Draw One In The Dark(126)
"We'll leave my son out of this," Edward said.
"I see. Will we?"
"Yes."
"Your son caused much damage and death to our . . . organization."
Edward said nothing. What was he supposed to say?
After a long while, Lung sighed. "I see. But you are returning the object in dispute."
"Yes."
"Well, then I shall wait anxiously. I will see you in how long?"
"About ten minutes," Edward said, and hung up the phone. He looked at the light growing brighter and brighter in east, every minute. If he was very lucky, then they wouldn't summon the Great Sky Dragon this close to dawn. Or if they did, he wouldn't make it here.
If he was very lucky.
He felt he could stand just about everything short of facing that huge, enigmatic presence once again.
* * *
The panther scented the corpses right away. Fortunately, they were a little past ripe, even for its tastes. Kyrie was grateful for this.
Locked at the back of the huge feline mind, she could feel the huge paws tread carefully through the undergrowth, and she could feel the big feline head swaying, while it tasted the air. Death. Death nearby.
The death smelled enough like what the animal recognized as its own mortality to slow down its steps, and it only continued forward because Kyrie forced it to.
But it continued. Around the lushest part of the vegetation and toward a little clearing of sorts, in the midst of it all.
The vegetation that had once grown here had been torn out, unceremoniously, by the roots, rose bush and fern, weed and bulb, all of it had been pulled up and tossed, unceremoniously, in a huge pile beside the clearing.
What there was of the earth there had then been turned. Graves. Kyrie could smell them, or rather the panther could.
Kyrie was sure the smell would be imperceptible to her human nose, but her feline nose could smell it, welting up through the imperfectly compacted earth—the smell of decay, of death, of that thing that inevitably all living things became.
Only this death had the peculiar metallic scent that Kyrie had learned to recognize as the smell of shifters. The people laid to rest here had been shifters. Her kind. She looked at the ground with the feline eyes, and forced the feline paw to make a scratching motion on the loose earth.
It didn't take long. The hand wasn't much more than fifteen inches down.
The panther wanted to run away and to forget this, to pretend it had never existed.
But Kyrie forced it to walk, slowly, ponderously, to where Kyrie had left her clothes. Kyrie would shift. And then she would call the police.
But before she got to where her clothes lay, she found herself enveloped by a cloud of green dust. It shimmered in the morning air, raining down on her.
Pollen. It had to be pollen. Just pollen. She wished it to be pollen. But she could feel the panther's head go light, and indistinct forms take shape before her shifted eyes. Game, predators, small fluffy creatures and large ones, all teeth and claws, formed in front of the panther's eyes, coming directly from her brain.
Kyrie could feel the huge feline body leap and recoil, as if the things it were seeing were normal.
And then . . . And then she saw the beetle. It was coming through the vegetation, blue-green carapace shining under the morning light.
Not quite sure what she was doing, Kyrie forced the panther throat to make a sound it had never been designed for. She screamed.
* * *
The Chinese restaurant looked dismal grey in the morning light, as Edward got out of the cab in front of it.
As he was paying the fare, the cabby gave him an odd look. "They're closed, you know," he said. "They only open for lunch and that's not for seven hours."
"I know," Edward said, giving the man a generous tip and handing the credit card slip back. When you're not sure you're going to live, you can be very generous. "I'm meeting someone."
The cabby frowned. And older man, with Anglo-saxon features, he was one of those men whose expressions are slow and seemingly painful, as though their faces had been designed for absolute immobility. "Only," he said, "they've found corpses in this parking lot, all the time. I've read about it in the paper. Are you sure you want . . . ?"
Edward nodded. He wanted to explain he was doing it for his son, but that made it sound way too much like expected a medal for doing what any decent father would do. Brave death to keep his son safe. Only . . . he supposed he hadn't been a decent father. Or not long enough for it to be unremarkable.
"I'm sure," he said. "I'll call you for the trip back," he said. "Your name is on the receipt, right?"