The panther scented the corpses right away. Fortunately, they were a little past ripe, even for its tastes. Kyrie was grateful for this.
Locked at the back of the huge feline mind, she could feel the huge paws tread carefully through the undergrowth, and she could feel the big feline head swaying, while it tasted the air. Death. Death nearby.
The death smelled enough like what the animal recognized as its own mortality to slow down its steps, and it only continued forward because Kyrie forced it to.
But it continued. Around the lushest part of the vegetation and toward a little clearing of sorts, in the midst of it all.
The vegetation that had once grown here had been torn out, unceremoniously, by the roots, rose bush and fern, weed and bulb, all of it had been pulled up and tossed, unceremoniously, in a huge pile beside the clearing.
What there was of the earth there had then been turned. Graves. Kyrie could smell them, or rather the panther could.
Kyrie was sure the smell would be imperceptible to her human nose, but her feline nose could smell it, welting up through the imperfectly compacted earth—the smell of decay, of death, of that thing that inevitably all living things became.
Only this death had the peculiar metallic scent that Kyrie had learned to recognize as the smell of shifters. The people laid to rest here had been shifters. Her kind. She looked at the ground with the feline eyes, and forced the feline paw to make a scratching motion on the loose earth.
It didn't take long. The hand wasn't much more than fifteen inches down.
The panther wanted to run away and to forget this, to pretend it had never existed.
But Kyrie forced it to walk, slowly, ponderously, to where Kyrie had left her clothes. Kyrie would shift. And then she would call the police.
But before she got to where her clothes lay, she found herself enveloped by a cloud of green dust. It shimmered in the morning air, raining down on her.
Pollen. It had to be pollen. Just pollen. She wished it to be pollen. But she could feel the panther's head go light, and indistinct forms take shape before her shifted eyes. Game, predators, small fluffy creatures and large ones, all teeth and claws, formed in front of the panther's eyes, coming directly from her brain.
Kyrie could feel the huge feline body leap and recoil, as if the things it were seeing were normal.
And then . . . And then she saw the beetle. It was coming through the vegetation, blue-green carapace shining under the morning light.
Not quite sure what she was doing, Kyrie forced the panther throat to make a sound it had never been designed for. She screamed.
The Chinese restaurant looked dismal grey in the morning light, as Edward got out of the cab in front of it.
As he was paying the fare, the cabby gave him an odd look. "They're closed, you know," he said. "They only open for lunch and that's not for seven hours."
"I know," Edward said, giving the man a generous tip and handing the credit card slip back. When you're not sure you're going to live, you can be very generous. "I'm meeting someone."
The cabby frowned. And older man, with Anglo-saxon features, he was one of those men whose expressions are slow and seemingly painful, as though their faces had been designed for absolute immobility. "Only," he said, "they've found corpses in this parking lot, all the time. I've read about it in the paper. Are you sure you want . . . ?"
Edward nodded. He wanted to explain he was doing it for his son, but that made it sound way too much like expected a medal for doing what any decent father would do. Brave death to keep his son safe. Only . . . he supposed he hadn't been a decent father. Or not long enough for it to be unremarkable.
"I'm sure," he said. "I'll call you for the trip back," he said. "Your name is on the receipt, right?"
"Right," the cabby said, but dubiously, as though he couldn't really believe there would be a trip back.
The truth was neither did Edward. As he walked away from the cab—already peeling rubber out of the parking lot—and toward the silent door of the Three Luck Dragon, with the closed sign on the window, he would have given anything to run away.
But instead he fumbled off the backpack as the door opened a crack and Lung's face appeared in the opening. "Ah, Mr. Ormson," he said. Then he stepped aside and opened the door further. "Come in."
"There is no need," Edward said. "I have what you want, here. Take it and I—"
But the door opened fully. And inside the room were a group of young men, all glaring at him. They all looked . . . dangerous. In the sort of danger that comes from having absolutely no preconceived notions about the sanctity of the human life.
"I said, come in," Lung said.
It wasn't the sort of invitation that Edward could refuse. For one, he was sure if he did those dark-haired young men glaring at him out of the shadows would chase him down and drag him back. The only question was whether they would shift into dragon form first.
Edward suspected they would.
Walking away from Goldport by the shortest route did not require going near Kyrie's house. However, walking away from Goldport and not heading out of town via the route to New Mexico did lead Tom down Fairfax Avenue, in the general direction of the castle and Kyrie's neighborhood. Though those were a few blocks north from his path.
Kyrie. The name kept turning up in Tom's mind with the same regularity that a sufferer's tongue will seek out a hole in a decaying tooth. It hurt, but it was the sort of hurt that reassured him he was still alive.
Kyrie. The problem was that he'd actually had hope. He'd seen her look at him. She'd patted his behind. She'd smiled at him. He'd had hope, however foolish that hope might have been. If he'd never hoped for anything, he wouldn't have been so shocked and wounded at seeing her with Rafiel.
And, yes, he was aware that the fact he couldn't bear to see them together was a character failing of his, not of theirs. He was also aware she hadn't betrayed him. Looks and even pats on the bottom are not promises. They certainly are not a relationship. They are just . . . Lust.
Perhaps, he thought, as he walked in front of closed-up store doors and dismal-looking storefronts in the grey morning daylight, perhaps she lusts after me—though who knows why—but when it comes to love, when it comes to a relationship, she's a smart girl. If she were interested in me, it would only be proof of either stupidity or insanity.
But . . . but if it wasn't her fault, why was he punishing her?
He scowled at his own thought. He wasn't punishing her. If anything, he was keeping himself from being punished daily by the sight of her with Rafiel.
It hurt. No, it wasn't rational, but it hurt. Badly. And Tom didn't do well with hurt. He wasn't punishing Kyrie. He'd go out of town, through Colorado Springs. Probably buy a bus ticket there. Maybe go to Kansas for a while. It had been a long time since he'd been in Kansas.
But, the relentless accusing voice went on in his mind, if he wasn't trying to punish her, why was he leaving Kyrie to face the beetles alone? Why was he leaving her when she couldn't even sleep in her house?
Because it wasn't his problem. Because she wasn't his to worry about. She could always bunk up with Rafiel, couldn't she? And she was sure he'd keep her safe. She wasn't Tom's to keep safe.
If she had been, he would have given up his life for her, happily enough.
But what kind of love was that? He minded seeing her with Rafiel? He minded her being happy? But he didn't mind leaving town while she was in danger?
No wonder she'd picked Rafiel. Tom's love was starting to sound a lot like hate.
As the last few thoughts ran through his mind, Tom's steps had slowed down, and now he stopped completely in front of the closed door of a little quilting shop, just one crossroad past where he would have turned up to go to Kyrie's place.
Maybe he should go and check on her. See if she was home. See if she was well . . . Then, if she told him she was fine and that Rafiel would take care of her, he could leave town with a clear conscience and never worry.
He turned around, in front of the shop—the window screaming at him in pretty red cursive that summer was the ideal time to quilt—and headed back toward the crossroad. He'd just turned upward on it, when he saw, ahead of him, just scurrying out of sight on a bend of the road, a giant beetle, its blue carapace shining in the sun.
Kyrie, Tom thought. He knew there were other places they could be headed. But right then he thought of Kyrie. He thought only of Kyrie.
And then the scream came. It was all Kyrie and yet not human—a warbling mix of terror coming from a feline throat designed only for roaring and hissing.
Without even noticing what he was doing, he broke into a run. He made the turn ahead in the street in time to see the beetle creep into the greenery-choked garden of the castle.
And the scream came again.
Kyrie was hallucinating. Or rather, the panther was. In front of the feline eyes arose a hundred little animals that needed hunting, or rearing predators.
And yet, at the back of the panther's mind, Kyrie managed to remain lucid, or almost lucid. There was a beetle. She must not loose track of that. A beetle with shimmering blue-green carapace. And it was trying to kill Kyrie. And lay eggs in her corpse.
This certainty firmly in mind, Kyrie aimed at anything green-blue that she caught amid the snatches of illusion clogging the panther's vision. The panther's claws danced over the extended limbs with what looked like a poison injector at the end but might merely have been a lethal claw of some sort. She careened over the bug's back, and scrambled halfway away before the beetle caught up.
They were right over the graves, and the funky smell of them disturbed the panther, even through the hallucinations.
And at the back of the panther's mind, Kyrie knew soon she would be dead and buried in this shallow grave.
Tom had run full tilt into the garden of the castle, before he realized what he was doing. He was only lucky the beetles were too busy to realize he was running after them.
Of course, what they were too busy with was Kyrie. And once they noticed Tom they would start pumping the green stuff, and make Tom high as a kite and his fighting totally ineffective.
Twenty yards from them, seeing the huge black feline leap and dance ahead, in mad attack, Tom stopped. He pulled his jacket off, and tossed it in the direction of a tree, making a note where it was. He would come back for it. Then he peeled off the white T-shirt and, wrapping it around his head, tied it in a knot at the back. Its double thickness of fabric made it hard to breathe, and he could wish for better clothes to fight in than the pants that were slowly castrating him.
But he didn't get his choice. And it didn't matter. He must fight for Kyrie.
He grabbed a tree branch and plunged forward into the battle swinging it at any beetle limbs within his reach.
Clouds of green stuff emanated, turning the air green and shimmering.
Tom realized the smaller beetle—the one he'd followed?—was immobile and rubbing its wings to emit cloud after cloud of green powder. Meanwhile the one fighting Kyrie—and so far not losing, though also not managing to get any hits in—was not emitting green powder.
Interesting. So, they could only make people hallucinate when they weren't actively fighting, was that it?
Well, he thought, jumping back and landing atop the beetle, with a huge tree branch in hand. Well. He was about to take the fight to the enemy.
And now Kyrie was sure that she, personally, was hallucinating. On top of the panther-conjured images of scared little furry things, there was . . . Tom. Oh, not just Tom, but Tom in gloriously tight jeans, with his shirt removed, and his muscular chest bare in the morning sunlight.
Of course, the shirt he'd taken off was tied around his face, which seemed a really odd hallucination for her to have. And she would think she would dream of his grabbing her and kissing her, rather than of his hitting some very hard blows on the beetle with a huge tree trunk—far too big to be a branch—he'd got from nowhere.
And yet, she thought as she tried to concentrate on hitting any green-blue bits of bug that she could see through the panther's addled eyes. And yet the sight of him fighting the bug was far more distracting than the sight of the small furry things could be for the panther.
She bit and snarled and clawed at bits of bug, but in her mind she was admiring the way Tom leapt, the way he could turn on a dime, the force he put into the swing of that tree branch in his hand. From his movements, he too must have taken gymnastics or dance, or something.
Absorbed between her fight and disturbing glimpses of half-naked Tom, she could barely think. She heard the squeal of brakes toward the back entrance of the garden, but she paid it no attention.
Which is why she was so shocked to see Rafiel running toward them, gun drawn, blond hair flying in the wind and his expression quite the most distraught Kyrie had ever seen. He was screaming something as he ran, and it seemed to Kyrie—through the panther's distorted senses—that one of the words was "die." The other words, though, were "gravy" and "pick." She wasn't sure what gravy had to do with it.
Rafiel let out shots as he ran, aimed at the beetles, and from the high-pitched whining of the one that Tom was beating, Kyrie would guess at least one of the bullets had found beetle flesh. Whether that meant it had also found any lethal points was something else again.
Behind Rafiel, Keith came, running up, with what looked like a hoe in his hand. Where had he found the hoe?
Tom heard a bullet whistle by and looked up to see Rafiel running into the garden firing wildly. Still beating on the beetle—smacking it repeatedly on the head seemed to make it too confused to either fight, flee, or put out green powder—Tom wondered if he was the intended victim of the beetle.
But the next bullet lodged itself solidly in the beetle's—Frank's?—flesh, and the creature emitted a high-pitch whine. And then it went berserk, limbs failing up toward Tom, trying to dislodge him, trying to stab at him.
Tom hit at the limbs, wildly. Keith was running up, behind Rafiel, and as Rafiel leapt toward Kyrie's beetle and shifted shapes mid-leap, his clothes falling in shreds away from the lion body, Keith grabbed the falling gun and aimed it at Tom's beetle.
Kyrie was grateful when Rafiel, now in lion form, joined the fight, but—though the panther was having trouble seeing clearly—she could see enough to see Keith grab the gun and point it in the general direction of Tom.
She didn't think that Keith would hurt Tom. Or not on purpose. But from the way Keith was holding the gun, she could tell there was no way in hell he could hit the broadside of a barn.
Unfortunately, he wasn't aiming at the broadside of a barn. He was aiming at a general area where Tom was a prominent feature. Without thinking she leapt, hitting the still-human Tom with her weight and bringing him rolling off the bug and onto the ground, with Kyrie just by his side.
Just in time, as the bullet whistled through the space where he'd been.
Kyrie was attacking him, Tom thought, as he hit hard on the ground, just barely managing to tuck in his head enough that he wouldn't end up unconscious. Why was she?
And then he realized that Keith had a gun and clearly had no idea what to do with it, as several erratically fired bullets flew over the beetle's carapace. Just where Tom would have been.
Still stunned by his fall on the ground, Tom put out an hesitant hand toward the huge mound of fur beside him. "Kyrie?" he said.
A tongue came out and touched his hand. Just touched, which was good, because it felt just like a cat tongue, all sharp bits and hooks.
A nonfeline hissing sound, a scraping, and Tom saw the beetle was turning around and was aiming sharp claw-like things at Kyrie.
Before he could think, he knew he was going to shift. He had just the time to kick off his leather boots as his body twisted and bent. And he was standing, as a dragon, facing the bug. He did what a dragon does. He flamed.
First, Kyrie thought, flames weren't particularly effective in these circumstances. Tom's flame seemed to glance over the beetle's carapace, without harming it. And second, if Tom continued flaming, he would hit a tree and roast them all alive.
But before Kyrie could change shape and yell this at Tom, who was clearly addled by adrenaline and change, Keith came flying out from behind them, hoe in hand. He had dropped his gun. Which was good. But Kyrie wasn't sure that a hoe was the most effective of weapons.
Only she couldn't do anything, except shift, in a hurry and scream, "Don't flame, Tom," as Keith landed on top of the beetle and started digging into the joint between the neck and the back carapace. Digging, as if he were digging into soil, making big chunks of beetle fly all over.
The beetle went berserk.
Sometimes the only way to stop a flame that is doing its best to erupt from a dragon's throat is for the dragon to force himself to become human. This Tom did, forcing his mind to twist his body into human shape. Just in time to avoid burning Keith to a crisp atop the beetle. Which was good, because Keith seemed to have hit on something that worked. He was digging up large chunks of beetle flesh, throwing them all around in a shower of beetle and ichor.
And the beetle was stabbing at him, fortunately pretty erratically. The beetle's arms weren't meant to bend that way. Not upward and toward something on its back. Only, even an erratic blow was bound to hit, eventually. Unless . . .
Tom grabbed the tree branch he'd let drop, and started beating at beetle limbs. From the other side, Kyrie was doing the same.
Kyrie was back to her human form, and Tom couldn't look at her with more than the corner of his eye. Not if he wanted to continue fighting in any rational manner at all.
But, damn, that woman could swing the tree branch with the best of them.
As the beetle stopped moving, and its high-pitched scream grew, Tom became aware of another sound behind him. A feline protest of pain. He turned, in time to see the beetle get a claw into Rafiel between shoulder and front leg.
For a moment, for just a moment, Tom thought, Good. He deserves it.
But an immense feeling of shame swept over him. Why did Rafiel deserve to die? Because he'd bested Tom in winning the affections of a woman?
Hell, by that criteria there would hardly be any males left alive in the world.
Shame made Tom jump forward, toward Rafiel, tree branch in hand, beating at the beetle. Just in time, as Rafiel was crawling away, bleeding.
And now Keith scrambled up on the back of this beetle. He looked like nothing on Earth and certainly no longer like the hard-partying college student. His clothes were a mess, he seemed to have bathed in greenish-brown ichor, and he'd lost his cap somewhere.
But he had an insane grin on his face, as he started digging up chunks of this beetle. And Tom concentrated on keeping the beetle from stabbing his friend, by beating the beetle's limbs away. Kyrie joined in on the other side.
Soon the beetle had stopped moving.
But from behind them there was still a high-pitched sound, like the beetle's scream.
Tom turned around, expecting to face yet another beetle. Instead, he saw Rafiel desperately clutching his shoulder and struggling to get up while pale, white, giant worms swarmed over him.
Tom didn't understand where the worms came from, but they had big, sharp teeth and were biting at Rafiel.
Tom ran toward Rafiel and started grabbing at the worms trying to eat Rafiel, while Kyrie ran up to smash the ones that were merely around Rafiel.
A second later, Keith and his hoe joined in.
Grubs, Kyrie thought. The more advanced grubs on the corpses beneath the thin layer of soil had come alive at the smell of Rafiel's blood, and were swarming him.
She saw Tom jump ahead and start to pull the grubs off Rafiel. As mad as she was at Rafiel, she didn't want him eaten alive by would-be insects. And besides, Rafiel had got in this trouble by trying to help her in the first place.
She jumped into the fray, gleefully smashing at the grubs with her heavy branch.
And Tom had got the last grub off Rafiel—who seemed more stunned than hurt, and was swinging the huge piece of tree he carried, likewise beating down the bugs. Keith joined in with his hoe.
There were a lot of grubs, more and more—pale and white and writhing—pushing up out of the soil, as soon as they smashed a dozen or a hundred.
So absorbed in what she was doing, her arms hurting, while she kicked away to keep the grubs from climbing her legs, Kyrie didn't keep track of Rafiel.
Until she smelled gasoline and realized that Rafiel had got a huge container of gasoline from somewhere and was liberally dousing the clearing and the surrounding vegetation.
Tom had just realized what the worms were. They were grubs. Babies. It seemed odd to be killing babies who were acting only on instinct.
But . . . were the babies human? He couldn't tell. They looked like white grubs, featureless, except for large mouths with sharp teeth. With which they'd probably been feeding on decaying human flesh.
Would they ever be human? How could Tom know? Except that, of course, their parents had been human. At least part of the time.
He swung the tree branch and smashed little beetle grubs while wondering if with time they would learn to be human babies and human toddlers. But . . . would they? And even if they did, when adolescence came, when most people started shifting, would they be able to control their urges to shift? And their urges to kill people so they could lay eggs in the corpses?
He just decided that he'd hit all of them who attacked him, but he would not, could not, kill any that might still be asleep beneath the soil. They should take those, and see if they became human babies as they developed. If they did, chances were they wouldn't shift again till their teen years. And meanwhile, they could see that they got a good education, and didn't believe they could kill people for their sexual gratification.
If shifters would look after punishing their own criminals, then they had to look after educating their own young, didn't they?
He'd just thought this when he smelled gasoline, and, looking up, saw Rafiel spreading gasoline over the entire area and the surrounding vegetation.
Tom had to stop him. He had to. He was going to kill all the babies. And themselves with them, probably.
As tired as he was, he didn't realize he'd shifted and flamed until he saw fire spark on the gasoline-doused tree on the other side of the clearing.
Oh, shit.