“Don’t worry about it,” Tom said, hoping his dismissive tone would stop the conversation. He’d never learned to take compliments, and he wasn’t ready for gratitude for doing what he had to do—what was clearly required of him as a human being. He just wanted to get back to the bed-and-breakfast and have a shower and—
“Damn,” he said.
“What?”
“I left my boots in the aquarium.”
Rafiel laughed. It was weak laughter. Not so much amusement, as a reflex of relief. He remembered Tom, once, running naked down the street, save for his all-prized jacket and his boots.
“It’s not funny,” Tom said.
“Yes, it is. You have an unnatural attachment to those boots.”
“They’re mine, and I like them,” Tom said. Still driving like a maniac, he turned to glower at Rafiel. “I haven’t had many things in my life that I could hold onto, you know? Things that were mine, I mean.”
“Yes, but why in the name of all that’s holy would the things you want to hold onto be items of apparel when you are a shifter?” Rafiel asked, smiling.
Tom shrugged. “It was all I had before settling down. All I had were the clothes on my back.”
“Right. Well, it’s unlikely the creature knows how attached you are to your boots, so you’ll probably be safe,” he said. “Meaning he won’t piss in them. And if he does, I’ll buy you new boots.”
“Thank you. I like the ones I have.”
“Unnatural,” Rafiel said. “But I’m not going back to get them. Not even for you, my friend.”
“Ah, look, the dire wolf will probably be gone and besides we can’t leave them behind. Someone will go to the aquarium. Someone will know we broke in.”
Rafiel looked at him, disbelieving. “You have to be joking.”
“No, I’m not. It’s my boots, and they’ll figure out they’re mine, and next thing you know, they’ll be talking about my pushing people into the shark tank or something.”
Rafiel groaned, seeing what he meant. “Oh okay, fine. But if the car is still there, I’m not going in. I’m just not. And I suspect we left blood all over the floor and isn’t that enough to show I was there? What do the boots matter? I’ll just have to try to divert any investigation that—”
“Rafiel, you were shifted. They’ll find lion’s blood.” He gave Rafiel a sideways look. “On the other hand, unless I’m wrong, you also left your cell phone and your clothes and your official identification there. So you’ll have to have a really good story to explain having been in there …”
“I could tell them I lost them this morning, when I was there with Lei.”
“What? And your clothes? Shredded as if you’d burst out of them?”
Rafiel groaned and heard himself swearing softly. “Fine, we’ll go back. I’m trying to figure out how the day could get any worse.”
Which was a stupid thing to say, he realized, as he heard the siren behind him, and saw the flashing lights in the rear view mirror. “Don’t worry,” he told Tom, as Tom smashed his foot on the gas. “I’m a policeman.”
“What, naked, in the car, with another man, in public? How much authority will you have, Officer Trall?”
“They … uh.” Naked in public was the problem. They’d bring him up on an indecency charge so fast. He looked back. “We could get dressed.”
“Fast enough? Before he comes up to the window?”
It might have been possible if they were being followed by a police car. The cop would have had to park way behind them, and then approach them carefully. But Rafiel could see that there was a motorcycle cop in hot pursuit. “We can’t outrun it. He probably already has my license plate and—”
“Right,” Tom said. “There’s only one thing to do. But afterwards, you have to get me a burger. No. A dozen of them.”
“Sure thing,” Rafiel said, not absolutely sure what Tom meant to do and not caring either. “I have money under the seat, with the clothes. We don’t even have to wait till we get my wallet.” At this point, anything Tom could do to get them out of this fix was worth it.
“Right.” Tom said. “But you have to drive. Can you drive?”
“Sure. I’ll use my left foot.”
Tom pulled over and stopped. Something to the way he clenched the wheel, the way his nails seemed to elongate slowly, the way his bone structure appeared to change, made Rafiel want to scream, Don’t shift in my car. But when Tom was already this much on edge, all the scream would do was cause him to shift immediately. He bit his tongue and held his breath.
Tom rolled down the window, then grasped the handle. His voice all hissy and slurpy, as if his dental structure had already shifted, he said, “The moment I get out, drive. Just drive straight. I’ll catch up.”
“Tom … don’t—” He was going to tell him not to eat the man, but didn’t have time.
There was a voice from the open window. “Sir, you were doing … What—”
Tom opened the door and leapt out, while shifting—so that the effect was rather like a kernel of corn popping—bursting and exploding into a massive, much larger form, as it escaped the confines of its skin.
There was a strangled scream from the policeman, and Rafiel switched seats and closed the door and drove straight ahead. He was on Fairfax, he realized. The world’s longest, straight thoroughfare. It was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as such. He hoped it was long enough to allow Rafiel to still be on it whenever Tom caught up.
“Don’t eat him,” Rafiel yelled and rolled up the window, as he drove. He didn’t know if Tom had heard him.
Perhaps ten blocks ahead, as Rafiel entered a definitely seedy area of abandoned warehouses and graffitied overpasses, he saw a shadow fall over the car. A shadow such as if a really large dragon body had flown overhead. And then, in front of a warehouse, Tom stood, extending his thumb in the universal gesture of the hitchhiker.
Rafiel stopped and unlocked the door. As Tom got in, he looked for signs of blood around his mouth or something. Trying to keep it light, he said, “You know, hitchhiking naked is a felony. And we don’t even go into what eating a policeman might be. The force disapproves of it.”
Tom stopped, in the middle of buckling his seatbelt. “I didn’t eat him,” he said. “He started screaming for mercy as soon as I was fully out of the car. I just flew away after that. I figure there’s no way he’s going to tell anyone what happened, and your license plate will never be mentioned.”
“You sure?” Rafiel said.
“I’m sure. If I’d eaten him, you wouldn’t look so tasty right about now.”
Rafiel wasn’t absolutely sure whether Tom was joking, but then again, he also wasn’t willing to tempt fate. “Clothes are under the seat. We should put something on before we go to a drive-through,” he said.
“And afterwards?” Tom said.
“Afterwards,” Rafiel said, “we go get your damn boots.”
When they got to the aquarium, Lei Lani was just ahead of them, opening the door on the restaurant side. Rafiel tried to remember whether they might have left it unlocked—whether they might—perhaps—have left via that entrance. He couldn’t remember. Clearly, being concussed and dangling from a berserker dragon’s jaws did something to the memory. But it didn’t matter, he thought. After all, Dire might have left the door open, too.
She was in the process of opening the door as they came up behind her—wearing tracksuits and looking rather disheveled and, in Rafiel’s case, limping, but seeming much more respectable than they’d been before. Tom, who had inhaled five burgers in the ten blocks here, even had a little color and seemed reasonably human. At least, Rafiel hoped so, because if he had looked tasty to Tom, then Lei must look positively tender.
Still, she turned and looked at them, seeming puzzled. “Oh, Officer Trall …” she said. “I … didn’t expect to see you. I realized there was another report that I left behind.”
Or perhaps another colleague to try to implicate. Or, Rafiel thought, not qui
te sure why, but catching something shifty about her eyes, a look of discomfort. Or perhaps you’ve decided it’s too late to cover things up, and so are going to leave without a forwarding address.
He was fairly sure this last wasn’t true. Not unless McKnight had been so clumsy in his prodding that she now knew, or suspected, that the police had found the lies about her background. McKnight? Incompetent? What are the odds? he thought, sarcastically, and barely suppressed a groan. A look at Tom revealed an expression so full of distress and a gaze desperately attempting to make several speeches, that Rafiel almost groaned again.
He wished he could mind-talk to Tom and inform him that, yes, yes, he had realized they needed to retrieve their things before Lei Lani found them. Meanwhile he would have to hope she didn’t notice they were wearing identical stretch-shoes.
She didn’t seem to. When he said, “I forgot my wallet,” she merely gave him a wry look and said, “You seem to do that a lot.”
Rafiel shrugged. “I drop it,” he said. “I need bigger pockets or a briefcase or something. But then, if I had a briefcase, I’d probably leave it behind.”
She smiled and didn’t comment on that, and turned right, to go to the office. Rafiel turned the other way, towards the piranha room, his heart accelerating. The dire wolf would be there, right there, ready to jump out at him.
But the room was quiet and empty, except for the gurgling of the tanks and the sound the piranhas made swimming back and forth. Tom’s clothes and boots were where he had left them, by the tank. Rafiel’s were quite shredded, so he transferred his wallet and ID and cell phone from the shreds, then bundled them up.
He looked up to see Tom standing, holding his own clothes and the box for the cameras. “Here,” he told Tom, thrusting his bloodied, shredded clothes at him. “Take this to the car, okay?”
He got raised eyebrows in response.
“I’m going to go ask Lei Lani for a date,” Rafiel said.
“What?” Tom’s voice came out louder than the half whisper in which they’d been speaking, like a small outburst of sudden indignation. “Excuse me?”
“Shhh.” Rafiel said, gesturing down with his hand. “It’s not what you think,” he said, in a whisper.
“Isn’t it? This is a heck of a time to work on your social life, Rafiel,” Tom said, but he lowered his voice to a whisper as well.
“It’s not my social life,” Rafiel said. “It’s … you know how …” He concentrated on listening for the slightest sound. His hearing was more acute than normal human, but he heard nothing. Not close enough for Lei Lani to hear. And yet, he didn’t feel comfortable. He sighed. “Come to the car.”
Tom shrugged and followed him to the car. Rafiel threw his shredded clothes in the back. Tom sat on the passenger side and started changing. Rafiel, his gaze sweeping the parking lot to make sure they were quite alone, explained. “I’ve been worried,” he said. “About the camera and how all this was going to work.”
Tom frowned at him. “Duh. Whoever it is brings a date there, and then the computer sounds the alarm, and then—duh—we catch her. Or him.”
“No,” Rafiel said, very patiently. He loved Tom like the brother he’d never had. Truly, he did. But elaborate plans were not the man’s main strength. His greatest act of heroism had been on the spur of the moment. Most of what Tom did seemed to be on the spur of the moment. “Yeah, we will have footage of whatever happens. It’s even possible we’ll know who it is, and what they’re doing. If they’re shifters, we could go and kill them in cold blood, and stop the deaths. Of course, then we’ll have Dire on our tails, but that’s something else again. But … Tom, the poor sap who is brought here will die. There is no way we can get to him in time.”
“Oh,” Tom said. “Unless we’re expecting it?”
“How can we be expecting it, if it’s a stranger?” he said. “By the time the camera beeps, they’ll already be in the aquarium. There is nothing we can do. Except collect the remains.”
Tom frowned. “Damn. I hadn’t thought that through. I don’t think it’s going to be that easy to sit there, waiting, you know, while … some poor sap … Damn, Rafiel, I don’t even think I can do it. I mean, I know he’d probably die anyway, whether this is part of our trap or not. But I don’t want to be … I’d feel like an accomplice.”
“No, it wouldn’t work,” Rafiel said. “Which is why I’m going in there and ask Lei Lani for a date.”
Tom frowned at him. “Because you think she’s the murderer?”
Rafiel shrugged. “Not exactly. But I think there is a good chance she might be. I think it’s quite possible she’s a shark shifter. Which might or might not mean anything. I’ve also found she’s never attended the University of Hawaii, at least not under this name.” He shrugged. “All of it might have other, innocent explanations, and if this were a normal investigation, where I could share my suspicions with my colleagues, it wouldn’t be the time for a desperate gamble. But it isn’t a casual investigation—it’s a life-and-death one. And … other people will die. Plus, Dire seems to have settled on me as the sacrificial victim for him to execute.”
“Dire will just be furious,” Tom said, “if we go after Lani and she’s a shifter.”
“I think Dire is furious now. There is one thing I know we can’t do, Tom, and that’s face Dire, the triads and the aquarium murderer all at the same time. For the last week I’ve walked on eggshells, afraid one or the other of those are about to give us away. I can’t go on like that. Let’s start taking the enemies down one at a time. The aquarium murderer, at least until further notice, is not more powerful than us, so let’s take that one on first. Then we’ll figure out some way to get Dire. And then the triads …” He shrugged. “Perhaps they’ll just go away.”
“Fat chance,” Tom said.
Rafiel shrugged again. “One at a time. So, I’m going in and asking Ms. Lani out.”
“But … like that?” Tom asked. “You are all bruised, have two big gashes on the back of your neck, and you probably broke your ankle.”
Rafiel shrugged. “So, I tell her I got in a fight in the course of duty. You know there is little that a woman loves better than a hero.”
Tom stared at him for a long time, then sighed and shook his head. “The worst part, Mr. Hero, is that you’ll probably pull it off.”
Rafiel gave him a feline grin. “Of course I will.”
Kyrie looked from one to the other of the men, her mouth half open, as though all the words had escaped her and weren’t coming back. Rafiel looked like he’d been put into an industrial threshing machine. His forehead was scratched, his arm showed blood through the shirt. He was walking as if he had—at the very least—a seriously bruised ankle.
Tom looked hungry. In fact, despite the fact that he’d announced to her, up front, that he’d already eaten, and even though his story made it clear he’d had something like ten hamburgers, he looked starved, and sniffed the air as if trying to inhale calories through sniffing in stray particles of cooking meat.
And yet, both of them looked as happy, as full of themselves as boys who had pulled off a really good prank. It had to be one of those male things, because she couldn’t begin to imagine what was going through their minds. “And you went back?” she said. “For the boots and the ID?”
“And the clothes,” Rafiel said, enthusiastically. “My clothes. Well, the shreds of them.”
“I see,” Kyrie said.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Tom said, as his head swiveled to follow a gyro platter carried by Keith. “Dire wasn’t there when we went back.”
Yes, of course, that made it all right, Kyrie thought, as she sighed and despaired of explaining to these overgrown boys that, after all, Dante Dire had the power of messing with their minds. He might have made it seem that there was no one there. He might have jumped them from a dark corner. He might still be waiting to—She couldn’t say any of it, certainly not in the diner, although the three of them were occupying the corner
booth, under the picture of the dragon slayer, and there were no other occupied booths in this part of the diner.
Keith stopped by and dropped a plate entirely filled with gyro shavings and souvlaki in front of Tom, who looked up at him, surprised, “How did you know?”
Keith shrugged. “Meat-seeking behavior,” he said. “I’ve come to know it.” He looked from Rafiel to Tom. “What have you two been doing with yourselves?” he asked. And then paused, and bent over towards the table, his hands on the formica. “It isn’t about Summer Avenir, right? I mean … is there some big fight going on that you guys haven’t told me about?”
Kyrie sighed and shifted further into the booth. “Come. You can hear about it.”
But Keith shook his head, and looked around at the tables. “Nah. Conan went to take a nap, he said, and that would leave the tables unattended.”
Kyrie frowned. This sudden reluctance to run away with the shifter circus was not like Keith at all. A look at the young man showed her dark circles around his eyes and a general impression of being less than healthy. “Huh,” she said.
“It’s nothing, okay?” Keith said. He shrugged. “It’s just that, you know, you guys always said that being a shifter was no picnic, that there was stuff … but you know, for me, it was all about fighting and … well, it was like being a superhero.”
“Yeah, so you told us,” Tom said.
“Only, then … Summer turned out to be the granddaughter of the newspaper owner, and to have been after cryptozoology stuff, and she endangered you and got herself killed … and now I know it’s not …”—he looked at them, intently—“I assume it wasn’t one of you. I wouldn’t have come back if I thought it had been one of you.”
“No,” Kyrie said, shocked. “No. It’s … one of the people we’re fighting.”
“People!” Keith said. “Somehow, no, I don’t think it’s people.”
Kyrie felt shocked as if she’d been punched. “What about us?”
Keith sighed. “I want to say of course you’re people …” he said. “I want to say it … but …” He looked away. “It would help if Tom didn’t look like he could happily take a chunk out of a passing diner.”
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