Noah's Boy-eARC (9 page)

But then there had been…something. Kyrie wasn’t sure what and neither was Tom, who refused to have more to do with the boss of the Chinese dragons than was absolutely necessary. But suddenly, just when an ancient shifter called Dante Dire had come to town bent on punishing Kyrie and Tom, the Great Sky Dragon had sent Conan to guard Tom. In the ensuing battle and for good enough reason, Tom had claimed Conan’s fealty from the Great Sky Dragon.

And it seemed that no matter how many times Tom told Conan he was free, the Chinese dragon shifter couldn’t quite believe it and, instead of merely treating Tom as a boss, treated him somewhere between a father and his liege lord. And Kyrie was sure that was what had happened here. She was as sure as she was of standing here that Conan had decided to ask Tom for something—probably something absolutely stupid, and that Tom had given it to him out of kindness and a desire not to be pestered.

Her suspicions were confirmed when Tom put his hand on her arm and said, “I’ll explain on the way out.”

I’ll explain on the way out
from Tom usually meant
You are less likely to bite my head off if we’re moving.
Which meant whatever he’d agreed to relating to Conan must be a spectacularly bad idea.

But they couldn’t argue in front of Anthony. Besides, Rafiel was waiting. The thought of Rafiel made her look back over her shoulder, “Tom, we should take meat. He hasn’t eaten in—”

“Of course,” Tom said. “You start up the van. I’ll be right there.”

Kyrie nodded, got under the pass-through, and headed to the curving corridor that led to the restrooms and the back door.

* * *

“You know I really can’t deal with this alone,” Anthony said. “Laura is doing the prep work, but I have no one to tend to tables, or for that matter to arrange tables and chairs for Conan’s thing.”

Tom looked up from the meat he was cutting. “You can’t call one of the part-timers?”

“Not many of them around just now, with the end of the college year and finals and all that.”

“Um.” Tom ran an eye over the patrons, looking for friends he could recruit. Over the last year, many of the patrons had become friends—particularly those who were shifters and who knew that Kyrie and Tom were also shifters. But now, though the tables were full—and Laura had to keep interrupting her real work to go attend tables—he was having trouble finding a familiar face.

Until he heard a voice from the counter, “Hey,” the voice said. “Hey.”

Tom focused on the man standing between two of the stools at the counter. He was stocky, olive-skinned, wore a black T-shirt, had short-short hair with the tips frosted white, and looked anxious. “Hey, did you hear about the police officer? I mean, how is—”

“Jason, right?” Tom said. “Jason Bear.”

A smile. “No, Jason Cordova,” the man said. “But yeah. Did you hear from Officer Trall?”

“Yeah. In fact, we have to go and…help him. Uh. Have you ever waited tables?”

“What?” Nod. “Yeah. Couple of times. Pizza Hut and stuff.”

“Would you do it, at least for tonight? To help us out?”

“What? You mean, like a job?” Was that an anxious light in the man’s eyes?

“Like a job, if you need it. We’re always short-staffed, and now with students leaving we will be very short-staffed all summer. Here.” Tom grabbed an apron from under the counter and shoved it at the man.

“Minimum wage?” the man asked lifting an eyebrow.

“We pay ten fifty-five an hour, double time for overtime, and you get all the meals you’re here for.”

“Suits me,” Cordova said putting on the apron.

“Good. Anthony. Jason here will be doing the tables. Teach him the ropes as he goes, will you?”

Anthony rolled his eyes. “What I like about this job,” he said, “is the variety. Every day is a new experience. And the teaching opportunities—I really like that.”

“Good,” Tom said. “Then you have it covered.” He grabbed the carryout container and ran out the door.

* * *

Kyrie had completely forgotten about Bea, and she nearly jumped out of her skin as Bea surged out of the booth and grabbed her arm. “Let me come with you,” she said. “Let me help.”

Kyrie hesitated. On the one hand Bea was a shifter, which meant she wasn’t likely to turn in shifterkind. On the other hand, though what she’d heard of the girl’s story sounded good, they hadn’t questioned her, and it was possible she belonged to one of those shifters organizations who thought it was their duty to keep every shifter in line.

Bea looked anxiously at Kyrie’s face, then said, “I know you have no reason to trust me, and I don’t even know what is happening here, but think about it from my perspective. I was almost roasted alive, and I don’t know why, nor whether the Grea— Himself is not likely to do the same thing again.”

Her terror was either real or the girl was the most gifted actress alive. Kyrie nodded. “Okay. Come on.”

* * *

Tom was surprised that Kyrie and Bea were both in the van. Almost as surprised as he was that they’d left the driver’s seat to him. He hadn’t expected the not-exactly-Chinese girl. And he never expected Kyrie to let him drive. “I couldn’t leave her alone,” Kyrie told him in an undertone, understandable only to a lip reader. “She was attacked and almost killed, after all.”

Tom tried not to smirk but must not have managed it, because Kyrie sighed. “It is not in the least like your taking in all sorts of strays.”

“No?” Tom said, and left it at that, because Bea was, after all, in the back seat.

“No. Not in the least. Now tell me what it is about Conan’s thing.”

“No,” Tom said, starting the van, the large vehicle they normally took to farmers’ markets in summer. “First you tell me what it is about Rafiel and where we’re going, and why.”

“Oh. He was attacked by something. He couldn’t describe it, because…he sounded pretty weak. But he was attacked by something, and he’s very hurt. Somewhere out 25, near Goldminers Road. He said he’s in a field, so when we get near, we’ll need aerial recognizance, which is why we needed you.”

“I see. So, I’ll drive out to Goldminers, then you can follow me while I fly. That way I minimize the time I spend in the air, during which someone might get a picture of me.”

“And what is Conan’s thing?”

“You’re not going to forget that, are you?” Tom said, turning out of the parking lot and into the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Fairfax Avenue, the street that crossed Goldport from one end to the other. He headed west on it, and traffic cleared after the warehouse district.

“No. It’s something with the diner. And you’re not supposed to do anything to the diner without telling me. Is he having a party or something?”

Tom shook his head. “No. You know Wednesday is our slow night, right? So I thought there would be no problem at all with letting him sing.”

“What? Tom!”

Tom sighed. He’d known for the last few months that while Conan was a decent waiter and could hold down the fort when they were needed elsewhere, Conan had ambitions beyond food service. Having grown up in Nashville, Tennessee, where his parents owned a Chinese restaurant, he wanted to be a country-western singer. “He can’t be that bad,” he mumbled.

“How do you know?” Kyrie asked. “We have never heard him sing. And he couldn’t have practiced the guitar in the time he’s spent regrowing the arm he had ripped off. He could be absolutely horrible.”

“Well, Wednesday is our slow night,” Tom said. “If he’s absolutely horrible, we only let him do one song. But he wanted to sing in front of an audience, never having done that before, and he asked, and—”

“And you have no ability to say no?”

“I don’t see what it can hurt. Remember, the coffee shop down the street has really bad poetry readings? They still bring people in.”

“Yes, but…if you have really bad singing, that makes people go out.”

A sound like a snuffle from behind them made Tom look in the rearview mirror, to see Bea hiding her mouth, her eyes filled with amusement. “You find us funny?” he said.

“It’s just that…are all shifters like this?” she asked. “Do you live in communities that behave like families?”

“No,” Kyrie said. “I suspect most shifters in the world are all alone, and don’t know anyone like them. We have two things that make us different. One of them is that at some point someone—we’ll tell you the story another time, if you must hear it—someone sprayed the entire area around The George with pheromones that attract shifters from hundred of miles round. The other is that—”

“The Great Sky Dragon has at least temporary headquarters in town,” Tom said.

“No,” Kyrie said. “I don’t know why he has that, but I know—”

“Because you’re his heir,” Bea said.

“What?” Tom said. He couldn’t have heard the words right. She’d said it so naturally, it was as though it were something obvious.

In the rearview mirror, he saw Bea’s eyebrows arch over the bright green eyes. “You didn’t know that?” she asked. “That’s why he wanted me to marry you.” In a hurried voice she told a fantastic story of the successor of the Great Sky Dragon having to be a male, who could shift—apparently it wasn’t a given all of his descendants could—and who was descended on the male line unbroken. Tom was actually descended from the Great Sky Dragon’s son on both sides, Bea told them, shrugging, the male line broken of course by his mother on one side.

“It sounds…inbred,” Tom said. “And neither of my parents is even slightly Chinese. Dad is of Swedish ancestry, and I think most of Mom’s ancestors were French, though I’m not sure now why I think that.” He added, as explanation, “She left when I was a kid.”

“Oh,” Bea said. “But this would be thousands and thousands of years ago. I gather the Great Sky Dragon is near immortal.”

“Which brings up the question of why he needs an heir.”

“Because he says something is coming that might kill him.”

“Irrelevant, since I don’t intend to lead a triad, even if they obeyed me, which I doubt. But…so that’s why he’s taken an interest in me.” Tom was now driving out of town and into the country expanses of I-25, with unlit fields on either side. “Would you watch out for the turn to Goldminers Road, Kyrie? Otherwise I might miss it in the dark.”

“Yes. But what you said about the Great Sky Dragon has nothing to do with the community of shifters around the diner. What makes it…well…a coherent group, instead of just a bunch of unrelated people—what makes us work together and cover for each other, and…care for each other is Tom.”

Kyrie said it so convincingly it was no use Tom laughing. Instead, he said, “I’m not some kind of saint.”

“No. You’re just a natural leader—and you care about people. It’s one of those natural things. You either have it or you don’t.”

“Maybe that’s why the Great Sky Dragon thinks—” Bea said. “I mean—”

“Irrelevant. As I said, I have no intention of leading a triad any more than you have any intention of marrying me.”

“No. Of course not. It’s just…look at what he did to me,” Bea said.

“Oh. Yeah. I expect he’ll be trouble,” Tom said. “And that’s nothing new.”

“Goldminers on the right, Tom. Exit.”

* * *

Bea sat quietly. She was starting to get, if not a clear idea of what was happening, a suspicion that she might comprehend it sometime. There was…a shape of events forming in her mind, and she wasn’t sure what they were. But there was a sense of a pattern.

Tom took the exit off the highway onto a narrow street flanked by trees. The street became a dirt road and ran through an expanse of rocky ground covered in what appeared to be low, thorny bushes.

Tom pulled over to the side and parked the van. He got out, stepping into the circle of the headlights. When he then moved out of the light, for a moment Bea wondered why, then realized that it was so he could undress—presumably in respect for her modesty. Meanwhile Kyrie moved over to the driver’s seat. A few minutes later, Tom emerged into the headlights. No. Tom’s dragon.

His scales glistened blue-green in the light, and it was impossible to believe that this was the same young man who’d been talking to them and driving moments before. Impossible, that is, until he turned to look at them and she got a good look at the dragon’s blue eyes, which were, very reassuringly, Tom Ormson’s.

She wondered how much knowledge of their human self other people retained while in shifted form. She’d never known anyone else who shifted, never had a chance to ask. She just knew that her control over where the dragon went had improved over the years. When she’d first shifted at fourteen, she’d hardly known what she did when she was the dragon. Later, there had come memories of her actions—as if in a dream—and by the time she was sixteen, she could control the dragon to some extent. Now she could control what the dragon did, and she could even—most of the time—avoid shifting when she didn’t wish to shift.

But she wondered if everyone else was like that. Clearly Tom Ormson was. But was that normal or just part of being a descendent of the Great Sky Dragon?

“Okay, here we go,” Kyrie said, as Tom took to the skies, unbelievable in his look of archaic fantasy, flying over a land crisscrossed by highways and lighted by electricity.

Bea shivered a little. “I’ve always wondered,” she said, “why none of us is photographed. I mean…when I had little control, I was flying over this Atlanta suburb.”

Kyrie shrugged. “My form? I change into a panther. I’ve often wondered if we’re responsible for all the sightings of great black cats. And if other shifters account for all the out-of-place animals seen here and there. But with dragons and other…less normal forms, I suspect the thing is partly that no one believes it. People don’t fully believe what they’re seeing. Other people look at pictures and think what a clever Photoshop job. I’ve told Tom we could make a great deal of money on the side by taking pictures of him and Conan flying over the city and making a calendar. Everyone would think it was made up.”

Bea turned the idea in her mind. “Except that over time it might give people the idea that…well, that it exists.”

“That’s what Tom says, though you know, dragons shifters are not just a genetic impossibility. They’re a physical impossibility. Those wings of yours shouldn’t be able to hold you up.”