Night Shifters (21 page)

He just grinned up at her. “Oh, bring me pie à la mode, then. I don’t care. I’m in it for the vanilla ice cream.” And he winked at her.

“What kind of pie?”

“I told you I don’t care,” he said. “Just bring me a wedge.”

“Green bean pie it is, then,” she said, and walked away. To bump into Anthony, the last of the day shift to leave. He was in his street clothes, which, in his case were usually elaborate and today consisted of a ruffled button-down white shirt, red vest and immaculate black pants. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up with Frank? He’s acting like a bear with two heads.”

Kyrie shrugged and Anthony sighed. “What that man needs,” he said, as if this summed up the wisdom of the ages, “is to get laid. He seriously needs to get laid. His girlfriend hasn’t been in for too long.” And with that, he twirled on his heels and made for the door. Kyrie had often wondered if in his free time he was a member of some dance troupe. At least that would explain the bizarre clothes.

Kyrie went back to scout out the pie, though the only choices were apple and lemon. She chose lemon, figuring he would like it less, and put two scoops of ice cream on the plate with it. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to thwart Rafiel—but a man who ordered with that kind of complacency did deserve green bean pie. Or at least Brussels sprouts. Too bad they didn’t have any on the menu.

She took the plate of pie in one hand, the carafe in the other, set the pie in front of Rafiel and went off, from table to table, warming up people’s coffees.

Despite her best efforts to banish it, the image of Frank getting laid was stuck in her mind. She looked across the diner at Frank, behind the counter, his Neanderthal-like features still knit in a glower. She shuddered. There were things the human mind was not supposed to contemplate.

Edward Ormson’s first thought was that they couldn’t be in Colorado. Not so fast. Even by airplane it took over three hours. And they couldn’t be flying at airplane speeds. Well, they could, but it would have left him frozen as a popsicle sitting astride that dragon.

And he hadn’t been frozen, nor gasping for air. The temperature around him had remained even, and he’d felt perfectly comfortable. Only twice, for just a moment, light seemed to vanish from around them. But it was such a brief moment that Edward hadn’t had time to think about it. Now he wondered if some magic transfer had taken place at that moment.

Oh, Edward didn’t believe in magic. But then he also didn’t believe in dragons, he thought and smiled with more irony than joy while the dragon circled down to a parking lot in a street of low-to-the-ground buildings.

They landed softly on the asphalt and the huge wings that had been spread on either side of him, coruscating and sparkling in the light like living fire, closed slowly.

“Down,” the dragon said. Or perhaps not said it, because Edward didn’t remember sounds. Just the feeling that he should get down. He should get down immediately.

He scrambled off, sliding along scales that felt softer on the skin than they should have.

But once he stood, in the parking lot, holding his briefcase, he realized that the front of his suit had tiny cuts, as though someone had worked it over with very small blades.

He frowned at it, then looked up at the dragon who glowed with some sort of inner fire, in front of him. The beast opened its huge mouth, and all thought of complaining about damages to his clothes fled Ormson’s mind.

“Find your son,” the dragon said, in that voice that wasn’t exactly a voice. “Make him give back what belongs to me.”

And, just as suddenly as he’d appeared at Edward Ormson’s office, the dragon now stretched its wings, flexed its legs, and was airborne, gaining height.

Alone in the parking lot, Edward became aware that it was raining, a boring, slow rain. Behind him, a little Chinese restaurant called Three Luck Dragon had its open sign out, but there were no cars parked. So either it catered to a local clientele, or it had none.

Did the Great Sky Dragon mean anything by dropping Edward off here? Or was it simply the first convenient place they’d come to?

Edward saw the curtain twitch on the little window, and a face peer out. The lighting and the distance didn’t allow him to see features, but he thought it would be the proprietors looking to see if he intended to come in.

Well, today was their lucky day. He’d go in and order something, and get out his cell phone. He would bet now he knew where Tom had last been seen, he would be able to find the boy with half a dozen phone calls.

One way or another, he always ended up cleaning up after his son.

Western towns don’t taper off. Or at least that was what Tom had seen, ever since his drifting had brought him west and south to Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. You walked down a street, surrounded nice Victorian homes and suddenly you’re amid five-floor brick warehouses, with the noises of loading and unloading, of packing and making of things resounding within.

And then, a couple of blocks away, you were in the middle of a high prairie, with tumbleweed blowing around. Looking back, you could still see the warehouses, but they were so incongruous that they seemed to be part of another world.

Tom turned to look at the dark edge of the warehouses. He stood on what had abruptly become a country road, its asphalt cracked underfoot. Looking just beyond where he was standing, he saw nothing but an underpass, just ahead. Why there was an underpass was a question he couldn’t answer, as it was just two country roads meeting. Perhaps this was what people complained about, with public projects that made no sense.

But right then Tom was grateful of the underpass. In this landscape of brown grass and blowing tumbleweeds, there wasn’t much cover, otherwise. He made for the underpass and stripped quickly, shoving all his clothes and boots into the little backpack with the happy dragon on the back. The boots were a tight fit into the small space, but he got them in, and zipped the thing. Then he loosened the back straps to their outmost, and put them around his wrist.

Willing yourself to shift was like willing yourself to die. Because the process of shifting, no matter how easy, always hurt. It took desire to do it, but it needed something else. He got out from under the overpass, and stood—naked in the moonlight, willing his body to shift, willing.

A cough shook him, another, heralding the preliminary spasms that often preceded the shape-shifting. Pain twisted in his limbs, wracked his back, as his body tried to extrude wings from itself. He opened his mouth and let the scream come—something he never did within a city—the scream of pain of his human self, the scream of triumph from the ancient beast once more let forth.

A car drove by, toward the outside of town. One of the tiny SUVs in white. A Kia or a Hyundai or one of those. Tom’s confused senses were aware of its turning around and then zooming past again. But no one came out.
Worse comes to worst
, his still rational mind thought, as his body shifted.
They’ll just call 911. And good luck with convincing a dispatcher they just saw a dragon.

In the next moment it no longer mattered. The dragon was him. He was the dragon. His body fully shifted, Tom spread his wings fully, feeling the caress of wind and rain on them. He opened his mouth and roared, this time in triumph. His vision sharpened. He was in a vast non-cave. And the dragon knew they should go to ground, they should find a cave.

No,
the human part of Tom said.
No. Not to a cave. We’re flying west. Deep west, until we come to a town. We’ll follow the highway
that will take us to Las Vegas, New Mexico, by early morning. Then
. . . cave.

The dragon blinked, confused, because the image in its mind, for a cave, had mattresses and pillows and other things that made sense only to the human. But it had learned, over the years, to trust the ape cowering away at the back of its mind.

It trusted it now, even when it found something wrapped tightly around its front paw. The human mind said they were clothes, and that they shouldn’t be discarded.

The dragon harrumphed, loudly. Then spread its wings again, sensing the air currents. Half of flying was coasting. If you needed to beat your wings the whole time, you were going to die of tiredness soon.

He felt the currents. He flapped a little. He gained altitude. He headed out of town.

“Break?” Rafiel asked.

Kyrie was about to shake her head, but stopped. The dinnertime crowd had thinned. Students had left for concerts or movies or whatever it was that college students did with their evenings. And the families, too, had vanished, probably home to their comfy chairs and their TVs.

The only two people in the diner were a man at the back, who seemed to be signing the credit card slip that Kyrie had dropped on his table. And Rafiel.

Kyrie looked at the wall clock. Ten-thirty p.m. That meant there would be a lull till eleven or thereabouts, when the late-night people would start coming in. And she only needed ten minutes.

She backtracked to the counter and put away the carafe she’d just used to give Rafiel a warm up. “Frank, is it okay if I take ten minutes?” she asked.

Frank turned around. He was still glowering. “Fine. It’s fine,” he said, as if he were saying that it was all completely wrong.

“Is there a problem?” Kyrie asked taken aback.

“No. I just wish your boyfriend had given us some warning before he decided to disappear.”

“He’s not due for an hour or so. I came in early,” Kyrie said. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

But it was hardly worth arguing. And Frank looked to be in a worse mood than she’d ever seen him. “I’ll take a break now,” she said. “If Tom doesn’t come in, it’s going to be a hellish shift, and that way I’ll be able to stay till five a.m., okay?”

Frank shrugged, which looked like consent. He was grilling a bunch of burgers, though Kyrie had no idea why, given the deserted look of the diner. Perhaps he was precooking them a bit to allow him to cook them faster later on. It wasn’t any of her business, in any case.

She backtracked to the enclosed-porch addition. Rafiel must have heard, or watched her conversation. He was standing as she approached. “Ready?”

She nodded. And gestured with her head toward the door at the back of the extension that led to the parking lot. She didn’t want to go to the parking lot again. Truly, she didn’t. On the other hand, neither did she want to talk to Rafiel in front of Frank. Frank was likely to decide that Rafiel was also her boyfriend and hold her responsible for whatever the policeman did in the future.

She had no idea what had gotten into her boss. He was usually grumpy, but not like this. And then there was Anthony’s idea, which made her make a face, as she led Rafiel out the back door and onto the parking lot.

This time the parking lot was deserted, there was no smell of blood, and she took care to stay in the shadow of the building, out of the light of the moon.

Rafiel made a sound that seemed suspiciously close to a purr as he got outside, and he stretched his arms. “Do you feel it?” he asked, giving Kyrie a sidelong glance. “Do you feel the call?”

“No,” Kyrie said, as curtly as she could. It was a lie, but only in a way. Yeah, she could feel the call, but she could feel the call every night. And it seemed to her Rafiel was speaking of another call. And there, as if on cue, she noticed his smell again. No, not his smell. His smell was soap and a little aftershave, nothing out of the ordinary. But the smell exuding from him right now was a thick, feline musk that made her think of running through the jungles, of hunting, of . . . “You said you had news that pertained to the corpse?” she said, turning her head away.

“Yeah,” he said, and looked away from her, as though her turning her head to get fresh air, slightly less tainted by his musk, were an insult. “Yeah. We got a chemical analysis for the green stuff we found.”

She looked at him. He nodded as if she’d asked a question. “The . . . Well, the lab thinks it’s of insect origin, although not quite like anything they know from any insects.”

“And?” Kyrie asked.

“And those things . . . the white stuff on the lungs?”

“Yeah.”

“They think it’s eggs.”

Kyrie frowned at him and he shook his head, looking impatient and annoyed, as if resenting that she couldn’t read his mind. “Not chicken eggs,” he said. “They’re insect eggs. They don’t know what type yet, but they’re getting in an entomologist from the Natural History Museum in Denver tomorrow. He’s someone’s brother-in-law or brother of a brother-in-law, and he’s driving down day after tomorrow. He’s supposedly one of those guys who can tell on sight what kind of insect laid eggs where. He’s used for investigating crimes by all the local police departments.”

“Okay,” Kyrie said. “And why did I need to know this right now? Why was this so urgent that I had to take a break to hear it?” His smell was growing stronger. It seemed to fill her nose and her mouth and to populate her mind with odd images and thoughts. She found herself wondering what his hair would feel like to the touch.

“Because I think there was the same powder on your porch last night,” he said. “Where those windows were broken.”

“My porch? Insects?” she asked. “But Tom said something about dragons and his friend was going on about aliens.”

“Well, yeah,” Rafiel said, and shrugged. “But I don’t think those two were exactly in the state necessary to testify in a court of law. Or for that matter anywhere else.”

Kyrie conceded. And yet, she wondered what had happened in the porch while they were gone. Had bugs broken the window? In her mind was an image of masses of bugs crawling out of the loam, pushing on the window, till the sheer weight of their mass broke it. Yuck. Like something out of a bad horror movie. “Any dead bugs, or other pieces of bug in that powder?”

“No,” he said. He looked directly at her, as if her face were a puzzle he was hoping to decipher. His eyes were huge and golden, and his lips looked soft. The musky smell of him was everywhere, penetrating her nostrils, her mind.

He leaned in, very close to her, and asked in a voice that should be reserved for indecent proposals, “So, can I come by? After your shift?”