“Tom, that isn’t helpful.”
“Well, I’m not a believer, myself, but it’s a fascinating idea. Are we judged by the divinity of humans, or by some … you know, animal god?”
Rafiel pulled the door open. “Not right now it isn’t a fascinating idea. I’m facing the problem of living with my guilt about breaking police regulations. I don’t even want to think of anything else.”
They were in the big dim room that Tom had heard described several times, but never seen till now. Walls and ceilings had been sculpted to look like the inside of a cave, stalactites and stalagmites delineating paths. Though, Tom thought, it was expecting rather too much of suspension of disbelief to think that the stalagmites had formed benches by natural processes. And the speckled-cement stairs with their metal railings, leading up to an observation platform—probably nine by nine feet wide—also with metal railings and planters with curiously plastic-looking flowers, just about killed that natural structure feel.
Rafiel went up to the platform and looked around nervously. He looked as if he expected doom to fall at any moment. Like … he thought his superiors would be psychically warned or something. And Tom, who’d been a juvenile delinquent and delighted in breaking rules long before he’d known he was a shifter, could only smile at him.
“It’s not funny,” Rafiel said. “I could be fired if anyone finds out about this.” He clutched the grey box of surveillance equipment against his chest, as though it were a shield of righteousness. “Good lord, I could be arrested.”
Tom didn’t realize he was about to cackle till the sound bubbled out of his lips despite his best efforts. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, to Rafiel’s glare. “It’s just I was thinking … we could be killed. We could be discovered as shifters—and ultimately killed—and you’re worrying about being arrested. I mean … if they came for you, what’s to stop you taking off in lion form?”
“What? Other than losing my identity, my family, everything I’ve worked for?”
Tom sobered up. He too could leave. At any moment, he could just go. It was easy. Take to the wing, and forget Kyrie and The George, and Keith and Rafiel and Anthony and Notty. No. What good was it to save yourself by losing everything that was important to you?
“Exactly,” Rafiel said, softly, having read Tom’s expressions without need for words. He shrugged. “But your point is taken too. In the maze of dangers we face, risking being arrested is not so very bad. And then I doubt we will be arrested, or even found out. At least with a bit of luck.” He looked above himself, then around at the walls of the fake cave. “But we forgot something, Tom. Neither of us is an electrician. How are we going to put these up?” He waved the package containing two cameras and a mess of electrical stuff.
Tom grinned. “Well … you know …”
“Oh, don’t tell me you used to wire cameras in people’s houses while you were homeless. There are things I don’t want to know.”
This time Tom’s gurgle of laughter poured out, without his ability to control it. “No. But when we had The George remodeled, the electrician didn’t have an assistant. Nice man, but … you know, semi-retired. Did it cheap. One of Anthony’s acquaintances.”
“And?”
“Well, he needed help. Holding this, twisting that. Third hand kind of stuff. And I didn’t have anything better to do. I was recovering from … near death. And he liked to talk … Seventies, you know, and no one wants to listen to him most of the time.”
“So he taught you electrical stuff?”
“A bit. Jackleg stuff,” Tom said. He brought out the little set of tools he’d slipped into the pocket of his jacket earlier, and grinned as Rafiel looked surprised. Just now and then he liked to upstage Mr. Unflappable Trall and be better prepared. He looked up and pointed to a light. “I think we’ll tap that light,” he said. “It’s close enough to the stalactite and the plastic plants, that we can sort of run the wire behind and no one will know.”
Rafiel looked at the light in turn. “Any idea how you’ll reach it?”
“Oh, sure,” Tom said. “I stand on the railing.”
“Uh … I see. And if you fall?”
“I won’t,” Tom said.
“Really?”
“No. Because you’re going to hold my ankles.”
Rafiel looked up at Tom, who’d propped himself up, with a foot on either of the intersecting metal railings. He looked doubtfully down at the railings, which he wasn’t even sure should be able to support that weight, then up again at Tom, who was fiddling with the light cover, and doing something underneath. After a while, Tom trailed a wire down, and pulled it, so it followed, kind of behind one of the cement stalactites that dropped down from the ceiling and around the edge of the railing.
“How much wire do you have?” Rafiel said.
“Enough,” Tom said. “Right. I’m going to jump down now.”
“Not while I’m holding you,” Rafiel said, and stepped back.
Tom’s feet wobbled on the railing, he started tilting forward. Rafiel reached up. Grabbed his wrist. Pulled. Something at the back of his mind said it was better for them to fall on the platform than on the tank. They toppled to the floor. Rafiel hit his elbow and his head, and gathered himself up. “Are you all right?” he asked Tom who had fallen in a heap, and was pale and shivering.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Only …” He shook his head and scrambled to his knees and, on his knees, across the platform, to the planter, the box was tilted up against. Fishing in the box, he brought out the camera, which was about the diameter of a dime, and about as thick. He stuck it to one of the planters, well hidden in the foliage, the wire behind it. Then, as he seemed to make sure that the camera lens was unobstructed, he said, “When I was little, we had goldfish. At least, I wanted a pet, but you know, we lived in a condo. No place for pets, really, so my dad got me a bowl with goldfish. He also started calling them Schröedinger fish, because—well, I wasn’t very interested and it wasn’t in my room—it was in this passage between my room and the walk-in closet, and I didn’t always remember to feed them. So Dad said every time we checked on them, it was not sure if they were alive or dead till we actually saw them. I remember this one time I forgot to feed them for like”—he narrowed his eyes with thought—”five days? When I came back to feed them, they all congregated in one spot, you know, clearly waiting for food.
“The sharks looked like that,” he said and, for the first time, looked up to meet Rafiel’s gaze. “Just like that. As if they were pet fish, used to being fed by people, you know?”
Rafiel sighed. “I’d say they are. I just wish we knew by whom.”
“Well …” Tom said, and gestured towards the camera. “That will tell us, right?”
“Yeah,” Rafiel said. “If they come in, of course. I mean, what with … you know …” He shrugged. “The room is sealed. Or will be again, once we leave. If it’s a casual thing, if she just brings her boyfriends in, and someone … like the crab shifter, doesn’t like it …”
“But if it’s not,” Tom said, “then we’ll get it. The camera is motion-activated and it connects to my laptop, which is at the bed-and-breakfast. It will sound an alarm …” He gave an impish smile. “At least as soon as I install the program.”
“Right,” Rafiel said, but the idea didn’t please him. There had to be another way around it, some other way to make things work. He didn’t like the idea of just sitting down and waiting for some poor sap to be thrown in the shark tank. Not the least of which, because the poor sap would then be doomed. “So, why did you think you needed a surveillance system for The George?”
Tom stood up and dusted off the knees of his pants, as if this would fix the dust all over his clothes from having fallen headlong onto the observation platform. “I thought, you know, with the stuff that was happening at the back before … murder and all …” He shrugged. “I thought if a bunch of shifters were coming to the place, called by pheromones, we’d do as well to have early warning
and proof if any of them had … control issues.”
Rafiel, raising his eyebrows, reasoned that his friend trusted other shifters about as much as he did. They climbed down the stairs. Rafiel opened the door to the shark room, waited till Tom went by, then sealed the door again, initialing it once more, and putting in the date and time on the destroyed seal. “I’m going to hell.” This time Tom didn’t seem disposed to argue.
They walked quietly side by side along the deserted hallways, past the concrete trunk filled with plaster coins and Rafiel wondered if even very small children were fooled by it. He didn’t remember ever being small enough to fall for that kind of fakery.
And then he wondered what they were going to do with the camera. While it had seemed like a good idea to set the camera in place, he now wondered how sane it was. Tom had been all enthusiastic about it, but it was probably just his happiness at getting to wire something. “Hey,” he said, softly. “The other camera? Where do you intend to put it?”
Tom looked surprised. “Nowhere, really, I don’t—”
He shut up abruptly, and Rafiel realized he had heard a sound, just before Tom stopped talking. Something like a soft footstep to their right. They were at the top of the stairs that led down to the aquarium with crabs and to the restaurant. For a second, he thought that it would be the crab shifter, emerging from his aquarium. Perhaps they could interrogate him.
But the person who came walking out of the shadows was Dante Dire—lank hair falling over his dark eyes, and his dark eyes sparkling with fury. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
Rafiel drew himself up and tried to hide the quiver of fear that ran through him on seeing the creature. Because he was not a fool, he remembered—all too well—that this creature could reach into his mind and change his thoughts; the idea paralyzed him. He could have endured any form or amount of physical torture, but the idea that someone—something—could change what he thought and how he felt … that he could not stand. “It would be better to ask what you are doing here,” he said, keeping his voice steady. He was aware of Tom’s having done something—he didn’t know what. But Tom had been behind him as they walked, still in the shadows, Rafiel presumed, and now when Tom stepped forward there was nothing in his hands. He’d put the camera box down somewhere. And immediately Rafiel made himself stop thinking about the camera, and think only that they were there to gather evidence against the murderer who’d been throwing people into the shark tank. He put that thought in front, as it were, and hid all the rest—even his fear—behind it.
Dire’s face hardened. “You have no business,” he said, “trying to entrap innocent shifters.”
“Innocent,” Tom said, calling attention away from Rafiel—and presumably his thoughts. Rafiel felt as though something had been pressing against his thoughts, and the pressure now lifted, leaving him free to think clearly for a change. “Why do you think we’re trying to entrap any shifters, innocent or otherwise?”
Dante Dire straightened up and stared, right over Rafiel’s shoulder, at Tom. “Ah! You think I’m stupid and don’t read the paper? I do. And the paper says there have been murders in this place. And then, and then, I see you here, skulking, looking for clues. His mind,” he pointed at Rafiel, “makes it clear enough he’s looking for clues against someone he thinks is a shifter.” He crossed his arms on his chest. “It’s you or me, pretty Kitten Boy. We’re going to have this out now. The way I told it to the girl, I need to kill someone who can plausibly be accused of having killed the young shifters. You will do as well as any.”
Rafiel felt as though his heart had skipped in his chest. He felt fear surging through his veins, demanding loudly that he shift. “I have to investigate,” he said. “I have to. It’s my job.”
“Bah. A job paid for ephemerals. A job in which you obey ephemerals. A job”—he spat out the word as if it were poison—“where you demean your nature for money. Money is easy, Kitten Boy, when you live almost forever. As you’d already have figured out, if you were made of stronger stuff. But you’re not, and now you’ll die for it.” He glared at Rafiel. “Are you going to shift, or do I kill you as you are?”
And not all the forces in the hell he claimed awaited him could have kept Rafiel from shifting.
Tom felt as if he’d frozen in place. He’d thrown the box with the remaining camera behind some plastic bushes at the edge. He hoped he’d managed it before Dire saw it. He must have managed it, because Dire hadn’t said anything about the box, just challenged their right to be there and announced that he was planning to kill Rafiel.
Stunned at the idea, Tom started to speak, but nothing came out of his mouth. It seemed to him that this was a duel. At least Dire had challenged Rafiel to a duel, challenged him to shift. If the intent were only to kill Rafiel, why not kill him as a human, without bothering with the lion form?
Except, of course, that Dire was a sadist. And the lion would, of course, provide him with a better fight, he thought, as lion and dire wolf stood facing each other, in this incongruous setting—tanks bubbled on either side, fish swam looking incuriously onto the scene. And Tom retreated until his back was against the concrete wall, while his brain worked feverishly.
His first thought—that Dire was doing this to gratify his sadistic impulses—was confirmed when, instead of going for the jugular, the huge prehistoric beast jumped at Rafiel and grabbed him by the scruff, much as a mother cat grabbing a baby. Only, it then lifted him off the ground and shook him, and threw him, sending him sprawling against one of the tanks.
For a moment, Tom, heart thumping at his throat, thought that Rafiel was already dead—that the dire wolf had broken his neck with that shake and toss. He heard something like a hiss come out of his mouth, and he realized what was about to happen. As he pulled off his shirt and dropped his pants—barely ahead of the process already twisting his limbs and covering his skin in green scales—he thought that he didn’t want to fight the dire wolf. As ill-matched as Rafiel was against Dire, Tom was no better. He remembered the fight in the parking lot. He remembered that the dire wolf had almost killed him then. Why should now be any different?
But Rafiel was the closest thing he had to a best friend. If Tom stood by and watched the dire wolf finish Rafiel off in order to blame him for the deaths of hundreds of newborn shifters, just a few months ago, Tom would never be able to live with himself. Nor—he thought, ruefully, as his body contorted, in painful acrobatics, bending and twisting in a way it wasn’t meant to, and as wings extruded from his back—would Kyrie want to live with him.
Dire was concentrating on Rafiel and hadn’t seemed to notice Tom’s shift, yet. Dire had swung the lion again, this time against the piranha tank. Tom flung himself into the fight, blindly. In the tight confines of the aquarium building, flying was no advantage, but he flung himself, aided by his wings, at the dire wolf and bit deep into what he could grab, which happened to be an ear, while letting out an ear-splitting hiss-roar that translated all his anger and frustration at this unreasonable ancient creature.
The dire wolf looked shocked—he turned a bloodied muzzle towards Tom, his eyes opened to their utmost in complete surprise. And Tom, instinct-driven, slashed his paw across the face, claws raking the eyes. Blood spurted. The dire wolf screamed. And the part of Tom that remained very much human was aware that this was a momentary advantage. The creature would recover. Eventually it would regrow its eyes. Until then, it might very well be able to look through their eyes. He couldn’t allow it time to recover.
Leaping across the room, he grabbed Rafiel by the scruff even as Rafiel, dizzy and battle-mad, tried to grab at him. But grabbing the scruff seemed to paralyze him, and Tom—fairly sure that in normal circumstances he’d have a hard time lifting Rafiel and trying to hold as gently as possible so he didn’t wound Rafiel more—ran down the stairs with his friend held between his teeth.
Down the stairs and at a run through the aquarium—was that a Japanese man hiding in the shadows? and had he winke
d at Tom?—and turning sharply left, down a narrow corridor between tanks and …
Tom hit the exterior door with his full body weight. As he hit, he thought Dire might have locked it, but the door was already opening, letting them out into the cold air, where Tom dropped Rafiel and concentrated on changing. The dragon argued that Rafiel would make a really good protein snack, but Tom forced his limbs to shift, decontort. Before he could fully form words, he said, “Now, Rafiel, shift.” The words came out half roar, half hiss, with only the barest vocalization behind them. And then Tom’s eyes cleared and he realized Rafiel was already human, trying to walk to the car on a leg that bent the wrong way.
“Your keys?” Tom said.
Rafiel looked at him, his eyes full of pain, but reached for a bracelet at his wrist—metal but of the sort of links that stretched, so that it stayed with him through his shifts. He pulled the key and handed it to Tom, who opened the car, climbed in, and flung the passenger door open, just in time for Rafiel to climb in. He saw Dire’s car parked next to them.
“Drive, drive, drive,” Rafiel said. And Tom was driving, as fast as he knew how, down the still-half-iced streets, breathing deeply, telling himself that residual panic didn’t justify shifting, that he would not—could not—shift. He tasted Rafiel’s blood in his mouth, from the wounds the dire wolf had made at the back of Rafiel’s neck, and it didn’t help him keep control. Not at all.
It was a while—and Tom had no clue where he was, having driven more or less blindly—before Rafiel said, softly, “Thank you.”
“What?” Tom asked, hearing his own voice ill-humored and combative. “Why?”
“Well … you … saved my life.”
“As opposed to just letting you die? What do you think I am?”
“Brave. I know that creature scares the living daylights out of me. I don’t know if I’d be able to make myself intervene in a fight between him and you.”
Night Shifters Page 74