Night Shifters (99 page)

Kyrie hit the aquarium door first, full lope, and rebounded back, shocked. Locked. The door was locked. The cat in whose mind Kyrie was couldn’t understand it, even as Kyrie forced it to try to turn the knob. Until she felt a dragon claw rest, gently, on her shoulder, moving her aside.

The cat felt threatened and wanted to fight, but Kyrie was in control and she forced the body to step aside. And felt it recoil in terror and put belly to the ground and growl softly, as the dragon faced the door and opened his massive jaws, and let loose a stream of white-hot flame.

The door cracked. The outer lining of metal melted and ran. The inside layer of wood charred. The door fell inward, and Kyrie forced the great cat to leap in, over the smoldering door, and down a hallway, to where a door stood open with a seal ripped in two, and Kyrie lunged up the hallway, and loped up the stairs to the platform, in time to see . . . Rafiel, in human form, leaning over the railing and getting a push, and falling, falling headlong into the shark tank.

He made a sound of panic as he fell, and his shape blurred and changed. It was the lion that hit the water with a loud splash. The cover of the tank, removed, stood to the side.

A woman laughed, and turned to Kyrie. “I see. Why don’t you join your boyfriend?”

Tom wanted to scream “No,” but what came out of the dragon’s mouth was a long, incoherent growl, as he rushed in, past Kyrie and almost past the woman on the platform.

The thought in his mind was that he must go and rescue Rafiel. He must. But he had a moment to think that if the woman stayed where she was, she might find a way to push Kyrie in. And he couldn’t allow that, so he did what seemed all too logical to the dragon, and grabbed at the woman, pulling her in with him, as he plunged in after Rafiel.

The sharks hadn’t started on Rafiel, who was trying to swim, his lion body quite adept at swimming, but not so much at reaching up to the edge of the tank lid and climbing out. He growled softly, whenever he tried and failed. And he looked—the human in Tom’s dragon mind thought—very much like a drowned cat.

He thought all this as he plunged in, hitting the water with a great splash and going down-down-down, drawing a deep breath scented with what seemed like intoxicating perfume, and realizing he was breathing under water.

He came up beneath Rafiel, lifting him, pushing him up with his own body, till the lion’s paws touched the edge of the opening, and then the dragon gave the lion a little shove, pushing him out.

And he felt a shark—skin rough as sandpaper—touch his back paw. Something from a nature program about sharks turning, or circling or something before biting crossed the dragon’s mind, and the dragon did what came instinctively. It snapped downward and it bit at the shark. Hard. The shark flopped. Blood poured out. Other sharks rushed in.

Feeding frenzy
, Tom’s human mind thought and pushed, with all its might, at the dragon’s body, impelling it, mind over matter, to the opening, its wings unfurling, half jumping, half flying out of the tank.

On the way he picked up the lion, who had been cowering on the edge of the tank where the covering rested, and lifted him all the way to the platform.

And before he could shift and talk or look around for Kyrie, he heard an unholy growl.

Dante Dire, Kyrie thought. And—through the panther’s mind, confused, blurred—went the thought that he’d escaped the Great Sky Dragon. Somehow. She would hate to imagine how.

And then she was plunging after him, madly. She felt him bite her, attack her, too ravening to care who she was, too maddened with rage to care whether he could just mind-control her instead.

From the shadows a dragon emerged. No. Two dragons. One of them red and with a foreshortened arm. And a very wet lion. They all fell on Dire, and Kyrie couldn’t honestly say who was attacking what, except that Dire seemed to be everywhere at once, his teeth biting and his claws scraping, but never enough to get hold of them.

And then he seemed to regain control. Suddenly, the horrible smell she remembered from her kitchen when he’d attacked her there, surrounded them. And into their minds poured Dire’s voice,
If you are done now, I can kill you.

But at the same moment, two other voices sounded. “I don’t think so,” said a tremulous voice and, looking over, Kyrie was surprised to see Old Joe standing, for once, very straight. Next to him was an old Japanese gentleman, looking faintly amused.

You!
Dire said.
You. You’re weak. You can never face me.

“We’re not weak,” the Japanese gentleman said. His accent was, clearly, the real thing, but not that incomprehensible. “We are free. We would have nothing to do with your council and your rules. We told you before it was wrong to separate yourself from humanity.”

“We told you it would come to no good,” Old Joe said, his voice clearer and more firm than it had ever been, at least that Kyrie had heard it.

“No good, uh?” Dire had shifted. He was human, looking at them with scornfully curled lip. “I am the executioner. Even the Daddy Dragon couldn’t face me. He cares too much for his whelp to use his form too long. He was afraid I would hurt the body he was borrowing.” He grinned. “And I won. Because I don’t care for anything but myself. Come,” he said, and shifted, in a single, fluid movement.
Come now, we’ll see who is stronger.

It all happened too fast. There were suddenly an alligator and a giant spider crab. And they shifted, and the crab was stabbing at the dire wolf, while the alligator seemed to be everywhere at once, biting and slicing. The dire wolf’s teeth closed on hard carapace and armored back. The alligator’s teeth clack-clacked in what sounded like laughter.

There was a howl, a growl of pent-up fury, and suddenly the dire wolf was not there.

“He will come back,” Tom said softly. And Kyrie realized he had shifted, and so had she, and they were both naked, hugging on the top step of the platform.

Before she could answer, a dripping-wet Rafiel walked around the shark tank, below them, and halfway up the stairs. “I’ll be damned if I can explain all the trace on the scene now,” he said, ruefully. “They’re going to find scales, and blood of at least three different animals. But,” he said, “I don’t think that the murders will go on.” He looked incredibly tired and somehow defeated, even as he announced good news. “She . . . shifted as she died. They will find human remains in the tank this time. Female.”

Tom, pulling Kyrie against him, shuddered. And Kyrie said, “Why did you let things get that advanced?”

“I don’t know. It could be some form of pheromones,” he said. “Or else, she put something in my drink.” He looked up, his golden eyes very sad. “I know that it was all delusion. I know she just wanted a snack. But for a moment, it was like being a kid again, back when I was in love with Alice.” He shrugged and sat on the bottom step of the platform, and leaned against the railing. “I guess time never winds backwards.”

And Kyrie who remembered something from the fight, looked to the other side of the steps, where Conan sat, looking just as dejected as Rafiel. “Conan,” she said, “what was it Dire said, about the Great Sky Dragon borrowing your form?”

Conan shook. He looked up at her, seeming drained and pale. “He . . . he didn’t . . . I mean, he can’t be everywhere at once, but just like he can listen through his underlings . . . he can make us take his form. With all of his powers. Only if he does it for long, we die.”

Kyrie blinked at him. “He made you take his form?”

“Just . . . just for a moment. Then he realized I couldn’t stand it . . .”

“And he realized he cared for you?” Tom said, skeptically.

Conan shook his head. “No. He realized he cared for
you
. And he thought . . .” He sighed. “He thought you wouldn’t forgive him if he killed me. Even when . . . even if it was to kill Dire. So he . . . let me go. He told me . . . in my mind, that I was now yours. That I’m to do what you tell me.”

Tom coughed. “Mine?” Something like a choked laughter escaped him. “No offense, Conan, you’re a nice guy. But the only person I ever wanted to be mine was Kyrie, and it wasn’t in that sense. If he gave you to me, I give you to yourself. You’re yours.”

“I was afraid of that,” Conan said, dolefully.

“Afraid,” Kyrie said.

Conan shrugged. “Yes. I don’t know how . . . not to belong to someone. I’ve taken orders from someone since before I was an adult. I’m not used to being my own person.”

“Try it,” she said, not without sympathy. “You can get used to it. And you still belong to us. Just as a friend, not a . . . possession.”

“Truly?” he asked. “And I can . . . still work at The George?”

Kyrie felt Tom tremble with silent laughter. “If you want to. But I thought you were going to sing for your supper.”

Conan blushed. “Maybe someday. But for now, I’m just glad to have a job.”

“And on that, gentlemen and lady,” Tom said, “I’m starving, and I think we should go to The George for some food. Because, you know it and I know it, that the old bastard is going to come back and try to kill us and right now another shift might kill
me.
”

“Maybe he won’t try to kill us,” Old Joe said. He was standing alone. The crab shifter was nowhere to be seen. “Maybe he’s afraid now?”

“I very much doubt it,” Tom said, drily. But he added, “And Joe? Thank you. You saved our lives, I think.”

Old Joe shrugged, but blushed and said, “You do what you have to.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “At any rate, let’s go eat something. What about your friend? Does he want to come?”

“Who? He? No. He never does. He doesn’t feel very comfortable as a human, anymore. All he wants is his aquarium and to watch life go by.”

Two weeks later, Tom woke up from sleep in his back porch, at his and Kyrie’s house, looking up at the ceiling some past occupier had painted a deep pink. The bathroom had been repaired. The house was silent. Kyrie’s breathing wasn’t audible from her bedroom, and neither was what he was sure must be Notty’s quite industrial-sized purr.

He wasn’t sure what had wakened him, but Dire was on his mind. He hadn’t seen Dire or heard from him for two weeks, and he wanted Old Joe to be right. He wanted it to be that Dire had gone away forever.