Griffen watched frankly amazed as the young man somewhat nervously removed his bathrobe, carefully draping it so that at no time were his privates exposed to the audience. There were a few catcalls, but not many, and those that came were friendly.
Then, with a sheepish smile, Gustov lifted the robe in front of him. He held it open, blocking off everything from the eyes down, then dropped it. By the time it hit the floor, a large gray wolf stood where he had been.
The presenter only briefly glanced up from his cards.
“Notice the seamlessness of the change. None of the pain and agony Hollywood has become prone to showing in their special-effects pictures. Gustov is lucky, as there are indeed those who cannot change without pain, just as there are those who experience transcendent ecstasy as their bodies reconfigure. Kevin here, being what is commonly dubbed the loup garou, can change forms just as quickly but, by slowing and controlling the change, can take more than wolf form.”
Again, Griffen was astounded. His own encounters with such things had been brief and often so surprising that he didn’t notice the change till after it happened. He watched Kevin grow his nails and teeth to claws and fangs, then back again, then shift to wolf in an eyeblink. Then, with a small quiver, his form surged and there on the podium was a six-foot monster that combined all the best, or worst, attributes of man and wolf.
Many in the audience gasped, though not any of the group leaders. Griffen, conscious of the fact that several eyes seemed to flick to him on occasion, had assumed a poker face. Difficult though it was to maintain.
“Startling, isn’t it?” said the presenter. It was clear he had expected this reaction and put it on his note cards. “Not quite like anything Hollywood has come up with. Of course, part of that is because each garou tailors their form to what works best for them. This is Kevin’s wolf, and there will be none other exactly like it.”
Jay muttered next to Griffen.
“Unless it’s a good doppelganger or mimic.”
“What was that?” Griffen said.
“Oh, nothing. These are good basics, but it’s such a broad topic. Putting together an hour demonstration cuts off a lot of possibilities, you know,” Jay said.
Meanwhile, both of those onstage had become human-shaped again, Gustov hastily scooping up his bathrobe. Kevin was still fully dressed.
“How’d he do that without ripping his clothes?” someone called out. Griffen looked around and saw that it was one of the members of Estella’s church.
“What did I say about questions?” the presenter said, irritated.
There was a bit of a murmur from the crowd. The presenter looked a bit desperately at Jay and his fellow shifters, and received nods from them. He shrugged.
“Right, just this once, but after this, no more interruption.”
The crowd settled again.
“To keep it simple, clothes are a specialty skill. Some actually change the clothes themselves, some… well, let’s just say the clothes go somewhere else till they are needed again. Now, this is important: Most shifters who don’t have to strip or rip through their clothes when they change don’t know how they do it. They don’t need to, they just do it, and since it is a rare thing, it isn’t really studied or understood. No one else in today’s demonstration can manage the trick, so if you have the plums, buy him a drink and ask. Just keep in mind the parable of the centipede that questioned its own feet, okay?”
The two headed off the stage, and another figure came out of the door. She was easily one of the most beautiful women Griffen had ever seen. Tall and thin, curved enough that the one-size-fits-all bathrobe seemed strained top and bottom. Her long black hair fell straight to the small of her back.
She paused at the edge of the stage, making sure she had the crowd’s attention, and let the robe fall away. She strode nude onto the center of the stage.
The presenter stared openly for a few moments, till she caught his eye and quirked an eyebrow at him. He flushed and almost dropped his cards trying to find his place again.
“Uhhh, um… yes. Variety is important. Some of the most subtle tricks are also the hardest. For example, changing one’s hair and skin color.”
The woman closed her eyes and seemed to tense. At first it was gradual, her dark hair lightened, then reddened, then began to gleam. Her skin became tan, then brown, then black. Then she smiled and began to walk across the stage like a model walking a catwalk, and her skin began to swirl.
Multicolor whirls no natural skin tone could hold started to move across her skin. Blues and greens and purples blended and flowed and moved over her. Her hair was filled with metallic and jewel tones that seemed to flash into existence, then fade back.
Then the pigments of her skin become shapes. As if a film projector was using her as a screen, what started as unnatural colors became flapping songbirds in a rainbow of colors. All alive and realistic, like the world’s greatest tattoo. An animated tattoo.
The audience burst into applause.
“Of course, some tricks aren’t subtle at all,” the presenter said.
The woman threw her head back and, in midstride, she burst apart. Griffen was half-out of his chair, thinking something had gone horribly wrong. His jaw dropped as he realized the woman had become the birds, a hundred of them flapping about. A cyclone of color that seemed to dip, as if bowing, then flew off the stage and back out the door.
The audience was stunned silent by the showmanship of it all.
The presenter shook his head, clearly having been overwhelmed, too. And he had been expecting it.
“Keep in mind,” he said, “that even in the multiple forms her mass had not changed. This, among other things, keeps her from ranking among the highest shape-shifters.”
Griffen eased back down in his chair but leaned over to whisper to Jay.
“That may be so, but I don’t understand why someone with that kind of confidence hasn’t pulled up a chair with you four.”
“Maybe she wants to be invited,” Jay said thoughtfully.
Tail, the wild-haired shifter next to him, laughed in his gravelly voice.
“Invite her to sit? Ha! I’m inviting her to dinner.”
Apparently, despite the showstopping number, she was not the last on the docket for this demonstration. The presentation went on.
“Last but not least, one should keep in mind how broad the term ‘shape-shifter’ really is. There are many who are classified in other groups who have the means to change their form.”
For a panicky moment Griffen thought he, as a dragon, was going to be called on to perform. Thankfully, the door opened one more time and out stepped the changeling girl Tammy. She cast a brief, but heated, glance over her shoulder. Griffen was good at reading faces, and knew jealousy when he saw it. Tammy was feeling like a follow-up act.
She seemed to have decided to forgo the bathrobe.
She stalked onto the stage, clearly trying for a model strut, but she didn’t have the attitude. Her fey-enhanced youth made her look almost like a child, or at least girl barely out of puberty. Especially compared to the woman who had just vacated the stage. Still, she had a raw appeal that made Griffen feel a little guilty. Very much the gamine.
“Tammy here is one of our new changeling attendees. As this has been their first time attending, she has volunteered to show off some of her shifting abilities.”
Tammy stood with her feet together and threw her arms up into the air, arching her back and throwing her head back. With an audible creak, she seemed slowly to lengthen, her limbs especially growing spindly and long. Her skin went a dark nutty brown, and began to roughen. Green shoots started to extend from her fingers.
Tammy stood as a small cherry tree, barely seven feet high. Her roots spread over the stage, a light smattering of soft petals drifting from her branches.
There was a brief bit of applause. This was not as startling as the demonstration before, but it was something different. The cherry blossoms reddened, as if she w
ere blushing.
Griffen heard a low growling from Tail. He looked over curious, to see the man reach into one of his pockets and pull out a small stone. Before Griffen could react, the stone had been hurled toward the stage. Right at one of the leafy branches.
The stone passed through the branch and struck the wall behind.
What had been a tree before was instantly Tammy again.
Though her limbs were a little longer, her skin a little woody in color, she was still very much human shape. There was an angry burst of conversation from the other shape-shifters in the audience.
“Fifteen percent shifting, eighty-five percent fairy glamour. When the other participants agreed to only use shifting, even if they had other abilities,” Tail said.
There was a hiss from one of the shifters, a boo from another. Tammy, now fully her old self and quite naked and exposed in front of the audience, burst into tears. She ran off the stage and out of the room as the presenter tried to calm everyone down.
Griffen couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. He joined the presenter on stage, using his position as moderator to send everyone away. Competition aside, this was supposed to have been a friendly demonstration. And after the garou’s specialty trick with his clothes, picking on the changeling for her glamour seemed… petty.
Thirty-eight
Taking advantage of an open period in his schedule, Griffen tried to hook up with Slim to double-check the arrangements for the next day’s activities. Though the street entertainer had no official standing in the running of the conclave, he had proved to be a great help at seeing to the myriad of details that went into running an event, as well as serving as a liaison with the local groups.
The problem was, he wasn’t always that easy to find.
He was one of those that tended to keep his cell phone turned off except when he was making a call, which made that avenue of communication iffy at best. What was worse, he didn’t have any particular movement or behavior patterns, making his whereabouts unpredictable. While he would occasionally hang out with the other animal-control people at the conclave, for the most part he was a loner, seeming to prefer his own company.
One place there was always a chance of finding someone from the conclave was the hotel lobby bar. While the attendees were mostly into exploring the wilds of the Quarter and the locals tended to duck out to drink at their habitual watering holes, the lobby bar was convenient for a quick drink or conversation.
Poking his head in, Griffen did a quick scan of who all were there. Not seeing Slim, he started to leave, then took another look.
Sitting alone at a corner table was Tammy. The changeling was hunched over her drink, staring down into it while she idly played with the swizzle stick. While, like the other fey kids, she was normally high-energy and exuberant, just then she wasn’t looking happy at all.
Looking at her, Griffen wavered for a moment, then heaved a sigh. Pausing at the bar to gather up a drink of his own, he approached her table.
“Mind if I join you?” he said.
The changeling looked at him blankly, then gave a little shrug.
“I don’t know why you’d want to talk to me, but sure. Pull up a chair.”
Griffen studied her covertly as he sank into the indicated seat. He always thought of her as “the coltish one,” and the image still held. While she wasn’t all that tall, there was a lean, all-legs look about her that made one wonder what she would be like when she grew up, yet also left one feeling they were glad to have met her at this stage in her development. The look was accented by her outfit. She was wearing short shorts, which made her legs seem even longer, and a bare-midriff T-shirt that accented the soft flatness of her stomach. Topped by a long, slender neck and a pixie mop of blond hair, she was not unattractive at all.
He caught himself and forced his mind back to the issue at hand.
“Are you okay, Tammy?” he said. “It’s not really any of my business, but you seem a little down.”
The changeling gave a sigh.
“I really screwed things up with that demo,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “All the others are really pissed at me. They say I’ve made our whole group look bad at our first conclave. I don’t know. Maybe they’re right.”
She took a long pull on her drink, giving Griffen a chance to grope for something to say.
“I don’t think anyone has come off as well as they would like to, including me,” he said. “Except, maybe watzername, the tattoo and bird lady. She would be a tough act to follow for anyone.”
“Tell me about it,” Tammy said with a bitter laugh. “I was only going to do my partial tree change, but it would have looked so lame after her showstopper I tried to juice it a little with glamour.”
“That’s understandable,” Griffen said, soothingly. “It’s only natural to try to make a good impression. I really don’t think it’s such a big thing. To tell the truth, I didn’t even know that shape-shifting was one of the abilities you changelings have.”
“It isn’t, really.” Tammy grimaced. “A few of us can, but it’s not part of the standard package. That was part of the game plan. You aren’t alone in not knowing what we can or can’t do, even though for most of them it’s because they really don’t care. We’re supposed to be secretive and evasive about our powers, then show off some that people don’t expect… like the shape-shifting. It’s supposed to make people take us more seriously, or at least pique their curiosity.”
“Well, it worked for me,” Griffen said, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I, for one, am extremely curious about you.”
The changeling suddenly brightened as if someone had turned on a lightbulb inside her.
“Really?” she said. “You don’t know how much that means to me, Mr… I mean, Griffen.”
She put a hand over his and pressed down hard, effectively pinning his hand in place.
“I mean, I’ve always wanted to meet a dragon, but since that first day… you’re nothing like what I expected.”
Every alarm in Griffen’s head was going off.
He had meant that he was curious about the changelings, but Tammy was obviously taking it personally. Moreover, her response was so enthusiastic there was no way he could see of correcting the impression without it sounding like a blunt rejection of her. Of course, he wasn’t all that disinterested in her.
“Um… Tammy…” he said.
“Oh, I know,” she interrupted. “I don’t expect you to feel the same way. Still, curiosity’s not a bad place to start.”
Still holding his hand, she shifted it from her shoulder to the middle of her chest.
Griffen was suddenly aware that there wasn’t a damn thing under that T-shirt except Tammy.
At that pivotal moment, Tail came into the bar with two of the other shape-shifters. Tammy saw him and let go of Griffen’s hand, recoiling as if she had been struck.
Too late.
Tail spotted them and approached their table with a huge smirk on his face.
“Well, now we know what it takes to get our moderator to spend time with you,” he declared in his gravelly voice. “Just phony up a demonstration, and you get his undivided attention.”
Griffen leaned back in his chair and stared levelly at the intruder.
“You know, Tail,” he said, “as moderator, I try real hard not to let my personal likes and dislikes show or affect how I conduct the conclave. Some people make it harder than others. For example, I was just telling Tammy here that I thought that your interrupting and embarrassing her during her demonstration was totally uncalled for and made you look worse than it did her.”
“Really?” Tail said, crossing his arms. “Well, I suppose it’s as good a line as any to try to get into someone’s pants. Is she gullible enough to believe you?”
Griffen waited several moments before answering.
“Tail,” he said finally, “is there any particular reason you’re trying to be offensive and pick a fight? I find it hard to be
lieve this is your normal way of dealing with people.”
“This is pretty much it,” Tail said with a grin. “Of course, I get particularly ornery around phonies. Take you, for example. Everyone’s walking soft round you because you’re supposed to be a hot-shit dragon, but so far you haven’t shown me much. I notice you didn’t favor us with a shape-shifting demonstration.”
“Like I said at the opening ceremonies, I was invited here as a moderator, not a participant or demonstrator,” Griffen said, trying to keep a grip on his temper. “This whole conclave is supposed to be about the various groups that were invited in. Not an excuse to show off dragon powers.”
“Isn’t that convenient.” The shape-shifter sneered. “Well, this isn’t an official conclave gathering. Any reason why you can’t give us a little private demo of what you can do?”
Griffen glanced pointedly around the bar.
“Several reasons,” he said. “The first is there’s a conclave rule against showing our powers in public, which I figure I’m bound to follow. This also happens to be the town I live in, which gives me an extra reason to keep a low profile. And finally, I don’t use my powers unless it’s necessary, and I don’t do sideshows.”
“You know, McCandles, you remind me of a good old boy back home,” Tail said. “He keeps sayin’ he doesn’t want to fight ’cause he’s afraid of hurtin’ someone. The fact that he doesn’t really know how to fight and is really afraid of gettin’ hurt himself doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
Griffen pursed his lips, then leaned forward, putting both his hands on the table.
“Tell me something, Tail,” he said. “When one of the loup garou changes, exactly how hard are those claws he grows?”
“Hard enough to rip up most any critter you know of.” Tail smiled. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondered,” Griffen said, smiling back as he leaned back in his chair.
Tail looked at him for a minute.
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