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Excerpt from

Gentleman Takes A Chance

by

Sarah A. Hoyt

From near and far the creatures gather...
The lion leapt across the entrance...
The sound of the roar-hiss from the bathroom...
Tom was mortally embarrassed.
What Kyrie wanted to know was why he’d shifted.
For an intense panic-filled moment...
Don’t shift! Don’t shift! Don’t shift!
“Go inside,” Tom said, as he glimpsed the wing...
Kyrie knew this was crazy...
“Tom,” Anthony’s voice said from behind Tom...

Z

    From near and far the creatures gather – winged and hoofed, clawed and fanged, armed with quick rending maws. Great hulking beasts appear that the world has not seen in aeons; reptiles that crawled in great primeval swamps long before human foot trod the Earth; saber tooth tigers and winged pterodactyls. And others: bears and apes; foxes and antelopes, all converge on a small hotel on the outskirts of Denver, as a snow storm gathers over the Rocky Mountains.
    Outside the hotel, some change shapes – a quick twist, a wrench of bone and flesh, and where the animals once were, there now stands a man or a woman. Others fly into the room, through the open balcony door, before changing their shapes.
    In there – in human form – they crowd together, restive, massing. Old and young, hirsute and elegant, they gather.
    Outside the day darkens as a roiling darkness of clouds obscure the sun. Inside the men and women who were – such a short time ago – beasts wait, restive.
    Then of a sudden he is there, though no one saw him shift shapes no one saw him arrive.
    He is not huge. At least not in his human form. A well formed man, of Mediterranean looks – with close cropped dark, curly hair, sensuous lips and a body that would not have looked out of place in a Roman temple. He appears to be in his middle years and wears his nakedness with the confidence of someone who feels protected in or out of clothes.
    But it is his eyes that hold the assembly in check – dark eyes, intense and intent – that seem to look at each of them in turn as if knowing not only any of their possible mistakes and crimes, but also their nameless, most intimate thoughts.
    “Here,” he says. “It is here. It is nearby.”
    “Here,” another voice says.
    “Nearby.”
    “So many dead. Shapeshifters. Dead.”
    “We can’t let this stand,” someone says.
    “It won’t stand,” the leader of the group says. “We’ll find those who killed the young ones of our kind. And we will kill them. The blood of our children calls to me for revenge. I’ve executed the murderers of our kin before and I will do so again.”
    “The deaths happened in Goldport Colorado,” a voice says from the crowd and a finger points. “That way.”
    “I will be there tomorrow,” the leader of the meeting says. A tenseness about him indicates certainty and something else – an eagerness to kill again.
    Kyrie looked up at the ceiling as a sort of scraping knock came from the roof of the tiny working-man Victorian that she shared with her boyfriend, Tom Ormson. The sound reminded her of ships at high sea -- of the shifting and knocking of wood under stress. How much snow was up there by now? And how much could the roof withstand?
    From the radio – high up on the shelf over the card table and two folding chairs that served as dining nook -- came a high pitched whistle, followed by a voice, “We interrupt this program to issue a severe winter storm alert. All public city facilities are closed and everyone who is not emergency and essential personnel is requested to stay indoors. Goldport police department is on cold reporting. Should your home become unsafe or should you believe that it will become unsafe, these are the public shelters available.”
    There followed a long list of public buildings and churches. Kyrie thought briefly that with the weather the police couldn’t be on anything but cold reporting, though she knew very well they meant that any accidents should be reported later. Cold seemed such an appropriate adjective to what was happening outside.
    She looked up at the kitchen ceiling and out her narrow window, high on the wall near the back door and bit her lip. The little Victorian cottage had been here for over a hundred years and presumably had survived other snow storms. But outside, the scant light, the swirling darkness looked more like stormy midnight than the middle of the afternoon.
    It was her first blizzard in Goldport, Colorado. She’d lived here for just over a year, but the last winter had been mild, sparing her one of the legendary Rocky Mountain blizzards. Which she wouldn’t have minded so much, except for the stories of those blizzards growing ever larger in the tall tales of all her neighbors, acquaintances, and the regular diners at The George.
    For the last week -- while the weathermen screamed incoming -- the clientele at The George had been evenly divided between those who’d say not a flake would fall and those who insisted they would all be buried in snow and ice and future generations would find them like so many Siberian mammoths buried in permafrost, the remains of their last souvlaki meal still in their stomachs.
    Kyrie suppressed a shudder, gave a forceful stir to the bowl of cookie dough she held against her jean-clad hip, and told herself she was being very silly. It wasn’t like her to have this sort of fanciful, almost superstitious fear. She’d like to think she had imagination enough, but she’d never had time to let it run riot.
    She had been abandoned as a newborn at the door of a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Christmas eve, and had grown up in a succession of foster homes and had to fend for herself more often than not. She’d grown up slim and graceful, with the muscular body of a runner.
    At twenty one, she’d been on her own for four years. She rarely stayed at a job for very long. What she had thought for many years were dreams of turning into a panther – and now knew was true shape shifting – usually scared her away from any given situation and kept her moving before anyone became to close. She’d been afraid they’d make her undergo psychiatric treatment.
    For years she told herself she didn’t miss people, or relationships, or those other things that seemed to be a given right of al other humans. She kept her own house and her own mind. And, until three months ago, when Tom had become her boyfriend and started subletting the enclosed porch at the back of the house, she’d been lonely. Very lonely.
    This house and Tom were the closest thing she’d ever had to a family. Probably the closest thing he’d ever had to a family, too. Oh, he’d grown up in a wealthy family, she knew. He’d been raised in New York City by professional, well to do parents. But that hadn’t made them a family. It wasn’t just that Tom’s parents had divorced when he was very young. People might divorce and yet raise their children well and as a family. It was more that his mother had never cared again if Tom lived or died. And his father had left Tom to be raised by hired help, and only took notice of him when Tom got in some scrape and had to be bailed out – which he did regularly. And then, when Tom was sixteen, his father had walked in on him changing from a dragon to a human, and – horrified or scared – had forced Tom out onto the streets of New York City in nothing but a robe.
    After that Tom, too, had drifted aimlessly, living as he could, without anyone to rely on, without anywhere to call home. And now...
    And now they lived together. And they were dating, presumably with a view to marriage, not that it had ever been mentioned, though since Tom’s father had insisted on buying the diner for them jointly, they were already part of a partnership.
    And a touch of Tom’s calloused hand could still set her heart aflutter, just like a sudden tender look from him, across the diner, on a busy day, could make her feel as though she were melting from the inside out.
    Still all their kisses and their caresses had an end. Tom always pulled back, before things went too far. Everyone in the diner, everyone who knew them, assumed that, dating and living together, they were sleeping together as well. And Kyrie didn’t know what to think. Tom said that he wanted to take it slow, to give them both time to establish a normal relationship before they became more intimate. And yet...
    And yet sometimes, when he pulled back, she caught a hint of something in his eyes – distance and fear. Was he afraid he’d shift during lovemaking? It wasn’t that unusual to shift under strong emotions, so that might be all it was. Or perhaps he’d realized he’d made a mistake and she was not whom he wanted?
    A wave of protectiveness and of almost shocking possessiveness arose in her at this thought – the need to protect this, the one haven she’d found. Something – someone – must belong to her. And Tom was hers.
    Setting the bowl down, she pulled back her waist-long hair, leaving a long white streak of flour to mar her carefully dyed-in Earth tone pattern that gave the impression of a tapestry whose lines shifted whenever she moved. She frowned at the little door to the side of the door that led outside. The door to the back porch where Tom was still asleep.
    Would Tom be upset that she had turned off his alarm clock? They both worked the night shift at The George and he always set his alarm for two pm. But she had turned it off because she thought there was no point going into the diner today and Tom might as well rest. The chances of their having enough customers come in to justify the money used in lighting and heating The George was very low. And even though it was only a few blocks away, Kyrie didn’t want to drive in the storm howling outside. And she certainly didn’t want to walk in it.
    Whether Tom agreed with her, was something else again. She looked down at the bowl of dough. A succession of never-ending foster homes had taught her that the easiest way of managing men was by setting something sweet down in front them. It tended to distract them long enough that they didn’t remember to be angry.
    Still, as she knelt down to rummage under the cabinet for her two baking sheets, she tensed at a sort of half gasped cry from Tom’s sleeping porch. Rising, she held the trays as some sort of atavistic shield, and looked at the door into the enclosed back porch. Tom didn’t normally cry out in his sleep. The house was barely large enough to swing a cat. If he sleep-screamed, she’d know by now.
    He didn’t yell again, but there was a sound like a deep sigh, and then the slap of his feet – swung over the side of the daybed – hitting the wooden floor of the sleeping porch at the same time. The sound was followed by others she knew well, from normal days. A confused mutter that, had she been close enough, would reveal itself as “What time is it?” followed by a cartoon-like sound of surprise, which was followed, in short order, by the sound of the back blind being pulled aside to allow him to look outside, and then by words she couldn’t hear well enough to understand but which were definitely swearing.
    Then Tom’s bare feet padded towards the door between sleeping porch and kitchen. Kyrie, who in her short time of sharing the house with a male, had learned that if you appeared to be totally in command and quite sure you’d done the right thing men – or at least Tom – were likely to go along with it, set the tray down and started studiously setting little balls of cookie dough down on it, two inches apart.
    Tom cleared his throat, and she looked up, to see him in the doorway. Her first thought – as always -- was that, despite being all of five six, he looked amazing – pale skin, the color of antique ivory. Glossy, curly black hair just long enough to brush his shoulders – contrasted with intensely blue eyes like the sky on a perfect summer day and generously drawn lips that just begged to be kissed. Her second thought was that his sense of fashion had not improved through living with her. The most sculpted chest in creation deserved better than to be encased in a baggy green t-shirt that read Meddle you not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and good with ketchup. Even if she’d bought him the t-shirt. And the best ass in the tri-state area should not be hidden by flannel checker-pattern pajama pants in such virulent green and yellow it could give seizures to used car salesmen.
    “I take it The George is closed?” Tom said, and raised his hand to rub at his forehead between his eyebrows.
    He was squinting as if he had a headache and there were heavy dark circles under his eyes. Granted, skin as pale as Tom’s bruised if you sneezed on it, but he didn’t normally look like death warmed over. She wondered why. “It’ s either closed now or very soon. I called Anthony and he said it was pretty slow. He wanted to shut down the stoves and all, close and go home. So I told him fine. I know we could probably walk to The George but–”
    “I looked out,” he said. “We might very well not find The George in this. Blinding blizzard.” He blinked as if realizing for the first time what she was doing. “Cookies?”
    “Well... the radio is saying that there will be emergency shelters and I could only figure two reasons for it. Either the snow is going to be so heavy that the roof will collapse, or they’re afraid we’ll lose power. So I thought I’d preemptively bake cookies. Make the house warm.”
    He came closer, to stand on the other side of the little table. Though he was still squinting, as if the light hurt his eyes, his lips trembled on the edge of a smile. “And we get to eat the cookies too. Bonus.”
    “Make no assumptions, Mr. Ormson,” she waggled an admonitory finger. “This is the first time I’ve baked cookies. They might very well taste like builder’s cement.”
    His hand darted forward to the bowl and stole a lump of dough. Popping it in his mouth, he chewed thoughtfully. “Not builder’s cement. Raisin AND chocolate chip?”
    She shook her head and answered straight faced, “Rat droppings. The flour was so old, you see.”
    He nodded, equally serious. “Right. Well, I’ll take a shower, and then we can see how rat droppings bake.”
    Down the hallway that led to the bathroom, she heard him open the door to the linen closet. Using a clean towel every day was one of those things she didn’t seem able to break him of. But part of living together, she was learning, was picking your battles. This was one not worth fighting.
    She heard him open the door to the bathroom as she put the cookie trays in the oven. She was setting the timer when she heard the shower start.
    And then...
    And then the sounds that came out of the bathroom became distinctly unfamiliar. They sounded like metal bending under high pressure, like tile and stone cracking, wrenching subjected to forces they weren’t designed for.
    Her first thought was that the roof had caved in over the bathroom. But the sounds weren’t quite right. There was this... scraping and shifting that seemed to be shoving against the walls. The cabinet over the fridge trembled, and the dishware inside it tinkled merrily.
    Kyrie ran to the hallway and to the door of the bathroom.
    “Tom?” she said and tried the handle. The handle rotated freely – well, not freely but loosely enough that the door clearly was not locked. And yet it wouldn’t budge. “Tom, are you in there?”
    A growl and a hiss answered her.

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Z

    The lion leapt across the entrance of the Goldport Undersea Adventure. He bounded across the next room, amid two rows of aquariums. The private company that had bought out the municipal aquarium had outfitted this room to look like a submarine’s control room, with gages and the sort of wheels that turn to activate pressure locks, and buttons and things. When the aquarium was open and functioning, the screens above the “controls” showed movies of underwater scenes in various bodies of water around the world.
    Now they were dead and silent, and the aquarium closed due to inclement weather. The whole building was empty except for a woman in the back office and the lion, who sniffed his way down the pretend mountain path that wound among tanks stocked with fish from the world over.
    As he padded past the tank with piranhas, the lion growled softly, startling the exhibit of sea birds on an elevated area and causing them to fly up till they met with the net that kept them within their space.
    The lion didn’t care. He had picked up the scent he had been looking for. A sweetish, almost metallic scent. The smell of shape shifters. He put nose to the ground and followed it, growling softly to himself, past the little suspension bridge with the artificial river underneath -- momentarily disoriented where water had sprayed and diluted the scent. But the scent picked up on the other side of the bridge.
    The lion couldn’t think why the scent was important. There was a part of his mind – as if it were someone else, another mind, locked deep inside his brain – telling him the scent was important because it related to death and killing.
    The lion didn’t know why death or killing would be important, and he couldn’t smell death in the air anyway. There was no decay, no blood. Just a smell of fish and water and chemicals, and the smell of people, many people, some of which had probably passed by days ago but left behind the olfactory trail of their passage.
    Then there was the clear bright scent of a shape shifter. Not that the lion knew what a shape-shifter was, or not really. Just that this was the scent he was seeking, the scent he must follow, deep into the broad chamber decorated with a cement chest and a hoard of plaster coins painted unconvincing gold.
    The chamber was vast, with a tall ceiling lost in darkness. The lion crouched close to the ground, and followed two trails of smell – or rather, one trail that wound itself around, in front of two vast tanks. Inside the tanks swam creatures the lion’s inner mind told him were sharks. Large, with sharp, serrated teeth, they swam towards him, while he sniffed at the glass.
    The lion paid them no more attention than he did the yellow tape that blocked one of the tanks and the service stairs, discretely hidden behind some fronds, leading back to the top of the tank. There was no smell there at all, and the lion didn’t look at it. Instead, he turned to follow the interesting scent out of the chamber, towards the front of the aquarium.
    And stopped when he heard a voice, coming from the opposite direction of where he had come. “Officer Trall?”
    The words made the lion turn, giving something like a half-grunt under his breath, as he lopped very fast back the way he had come. Very, very fast, his paws devouring the distance he had traversed so cautiously.
    Steps followed him. Human steps. Steps in high heels – the inner voice told the lion. A woman.
    The lion gave a soft, distracted roar as – the inner voice driving him hard to hide, to change, to do something – he leapt into a corner of the entrance chamber, around the side of the ticket booth, and into the narrow hallway that led to the bathrooms. He hit the door of the men’s bathroom at a lope, and rolled into the room.
    As he rolled he... changed, his body twisting and writhing even as he tumbled, till a tall, muscular blond man landed, from a somersault, in the middle of the bathroom, by one of the closed stalls.
    From outside the door, the voice called, “Officer Trall?”
    “In here,” the man who had been a lion answered, his voice shaking slightly. “Just a moment.”
    And it was just a moment, as he reached for his clothes – khaki pants and a loose-cut shirt that, with his mane of long, blond hair made him look like a surfer about to hit the waves – and slipped into them and his shoes with the practice of someone who changed clothes several times a day.
    In fact, Officer Rafiel Trall of the Serious Crimes Unit of the Goldport police department, had clothes hidden all over town and in some of the neighboring towns as well. One thing shifting shape into a lion did -- it ruined your wardrobe. Though he controlled himself – well enough during the day, with more difficulty at night – he still destroyed clothes so often that he’d developed a reputation as a lady’s man throughout the department.
    Every time he came back wearing yet another set of clothes, all his subordinates, from his secretary to the newest recruit, elbowed each other and giggled. Rafiel only wished his sex life were half as exciting as they thought it was. Not that he could complain, or not really. He dated his fair share of women. He just couldn’t allow any of them to get close enough that they might get wind of his... changes. So he had a lot of first and second dates and rarely a third.
    He looked at himself in the mirror, frowning, as he combed his fingers through his hair. Receptionists, women officers, even the medical examiners and legal experts who had sporadic contact with the department, all warned each other about him in whispers. He’d heard the words “Fear of commitment” so often he felt like it they were tattooed on his forehead. And it wasn’t true. He’d commit in a minute. To any woman he knew would accept him and not give him away. To a woman like him.
    The thought of Kyrie came and went in his mind. No point thinking about it. That wasn’t going to happen.
    Instead, he opened the door -- his relaxed smile in place as he met the aquarium employee who waited outside the bathroom door, a slightly worried look in her eyes. She was small and golden skinned, with straight black hair and the kind of curves that fit all in the right places. Her name was Lei Lani – which made him think of her as one of the bond girls – and she was a marine biologist on some sort of inter-program loan from an aquarium in Hawaii.
    Looking at her smile, it was easy to imagine her welcoming tourists in nothing but a grass skirt. Of course, thinking about that was as bad as thinking too much about her first name. Neither encouraged his sanity.
    “I’m sorry,” Rafiel said. “One of those sudden stomach things.”
    “Ah. I was just checking, because I really should lock up and go home. I mean, everyone else has, and I only stayed because I live so close here.”
    “Yeah. How bad is it out?”
    “Blinding. As I said, if I didn’t live within walking distance, I’d have left long ago. I mean, I’m not even sure you should drive in this. Perhaps you should stay at my place till the weather improves.”
    Was that a seductive spark in her eye? Did Rafiel read it correctly. It wasn’t that he wasn’t tempted, but right now he had other things on his mind.
    He shouldn’t have been so reckless as to shift shapes while there was someone else in the building, but the hint of shifter scent he’d been able to pick up even with his human nose had forced him to check it out. After all, a shape shifter at a crime scene could mean many things. The last time he’d picked it up, it had, in fact, meant that the shifters were the victims. But there was always the chance it meant the shifter he smelled was the killer. And a murder committed by shape shifters might very well make the world aware of their existence. Which meant – if Rafiel knew how such things worked – that at best they’d all be studied within an inch of their lives. At worst... Well... Rafiel was a policeman from a long line of policemen. He understood people would be scared of shifters. Not that he blamed them. There were some shifters that he was scared of, himself. But the thing was, when people were terrified, they only ran away half the time. The other half... they attacked and killed the source of their fear.
    “I will be okay,” he said. He was still trying to process the input of the lion’s nose. There had been a clear shifter scent trail throughout. It had circled the shark area. “I have a four wheel drive, and I’ve lived here all my life. This is not the first blizzard I’ve driven in.”
    The shark area where, yesterday, a human arm had been found – still clutching a cell phone – inside a shark. Leading to the aquarium being shut down – though the weather provided a good excuse for that – and to all the yellow crime-scene tape around the place. The man had been identified as a business traveler from California, staying in town for less than a week.
    The question was – had he fallen in the aquarium or been pushed? And if he’d been pushed, was it a shifter who’d done the pushing?

Top

Z

    The sound of the roar-hiss from the bathroom made Kyrie stop cold. Tom didn’t – normally – roar or hiss. But the dragon that Tom shape-shifted into did.
    She frowned at the door, trying to figure out how Tom could have become a dragon in the bathroom. And why. While Tom was a short human, as a dragon he was... well, he had to be at least... She tried to visualize Tom in his dragon form and groaned.
    With wings extended, Tom had to be at least twenty feet from wing tip to wing tip and she was probably underestimating it. And he was at least twelve feet long and his main body was more than five feet wide, with big, powerful paws and a long, fleshy tail.
    Now, your average bathroom might – for all she knew – be able to contain a dragon. But the bathroom in this house was not what anyone could call a normal bathroom. In fact in most other houses it would be a closet and not walk-in. It was maybe all of five feet by four feet – the kind of bathroom where you had to close the door before you could stand in front of the sink and brush your teeth. There was no way, no way at all, a dragon could fit in there.
    “Tom,” she yelled again, pounding on the door. “Tom! Please tell me you didn’t turn into a dragon in the bathroom.”
    The sound that answered her was not Tom’s voice – in fact, it resembled nothing so much as a distressed foghorn – but it carried with it a definite tone of apology and confusion.
    “Right,” Kyrie said, as she tried to push the door open. The problem, of course, was that the door opened inward. That meant to open it she must swing the door into the bathroom which was, in fact, already filled to capacity with dragon. The resistance she felt was some part of Tom’s flesh refusing to give way.
    She stopped pushing. She had no idea what had caused Tom to shift. Normally he only shifted involuntarily with the light of the moon on him and some additional source of distress working against his self control. But what could that mean, in the middle of a blizzard, in the bathroom?
    She needed to get him to shift back. Now. Knowing why he shifted would help, but if she couldn’t find it out – and he wouldn’t be able to answer questions very intelligibly – then she must get him to shift back by persuasion.
    The door seemed to date from the same time as the house – somewhere around the nineteenth century, when Goldport had been built from the wealth flowing from the mines around the area. The wealth hadn’t reached into this area of tiny houses – filled mostly with workers brought from out East to build the mansions for the gold rush millionaires. Oh, the house was, in general, still far more solid than houses built today. The walls were lath and plaster or brick, instead of drywall. It was framed in heavy beams. But the doors – as she’d found out when repairing hinges or locks before – were the cheapest, knottiest pine to be found in any time or place. One grade up from kindling. Further, to make their construction cheaper, they were not a solid panel, but a thicker cross-frame filled out with four veneer thin panels.
    Kyrie silently apologized for any injury she might do Tom, but she had to bring him out of this somehow. She went to the linen closet and wrapped her hand in a towel. Then she aimed at the thin pine panel and punched with all her strength.
    The panel splintered down the middle and cracked in the sides, though remaining in place, held together by countless layers of paint. The dragon inside the bathroom made a noise like a foghorn, again.
    Kyrie ignored the noise and, instead, started tearing at the door panel, pulling it out piece by piece. When she had all the pieces out, she leaned in to look into the bathroom. Which was not as easy as she’d anticipated. First because it was dark in there. Whatever else the dragon had done in the shifting, he’d definitely broken the ceiling light fixture. Judging by a sound that seemed, suspiciously, like a romantic brook running through unspoiled mountains, he had also torn the plumbing apart.
    But worse than that, it was that what she was looking at resembled a nightmare by Escher, where nothing made any sense whatsoever. There were green scales, and she expected green scales, shading to blue in spots. But also visible was part of what she was sure was the bluish-green underbelly of the dragon Tom shifted into. And right next to the missing panel, was a claw – huge and silvery, glinting like metal in the moonlight. But next to it crammed what looked suspiciously like a bit of wing. There was no position Tom could be in – except exploded and scrambled – where all of these made sense pressed into a small space at the same time.
    “Tom,” she said, trying to sound reasonable, while speaking to a mass of scales that, she realized, was pulsing rapidly with the sort of panting rhythm a frightened person might breathe in. “Tom, shift back. You can’t get out like this. Shift back.”
    The scales and wing and all slid around, scraping the door. The dragon moaned in distress. For a moment, the huge claw protruded through the opening, causing Kyrie to jump back, startled. But then, when everything was done shifting around, there was a dragon-eye looking back at her. The fact that it had a tile balanced on the brow ridge, just above it didn’t make it look any more pitiful. Or any less. The eye itself was huge and double-lidded and blue. Except for size and the weird additional inner lids, it was Tom’s eye.
    Kyrie spoke to Tom’s eye. “Tom, please, you must shift. I understand there had to have been something to make you shift. But if you don’t shift back now I can’t get you out of there. And that bathroom is going to freeze.”
    She didn’t need to be a building expert to know the tiny window into the bathroom had to be broken. The sudden moisture at her feet made her cringe. First, they were going to flood the house. And then they were going to freeze it. And it wasn’t even her house. She rented it. Good thing she’d long ago resigned herself to the idea she’d never see the security deposit again. And good thing she didn’t expect to ever be rich. After paying for these repairs, she’d be flat broke.
    “Tom,” she spoke as calmly as she could, though she felt her heart racing and was holding back on a strong impulse to shape-shift herself. She could feel as her nails tried to lengthen into claws, as her muscles and bones attempted to change shape. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to remain human. To remain sane. “Tom, you must shift back. I don’t know why you shifted, but there is nothing that we can’t face together. We’ve done it before remember?”
    The eye blinked at her, panic still shining at the back of it.
    “Look, breathe with me – slow, slow, slow.” She forced her own breathing to a slow, steady rhythm. “Slow. Everything is safe. And if it isn’t, you can’t fight it while crammed in that bathroom. You must be human and come out of there first. Then we’ll talk.”
    She spoke on so long that she almost lost track of what she was saying. It was all variations on a theme. The theme being calm. Calm and shifting back.
    Water was running under the door, covering the pine floor of the hallway in a thin, shimmering film, but she didn’t dare move or stop talking. Was she having any effect? Tom’s eye continued to glare at her, unblinking. She only knew he was alive because she could hear the dragon’s breathing huffing in and out of huge lungs.
    And then there was a sound like a sigh. Or at least a short intake of breath followed by a long, deep exhalation. The dragon flesh filling the broken part of the door trembled and wobbled. The distressed foghorn sounded again.
    Other sounds followed – sounds Kyrie knew well enough and which she felt a great relief at. Not that she’d show her relief. She didn’t want to startle Tom and stop the process. That was the last thing she wanted. Instead, she took deep, deep breaths, feeling Tom breathe with her, while muscles slid around with moist noises, and bones made sounds like the cracking of knuckles writ large.
    Tom sat there, on the soaked floor of the bathroom, on what remained of his ripped pajama pants and t-shirt. There was plaster in his hair. His naked, muscular body was a landscape of scratches and bruises.
    He looked at her, mouth half open. Then he made a sound much like keening. It was neither crying, nor screaming – just a sound of long-held, pent-up frustration. He raised his knees and wrapped his arms around them, lowering his head and taking deep deliberate breaths.
    She’d seen this before. She knew what it meant. He was fighting the urge to shift back. But he had it under control now. And he would be mortally embarrassed as soon as he had the time to be.
    Kyrie did what any girlfriend – what any friend – could do under the circumstances. “Right,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m going to go turn off the water valve to the house.”

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Z

    Tom was mortally embarrassed. Once past the panic of the dragon and the heightened senses of the beast and the pain for being forced into what seemed to the dragon like a very tiny box – once he was himself – he didn’t need to examine his surroundings to know the damage he had done.
    The toilet was broken, the pieces shattered everywhere. The plumbing was torn apart. Faucets bent beyond recognition. Walls with their inner layer scraped off, in a way that was probably not structurally sound. The window was smashed – leaving jagged pieces of glass glinting in the frame. The shower enclosure destroyed. What had, less than half an hour ago, been a bathroom was now a disaster zone.
    And Tom was sitting in the middle of it, looking up at Kyrie, who stared back in shock. She was very pale. No doubt totting up the expenses he had caused her. The lease was in her name. They’d be lucky not to get kicked out, even after they repaired the damages. And all because he couldn’t control his shifting and had gotten scared by--.
    In that moment, staring open mouthed at Kyrie – who looked, as she always did like a Greek goddess who had consented to come down from her pedestal and wear jeans and a t-shirt and a single red feather earring – he remembered what had made him shift.
    There had been a voice in his head. There had been a voice – echoing in his mind as clearly as though it were coming through his ears, which it wasn’t. The voice had been of an entity known to Asian cultures as The Great Sky Dragon.
    Whether he was really the father of all dragons or not, as legend maintained, Tom could not know. What he did know was that he was the leader of Asian triads in the west – that he ruthlessly murdered and stole and sold drugs and did what he had to do to keep his people safe and prosperous. And his people were only those who could shift into dragons. A specific kind of dragon. A kind Tom wasn’t.
    Their last meeting had brought Tom closer to his death than he ever cared to go. As close as he could go and still come back.
    Tom shuddered as panic tried to establish itself and force him to shift again.
    No, and no, and no! Nothing would be served by becoming a dragon. There were threats that the human brain was best suited to handling, no matter how much the puny human body might not be a match to claws and fangs and wings.
    He heard himself make a sound – a half scream of frustration at the body he couldn’t control – as he lowered his head and concentrated on breathing. Just breathing.
    In his absorbed state he only half heard Kyrie say something about the water valve. He heard her walk away as he controlled himself. And then he smelled burning. The cookies.
    It was, strangely, a welcome relief from other thoughts. He got up and padded through the soaked hallway to the kitchen where just the barest bit of water was making it over the little metal lip dividing the kitchen linoleum from the hallway wood flooring. His feet slipped as he hit the linoleum, but he balanced, and rushed to the oven.
    Oven mitts on, he pulled the tray of cookies out and set it atop the stove, then carefully turned the oven off. The cookies were less burnt than he’d expected – just looked like they’d gotten a suntan.
    He looked at them for a moment, then down at himself and groaned. Right. He’d best make himself decent quickly. They had bigger trouble than the cookies, and there was absolutely no way he could take a shower now. But if he remembered correctly, when you turned off the water valve to a house whatever water was in the pipes or in the heater remained. That might just be enough to at the very least get the grit of masonry off his skin and hair.
    He went to the hallway closet, full of purpose – because any purpose, and any thought was better than to think again of what had made him change – and grabbed a handful of washcloths and a towel.
    He wet the washcloths at the faucet in the kitchen, and put soap in about half of them – then retreated with them and the towel back to his room.
    Fortunately he was familiar with this sort of ad-hoc washing. He’d had to do it often enough when he was living on the streets and only working occasional day jobs, between the ages of sixteen and twenty or so. Contrary to public perception, it was possible to wash up – at least enough to not stink – at a stall in a public bathroom. At least it was possible given a supply of paper towels and soap. It didn’t, by any means, beat a long soak in a tub, or even a hurried shower, but it would do if it must. And clearly it must.
    He was going through the motions of wiping down with soap, then wiping the soap off, noting that the soap stung in a high number of abraded places, when he heard the back door close and Kyrie call tentatively, “Tom?”
    “In here,” he said. “I’ll be out in a moment.”
    She didn’t come in. Their rules for when they were allowed to see each other naked wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. They didn’t even make any rational sense to Tom himself. But they made emotional sense.
    Because of the shifting they had, of course, seen each other naked long before they had a relationship, and saw each other naked in all sorts of situations. But while human and not coming off from a shift, they respected each other’s privacy as much as possible. Kyrie would no more walk into his room while she knew he was naked than he would walk in on her in the shower. Oh, yes, they were dating. They were in love, or at least – Tom smiled to himself, as he extracted as much masonry as possible from his long dark hair – he thought so. His opinion might be insufficient, since he’d never had any experience with the emotion before. Still, he would give his left hand, or wing, or claw for Kyrie and she’d proven often enough she’d do the equivalent for him. But because neither of them had experience of relationships before, they were taking it slow and trying to establish the feelings and the boundaries before becoming more physical. Not the least because neither of them was sure how the beasts they shifted into would react to “more physical.” And because both of them lacked experience in simply being friends with anyone, let alone being lovers.
    Having finished his Spartan wash, he dried with the towel, tied his hair back – having found the elastic in the bedclothes – and slipped on a pair of jeans, a loose white sweatshirt. Remembering the water in the hallway, he put on socks and shoes and came out of his room to find Kyrie coming in too, from the other side, duct tape in hand.
    “I sealed the bathroom,” she said, matter of fact. “So the cold doesn’t come into the rest of the house.” Then looking at him, “You cleaned up.”
    He felt himself blush that she was surprised he’d take the trouble to clean up. “I didn’t think masonry was the in look this winter.”
    She nodded solemnly, stowing the duct tape in the drawer where they put such odds and ends. “There’s coffee,” she said, while pouring herself a cup. “I’d started it when–” She stopped. “Thank you for saving the cookies.”
    He bit back the obvious answer, You don’t need to put on the politeness. No need to thank me, since I was the one who made you forget them. Most of his life, long before he’d found out he was a shifter, at sixteen, he’d been giving the answer guaranteed to infuriate people and rejoicing in getting a reaction. He didn’t know what had given him that habit. He’d always had it as far as he remembered.
    It was tempting to say that he’d become a hostile bundle of aggression because both his parents were busy professionals, too busy in fact to notice their son existed. Tempting and, no doubt, some psychologist would say it in all seriousness.
    But Tom didn’t believe in psychology anymore than he believed in any other organized religion. Perhaps that was what had set him off... perhaps not. Perhaps some accidental genetic combination had caused him to be born hostile and contrary. But three months ago, when he’d moved in with Kyrie, he’d decided that habit stopped and quickly too. So now he bit his tongue and sighed. “They are a little too tanned.”
    She smiled back, as if she knew of the averted response. “No matter. Still edible.” Picking up a cookie, she sat down.
    He got himself coffee. Her whole attitude said we have to talk, and he supposed they did. He used the time of filling the cup and sugaring his coffee to think of what he could say that would mitigate what he had just done.
    I’ll pay for it was obvious, though he had exactly zero clue how. All the money he had – just like all the money Kyrie had – was part shares in The George. And, unlike what he would have imagined before getting into it, it wasn’t as clear cut as it seemed. His father – in an impulse for atonement that could not be gainsaid – had bought them the building and equipment for The George. That much they had. But it wasn’t money. You couldn’t walk into the mall with five bricks and buy a t-shirt. And there was no way he could swap one of the industrial freezers for the repair bill on the bathroom. For one because they needed the freezers.
    Which was the issue with the money. The George was doing well. Money came in every night and day. The few upgrades he and Kyrie had been able to afford here and there – a coat of paint, new Formica on the tables, re-covering the vinyl booths – was drawing in a better clientele, too. In addition to the manual laborers and students who had always drifted to The George, they now got young professionals from the gentrified area a few blocks away, amused at the dragon theme of the restaurant and intrigued by Tom’s culinary experimentation.
    They were -- from what Tom understood of the raising of eyebrows of his accountant -- doing very well indeed, having unwittingly become the spearheads of the push for gentrification in that area. But the money that came in went out again very quickly, and the improvements fueled other improvements. There were waiters to pay and Anthony’s salary had been raised since he’d become manager. To keep the better clientele Tom had bought new silverware and dishes and improved the quality of everything from the paper goods to the coffee mugs. His own self-respect as a cook had forced him to buy better quality meat.
    His father – when they talked – assured him all this would eventually pay off and while the cycle seemed fruitless and inane right now, eventually the money coming in would outstrip the need for improvements and Tom and Kyrie would find themselves wealthy or close to it. Today was not the eve of that day, though. Their separate bank accounts, if polled, would net them maybe two thousand dollars. From which they had to live for the month. Not enough for this type of repair.
    He could, of course, ask his father for help, but just the idea of it was enough to give him heartburn. He’d solved – he thought – his life long struggle with his father. While his father was not the best of parents, neither was Tom the best of sons. But still... Edward Ormson had forced his sixteen year old son out of the house – in a robe – onto the streets of New York City on the day he found that Tom shifted shape into a dragon.
    Tom could forgive, but he could not forget. He’d accepted the diner, but even that had smarted, and he’d only accepted it because he could tell how much Kyrie wanted it. And he’d talk to his father and be civil when he called because the man was trying his best to establish a relationship. And Tom was not so flush with friends that he could turn down anyone willing to befriend him. Even if it was his own father.
    But he’d be damned if he was going to go back, cadging his father for money. He’d be damned if he’d go back to his father every time he found himself in a scrape. He’d be damned if he gave his father reason to think of him – ever again – as his fucked-up son.
    He’d rather live on the streets, he thought, decisively as he made his way back to the table and sat down, cup in hand. He’d done it before.
    He looked up, frowning slightly, to face Kyrie’s attentive gaze on him. She was examining his face – probably for signs of the madness that had caused him to shift in the bathroom.
    When she saw him looking, she smiled. “Have a cookie.”

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    What Kyrie wanted to know was why he’d shifted. But she was terrified that if she asked him, he’d feel the need the shift again. After all, whatever it was had to be powerful enough, strong enough to cause a visceral panic reaction. Thinking about it might bring it on.
    His eyebrows were lowered a little and as he took a bite of the cookie he did it as if it required a large amount of concentration. When he looked back at her, his gaze remained worried and more than a little bit confused.
    “I figured,” he said, his tone slow and calculating. “I might be able to get a loan. But I don’t know how because I don’t want to mortgage The George because that’s yours too and, you know–”
    “What?” she hadn’t meant to interrupt, but the last thing she’d expected was for him to start talking money.
    “The bathroom,” he said, gesturing airily.
    “Oh, that. I looked at the walls and they seem to be fine. You just peeled the tile off and destroyed the plumbing and appliances. Cosmetic stuff. We’ll find a handyman. Place is solidly built.” She shrugged. “Yeah, we’ll borrow if we have to. We could do it all ourselves, you know, with a good how-to manual, but we don’t have that much free time and a functioning bathroom is kind of a necessity.” Seeing him open his mouth, she went on, redirecting the conversation, “Which is why I think we should go to The George.”
    He blinked at her. “What?” he said, his tone exactly matching her earlier one, as, clearly, the gears of his mind had been grinding at a different place.
    “I think we should go to The George until the blizzard is past and we get the bathroom repaired. While I don’t like the idea of driving in this, we’ll have a bathroom at The George. I mean – no place to take showers, though we can probably get a room at the bed and breakfast next door for that – but we’ll at least have a place to go to the bathroom. The weather – not to mention the neighbors – kind of precludes just peeing in the yard.”
    Her absurd words managed to bring a smile to his lips, but it vanished very fast. “Yeah. We’ll have to go.”
    “Yes. We might as well open too, since we’ll have to light and heat the place. We might get a few people, and it might just pay for that. I mean, we could go to one of the emergency shelters, but you and me and an enclosed space with a lot of people...” she shrugged. Given what had just happened to him, in the bathroom, she didn’t need to draw pictures of a dragon and a panther rampaging amid distressed refugees.
    He nodded and took a sip of the coffee. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take a sleeping bag. In case we rent a room with only one bed.” He got up and headed for his sleeping porch, clearly intent on packing.
    “Tom...” She didn’t want to ask, but she’d have to. “Why the shift? Was it the storm? You don’t normally shift during the day, much less–” She stopped.
    He’d turned around, a hand going up to his head, as if to pull back hair that didn’t need it – a habit of his when he was nervous. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. He sighed. For just a moment, it seemed to her, he was concentrating very hard on not changing. “It was the Great Sky Dragon,” he said. “I... I don’t know how to put this without sounding like a science fiction story, but I heard him in my mind. Without sound.” He took a deep breath like a drowning man who has succeed in getting his head above water for a moment. “I know I sound crazy, but... He was there.”
    She shrugged at him. They were people who could – and did – change into animal shapes with or without wishing to. Tom’s changing into a dragon had cost him his home with his wealthy corporate-lawyer father and what – despite his incipient juvenile hooliganism – promised to be a bright future. Kyrie had thought she hallucinated her changes into a panther until very recently. And still, he was afraid she’d think having experienced telepathy made him sound crazy.
    “So you heard him in your mind,” she said. “Did he threaten you?”
    Tom shook his head. “No, that was the odd part. He warned me. But it wasn’t a threat. He said someone he called The Ancient Ones wanted to kill us. That we should beware.”
    “Right. We’ll stay out of retirement homes,” Kyrie said, and immediately after, “I’m sorry. It isn’t funny. But why should he warn us now, when he went out of his way to almost kill you before?”
    Tom shook his head and looked startlingly naked and vulnerable – as if it cost him something to admit this. “I don’t know.”
    The phone rang.

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    For an intense panic-filled moment, Tom thought it would be the Great Sky Dragon calling him to repeat the vague warnings he’d spoken within Tom’s mind. It took a deep breath and remembering the damages to the bathroom to keep him from shifting again right then and there. Instead, he stretched his hand to the phone on the wall and picked it up.
    The ID window read “Trall, Rafiel” which made him draw a sigh of relief. For all his faults – and there were many – and despite the fact that he still carried a torch for Kyrie, Rafiel was the closest thing Tom had to a friend. He was, with Kyrie, almost the only other shifter Tom was friends with. Almost because an addled alligator shifter who went by Old Joe didn’t exactly qualify as a friend. Not so long as friendship involved more than Tom covering up for Old Joe’s shifts and giving him bowls of clam chowder on the side. Kyrie, Rafiel, Old Joe, an orangutan shifter, two now-dead beetle shifters and the dragon triad were the only shifters Tom had ever met, period. He guessed there weren’t many of his kind in the world. The few, the proud, the totally messed up.
    “Yeah?” he said, into the phone.
    “Uh,” Rafiel’s voice said from the other end, as though the phone’s being answered were the last thing he could possibly expect. Then, “I’d like to... I need to talk to you and Kyrie, when you have a minute.”
    There was that tone in Rafiel’s voice – tight and short – that meant he was on the job. Tom wondered if he was alone or if he’d have to pick his words carefully. Aloud he said only, “Wassup?”
    “Murder. There’s... been... well, almost for sure murder. Human bones and stuff at the bottom of the shark tank at the aquarium.”
    “And?” After all solving murders was Rafiel’s job and he usually managed it without a little help from his friends.
    “And I smell shifter,” Rafiel said. “All over it.”
    “Oh,” Tom said. “We’ll be at The George.” And suddenly he felt exactly like a man on the path of an oncoming train.
    His dreams had been full of a nightmare about some ancient menace; the Great Sky Dragon had spoken in his mind; and now there was murder, with shifter involvement.
    Was the shifter a murderer or the victim? Either way, it could not be good. Either way made it more difficult to keep the existence of those like Tom secret.

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    Don’t shift! Don’t shift! Don’t shift! Kyrie told herself. But she wasn’t at all sure she was listening, and she kept looking anxiously at her hands, clenched tight on the wheel. Her violet nail polish looked cracked and crazed from her run-in with the bathroom door, so that it was hard to tell whether the nails were lengthening into claws or not. Part of the reason she kept her nails varnished was to make sure that she saw the first signs of her nails lengthening into claws. Today that wouldn’t work.
    Outside the window, in the about a palm of visibility beyond the windshield, white snowflakes swirled. Past that, the flakes became a wall of white, seemingly streaming sideways, sparkling. Somewhere out there, in the seemingly nebulous distance, there were twin glimmers of dazzling whiteness, which were the only indication Kyrie had that the headlights of her subcompact were in fact on.
    “Maybe we should have walked,” Tom said. He shifted in his seat and leaned close to the snow-covered windshield, as though he could lend her extra vision.
    Kyrie gritted her teeth. Maybe they should have, except that the three steps they’d taken on the driveway, their feet kept going out from under them, and they’d only remained upright by holding onto the car. From which point getting in the car had seemed a given. She slowed down – which mostly meant slowing to the fractional amount of sliding the car seemed to do all on its own – and kicked up her windshield wipers, not that it did much good.
    “How can you see?” Tom asked.
    “I can’t,” she said, just as a sudden gust of wind cleared the space ahead enough for her to see they were at the intersection of their street and the next perpendicular one. And that a massive, red SUV was headed for them at speed.
    Don’t shift, don’t shift, don’t shift. Kyrie thought, as a mantra, even as she felt her whole body clench and her muscles attempt to change shapes beneath her skin, to take her other form – that of a panther. Don’t shift, don’t shift, don’t shift, as she struggled to keep her breathing even, and bit into her lower lip with teeth that weren’t getting any longer, not at al, not even a little bit. She maneuvered quickly with a tire up on the sidewalk, tilting crazily around the corner, even as the SUV went by them and buried them in a shower of slush, bits of ice rattling against roof and windows.
    A moan from Tom reminded her she wasn’t the only one worried about panic setting off a shape shift reaction. “Perhaps,” he said, in the voice of a man working very hard to control himself. “I should get out and... fly?”
    “What? Shift twice without eating?” she said, and on that, as he moaned again, she realized she’d said the wrong thing. Shifting shapes demanded a lot of energy and, for some reason, it set off a desperate craving for protein. All Tom had eaten since shifting was half a dozen cookies. And there was no protein at all around. Except, of course, her. And she knew Tom would rather die.
    She pushed the gas, taking advantage of a momentary break in the storm that allowed her to see a big crossing ahead. Too late, she saw the light was red, but she was sliding through the intersection on the power of her momentum and slamming on the brakes only caused her to fishtail wildly and finally turn halfway through to the left. Fortunately she turned right onto Fairfax, where she was supposed to be. Sliding, she pressed the gas cautiously. Their shifting position caused the snow to seem to turn positions, so that she could now see – more or less – out her front window, but nothing on the side.
    I’ll never find The George, she thought to herself, and glared at her nails telling them they weren’t becoming claws, no they weren’t, not even a little bit.
    A sudden dazzling purple light to the left made her breathe in relief and confusion. The sign was still on. Thank heavens, the sign was still on. Anthony mustn’t have closed yet, which meant, of course, that light and heat would still be on, and less trouble than turning them on again. On the other hand, it also made the diner easier to find.
    She brought the car to a minimally-sliding almost-complete-stop and took a deep breath. Normally, turning left into the parking lot of The George from Fairfax involved taking your life in your own hands. Fairfax was the main East-West artery of Goldport, and it was heavily traveled all the time. In addition, mistimed traffic lights ensured there was no break in the two lanes of traffic across which you must cut to make it into the parking lot.
    Today, it involved another kind of risk. She couldn’t see at all through the storm, to find out if any traffic was oncoming. Just white blankness. True there were very few vehicles out, but she’d managed to almost run into two on the way here. Kyrie took a deep breath. There was nothing for it but to turn. And she wasn’t going to shift. Not even a little bit.
    She turned the wheel fully expecting to go into a spin, but the tires grabbed onto some bit of yet unfrozen pavement and propelled them in a queasy slide-lurch across the other side of the road and up a ramp into the parking lot.
    The snow didn’t allow to see any other cars in the parking lot, and Kyrie didn’t care. She just found herself in the vast lot at the back. Bordered by the blind wall of a bed and breakfast and a warehouse, the parking lot gave to the back door of The George and, through two outlets, to Pride and Fairfax streets both. Right now, she waited until the car stopped sliding, then put it in parking and pulled the parking break, and leaned over the wheel, breathing deeply. You’re safe, you’re safe. Don’t shift.
    When her racing heart had calmed down, she lifted her head and saw the parking lot – as much as could be seen – drifting snow spider webbed by the light of two street lamps and the purple glare from the diner’s sign. She looked to the passenger side of the car, where Tom was blinking and, she suspected, had just opened his eyes after calming himself.
    “We should really–” Kyrie started and stopped. Through the snow she’d glimpsed something, half seen. She thought it was... but it couldn’t be. Surely...
    “Was that,” Tom said, his voice small. “A dragon’s wing?”

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    “Go inside,” Tom said, as he glimpsed the wing again, through the growing snow. “It’s a red wing. It’s...” He didn’t say it. He couldn’t quite assemble words.
    His brain, still fogged from his quick shift into dragon and back, still laboring under the guilt of what he’d done to the bathroom – let alone the terror of the precipitous drive here, which had felt less like driving than tumbling down a chute – could not manage to describe the wing. But he was sure, from his two brief glimpses, that it was a Chinese dragon. An Asian dragon like the Great Sky Dragon and his cohorts.
    Feeling for the door handle with half-frozen fingers, Tom managed to grasp it and pull it back and throw the door open against resistence of what he hopped was stiff wind, and not a dragon tail or claw, as he yelled over the howling storm at Kyrie. “Go inside. I’ll deal with it.”
    He plunged out of the car just in time for his feet to go out from under him, and to reach, blindly, for the car door for support, and bring himself upright, and stare into...
    He was big and red. No. As he blinked to keep his eyes from freezing, he thought he wasn’t that big. Smaller than Tom himself in dragon form. But he was also horribly familiar – more familiar as Tom focused on the details and noted that the dragon’s front left paw was much smaller than the other. He was... Red Dragon. Not only was he was one of the Great Sky Dragon’s cohorts, but when Tom had last seen him there had been a big battle, and Red Dragon had ended with his arm ripped out at the roots.
    Tom knew – from experience – that his kind was hard to kill. But this was a particular foe he’d never thought to see again; one he was sure had more reasons for vendetta against him than anyone else alive.
    He felt his throat close and the panic he’d – barely – managed to control in the car surged through his body like electric current, seeking a ground. Not finding it, it twisted in a sparkle through his flesh. He felt his limbs twist, and his body bend, and a hollow cough echoed through his throat. His mouth opened, and he swallowed an aspiration of snow, cold and suffocating. He knew, absolutely knew, that if he shifted he would attack Red Dragon and probably try to eat him. He was that protein starved. A protein starved Tom ate uncooked hot dogs and whatever else he could get hands on. A protein starved dragon would hunt live prey.
    “Run,” he told Kyrie with what was left of his human mind and his human voice. “Run inside Kyrie.”
    He could just tell in the periphery of his beclouded vision that she was not obeying. Not even considering it, and he wondered if his voice had already changed. If perhaps she couldn’t understand him. His body twisted again, the pain of changing upon him, and he kept his eyes on the other dragon, in case he should think of flaming or striking. Dragons were hard to kill but not impossible. This Tom knew. If you severed the head from the rest of the body. If you divided the body in two. If you incinerated the body. Those deaths even a dragon could not overcome.
    And just as Tom had to think of how to inflict them on his foe, he had to protect himself. He felt his fingers lengthen into claws and–
    “No,” it was Kyrie’s voice, decisive sounding. And Kyrie – slim, unshifted, very human Kyrie – stood between the two dragons, her dark blue sky coat making her just slightly bulkier than normal as she yelled at both of them. “No. You’re not going to change, Tom. Deep breaths. I’m not having you pass out or worse when you shift. Don’t you dare.”
    There had been a time when Tom had sought for cures for his condition. He’d tried to prevent his shifting with drugs and with will power, with perfect diet and with lack of sleep. He’d visited places where people said native tribes had once worshiped. He’d taken Yoga and tried to meditate. None of it had worked.
    In times of stress, or when the moon was just right, causing some shift in the tides of his being; when panic or excitement overcame him, he would change. And he couldn’t control it, any more than a human being can stop sneezing by wishing to stop. But Kyrie standing in front of him and saying “no” tore to the very center of his being and stopped the already started process.
    He groaned as he felt his muscles return to their normal position, his bones resume proper human shape. She’d made him think even if what he was thinking was that they were both in great trouble. The red dragon had come back to seek vengeance. And, being a triad member and therefore an outlaw, he would stop at nothing. Tom’s life, Kyrie’s life, the diner – all of it would be in danger. And behind Red Dragon stood the powerful, mysterious figure of the Great Sky Dragon, who had taken Tom’s life only to give it back again, and whom Tom didn’t even pretend to understand. But Tom stopped and thought long enough to realize that if he were to change now he would, probably, as Kyrie had said, lose consciousness. And that would not solve anything. Even if Red Dragon didn’t take advantage of his weakness to behead him, an unconscious dragon in the parking lot becoming hypothermic would only add to Kyrie’s troubles. Through clenched teeth he asked Red Dragon, “What do you want?” But the Red Dragon only glared and bobbed his neck up and down, waving his head like some deranged bobble-toy, his mis-matched limbs rearing, his wings flaring.
    “Go inside,” Kyrie answered, looking at the Red Dragon, but speaking to Tom, impatiently. “Go inside, Tom. We can’t have you here. Not weakened. I’ll find out what this... what he wants.”
    “But–” Tom said, and stopped as he realized he was about to say I’m the man. I’m supposed to protect you. He could not say that. Man or not, he was in no state to protect anyone.
    Feeling his cheeks heat in shame, he retreated. He retreated step by step, while staring at Kyrie. He walked backwards, through the blowing snow, till Kyrie and the red dragon were no more than outlines of themselves, patterns of shadow drawn on the surrounding whiteness. He felt his heart beat, hard in his chest. He was sure it was beating hard enough that if he looked down he’d see it pound even through the shirt and his black leather jacket. His mouth was dry and tasted vaguely of blood as though the hoarse cough that normally heralded his transformation had stripped it of skin. He cleared his throat, more because he wanted to remind Red Dragon and Kyrie that he was still there – more because he felt like a coward and a fool, backing away from confrontation and leaving his girlfriend to face evil alone. But he didn’t know if the sound carried that far, and besides, what good was it to remind them he was here, when he could do nothing to defend the woman he loved?
    Oh, sure, Kyrie was a were panther. Oh, surely, she could defend herself. She had fought these creatures before but...
    But if he’d not helped Kyrie then, she would have died. And now he was going to leave her alone with one of these – a creature that was bigger than her feline form, a creature that could burn her to cinders. Everything that was Tom – normal and human and responsible – wanted to stay and protect Kyrie. But he knew better, he knew how sensible Kyrie was. And he knew his body would not take another shift.
    He wished there was someone he could call to, but all the shifters he knew for a fact were shifters were a homeless man and Rafiel – who might or might not be inside. Was Rafiel inside? He’d called Tom. Had he had the time to get here, yet?
    Tom must check. He stepped back faster and faster. He couldn’t see so clearly through the snow anymore, but Kyrie seemed to be circling the dragon, or the dragon seemed to be circling Kyrie. It couldn’t be good, but at least he saw no flame. That at least was better than it could be.
    He stepped back. As he stepped into the purple glow of the sign he felt the warmth of the diner behind him. Even through the glass door at the back, enough heat escaped that, without looking, he could tell where the door was.
    Stepping back towards the warmth, he heard the key turn, and then the door opened, right behind him.
    He turned. “Anthony!” he said, or rather gasped in surprise, turning back to look and see if Anthony – who had no idea shape shifters or dragons existed – would see the dragon through the snow. But there was nothing out there, just the briefest of shadows, and did he hear Kyrie’s car trunk open? What was she doing? Stashing the defeated body of her opponent? Well, it could be worse.
    “Tom?” Anthony asked. He was slim and Italian or perhaps Greek or maybe some flavor of South American. Or maybe he had all those in his ancestry somewhere. Olive skinned, with curly dark hair, Anthony was a local boy, grown up in this neighborhood. He was Kyrie and Tom’s guide to local stores and events. And every small business owner seemed to know Anthony, whose approval counted for more with them than their better-business bureau rating. He was also the leader of a bolero dancing troupe and newly married. And the one person they trusted enough to let him manage the daytime shift.
    “Yeah.”
    “You guys came in.”
    “You’re open.”
    “I was going to close, but then people started tricking in and keep coming in. Cold, you know. Or just want to see people.” He shrugged. “And there’s freaky stuff around here, and...”
    But Tom was listening, wildly, for the sound of the car door, for the sound of Kyrie, for what might be happening out there, in the howling snow.

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Z

    Kyrie knew this was crazy, but it would be crazier to do nothing. She circled around the red dragon, looking up at the creature, as it circled in turn, to keep her in sight. She could feel her other form itching to take over, but she didn’t think that would be the best of ideas. Because the dragon wasn’t attacking her. Why wasn’t the dragon attacking her?
    Truth be told, from what she remembered Red Dragon had been the least effectual of the triad members. Why would he be the one sent? Unless – she took a look at his shrunken arm – he was trying to avenge himself on his own.
    He opened his mouth and she tensed, ready to hit the snow and roll away from the fire and possible incineration. Instead he made a pitiful sound, low and mournful in his throat.
    “What?” she said, as if she expected the creature to speak. Instead, it made the sound again, and then it coughed. The cough was just like Tom’s when he was about to change. Or when he was about to flame, of course. She tensed and circled, watching. It moaned and circled in turn. Suddenly, it spasmed. Contorted.
    It was changing. Kyrie, who’d thrown herself to the snow covered ground looked up to see the creature bend and fold in unnatural ways and seeming to collapse in on itself.
    It was shifting. It was shifting.
    But why is he shifting? Wouldn’t his dragon form give him the advantage? What could he gain by becoming human?
    What he couldn’t gain, clearly, was warmth, because in the next moment he stood there, looking like an instant popsicle in the shape of a young Asian male very very naked in the howling storm. He covered his privates with one hand – the other arm being rather too short to allow him to reach that far, and he looked at her with pitiful eyes, even as his skin turned a shade of dusky violet.
    “What do you want?” she asked, using all her will power to keep her teeth from chattering. “What do you want? What do you wish from me?”
    He shook his head slowly, his eyes very wide. She wondered if he looked like that out of fear of her, and realized it was more likely that it was the cold. “I... Must speak. I was sent to speak. To you. I must protect... Him.”
    “Protect the Great Sky Dragon?” Kyrie asked. A sword drawn at venture.
    Red Dragon shook his head. He had a crest of hair in the front – rumpled – probably a natural cowlick, and in human form, his eyes looked small and dark and confused. “No, not him. He sent me.”
    He did not speak with an accent so much as with the shadow of an accent – as if he felt obligated to sound Asian, even though he didn’t. His words came out stilted. He talked while shivering and the words came out through short panting breaths. “He sent me to redeem myself. The Great Sky Dragon. Sent me.”
    “To redeem yourself?” Kyrie yelled as the snow blew into her mouth. She looked at the snow-covered ground for a stone or something with which to hit the enemy. Nothing was visible under the snow, but she must find something. Because she now knew he had come to kill Tom.
    And then Red dragon wrapped his arms around himself, a curiously defenseless gesture. “He send me to protect the young dragon. He says I must prove I’m worthy before I’m trusted, and this is where he wants me to prove myself. I am to defend the young dragon from the Ancient Ones.”
    “Defend?” Kyrie asked, her voice a mere, surprised whisper as her mind arrested on the word she could not have anticipated. “Defend? Defend Tom?”

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Z

    “Tom,” Anthony’s voice said from behind Tom, as Tom tried to see beyond the light of the diner’s back window, beyond where it seemed a dazzle upon a confusion of snow. Beyond that, he was sure now, there were two human figures. And that must mean...
    “Tom,” Anthony’s voice again. “Look, I don’t suppose you and Kyrie are going to stay?”
    “We have to,” Tom said, still intent on the two people out there in the snow. Why weren’t they walking any nearer? He had no doubts that Kyrie could more than hold herself in a fight with Red Dragon, provided they were both in human shape, but all the same, he wished that they would come closer – that he could hear what they must be saying. “We need a bathroom.”
    It was only as the silence lengthened that Tom thought his remark might be cryptic and he was trying to figure out how to describe what had happened in their bathroom, and being quite unable to form a sentence that made any sort of sense. “The pipes burst,” he said at last, squinting. Were they now, finally, walking towards the diner?
    “Oh,” Anthony said. “So you two are staying? Because, you know, my wife is alone, and we don’t have groceries and if we end up not being able to... I mean... If we’re snowed in for a week or... I know I’m supposed to work, but, you see, my wife is not used to Colorado weather, and she’s nervous at all the emergency announcements on the radio and–”
    Tom looked over his shoulder at Anthony’s anxious face, and understood what Anthony hadn’t quite said. “You want to go home,” he said. “Sure. Go.”
    “I hate to leave you guys in the lurch, but all the prep stuff is done, and there’s a pot a clam chowder and I left a large bowl of rice pudding in the freezer and–”
    “Go,” Tom said. He was now sure that Kyrie and Red Dragon – in human form – were coming towards him, but they were walking very slowly, and he could not figure out why.
    “There’s... look, Tom, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but...”
    He had to turn around, no matter how much he wanted to keep an eye on Kyrie. And then the other thing was that he realized all of a sudden perhaps Kyrie was delaying coming inside because she could see Anthony there behind Tom and there was something she didn’t want Anthony to see. After all, Anthony had no idea at all that there was such a thing as shape shifters, much less that he was working for two of them. It was a strange part of their secretive life to know a person they trusted absolutely with their business and their local connections could not be trusted to know what they truly were. But neither Tom nor Kyrie were willing to risk the reaction. And perhaps Red Dragon was naked – Tom couldn’t remember if there had been any extra clothes in the car or not – and if he was, Anthony would want to know why.
    So Tom turned, away from the door, away from the parking lot, and towards Anthony, who, looking relieved to have his attention at last, held the door open, stepped aside and gestured Tom towards the inside of the diner as he said, “Tom, look. It’s... oh, this is going to sound stupid, but... You see, you might have to call animal control.”
    “Animal control?” Tom asked, as they walked the long, slightly curving hallway that led from the back door to the diner proper. They passed the door to the two bathrooms on the left, the doors to the freezer room and the two storage rooms on the right, and then found themselves at the back of the diner, looking at green vinyl booths that Tom planned to upgrade as soon as possible, and tables newly covered in fake-marble formica. There were – out of habit Tom counted – five tables occupied here, and – from the noise – another five or six occupied in the addition – a sort of large enclosed patio attached to the diner, which had larger tables and which was preferred by college students.
    Tom took off his leather jacket and hung it on a peg by the counter, and reached under the counter for an apron with The George on the chest. Then felt around again for the bandana with which he usually confined his hair while cooking – usually to prevent hair falling on the food, though today it would also keep the grill masonry free, as he was sure his hair wasn’t completely clean.
    “Look, I don’t know who deals with situations like that,” Anthony said. He frowned. “For all I know it escaped from the zoo or something.”
    “What?”
    Anthony looked embarrassed. “It’s an alligator. I know you’re going to think I’m completely insane, but I went out there, to throw some stuff away just a few minutes ago. Because, you know, Beth didn’t come in, and we don’t have anyone to bus, and the kitchen trash...”
    “Yes.”
    “Yeah, anyway, so, I went out there to throw the stuff away, and you... Oh. You’re going to think I’ve gone nuts.”
    “I doubt it,” Tom said flatly. He’d discovered -- sitting in his favorite table, by the front window, under a vivid scrawl advertising meatloaf dinner for 3.99 – the blond and incongruously surfer-like Rafiel Trall. Rafiel looked up at his gaze, and raised eyebrows at Tom.
    “Well... whatever. If you think I’m nuts, fine, but I swear there was an alligator by the dumpster, eating old fries and bits of burger.”
    “An alligator?”
    “I know, I know, it sounds insane.”
    And Tom to whom it did not sound insane at all -- Tom, who, in fact, was suppressing an urge to blurt out that it was nothing but a homeless gentleman known as Old Joe, who happened to be an alligator shifter -- instead shrugged and said, “No, it doesn’t sound insane. You know, people buy them little as pets, then abandon them.”
    “In restaurant dumpsters?” Anthony asked, dubiously.
    “I don’t see why not,” he said. “People abandon cats here all the time. Why shouldn’t they abandon alligators?”
    Anthony took a deep breath. “Well... sewers in New York, and I’ve heard of alligators in reservoirs here, but...”
    “People are weird,” Tom said, squirming, feeling uncomfortable about lying to his employee and friend.
    “I guess,” Anthony said, frowning slightly, as though contemplating alligator-infested restaurant dumpsters were too much for him. He rallied, “Well, be careful when you go back there, all right? I beaned him with a half-rotten cantaloupe and he hid behind the dumpster but I don’t think he’s gone away.”
    “Yeah.” He hoped old Joe hadn’t gone away. He was totally harmless, and truly in need of a minder. And that mind, for the time being at least, was Tom.
    “And I may go? Home?”
    “Yeah,” Tom saw Rafiel had stood up and approached the counter and now stood behind Anthony, trying to catch Tom’s eye. He remembered Rafiel’s call had been about murder. “Yeah, go home, Anthony. I’ve got it covered.”
    He turned blindly – more on instinct than on thought – to the far end of the counter, where no customers sat, and where the two huge coffee brewing machines stood, made of polished chrome and probably a good twenty years out of date. They shimmered because Tom had taken steel wool to them last month, and they managed to look retro, rather than obsolete.
    On the way he grabbed still-frozen hamburger patties from a box Anthony had left behind the grill. He didn’t think before he grabbed them, and he didn’t think before biting into the first one. It was hard, and the cold made his teeth hurt, but he couldn’t stop himself. He needed protein. He desperately needed protein, with an irrational bone-deep craving. If he ignored the craving, then there was a god chance the customers would start looking like special protein packs on two legs.
    The third patty in his hand, like a cookie, and hoping no one was looking too closely, he peered at the coffee machines. The caffeinated side was low, and he thought he should also bring the small back-up coffee maker from the back room and use it to run hot chocolate, because on a day like this they should offer a special on hot chocolate. And doing this work at the end of the counter, would allow Rafiel to approach him and talk to him without either calling attention or risk being overheard. Which was essential if that murder truly involved shape shifters. And it probably did, because Rafiel wasn’t a fool. Impetuous sometimes and a bit too cocky, but not a fool.
    Tom got the spare coffee maker from the back room, and then the good spicy hot-chocolate mix from the supplies room. He darted to the front and wrote on the window “Hot chocolate 99c a cup” and was setting up the coffee maker – scrupulously cleaned – to run hot chocolate, when he heard Rafiel lean over the counter. At the same time, he heard steps down the hallway. Kyrie’s steps – he’d know them anywhere – and someone else’s.
    Behind him, Rafiel’s voice hissed, suspicious, “What is he doing here?

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