Gentleman Takes a Chance

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  "I don't really care if you find us interesting," Kyrie said, thinking that, on the contrary, she cared a great deal. She could feel his interest in them being exactly the same as the interest of a kid in the bugs he burns with a magnifying glass. And she didn't like it. But she would be damned if she was going to let him see the cold pit of fear in her stomach. "And I don't know what you have to say that we might want to hear."

  He toyed with one of the bright pink packages of sweetener that she had left by his side on the counter. He had incongruously large hands, which looked calloused, as if he normally engaged in repetitive manual labor. Agile fingers with slightly enlarged knuckles. Did shifters get arthritis in their old age? And what had he meant about fewer shifters living to be a hundred? How old was Dire, after all? Oh, he changed into a prehistoric, long-extinct animal, but that might not give any indication of how old he himself might be. After all, Tom changed into a mythological being. And it wasn't as though Tom was mythological. Though he often could seem highly improbable.

  "You want to hear what I have to say," Dire said. "Because otherwise you'll die from not knowing it. Already, you've broken the rules of our species. You can plead ignorance, and given enough good will, we might listen to you. But you have to show good will. You have to show a willingness to listen."

  "So our special circumstances can be taken into consideration?" Rafiel said, ironically. "By a benevolent judge?"

  This time Dire's look at him was amused. "Something like that," he said. "You should understand my point. I'm a policeman of sorts myself. And he"—he pointed a long, square-tipped finger at Keith—"is outside my jurisdiction."

  "Well, if what you have to tell us is essential to our survival, then shouldn't we wait for Tom to hear it?" Rafiel said, challengingly. And, bringing up Tom before she could, made Kyrie feel guilty that she hadn't done it first.

  But Dire shook his head, and shrugged, dismissively. "The dragons look after themselves," he said. "He's a shifter, but not my problem. The old daddy dragon has made it clear that your friend is one of his fair-haired boys and that I can't touch him no way no how, so why bother? He's protected or not, and if anyone does spank him, it will be his own kind. This is what I meant when I said there are things you must learn, before you get in worse trouble. There is nothing—nothing I can do to him, without precipitating a war between dragons and other shifters, the likes of which hasn't been seen on this Earth for thousands of years. I have no wish to see another one of those. The record of the last one still echoes through the legends of the ephemerals. Another one might very well destroy their puny civilization." He grinned suddenly, disarmingly. "And their civilization makes our lives much too comfortable to be allowed to vanish without a trace."

  "Uh," Rafiel said, as though trying to figure out what to say.

  "Fine, I'll go," Keith flung. "Being ephemeral and all, I'd better make sure that the stove doesn't catch fire. All I have to say is that Tom had better come in and look after it, as I'll still be close enough that I might, accidentally, catch wind of this highly forbidden knowledge, and we can't have that, can we?"

  Kyrie wanted to turn around and apologize to Keith, but she also wanted to know what Dire had to say. She was starting to suspect that, biased or not, it would be informative. There did seem to be way too much that they didn't, in fact, know. Like how long their kind lived. Or the story of their relations with the rest of the human race. And it was becoming clear to her, more so than it had been when they'd last tangled with the dragon triad, that there was more to shifters than little groups of them struggling to survive, or loners like Old Joe.

  She heard Keith retreat towards the stove, as Dire said, "Now, I'm one of the oldest shifters currently alive—"

  * * *

  Tom came in, followed by Conan, and surveyed the diner with a dispassionate look. Only a dozen people, in all, and all of them eating. "I think table six and eight could use coffee warm-ups," he told Conan, and instinctively looked around for Kyrie, because Kyrie was usually very good with refilling people's coffee and it wasn't like her to ignore the need for warm-ups. He found her and Rafiel behind the counter, at the point they were furthest from the customers at the table. Facing them was . . . He felt his mouth fall open, and the dragon struggle within, attempting to make him shift into his bigger, more aggressive form.

  He'd come here, as they'd feared he'd come. He'd come here and tried to . . . He didn't even know what Dire was trying to do, but he was talking to Rafiel and Kyrie, and it seemed to Tom that if this creature was talking to Rafiel and Kyrie, then it must have them under some kind of mind control, because it was impossible that his friends had taken such complete leave of their senses as to listen to him like that. Wasn't it? Shouldn't it be?

  He ducked rapidly under the counter, to the other side, and started towards them, but Keith grabbed his arm. "No use, old friend," he said. "That's a conference for non-dragon shifters only. I'm excluded because the bastard says I'm ephemeral, whatever that means. And you're excluded because you're the Great Sky Dragon's pet and the old bastard doesn't want to start a war. Is this the creature who fought you, outside the aquarium? He didn't seem so afraid of causing a war then."

  "No," Tom said. "He didn't."

  Conan, who had ducked behind the counter also, and was putting his apron on, said, "But then he didn't know Himself was protecting you personally."

  Tom bit his tongue, so as not to tell Conan what Himself could do with his personal protection. He suspected if he were to name the exact unlikely anatomical feat he would like to see the Great Sky Dragon perform, it would only cause poor Conan to become speechless. Possibly forever. He couldn't even say the creature's name. How could he possibly hope to resist him? So, instead, he said, "And?" to Keith, instead of to Conan.

  Keith shrugged. "He's apparently issuing some sort of warning to them about my kind and your kind, or whatever. He says he's a policeman, so perhaps he thinks he's Rafiel's colleague."

  It was clear to Tom that Keith was offended at being kept out of the conference and he wanted to tell him that this was a fraternity he should count himself greatly lucky to be excluded from—that it was better to be excluded than to be claimed by old, amoral creatures. And he was sure if he said it, it would have no more effect than to have told his young, bereft self that it was better to be kicked out of the house with exactly a bathrobe to his name than to be handed over to a criminal, or at best an extra-legal organization by doting and dutiful parents.

  So instead he turned, to rummage under the counter. He found his boots there, and wondered whether Rafiel or Kyrie had taken care of that. He put them on, laced them, then put his apron on. Conan was already among the tables, giving warm-ups and taking other orders, or drawing tickets. But he kept looking over his shoulder at Tom, as if afraid Tom was about to do something stupid.

  And Tom, who felt a great roil of anger boiling at the pit of his stomach, looked at the three people talking. Talking, as if this were a perfectly normal social occasion, talking as though the dire wolf hadn't tried to kill them just moments before. In the shower, he'd washed and disinfected a wound, halfway up his calf, caused by the monster's teeth. He was sane enough to realize that the creature could have hurt him much worse. It could have bitten his head off. It could have dismembered them all. It could have closed its teeth on his calf, and now Tom would presumably be growing a new foot, just like Conan was growing a new arm, just like . . . But this wasn't rational. This wasn't even sane. He looked at that creature—who showed no sign of their pitched battle—talking to Kyrie, and he wanted to grab another meat-tenderizing hammer and a fresh skewer and renew the wounds he was sure he had made on that impassive, inhuman face.

  * * *

  "I was born a long time ago," Dire said. He looked at Kyrie first, but then up at Rafiel, as though making sure that he, too, was following the story. "It's hard to say exactly when, because, you know, in those days the calendar was different and more"—he flashed a humorless grin—"
regional. Limited. The birthday of the god, or the such and such year of the city." Something like a shadow passed across his eyes, as if the visible reflection of all the passing years. "I can tell you it was before Rome. Probably before Rome was founded, certainly before it was heard of in our neck of woods, which was somewhere in the North of Africa—I think. Geography was arbitrary too, and your city, your people, your land, were the only people, the only lands, in the middle of the ocean, where true humans lived."

  Rafiel tried to imagine that type of society. He could not. Or rather, he could all too well, but it came from his reading, from movies, someone else's imagination grafted on his own, and he was sure nothing like the real thing. He very much doubted that these people had ever been noble savages, or that such a thing as noble savages existed. On the other hand, he also doubted it was quite as hellish as other movies and books had shown it. In his experience, people were mostly people.

  Dire's gaze changed, as though he'd read Rafiel's mind, and so perhaps he had. "I don't know how many shifters there were in the world at that time, but it's been my experience a lot more of us are born than ever survive to reach even human maturity. As I said before, most succumb to the animal desires, when they first change. And then others are the victims of other people's fear, then as now. Now perhaps less, because we are told that shifters don't exist. Back then, they believed we were evil spirits, or the revenge of prey upon their hunters, or other curses, but no one doubted that we existed.

  "I was lucky enough to be born in a small village, where my shifting was viewed not as evil, but as a sign of favor from the gods. I was made their priest, and asked to intercede for my people with the wolf gods." He shrugged and again there was that feeling of a dark shadow crossing his eyes, implying to Rafiel that something more had happened.

  It would be much like Rafiel saying, "I knew this girl named Alice, and then she died." In the spaces between the words lay all the heartbreak. He found himself feeling an odd tug of empathy towards this man, this creature, who had just declared himself older than time, and he wondered how much of it was true, and how much projected by the mind powers of their foe.

  He steeled himself, crossing his arms on his chest, trying to present less of a sympathetic facade, and therefore invite less interference in his thought processes. Kyrie looked impassive, as if she were listening to a story that had nothing to do with any of them.

  "It was fine while it lasted, but my people didn't last that long. We were conquered. I think, in retrospect, our first conquerors were Egyptian." He shrugged. "Hard to tell, and I certainly couldn't place it by dynasties. Then there were . . . others." Again the shadow. "And what is a power greatly appreciated in a shaman of the people, is not a quality appreciated in a slave. I shifted. I killed. I ran. I shifted again.

  "Through most of history, shifters were neither appreciated nor protected." He showed his teeth in something between menace and grin. "But the truth of it, in the end, is that we scare ephemerals. Our greater powers terrify them. But until we group together there is not much we can do, and we certainly can't exert revenge. Over time . . . we formed such a group. Many of us, most over a thousand years old by the time we met, got together. We formed . . . something like a council of peoples. The council of the Ancient Ones. And we made rules and laws, to defend ourselves. There are many more of them than there are of us, and no matter how long we live, we lack the sheer numbers. So . . . we made rules. One of them is that it is illegal for anyone—even shifters—to kill great numbers of other shifters. Particularly young ones, who cannot have learned to defend or control themselves yet.

  "And it is, of course, illegal for ephemerals to go after shifters in any way. These laws are ours." He tapped on his chest. "Our people's. We do not recognize anyone else's right to supersede them or to impose their rules on us."

  Rafiel asked. He had to. The memory of those fragments at the bottom of the tank was with him—the idea that his people were causing deaths, causing people to be killed. Shifters like him were killing normal humans. None of Dire's carefully codified laws had anything to do with that. "Can shifters kill . . . other humans?"

  Dire laughed, a short, barking sound. "What should we care, then? If our kind kills the ephemerals? Their lives are so short anyway, what should we care if they are shortened a little further. No one will notice and there are too many of them to feel the loss of a few, anyway."

  Rafiel saw Kyrie wrap her arms around herself as she heard this, as if a sudden breeze had made her cold, and he said, "And what if the crimes lead the ephemerals, as you call them, to find us, and to go after us? What if the crimes lead to the discovery of the rest of us in their midst? And they turn on us? In these circumstances, you must agree, the security of one of us is the security of all."

  "Is it?" Dire asked. "I thought that was why you were a policeman, Lion Boy. Yes, I have investigated all of you—and I thought you were a policeman so that you could keep yourself and your friends safe."

  "It's not exactly like that," Rafiel said, and then hesitated, feeling it might not be safe for him to tell the dire wolf that he felt obligated to defend the lives of normal humans as well—that he'd become a policeman because he believed in protecting every innocent from senseless killing.

  But before he could say any more, Kyrie spoke up, "You said there was a feud with the dragons? Or a war?"

  * * *

  Kyrie knew Rafiel too well. She knew this dire wolf, this creature talking to them with every appearance of urbane civility, would lose his civility, his compassion, his clearness of mind and word, the minute he thought that one of them wasn't in full agreement with him. She also knew Rafiel's deep-down pride in being a policeman and in his duties and responsibilities to those he served.

  He was the third in a family of cops. His grandfather had been a beat cop. His father had been a detective in the Serious Crimes Unit. So was Rafiel. That was the type of tradition that left its mark on the soul and mind. Rafiel hadn't chosen to be a policeman. Rather, he was a policeman, who had simply felt he had to join the force.

  And his loyalty to his family—whom Kyrie realized Dante Dire would call mere ephemerals—wouldn't allow Rafiel to stay quiet while their lives were deemed expendable by this ancient being who had never met them—and who clearly had no understanding for nor appreciation of normal humans.

  She'd heard Rafiel hesitate, and she expected the barrage that would follow. And after that, she knew, it would take axes and skewers again, or worse. She interrupted, blindly, with a question about dragons, which pulled Dante's observant gaze from Rafiel's face, to look at her.

  All of a sudden he looked older than he was, and tired. "It was a long time ago," he said. "At first . . . when we formed, dragons were part of our numbers. There were a good number of dragon shifters—in the Norse lands, and in Wales, in Ireland, and all over. And some of them formed part of our council, became Ancient Ones with us.

  "I thought your boy dragon was descended from one of these lines—from these great tribes of dragons that lived all over the globe. I thought . . ." He shrugged. "That he was a young one like any other. That he didn't matter."

  "And he matters?" Rafiel blurted behind her, still half-bellicose, but at least not openly antagonizing Dante Dire.

  Dante shrugged. "Their daddy dragon seems to think he does, even though he doesn't look a thing like his spawn. If he has decided to claim dragon boy, who am I to dispute it? We had a war with them, once, before human history was recorded. Our emissaries ran into his, into his kingdom as he called it. Yes, I see by your eyes that you doubt it, but yes, it was the same being, the same creature. And under him, organized, were the same people—well, some, of course. Some have died, and been replaced. I gather, like the Ancient Ones, he doesn't put much value on anyone until they've proven themselves, only in his case they can't prove themselves until they are over a hundred years old or so. Till then, he counts them as meaning little and being worthless, and he plays his games with them like a ch
ild with toys."

  "So, is this a game?" Kyrie asked. "That he's playing? With Tom?"

  "I don't know," Dire said. He hesitated. "That could be all it is. Your friend could interest him, purely, as a toy, something amusing to play with and to see what he does. Or he could interest him for . . . other reasons. It is not mine to judge. Except that it is clear he's keeping an eye on him through that younger dragon." He pointed towards Conan.

  * * *

  Tom had been on slow boil, anyway, looking at Kyrie sitting there, as if it were normal to talk like a civilized human being with that ancient horror who had been in her mind, who had manipulated her, who had, in fact, violated her thoughts in a far worse way than a violation of her body would have been. He wanted to do something. Like hurl cooking implements at the dire wolf shifter's head. Or perhaps beat him repeatedly with something solid—like, say, the counter top. Or perhaps simply request that he leave the diner.

  He crossed and uncrossed his arms, looking towards him—without appearing to—listening to the things he was saying and studiously ignoring Keith's attempts at making Tom take over the stove so that Keith could beg off.

  And then he heard the dire wolf say that Conan—hapless, helpless Conan—was not only, as he'd told Tom, an inadequate bodyguard, sent to protect Tom from the Ancient Ones, but he was, also, somehow, a spy. Or perhaps a listening device. He couldn't stay quiet. He took two steps forward. He put his hand on Kyrie's shoulder, to warn her that he was going to speak, and then he said, "What do you mean he's keeping watch over me? Conan? Yeah, we know Conan is a spy. What of it?"

  "Oh, he's more than a spy," Dire said, amused. "He can do things."