"Yeah. I wonder why Rafiel didn't ask us the questions himself."
"Dunno. Dealing with some administrative stuff, I guess," Kyrie said, and started towards the tables, carrying the tray. She smiled and joked with her regulars. But her mind wasn't in it.
No, her mind was carefully processing the input of her nose. How many shifters were there in the diner? They knew for a fact that the diner had been soaked—some years ago—in pheromones designed to attract shifters. It had called her all the way from the bus station, in response to something—she wasn't sure what. For all she knew it had called her all the way from Cleveland where her last job had been. How many more people did it call? And what were their forms?
She didn't think they were implicated in the death of the journalist, Summer Avenir. She didn't think so, but you never knew. After all, the Ancient Ones weren't the only ones who could lose their heads when faced with something like pictures of shifters on the front page of their local paper and just outside their favorite diner. While Kyrie and Tom had no wish to associate wild animal attacks with their diner, some customer who just wanted to stop a threat might have more direct views of how to do so.
She saw Tom and Rafiel come in through the back door, poor Tom looking very pale and cranky, which made perfect sense, since he'd slept all of two and a half or three hours at most.
At the moment she saw them, she was standing by the front door and away from most of the occupied tables. She stood her ground, ostensibly waiting for them to go by her, so she could move freely.
But as they came close enough, she asked Rafiel in a whisper, "The teeth that killed the woman . . . They weren't alligator teeth, were they?"
* * *
Rafiel had a headache. No, it wasn't a headache as such because headaches were natural occurrences that came and went without much provocation. This headache was like a living thing, compounded half of pain, half of fear and mostly of anger. It sat on his brain, seeming to squeeze all rationality out of it.
He wanted to be mad at Tom for refusing to even consider calling the Great Sky Dragon and the triad to their aid. What was he doing? Did he think they could play heroes all by themselves? Who were they against this ancient shifter group that permeated all nations and was a law unto itself. If the group decided whom to kill and whom to let live, to whom could they speak out against it? How could they when they were part of it too?
To some extent Dire was right when he told Rafiel and Kyrie that in the ancient times there had been many deaths, that in those days shifters were viewed as dangerous, as things to be eliminated.
But then again, weren't they dangerous? So many of them seemed to have a lust for killing and a total disregard for those outside their group.
Rafiel stood in the brightly lit parking lot and squinted against the light, and watched Tom walk from the inn, around the thawing slabs of ice in the parking lot. The sun was out, things were melting. Probably only to freeze again this night, but for now, ice was in retreat.
Rafiel squinted at Tom and thought to himself that if shifters were known, and if they were known for what they were, those creatures that Dire called ephemerals would be more than justified in exterminating them all, root and branch, the guilty with the innocent. But then . . . but then he and Tom and Kyrie were innocent.
And if we want to remain so, we'd best find a way to control those among our kind who aren't—those who are a danger to the society we live in. From there it followed that Tom had been right. They could not call on the Great Sky Dragon. They couldn't call on any of the old, corrupt organizations that looked down on the society amid which they lived and from which they derived the benefits of civilization. No. It must be us. Me and you and me against the ancient shifter world. And Keith too, if he's willing.
The ridiculous thought of the four of them facing down the Ancient Ones, much less the Ancient Ones, the triad and whatever was killing people at the aquarium—if it wasn't Dire or the crab shifter—made his head throb all the worse. The Rodent Liberation Front might be more their speed.
Tom, who always looked like heck when he was tired, now looked tired and grumpy and ill-awakened, with shadows under his eyes, and the sort of expression that suggested he was about to face a firing squad by the early dawn light.
He stomped across the parking lot towards Rafiel and greeted him with a grunt. They walked across the parking lot together, presumably, Rafiel thought, to talk to Conan. What Tom expected to get from Conan, if not the help of Conan's patron, was beyond him.
And then, as they got into the diner, and went close by Kyrie, he found his arm grabbed and Kyrie asked, "The teeth that killed the woman . . . They weren't alligator teeth, were they?"
Tom snorted behind Rafiel and said, with certainty. "It wasn't Old Joe."
But Kyrie was looking at Rafiel with those bright eyes of hers, that inquisitive all-attentive gaze she so rarely turned towards him. "Was it, Rafiel?"
He shook his head slowly. "Not so far as the examiner on the scene thought. He said bear or dog"—he shrugged—"only much, much bigger teeth. I could imagine, by a stretch of the imagination, its being a dragon, but not an alligator, no."
While he talked to Kyrie, Tom had gone behind both of them and into the glassed-in annex, where Conan was cleaning a table. Tom cheerfully helped him put the menus and condiment bottles back. Then he grabbed the wrist on Conan's good arm. Rafiel had no idea what he said to the man. Tom spoke in too low a voice to be heard. But Rafiel saw Conan pale, and then Tom shook his head and said something else, and Conan looked at him half in fear, but seemed calmer and nodded.
Rafiel wished he could hear it, but doubtless, through this headache, he wouldn't make any sense of it, in any case. Aloud he told Kyrie, "Looks like you'll have to take over all the waitressing. I think we're talking to Conan." He watched Tom take Conan to the table nearest the window—the one where the two sets of glassed-in walls met, and fortuitously the corner nearest the lamppost around which the dead woman had been wrapped.
"I won't sit people near there," Kyrie said, and turned to meet a couple who had just entered. Which left Rafiel with nothing to do but go talk to Conan.
Conan was sitting across from Tom, and as Rafiel approached, Tom got up. Before Rafiel was fully settled, Tom came back with three cups of coffee, a bowl full of the little packaged creamers, and a container of sugars. Conan hesitated and looked almost guilty taking the coffee. Or perhaps he just looked guilty. He looked guilty most of the time, a sort of cringing general-purpose guilt that made Rafiel's headache worse.
Tom looked at Rafiel as though expecting him to start the questioning, and Rafiel sighed. "The dead woman, out there?" he said.
"Yes. You asked me earlier," Conan said. "I didn't see anything."
"Really?" Rafiel asked, with withering sarcasm. "Were you waiting on people in this annex, then? Was there no one seated here?"
"Oh. Well, of course people were seated here. But . . . but it's dark out there. I didn't see anything." And then, as if with sudden inspiration. "Kyrie attended to people here too, and don't you think she would have spoken up if she'd seen something?"
Tom jerked forward, and Rafiel, fairly sure that he was going to come to Kyrie's defense, perhaps in a violent way, put a hand forward to stop him. "I'm sure she would have," he said. "I also know that these . . . creatures, whatever they might have been, from whichever side, have defenses that we can't begin to fathom. I'm fairly sure that Dire doesn't actually teleport, for instance. And if he can fake a phone call and make Kyrie actually hear my voice as if it came from her cell phone . . ." He shrugged. "It's possible they made themselves invisible.
"But you, Conan, aren't just one of us, one of the young shifters, are you?"
This brought him a wide-eyed glance from Conan, not an admission of guilt, not even, Rafiel thought, with an inward groan, an admission that Rafiel had somehow penetrated a deception. No. All that fish-eyed glare was pure shock, combined almost for sure with a calculation on Rafiel'
s mental health or lack thereof. "Of course I'm one of you," he said, in outraged protest. "What else would I be? I am twenty-three years old, and I was born in Tennessee. Knoxville. Mom and Dad own the Good Fortune Restaurant there. I was president of the Latin club in high school. Check it out. I'm in the yearbook."
"That's not what I meant," Rafiel said. Though I worded it vaguely enough to catch something else, should it be there. "What I mean is that the Great Sky Dragon sent you here to protect Tom. He has a link to your mind. Surely he wouldn't be fooled by whatever mind tricks Dire might be using. Surely, he would see whatever was happening. Did you not see anything? Sense his alarm in some way?" Mind tricks. What if he convinces the victims of shark to just jump IN to the aquarium? Surely he can do it. Damn. How can one check that? Prove that? He probably doesn't even need to be there. Look what he did with Kyrie's phone.
Conan shook his head. He looked miserable and on the edge of sniffling like a lost child. "I never . . . I didn't see anything. But . . . but before, when he spoke through me? I didn't see anything either. I wasn't . . . aware that he was doing anything."
Rafiel took a deep breath and drank a sip of hot, black coffee to fortify himself. "And could you have done it, Conan?"
This time he got the wide eyes and a look of almost panic. First Conan shook his head, then he opened his mouth. He looked like he was about to scream or run, but he did neither. Instead, he put his head in his good hand, and Rafiel fully expected him to show a tear-streaked face when he looked up. It wasn't. His face was perfectly dry, though his eyes looked reddened.
"Look, do you think I haven't asked myself this?" he asked. And, as though driven out of his voice by stress, the pseudo-Asian accent was gone, replaced by just the faintest hint of a Southern twang. "Ever since she was discovered I've asked myself this. He spoke through my mind. Could he also . . . do other things through my mind? I don't know. I don't know." He shook his head. "I don't know if he could have had me change and attack the girl. I think not, because if he could have, then when we were hunting Tom"—he looked at Tom—"why would he not do the same? Why would he leave us to our own devices?" He shrugged. "On the other hand, I think, why would he not have put a listening thing in our heads then as he did now, so he could advise us when we ran into trouble?" He shrugged again. "I don't know. I just don't know."
"Perhaps he didn't think it was worth it for just me," Tom said. "After all, I was just a young shifter, right? While here he knows he's up against the executioner sent by the Ancient Ones, right? So it would be more important. And he would send you, of course."
Conan started to shake his head, then shrugged again. "You might have been only a young one, but he was . . . By the end of it, we were all in full hunt for you. Though to be honest . . ." he looked pensive, "he only ever sent the young ones of us, never the old, experienced ones. Why, I don't know, just as I don't know why he wants you protected now." He looked suddenly embarrassed. "Only I'm kind of glad he does, because you're a nice guy and I don't want to be ordered to attack you."
"Would you, if he ordered you?" Tom asked.
Conan looked at Tom. And Rafiel felt as though he was seeing several thoughts flicker through Conan's mind. No. And then yes and then . . . Conan shrugged. "I'd like to think I wouldn't," he said, opening his hands on the tabletop, as if to show the absence of weapons. "But the thing is, if he ordered me, and I didn't obey, then I would be left . . ." He sighed. "With the absolute certainty of my own death. I belong to him. He's in my mind. Still, the prospect of waking up with myself, day after day, year after year, after killing someone who has become a friend . . ." He made a face. "Death might be preferable. On the other hand"—disarming smile—"I think I've proven I'm a coward and very attached to life. So . . . I don't know. The Great Sky Dragon would tell me to tell you that no, of course I wouldn't kill you, but I'm telling you the truth."
He seemed inordinately proud of it, and Rafiel who could feel the same gears turn in Tom's head that were turning in his—what does he mean he doesn't know, and this is not a free man—said, "It's always good to tell the truth. So, you don't know if you killed this woman or not?"
"I don't think I did," Conan said. "The thing was, see, we were fairly busy all night. Yes, there was a lull around four, but it wasn't a lull in the restaurant. It was just that no more people were arriving, not that the ones that were already here were leaving. A bunch of people came in and sat from three to five or so, just . . . here. Ordering more stuff, you know? So Kyrie and I were both very busy, all that time. I think Kyrie would have noticed if I'd left my tables unattended for any of that time. She would have asked me. You know she keeps an eye on me all the time. And I asked her . . . I asked her right after I heard. Just a quick question. And she said I'd been here all the time, helping with the tables."
"So it's improbable it was you," Rafiel said. "I presume that you don't have a way to cast the same sort of mind-invisibility thing that Dire does?"
"Not that I've ever heard of. And I've never heard of any of the senior dragons doing it . . . not even Himself. He usually appears in perfectly normal, reasonable ways."
"Except flying, yes," Rafiel said. "So you know of no reason why the Great Sky Dragon would want this woman dead? Wouldn't seeing dragons, one of them you, on the cover of the Weekly Inquirer unnerve him or enrage him?"
Conan shook his head. "I'm sure it wouldn't," he said.
"Why?" Rafiel asked.
"Because if it had I would have heard from him, or from one of the other ones, in the town, you know? Someone would have come to me and told me . . ." He seemed to run out of words or perhaps of imagination as to what they'd tell him.
"That you'd been a very naughty dragon?" Tom asked, seeming suddenly amused.
Conan nodded once. "That. I'm sure they would have. And he didn't. Which means he wasn't mad about the picture. Wasn't mad about showing myself. He is not . . ." A sudden lopsided smile. "I know it's playing into a stereotype a little, and perhaps it is wrong, but you know we Asians are supposed to be good with technology? Well . . . Himself is. He really is. He's very, very good with it. And he would have thought what I thought. That the dragons could be a Photoshop job, and that no one living in the world today would think they were real, unless they were shifters or already knew shifters themselves."
"But then . . . that leaves . . . Wait. What if she had gone after those you call senior dragons? I assume there are some of those here in town?"
Conan nodded once. "The Three Luck Dragon Restaurant where we . . ."
"Where I almost got killed?" Tom asked.
Conan's eyes opened wide. "You did? Was it there? I heard about it through the organization after I . . . came back. But I didn't know it had been done there, right at the center of our operations." Then to Rafiel: "That's where we met in the parking lot."
"And I assume the owner is one of you," Rafiel asked, and seeing the expression on Conan's face, hastened to add, "You don't have to answer that."
"She might have gone there," Conan said. "Yes. And harassed someone. But the thing is . . ." He shrugged again, an expressive, eloquent shrug that was almost a word in itself, a word that combined lack of knowledge with ability to acquire any. "The thing is that I don't think Himself would do it this way. For some reason he wants you protected." He gave Tom a look. "To be honest, it might be simply because you impressed him. Or Kyrie did. And because he is afraid that the Ancient Ones will take you out without his protection. I don't know. You don't ask that sort of question. But, anyway, if he wants to protect you, the last thing, the very last thing he would do was to come here, to leave the dead woman this close to your diner, and therefore call attention to you, right? He'd never do that. He's not stupid."
Rafiel didn't think the Great Sky Dragon was stupid at all. And even through his headache, he had to concede Conan's logic. He didn't see the Great Sky Dragon leaving a corpse that close to Tom, not if he wanted to protect him, at any rate.
His headache was worse. "Dam
n," he said. "That means it was probably Dire."
Conan nodded, sagely.
"Which means we need to figure out a way to deal with him."
"Deal with him?" Conan said. "You can't. Not alone. That's why Himself sent me, so that . . ."
Rafiel looked at Tom. Tom shook his head at him, but said nothing.
"Right," Rafiel said. "I think I'll take my headache and go see if I can come up with any new ideas."
Tom smiled at him, suddenly. "Where are you going to take your headache?"
"I don't know," Rafiel said. He had a savage need to be mad at someone and to be rude to someone, and he didn't want to do it here, and he didn't want to be mad at Tom. "I don't know. Maybe I'll drive in circles for a while till I think of somewhere to go."
The quizzical half-amused look he got back didn't really help his mood or sense of humor any. Nor did hearing Tom tell Conan—clearly, in answer to a question he didn't hear, "No, I don't want you to help. I don't want the Great Sky Dragon involved in this. It's between me and my friends. If the Great Sky Dragon gets involved I'll make sure to die. And then all his work and meddling will be for nothing."
* * *
Kyrie was worried and she didn't like to be worried. Or rather, she tried to minimize the time she spent being worried, tried to minimize the time she devoted to feeling stress. She much preferred, by far, to work on solutions than to turn over in her mind things that couldn't be helped.
But she was sure that it had been Dire who'd killed that poor woman. She remembered her own words to him—in haste and rage, and mostly wanting to get rid of him—about the reporter and the paper. Oh, she should have known better than to say that sort of thing to a psychopath, but she didn't feel guilty. Not exactly.
Gentleman Takes a Chance Page 30
