The July night sprawled, warm and deep blue over Goldport, Colorado. In the distance the mountains were little more than suspicions of deeper darkness, a jagged outline where no stars appeared.
Most of Goldport was equally dark, from its slumbering suburbs to the blind silence of its downtown shops. Only the streetlights shone, at intervals, piercing the velvet blackness like so many stars.
At the edge of the western suburbs that climbed—square block after square block—into the lower slopes of the Rockies, the neon sign outside a Chinese restaurant flickered. Three Luck Dragon flared, faded, then flared again, and finally turned off completely.
A hand with nails that were, perhaps, just a little too long turned over a sign that hung on the window, so that the word "closed" faced the parking lot.
After a while, a sound broke the silence. A flapping, noise, as though of sheets unfurling in the silent night. Or perhaps of large wings beating.
Descending.
Had anyone been awake, he'd have seen a large, dark creature—serpentine and thin—with vast unfolding wings descend from the night sky till his huge taloned feet met the asphalt. It closed its wings about itself and waited.
It did not wait long. From alleys and darkened streets, people emerged: teenagers, in tight jeans and T-shirts, looking nervous, sidling out of the shadows, glancing over their shoulders as if afraid of being followed. From yet other alleys . . . creatures emerged: long, sinuous, in moist glistening colors between green and blue. They slid, monstrous heads low to the ground, curved fangs like daggers unsheathed in the moonlight. And sometimes dragons seemed to shift to naked teenagers and back again. In and out of the shadows, knit with walls and garbage bins, slithering along the hot cement of the pavements came young men who were dragons and dragons who were nervous young men.
They gathered in front of the Great Sky Dragon. And waited.
At length the dragon spoke, in a voice like pearls rolling upon old gold. "Where is it?" he asked. "Did you get it back?"
The amorphous crowd of humans and dragons moved. There was the impression of someone pushed forward. A rustle of cloth and wings. A murmur of speech.
The young man pushed forward was slender, though there was a suggestion of muscles beneath his leg-molding jeans and of a substantial chest straining the fabric of the white T-shirt. His bare arm displayed a tattoo of a large, green, glistening dragon and his eyes had an oriental fold, though it was clear from his light brown hair, his pale skin that he was not wholly Asian.
He was, however, completely scared. He stood trembling in front of the monster, who brought a vast golden eye to fix on him. "Yesss?" The dragon said. "You have something to report? You've found the Pearl of Heaven?"
The young man shook his head, his straight, lank hair swinging from side to side.
"No?" the dragon asked. Light glimmered on his fangs as he spoke, and his golden eye came very close to the boy, as if to examine him better.
"It wasn't there," the youth said, rapidly, his English not so much accented as retaining the lilt of someone who'd grown up in a community full of Chinese speakers. "We looked all over his apartment. It wasn't there."
The golden eye blinked, vein-laced green skin obstructing it for just a moment. Then the huge head pulled back a little and tilted. "We do not," it said, fangs glimmering, "tolerate failure."
It darted forward, so quickly the movement seemed to leave a green trail in the air like an afterimage. The fangs glistened. A delicate tongue came forth.
The boy's scream echoed a second too late, like bad special effects. It still hung in air as the youth, feet and hands flailing, was lifted high into the night by the great dragon head.
A crunching sound. A brief glimmer. Two halves of the boy tumbling, in a shower of blood, toward the parking lot.
A scurry of cloth and wings followed, as men and dragons scrambled away.
The great golden eyes turned to them. The green muzzle was stained red. "We do not tolerate failure," it said. "Find the Pearl of Heaven. Kill the thief."
It opened its wings and, still looking intently at the crowd, flapped their great green length, till it rose into the dark, dark sky.
In the parking lot below no one moved till the last vestiges of the sinuous green and gold body had disappeared from view.
* * *
Kyrie was worried about Tom. Which was strange, because Tom was not one of her friends. Nor would she have thought she could care less if he stopped showing up at work altogether.
But now he was late and she was worried. . . .
She tapped her foot impatiently, as she stared out at the window of the Athens, the Greek diner on Fairfax Avenue where she'd worked for the last year. Her wavy hair, dyed in multicolored layers, gave the effect of a tapestry. It went well with her honey-dark skin, her exotic features, and the bright red feather earring dangling from her ear, but it looked oddly out of place with the much-washed full-length red apron with "Athens" blazoned in green across the chest.