by Zoe Chant
“But she did start it,” the first boy muttered truculently.
“Yes, and I know she will offer to pay for the cleaning crew. Which I will accept. After you bunch get the worst of this mess picked up. Or shall I ask your parents for donations?”
The boys hastily began picking up bits of pastry and piling them on a tray.
The woman turned to Rigo with no friendly eye. “As for you, since you haven’t bought anything, may I ask you to step aside so they can get on with it?” Her voice was icily polite.
“Yes ma’am,” Rigo said, reaching from long habit to tip a cowboy hat he wasn’t actually wearing. He glanced at the men he’d met that morning. It was clear that his Shirley—that is, Godiva—had herself some firm allies in this town.
He’d been furnished with an introduction to Joey Hu from the shifters’ Guardian of the Midwest. Joey, and Nikos and Mikhail, the other two men he’d met just that morning, gave him a variety of apologetic looks as they filed out the door.
Rigo glanced from the lemon custard splat on the windshield of his car to the hardening glop on his hood ornament, then turned to Joey Hu, whose face was a study in deep regret.
“That went well,” Rigo said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
No one laughed. The austere one called Mikhail just looked back impassively, and Nikos eyed him like a sheriff back in the old days used to eye a gunslinger who just rode into town.
“So . . .” Joey Hu said in a tentative voice. “I take it that was not the happy reunion you were expecting, Rodrigo.”
“Rigo will do,” Rigo said. “Rodrigo was my pa, a meaner polecat never walked this earth. No offense to polecats,” he added hastily, in case one of these guys was related to a skunk shifter.
Old habits of speech came out when he was unsettled, and he was about as settled as a bronco sniffing a rattlesnake on the wind. Maybe the mate bond was dying after all. He supposed he deserved it, but here were these men he’d liked at their first meeting, now eyeing him like he was week-old road kill.
STILL OUR MATE, his basilisk stated.
How can you tell? Rigo shot back internally.
As usual, no answer. It was a miracle his basilisk had actually spoken twice in a day. Once in twenty-five years was more like it.
Rigo sighed. “I get that it looks pretty bad. My fault.” And when their expressions didn’t alter a whit, he added, “I’d like to explain, but I think it ought to wait until I’ve talked it out with Sh—Godiva. Gotta get used to that. Suits her, though. We talk it out, then she can say whatever she wants about the past. I ain’t gonna argue, even if she still thinks me the worst thing to crawl outa Hell since Lucifer.”
At that, Joey Hu smiled crookedly. “It’s just that I’ve never seen Godiva get . . . that . . . intense.”
Rigo understood immediately. “What I can tell y’all is, I mean to make it up to her. If she’ll let me.”
Joey’s smile widened with a little less caution and a lot more sympathy, and the others . . . looked a little less menacing.
Rigo began to breathe with relief, and then the door opened and three women came out. They saw him, and it was road kill all over again. Times three. These women had to be Godiva’s posse. Of course she had a posse. Back in the day, you couldn’t find a more loyal friend—or a more passionate defender.
He wondered what to say without getting them more riled up, then unexpectedly Joey Hu spoke. “Doris . . . Bird . . . Jen. This is Rigo Tzama. I gather he and Godiva have some issues to work out. But he’s also here to help us with Long Cang.”
The female posse looked a little less like they were looking for a solid rope and an oak to hang it from in order to invite him to his own personal necktie party. He said, “And I confess I’m still a mite confused. So, the former Guardian of the West is a red dragon, right?”
“He is,” said Joey Hu.
“But he went renegade, and now wants an Oracle Stone buried under a cliff near here. Except the Oracle Stone ain’t—isn’t really there, or is it?”
Joey glanced around. So did Rigo. The only people in view were busy staring at his pastry-decorated Phantom, and commenting in low voices, as if the car could hear.
Joey lowered his own voice. “The Oracle Stone is still there, but Cang does not know that it’s merely an empty shell—that what it protected is gone.” At that everyone glanced at the taller woman, before Joey went on, “Only we know it. So we still have to defend it until we can round up Cang, and whoever is backing him. Meanwhile . . .” He gave a soft sigh. “We have a new problem.”
“New?” One of the women gave Rigo the fish-eye.
“Me?” Rigo asked, figuring he might as well man up.
“No. Zombies,” said Joey.
“Zombies?”
“Zombies?”
“ZOMBIES?”
That was all three of the women.
Joey turned to the one he’d called Doris, and from the way he smiled, Rigo knew that this was Joey Hu’s mate. Joey said, “Not real zombies. Ah, not that zombies are real,” he corrected hastily.
In spite of the situation—Godiva’s death glare was still reverberating around Rigo’s chest cavity—he felt a spurt of amusement at the women’s expressions of disgust at the word ‘zombies.’
Joey went on, “I told Rigo that another pair of people was found by my student volunteers guarding the Oracle Stone site.”
Doris said, “I thought the ones they found were students who’d been partying too hard?”
“That’s what we all thought,” Joey said. “But this pair this morning were not the sort of people who party. One drives a delivery truck. The other was wearing ER scrubs. I stashed them on the chaise lounges in my yard to sober up before I left to come here. But I just got a call from one of my roaming scouts that they are on the move again.”
The tallest woman—she had to be Nikos’s Jen—said, “When you say zombies, what exactly do you mean?”
“Like,” Doris put in cautiously, “with fingers and ears and things falling off?”
“No,” Joey said, wincing slightly. “It’s more that they act . . .”
His expression shuttered, then he said softly, “Like that.”
All heads turned, Rigo’s included.
A middle-aged man in the sort of blue polyester shirt worn by many truck drivers for distribution companies shuffled dully down the sidewalk, next to a big woman in light green ER scrubs. The hems of her pants were filthy as if she had slopped through gutters, her shoes soggy. The man wore heavy boots and jeans, but they, too, looked stained.
Joey said, “They must have trudged all the way from my place.” With a look Rigo’s way, he added, “About three miles from here.”
“Look at the direction they’re going in,” Jen said. “If they keep going that way, they’ll reach the beach above the palisade. Right above the Oracle Stone cave-in.”
Joey frowned. “Maybe we ought to follow them. See exactly where they end up, and what they do there.”
“I’ll go,” Mikhail said.
Joey waved a hand. “You’re too recognizable. It feels like this should be more of a covert recon mission.”
“You’re too recognizable as well,” Doris pointed out.
Nikos spoke up, his English accented in a way Rigo had never heard before. “I’d volunteer, but I need to get back home.”
Joey said, “Understood.”
Nikos and Jen walked away.
Rigo glanced from them to the pair of shamblers. “Something about that looks familiar. Let me follow them. I did come to help as well as to . . .” He made a gesture, and noticed both the remaining posse followed his hand as he pointed to the bakery. “Fix things. Anyhow, if this is what I think it is, I might actually be able to give you that help.”
Joey said, “Good. Then we’ll take you up on that. The rest of you, more soon’s we know it.”
The group dispersed. Rigo noted doubtful frowns shot in his direction from the two women, then they were gone
around the corner.
Joey put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the Phantom. “That is one handsome automobile.”
“My boy and I rebuilt it,” Rigo said proudly.
“Really a work of art, but I feel obliged to point out that it doesn’t exactly cruise under the radar.”
Rigo chuckled. “I mean to leave it here. Come back for it. These two zombies ain’t exactly hustling. I’ll stroll a couple blocks back of ‘em.” And he began to walk after the pair of shufflers.
To his surprise, Joey fell in step beside him. Rigo said, “Ah, you have my number already, since I called you yesterday to get directions.”
“I know,” Joey said. “I’m about to be really nosy, so I’m going to apologize ahead of time. It is not even remotely my business, but if there’s any way I can help, I’d like to make the offer.”
“Thanks. But judging by the total lack of success of my surprise, it’s clear that I’ve got to let her take the lead. Just like I did back when we were together.” He smiled reminiscently. “There weren’t a dog or cat or kid in that town that didn’t have her as a champion.”
“That sounds like the Godiva we know,” Joey said. “Here’s where I’ll leave you. I don’t want to be seen, either in human or fox form.” He lifted a hand and ducked into a crowd of people going into a supermarket.
Rigo’s targets walked in a straight line, never looking back, even when they crossed streets.
His mind zapped straight back to that bakery, and his first glimpse of Godiva’s face. He’d known her at once, though he’d worried during the long drive about whether or not he’d recognize her. He knew he wasn’t much changed—that was the shifter in him, and basilisks seemed to age even slower than many. She was human, though he’d wondered since how a human form could contain a being that seemed to be part fire and part sprite.
Of course time and age were evident, but not in any way that mattered. She was still a tiny slip of a thing, with passion burning like the Texas sun in her bright black eyes.
Okay, the passion had pretty much all been sheer rage. She still had a right arm on her, tossing that tray. Oh, those hands! He sparked with the memory of her hands on his hips, the promise there, and emotion surged up, the painful weight of realization that the wrong move now would ruin everything. But he was here, walking in the hazy sunlight of this small coastal town as memory hit him with their first time alone together. Though she’d been younger than him, it was she who’d made the first move, brushing her lips across his jaw, then she’d kissed him, her heat rushing into him like a thunderstorm in July.
It was like she’d had a road map to all the pleasure points in his body—places he hadn’t even known were there. They’d communicated without words, fitting together perfectly, so perfectly. . .
He squeezed his eyes shut until stars flickered behind his eyelids. This was not the time! He had to work so hard to tamp those feelings right down again that he almost missed it when the zombies took an abrupt turn.
He caught up quickly, knowing that he had to face the truth: he’d always thought the tough part would be finding her, and that once he did, everything would be easy. Over the years he’d even imagined conversations with her. They’d always ended in her forgiving him, after which they’d immediately gone horizontal and made up for lost time.
He had certainly not expected what he got. And he should have. He knew that now. At least he’d had the sense to meet up with Joey Hu first, though he’d wanted to go straight to her front door. Hell’s afire! He wouldn’t put it past her to have a cannon mounted in her front yard, with his name on it.
The zombie-wannabes took another abrupt turn. Sure enough, as the tall woman, Jen, had suggested, they had a destination.
And that reminded him of something . . . something . . .
Damn. Lost it again. He forced his mind to the present as the zombies trudged through the sand to what looked like a landslide. Not fresh. Rain had smoothed it out, and here and there tufts of weed stuck up. The two marched straight to a gouge in the landslide, an indentation about the size of a car, and began digging. With their hands.
Rigo approached them. “Hey, do you need help?”
Neither reacted. Rigo tried twice more. When the man caught a finger on a rock, scraping the flesh, he just kept digging in spite of a thin trickle of blood. Rigo grabbed one of the man’s arms and pulled him away. “Wake up! You need to bandage that.”
The man’s blank gaze turned toward the hole in the landslide, his free hand making little motions as if it wanted to dig on its own. That creepy sight triggered the memory.
Still holding onto the man, Rigo grabbed his phone with his free hand. “Alejo?”
“Dad! Did you find Mom?”
Rigo winced. “Well, I know where she is. Look, I told you about the Midwest Guardian asking me to offer my aid while I was out here.”
“I remember. Oracle Stone, renegade dragon.”
“Got it. Right now there’s an emergency in slow motion going on, which may be related. Remember some years ago, you told me about some shifters getting hypnotized into making an underground tunnel in a sewer for some kingpin shifter, back in Chi-town?”
Alejo laughed. “Dad, nobody says Chi-town anymore.”
“Okay, okay. Chicago. The thing is, right here beside me I’ve got me a couple of people acting like something took over their brains. Digging.”
“In a sewer?”
“No, it’s a landslide. One of them just cut himself, but he doesn’t seem to notice. That’s what reminded me of that situation. Do you remember what they did to break this compulsion?”
“Yep. What you need is a dog whistle.”
“Dog whistle?”
“That’s how the Chicago shifters got caught in the first place. Most shifters can hear above 40hKz. There’s some frequency that can short our brains, if our hearing is sensitive enough. Catches us midway between our animal and our human selves, freezing us for maybe a heartbeat. Then the bad guys use a specific charm to override will, which makes people do whatever they want. But once the victims fall asleep they break out of it and it has to be done all over again. Or, a really high dog whistle can also break it.”
“Charm,” Rigo repeated. “Got no dog whistle, so I’ll just have to muscle these two out of here before they hurt themselves.”
“Yeah, do that. Some of the shifters down in those sewers got badly banged up, and one almost drowned before people caught on that these weren’t drunks partying too hard, and went after the sleazebag behind it all.”
Rigo definitely wanted to hear more about that—later. “Thanks, son.”
Alejo’s voice flattened. “Gotta run. Call me soon’s you find her!”
“Sure, fejo. We’ll get it straightened out,” Rigo said—then remembered that flying pastry tray, and hoped he wasn’t making a false promise.
Rigo pocketed his phone, and stepped in to grip each of the zombies by the arm. He gently pulled them away from the landslide. Both turned their heads toward the dig site, but they didn’t fight him. He began walking them away, ignoring their feeble attempts to return to digging.
He cast a look around. If Long Cang did have spies watching, there wasn’t a hope of staying anonymous anymore, but that couldn’t be helped. Rigo was not willing to let these people hurt themselves just so he could stay out of sight a little longer. He was here to take down a renegade Guardian, so a takedown was going to happen one way or another.
As he shepherded his shamblers up the walkway to the top of the palisade, he recollected passing by a pet store on one of the side streets. Which street? He slowed to a snail’s pace while keeping a hold on the twitching zombies. Then he caught sight of a dog on a leash being taken inside a store at the other end of a curving street. That had to be the pet store.
A few minutes later (after some puzzled stares from passers-by at his blank-eyed companions), he finally guided them inside the store. Three aisles down, he found what he was looking for. Helping
himself to a dog whistle, he gave a couple of firm blasts.
His basilisk ears caught the shrill whine—somewhere between a mosquito and a laser—and the two zombies turned into a cursing man who clapped his hands over his ears, and a woman who swung a haymaker at his jaw.
Rigo ducked the haymaker, and waited until the truck driver turned a scowl his way. “What—where am I? What happened to my hand?” He gazed in shock at the bleeding scrape.
“Next time you hear any kind of whistle, block it out,” Rigo said, and lowered his voice. “Someone is messing with shifters. Some kind of charm.”
The truck driver’s gaze flickered from side to side, and his anger melted away. “Oh. Uh, okay. Right. Thanks a lot.”
The woman sighed. “I was supposed to be on shift at the hospital five hours ago.” She looked up at Rigo. “Thanks.”
“Spread the word,” Rigo said.
The two took off. Rigo turned away to pay for the whistle, then on second thought helped himself to the entire box. At the cash register, the cheerful young fellow said, “Dog obedience class?”
Not a shifter, Rigo thought. He knew some shifters could tell. He could only sense other mythic shifters. “Something like that.”
He paid, and walked out, reaching for his phone. Joey answered within seconds. Rigo gave a fast report, said he had the bag of dog whistles, then added, “My plan all along was to go up and knock on Godiva’s door. But considering how she reacted today, that might not be a good idea.”
“Definitely not,” Joey agreed, a little too fervently.
Rigo hated the thought that these people he’d never set eyes on before today had known Godiva for a lot longer than he had.
But they hadn’t loved her longer.
Regret had been his faithful companion for decades. So he said, “Got any suggestions?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Joey said. “Meet me for lunch? I’ll text you directions . . .”
Chapter 3
Godiva
Godiva usually walked home from the bakery, to get her aerobics for the day done with. Anger, she had decided years ago, hurt a whole lot less than grief and betrayal. Anger got you moving. Anger got her walking vigorously all the way home without her looking back once.
