“How many of us are there?” Kyrie asked. “I mean—there’s you and the triad, but … You’ve known about this more and have been more places. How many shifters have you met?”
She had to talk to keep her mind off what he was doing. He wasn’t hurting her. On the contrary. His fingers, touching her skin ever-so-lightly were a caress. Or the closest to a caress she could remember.
It had been too long since she’d even let anyone touch her. Certainly not since she’d started shifting. Before that there had been foster siblings who’d got close, some she’d hugged and who’d hugged her. But not since then.
Tom’s touch was very delicate, as if he were afraid of breaking her. It felt odd. She didn’t want to think of him, back there, being careful not to hurt her.
And she really wanted to know how many shifters he’d seen in the five years since he’d left his house. She hadn’t been out much. Well, not out on the street and not out while aware of being in a shapeshifted body. She hadn’t been looking for other shifters. But he might have been. Hell, considering his thing with the triad, he probably had been.
He paused at her question. He’d been taping the gauze down over her wound, and he stopped. For a moment she thought she’d offended him.
But he sighed. “I don’t know for sure,” he said. “I wasn’t counting. Including the occasional enforcer for the triad or not?”
“The enforcers for the triad have been trailing you all this time?”
She was sure he’d smiled at that, but she wasn’t sure how. His fingers resumed their gentle touch, taping the gauze in place.
“No,” he said. “Only a … part of a year.” He paused again. “Without counting them and … and the other triad dragons, of whom there are many, I’d say I’ve seen about twelve, maybe thirteen shifters. Not … not close enough to talk to. I’ve only talked to a couple. I never went out of my way to talk to them. And sometimes, it was ambiguous, you know. Like, you’re walking downtown and you see someone walk in a certain direction and moments later a wolfhound … or a wolf … comes from the same direction. The only ones I knew for sure were the triad and the orangutan and the coyotes. There seem to be any number of them within the triad. Hundreds. And that might be hereditary. They seem to think they’re descended of the Great Sky Dragon. They marry among themselves and they have rites and … and stuff.”
“So—excluding the triad—a dozen in five years? That doesn’t seem like many.”
“No. And most of the time it was larger cities than Goldport. Large cities back east. New York and Boston and Atlanta.”
“Odd,” Kyrie said. “Because just last night—”
“Yes, you and me and that lion,” Tom said, his voice grave, as he finished taping the gauze in place. At least she assumed he’d finished, because he lay the tape back on the table, with the scissors on top of it. And then, ever so gently, he tugged her robe back in place. “I’ve been thinking the same. Why that many in one night. With the triad here, too, we must be tipping the scales at … a lot of shifters. And I wondered why.”
Kyrie wondered why too. She’d been living in Goldport for over a year. She remembered the Greyhound bus had stopped here and she’d thought to stay for a night before going on to Denver. But she’d never gone on. Something about Goldport just felt … right. Like it was the home she’d been looking for so long. Which was ridiculous, since it was what remained of a gold boom town that had become a University town. And she never had anything to do with either mining or college.
But Goldport had felt … Not exactly familiar, but more safe. Secure. Home. Like the home she’d never known. She had walked from the Greyhound station to the Athens and seen a sign on the window asking for a server. She’d applied and been hired that night.
But what attraction could the small, odd town have for other shifters. Well … Tom had come via the Greyhound too, she supposed. And Frank had offered him a job.
As for the lion … She wouldn’t think about the lion. “It’s probably just a coincidence,” she told Tom. And it probably was. Three were not, after all, a great sample. Perhaps they were the only three shifters in town—other than the triad—and had just chanced to bump into each other. The blood had surely helped. She swallowed, remembering what the blood smelled like in the other shape.
Tom came around and started gathering the first-aid supplies.
“What kinds of shifters are there? What kinds did you see? Just big cats? And werewolves? And dragons? Or …”
Tom stopped what he was doing. He didn’t drop the supplies, just held them where they were. He didn’t look at her. “You’re going to think I’m an idiot,” he said.
“Um … no,” Kyrie said. She couldn’t understand why she would think he was an idiot now. She had a thousand reasons to think him careless, low on self-preservation instincts, and probably a little insane. But … an idiot? “Why?”
He sighed. “I swear one of those shifters was a centaur. I know what you’re going to tell me, that centaurs don’t exist, that I was just seeing a horseman, that—”
“No, I’m not,” Kyrie said.
“You’re not?”
“Tom, dragons are thought not to exist too.”
“Oh.” He looked shocked. As if he’d never thought of it that way. Then he grinned. “Well, then I can tell you. Another one of them was an orangutan. Little stooped man, sold roast chestnuts on the street near … near my father’s house. And he shifted into an orangutan at night. He was a very nice man, once I got to talking to him. He told me that his wife and his daughters sometimes didn’t notice when he shifted.” He grinned at that, as he gathered all the first-aid supplies, and headed back to the bathroom.
Kyrie followed him, wondering what to do next. He’d helped her. And, whether his association with the triad was dangerous or not, he, personally, didn’t feel dangerous. And they’d lost the triad for the night, hadn’t they?
She was reluctant to send him out alone and barefoot into the night. What if he got killed? How would she feel when she heard about it? How would she live with herself?
And besides, having grown up without family, all alone, this was the first time she’d found someone who was genuinely like her. Not family—at least she didn’t think so, though he could be a half brother or a cousin. One of the curses of the abandoned child was not to know—but someone who had more in common with her than anyone else she had found. And if he’d gone bad … She shook her head.
She didn’t know why he’d gone bad. She remembered the smell of blood in that parking lot and the madness in the apartment. Clearly, she too had it in her to commit violence. She would have to control it. Perhaps he was just weaker than her? Perhaps he could not control himself as well.
He put the stuff back in the medicine cabinet, carefully organized, and turned around. “I’ll get out of your hair now, okay. Just report your car stolen. You have insurance, right?”
“Yes, but …”
“Oh, I’ll still pay you for the window,” Tom said. “But it might take me a while to be able to get to an ATM. I have some money. Not much. I don’t think I’ll get my deposit back for the apartment. I thought I’d head out of town, lead the … the dragons away from you.”
“And leave me stuck in the middle of a murder investigation?”
He opened his hands. “What else can I do? I can’t undo what happened.” He looked earnest and distraught. “Someone died. And, Kyrie, I wish to all that’s holy that I could tell you it wasn’t me who killed him. But I can’t. He’s dead, and I’m …”
He opened his hands, denoting his helplessness. “I wish I could tell you I never touched him and that I would never have done that, but my mind is all a blank. I don’t even remember being attacked in my apartment, honest. If it weren’t for the state it’s in …”
His hair had fallen in front of his eyes, and he tossed his head back to throw it back. “Look … I might very well have done it, and they might find evidence linking me to it. I’m not sure how
your DNA works when you’re shifted. But if it was … If they think I killed him, all you have to say is that I asked you for a ride home, that you had no idea anyone was dead. You could have come out in the parking lot and never seen it, you know? It was behind the vans. I took advantage of your charity and stole your car. No one will hold that against you.”
Kyrie bit her lip. There were other things he wasn’t even thinking about, she thought. For instance, the paper towels. Properly looked over they’d probably find traces of her hair, dead skin cells, whatever.
But fine, the major evidence would point to him, and she could probably come up with a story that would let her off and get him out of her life forever. So, why didn’t she want to? Was it because once he was gone she could go back to imagining that she was just hallucinating the shifts? And she wouldn’t have a witness to her shapeshifting.
She put her hands inside the wide sleeves of her robe. “I think that’s tiredness talking,” she said. “I think if I can come up with an excuse, so can you. You’re exhausted from who knows how many hours shifted. And you don’t look well.” This last was the absolute truth. Tom had started out looking shocked and ill, and he’d progressed to milk-pale, with dark, dark circles under his eyes, bruised enough to look like someone had punched him hard. “You could crash the car out there,” she said, and seized upon that. “And I don’t want it made inoperable. The insurance never pays you enough to junk it.”
He frowned at her, the frown that she had learned to identify as his look of indecision.
“I have a love seat,” she said. And to his surprised look added, “In the sunroom at the back. Sleeping porch, really, from when they treated tubercular patients in this region. They thought fresh air was essential, so they had these sun-porches. Someone glassed this one in, and there’s a love seat in it. Nothing fancy, mind you, but you can have it and a blanket.”
She could see him being tempted. He was so tired that, standing in the middle of her little bathroom, he was swaying slightly on his feet. She could see him looking in what he probably thought was the direction of the sun-porch, and she could practically hear the thoughts of the love seat and blanket run through his head. She could also see him opening his mouth to tell her thanks but no thanks.
Which was when the doorbell rang.
CHAPTER
3
The noise of the doorbell echoed, seeming to fill the small house.
Kyrie jumped and Tom turned his wrist toward himself, as though checking time on a watch he didn’t wear.
She swept her gaze toward the narrow little window in the shower, instead, checking the scant light coming through, blue tinged, announcing the end of blind night, the beginning of barely lit morning.
“It can’t be anyone about the … It’s too early,” she said.
And saw Tom pale, saw him start shaking. “Go to the kitchen,” she told him, sure that in his mind as in hers was the memory of the bathroom at the Athens, full of bloodied towels, probably tainted with his hair and skin. And hers.
Why, oh, why hadn’t she put the used towels in her car? Dumped them somewhere? But where? Outside Tom’s apartment? They hadn’t exactly had time to stop anywhere and get rid of things.
It was too late for all that, now. All her life, she had faced crises and looked after herself. What else could she do? There hadn’t been anyone else to look after her. Now she had to look after Tom too. Not the first time she had this sort of responsibility. Younger kids at foster homes often clung to her, sure that her strength would carry them. And it did, even when she thought she had no strength left.
He was shaking, and she put a hand out to him, and touched his arm. It still felt too cold, even through the sweat suit. “Go to the kitchen. Sit down,” she said. “Stay. I’ll go see who it is. I’ll deal with it.”
She walked out through the kitchen and the hallway, to the front room with its curved Seventies vintage sofa that she’d covered in the pretty red sheet, and the table made of plastic cubes where she kept her books and her few prized possessions. It should give her a sense of security, but it didn’t. Instead, she wondered what would happen to her books if she were arrested and what would happen to the house if she lost her job. Though it was just a rental, it was the first place she could call hers, the first place where she was not living on someone else’s territory and on someone else’s terms.
She shook her head. It wouldn’t come to that. She wouldn’t let it come to that.
The front door was one of the cheap hollow metal ones, but it did have a bull’s eye. The neighborhood was quiet enough and the whole city was basically safe, so she supposed it had been put there to allow occupants to avoid Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Now she leaned into the door and put her eye to the tiny opening. Out there was … a stranger.
He stood on her doorstep, and he was tall, blond. Broad shouldered, she supposed, but with the sort of relaxed posture and laid-back demeanor that made him look more like a surfer than a body builder. Increasing the impression was hair just on this side of long, the bangs overhanging his left eye. He wore a loose white linen suit that seemed to accentuate his relaxed expression. The sunglasses that covered his eyes despite the scant light made him look like one of those artists afraid of being recognized, or else like a man who’d just flown in from a vacation in Bermuda and had not yet fully realized that he was back home.
The sunglasses made his expression unreadable, but he seemed to be looking intently at the door. As Kyrie watched, he raised his hand and rang the doorbell again.
It was what? Four, five in the morning? Surely this was not a casual visit. Casual visitors didn’t insist on being answered at this time of night. But then what? A rapist or a robber? What? Ringing the doorbell? Wasn’t that sort of unusual? Besides, she could handle herself. Surely she could handle herself.
Kyrie unlocked the door and opened it the length of the chain. The chain was another puzzler. Either the neighborhood had been a lot worse when the security device was installed, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses were unusually persistent.
“Ah,” he said, when she opened the door, and smiled flashing teeth straight out of a toothpaste commercial. “Ms. Kyrie Smith?”
Before she could answer, there was a faint rustling sound behind her. She turned and saw Tom mouthing soundlessly, “Police?” He raised his eyebrows.
She shrugged. But it if was police, then she really needed to answer. Before he took too close a look at the car. The upholstery was doubtlessly smeared with blood. And, doubtlessly, some of it would be the murder victim’s.
Tom nodded at her, as if to tell her to go ahead and open the door. And Kyrie did, about a palm’s width further.
The man on the other side got closer. He wore some strong aftershave. No. Not strong, but insinuating. He looked down at her, his eyes unreadable behind the sunglasses. “Ms. Kyrie Grace Smith?”
She nodded. Smith was the name of a foster family she no longer remembered, but it had stuck to her throughout her growing up years.
He reached for a pocket of his linen suit, and brought out a leather wallet, which he opened with a flourish that must have taken years to learn. “Officer Rafiel Trall, Goldport Police Department. May I speak to you for a moment?”
Tom swallowed hard and was sure he’d turned pale at the announcement that the man on the other side of the door was an officer of the law. He’d had run-ins with the police before. He had a record. Oh, he’d never been arrested for more than a night or a couple of nights. And he’d been a minor. And every time his father had bailed him out.
But still, he didn’t know what kind of record they kept or if it would have been erased when he turned eighteen. He was sure a couple of times they’d tried to charge him as an adult. Wasn’t sure if it had stuck. He hadn’t been paying much attention back then. He’d been cocky and full of himself and his family’s power and position.
Since he’d left home, he’d done his best not to be caught. He tried to visualize being in j
ail, and needing to shift. Or shifting without meaning to. He imagined turning into a dragon in confines where privacy didn’t exist. He couldn’t be arrested. He wouldn’t be. He would kill himself first.
Kyrie looked at the ID, then at the man.
“May I come in?” the man asked. “I have a few questions to ask you. Just a few minutes of your time.”
Silently, Kyrie opened the door, and the man came in. He didn’t look surprised at all at seeing Tom, whom he greeted with a nod. But then why should he look surprised? He couldn’t know that Kyrie didn’t have a boyfriend, could he?
Tom willed himself to relax, to show no fear. Fear would make the man suspicious and would make him look harder for something that had triggered that reaction.
“Look, this is just a quick visit,” the policeman said. “A quick question. You work at the Athens on Fairfax, right?”
Kyrie nodded.
“Mr. Frank Skathari, your boss, said you had left about midnight?”
Had it been midnight? Tom wondered. It seemed like an eternity to his tired body, his dizzy mind. He saw Kyrie nod and wondered if she had any more idea of the time than he did.
“You didn’t see any large animal in the parking lot?”
“An … animal?” she asked.
“There was a corpse … I’m sorry. You might not have noticed,” he said. “It was behind some vans. But there was a corpse, and it looked like it died by accident. An attack by some creature with large teeth. We’re thinking like a Komodo dragon or something.”
Dragon. Tom felt as if the word were directed at him. The policeman looked at him as he spoke. Or at least, his face turned in Tom’s direction. It was hard to see what the man was looking at, exactly, with those sunglasses on. “People bring these pets from abroad,” he was saying, as Tom focused on him again. “And let them loose. It could be dangerous. I just wanted to know if you’d seen something.”
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