Night Shifters (6 page)

She’d never shifted when she was scared. The few times she’d shifted it had been just the moon and usually summer calling to her, the feeling of jungle in her mind, at the back of her brain.

But as her fear closed upon her throat, making breathing almost impossible, as her heart pounded seemingly in her ears, as her blood seemed to race away from her leaving her cold as ice, she felt something . . .

She wasn’t sure what was happening until she heard the growl erupt from her throat. A full growl, fashioned from melodies of the jungle.

Lizards. Uppity lizards, at that. They dared challenge her? Try to grab her?

Turning around, she swiped a giant paw across the tender underflesh of a clawed foot holding her. And then she leapt for the throat of the giant beast who was trying to claw her down.

It was—the part of her that remained human, deep in the mists of consciousness thought—like the armada and the English ships. The Spanish armada’s huge, slow ships might be stronger and better armored. But they had no hope against the small English ships that could sail around them, landing shots where they wished till the giant ship was crippled.

Kyrie grabbed the beast by the throat, hanging on, till she tasted blood—and what blood. It was like drinking the finest champagne straight from the bottle.

The beast yelled and reached for her with its claws. It managed to scrape her flank, in a bright slash of pain. But she jumped out of the way before the creature could grab her, and she was on top of his head, as both his friends converged, trying to grab her. And she leapt at the soft underbelly of the red one—Red Dragon, the human Kyrie thought—in a mad dance of claws sinking into soft, unarmored flesh.

And then up again, and leaping at the eye of the next dragon.

That there were three of them was not an advantage. After all, three large, slower-moving beings only helped each other get hopelessly entangled while Kyrie danced upon them like a deadly firefly, in a frenzy of wounding, a joy of blood.

She was vaguely aware that she too was bleeding, that there were punctures on her hide and that, somehow, one of them had managed to sink his fangs into her front leg—her right arm. But she didn’t care. Right then, allowed the madness she’d long denied, she jumped at the dragon’s eyes, swiping her claws across them and relishing the dragon’s shriek of pain, the bright blood jumping from the right eye. She jumped and leapt, possessed of fierce anger, of maddened, repressed rage.

But while the beast exulted in the carnage, while the feline gyrated in mayhem, a small trickling feeling formed at the back of Kyrie’s mind. It was like the first melting tip of an icicle, dropping cold reason on her hot madness. The feeling, at first, was no more than that—just a trickling cold, protesting, demanding—she wasn’t sure what. The beast, in its frenzy, ignored it.

Until slowly, slowly, the feeling became words and the words became panic in Kyrie’s mind. She was fighting all three dragons. She was keeping all three dragons at bay—just. But there were three of them, there was one of her, and the beast’s muscles were starting to hurt and . . . How could she get out of here?

There was no way of reaching the door. All the dragons were between her and the door and none of her sorties had brought her close to escaping.

Blood in her nostrils, mad fury in the beast’s brain, what remained of the human Kyrie tried to think and came up with nothing but an insistent, white surge of panic. And she couldn’t let it slow her down. She couldn’t. If she did, all would be lost. But she couldn’t fight forever.

In a twirl, claws sinking into the nearest dragon’s hide, she thought of Tom. But the corner into which he’d shrunk when she’d shifted was vacant.

The coward had run out the door behind her back, hadn’t he?

She felt a horrible sense of betrayal, a letdown at this, and her extended paw faltered, and the dragon above her reared.

It was the center dragon—who in human form had artificially smooth and immovable hair. In dragon form he had a tall crest, red and gold. Well, it had been red and gold, it was now much darker red in spots, thanks to Kyrie’s claws. And blood ran down its cheek from one of its eyes. But the other eye was unblinking fixed hatred as it opened its jaws wide, wide, fangs glistening.

Kyrie needed to jump. She needed to. But her muscles felt powerless, spent. Stretched elastic that would not spring again.

So this is how it ends . . .

The big head descended to devour her, teeth ready to break her neck. And a taloned paw grabbed her roughly around the middle, swept her back.

She turned. She turned with her remnant of strength, her very last drop of fury, to snarl at the dragon behind her.

She snarled at him, Tom thought—amazed he could think clearly in dragon form. He’d willed himself into being a dragon. Willed himself into it.

He desired it and pushed. He knew she was going to have problems leaving. He knew she couldn’t fly.

And he knew she was an idiot for even fighting. They had no chance. But then, neither could he leave her to die alone. She had taken care of him, when she’d found him in suspicious circumstances. She’d shown him more kindness than his own father had. And she was a shifter like him. They were family: bonded deeper than any shared genes, any joint upbringing.

He shifted suddenly, unexpectedly, leaping in the air, and out of his corner so quickly the other dragons didn’t seem to register it. He had only the time to see that she was cowering, that the dragon above her would finish her. And then he was reaching for her, grabbing her, jumping out the open window, even as she turned to snarl at him.

But the snarl—lip pulled back from vicious fangs—faltered as she recognized him.

He held her as gently and firmly as he could. He mustn’t drop her. But neither must he hurt her. He could smell blood from her. He could smell fear.

He unfurled his wings—huge parachutes. Above him, the other dragons hadn’t appeared yet. Perhaps she’d done more damage than he’d thought. Perhaps they had a few minutes. A very few minutes.

Down in the parking lot, her car was a small abandoned toy. Her keys would be in his apartment, he thought, and shook his huge head, amazed at the clarity of the human thought in beast form. Normally he didn’t even remember what he’d done as a dragon. Perhaps because he was responsible for another? He’d never been responsible for anyone but himself.

But they must run. They must get out of here very fast. And as beasts, he could not explain to her what danger they were in. He couldn’t even think, clearly think, of where to run.

The dragon wished to crawl under a rock, preferably by a river, and hide.

But Goldport was not so big on rivers. There was Panner’s Creek, which in the summer became a mere trickle winding amid sun-parched boulders.

He flew her down to the parking lot, slowly, landed by the car, and wished to shift. He didn’t dare reach for the strength of the talisman to allow himself to shift. No. The dragons would sense that.

Instead, setting Kyrie down carefully, he
willed
himself to shift. He thought himself human, and shivered, as his body spasmed in painful change.

He was naked. Naked, sitting on the warm asphalt of the parking lot, next to Kyrie’s car and a panther. No. Next to Kyrie. In the next minute, she also shifted, and appeared as a naked, bloodied young woman, lying on the pavement next to him.

“The car,” he rasped at her, his voice hesitant, difficult, like a long-neglected instrument. “We must leave. Soon. They will pursue.”

She looked at him with confused, tired eyes. Her chin was scratched, and there was too much blood on her everywhere. He wondered how much of it was hers. Did they need to go to the hospital? They healed very quickly. At least Tom did. But what if these wounds were too serious? How could they go to the hospital? How could they explain anything?

“I don’t have keys,” she said, and patted her hips as though looking for keys in pockets that were no longer there.

Tom nodded. He got up, feeling about a hundred years old after two shifts in such a short time. His legs hurt, as did his arms, and his whole body felt as though someone had belabored him with sticks.

But he was human now and he could think. He remembered.

One eye on the window of his apartment, wondering how long he had, he said, “I’m sorry. I’ll pay.” Then he grabbed one of the stones on the flower bed nearby—a stone-bed, to tell the truth, since he’d never seen flowers there. He smashed the window with the stone, reached in, unlocked the door.

Sweeping the crumbs of glass from the seat, he smashed the key holder, reached down to the floor, and grabbed a screwdriver he’d noticed there while Kyrie was driving him. “Remembered you had this here,” he said, turning to see her bewildered expression as her car started. And then, “Get in. I’ll pay for the damage. Just get in.”

Was it his imagination, or had he seen the shadow of a wing in the window above?

He reached across to unlock the passenger door, as she jumped in.

She fumbled with the seat belt as he tore out of the parking lot in a screech of rubber. Sweat was dripping from his forehead into his eyes. He was sure he was sitting on a chunk of glass. It had been years since he’d driven and he found the turns odd and difficult. The car his father had given him as a sixteenth-birthday gift handled much better than this. Good thing there was almost no traffic on the roads at this time.

He tore around the corner of Fairfax, turning into a narrower street and hoping he was only imagining the noise of wings above. He tried to choose tree-lined streets, knowing well enough that it was harder to see into them from above. The vision of dragons seemed to focus naturally on moving things. In a street of trees, shaken by the wind, in which shadows shifted and shook, it would be harder to see them.

Some of these streets were narrow enough—and the trees above them well over a hundred years old—that it made it impossible to see the streets at all, except as a green canopy. He took one street, then another, then yet another, tearing down quiet residential streets like a madman and probably causing the families snug in their brick ranches to wonder what was happening out there.

They passed two people walking, male and female, he tall and she much shorter, leaning into him. Shorts, T-shirts, a swirling white skirt, a vision of normalcy and a relationship that he couldn’t aspire too, and Tom bit his lip and thumped the side of the wheel with his hand, bringing a startled glance from Kyrie.

He’d gone a good ten minutes and was starting to think they’d lost their pursuers, when he thought of Kyrie. He turned to her, wanting to explain he really would pay and that she should not—

Her dark eyes gazed into his, unwavering. “How many cars have you stolen?” she asked.

The way he’d hot-wired the car, quickly—she swore it had taken him less than a few seconds—had chilled Kyrie to the bone.

She supposed she should have known someone with a drug problem, working minimum-wage jobs had to supplement with crime, but all of a sudden she realized he was more dangerous—more out of control than she’d thought.

More out of control than the other dragons?

And yet, after he’d driven like a madman for a while, he looked at her with a devastatingly scared expression in his pale face. Despite chiseled features and the now all-too-obvious dark shadow of unshaven beard, he managed to look about five and worried he’d be put in time-out.

“How many cars have you stolen?” she asked, before she knew she was going to say it.

His expression closed. She would not be able to describe it any other way. The eager, almost childish panic vanished, leaving in its place a dark, unreadable glare, his eyebrows low over his dark blue eyes. He turned away, looking forward, and shrugged, a calculated shrug from his broad shoulders. One quarter inch up, one quarter inch down.

“I used to go joy riding,” he said. “When I was a kid. I got bored.” And when she didn’t answer that, he added. “Look, I’ve told you. I’ll pay you for the damage.” And again, at her continued silence. “I couldn’t let us be caught. If they’d caught us, they’d have killed us.”

At this, he stopped. He stopped long enough for her to gather her thoughts. She felt so tired that if she weren’t in pain, she would have fallen asleep. But she hurt. Her shoulder felt as if it had been dislocated in the fight. There was a slash across her torso that she prayed wouldn’t need stitches, and a broad swath of her buttock felt scraped, as though it had rubbed hard against a scaly hide. Which it probably had, though she didn’t remember.

“Who are they?” she finally asked. “Why are they after you?”

“They’re a Chinese triad,” he said. “They’re members of a . . . crime syndicate. Asian.”

“Admirably described,” she said, and heard the hint of sarcasm in her own voice, and was surprised she still had the strength for it. “But what do they want with you?”

He hesitated. For just a moment he glanced at her, and the scared little boy was back, with wide-open eyes, and slightly parted lips.

He looked back at the road in time to take them, tightly, around a corner, tires squealing, car tilting. “They think I stole something from them,” he said, with the defensive tone of a child explaining it really, really, really wasn’t him who put the clamp on the cat’s tail.

Something. Kyrie was not so naive that she didn’t know Chinese crime syndicates—like most crime syndicates—dealt mostly in various drugs. “A drug deal gone bad?” she asked.

He had the nerve to tighten his lips, and shake his head. “I don’t deal drugs,” he said.

Whee. There was one form of criminality he didn’t stoop to. Who would have thunk it? “So . . .”

“I didn’t steal it, okay?” he said. “I didn’t steal anything. They think I did, and they’re trying to get it back.”

“Sounds ugly,” she said. Somehow she felt he was lying but also not lying. There was an edge to his tone as if he weren’t quite so sure how he’d got himself into this type of situation.

“It is,” he said. “They’ve been after me for months.” He shrugged. “Only they’ve just figured out my name, I think. Now they can follow me, wherever I live. They’re shifters. Dragons.”