the car, and that they had clothes, and Kyrie was dressing in the backseat, and he blinked, once, twice, once the human way, up-down, then the dragon way, his nictating eyelids flickering side to side, then the human way again, and he groaned out loud as his body twisted and bent and . . . shifted.

  His muscles were still writhing to proper shape beneath his skin, his scalp tingling as the bones of his skull adjusted, his vision double as his eyes changed, when he flopped into the back seat of the SUV, falling across the scratchy fabric.

  Kyrie, mostly dressed, reached across him to shut the car door. As it slapped shut, Rafiel stomped on the gas. The wheels spun a moment, and then they were hurtling out of the parking lot in a guided slide that careened gracefully around a curve and past a—he was sure of it—red light.

  "What if he had come back?" Tom asked. "As . . . as a dire wolf? And killed us while we were human and vulnerable?"

  "Was that what that was?" Rafiel asked. Incredibly, he seemed to Tom to be dressing and driving at once, through the blinding white snowstorm. Tom blinked, but the impression remained, as Rafiel put on a sleeve of his shirt, while he held the wheel with the other hand and then presumably steered by the force of his imagination while he used both hands to quickly button his shirt. "A dire wolf?"

  "Yes," Tom said, throwing himself back against the seat, and straightening as he felt the pain of open wounds at his back. "Oh, damn, I'm bleeding all over your upholstery."

  "Never mind that," Rafiel said. "My uncle has a car detail place. Kyrie, would you look under the seat? There's a first aid kit there, and there should be another pair of pants and a shirt, too, besides the ones Conan got. They'll be long on you, Tom, but it's all I have."

  "I left clothes, in the trunk of Kyrie's car."

  "Of course. You can change into them there, if you prefer . . . I just thought . . ." Rafiel took another corner in a way that appeared to be skating on two tires. "Kyrie? How badly wounded is he?"

  Kyrie had turned Tom halfway towards the window. "Gash across the back," she said. "I suppose that's the tissue your wings extrude out of. Looks vicious but it's mostly skin, and the antibiotic cream is stopping the bleeding, I think."

  "Should we go to the hospital?" Rafiel asked.

  "Not for this, but his hands . . ."

  And Tom, who was aware both his hands stung like mad, but also that he could still use them—he'd checked—growled low in his throat. "No hospital. What are we going to tell them? Animal bite? Leave it alone. You know it will heal fast."

  "Dragons heal very fast," Conan said quickly, in the sort of singsong voice that denoted he'd learned this somewhere, by rote.

  By touch, almost by instinct, Tom reached into the first aid kit, grabbing cotton wool and hydrogen peroxide and a roll of self-clinging bandages, cleaned away the worst of the wounds and started bandaging his left hand with his right. Kyrie started helping him halfway through, and by the time she'd got his left hand neatly bandaged, and snipped the excess bandage, she said, "He'll do, Rafiel. And it should be all right by tomorrow. Will hurt a bit to use his hands, but . . ."

  "You'll go to the bed-and-breakfast next to the diner," Rafiel said. "What is it called?"

  "Spurs and Lace," Kyrie said. "It's not as kinky as it sounds. I think they thought it was an allusion to the Old West."

  "Whatever. Tom, I want you to go to Spurs and Lace and go to bed. I'll man the diner for the rest of your shift."

  "Like hell you will," Tom said. "Don't be stupid. You can't handle the new stove and grill. And you don't know anything about cooking or serving, either. And that is if Keith hasn't set the place on fire in the last half hour, because he doesn't know much more than you do." He set his jaw, and caught sight of himself in the rear view mirror and realized with a shock that he looked much like his father in a mood. "I'll do the rest of my shift, thank you very much. We'll see if Anthony can come in tomorrow morning, and if not we'll call our backups till someone makes it in. There was that woman—Laura Miller?—who applied last week. We could always give her a chance."

  Rafiel seemed confused. He cleared his throat. "But you'll be in pain," he said. "And I . . ." He cleared his throat again. "I owe you my life."

  Tom shrugged. "So, shut up and drive."

  "I think," Kyrie said, "you should at least go to Spurs and Lace for a few minutes and shower. At least if they have a room and they should. They usually have rooms during the week. On the weekend they get all booked up with romantic couples or whatever."

  Tom sniffed at himself. "All right," he said, realizing he needed to concede on something, and also that fighting a dire wolf had not improved his rather dubious hygiene from this morning.

  "Just don't shift in their bathroom," Kyrie said, as she slapped bandages on his back, then handed him a bundle of clothing. "You might as well wear this and take the other clothes to change." And then, quickly, "Tom, why didn't you just call? I mean, you had my cell number, and Rafiel's. I understand you came over to protect us from this—that you knew this . . . creature was after us, somehow, but . . . Why not just call?"

  Tom shook his head. "Your phone battery was out, Kyrie. You never remember to charge it."

  "Oh," Kyrie said.

  "All right," Tom said again as he slipped the rather loose, long pants on. "Rafiel, I want you to come with me."

  "What? To shower?" Rafiel asked. "I said thank you already—"

  "Fee
ble," Tom said, rating the joke. "No. So I can talk to you about what sent me out there, and what I think that creature is. Without anyone in the diner listening in."

  "I should come," Conan said. "I should listen in. I'm supposed to protect you."

  All three of them yelled "No" at the same time, leaving it to Tom to explain, "No offense, Conan, but you're not exactly a friend."

  "You hired me! And I was sent by Himself, I—"

  "Himself is not exactly a friend, either," Tom said. "At least he hasn't proven himself one."

  Conan frowned, wrinkles forming on his forehead, as though he were trying to understand a very difficult concept. "You're a dragon," he said. "You belong to him!"

  "Beg your pardon? I don't belong to anyone but myself," Tom said, his voice echoing his father's iciest tones. "In case you haven't heard there was this guy called Lincoln who freed the slaves."

  "No," Conan shook his head, looking forlorn. "You don't understand. You're a dragon. You belong to Himself. Like . . . like family."

  "Oh, and if you think that's a recommendation or reassuring, I should tell you a bit more about my family," Tom said, grinning impishly. Kyrie smiled at him. "I have never gone out of my way to obey them or to belong to them, either."

  Conan opened his mouth, as though to reply, but seemed to realize it would be useless, and frowned slightly, as if he were facing a situation for which no one had prepared him.

  "Won't it look weird?" Rafiel asked. "My going in with you, when you're going to get a room and shower?"

  "I'm going to get a room for myself and Kyrie, for tonight and tomorrow," Tom said. "Probably three nights, actually. I can't imagine us going home before that. Heck, if we go home before a week, it will be a small miracle. I'll explain in detail what happened to our bathroom. But as for why you're going with me to the room, that's obvious." He raised his bandaged hands. "I was in an accident. We'll let them think it was a car accident. And you want to make sure I'm not going to pass out or anything."