Night Shifters (41 page)
Authors: Sarah A. Hoyt
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Contemporary, #Urban
And yet
, she thought as she tried to concentrate on hitting any green-blue bits of bug that she could see through the panther’s addled eyes. And yet the sight of him fighting the bug was far more distracting than the sight of the small furry things could be for the panther.
She bit and snarled and clawed at bits of bug, but in her mind she was admiring the way Tom leapt, the way he could turn on a dime, the force he put into the swing of that tree branch in his hand. From his movements, he too must have taken gymnastics or dance, or something.
Absorbed between her fight and disturbing glimpses of half-naked Tom, she could barely think. She heard the squeal of brakes toward the back entrance of the garden, but she paid it no attention.
Which is why she was so shocked to see Rafiel running toward them, gun drawn, blond hair flying in the wind and his expression quite the most distraught Kyrie had ever seen. He was screaming something as he ran, and it seemed to Kyrie—through the panther’s distorted senses—that one of the words was “die.” The other words, though, were “gravy” and “pick.” She wasn’t sure what gravy had to do with it.
Rafiel let out shots as he ran, aimed at the beetles, and from the high-pitched whining of the one that Tom was beating, Kyrie would guess at least one of the bullets had found beetle flesh. Whether that meant it had also found any lethal points was something else again.
Behind Rafiel, Keith came, running up, with what looked like a hoe in his hand. Where had he found the hoe?
Tom heard a bullet whistle by and looked up to see Rafiel running into the garden firing wildly. Still beating on the beetle—smacking it repeatedly on the head seemed to make it too confused to either fight, flee, or put out green powder—Tom wondered if he was the intended victim of the beetle.
But the next bullet lodged itself solidly in the beetle’s—Frank’s?—flesh, and the creature emitted a high-pitch whine. And then it went berserk, limbs failing up toward Tom, trying to dislodge him, trying to stab at him.
Tom hit at the limbs, wildly. Keith was running up, behind Rafiel, and as Rafiel leapt toward Kyrie’s beetle and shifted shapes mid-leap, his clothes falling in shreds away from the lion body, Keith grabbed the falling gun and aimed it at Tom’s beetle.
Kyrie was grateful when Rafiel, now in lion form, joined the fight, but—though the panther was having trouble seeing clearly—she could see enough to see Keith grab the gun and point it in the general direction of Tom.
She didn’t think that Keith would hurt Tom. Or not on purpose. But from the way Keith was holding the gun, she could tell there was no way in hell he could hit the broadside of a barn.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t aiming at the broadside of a barn. He was aiming at a general area where Tom was a prominent feature. Without thinking she leapt, hitting the still-human Tom with her weight and bringing him rolling off the bug and onto the ground, with Kyrie just by his side.
Just in time, as the bullet whistled through the space where he’d been.
Kyrie was attacking him, Tom thought, as he hit hard on the ground, just barely managing to tuck in his head enough that he wouldn’t end up unconscious. Why was she?
And then he realized that Keith had a gun and clearly had no idea what to do with it, as several erratically fired bullets flew over the beetle’s carapace. Just where Tom would have been.
Still stunned by his fall on the ground, Tom put out an hesitant hand toward the huge mound of fur beside him. “Kyrie?” he said.
A tongue came out and touched his hand. Just touched, which was good, because it felt just like a cat tongue, all sharp bits and hooks.
A non-feline hissing sound, a scraping, and Tom saw the beetle was turning around and was aiming sharp claw-like things at Kyrie.
Before he could think, he knew he was going to shift. He had just the time to kick off his leather boots as his body twisted and bent. And he was standing, as a dragon, facing the bug. He did what a dragon does. He flamed.
First, Kyrie thought, flames weren’t particularly effective in these circumstances. Tom’s flame seemed to glance over the beetle’s carapace, without harming it. And second, if Tom continued flaming, he would hit a tree and roast them all alive.
But before Kyrie could change shape and yell this at Tom, who was clearly addled by adrenaline and change, Keith came flying out from behind them, hoe in hand. He had dropped his gun. Which was good. But Kyrie wasn’t sure that a hoe was the most effective of weapons.
Only she couldn’t do anything, except shift, in a hurry and scream, “Don’t flame, Tom,” as Keith landed on top of the beetle and started digging into the joint between the neck and the back carapace. Digging, as if he were digging into soil, making big chunks of beetle fly all over.
The beetle went berserk.
Sometimes the only way to stop a flame that is doing its best to erupt from a dragon’s throat is for the dragon to force himself to become human. This Tom did, forcing his mind to twist his body into human shape. Just in time to avoid burning Keith to a crisp atop the beetle. Which was good, because Keith seemed to have hit on something that worked. He was digging up large chunks of beetle flesh, throwing them all around in a shower of beetle and ichor.
And the beetle was stabbing at him, fortunately pretty erratically. The beetle’s arms weren’t meant to bend that way. Not upward and toward something on its back. Only, even an erratic blow was bound to hit, eventually. Unless . . .
Tom grabbed the tree branch he’d let drop, and started beating at beetle limbs. From the other side, Kyrie was doing the same.
Kyrie was back to her human form, and Tom couldn’t look at her with more than the corner of his eye. Not if he wanted to continue fighting in any rational manner at all.
But, damn, that woman could swing the tree branch with the best of them.
As the beetle stopped moving, and its high-pitched scream grew, Tom became aware of another sound behind him. A feline protest of pain. He turned, in time to see the beetle get a claw into Rafiel between shoulder and front leg.
For a moment, for just a moment, Tom thought,
Good. He deserves it.
But an immense feeling of shame swept over him. Why did Rafiel deserve to die? Because he’d bested Tom in winning the affections of a woman?
Hell, by that criteria there would hardly be any males left alive in the world.
Shame made Tom jump forward, toward Rafiel, tree branch in hand, beating at the beetle. Just in time, as Rafiel was crawling away, bleeding.
And now Keith scrambled up on the back of this beetle. He looked like nothing on Earth and certainly no longer like the hard-partying college student. His clothes were a mess, he seemed to have bathed in greenish-brown ichor, and he’d lost his cap somewhere.
But he had an insane grin on his face, as he started digging up chunks of this beetle. And Tom concentrated on keeping the beetle from stabbing his friend, by beating the beetle’s limbs away. Kyrie joined in on the other side.
Soon the beetle had stopped moving.
But from behind them there was still a high-pitched sound, like the beetle’s scream.
Tom turned around, expecting to face yet another beetle. Instead, he saw Rafiel desperately clutching his shoulder and struggling to get up while pale, white, giant worms swarmed over him.
Tom didn’t understand where the worms came from, but they had big, sharp teeth and were biting at Rafiel.
Tom ran toward Rafiel and started grabbing at the worms trying to eat Rafiel, while Kyrie ran up to smash the ones that were merely around Rafiel.
A second later, Keith and his hoe joined in.
Grubs,
Kyrie thought. The more advanced grubs on the corpses beneath the thin layer of soil had come alive at the smell of Rafiel’s blood, and were swarming him.
She saw Tom jump ahead and start to pull the grubs off Rafiel. As mad as she was at Rafiel, she didn’t want him eaten alive by would-be insects. And besides, Rafiel had got in this trouble by trying to help her in the first place.
She jumped into the fray, gleefully smashing at the grubs with her heavy branch.
And Tom had got the last grub off Rafiel—who seemed more stunned than hurt, and was swinging the huge piece of tree he carried, likewise beating down the bugs. Keith joined in with his hoe.
There were a lot of grubs, more and more—pale and white and writhing—pushing up out of the soil, as soon as they smashed a dozen or a hundred.
So absorbed in what she was doing, her arms hurting, while she kicked away to keep the grubs from climbing her legs, Kyrie didn’t keep track of Rafiel.
Until she smelled gasoline and realized that Rafiel had got a huge container of gasoline from somewhere and was liberally dousing the clearing and the surrounding vegetation.
Tom had just realized what the worms were. They were grubs. Babies. It seemed odd to be killing babies who were acting only on instinct.
But . . . were the babies human? He couldn’t tell. They looked like white grubs, featureless, except for large mouths with sharp teeth. With which they’d probably been feeding on decaying human flesh.
Would they ever be human? How could Tom know? Except that, of course, their parents had been human. At least part of the time.
He swung the tree branch and smashed little beetle grubs while wondering if with time they would learn to be human babies and human toddlers. But . . . would they? And even if they did, when adolescence came, when most people started shifting, would they be able to control their urges to shift? And their urges to kill people so they could lay eggs in the corpses?
He just decided that he’d hit all of them who attacked him, but he would not, could not, kill any that might still be asleep beneath the soil. They should take those, and see if they became human babies as they developed. If they did, chances were they wouldn’t shift again till their teen years. And meanwhile, they could see that they got a good education, and didn’t believe they could kill people for their sexual gratification.
If shifters would look after punishing their own criminals, then they had to look after educating their own young, didn’t they?
He’d just thought this when he smelled gasoline, and, looking up, saw Rafiel spreading gasoline over the entire area and the surrounding vegetation.
Tom had to stop him. He had to. He was going to kill all the babies. And themselves with them, probably.
As tired as he was, he didn’t realize he’d shifted and flamed until he saw fire spark on the gasoline-doused tree on the other side of the clearing.
Oh, shit.
CHAPTER
13
“Run,” Kyrie screamed, managing to grab at Keith’s arm, and making an ineffective grab at Tom’s wing, as she scrambled ahead of them toward the back entrance of the garden—the nearest one.
If she thought for a minute she could go over the fence, she would have done it. She couldn’t pull Tom, though, and he seemed dazed, staying behind, staring at the flames.
“Tom, run,” she yelled, but there were sheets of flames where they’d been, and she couldn’t stop, but ran. Ran all the way out the gate. Where she collapsed in a heap on the beaten-dirt of the alley, a few steps from Rafiel’s car.
Rafiel was facedown in the alley, but he was clearly alive, taking deep breaths that shook his whole body.
Kyrie heard Keith ask, “Are you all right, man?”
And realized Rafiel was on all fours, throwing up.
Tom ran out of the gate, fell, then scrambled up, holding on to the eight-foot-tall metal fence of the castle to pull himself upright.
And Kyrie couldn’t help smiling when she realized he was wearing a jacket and a pair of leather boots. And nothing else. So, that was why he had delayed? Tom and his jacket and boots.
He dropped something at her feet. “I tripped on these.”
Her clothes. As she shook them out, even her earring dropped out.
But he had his back to her, and was still clutching the fence posts, while he stared at the roaring inferno growing inside the garden.
“We have to go,” Kyrie said. “We have to get out of here. The fire department will be here in no time.”
“But . . .” Tom said. “The babies.”
“You mean the grubs? Tom, those weren’t human. They tried to eat Rafiel.”
Tom made a sound half growl. “We don’t know if they were babies. Do we know what we were during gestation? Perhaps they would have shifted when they were fully grown, and only a few of them would ever shift again and not for years.”
“Tom,” Rafiel said. His voice sounded shaky. “I understand the feelings, but we had to kill them. We couldn’t afford for the corpses to be found with those larvae. They would be taken to labs. Do you want them to figure out shape-shifting? They might very well come after us and kill us all, if faced with a dangerous example like that.”
“So, you killed them to save your life? Is that right? Do you have the right to kill things just because there’s a remote chance it would eventually lead to your death?”
“Hell, yes,” Rafiel said.
“It’s not moral,” Tom protested.
“If I’m dead, morality doesn’t matter to me anymore. Tom. Look, they bit me.” He showed round bite marks, as if from a hundred little mouths equipped with sharp teeth. “They were dangerous. They would have bit other people. Killed other people. Besides,” Rafiel shrugged. “Technically
we
killed them. You flamed them.”
“Only because I was trying to prevent you from killing them,” Tom said, and realized how stupid that sounded.
“Tom,” Kyrie said. “It was self-defense. The heat of battle. And they were probably dangerous. Please calm down. We need to get out of here before those fire trucks get here. Hear them?”
Tom heard them, the wailing in the distance, getting near.
“We can go to my house,” Kyrie said. “Take showers. I’ll make something for us.”
Just then, Tom’s phone rang in his jacket pocket. “What now?” he said, grabbing the phone and taking it to his ear.
“Mr. Ormson,” a cool voice on the other side said.
“Yes.”
“We have your father,” the voice said.
Oh, shit. The dragons. “But you have the Pearl of Heaven too,” Tom said.
“Yes. But . . . There is someone who wishes for more than the return of the Pearl.” The voice on the other side was slick and uncaring an inhuman. “He says there must be punishment.”
“What punishment?” Tom said, feeling like he’d been punished enough this last hour.
“Severe punishment,” the voice said. “One of you will be punished. Either you or your father. We’re at Three Luck Dragon, on Ore Road on the other side of town. If you’re not here in half an hour, we’ll punish your father. The Great Sky Dragon is tired of waiting.”
The phone line went dead and Tom thought,
So, let them punish my father. He deserves it. He’s the one who got involved with the triad.
But Tom was the one who had stolen the Pearl of Heaven. Worse, Tom was the one who had asked his father to return it. And his father had gone, without complaint. Even though, knowing even more about the triad than Tom did, he must have realized this was the kiss of death.
Tom didn’t realize he had made a decision until he was running down the alley.
“Where is he going?” Rafiel asked Kyrie, as Tom started running.
Kyrie shrugged, but Keith said, “Something must have gone wrong with his father taking the Pearl out to the triad.”
“What?” Rafiel said.
“Whatever happened to we’ll leave the Pearl somewhere?” Kyrie said. “And let them find it?”
“I guess that wasn’t practical,” Keith said. “Since Tom was heading out of town.”
“He was? Why?”
“I don’t know,” Keith said. “But he’d seen the two of you kissing and he said he couldn’t stand to stay around.”
“Oh no,” Kyrie said.
“He’s not going to get very far dressed like that, before someone arrests him for indecent exposure,” Rafiel said, as Tom hit the end of the garden, and turned onto Fairfax Avenue. And then he jumped, and opened the door of his car. Getting into the driver’s seat, he yelled, “Get in now.”
Kyrie had barely the time to scramble in, beside Keith on the backseat, before Rafiel tore out of the parking lot in a squeal of tires and a smell of burning rubber.
He pulled onto the curb just ahead of the running Tom, leaned sideways and opened the passenger door. Then before Tom could swerve to avoid it, he yelled out the door, “Get in now, Tom. Get in.”
“I don’t want to get in,” Tom said, stopping.
“That you might not, but you’re naked. Someone will arrest you long before you get where you’re supposed to go,” Rafiel said, way too reasonably.
Tom looked down. Yeah. He supposed a leather jacket and a pair of leather boots didn’t constitute decent clothing. And he had to get to the restaurant without being arrested.
He flung into the passenger seat of the car. “I need to go to Three Luck Dragon on Ore Road on the south side.”
“I know where it is,” Rafiel said, starting the car up. “Wonderful Peking duck.” Then, as though realizing that Tom’s driving motive wasn’t a wish for food. “Your father?”
“Yes,” Tom said, and covered his face with his hands. “I should never have sent him to them. Hell, I can’t do anything right. Damn.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder, from the back, and heard Kyrie’s voice. “If you were planning to go out of town, you did the only thing you could do,” she said. “And your father, did he protest?”
“No,” Keith said. “He knew there was a danger. He wouldn’t let me go with him. But he, himself, went willingly. Tom. Your father is an adult. He made his own decision.”
“Doesn’t mean we’ll leave him to die,” Tom said.
“Right,” Rafiel said. “Which is why I’ll get us there as soon as possible. Meanwhile, there are clothes under the front seat, Kyrie, if you could get them. There should be at least two changes of clothes. And there should be a pair of pants and a T-shirt Tom could use. They’ll be large as hell, but they should make him decent.”
Before Tom could protest, he found Kyrie handing him a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Removing his jacket and boots and putting clothes on was difficult in the tight confines of the car. And Tom wasn’t absolutely sure if the dragons cared if he had any clothes on.
But he understood there would be a psychological advantage to being fully dressed when he got there and tried to negotiate his father’s release with the dragons. If he were naked, he’d be embarrassed, and that would put him at a strong disadvantage. No. He had to be dressed. And he had to get his dad out of this.
He should never have involved his dad in this.
Before they got to the restaurant Kyrie could smell the shifter scent in the air. She wondered how many of them were there.
Speeding down the—at this time—deserted Ore Road, lined by warehouses and dilapidated motels, then made one last turn . . . And then she saw it. At least she imagined that was it. She couldn’t imagine any other reason why the parking lot in front of a low-slung building ornamented with an unlikely fluorescent green dragon on the roof would be crammed—literally crammed with men.
No, she thought, as she got closer. Men and dragons.
And at the head of it all, golden and brilliant in the morning light, was a huge dragon. Ten times bigger than Tom in his dragon form. And even bigger than that in presence. He
felt
a hundred times larger than his already immense size.
In his front paw, raised high above the assembly, he held Edward Ormson.
Kyrie wasn’t close enough to see Edward’s expression. But she could see his arms moving. He was alive.
Rafiel stopped the car in front of the parking lot. Impossible to turn into it. And besides, Tom was already struggling with the latch, trying to jump out.
Kyrie opened the door, too, as soon as the car stopped. And was hit by the silence of the hundreds of beings in the parking lot.
It was the silence of suspended breath.
Tom had
never
been so scared. Not even when he’d been sixteen and his father had thrown him out of the house at gunpoint. Not even in the wild days and terrifying nights afterward, while he tried to learn to live on the street while not dying of sheer stupidity.
It wasn’t only his terror, he realized. It was the terror and awe of all those around him. He could hear it in their silence, see it in their absolute immobility. And he could feel it rolling in waves over him whenever he looked at the great golden dragon who stood in front of the multitude. Holding Tom’s father.
Right.
There were moments, Tom had learned, when fear was the best thing. Fear of the street thug kept you from saying something that would have made him kill you. Fear of the poisonous snake kept you too far away from it to be bitten. And fear of some animals would make you stand absolutely still, so that their eyes, adapted to movement, couldn’t see you.
And there were moments when fear had to be ignored. His fear was perfectly rational. He could sense the menace of the Great Sky Dragon and the fear that infected those around him, crowding the parking lot. He could feel it, and it made him struggle to draw breath. It made him have to fight his every instinct to be able to step forward into the crowd, which parted to allow him through.
His fear was the most natural thing in the world and it came from the fact that he did not wish to die. And it didn’t take a genius to know that was the most likely outcome of this situation.
And yet . . . And yet, of course Tom didn’t want to die. There had been enough ambiguity in the exchanges in the car that he thought he just might still have a chance with Kyrie. And who, thinking of Kyrie—particularly when she’d smiled at him—could want to die and not even try for something more with her?
But all of that was irrelevant, for the same reason that it was irrelevant whether or not Tom could or wanted to eat some human beings on occasion. It was irrelevant because if Tom did it and succeeded he wouldn’t be able to live with himself afterward.
As he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he walked away now and let them kill his father. His father had walked into this at Tom’s request. It was Tom’s doing, and it was high time Tom dealt with his own mistakes.
He walked forward through the crowd, which parted for him, leaving him a wide aisle to walk through.
He could hear his friends walk behind him, but he didn’t turn to look. That would only make what he needed to do harder to accomplish.
Edward wasn’t really scared until Tom showed up. Before the Great Sky Dragon arrived, even, while Lung and his minions had kept him prisoner in the entrance area of the restaurant—where the TV blared endlessly about round-the-clock monster truck rallies—he’d realized what was going to happen and he was prepared to take it.
Funny how, just days ago, when the Great Sky Dragon had told him that he held him responsible for Tom’s actions, Edward had bridled at the idea and tried to deny it. Now it seemed absolutely self-evident.