Noah's Boy-eARC (27 page)

Rafiel wasn’t absolutely sure that all police departments throughout the land did this. He thought perhaps the fancier and better equipped ones, in the bigger cities, had expert lockpickers or something, who could get into anything. But Goldport had exactly four officers in its serious crimes unit, and so they collected each variety of key that came into their hand.

He called the station and got Cas Wolfe.

“Yeah?” Cas said, followed by “I thought you were sick,” when Rafiel explained his predicament. There was always a feeling of amusement when Cas talked about Rafiel missing work, and there was often great amusement when Cas noted that Rafiel had changed clothes in the middle of the day. The conceit around the police station seemed to be that Rafiel had a complex love life of the sort that involved changing clothes several times a day and, possibly, climbing out of windows just ahead of enraged husbands.

At least, Rafiel assumed that’s what they thought, and Cas Wolfe and his cousin Nick, the newest addition to the serious crimes unit, were absolutely the worst. They had been raised as brothers, and acted like brothers a lot, and they were at least half Greek, or possibly all Greek, which brought with it a culture of machismo and an idea—Rafiel supposed—that all men were supposed to be philanderers. The fact that Cas was, so far as Rafiel could tell, absolutely faithful to his girlfriend, and that Nick was absolutely faithful to his boyfriend, didn’t stop them from imagining that other men lived the lives of roving Casanovas. Sometimes the looks they traded when Rafiel returned to the station having changed clothes because of an unfortunate shifting accident, were just about as much as Rafiel could take without blowing up.

Cas’ voice had that suggestion of amusement behind it that often infuriated Rafiel.

“Actually I was in an accident and got a bit bruised,” Rafiel said, figuring that the scrapes that still showed on his face might make it clear. “But I’m better.”

“You were in an accident but not your
car
?”

Was that skepticism in Cas’ voice? He was junior to Rafiel in the department, and he really wasn’t supposed to be checking Rafiel’s movements. “Tom’s car,” Rafiel said drily.

“Oh, yeah. I see. And you lost your keys when you went to emergency?”

“I didn’t go to the ER,” Rafiel said. Cas wasn’t supposed to be checking on his movements, but all the same, it wasn’t out of consideration that he might, at some point, be at the emergency room and ask…Even though calling in a sick day when you weren’t sick—and Rafiel had been sick—wasn’t that serious, there was no point undermining the confidence of his colleagues in the department. “I have no idea what I did with the keys. Look, if you don’t want to help…”

“Nah,” Cas still sounded more amused than suspicious. “Nick and I were just about to leave and go grab some pizza. Our respectives are out shopping for Dyce’s wedding dress again, so we’re just the two of us this evening.” Dyce was Cas’ fiancée and their wedding was any day now. “We’ll come out. Which car is this? Your Explorer? I’ll grab the keys.”

Rafiel hung up and met Bea’s curious eyes. “It’s just my coworkers,” he said.

Her eyebrows arched, and he realized he was blushing. “They have written this entire life for me, you know, where I’m some guy who sleeps around a lot and keeps losing his clothes. I still don’t understand how sleeping around a lot would cause me to lose my clothes, but never mind. They get juvenile, and wink at each other about it.”

“Oh my,” Bea said, but there was a tremor of a smile at the corner of her lips.

“Yeah,” he said, and thinking of it belatedly, “I’m afraid they might get juvenile when they see I’m with a woman, too, but—”

“Eh. I’m a college student. Juvenile doesn’t scare me.”

“My colleagues can be far more juvenile than college students.”

Bea smiled and turned off the engine. “I guess we’ll wait a while.”

“Yeah,” Rafiel said. His mind was working. He wondered what exactly might have happened with the investigation of the remains found in the hippodrome while they were at the cabin, and what his colleagues might have made of it. He’d have to ask Cas. He knew the culprit was the feral shifter, but other people wouldn’t know that. The problem with the shifter cases was that Rafiel always had to run double books, so to put it—what was really happening and what he could afford to share with the public, even that part of the public who were law enforcement officers.

He didn’t even know what he could do about the feral teen shifter. It was one thing to execute his private brand of justice on murderous adult shifters who had killed other shifters and other humans in full knowledge of what they were doing—with full intent and malice—but to go after a kid, particularly a shifter kid who might not know he was doing anything bad, seemed wrong. And yet he couldn’t be allowed to run free, could he? The kid would just kill more people, and more shifters, and eat them, all unaware that he was doing evil.

In a society in which shifters were known—Rafiel snorted at the idea—the kid would simply be confined and not allowed to be destructive, but allowed to live, because it really wasn’t his fault.

Rafiel remembered what he had seen in those eyes, the perfect lack of awareness not just of having broken any rules, but that there
were
any rules, or anything he should hold to. Rafiel couldn’t think of it without shuddering. To destroy a kid for being that way was like taking a feral kitten and killing it for soiling the rug.

He put his head back and groaned.

“What is wrong?” Bea asked.

He looked at her, and slowly explained, leaving many of the details out, his dilemma. She blinked at him. “But why do you have to decide?” she asked. “I mean, why is it
your
responsibility?”

“Because I’m a policeman. And I’m a shifter. I have a duty to both the police and shifters. I have to keep people from knowing that there are shifters, lest, you know, horrible things happen to our kind. And I have to keep the law. I mean, I swore to protect innocent. I can’t just say ‘Well, never mind,’ when the criminal turns out to be my kind.”

Bea pursed her lips, then stretched them. She shook her head and sighed. “It doesn’t seem right,” she said. “The responsibility shouldn’t rest on your shoulders.”

“If you think I’m taking power I shouldn’t be taking, I’d rather—”

“No, I don’t think you view it as power at all,” she said. “You view it as a chore. Which is good. But the thing is that there are no controls. Suppose the one shifter in the police force was power hungry and saw this as an opportunity to amass power? To start a group of shifters who’d terrorize the city, or—”

Rafiel suddenly felt very tired. “I know,” he said. “I’ve thought about it. I’ve wondered what it would be like if another one of us joined the force, and then I realized it could either be helpful or very, very bad. Long ago, I figured someone in a position of power, who was inclined to build an army, is what resulted in things like the triads and the other organizations we’ve got trouble with. So I don’t complain too much about the trouble, I don’t complain too much about how much work it is for me. I just wish there was someone to help decide what to do with this particular kid. That’s supposing I can catch him—”

Bea was still looking at him, her eyes wide open. He had a moment of fear that she would think he was a wimp, complaining like this, but she put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure out something, and that it will be the best possible solution. Meanwhile, you can always talk to me, you know?”

And after a minimal pause, she continued, “Why is there so much activity in the park? Isn’t it supposed to be closed?”

* * *

The shocks Tom felt as he pulled up his driveway started with seeing Kyrie’s car in the driveway, the door still open. He looked inside. Her purse was on the floor of the passenger seat. Nothing else was disturbed. He didn’t see or smell blood anywhere. There was no blood on the driveway either—Tom couldn’t have sworn to what he’d have done if there had been blood.

The back door hadn’t been opened. There were no signs of a scuffle. Maybe Kyrie hadn’t been kidnapped, he thought, knowing he was being foolish and trying to console himself with a vain hope. Maybe all that had happened was that she’d dropped her phone and someone else had picked it up.

But she’d dropped her phone on the way to
what
? What would cause Kyrie to drop her phone and not find another way to communicate with Tom? What would cause Kyrie to leave the car open in the driveway? Not just unlocked. Open.

True, their neighborhood had almost no crime, but Kyrie had not grown up in this kind of neighborhood. Tom might forget to lock the car, but Kyrie never would, and she checked front and back door twice before going to bed, and had insisted on putting a cat door on the back porch window, rather than just leaving the window slightly ajar, so the cat could go in and out. That meant they would have to replace the entire pane of glass when they moved out, but Kyrie felt safer that way.

No, Kyrie would never leave the car door wide open and go somewhere. She wouldn’t even leave it unlocked.

Tom sighed. Nothing for it but to deal with the fact that Kyrie was missing, that it was the doing of the triads—at least if what he felt in the secretive place in Jao’s mind was accurate—and that he would have to punish them in a horrible way.

The problem was…No, not that he felt bad about visiting fire and blood on the dragon shifters. He didn’t. Emotionally, the thought that they might have hurt Kyrie made him want to go on a rampage and kill them all, slowly and in interesting ways, but intellectually, he felt as though that would be a betrayal of everything he and his friends stood for.

Sure, they’d killed shifters before, but they’d done it only in self-defense. Well, most of them had done it only in self-defense.

Tom had, with malice aforethought, killed a sabertooth, Dante Dire. He wasn’t sure that could be considered self-defense, exactly, since he’d found Dire, and killed him, and made sure body and head were well apart and hidden. He was sure if Rafiel ever found out about that he would be very conflicted on whether or not to punish Tom. But the truth was not that clear. Tom had known, with absolute certainty, that as long as Dante Dire lived, neither he nor Kyrie would be safe. Had he been alone, had he had no Kyrie, no friends, no one else affected, he’d probably have left town to avoid the confrontation, and kept moving ahead of Dire. But realizing that if he simply disappeared Dire could go after his friends made it all different. In Tom’s mind the killilng was self-defense. He had had to slay Dire to keep himself and his own safe.

He only wished he were sure Rafiel would agree with him. And—this was important—Tom was almost absolutely sure that were he to kill half the triad to punish them for interfering with Kyrie, and to make them take his authority seriously, Rafiel would view that as a very bad thing.

While the world was full of shifters’ organizations who killed normal mortals without a second thought, Tom and the others had decided early on that they were humans among humans. If they were different, and if they had to hide that difference, it didn’t exempt them from the duties of common humanity.

But what did that mean when it came to his taking control of an ancient organization that behaved according to very different rules?

It meant Tom had an ache in the front of his head, right in the center of his forehead, and he didn’t know what he could do. He knew he had to make an impression. And he had to get Kyrie back. Above all he
must
get Kyrie back.

As he opened the door to the kitchen, the big orange tomcat, Not Dinner, came sauntering up, then smelled Old Joe and arched, hissing. Tom reached down and petted him, almost absently, “Old Joe won’t eat you, Notty,” he said. Not Dinner still clung to Tom’s ankles, weaving in and out. From habit, Tom got the bag of kibble, and filled Notty’s bowl, then blocked that area with his arm, as he led Conan and Old Joe to the living room. He gestured for them to sit on the sofa, and noticed—approvingly—that Conan was keeping an eye on Old Joe.

Good. He didn’t think the old shifter, with more important things on his mind, was going to shift into an alligator and eat Tom’s cat, but you never knew. And if Old Joe ate Notty, Kyrie would…probably kill Tom. Maybe not permanently. If he was lucky.

He had to get Kyrie back.

Old Joe was making a
clack-clack
sound with his teeth. Conan was sitting at the edge of the sofa, leaning forward, looking at Tom intently. Tom had to do something. He had friends, and he had allies, but he was the one who had to do something.

Like it or not, for the time being—and he would make very sure it was for no more than the time being—he was the Great Sky Dragon and must make sure they feared him as such.

Conan was leaning forward on the sofa. He said, “Summon him.”

* * *

“I wonder what they’re doing in there,” Bea said. With the motor turned off, sitting in the car beside Rafiel, she’d been looking around idly—anything but to think of Rafiel right there, next to her. She wasn’t afraid that she’d suddenly feel a need to tear his clothes off or something, though she
did
spare a moment to imagine him with his clothes off when he wasn’t out of his mind with shock. No, she was afraid of something far more material. She was afraid she’d start talking to him. Honestly, she couldn’t seem to go a few minutes without some nonsensical thought coming up, like, “I wonder what our kids would look like?” or “What if he works too hard to have a proper family life?” or even, “Would it be a good idea, with both of us being shifters?” She was very much afraid if she started talking, one of those questions would come out.

So instead, she looked around, and after a while it hit her that though the parking lot was empty—the truck rocked a little under the impact of a warm wind—there seemed to be a lot of activity in the amusement park itself. At least, lights came on in there now and then, seemingly erratically, and twice, Bea saw something or someone slink in through the gate.

It was hard to know if it was something or someone, because it was little more than a shadow, very fast, then gone.