Night Shifters (17 page)

“Why?” Kyrie said. There were many things she wanted to ask Rafiel, like why he assumed that one of their kind was bound to have seen corpses before, and why, if that was the case, they should discipline this killer. And why he’d assumed that this too was a death by dragon—other than having seen Tom standing over the body. But she couldn’t ask any of those, and anyway, the most important was this—why they particularly and not the police in general should find out what happened to this victim.

Rafiel blinked again. The gesture made him look slow of thought, though it was probably just a reaction to the strong sunshine. “What do you mean why?” he asked.

“Why should we care who did this, if it wasn’t a shifter?” Kyrie asked.

Rafiel frowned. “No, but the victim was a shifter. Didn’t you smell it?”

Rafiel insisted on following her home. There was nothing for it. “Can’t you see?” he said. “I have to. If something is killing shifters . . .”

“How would they even know I’m a shifter?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it take knowing the smell? And knowing what we are?”

Rafiel shrugged. “I can’t answer that. Perhaps something like your triad friends. Didn’t Ormson say that the triad had been shifters for centuries? That it ran in families? That they know what it means and even have a shifter god?”

She looked at him. A monstrous idea was forming. If someone was killing shifters, and if it was another shifter, wouldn’t it make sense for it to be someone who . . . oh, worked for the police? Who could keep an eye on people without anyone getting suspicious? He could smell someone—once—and then realize . . .

She shook her head. “Why were you at the diner?” she asked. “Last night?”

Golden eyes widened. “I was coming for a cup of coffee,” he said. “I was off work.”

“You were coming for a cup of coffee in lion shape?”

He chuckled at that. Audibly chuckled. “No. Of course not. I only shifted when I smelled . . . I was in human form when I first saw you. When I saw you pull Ormson inside. Of course, I knew you were shifters.”

“How?”

He looked at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. “He was a dragon,” he said.

“But then why did you shift?” Kyrie asked. “Why wouldn’t you just call the crime in?”

“And catch you still shape-shifted?” he said. “I had to make sure you were out of there before I called it in.”

“But why shift, then?”

He sighed. Something like a shadow crossed the serene golden eyes and he mumbled something.

“Beg your pardon?” Kyrie said.

“The smell of blood, all right? Combined with the moonlight it caused me to shift and it took effort to get back to my form. Because then . . .” He turned very red. “. . . then I smelled you.”

Kyrie thought of the smell of him, rising in the night with all the blatant come-on of a feline-seeking-female ad.

She nodded once. She could believe that. But she still had a question, “Why come to the Athens for coffee? Pardon me, but I know even late at night there are better places open, and dressing as you do, surely you can afford better.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, okay? Started going there about a year ago. I like . . . It’s homey, okay? Feels homey. And there’s you. You’re . . . I could smell you were a shifter. And I like looking at you.”

Kyrie frowned. “Fine,” she said. But she wasn’t convinced. For one, she couldn’t remember having seen Rafiel at the diner, ever. Of course, considering how busy it got there at times, like the five a.m. rush just before she went off shift, he could have been dancing naked on a table and she would not have noticed.

She looked at him, and, involuntarily, pictured that. No. If he were dancing naked on the table, she would have noticed.

“Fine,” she said again. “You can follow me home.”

At the back of her mind, she thought that if all else failed, Tom would be there. And Tom could always help defend her against Rafiel. Okay, Tom might not be exactly a superhero. But it would be two against one.

Tom had just kicked the door, and felt something—something giant and pincer-like reach for him when . . .

“What in hell?” came from the direction of the living room in a very male voice. A vaguely familiar male voice. And then there were strides—sounding echoey and strange through his distorting senses, advancing along, toward him.

Past the kitchen. He felt more than saw as two pairs of green wings took flight, from the backyard, into the dark night sky above.

And he turned in the direction of the steps to see Kyrie look at him, her mouth open in shock, her eyes wide, her face suddenly drained of color.

Keith was still doing fake kung-fu moves in the direction of the utterly broken windows. But Kyrie stood in the middle of the room, gulping air.

Behind her, stood the policeman lion, golden eyes and immaculate linen clothes, all in a vague tawny color. And he looked . . . disgusted.

Tom summoned all his thought, all his ability to speak, and came out with the best excuse he could craft. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “It was the dragons.”

Kyrie stood in the middle of her demolished sunroom. The windows were all broken. As was the sliding door. And there was Tom—and he looked very odd. Tottery and . . . just strange. And there was another guy—his neighbor, she thought, from the apartment.

“I’m sorry,” Tom said, again. “It was the dragons.” He pointed at the backyard. “They were attacking.”

His voice sounded odd. Normally it was raspy, but now it sounded like it was coming out through one of those distorters that kids used to do alien voices. And there had to be something wrong with him. He was walking barefoot on shards of glass. It had to hurt. In fact, she could see little pinpricks of blood on the indifferent beige carpet. But he didn’t seem to be in pain.

“Tom, are you all right?” she asked. But by then she was close enough to look in his eyes. His pupils were huge, crowding the blue iris almost completely out of his eyes.

Kyrie took a deep breath. Damn, damn, damn, damn. She knew better, didn’t she? Once a junkie always a junkie. And Tom was . . . Hell, she knew what he was. Shifter or not, someone with his upbringing wouldn’t have fallen as low as he had without some major work on his part. He had to be totally out of control. He had to be.

But she’d almost believed. She’d almost trusted. She remembered how she’d felt bad about telling Rafiel on him. She remembered how she felt so relieved it wasn’t a dragon’s teeth on that man’s body.

Hell, she still felt happy the man hadn’t died by dragon. That meant she didn’t have to keep Tom close until she figured out what to do about it. She just didn’t have to. She was through with him.

“You’re high,” she said, and it sounded odd, because she hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t meant to call attention to the fact, just in case Rafiel hadn’t noticed it. But it didn’t matter, did it? If Tom was this out of control, he was going to be arrested, sooner or later.

Tom shook his head, his dark eyebrows knit over his eyes in complete surprise. “Me?” he said. “No. Keith is high. He was talking about the mother ship. I mean, clear as day it was just two dragons.”

Kyrie didn’t know whether to laugh and cry. All these years she had kept away from dangerous men. She’d laughed at the sort of woman who let herself get head over heels with some bundle of muscles and no brain. And now she’d got involved with . . . this. Okay, so not involved, although if she told herself the truth, she had been interested in Tom. Or at least appreciative of his buff and sculpted body. She hadn’t done anything even remotely sexual or physical to him, though.

Not that it mattered. She’d let him into her house. She’d let him stay here alone . . . And he’d got his buddy over, hadn’t he? And they’d . . . what? Shot up? There didn’t seem to be any smell of pot in the air, and besides she doubted that pot would cause this kind of trip. Of course, she knew drugs could also be swallowed or . . . And that wasn’t the point. He’d gotten high and destroyed her property.

She looked around at the devastation in her sunroom, and wondered how she was going to pay for this mess. The landlord would demand payment. But she had no more than a couple of hundred in the bank, and that had to last for food and all till the end of the month. And she needed rent.

She took another deep breath. She was going to have to ask Frank for more hours. And even then, she might not make it.

Tom was looking at her, as though trying to interpret her expression, as if it were very hard to read—something he couldn’t understand. “Uh,” he said. “I’ll leave now?”

Part of Kyrie wanted to tell him no. After all, well, he was still barefoot. And bleeding. And he was high. She should tell him to say. She should . . .

But no, she definitely should not. She’d kept him overnight, so he would be better off leaving in the morning. And now, what? He’d just caused more damage.

“Yes,” she said. She heard her voice so cold it could have formed icicles on contact. “Yeah. I think it would be best if you left and took your friend.”

Tom nodded, and tugged on the shoulder of the other guy’s sweater, even as he started inching past Kyrie, in an oddly skittish movement. It reminded her of a cat, in a house where she’d stayed for a few months. A very skittish cat, who ran away if you so much as looked at her.

As far as Kyrie could tell, no one had ever hurt the cat. But she skidded past people, as though afraid of being kicked.

Now Tom edged past her the same way, while dragging his friend, who looked at Kyrie, blank and confused, and said, “It was aliens, you know. Just like . . . you know. Aliens.”

She heard them cross the house, toward the front door. She didn’t remember the guy’s car on the driveway, but it wasn’t her problem if they were on foot. In fact, it might be safer in the state they were. And she didn’t care, she told herself, as she listened for the front door to close.

“Kyrie,” Rafiel said. He stood by the windows, frowning, puzzled. “Something was here.”

They’d been walking for a while, aimlessly, down the street, when Tom because aware of three things—first, that he was walking around in a neighborhood he didn’t know; second, that he was barefoot; third, that his feet hurt like living hell.

He sat down on the nearest lawn, and looked at his feet, which were cut, all over, by a bunch of glass.

This realization seemed to have hit Keith at the same time, which was weird. As Tom was looking in dismay at the blood covering the soles of his feet, Keith said, “Shit. You’re bleeding.”

Tom looked up. He remembered seeing Keith’s eyes, the pupil dilated and odd. But Keith looked perfectly normal now, even if a little puzzled. “What happened?” he said. And frowned, as if remembering some thing that didn’t make any sense whatsoever. “What happened to us back there. What . . .”

Tom shook his head. He knew what Keith’s eyes looked like. And Tom had some idea what mind-altering substances could do to your mind and your senses. Hell, for a while there he was shooting everything that came his way. Heroin by choice, but he’d have done drain opener if he had any reason to suspect that it would prevent him from shifting into a dragon. He suspected, in fact, that he had shot up baking soda in solution more than a few times. And who knew what else? It was miraculous enough he’d survived all those years. But nothing nothing, equaled the trip he’d just gone through, back there.

He put his face in his hands, and heard himself groan. He’d messed it up for good and all. Not that there had ever been any hope that Kyrie would see him as anything other than a mess. Not considering what he’d done the night before. The . . . corpse. And then his being so totally helpless. There was no way he had a chance with Kyrie. Not any way. But . . .

But now she thought him a drug addict. And the policeman had been with her.

“I’m going to get my car,” Keith said. “Do you have any idea which way we came?”

“You have a car?”

“Yeah,” Keith said. “I parked just a couple of blocks from . . . your girl’s . . .” It seemed to hit him, belatedly, that perhaps Kyrie was no longer Tom’s girl. Not after what they’d done to her sunroom. “Do you have any idea which way we came?”

There was something to the dragon. Perhaps seeing the city from above so many times, Tom had memorized it like one memorizes a map, or a favorite picture. Or perhaps being a dragon came with a sense of direction. Who knew?

But by concentrating, he could just figure out which way Kyrie’s house was. He wondered if the policeman would arrest them for even coming near.

Standing up, unsteadily, he said, “Come on.” He winced at the pain in his feet. “Come on. It’s this way, up the road here two blocks, then up ten blocks, and then to the left another five, and you should see her house.”

Keith took a step back. “Whoa, dude,” he said. “You’ve gone all pale, just standing up. Sit down. I’ll go get the car. You’re sure of the way?”

Tom nodded. He wanted to say he would go with Keith, but he could tell he would only slow Keith down. He sat down on the grass, again, with some relief. “Sure,” he said. “Sure. You should see it. If not . . . come back.”

He put his face in his hands, again, sitting there. He didn’t know how long he and Keith had been fighting the . . . dragons? He was sure they were dragons, but there was a feeling of strangeness, his memory kept giving him images of a big, horned toe. No. A tooth. No . . .