In the next moment it no longer mattered. The dragon was him. He was the dragon. His body fully shifted, Tom spread his wings fully, feeling the caress of wind and rain on them. He opened his mouth and roared, this time in triumph. His vision sharpened. He was in a vast noncave. And the dragon knew they should go to ground, they should find a cave.
No, the human part of Tom said. No. Not to a cave. We're flying west. Deep west, until we come to a town. We'll follow the highway that will take us to Las Vegas, New Mexico, by early morning. Then . . . cave.
The dragon blinked, confused, because the image in its mind, for a cave, had mattresses and pillows and other things that made sense only to the human. But it had learned, over the years, to trust the ape cowering away at the back of its mind.
It trusted it now, even when it found something wrapped tightly around its front paw. The human mind said they were clothes, and that they shouldn't be discarded.
The dragon harumphed, loudly. Then spread its wings again, sensing the air currents. Half of flying was coasting. If you needed to beat your wings the whole time, you were going to die of tiredness soon.
He felt the currents. He flapped a little. He gained altitude. He headed out of town.
* * *
"Break?" Rafiel asked.
Kyrie was about to shake her head, but stopped. The dinnertime crowd had thinned. Students had left for concerts or movies or whatever it was that college students did with their evenings. And the families, too, had vanished, probably home to their comfy chairs and their TVs.
The only two people in the diner were a man at the back, who seemed to be signing the credit card slip that Kyrie had dropped on his table. And Rafiel.
Kyrie looked at the wall clock. Ten-thirty p.m. That meant there would be a lull till eleven or thereabouts, when the late-night people would start coming in. And she only needed ten minutes.
She backtracked to the counter and put away the carafe she'd just used to give Rafiel a warm up. "Frank, is it okay if I take ten minutes?" she asked.
Frank turned around. He was still glowering. "Fine. It's fine," he said, as if he were saying that it was all completely wrong.
"Is there a problem?" Kyrie asked taken aback.
"No. I just wish your boyfriend had given us some warning before he decided to disappear."
"He's not due for an hour or so. I came in early," Kyrie said. "And he's not my boyfriend."
But it was hardly worth arguing. And Frank looked to be in a worse mood than she'd ever seen him. "I'll take a break now," she said. "If Tom doesn't come in, it's going to be a hellish shift, and that way I'll be able to stay till five a.m., okay?"
Frank shrugged, which looked like consent. He was grilling a bunch of burgers, though Kyrie had no idea why, given the deserted look of the diner. Perhaps he was precooking them a bit to allow him to cook them faster later on. It wasn't any of her business, in any case.
She backtracked to the enclosed-porch addition. Rafiel must have heard, or watched her conversation. He was standing as she approached. "Ready?"
She nodded. And gestured with her head toward the door at the back of the extension that led to the parking lot. She didn't want to go to the parking lot again. Truly, she didn't. On the other hand, neither did she want to talk to Rafiel in front of Frank. Frank was likely to decide that Rafiel was also her boyfriend and hold her responsible for whatever the policeman did in the future.
She had no idea what had gotten into her boss. He was usually grumpy, but not like this. And then there was Anthony's idea, which made her make a face, as she led Rafiel out the back door and onto the parking lot.
This time the parking lot was deserted, there was no smell of blood, and she took care to stay in the shadow of the building, out of the light of the moon.
Rafiel made a sound that seemed suspiciously close to a purr as he got outside, and he stretched his arms. "Do you feel it?" he asked, giving Kyrie a sidelong glance. "Do you feel the call?"
"No," Kyrie said, as curtly as she could. It was a lie, but only in a way. Yeah, she could feel the call, but she could feel the call every night. And it seemed to her Rafiel was speaking of another call. And there, as if on cue, she noticed his smell again. No, not his smell. His smell was soap and a little aftershave, nothing out of the ordinary. But the smell exuding from him right now was a thick, feline musk that made her think of running through the jungles, of hunting, of . . . "You said you had news that pertained to the corpse?" she said, turning her head away.
"Yeah," he said, and looked away from her, as though her turning her head to get fresh air, slightly less tainted by his musk, were an insult. "Yeah. We got a chemical analysis for the green stuff we found."