Night Shifters (34 page)
Authors: Sarah A. Hoyt
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Contemporary, #Urban
“Many things. But most of all he seemed to be concerned with where you were, and I couldn’t have helped him even if I wanted to.”
Tom nodded. “And?”
“And I realized he was working for the triad and I was so shocked that I . . . I left.”
“Good,” Tom said, and picked up the phone again. “Now, where should we go to that Rafiel can meet us?”
“Tom,” Kyrie said, speaking in a low voice because she felt as though Tom were something very unstable on the verge of an explosion. Should not be shaken, stirred, or even looked at cross-eyed, as far as she could tell. “Your father has a hotel room. At the Spurs and Lace.”
She expected the silence, and it came, but then she expected a flip remark, and that didn’t come. Instead, Tom’s face seemed set in stone, his eyebrows slightly pulled together as if he were puzzled, his face expressionless, his eyes giving the impression of being so unreadable that they might as well have a blind pulled down in front of them.
“He said to call him if we needed anything.”
“Kyrie,” Tom said. It was a slow, even voice. “Are you out of your mind?”
“No.” She was prepared to be firm. It was the best solution, and yes, she realized it would disturb Tom, but she was determined to keep them safe. By force if needed. “No. I’m not. He said to call him, and we can meet him at the Spurs and Lace. Our names won’t be on the register and I don’t think anyone will think that he and you will be under the same roof.”
“And there are reasons for that,” Tom said, his voice still even. “Kyrie, he’s working for the triad.”
“No, he’s not. He realized that they wanted to . . . kill you. And he came to me. He wanted me to save you.”
“No. That might have been what he said. But he was just trying to find me, to—”
“Tom, I am not an idiot,” Kyrie said, and saw something flicker in his eyes and for just a moment thought that Tom was going to tell her she was. But he didn’t say anything, and she went on. “I saw what he was doing first, but he changed. He said that he didn’t want you dead. He came to the Athens in the middle of the night, looking like the walking dead. And he begged me to help him.”
“Kyrie. He’s a lawyer. Lawyers lie. It’s right in the contract.”
She shook her head. “He wasn’t lying.”
“No? How not? What sign did he give you of his amazing turnaround, Kyrie? Tell me. Maybe it will convince me. I know the bastard far better than you do.” He left the phone resting on his knees and crossed his arms on his chest, in a clear body-language sign that like hell he’d listen.
“If he shifts into a dragon in the car, I’m jumping out,” Keith said, quietly, from the back.
Kyrie ignored Keith. “I know he’s changed in his view of it, because he tried to convince me how bad you are.”
Tom’s eyes widened. “All right, Kyrie. I was the one who was hit on the head, but you seem to be the one affected by it. He’s always said how bad I was.”
“No,” Kyrie said, and shook her head. “Not like this. He stopped just short of saying you botched your spelling bee in third grade. Your father, Tom, realized suddenly that he messed up big with you. And he’s trying to justify it to himself by telling someone in increasingly more ridiculous terms how nasty a person you are.”
Tom didn’t answer. He was biting the corner of his lower lip.
“Look—I—” She stopped short of telling him she had done the same. Just. “I tend to do what he was doing, so I understand the process. Besides, when I told him you were safe, when Rafiel called, he went all slack. I’ve never seen someone so relieved.”
“Okay, so maybe he didn’t want me to die. Maybe he was relieved at that. Doesn’t mean he won’t change his mind again when he actually sees me.”
“I don’t think so,” Kyrie said. “I don’t think he will. And Tom, we could use his room. I’m indentured for the next six months, you can’t have that much money. We’d have to get Rafiel to pay for it. I’d . . . I’d rather not.” The last thing she wanted to tell Tom was that Rafiel had kissed her. Oh, Tom had no reason at all for jealousy, nor did she know if she had any interest in Tom’s kissing her—Okay. So, she had to stop lying to herself, she thought again, looking at his face— Yeah, she wanted to kiss him. She just wasn’t sure where it would go and
that
she wasn’t sure if she wanted. But Tom had no reason for jealousy and she doubted he would have any, but she would still prefer not to tell him about it.
“Kyrie, I don’t believe in big turnarounds. I don’t believe people change that much.”
Oh, she was going to hate to have to say this. “I don’t believe it either, Tom, but . . . You’re no longer a hard-core drug user who would steal cars for joyrides without a second thought, are you? So there must be change.”
Tom’s mouth dropped open. For a moment she thought he was going to ask her to stop the car so he could get out. His hand actually moved toward the door handle. And then he seemed to realize she wasn’t insulting him. The meaning of her words seemed to actually penetrate through his thick head.
He took a deep breath and held the phone out to her. “You call Daddy Dearest.”
It would have been easiest to tell him she was driving and couldn’t, but Kyrie was aware of the victory this represented. So, instead, she pulled over into a vacant parking space on the side of Polk Street and grabbed the phone. Pulling Edward’s number from her purse, she dialed.
The phone rang, and she asked for the room number from the bored-sounding receptionist. Then his bedroom phone rang. Once, twice, three, four times. She expected the message to come on, when the phone was picked up, and clearly dropped, and picked up again.
“Hello,” a sleepy male voice said from the other side.
“Mr. Ormson?” Kyrie said.
“Kyrie.” The name came out with force, as though it would be more effort to keep it in. “Tom. Is Tom all right? Anything wrong with—”
“No. Tom is right here. He’s fine. We were wondering if we could camp in your hotel room for a few hours.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Tom and I, and a couple of friends. We’re . . . in danger from . . . your friends and . . . other people. We wondered if we could hide there till we find a plan of action.”
There was a silence from the other side. And then a voice that sounded as if he didn’t quite know what he was saying. “Sure, of course. Sure.” A small pause. “And Tom is with you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” A deep breath, the sound of it audible even through the phone. “Sure. Of course. Anything you need.”
“Thank you,” Kyrie said and hung up the phone. She handed the phone to Tom and said, “Call Rafiel.”
“Daddy Dearest is even now calling the triad bosses,” Tom said. His mouth set in an expression of petulant disdain. “They’ll be there when we get there.”
“I doubt it,” Kyrie said.
“And if they are, we fight them,” Keith said, leaning forward.
Okay, so being “scared” didn’t even begin to describe the state of Tom’s emotions as they pulled into the parking lot of the Spurs and Lace.
The problem wasn’t being scared. He was used to being scared at this point. In the last three days, he’d been scared so often that he thought he wouldn’t actually know what to do if he weren’t in fear of someone or something. But this time he didn’t even know what he was scared of.
Okay—so, if the triad members were there, Keith was right. They fought. And if Tom had to sacrifice himself so Kyrie and Keith got out of this unscathed, he would do so. He’d been prepared to do it before, in the abandoned gas station. So, why not now?
So . . . that wasn’t the big source of his fear. The big source of his fear was that his father would be there, without the triad, and that all would be seemingly nice between them. He couldn’t imagine talking to his father as if nothing had happened, as if . . . Worse, he couldn’t imagine his father talking to him like that. But he’d been worried about Tom. Tom couldn’t understand that either.
He settled for thinking that his father had been exchanged by aliens. It didn’t make much sense and it wasn’t very likely, but heck, what around here was likely? He’d just think that this was pod-father, and with pod-father, he had no history.
He got out of the car, and followed Kyrie and Keith up to the elevator and up in the elevator to the room, only slightly gratified by the puzzled looks the staff gave him. Up at the fifth floor, they walked along the cool, carpeted hallway toward room 550.
Tom took in the trays with used dishes at the door to the rooms, and the general atmosphere of quiet. There were no detectable odors in the air. Down the hallway, an ice machine hummed and clunked.
The classiest place he’d been in before this was Motel Six. Oh, he supposed he’d been in hotels as a child. In fact, he had vague memories of a trip to Rome with mother and father and, of course, his nanny, when he was ten. But most of the stuff before he’d left home now seemed to him like scenes from someone else’s life.
And perhaps that was the best way to think about it. The Tom who’d been ordered at gunpoint from his childhood home was dead and gone. This new Tom was a stranger to the man in the room.
But when Kyrie knocked, the door was open by a man who looked far too much like the father Tom remembered for Tom not to take a step back, shocked—even as his father’s gaze scanned him indifferently once, before returning, and then his eyes opened wider, and he opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again in silence and, instead, stepped aside to let them in.
He was wearing the pants and a shirt for the type of suit that Tom remembered his father wearing—fabric good enough to look expensive without looking ostentatious. But this one looked like hell—or like he’d been sleeping in it. His hair too, was piled up in a way that suggested a total disregard for combs.
But the strangest thing was that, as he stepped aside, so they could enter the room, Tom’s father stared intently at Tom.
Tom let his gaze wonder around the room, instead. It was . . . dark red. And opulent. There was a dark red bedspread on the bed and from its sheen it might have been real silk. Someone had pulled it up hastily and a bit crookedly, so Tom’s father had probably been in bed when they called, and had tried to make the bed in a hurry. Tom felt a strange satisfaction about this. To his knowledge, it was the first time his father had engaged in housekeeping for Tom’s benefit.
Besides the bed, there were a loveseat and three armchairs and two chairs, a huge desk, where his father had a laptop, resting. And a lot more empty space than there should be in a room with all that furniture.
Over the bed was an abstract collage that brought the art form completely out of the realm of nutty Seventies fads—a thing in deep textures and gold and bronze colors.
The bathroom, glimpsed as Tom was going past, was all marble and actually two rooms, the first of which contained just a sink with a hair dryer and various other essentials of toiletry. Tom ached for a shower with an almost physical pain, but he went in to the bedroom, quietly.
“Mr. Ormson,” Kyrie said. “Thanks for letting us come in at such short notice.”
He shook his head. “No problem. Make use of . . . whatever you want. Tom? Are you . . . There’s blood on you.”
Tom shook his head. “I’m fine.” And then, as though betraying that he wasn’t, he walked over to the most distant armchair and sat down, as far away from his father as he could get.
His father frowned at him a moment, but didn’t say anything.
“I wonder if Rafiel is going to be much longer,” Tom said, pretending not to feel the weight of that gaze on him.
Keith sat down on one of the straight-backed chairs, and Kyrie, after some hesitation, took the armchair next to Tom’s.
She looked at him, too, but her gaze was not full of disapproving enquiry. Unlike his father’s expression, Kyrie’s was warm and full of sympathy.
He wanted to smile at her, to pat her hand. But just because the woman didn’t want him dead; just because the woman didn’t think he was dangerous or a criminal, it didn’t mean that she had any interest whatsoever in him.
So instead, he fidgeted in the chair and looked out of the window into the parking lot. But he kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She looked good enough to eat—and not in the sense he’d threatened to eat tourists. That cinnamon skin, those heavy-lidded eyes. He looked away. If he allowed himself to contemplate the perfection of her lips, or the way her breasts—one of which he remembered with particular fondness—pushed out her T-shirt, he wouldn’t be able to answer for his actions.
Instead, he looked again, at her tapestry-dyed hair, falling in lustrous layers. And he remembered he had something of hers.
Digging frantically in his jacket pocket, he brought it out. He saw her eyes widen, and her smile appear, as he offered her the earring on his palm.
“You found it,” she said.
“My landlady did,” he said. “And I took it. I was hoping . . . I was hoping I would see you again, to be able to give it to you.”
He felt himself blush and felt like a total idiot. But Kyrie put the earring on and was smiling at him. He’d have been willing to go a long way for that. Coming to his father’s hotel room seemed like a minor sacrifice.
Even if Daddy Dearest ended up selling them up the river.
CHAPTER
10
The boy looked tense, Edward thought. Only the thing was, he wasn’t a boy, anymore, was he? The face looking back at Edward’s with such studied lack of expression was covered in dark stubble. And the shoulders had filled out, the arms become knotted with muscle.
Tom was wearing a black leather jacket, ratty jeans, and heavy boots. His father could have passed him a hundred times in the street and never recognized him. Only the eyes were the same he remembered from childhood, the same that looked out of his own mirror at him, every morning. But Tom’s eyes showed no expression. They allowed him to look at them, and then they slid away from contact, without revealing anything.
There was blood on him too, and a snaking scar on his forehead. Had the triad done that, or had Tom gone through worse scrapes in the last five years? There were many things Edward wanted to know. Unfortunately, they were the ones he would never dare ask.
He watched Tom for a while, watched him pull out the girl’s earring and give it back to her. He wondered if the two young fools had any idea that they were giving each other sick-puppy-dog looks.
But not only wasn’t it his place to interfere, he was sure if he tried to tell them, either of them would put him soundly in his place.
“Do you guys want some coffee?” he asked, “I’m making some for myself.”
There were sounds that might be agreement from the bedroom, as he set up the coffee maker. Fortunately the Spurs and Lace went for normal-sized coffeemakers, not the one-cup deals that were normally the rule. And they provided enough coffee and enough cups. He set it to run and thought.
The boy needed a shower. And probably clean clothes. But Edward had a feeling that if he offered either Tom might very well fling out of the room in a fury. He got a feeling that Tom was holding something in, battling something. And that if he let it all blow, none of them would like it.
Of course, if Tom should shift to a dragon . . . Edward peered around the door at the young man and Kyrie, who were now talking to each other, while Tom had closed his eyes and appeared to be dozing.
Neither the young man nor Kyrie looked scared that Tom would shift into a dragon, so it couldn’t be that frequent an occurrence.
The coffee was made, and Edward had a sudden flash of inspiration. Everything that he might offer Tom would be refused. But if he handed it to Tom as a matter of fact, there was at least the off chance that Tom wouldn’t know how to refuse. He’d looked many things, none of them at ease.
So, testing his theory, Edward poured himself a cup of coffee, and then one for Tom, surprising himself with retrieving, from the mists of memory, how Tom liked his coffee. The boy had only started drinking it when he’d . . . left. But Edward remembered ribbing him about liking three spoons of sugar in it.
He now poured in three packets of sugar and then crossed the room, trying to look completely at ease. For all his appearances in uncertain cases, in courtrooms presided over by hostile judges, this was probably his greatest performance. “Coffee is ready,” he told Kyrie and the other young man. “If you wish to help yourselves.” Then he walked up to Tom.
The armchair the boy was sitting in was right next to a side table, and on the other side of that was the straight-backed chair normally used at the desk.
Edward put his own coffee cup down on the side table, and leaned over, touching Tom’s shoulder, lightly. “Tom, coffee,” he said.
Tom woke up immediately, and sat up, fully alert. Edward remembered that he used to sleep late and sometimes miss first period at school. When had he learned to wake up like this, quickly, without complaint. How had he been living that a moment’s hesitation between being asleep and full alertness might make a difference?
He couldn’t ask. “I put three packets of sugar in. The way you like it.”
Tom looked surprised. He reached for the cup, took it to his lips without complaint. And Edward sat at the desk chair, and took a deep draught of his coffee, feeling ridiculously proud of himself. It had worked. If handed things straight off, Tom was too confused to refuse. It was the first time in years . . . No. It was the first time Tom’s lifetime that Edward had set himself to learn how to get around his stubborn son without a confrontation. And it had paid off.
It was all he could do to keep himself from smiling in victory. Fortunately, at that moment, someone knocked at the door and Kyrie opened it.
“Mr. Edward Ormson, this is Rafiel Trall, a police officer of Goldport.”
Officer Rafiel Trall was tall and golden haired, with the sort of demeanor one would expect from a duke or visiting royalty. He shook Edward’s hand, but there was a slight hesitation, and Edward wondered what Tom had told him about his father.
But then, as the young people pulled chairs together to talk, Edward slipped out the door, quietly.
He didn’t know if they were all shape changers, and he didn’t know how they’d react to what he was about to do.
But he knew he had to do it.
Tom smiled at seeing Keith immediately assume the role of secretary of the organization. Sometimes people defied all categorization. He’d never expected his wild neighbor, of the late nights and the revolving girlfriends to be this . . . neat.
But Keith grabbed the pad and turned to them. “As far as I can see it,” he said, “we’re facing two problems. One is the beetles. Kyrie is the only one who’s seen the beetles—right?”
“No,” Tom said, amused. “We’ve seen them also. We just didn’t remember. I think you thought they were aliens.”
Keith looked wounded. “Whatever that powder was . . .”
“Yes,” Tom agreed not particularly wanting to go there, not wanting to explain that he’d thought Kyrie’s sugar was drugged. He looked at her out the corner of his eye, and realized that Rafiel was also looking at her with an intent expression. Well, if she had to go to someone else . . . But Tom very much hoped she wouldn’t.
“They are blue and green and refractive,” Kyrie said. “And they look somewhat like the beetles I’ve seen in the natural history museum in Denver. I vaguely remember they said they were made into jewelry, and I could believe it because they were so pretty. The little ones in the museum. Not the large ones.”
“You don’t know what their genus is, do you?” Keith asked, looking up. “Because we could look them up and figure out their habits.”
Kyrie shook her head. “I never really thought knowing the name of a beetle would be essential to me,” she said.
“Ah, but see, that’s where you go wrong,” Keith said. Scribbling furiously. “Beetles are always essential. You let them run around unnamed they start music groups and what not.” He looked up. “Well, I’ll call the museum later, or look it up on line. So . . . we have these huge beetles. Are we sure they’re shifters?”
“They’re the size of that bed,” Kyrie said, pointing to the king-size bed behind them. “Or maybe the size of a double bed. Okay, maybe a single bed. But taller. Huge still. Where do you suppose their natural habitat would be? And why wouldn’t it have been discovered long ago?”
Keith waved one hand. “Okay, point, point,” he said. “But so, we have two shifters. How often is it that shifters get together? Same species shifters? Can you guys like . . . mate in your other form?”
Tom felt a burning heat climb to his cheeks. Without looking he could tell that Rafiel was now staring at Kyrie with a gaze set to smolder. And Kyrie was staring ahead, looking shocked, refusing to look at either of them.
It was funny. Because of course Keith had always assumed that Tom was a player like himself, that he was out there, every night, picking up girls. And of course, Tom’s sexual experience, which could be written on the head of a pin, was all in very human form, and had all happened before the age of sixteen.
He threw his head back and laughed. “Keith, you’ve got the wrong guy, at least where I’m concerned,” he said. “The dragons I’ve known were in the triad. So, I have no idea. Also, the legends are a little quiet on the mating habits of dragons.”
“And I had never met another shifter till two days ago,” Kyrie said, her voice small and embarrassed. “I suppose it’s possible to mate in animal form.”
Did she throw a quick look at Rafiel? Tom’s heart sank.
“But I wouldn’t like to do it,” Kyrie said. She sat up straighter in her chair. “For the same reason I wouldn’t really like to eat in the shifted form. Even if it’s proper food, you know, not . . . people. I like being human. If I’m ever going to have sex, I’d like to be aware of who I’m doing it with and how.”
“You’ve never—” Keith started, then shook his head.
Tom realized he was grinning, and forced his face to become impassive. He hoped Kyrie hadn’t noticed.
Rafiel, meanwhile, was shaking his head. “Not in shifted form,” he said. “Never. So, I too know nothing about sex between shifters. Though I suppose”—he gave Tom a sly look—“that the sex lives of lions are far better documented than the sex lives of dragons.”
But he couldn’t touch Tom’s self-assurance at that point. Kyrie had just as good as confessed that her experience was not superior to his own. He wondered if she’d done it on purpose.
“You guys are a waste of shifting ability,” Keith said, sounding vaguely disgusted. “So, you don’t know if two shifters of the same kind, different gender met, if it would lead to . . .”
“Kittens in the basket?” Rafiel said.
“Eggs in the lair,” Tom immediately interposed not to be outdone.
“Actually,” Keith said. “I was thinking more than some species have truly bizarre mating habits. And if we’re dealing with a mating pair, which . . . could we be?”
Kyrie leaned forward, holding her coffee cup in both hands, over her knees. “I think we could be, yes,” she said. “I think . . . I got a feeling that was the case.”
“So, if we’re dealing with a mating couple, you know that insects can get really kinky, right? Like all the biting off of heads of males after mating, or while mating, and all that stuff. Is it possible that the killings are part of a mating ritual? Like where the male has to give the female a gift or something.”
“Yes, that’s quite possible,” Tom said, feeling slightly dumb that this hadn’t occurred to him. Possibly because in all he’d read of the mating rituals of beautiful jungle cats, there had never been anything about their requiring the gift of a corpse.
“It might be pertinent,” Rafiel said. “That I suspect there have been about two dozen people killed, and that they were all or almost all shifters.”
“How could you know that?” Kyrie asked.
“I don’t know. I suspect. If you remember, I told you I wanted to wait a little before I came here, because I wanted to find out if there could have been more people who disappeared in that area and whose bodies haven’t been found yet?” He took a sip of coffee. “Well, I figured it out. At least partway. There are at least fifteen other people who have been missing, all over the last month or so. And they all disappeared from around the Athens. They were all young and therefore we didn’t pay too much attention. Otherwise the pattern would have become obvious. But most of them, the families didn’t seem sure they hadn’t run away, so we thought we’d give it a little longer . . .” He took another sip of coffee. “We’re a small police department. Oh, and most people were either passing through or had just decided to move here. Some interesting things—they all seemed to really like the Athens and had been there more than once. And they all had, the sort of relationship with their families and people around them that . . .” He looked at Tom.
“Say no more,” Tom said, and for the first time realized his father was nowhere around. Was he hiding in the bathroom to be out of their hair? Tom didn’t think it likely, but then neither had he thought it likely that his father would still remember how Tom took his coffee.
“Well, here’s the thing,” Keith said. “If these are gifts perhaps they have to be shifters. Do you guys know when someone else is a shifter?”
“Sometimes,” Kyrie said. “If you get close enough. There is a definite tang, but I’m not very good at smelling it.”
“I can’t smell it at all,” Tom said.
“I smell it very well, but I have to be near the person and sort of away from everything else.”