Night Shifters (56 page)

“Them,” he said, and shrugged. “You know, the Ancient Ones.”

And all of a sudden, either dredged from memory or created by his mind on the spot, Tom had a comic book cover in his mind, showing the Greek gods in full array and under them the words “The Ancient Ones.”

He sighed. “Right.” In the morass of Old Joe’s mind, who knew what was true and what wasn’t. And now the kitten was asleep on Tom’s palm, as Tom shielded him with his other hand, so that Old Joe wouldn’t see him and get hungry. “Right.”

At that moment, Keith dropped the burger in front of Old Joe, who grabbed it as if he’d been lost in a burgerless desert for centuries. “Sorry,” Tom said, in an undertone. “I should have remembered you’d need protein. It was stupid of me. No wonder you changed.”

Old Joe shook his head, as emphatically as the alligator had, near the dumpster. “That’s not why I changed,” he said. “It was the Ancient Ones. I can’t take them like this. They might kill me, you know?” His eyes gave Tom an appraising look from under the long grey hair. “You know what they’re like.”

“Actually,” Tom said, “I don’t.” He wondered if Old Joe was talking about something real or something out of his nightmares.

Old Joe devoured the burger, with its bun and pickles, in fast, ravenous bites, all the more surprising because his teeth appeared to be broken and stained, and possibly moss-covered. How old was he? Tom had heard—and had observed in his own years on the street—how hard a life like that could be on people. When you threw in the alcoholism and drug use that plagued people on the streets, how likely was it that Old Joe was no more than middle-aged? Forty. Maybe fifty.

On the other hand, Old Joe was a shifter. So was Tom. And through five years of sleeping outside and roughing it through horrible winters, and working at the roughest manual labor, and shooting up and smoking and eating any amount of drugs . . . Tom had never managed to look his age, let alone unnaturally aged. At twenty-one, he looked closer to eighteen, except for the dark shadow of beard on his face. Even with his five o’clock shadow, he still got carded every time he tried to buy a beer. So Old Joe could not have aged all that fast, could he? Not unless he’d come up with some pinnacle of self-destructiveness that Tom had left untouched. And that, Tom found very hard indeed to believe.

But then again, perhaps alligators aged differently from dragons. How was Tom to know? The problem, he thought, as Old Joe demolished the burger, is that he knew so few shifters. Not enough to give him a statistical universe, truly.

He adjusted his hands, trying to remove one, to rub at his forehead, and stopped short when the kitten emitted a vaguely threatening purr and put out a paw to hold Tom’s hand in place. He was so much like Kyrie, asleep, on the sofa, putting out a hand to hold Tom back when he tried to walk off, that Tom smiled. A smile that died quickly, when he heard Old Joe say, in an almost singsong voice, “They want to kill you, you know?”

It was all Tom could do, not to look over his shoulder at where Conan was talking to a customer. “Who?” he asked, instead. “The Ancient—”

Old Joe nodded. “You see, they formed”—he wrinkled his forehead—“many years ago.” He waved a hand with short, broken, dirty nails. “To punish those who hurt shifters. And to create a law for shifters. And they know about the deaths. At the castle.” His voice was raspy, and he looked one way and another as if to make sure he couldn’t be overheard.

“Many years ago?”

“Before cars. Or airplanes or . . . gaslight.” His eyes seemed to be looking far away into the past. “Or horses.”

“I see.”

“I was young, you know? And they said that shifters needed rules and laws to protect them, and to rule themselves, that they needed to defend themselves against the others . . . the ones who would hunt them. And then they formed a . . . a group.”

“I see. And why do you think this group is after us? Just because so many young shifters died?”

Old Joe shook his head, then shrugged. “He came to me, when I was outside. Dante Dire did. He came to me. He’s the . . . killer for the Ancient Ones, the . . . how do you call it, when someone kills the condemned for a king? The executioner!” He looked very proud of himself for having come up with the word. “That’s what he is. He punishes those who hurt shifters. And he came to me and said that many young and blameless shifters had died, and that it was all your fault, and . . . yours and . . . your girl and the policeman. And he wanted to know your names.”

“How could he know we did it, and not know our names?”

“He can feel it. Many people can. Well, ancient shifters can.”

“And he wanted to know who we were?”

“Yeah. He tried to get me to change,” Old Joe squinted. “But I wouldn’t. And then, you know, your manager came out, and he went away, but I was hit with a cantaloupe.”

Tom tried to think through the confusion of articles, then shook his head. It didn’t matter if it was all a dream of Old Joe’s. Or rather, of course it did, since dreams couldn’t possibly kill them, and real, pissed-off shifters on a rampage could. But . . . but for now, not knowing to which aspect of Old Joe he was addressing himself, he had to treat the thing as if it were deadly serious. “Is there some way they could figure out who we are? Since you didn’t tell him? And why did he come to you?”

“He didn’t come to me,” Old Joe said, somewhat defensively. “He came to the diner because of the smell that attracts shifters, you know. And then he figured this is where all shifters came. And he recognized me. So he asked. I didn’t tell him.” He folded his gnarled hands in front of him, on the formica table, looking for all the world like a schoolboy who expects a reward, then looked up and smiled a little. “I wouldn’t worry. You’re safe. I saw Dante Dire again, just a little later. When your girl and that policeman . . . what’s his name? When they went out, he got in a car and followed them.” He patted Tom’s hand, reassuringly. “So, you see, you are safe.”

Tom didn’t feel at all reassured.

“So . . . what have we learned, children?” Kyrie said, in a singsong voice, as she dressed herself in the chilly bathroom. “We’ve learned that shifters piss.”

She and Rafiel had gone all over the aquarium. Much to her chagrin, she had confirmed Rafiel’s smelling of a shifter around the aquarium and up the stairs to the little observation area over the shark tank, where the smell became far more intense, as though the shifter had lingered there.

But that was all she’d learned. The only thing she could contribute—as she walked out of the ladies’ room, to meet the again-human Rafiel, outside his bathroom—marked salmon, according to some bizarre logic where all salmons were male, she guessed—was, “I could smell it strongest in the ladies’ room.”

“Really?”

“Really. So I’m guessing that shifters piss,” she said, with an attempt at a smile.

But Rafiel frowned at her, as though lost in intense thought. “And that it’s a female.”

Kyrie immediately felt like slapping her forehead. That hadn’t even occurred to her. “Or that. Or of course, it comes in after hours and isn’t sure whether it’s shad roe or salmon. Not that I can blame him . . . er . . . her . . . it there.”

This got her a very brief smile. “I’m more worried that it lives here.”

“What do you mean . . . Oh. You mean one of the sharks?”

He nodded. “I tried smelling the covering to the tank at the top, where they open to feed them and to go in and clean, but couldn’t smell anything. Hell, the smell through half of this place is faint. But I think I detect a trace of whatever it is they use to clean the aquariums with, and I wonder . . .”

“But wouldn’t they go nuts, staying shifted and in the aquarium the whole time?” Kyrie asked.

Rafiel shrugged. “I have no idea. Truly. You see . . . sometimes I think that if I lived somewhere in Africa, I’d just walk out one day into the savannah, and become a lion, and never, ever, ever change back.”

Kyrie stared at him, shocked. She’d always thought of the three of them, Rafiel was the best adjusted. He had a family who knew what he was and collaborated in hiding him. He had the job he wanted to have, the job he’d dreamed about as a little boy. If anything he’d seemed in danger of being conceited and full of himself, not lost and full of doubt. But as he said those words, she felt as if he’d undressed. His expression had for a moment become innocent and vulnerable, making him look like a confused young man faced with something he couldn’t understand nor deny.

“Never mind,” he said, and managed a little smile. “It’s just sometimes it’s so hard being both, you know, living between worlds. I’ve tried to be human, and I can’t—not all the time. And it just occurred to me, if I could
just
be a lion—be a lion all the time and stop . . . stop thinking like a human, stop caring about what humans think . . . it would be easier.”

There were many things Kyrie wanted to say. That she understood—though she wasn’t sure she did. She relished her rationality too much to let it go in exchange for a promise of simpler thinking. That she felt for him. That she could think of what it all must mean to him. But instead, what came out of her lips, was, “There’s always the zoo.”

As soon as she heard it, she was afraid he would be offended. And that was a heck of a thing to do to him, anyway. He’d just revealed an inner part of himself—at least she didn’t think he was playacting, though with Rafiel, it was sometimes pretty hard to tell—and she’d answered with a joke.

To her surprise, he gurgled with sudden laughter. “Oh, yes . . . But if I couldn’t control the changing even then, it could get a little embarrassing, no? Not to mean dangerous, right there in the feline enclosure.”

“Yes,” she said. Then changed the subject quickly. “But you think one of the sharks might have done it?”

Rafiel shrugged. “It still doesn’t make any sense, does it? I mean, they get fed, as sharks. Why would she . . . or whatever . . . feel a need to come out and push humans into the tank?”

“Perhaps she has a taste for human flesh,” Kyrie said. “Or perhaps there was someone who saw her shift, and had to be eliminated.”

The refrain in Tom’s mind had changed to
oh shit, oh shit, oh shit
, and he jumped up from the seat. Kyrie and Rafiel were being stalked by someone called the executioner for whatever the Ancient Ones were.

He ducked into the storage room and dialed Kyrie on his cell phone. There was no answer. It rolled over much too fast, in fact. He bit his tongue, thinking. Kyrie never charged her cell phone. Which meant, he had to get to her—somehow.

Oh, maybe Old Joe was dreaming it all up, but this seemed a bit complex, and the man’s hesitations about time and place were much too realistic, and unless Old Joe’s dreams came in technicolor and surround sound, Tom didn’t think it was a dream at all. No. Tom thought that Old Joe was somehow trying to reassure him and claim loyalty points for not having turned him in.

Had he not turned them in? Who knew. Maybe he had. Or maybe he had turned Kyrie and Rafiel in. His primary loyalty seemed to be to Tom, who fed him and looked after him. Everyone else was a distant concern. He might care for Kyrie because Tom did. On the other hand, Kyrie thought that Tom encouraged Old Joe to hang around, and endangered them, and she made no secret of her feelings.

Tom came out of the storage room and dove behind the counter, kitten in hand. “Here,” he told Keith, handing over the small, orange fluffball, and ripping off his apron over his head.

“What am I supposed to do with him?” Keith asked, holding the puzzled creature, who was meowing and hissing at having his sleep disturbed. “No matter how much Old Joe wants him, I’m not grilling him.”

“No,” Tom said. “He’s not dinner. Just put him somewhere. I have to go out . . . uh . . . for a few minutes. I’ll be right back, I swear.”

Keith looked closely at the kitten who was wearing the universal kitten expression that means
let them come, all together or single file. I have my claws.
“How am I supposed to keep him from wandering around? Let me tell you how many health violations—”

“Oh, I’m sure. But if we let him go, Old Joe is likely to eat him. Just tie him up or something. Some sort of a leash.”