by Zoe Chant
Godiva hesitated, remembering that her army of women didn’t know about those.
“Welp, time to scoot,” Godiva said, as Mattie drew breath. “Thanks for helping out!”
Mattie blinked a couple times at this abrupt departure, but called cheerily, “Always glad to clean up the community,” as Godiva hustled away and poked Doris’s number on speed dial.
As soon as Doris answered, Godiva said urgently, “Zombies at two o’clock, heading toward Avenida dos Santos.”
Doris’s phone made the squishy noises that meant she was bobbling it while doing something else, then she said, “More zombies? Thanks, Godiva. I don’t know who I can send. Any chance you can duck into the pet store and get a dog whis—that’s right, I forgot. They all got bought out. Never mind . . .”
Godiva barely recognized Doris’s voice, it was so flat and intense. The fun of the situation vanished. Doris was normally so unflappable, after years of wrangling high school students, that her tension now sent alarm zinging through Godiva. “Doris, what’s wrong?”
Doris sighed, a hissing sound. “They played us, Godiva—” She paused, then said, obviously to someone else, “Another pair just reported nearing Avenida dos Santos. Who’s left to send? I’d better go myself . . .”
Godiva realized Doris was way too busy to chat. She rang off, and turned toward the bakery, punching Rigo’s phone number.
But he didn’t answer.
Now really alarmed, she picked up her pace, bewildered at how a person could go from glee to terror in ten seconds flat. Be sensible, she told herself. He could have left his phone in a restroom or something. But deep underneath she knew he was in danger.
No, no, no, not when she just found him again . . .
Wishing she’d thought to bring her cane, she hustled faster.
Chapter 18
RIGO
When Godiva left for her assignment, he watched her go, relishing her delight in this covert operation. The mate bond gleamed in his mind, bright with her glee.
“I’m so glad you two worked things out,” Jen said.
He turned as she joined him by the window, out of the way of actual customers coming and going. Jen sipped at her herbal tea, and grimaced slightly.
“Thanks,” he responded, unsure where to go next.
She dipped her head toward the door, then said in an undervoice, “You should probably know that Joey Hu hears a lot more than most do. Even me.” She tapped the side of her head significantly.
Rigo looked around before speaking. Everyone was talking to someone else. He said, “So it wasn’t all that random, him bringing up Godiva’s name when I first contacted him?”
She shrugged a shoulder, sipped, grimaced slightly again, then murmured, “Don’t know. Only that he’s very, very sensitive to mates. Potential mates. Broken mate bonds. He tries to fix the ones that can be fixed. Yours was a tough case as the bond was thinner than a thread. All coming from your direction. We didn’t know if that was a bad thing or a good thing.”
A lot became clearer to him then, and gratitude filled him.
She went on, “Bird and Mikhail thought that it might be better to wait to tell Godiva about Joey’s ability. Let her get used to the shifter world first. But Joey felt that you had to be the one to decide that.”
He was about to thank her, but the words fled from his brain when there was another crash behind them. Mikhail staggered back against a table, sending dishes rattling and one mug falling to the tile floor. Nikos sank slowly into a chair in the opposite corner, his head in his hands.
Joey Hu and two other people Rigo did not know also sat, strangely silent, their faces an unpleasant gray tinged with green.
Rigo followed Jen, who was rushing to Nikos’s side. He said to Jen worriedly, “It’s seven. Aren’t Mikhail and Nikos supposed to be in the air?”
“Yes,” Jen muttered, as Nikos put his head in his hands.
Jen turned to Doris, who was talking urgently on her phone while unhappily eyeing Joey.
“Doris?” Jen said. “What happened?”
Doris held out a hand, talked rapidly into her phone before turning it off. “More zombies on the move,” she said tersely. “When did I ever think zombie was a funny word? Cang’s gang seems to have spent the entire night charming random people. But at least Godiva’s women are so far batting a thousand.”
Jen said, “Okay, but what happened here?” She opened her hand toward Joey, Mikhail, and Nikos.
Joey said weakly, “Shiftsilver.”
“What?” Doris gasped.
Joey closed his eyes as if gathering strength, but before he could speak, Mikhail straightened up with an effort that Rigo could feel. He looked around, and seemed to recognize everyone in the bakery. The owner was still in the back, making more coffee.
Joey visibly gathered his strength to say hoarsely, “The pastries. Were dusted with shiftsilver powder. Probably while the other person. Was knocking over the coffee. And the dishes.”
Everyone looked at each other. Doris said, “Then they were here.”
Mikhail said tightly, “We still have to get to the palisade. But . . .” He pressed a hand to his head.
Jen set down her tea. “I’ll do the flyover.”
Doris shook her head. “You’re queasy. You can’t fly on an upset stomach.”
“It’s mild,” Jen said—then hiccoughed.
Rigo stepped past Jen. “I’m here as backup. Seems to me that this here situation is one that calls for backup. Let me go. I even know where that palisade is, as the first pair of shamblers I followed went straight to it, and I’ve flown over it a few times.”
Mikhail’s gray face eased a bit, and Joey Hu let out a sigh of relief. He lifted a hand toward Rigo and Jen, clearly too ill to speak if he didn’t have to.
Jen grinned at Rigo. “Come on. Let’s do it. Who knows, maybe being my phoenix will get rid of the morning queasiness.”
Rigo felt the impulse to call Godiva, then reminded himself that she was undercover—and she tended to use her phone with the speakers on. Anyway, she’d be busy for the next few minutes. “Lead the way,” he said.
They walked out. Jen said, low-voiced, “In case we see trouble. My power is a spurt of sunlight in fire form. It burns out fast, so I don’t want to use it if I don’t have to. Other than that my phoenix isn’t a fighter. Not the way I am as a human.”
“I’m a basilisk,” he said. “I can fight.”
Jen gave a single nod. “Then how about I be lookout?”
“Let’s go,” he said.
She didn’t waste any time beyond that. They turned a corner, into a narrow driveway leading to the alley behind the bakery and its adjacent businesses. She swept a look around, then leaped into the air, turning in a golden flash to a phoenix. Rigo shifted into his basilisk and with two beats of his wings caught up with her—then shot past, straight up into the air.
So far his patrol flights had produced nothing whatsoever, so he expected the same as he began sweeping his eyes over the town below.
So he was completely unprepared for Jen’s mental cry, Look out above!
Rigo turned his eye upward, to where a huge red dragon arrowed down from high in the sky, dropping to the attack.
So this was what Cang had been planning, Rigo saw between one heartbeat and the next. All those zombies below, even the super-strength charm—it was all deflection, intended to draw Joey Hu’s army into a defensive desperation while the mythic shifters were prevented from taking their powerful form, so that Cang could pick them off from above while they were suitably weakened.
Cang’s got no backup! Jen’s voice reached Rigo’s inner ear. He’d experienced shifter mind speech once or twice. It was always startling.
He began climbing with powerful strokes of his wings as he carefully formed a thought: Wants the fun of taking everyone out himself. Or maybe he’s too arrogant to let anyone help. I’ll show him how wrong he was—
Cang was on him.
&nbs
p; Was almost on him. Rigo flipped up one wing, whipped his tail, and Cang shot past.
One thing he’d learned early when finding his basilisk in trouble, don’t let the enemy get the drop on you.
He skimmed high over the water, racing out to sea to lure Cang away from Jen, and at the last second, flipped his wing up and did a barrel-roll as Cang tried again to dive-bomb him. Cang’s velocity buffeted him, he was that close. The red dragon whipped around, furious—
And that’s when Rigo landed on his back, claws extended.
One claw ripped into the red dragon’s back, but Cang snapped his tail around in a lethal arc and struck Rigo spinning.
He pulled his wings in tight to let gravity add to his own velocity, then snapped them out, banking hard as the wind screamed past him. Then he pulled them in again as he arrowed at the dragon, hissing through the air, eyes locked on the dragon’s face.
But Cang kept his gaze averted as he whirled in for another try at Rigo. Bank. Flip. The dragon’s own tremendous length worked against him, and this time Rigo snapped beak and claws out. He got in a hard bite behind Cang’s head, and scored deep scratches through the dragon’s scales before the long tail once again came around.
But Rigo knew it was coming.
He eluded the strike, whipping his own much shorter tail around to smash against a loop of dragon, the sharp protrusions slicing before the dragon snapped free.
By now the dragon had lost all his extra speed from his overhead dive. He was still formidable—deadly, if he got his body around Rigo to crush him.
Rigo took a split second to check on Jen, who had flown lower. Rigo saw shapes rising from below. These had to be flying shifters mentally summoned by Cang, but they would have to get past Jen, who flew close to the first, and sent out a beam of light, no more than a glint.
The minion—an eagle—let out a shriek and spiraled down, tail feathers singed. Followed by another, then a third. Rigo banked, wheeling. He trusted Jen to keep the minions off his back.
This was his duel.
Cang came at Rigo again. Sweep, strike. Swoop, dive. Rigo fought to get at least one claw into the dragon, as the dragon fought to get his long, snapping body around Rigo.
It was a lethal dance of attack and evasion. Rigo had to concentrate everything he had on the fight, leaving Jen to handle Cang’s reinforcements. He kept his hot gaze on the dragon. It would take only an instant.
But the dragon’s head lashed back and forth, avoiding Rigo’s gaze. Rigo fought on, sensing an internal pressure building in his head at the effort to sustain his laser vision. His fights had never lasted this long—basilisks were strongest at quick strikes. He was vaguely aware that the battle had taken them over the land again, though he’d meant to keep them far out to sea.
What now? His head panged sharply. The dragon was trying to get at his thoughts, or someone was, at his command.
Rigo snapped at the dragon, ripping claws under his belly as Cang twisted away. No. Keep the red dragon from flying over land, which would endanger living beings below . . . among them his—
And the home instinct reached for his mate—
MATE, Cang’s thought battered Rigo’s mind. AH, THERE.
Chapter 19
GODIVA
A block away from the bakery, Godiva saw a couple of running figures. Had they come from the bakery? She peered in the direction where they were heading, and a flicker overhead caught her attention.
She looked up, and cold horror surged through her.
A silvery-gold basilisk with elegant overlapping armor plating fought against a blood red eel-shaped dragon that was at least four times the basilisk’s length.
“Rigo,” Godiva whispered, and began to walk faster, ignoring the twinge in her hip, and the echoing twinge in her knee.
Well, Godiva, what can you do against that thing? was her exasperated thought. She had no answer, except the utter conviction that she had to be there. She was not going to stand by while the man she had regained, after so many years of silence and misunderstanding, was taken away again.
As she rounded a corner, she caught sight of two more people zombie-shuffling toward the end of the street, which abutted onto the palisades above the shoreline. And when she reached the guardrail that kept cars from driving onto the rocky expanse, she saw another pair, and another, mumbling along from other streets dead-ending against the shoreline. And not far away, the yellow tape and traffic cones marking off the palisade over the Oracle Stone site. Everybody was heading there.
Before she stepped over the low guardrail, she glanced back at the street. People were busy walking along, driving, talking, texting, but nobody seemed to be aware of the battle between two mythic creatures overhead.
So the mate bond made mythic shifters visible. What to do now?
She stepped over the guardrail, and with no buildings blocking her view, she saw a brilliant golden shape arrowing low across the beach, driving away a flock of various birds. Some of them very big. Hadn’t she seen that golden bird with the long tail feathers—Jen!
“That wasn’t in the plan,” Godiva muttered.
Which meant one thing. The plan had gone sideways.
She was forced to slow over the uneven ground, corrugated by wind, weather, and the occasional quake. Her knee twanged at every step, but she ignored it, and pulled out her phone to punch Doris’s number again.
This time Doris didn’t answer.
“Something’s definitely gone south,” Godiva whispered under her breath, just as she got close enough to recognize Joey Hu among those converging on the police taped area. Already most of the traffic cones had been kicked down, the useless yellow tape fluttering in the breeze as muscular guys formed up menacingly. Godiva saw her spritz target elbow through the crowd. The Cang gang was rallying.
But so were Joey’s people. Several of them ran about with dog whistles, blowing until they were purple-faced as they turned the shamblers into a crowd of bewildered, annoyed people adding to the confusion.
A gap in the crowd revealed Mikhail, who had a cane with him. His face looked strained even at this distance, sort of a grayish pale, but he stood up straight, grasped his cane—and drew a sword from it with a metallic zing! Nikos emerged from behind a clump of people and took up a martial arts stance.
The forming Cang gang faded back a couple steps.
“No super strength?” Godiva gloated, as Mattie’s target appeared among the Cang team. She kicked someone from the back, sending the guy sprawling. The woman spat her cigarette onto the ground as she joined Red, and began screaming at the Cang people, urging them with violent gestures to attack Joey and Mikhail.
The closest Godiva had ever gotten to gang fights was watching West Side Story on stage, but it really looked like there was going to be a nasty one here. Everyone seemed to be yelling at everyone else to go first, or lead the way, toward Joey, Nikos, and Mikhail at the front of their group. But a lot of the Cang gang seemed to be wary of the three men, and others watched Jen flying low, back and forth, above the breakers.
Godiva forced her attention away. She would be no help to anyone there. Any of those Cang people, even denied the charm that gave them super strength, could squish her like a bug without half trying. They were much taller than her, and probably twice her weight.
How could she help Rigo? She glanced skyward, peering against the bright sun behind the madly writhing dragon, and Rigo’s silver form darting, swooping, slashing.
What to do? What to do? She looked around, agonized. Some stared upward, fascinated by the duel in the sky. These had to be shifters, if they were able to see Rigo and that evil red dragon. Some watched the opposite group as they readied fists and some hastily snatched up sticks and other weapons.
Cang.
Godiva peered upward again, her eyes tearing from the sunlight. Whoa. Rigo’s gorgeous basilisk, and the evil red dragon, were a whole lot closer—almost overhead, maybe two hundred feet up. She couldn’t take her eyes away fro
m Rigo, whose claws, beak, and tail slashed at the incredibly long dragon, his wings kiting him this way, that, keeping him out of the dragon’s reach.
The two drifted closer and closer. Godiva could see dark splatters on Rigo’s scales. Was that blood? She froze, head tipped back as the battle raged a hundred feet overhead, then fifty. The dragon’s head moved back and forth over the two groups below, as if he was searching for something, besides avoiding Rigo’s eyes.
Suddenly everything in the world stopped. Between one blink and another the red dragon disappeared, and a tall man in a long black duster appeared right in front of Godiva.
His long curly hair stuck damply to his forehead as he gave her a nasty grin. “And here’s the mate,” he growled—as overhead, Rigo dove down.
Instinct prompted Godiva to run. But the man was faster. He got an arm around her ribs, pinning one arm painfully to her side. He squeezed hard, and the next thing she knew, her feet left the ground.
As she stared in disbelief, her shoulder bag slid off her free arm, and tumbled down, spilling on the sand. Godiva blinked, realizing that the arm around her waist was now thick, scaled in crimson. Her sandaled feet dangled in the air as the ground shrank below her.
Godiva’s frantic mind worked rapidly. How did Cang find out that she and Rigo were mates. . .
No. Right now that didn’t matter.
She gritted her teeth. She’d written enough mysteries to know how this was supposed to go—surely Rule Two in the Villains’ Playbook was to use your enemy’s loved ones against you.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she snarled as the wind whipped her words away.
The enormous dragon head had been watching Rigo, but at the sound of her ex-waitress parrot squawk of a voice, Cang turned toward her, long whiskers rippling in the wind. The huge eyes fixed on her—and her free hand brought up the only weapon she had, the spritzer bottle.
