Night Shifters (28 page)

CHAPTER
7

Lung nodded, then shrugged at Edward Ormson’s question. “I don’t pretend to know why
he
wants you here, though I’m sure he has his reasons. However, you don’t need to stress too much in search of your son. As I said, he is . . . We have him. And he will talk.”

A cold shiver ran up Edward’s back at those words. They had Tom? “What do you mean by having him? Do you . . . are you keeping him prisoner?”

Lung seemed puzzled by Edward’s question—or perhaps by the disapproval that Edward had tried to keep from his voice, but which was still obvious. “He stole from us,” he said. “Some of our men have captured him. They will find out where he put the Pearl of Heaven one way or another.”

One way or another. Edward found his hand trembling. And that was stupid. All these years, he’d gone through without knowing if Tom was dead or alive, or how he was doing. He hadn’t worried at all about him. Why should the thought that he was being held prisoner by a dragon triad disturb him so much? Why should he care?

Oh, he could hear in the way Lung said that Tom would tell them the truth eventually that they probably weren’t being pleasant with him. He doubted they were treating him very well. But in his mind, with no control from him, was the image of Tom on that last night. Barefoot, in a robe.

Edward had thought . . . well, truth be told, he couldn’t even be very sure what he’d thought. He’d seen the triad dragons in action often enough. He knew what they could do. He’d seen them kill humans . . . devour humans. He’d seen the ruthlessness of the beasts. Seeing his son become a dragon, himself, he’d thought . . .

He’d thought it was an infection and that Tom had caught it. He’d thought his worthless, juvenile delinquent of a son had now become a mindless beast, who would devour . . .

His throat closed, remembering what he’d thought then. He didn’t know if it was true or not. He assumed not, since Tom wasn’t a member of the triad and lacked their protection. If he’d been making his way across the country devouring people, he’d have been discovered by now. He would have been killed by now. So Edward was forced to admit that his son must have some form of self-control. Well. Clearly he had to have some form of self-control if he’d not given in to whatever persuasion they were using to make him talk.

He looked up at Lung, who was staring at him, obviously baffled by his reactions. “What are you doing to him?” he asked. In his mind, he saw Tom, that last night he’d seen him. He saw Tom who looked far more tired and confused than he normally was. He hadn’t even attempted to fight it. He’d opened his hands palm up to show he wasn’t armed—as if he could be, having just shifted from a dragon. He’d tried to talk, but he didn’t make any sense. Something about comic books.

These many years later, Edward frowned, trying to figure out what comic books had to do with the whole thing. Back then he’d found the whole nonsense talk even scarier, as though Tom had lost what little rationality he had with his transformation. And he’d got his gun from his home office desk and ordered Tom out of the house.

Tom had gone, too. And, somewhat to Edward’s surprise, he hadn’t made any effort to get back in.

“I thought you hadn’t seen him for years?” Lung asked. “That you didn’t care what happened to him?”

“I don’t. Or at least . . .” But Edward had to admit that this last recollection he had of Tom as a sixteen-year-old youth in a white robe, and looking quite lost was an illusion. A sentimental illusion. It was no more real, no more a representation of their relationship than the picture of Tom in the hospital, two days old, with a funny hat on and his legs curled toward each.

It was a pretty picture and one that, as a father, he should have cherished forever. But Tom had been very far from living up to the picture of the ideal son. And in the same way, at least five years had passed since Tom had been that boy of sixteen, and even if Edward had done him an injustice then—had Edward done him an injustice then?—the man he was now would have only the vaguest resemblance to that boy.

Back then, Tom hadn’t known anything but his relatively sheltered existence. And though he’d been popular and had the kind of friends who had got him in all kinds of trouble, his friends were like him, privileged. Well taken care of.

Suddenly Edward realized where his uneasiness was coming from about Tom and who Tom was, and what he had assumed about Tom for so many years. “It’s his girlfriend, Kyrie,” he said.

“Girlfriend?” Lung asked.

“Yes . . . or at least, I think she is. She said they were just coworkers, but there is something more there. She seems to care for him. She was furious at me for . . . I think she realized I was working for you, and she was furious at me.”

“The panther girl?” Lung asked.

“I’m sorry?” Edward asked confused.

Lung smiled. “The girl who was with him two nights ago. The one who shifts into a panther.”

“She . . .” Edward’s mind was filled with the image of the attractive girl shifting, shifting into something dark and feline. He could imagine it all too well. There had been that kind of easy, gliding grace in her steps.

“Oh, you didn’t know. Yes, she is a shifter. But I never knew she was his girlfriend.”

“I just thought . . .” Perhaps what had bound them was their ability to shift shapes? But what would a dragon want with a panther? The images in Edward’s mind were very disturbing and he found himself embarrassed and blushing. “There are other shifter shapes? Other than dragons?”

Lung smiled. “Come, Mr. Ormson, you’re not stupid. Your own legends talk about other shifters . . . werewolves, isn’t it? And were-tigers too? And the legends of other lands speak of many and different animals?”

Edward felt his mouth dry. “This has been going on all along? People shift, like that.” He made a vague gesture supposed to show the ease of the shifting. “And they . . .” He waved his hand.

“We don’t know for sure,” Lung said, seriously. “He who brought you here says there have always been shifters, and as you know he’s not the sort of . . . person, whose word one should doubt. He is also, not, unfortunately, someone one can question or badger for details. He says that there have always been shifters. But that shifters are increasing.”

“Increasing?”

“There are more of them.”

“How? Is it . . . a bite?” He’d thought that back then. He remembered being afraid that Tom would bite him. He remembered having gone through the entire house, trying to think whether he’d touched anything Tom had touched. Tom’s clothes, his toothbrush had all been consigned to the trash at his order.

The man laughed. “No, Mr. Ormson. It is . . . genetic,” he pronounced the word as if to display his knowledge of such modern concepts.

Edward felt shocked, not because the man knew the word—he spoke without an accent—but at the idea that such a thing could be genetic. “But there is no one in our family . . .”

Lung shrugged. “In our families, which intermarry with each other quite often, even then only one child in four, if that many, will have the characteristic. In other families, in the world at large, who knows? It could be not one in twenty generations.” He frowned. “I have often wondered if it is perhaps that people travel more now, and meet people from other lands, carrying the same rare gene. And if that’s the only reason there’s been an increase. Although . . .” He frowned. “I don’t know that this is entirely natural—or explainable by simple laws of science. We seem to heal quicker than normal people and unless we are killed in certain, particular ways—traditional ways like beheading, or burning, or destroying the heart, or with silver—we’re nearly impossible to kill. And we seem to live . . . longer than other people. I don’t know how long. Himself is the oldest among our kind. I’ve never enquired as to those of other kinds and other lands.”

Edward swallowed. That gun, that night, wouldn’t have killed Tom anyway. Good thing he hadn’t fired it. It would be horrible to have to live with Tom after firing on him.

But beyond that, something else was troubling him. The thought that Tom had received that curse from him—and presumably from his mother—and yet, he’d thrown him out. And now . . . “What will you do to Tom, if he tells you where the Pearl is?” he asked.

“He will no longer be . . . a problem,” Lung said.

Edward nodded feeling relief. So, they’d let Tom go. “Pardon me if I’m asking too much. You don’t need to tell me. I know something of the working of the triads in this country and I know the Dragon Triad is not that very much different, but I must ask . . . Why the Pearl? You’re the only ones who have it, right? It was shown to me, years ago, in my apartment, and I remember thinking it was very pretty. But I thought it was a symbol.”

Lung smiled, a smile that seemed to have too many teeth and to slide, unpleasantly, over his lips. “It is not a symbol,” he said. “Our legend has it that the Pearl was sent down with the Great—with him. The Emperor of Heaven, himself, is supposed to have given it to him.”

“Why?” Edward said, asking why the man believed his legend when he had dismissed all others.

But Lung clearly misunderstood him. He shrugged. “Because dragons are by nature bestial, competitive, and brutal. The beast in us overrides the man. We could never band together, much less work together without the Pearl of Heaven. We must find it soon,” he said. “Or we will destroy ourselves and each other.”

It wasn’t until Edward had left and stood outside the restaurant that it occurred to him that saying Tom would no longer be a problem was not a reassurance. On the contrary. Unless it were a reassurance that Tom would soon be dead.

Stopped, in the parking lot, he felt as if ice water were running through his veins. He took a deep, sudden breath and almost went back inside. Almost.

But then he thought it would only get him killed. How could he go up against almost immortal shapeshifters? How could he? He would only get killed. And for Tom?

He needed help. He needed help now.

Kyrie locked her front door as best she could, which in this case involved sliding the sofa in front of it, because the beetle had pulled the handle and the lock out of it.

If Kyrie survived all this mess, she would be so far in debt for house repairs that she would be arrested. Or die of trying to pay for it. Or something.

The back door was impossible to close, having splintered in a million pieces. She should have got a solid wood door, after all. And on that thought she got out the phone book, called her bank for her balance, which ran to the middle hundreds. Then she went back to the phone and started calling handymen, finding it somewhat difficult to reconcile her urgency in getting the doors fixed with the price any craftsman would accept for this.

She had just discovered an elderly handyman, who only worked two days a week, who could do both glazing and carpentry, and who thought her situation desperate enough to warrant immediate response when Rafiel came in through the ruined back door.

“Dragons?” he asked her, as she was hanging up the phone.

“No,” she said. “As it turned out, beetles. Huge, green and blue and iridescent. If you go to the Natural History Museum in Denver, you’ll find that the much tinier versions of the creatures are used as jewelry by some rain forest tribe or other.”

He grabbed blindly for one of the overturned chairs, pulled it upright, and collapsed on it, looking at her. She’d put the kitchen table and the other chair up, and that was where she’d been making her calls. “I’ve just got hold of a handyman, who will be coming by to fix my porch and my two doors. I gave him the dimensions and he says he has some surplus, older doors he removed from a house and I can have them for nothing. Which only means I’ll be broke, not in the red. At this rate I do not dare miss work for six months, but I will probably survive the experience.”

But Rafiel only looked at her, the golden eyes dull and uncomprehending. “Beetles?” he said.

She nodded. “Very much so.”

“So it wasn’t a hallucination in the back of the Athens?” he said.

“Did you find a corpse?” Kyrie asked.

He shook his head slowly. “No. But I found . . . I could smell blood. I didn’t want to shift to verify it, but I could smell blood. And death. Fresher than . . . two nights ago. So I’m sure you were telling the truth. Only till this moment I had hoped that you had seen it wrong and that it was actually dragons. Do you mean to tell me we have dragons
and
beetles?”