Night Shifters (53 page)

“Conan?” Kyrie asked. She didn’t know whether she believed it, and she almost laughed at the idea of this man, who was shorter even than Tom, much slimmer, and—definitely—no barbarian hero, being called Conan.

“I . . .” He sighed. “My parents used comic books to improve their English, and they liked Conan.”

That he was descended from the sort of people who thought that their son was likely to grow up to be a barbarian hero, might explain his delusional thoughts of protecting Tom.
Might
. She doubted anything
could
fully explain that.

“Right, then, Mr. Lung,” she said. “What I want to know—”

“Call me Conan,” Conan Lung said, quickly, and in the sort of undertone that implied he expected a rebuff.

“Right then,” Kyrie said, thinking to herself she hoped the creature wouldn’t think they were the best of friends, now. In his last foray into their lives, he’d chased them all over town and he’d helped catch and torture Tom. She knew that like all cowards, he could be exceptionally cruel in a fight. And she didn’t want to have him at her back in a dangerous situation. In fact, she didn’t want to have him anywhere that she couldn’t keep a sharp eye on him. “You said you came to protect Tom?”

Red Dragon cast a fearful look at Tom, then another back at Kyrie. “The Great One said that I must come and protect the young dragon,” he said, and bobbed a small bow, as though just speaking of the Great Sky Dragon must entail a need to kowtow. “He said I should answer for his life with mine.”

Kyrie frowned. Conan sounded terribly earnest and she didn’t think just now, scared as he looked, that the man was capable of lying so convincingly. However, having met the vast golden dragon that was master of all other Asian dragons in the West, she couldn’t imagine his sending Conan to Tom as a protector.

“You’re . . . He told you you’re to protect Tom? You’re a bodyguard of sorts, then?”

Conan bobbed his head again, then shook it desultorily. “Not . . . a bodyguard. My . . . my fighting is not all that could be desired. But I am one of the Great One’s . . . you know? One of his vassals. I’m supposed to . . . to report to him what’s happening around . . . the young dragon. To . . . to call him if needed.”

“Do you mean,” Kyrie started, narrowing her eyes, “that you are spying for the Great Sky Dragon? That if there is any trouble . . .”

“He can be here in no time at all,” Conan said. “He tried telling the young dragon to beware, but the young one didn’t seem to understand him, so I am here to protect him.” A bite of the burger and a fleeting look under his—annoyingly thick and long—lashes at her. “And . . . and you. By making sure the Great One can chase away any enemies before they can harm any of you.”

“But protect us from what?” Kyrie asked. She didn’t at all like the idea that the Great Sky Dragon had effectively planted a spy among them. She wasn’t sure she trusted his intentions or his ideas of what was proper. And she was very sure she didn’t trust the Great Sky Dragon, himself. A creature more than a thousand years old—and from what Kyrie understood, the Great Sky Dragon was several thousands of years old—would have seen generations come and go. What would others’ lives be worth to him?

Oh, he could have killed Tom, three months ago—killed him in such a way that even the amazing healing power of dragons would not have reversed. And he’d chosen not to. But how did Kyrie know that it was ever a choice? How could she know that under what must surely be an alien honor code, the Great Sky Dragon hadn’t been forbidden from killing Tom then? And how did she know that he didn’t mean to make up for it now, by setting a trap in which Tom would be caught and killed?

She looked towards her boyfriend, who was leaning on the counter, chatting animatedly with Rafiel, and again felt a sick lurch in her stomach. In place of the family she’d never known, she had a man who loved her and who was—she believed—one of the best people in the world—dragon shifter or no. And she had friends: Rafiel and Anthony, and a young man named Keith who was, now and again, a part-time waiter at The George.

Kyrie was not willing to give up any member of her chosen family, nor any corner of her domain to shadowy creatures whose life span might be many times as long as hers, but whose moral compass left much to be desired.

“Stay here,” she told Conan, as she got up, collecting the carafe. She must talk to Tom and Rafiel and try to figure out what they should do with Conan and what the Great Sky Dragon could be
trying
to do.

Whatever it was, they would be in as much danger as she would be—perhaps Tom would be in more danger, in fact—and she couldn’t make a decision for either of them.

“Seriously,” Rafiel said, speaking in an undertone to Tom’s back, as Tom industriously scraped at the grill. “How many of your clients are shifters?”

Tom gave Rafiel a look over his shoulder, half startled. “I told you. You and Old Joe.”

“You know better. You know because of the pheromones the . . . former owners . . . sprayed this place with, it attracts shifters. They attracted you and Kyrie, didn’t they? Right off the bus. Unless you have a better explanation as to why you and Kyrie found little Goldport, Colorado so irresistible. They attracted me, which is perhaps more easily explainable, since I’m a policeman and I work the night shift. So, failing a really good twenty-four-hour doughnut shop in town . . .” He smiled a self-conscious smile, glad Tom was turning around—spatula still in hand—and answered his joke with a chuckle. “You could say an all-night greasy spoon is the closest thing to my natural habitat. But how can you truly believe we’re the only ones?”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t know, Rafiel. I don’t think there are that many of our kind of people, period. There was an orangutan shifter, back in New York. And of course, the Great Sky Dragon and his brood. And there is, of course, Old Joe and you and Kyrie. But that’s out of thousands of people, Rafiel. I don’t think there are that many of us to gather here. Or anywhere.”

“What you mean is that you don’t think there are that many of them in the vicinity. But how far does the call of the pheromones extend? How far will it bring shifters, do you know? How many casual travelers, how many students, will stop here and stay? How many of those do you have as regulars, Tom?”

Tom shrugged. He set the spatula down and leaned over the counter, so that they could talk to each other in a whisper and with a modicum of privacy. “I don’t know,” he said. “You figured out how to smell shifters before either Kyrie or I did. Can’t you smell out shifters in the diner, and tell
me
how many shifters there are here?”

Rafiel shrugged. “Not always. When people wear perfume, or even cologne, sometimes it’s hard to tell. When I was in high school—” He stopped abruptly.

“Yes?” Tom asked.

Rafiel shrugged. He’d never told Tom this. He had never told anyone, not even his parents. The incident, secret though it was, had crystalized for him exactly what risk shifters were in, and how their very natures placed them outside the purview of normal legality. Of what other people would see as reality.

Tom was watching him intently and Rafiel sighed and gave in. “When I was in high school, I had a girlfriend. This was around the time I started shifting, but I shifted mostly late at night, and provided I took care not to have dates on full-moon nights, we were okay. She was . . . she seemed very easygoing and was willing to postpone dates and take my less than convincing excuses. Still, when I graduated I went away to Denver to study law enforcement, and it was either break up or get married and, you know, I couldn’t get married. Not and risk her figuring out what I really was. So we broke up. Alice stayed behind and worked . . . actually at The George. The Athens as it then was. And then when I came back for Christmas . . .” He shrugged. “Well, you know, being a shifter and all, and the first year at college I had to be in dorms . . .”

“I always wondered how that worked,” Tom said.

“Not well. So I was convinced I wanted to quit school, and I came back home for Christmas, and I was going to tell Dad I couldn’t be an officer, after all, which would break his heart. Anyway, when I got here I found out Alice was missing. Had been missing for some days. I shifted. I trailed her . . . well . . . her scent. I found her dead. She had been killed because she was a shifter. She was . . .” He looked up at Tom and saw, reflected in the other man’s face, the strange, hollow grief he himself felt. “She was a lion shifter. And her new boyfriend caught her shifting and . . . you know . . . killed her. He was scared. I . . .” He shook his head, trying to free himself of memories of the past and Alice’s soft brown eyes. “I never knew it. Even though I was with her, every day, I never smelled the shifter in her. She wore a perfume that had the same sort of undertone, and it got lost in the perfume.”

He was quiet a while, unable to find words to continue.

“I’m sorry,” Tom said, in a low voice.

Rafiel managed a chuckle. “Well, it was a long time ago. Ten years. But you see, if I could smell shifters that well, I’d have
known.
I did not.”

“And you became a policeman,” Tom said, softly.

Rafiel shrugged. “Someone official needs to be looking out for our kind, which is what this is all about. I didn’t count on the diner becoming the center of shifters for miles around.” He gave Tom a smile he was sure looked sickly.

“And why are you so interested in how many of our regulars might be shifters?” Tom asked.

“Well, I figure the aquarium isn’t that far away, and if there was a shifter . . . well . . . it might have been one of your regulars who was there, and we might be able to tag him on his specific scent. And then I could question him, you know, without seeming to, and if it turned out to just be someone who went to the aquarium for fun or something . . .” He drew to a halt slowly. The truth was he didn’t want this murder to involve any shifters. He didn’t want to have to lie and skulk and go behind his superiors’ backs.

Oh, Goldport was a small enough town, and the police department was somewhat informal and friendly. Rafiel was a third generation cop in the same department. He could get away with a lot. But he didn’t like to. He was a policeman because he prized the idea of a justice system based on laws. He didn’t approve of anyone defiling it. Not even himself.

“Rafiel,” Tom said, laughter at the back of his throat, trying to cut through the words. “Are you truly suggesting we go up to all our regulars and smell them? Half of them are college students or warehouse workers who come here after work. You know what they smell like.”

“No. I mean . . . no, I don’t think that would work. Perfume and all. But . . . just keep your nose open, okay?”

Tom nodded and opened his mouth as though he were about to add something, but at that moment Kyrie came up to them. “He says he was sent to protect you, Tom. That the Great Sky Dragon said he tried to warn you and you didn’t seem to get it.”

“Why would anyone—particularly anyone ancient and presumably intelligent—send
Red Dragon
to protect . . . me?” Tom said.

“He says his name is Conan,” Kyrie said, looking at Tom, but with an unfocused expression that indicated her attention was on her thoughts and not on their conversation.

“Conan?” Rafiel asked, before Tom could.

Kyrie turned to him. “His parents liked comic books, he says.”

“So it stands to reason he should be the hero to protect me? And protect me from what?” Tom said.

“Are you sure you don’t remember what the Great Sky Dragon told you?” Kyrie asked. “Perhaps . . .”

Tom shook his head. “It was all very confused.” Just thinking back on that precise, booming voice in his head made his muscles clench and made him fear he would shift without warning. “I know he said I had violated old and sacred customs. The laws of our kind . . .” He shook his head, unable to remember.

“Our kind has laws?” Rafiel asked, at the same time that Kyrie said, “That doesn’t sound like he wanted to protect you.”

“No,” Tom said. “It didn’t sound that way to me, either, which is why I thought . . .” He clenched his hands on the counter, digging his nails against the hard formica top and making not an impression. If he’d been in dragon form . . . he would have dug his nails right through it. But he would not allow himself to change. Not now. Not today. Not again.