Gentleman Takes a Chance (49 page)

"I think my boyfriend is perfectly fine," she said, snappishly. And meaning the snap, too, because Dire annoyed her—besides putting a chill up her spine—and because she thought he would expect her to react this way.

Dire shrugged. He took a pull on his cigarette, making the tip glow bright. "I'm sure you do. You're both very young. Young as ephemerals. But he doesn't understand that, when needed, one must sacrifice a friend . . . or two." His gaze on her was speculative, and she felt as though she were being considered as a "sacrifice."

"And have you sacrificed many
friends
?" she asked, wrapping her arms around herself.

If she expected him to flinch or look guilty, she would have been sorely disappointed. He threw his head back and laughed. "One or two . . . dozen. But I'm still here, aren't I?"

"Yes," Kyrie said, and judging the time to be right, added, "In fact, I wish you weren't here so much. What are you doing here, all the time? Are you following us?" Mentally, she projected the feeling/idea that tonight of all nights she didn't want him around.

She watched his eyes quicken, but nothing more in his gaze gave away that he'd caught on to something. His voice was quite disinterested and amused as he said, "I find you entertaining."

Tom felt awkward and stupid. Which, he supposed, in many ways he was. At least when the many ways involved human interaction. He felt very strange taking time off and getting into the supply van with Kyrie. Kyrie drove till they were outside the aquarium, about the time that Rafiel would be starting his date. It was unlikely, of course, that Lei Lani would be dragging Rafiel to the aquarium at the beginning of the date—even if Rafiel was right in his suspicions. Even if she intended to drag him there later.

But they didn't want to be too far away to intervene if she did take him there. The time was quite likely to be too short, then. And the idea was not to have Rafiel get himself killed. For one, even if they got the woman immediately afterwards, the police tended to get religious when one of them got killed. They would leave no stone unturned. And when it came to murders committed by shifters, Tom would very much like to let mossy stones lie. And for another . . . Tom liked the lion bastard. Life wouldn't be nearly as much fun without a friend in the police, he thought. Why, they might not get pulled into whichever murder was going on, on the vaguest suspicion that a shifter might be involved.

So, they'd taken the laptop—still quiescent—and driven to a block from the aquarium, where they'd parked on a darkened side street. The van smelled of old cabbage and—strangely, since Tom didn't remember carrying any in it—stale crackers. It had only two seats, since the back was normally filled with crates and boxes of supplies for the diner. In summer and fall, he and Kyrie had taken the van to the farmers' market early every morning, when Anthony came in to relieve them. They'd got better deals, and better produce too. Though Tom had probably gone overboard on the apricots, which was why they had about a hundred jars of jam in the cold room at The George. Which would come in really handy the minute he learned to make homemade bread.

But because he and Kyrie rarely got to go out alone, because he didn't want them to sit in the front seats and be obvious, and because he was a fool, he'd made sure the van was clean and he'd brought a blanket to spread on the metallic floor that had long since lost its carpet, if it had ever had one.

He'd also brought two very large throw pillows from their room.

It was only when Kyrie had looked at the blanket and the pillows, and turned an inquisitive glance towards him, that he realized how it might look. "What?" he said. "What? I thought it would be more comfortable than the bare floor and all, while we wait."

She had smiled just a little, an odd, Mona Lisa smile. "I'm sure it will be," she had said all soft and breezily.

And now they were parked on a side street, less than a block from the aquarium. It was a narrow street and at this point pretty much deserted, with what looked like an empty—with broken windows—house on one side, and a park on the other. They left the front seats and went to the back, where they sat primly on the pillows across from each other, and they put the laptop up, its back against the front seats. The laptop had been a gift from Tom's father and, until now, he'd never used it for anything more exciting than doing the accounting for The George.

But the laptop wasn't being exciting either. A blank screen with a field of stars streaming past—his screen saver—stared back at them. Tom looked at it, then looked at Kyrie. The laptop was supposed to beep if it caught anything, and just now, Tom was disposed to let the laptop do its thing and not give it undue attention. Because, after all, if you couldn't trust your laptop, what could you trust?

Instead he looked over at Kyrie. He was dating the only woman in the world who could look like a goddess in worn jeans and a utilitarian brown sweat shirt. The brown brought out the olive tones in her skin, and went seamlessly with the layer-dyed hair which was her only concession to vanity. Well, she had one other, but he wasn't sure whether that was due to vanity or to her belief that this was her good-luck charm, much like his boots were his—but she was wearing her red feather earring, dangling from her ear, jewel-bright against her dark hair. It seemed to highlight her dark-red lips, which were jewellike enough even without the benefit of lipstick.

He longed to trace with his hands the outline of her breasts under the sweat shirt. His lips ached for her lips. It had been . . . a week, maybe more, since he had so much as hugged her. And he wondered if she now thought he was a perfect idiot, since he'd shifted in the bathroom. He wondered if he'd ruined her respect for him, and if now it would be only a matter of time before she told him they couldn't go on like this.

"I'm an idiot," he said. And as she turned to look at him, he went on, honestly. "If I had half a lick of sense, when I knew I'd be spending at least an hour, and probably more in a van with the most beautiful woman in the world, I'd have had the good sense to bring champagne and chocolates, or something."

"We couldn't have champagne," she said. "We can't afford to be tipsy."

"Apple cider then," he said. "Something to make you feel as special as just being near you makes me feel."

For a moment he thought he'd upset her. Her mouth opened in an "Oh." and her eyes widened, as though surprised. And then, unaccountably, she was in his arms, her body warm against his. He frantically searched for her lips and found them, kissing her desperately, as if he could only draw breath through her mouth. "Kyrie," he said. "Oh, Kyrie."

Halfway through dinner, Rafiel found himself hoping that Lei Lani wasn't the murderer, whether or not she was a shifter. And he wanted her to be a shifter. He really did. Because then she would understand him—and he could maybe even marry her.

He didn't know what it was exactly, and he'd have been hard pressed to say, but he felt happy in her presence. Very happy. Almost on the edge of drunk.

Tuscany Bay, the fashionable restaurant to which he'd decided to take her, despite the nonsensical name, turned out to be a very decent Italian place, with dancing and a jazz band that played softly melodic sounds. And being around Lei seemed to erase Rafiel's pains, so that, after a dinner of grilled salmon, he could stand on his bruised ankle, and lead her in a heartfelt—and possibly slightly obscene—slow dance.

They danced one song, two, and Rafiel was conscious that most people in the place were staring at them, and he was sure—absolutely sure—that everyone of them was envying him. Lei was wearing a simple—almost severe—black and white dress, and the cutest little fedora tilted sideways on her head. Beneath it, her hair was loose, brushed till glossy and dark as sin.

After the second song, she said, "I think we should go out. You know, for a walk."

And he was fine with that. He'd have gone anywhere with her. At the door, when they picked up their coats from the coat check, the coat check lady whispered to Lei, "Don't let him drive," and Rafiel could not understand why. Did she think he was drunk? How could he be? He had drunk iced tea all evening.

But it didn't matter. As they walked outside, the cold air did feel invigorating. Lei put her arm in his. Above the skies had cleared and a million stars seemed to sparkle in the deep black velvet of the night.

He was a little surprised when they got to the aquarium and she opened the door. There was something about the aquarium. Something he was supposed to remember. But he had no idea what. And he was sure it couldn't be very important. After all, he was lucky. He had Lei Lani, right there.

Tom had just said, "Oh, I'm such an idiot," against the soft depths of Kyrie's tapestry-dyed hair, when the alarm sounded. For a moment, for just a moment, he thought it was ringing inside his head. Reminding him there was a reason he didn't usually allow himself to lose control, that he might at any moment lose control of himself and shift, which would work about as well in the van as it had in the bathroom.

He tried to tell the alarm to stuff it, but it continued to ring, quite oblivious to his opinions, and it dawned on Tom that it was the sound from the laptop at about the same time that Kyrie pulled away and said, "Damn, the laptop."

"Yeah," Tom said. "Yeah." It wasn't the most coherent response in the world, but it was the one he had, and he was going to stick to it.

Kyrie touched the button that made the screen saver stop scrolling by and brought the transmission from the camera to them in vivid, bold color. Tom remembered, irrelevantly, his father going on about how he'd picked that laptop because of the wonderful movie screen. All the same it took him a moment to figure out what he was looking at.

"Oh, good lord," Kyrie said. "Is he crazy or stupid?"

And then Tom realized he was looking at Rafiel and Lei Lani, without clothes, in what used to euphemistically be called a moment of passion. He jumped to the front seat and out. He had gone five steps before he realized that Kyrie hadn't been as fast. And it took him only two seconds to see a dire wolf round on him, from outside. It was growling in a low tone, and of course there were no words in its growl. But Tom would swear it was saying "Payback time, Dragon Boy."

Kyrie removed her earring, and then her clothes and leapt from the van even as she shifted. As a panther, she interposed herself between Dire and Tom. She growled, a fierce, loud growl that meant that he wouldn't be allowed to touch Tom, and she willed Tom to go past her. Willed it with all her mind.

There was Dire, standing in front of them, blocking the access to the aquarium. How long before Lei Lani took it into her head to drown Rafiel? They'd been naked and . . . um . . . Tom had no idea how long it was supposed to last. Movies had given him a range of times from a couple of minutes to hours, and he had no idea which one was closer to the truth.

But he knew, or at least he suspected that when the fun and games were done, it would be the final swim for Rafiel, a swim from which he would not return.

He could tell from the way Kyrie—in panther form, her fur velvet-dark—interposed herself between him and Dire, that she meant for him to go past. But how could he go past when Kyrie's life was at risk? He remembered what Dire could do. And he wasn't willing to see him treat Kyrie as he'd treated Rafiel.

Oh, Dire might want Kyrie, or at least he might think so. But did he want her more than he wanted to fulfill his
duty
and return, once more victorious, to his cosmopolitan lifestyle? And Kyrie would make as good a sacrifice to Dire's lifestyle as Rafiel.

Tom realized his body had made the decision for him because while he thought, he had stripped bare and untied his boots. He now stepped out of his boots, and spoke, in his slurpy almost-dragon voice, "Attack me, you prehistoric horror. Or can you only defeat girls?"

And then he shifted.

Damn the man, Kyrie thought, a passenger in the back of the panther's mind, even as Dire lunged at her and tossed her aside, while he rounded on Tom.

Kyrie landed heavily on a scruffy front lawn, and tried to get up. And couldn't. At first she thought she must be paralyzed, and then she realized Tom wasn't moving either. After issuing his challenge and leaping, he'd landed heavily, as if he couldn't control his paws, and now was half lying on the street, while Dire circled around him, growling, with every appearance of enjoyment.

He was going to kill Tom, she realized. He was in their minds. He was controlling them. And he was going to kill Tom. And then probably kill her.

Don't be silly, Kitten Girl,
his voice said in her mind, with a suggestion of indecent laughter.
That would be a waste.

She wanted to get up. She tried with all her mind and heart to get up. But she couldn't. She couldn't move.

And then, from above, came the flap of wings.

Tom heard the flap of wings. His eyes—about the only part of him not paralyzed—turned upward in time to see huge wings, descending. He wanted to protest, to say no. He hadn't asked for help. Even there, at death's door, he hadn't asked for help.

Let Dire kill him, but at least he would die free, and not owe his life to a criminal dragon.

Laughter filled his mind, and then a voice he remembered all too well.
Commendable
, it said.
Or perhaps crazy. Never mind. Go now. You are free. Go take care of your friend.

And suddenly Tom could move, and he could see Kyrie move too. She was leaping towards the aquarium ahead of him. So she'd heard the golden bastard in her mind as well. And the golden bastard was interposing himself between Tom and Kyrie and Dire. The dire wolf screamed a sound of pure fury and Tom, who hadn't wanted the Great Sky Dragon's help, nonetheless hoped the Great Sky Dragon was doing to Dire what he did to them, and rifling through his mind, and using it. He hoped so, as he lurched, as fast as he could towards the aquarium.