Gentleman Takes a Chance (36 page)

"Not that I know. Of course, the other people don't know he's a shifter. Anyone who is not expecting it, and who sees a little old man climb the side of an aquarium and plop inside, and disappear, thinks they're just seeing things, you know. So they talk about him as a ghost. If you go on-line, this aquarium is in Colorado's list of most haunted places. Just because of the old Japanese man. And they've made up all sorts of weird-ass shit about him. You know, that he was eaten by sharks here or some shit like that." He shrugged. "But as far as I know he's never talked to anyone. He just sits there and watches."

"I see," Rafiel said, wondering whether he was being lied to, and if so why.
Professional disinformation,
he thought.
You always wonder if they're lying to you. And if they are, why.
"So . . . did you smell him? The crab shifter? Is that why you know he's not a ghost?"

John Wagner looked startled. "You can't smell them. Not the water ones. Keith Kawamoto says he knows a dolphin one, and he said that, too. They don't smell like the rest of us. Why should they? Their signals will go over water, not air—"

"But—" Rafiel said. "How do you—"

"I've seen him shift. Watched him. I know what that looks like. Don't you?"

"Yeah . . . but . . . he doesn't smell? Of shifter?"

John Wagner shook his head. "And that's what worries me, you know? There could be others, in here." He gestured broadly at the tanks all around. "We'd never know. So . . . how could I find them if I can't smell them?"

"And do you have any idea?" Rafiel asked.

"Oh, sure," Wagner said. "You know, how when you shift you're always dying for a protein snack?"

Rafiel thought of Tom stuffing down pepperoni and cold cuts once, in a convenience store in the middle of Arizona. He thought of himself, dropping into the diner for bacon and eggs in the middle of the night, after a shift. He thought of sharks . . . "You mean?" he said, his voice sounding thick and queasy to his own ears. "You mean the sharks?"

John Wagner nodded. "Oh, yes," he said. "The sharks. And you know . . ." He shrugged. "Ah, hell. You grow up with legends about this stuff, you know? In Hawaii it's the beautiful girl who goes swimming with you at night and becomes a shark." He frowned slightly. "One of my college profs said it was a gynophobic fantasy like the vagina dentata. Dumb ass."

Rafiel, not sure he got the point, cleared his throat. "A girl," he said, "who turns into a shark. A girl from Hawaii? Like Lei Lani?"

Wagner shrugged. "Eh. Don't quote me on that. I have nothing against Lei. She's okay by me. Pretty easy on the eye too. Besides, I'm not too sure she's from Hawaii."

"What do you mean you're not too sure? I thought she was interning here, from the aquarium there or something?"

"Heard something like that too. 'Course, I didn't look at her resume or anything, you know. But . . ."

"But?"

"But I, well . . . At the end of the day I told her, you know,
Eh tita, pau hana
?"

"You told her tit what?" Rafiel asked, flabbergasted.

"Exactly. And she said just that. And she thought I was getting fresh or something . . ." He frowned. "And no Hawaiian girl would. That phrase is . . . eh . . . 
so, strong sister, quitting time?
Tita
is . . . a strong woman. When a Hawaiian
tita
comes after you, you run. Very strong personality. But she didn't get that at all. And anyone from Hawaii would
know.
" He paused. "And she didn't know
tako
is a squid. And . . ." He shook his head. "She's just not right."

Kyrie saw him hanging around, outside the door. Dire. He was wearing a dark suit, and he was smoking, outside, pacing between the door and the side of the enclosure, where the diner had been expanded over what, in pictures from the thirties, had once been a covered porch.

She wondered if he was pacing out there because he, thanks to the latest Colorado laws, couldn't smoke inside. Or if he was pacing out there because he didn't want to come in.

She followed his movements with her gaze—watching the dark silhouette, the trail of red cigarette end. He looked nervous in his pacing, she thought as she wiped down a just-vacated table. Or perhaps he looked like a predator about to pounce. She'd gone to the zoo once, when she was about five, with the family she was staying with at the time. She remembered they had the tigers in altogether too-flimsy-looking enclosures. And she remembered a particularly large tiger pacing like that, while staring at her, as if she were next on his list of minimum daily requirement. Fifty pounds of skinny little girl. That was what Dante Dire's movement reminded her of, and she could feel his gaze almost burn through the window at her.

She looked over, as she took the tray back. Tom was cooking, his back turned. She was fairly sure he hadn't seen Dire. If he had, he'd say something.

And there was tension in each of Tom's muscles, in each of his movements. She wondered what he was thinking about. The murders? The newspaper article? The problems with Dante Dire? Or the semi-eternal, nearly all-powerful dragon who claimed ownership and full control of Tom, simply because Tom had been born with the ability to shift into a dragon.

She watched Tom flip a burger, and then he turned around to look at her. He raised an eyebrow, enquiringly. "Yes?"

"Nothing," she said, blushing a little, and disguising it by setting down the tray and ducking behind the counter to set the carafe back in its place so it could refill. "Nothing. I was just thinking that . . . as bad as things are, I don't want to lose this. I don't want to let this go. This is . . . what . . . us . . . our place. The George. It's . . ." She looked at him and was met with what looked like incomprehension, and blushed again. "It's the only home I've ever had," she said.

He looked blank a moment longer, and she realized, suddenly, that it wasn't incomprehension. It was Tom controlling his expressions and his emotions. Perhaps he thought she'd seen his naked emotions too often? Perhaps he thought she had come to his rescue once too often? Perhaps . . . 

Or perhaps this was beyond thought and feeling. Perhaps it was just what men did. They didn't melt into tears at every turn. They didn't want women to feel they had to hold their hands and protect them. Kyrie saw it with sudden, distinct clarity. Oh, perhaps, in this age of the sensitive male, it was an ideal honored most often in the breach, but Kyrie could see it. From the earliest times of mankind, men had protected women, right? Women had been weaker, or at least more vulnerable while pregnant. It was a physical thing. For women, security and reproductive success had depended on having someone big and strong to protect them. But that meant that women often had to hold the someone big and strong together emotionally. And it meant that the someone big and strong didn't want to appear emotional to a prospective mate.

Tom swallowed. He managed to look perfectly impassive, but unbent a little as he said, "I know. I know. Me too. I don't want to lose this. But I keep thinking, and I don't know what to do. I can't . . . Kyrie, I can't ask the Great . . . I can't ask the creature to protect us. And I don't care if that's what he thought he was doing when he sent Conan to us. If we accept . . . if we ask his help . . . I'll never be able to call my own soul my own." He frowned and spoke, urgently, in what was little more than a whisper. "It would be the same as admitting I belong to him. If I'm his to protect, I'm his to order around."

"Yeah," Kyrie said. "Yeah. We'll think of something." She was thinking of something. She was thinking that if anything was going to be done about Dire, she would have to do it, and that she wasn't going to be able to tell Tom about it.

Oh, she could get angry about it. She could talk about stupid male pride. But what would it accomplish? She could see that he couldn't ask for help in this, not without bartering his—for lack of a better word—soul in the bargain. She wasn't even sure it was a male thing, but she was sure the male thing complicated it. Tom had to feel that he could defend home and woman. That much was obvious. He could not trade down on it.

"I'm going to take a break," she said. "For a moment. Conan has the tables and there's not that much."

"Okay," Tom said, and turned back towards the stove. Which, by itself, was a mark of his being worried, concerned, not thinking straight. Because, normally, he would have glanced back to make sure that Conan did have the tables and that the work wasn't overwhelming him. Kyrie didn't think it was. Maybe when Conan was starting, but this was his third night. His third night. Seemed like a month, at least.

She went by Conan on the way out, asked him to cover her tables. At the very least, she thought, she had to go out there and get rid of Dire before Tom saw him. Tom was tense enough already and not much could be gained from making him even more nervous.

She slipped out the front door, and only as the cold air outside hit her, did she think that Dire could kill her, out here, and perhaps make sure no one could see. But then again, she thought, that was one of those things she couldn't control, wasn't it? If he was going to kill her and mind-control people not to see her—as he would have to on a public street which, even in this snow day, had traffic, albeit foot traffic—then he could do it in the diner too. Or in her house. Or at the bed-and-breakfast. There was no safe place.

And if there was no safe place, there was no reason to be especially afraid of any place. She took a deep breath and looked up. Straight into Dire's eyes.

He smiled at her, a slow, welcome smile, and took a drag of his cigarette. "Hello, Kitten," he said, very softly, as though he were an older man, flirting with a younger girl in a cheesy movie from the seventies.

Kyrie felt a finger of unease crawl, coldly, up her spine. But he only smiled at her, a broader smile at what must have been her momentary, pinched look.

"You shouldn't be here," she said. "I mean, outside here. It will make our customers nervous to see someone roaming around outside, I mean . . ." She faltered. She couldn't explain why it would make the customers nervous. There was something, of course, to his step, to his look, that indicated he was on the prowl, that he was dangerous. But would normal people know that? Or did she see it, because she feared it?

"I'm not going to eat your customers, Kitten," he said, amused. He glanced at the diner then across the street, at the other, closed buildings. Down the block and across the street, white Christmas lights swung forlornly from the front of the hastily closed used bookstore. They normally turned them off when they left for the day, but they'd forgotten.

For some reason, those swaying lights were one of the saddest images Kyrie had ever seen. Dire lingered on them, then looked back at her. "To quote Bette Davis," he said, and smiled a little. "What a dump." He threw his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. "What's a girl like you doing in a joint like this?"

She tightened her lips, mentally willing Tom not to look outside. She maneuvered, slightly, so that they were in the blind spot between the door to The George and the side enclosure. "In case you haven't noticed," she said, "I own the dump. Or at least half of it."

"Ah, yes, the diner named after the dragon slayer. Your boytoy has a weird sense of humor, doesn't he?" He looked at Kyrie. "Was he bragging that he kills other shifters? Was he actually proud of this?"

Kyrie thought of the painting of St. George and the dragon that Tom had hung over the back corner booth on the day they'd taken possession of The George. She remembered his words, "Because we have to be both the beast and the slayer."

She knew what Dire's opinions on this would be, and she'd be damned if she was going to give Tom up to some sort of insane punishment. She shrugged. "He has an odd sense of humor," she said.

"Ah. I see. Loyal." Dire said, and frowned slightly. "But I have a problem, you see? I was given a mission. As I told you and your friends, I'm sort of like a policeman, except the law I operate by is only the law of our own people. We don't"—he looked around with distaste—"recognize ephemeral law. But our law is nonetheless enforceable for applying only to us, and I'm the one sent to enforce it." He grinned, suddenly. "In other words, Kitten, I must find someone who is guilty. And I must deliver him to them. I was thinking your boyfriend might serve. But Daddy Dragon would get upset, and he can be a total bastard when he's pissed. So it would be better if it were that nice policeman."

"The—" Kyrie felt anger rise in her, and tried to keep it down. Getting furious at someone much more powerful than her wouldn't solve anything and it certainly wouldn't help anything. "What do you mean deliver him to them?"

"As the guilty one, you know?" Dire said, clearly unaware of the storm of emotions she was feeling. "I must find the guilty party, but they are not here, and they'll never know if it's the real guilty party, if you know what I mean. I could tell them it was." He shrugged. "So, your boyfriend or the policeman?"

"What?" she asked. And then the anger grabbed her. She glared at the ancient—and amoral—creature. "I don't think so. Not Tom. You wouldn't dare. Not Rafiel. Not even Conan. No. None of them is guilty. Not one. No."

"Well," he said, completely unconcerned by the rising tone of her voice. "It would be easier if it's not the dragons. Though if I told the Ancient Ones that it's the dragon boy, your boyfriend, they couldn't do anything, anyway, and . . ." He shrugged. "He might have to run away, true, because some of our members are less than sane and might want to strike anyway. But I would never. There's the daddy dragon. There's a treaty of sorts between our kinds. And I'm not stupid."

He shook his head. "No, I'm not stupid at all. I'm fine with telling them it was him, but he'd have to run, and if they came here and got you by accident . . . well . . . that would be a waste, wouldn't it?"

His gaze traveled lazily up and down her figure. "Wouldn't it? So, how about this? We work together. We pick a likely guilty party. Or a fall guy. It's all the same to me. I've asked enough, and I've gone to the site, and what I think happened is that these shifters were killing other shifters to serve their purposes." He shrugged. "This happens, right? It's one of the ways in which our kind can be very stupid. And why not everyone lives to be a full adult shifter. But then . . . then you came on the scene. And you played heroes. Okay. You're allowed to be heroes, I suppose. And they
were
preying on shifters. But then you killed a lot of innocent young ones. I'm not sure how it happened. Self-defense, or perhaps accidentally. I'm not going to ask. I'm just going to tell you that death on that order of magnitude requires a culprit, and I'll have to find one."