Noah's Boy-eARC (37 page)

“Without hurting?” Old Joe said. “I didn’t say that. I don’t think that is possible. We all hurt, dragon boy. Life is hurt. You know you’re still alive because you still hurt. You’re too soft. You’re too kind. You’ve never had to face real. But real is there, and real hurts.”

Tom started to open his mouth, to tell Old Joe that he knew
real
plenty. He had lived the life of a big city runaway, and even if, by shying away from most humans, by reason of his shifting, he’d never experienced most of this personally, he had seen all the varieties of what could go wrong, and how bad things could get.

But then he thought of the time since Old Joe had been young, the time since…Since dinosaurs? Since Colorado had been a subtropical wonderland?

He didn’t want to know. There were things that he didn’t want to know, even if he could. But he knew even without pinpointing the details, that Old Joe had to have seen more
real
than Tom could ever see. In a way, the life of modern man wasn’t and couldn’t be real. People had shelters from the rain, and antibiotics, and soft furniture. Even before one got to the internet, and cell phones and modern conveniences, even the most wretched of the big-city homeless would seem to someone—even a chieftain—of the Paleolithic as living so far in the lap of luxury as to be in paradise.

Old Joe cackled, as though realizing where Tom’s mind had got him. A grubby hand reached out and patted Tom’s arm. “Don’t worry, dragon boy. Real comes to all of us, sooner or later. And until you find the courage to face it, you got me.”

The rain was slackening a little as Tom saw the exit sign for Riverside. He looked to the sky, but saw no sign of dragons.

* * *

Rafiel saw the sign for the Tomahawk Motel, the cartoon Indian chief, bending forward under the rain, then straightening again, in a weird war dance, as now this, now that neon tube lit.

It had been one of the fun memories of Rafiel’s childhood, a landmark on his way home from school in winter, past the early Rocky Mountains nightfall, or on his summer trips to the zoo with his parents, when they drove home after dark, with Rafiel tired and happy in the back seat. Seeing the Indian meant that his parents’ house wasn’t that far off and, early on, Rafiel had been enchanted by what seemed to be images made of pure light. Even getting older and being able to see the dull neon tubes that lit off and on hadn’t killed the magic.

He turned, just past the Indian and up the graveled drive. Fortunately, he didn’t need to see well to be able to drive to the cabin that housed the check-in and office. It wasn’t as if every other day there wasn’t some complain that required the police to come here and talk to the manager. In fact, the night manager, whom they would be seeing right now, was almost an old friend, in the sense that friends are people you don’t arrest even when you know that you really, really should. Also in the sense that friends are people whose character defects you have to put up with, because you can’t change them. And the fact that they now and then sell a little blow on the side doesn’t mean your relationship changes.

He gave a motion of the head to Conan, as he parked in front of the building. “You stay here,” he said. “The window glass is bulletproof, so you’ll be—”

“No. I’m coming.” Conan looked stubborn. “I can take care of myself, Rafiel. For heaven’s sakes, I can change into a dragon.”

As if that were protection from anything,
Rafiel thought. But he guessed before he embarked on that line of reasoning that it would be useless. Conan was worried about his girlfriend, and even if Rafiel could convince him that he would be less than useless in a fight, what would that do, other than make Conan even more desperate to prove he was not useless? Which in the end would probably only get him in greater danger.

He said, instead, “Fine, you can come out.” And realized Nick was knocking at the window. Rafiel lowered it, and Nick’s hand emerged from his sleeve, holding a smart phone, which he handed to Rafiel. “I looked up the description Tom gave us in the list of usual suspects, and this guy came up. Harry Rivers.”

Rafiel looked at the picture of an unprepossessing young man with close-set eyes and a pimply face. “I see,” he said. Very young. The story of Kyrie’s escape from her captors came to him. Perhaps these were the only non-dragon thugs the dragons knew. Minor drug suppliers, he guessed, people the triad dealt with.

Perhaps their youth and stupid look meant that Rya wasn’t in danger at all. Or perhaps she was in more danger. When it came to incompetent thugs, you never could tell.

* * *

Kyrie taught Bea to handle the fryer, to the extent of calling Kyrie when something went wrong. Jason and James seemed to have the waiting at tables under control. Particularly since half the triad members had left. Kyrie wondered if they’d left to follow Tom, and wondered why they would. She wondered what their cluttering the diner tables had meant, anyway. Did they really think that Tom was that easy to force into line? Or was there some other reason? Were they perhaps protecting him from something? Was that why half of them remained behind? But what could they be doing?

She couldn’t answer any of the questions, and it would have looked like a perfectly normal day, except that everyone—the dragons and Jason, and James, and everyone in the place that she knew for sure were shifters, and Laura, who might be one—looked like they were tense.

It was, Kyrie thought, like when you were waiting for the phone to ring.

Which, of course, is when the phone rang. She picked it up and said, “The George, how may I—”

“We have the fox girl,” a voice said, “and we will kill her, unless the Great Sky Dragon marries Bea Ryu and provides children for the dragon.”

She opened her mouth to tell them that this was no way to get what they wanted out of Tom, that they were more likely to get what they wanted with a sob story, but they weren’t likely to manage this even with the saddest story ever, because— But they had hung up.

She looked at the phone a few seconds. Then she looked around the diner and noted the feeling of tension in every back, the odd posture of everyone. No, this was not going to end well. As much as she wished to imagine that nothing bad could possibly happen, as much as she wished to believe that tonight would be like all other nights, she knew better.

She grabbed the phone again, dialed Anthony’s number.

“Can you come in?” she asked.

He didn’t even ask who it was. Doubtless he recognized her voice. And he didn’t put in the token resistance he normally did, or say his wife would kill him. Instead, he said, his voice tight and full of feeling, “I knew it. I knew I’d be needed. I’ll be right there.”

* * *

The motel manager looked fifty, though Rafiel knew, from having had cause to look at the man’s license in the past that he was only thirty-five. He was shorter than Rafiel—almost as short as Conan—with a ferrety face and untidy red hair that was going white in the way red hair sometimes did, by fading all over, like aluminum siding in the sun.

He stood behind a pale green counter that looked like a plastic structure with a Formica top trying to pretend to be marble. The only lamp still working was a fluorescent light in the ceiling, its fellows on either side completely dead, which was good, Rafiel thought. The lack of light prevented their seeing just how dirty the grey carpet was, and how the smudges on the wall might be blood or even more unsavory substances. Rafiel had been in there during the day, and he remembered how very difficult it was to avoid staring at those stains and trying to figure them out.

The manager looked at Rafiel out of strained eyes underlined by bruised, puffy skin. “There was no reason for me to stop them,” he said. “Two guys with money, and well, they paid for a night, and what was I to do? Follow them to see if they had a woman with them?” A sudden unpleasant grin. “Think about it, that could be much better than the alternative! Not that I want to know. People pay for the cabins, and they’re entitled to their cabins and I—”

Cas rushed in, telling the man that for once they didn’t think he had done anything wrong, but did he remember this guy, and did he have his name and driver’s license noted down anywhere?

Rafiel thought the chances were very high that it was a fake license, but what the heck, they had to at least try.

The manager came up with a name: Harry Rivers. After some deliberation and apparent trouble interpreting his own handwriting, he came up with an address on Sierra Avenue, about eight blocks away.

They jotted it down and left. Outside, they all clambered into the white SUV, out of the rain. In the back seat, Nick brought up the app that allowed them to look up addresses from the license number.

“What was that address again, Rafiel?”

“4530 Sierra, Building 5, apartment 30b.”

“What do you know?” Nick said.

“The same one?” Rafiel said.

“Maybe it’s the true one,” Cas said, leaning forward, his hand on the back of Conan’s seat. Conan looked pale and terrified, and hadn’t said a word. Rafiel hoped he wasn’t working himself up to do something heroic or something stupid. He was fully aware that for Conan, the two would probably be one and the same.

“The guy is very young,” Cas said. “Probably under twenty. I don’t think it has occurred to him to use a fake license, not since he needed it to buy liquor. What’s his record, Nick?”

Nick looked at his phone, then rapidly punched a few buttons. “Minor stuff,” he said. “Really minor stuff. Shoplifting, some pot selling. No time served. Everything plea-bargained for fines and probation and rehabilitation programs.”

“So kidnapping is new to him?” Rafiel asked, hoping it was so, hoping that for a change this would be an easy case, an easy rescue. “I wonder why he decided to try it?”

“I suspect,” Nick said, “those dragons can be pretty convincing. One hears things.”

“So, do we go there?” Conan asked. “Do we try it?”

Rafiel thought it would be a fool’s errand. Even the dumber of henchmen wouldn’t take a kidnapped wench home, right? Unless he was intending to kill her before she could be rescued and rat him out, and they really didn’t seem the type.

On the one hand, all criminals were small criminals till one day they snapped and went big. On the other hand, where else could they start? If Harry wasn’t home, perhaps someone at the place would give them another lead.

“Yeah,” he said. “We might as well try it.”

* * *

Riverside Park looked even worse at night and under the pouring rain than it looked midafternoon in the merciless glare of the sun. No, Tom thought. That wasn’t quite true. It didn’t look bad exactly. You couldn’t see the worn-out paint or the chipped walls, or the shabby appearance of many of the rides.

Mostly, though, it looked dark. There were some lights on. Tom thought they were the lights on the trees that lined the walkways. They were white and sparse, and seemed drowned under the downpour, like the lights in ships that have sunk, shining back at you out of the water. A wind had started up, or perhaps there was always a wind around here. There were places like that. Perhaps the wind gathered speed over the water. At any rate, it shook the lights, making them seem even smaller and more forlorn.

There were lights outlining the entrance tower, too, but it was empty, as it had been when Bea and Rafiel had gone in. Old Joe, just beside Tom, clacked his teeth at it, as though happy at this, but Tom thought that the park looked dark and forbidding and more like a house of horrors than a place of amusement.

Then he though that he only felt that way because of Bea and Rafiel’s story, and, after ducking under the stile, he turned back to Old Joe, and whispered, “Maybe the Pearl is no longer where they saw it.”

“Maybe not,” Old Joe said. He grinned one of his ghastly grins, all broken teeth. “Maybe it is now where the Great Sky Bastard is. Daddy dragon,” he added self-consciously, as though he were afraid of offending Tom. “Can you feel him?”

Tom started to shake his head, then his eyes opened wide. “Not exactly, but I can tell he is very close. How odd.”

“Not odd at all,” Old Joe said. “I’d say the park was where Maduh hides out, with her cub. Easy to have only one place to guard, yes?”

Tom didn’t know. He’d never had any place to guard. Well, except The George and his greatest danger there was someone forgetting to turn off the fryer and causing it to explode. He concentrated on following the path to the cottage, as Bea and Rafiel had described.

When it appeared in front of him, looming dark and smelling funny, he looked at Old Joe, but the old alligator gave him a challenging look, as though asking if he didn’t have the courage, then grinned. “We should shift, dragon boy. There will be a battle.”

“Maduh?”

“More likely her cub, but all the same. You say he’s eaten shifters before…”

Tom tried to remember the doglike creature, running with Rafiel after him. No match for a dragon.

Self-conscious and feeling more than a little strange at undressing before going into danger, Tom took his clothes off and folded them carefully. He’d gotten killed in his good leather jacket before, and he had no intention of letting it happen again.

He told his body to shift, even if it was difficult under the rain and with no moonlight to help, but he forced it, forced his body to twist and writhe, ignoring the pain as he shifted into his dragon form.

At the same time, he sensed into the cottage. Not feeling for anyone in particular, but for that thing—the warm glow he’d once stolen for its calming influence—the Pearl of Heaven. And he could feel it, he realized. It was in the cottage. That meant…

A scruffy dog-bear creature came screaming out of the cottage, making a sound like baying and growling combined. Tom felt his impact mid-body, sharp claws tearing at his sensitive left wing. He reacted by instinct and backhanded the creature with a powerful paw.

The little feral—Tom’s human side knew it—went flying through the air, and even before he hit the wall of the cottage with a sickening crunch, Tom was shifting—willfully shifting himself back to human, putting his clothes on quickly. A dragon was much too conspicuous a form. If the creature’s mother came— If that baying had been an alarm—