It couldn't have been hard to find a place to lay in ambush for him.
In the next minute, there was a sound of high censure, in some form of Chinese. Oh, bloody hell. And then, out of a darker corner of the warehouse they came, all three of them. Tom had run into them a couple of times, before the time they'd ambushed him in his apartment.
He'd privately nicknamed them Crest Dragon, Two Dragons, and The Other One. And his opinion that their intelligence and their viciousness were inversely proportional did nothing to make him feel better right now. The only good thing, he thought, as they advanced, speaking fast Chinese at him as though he should understand it, was that they were in human form and not dragons.
As usual Crest Dragon—in his human form a young man with hair so well groomed Tom had wondered if it was a wig—took the lead, walking in front of the other two, who flanked him, left and right. Crest Dragon was waving the backpack around, and shouting something in Chinese.
Truth was, even without having any idea what the complaints in Chinese were, Tom understood the gist of the matter completely. And the gist of the matter was that the Pearl of Heaven hadn't been in the backpack.
Exactly what kind of an idiot did they think he was? He glared at them. And how stupid were they, really? Did they think they would not feel . . . it, if it were in that backpack. Tom remembered holding it, remembered the feeling of power and strength and calm and sanity flowing from it. He could feel across miles, and he was sure so would they be able to, if he hadn't taken extraordinary precautions in hiding it. And they'd thought he'd carry it in a back pack?
He glared at them, which was harder to do than it should be, because his eyes seemed to want to focus in different directions. How hard had they hit him on the head? And did they realize how hungry he was?
Crest Dragon came closer, waving his arms in theatrical exasperation. Then he flung the backpack—with force—across the building, grabbed Tom by the front of the T-shirt and, lifting him off the ground, punched him hard on the face.
Tom screamed. The pain radiated from his nose to match the pain on the back of his head, but sharper and sudden, edged around with blood and a feeling that his nose had broken. His vision blurred. If not for the rag in his mouth, he'd have bit his tongue.
Another punch came, immediately after. And he screamed again. He tasted blood and didn't know if it was running from the back of his nose, or from his mouth. And it didn't matter. Pain after pain came. He was vaguely aware of being kicked, punched, and hit with something—he wasn't sure what.
On the floor, curling into a tight ball, he endured each sharp pain as it came, and screamed as loud as he could. In the back of his mind, words ran, words so completely calm and composed that he couldn't think they were his. But the thoughts couldn't have belonged to anyone else. And they made sense.
One was: Scream. Stoicism is for fools. Another, just as sudden, as complete, was: Only idiots inflict pain for pain's sake. And the third, very clear, very sharp, was: I could shift. I could eat them.
It was the third thought that caused him to scream louder than the pain. And the word he would scream, if his mouth hadn't been so firmly gagged, would have been, "No."
Oh, he could shift. He could undoubtedly shift. And the binds on his limbs would break away with the force of the shifting, the greater strength and size of the dragon. Of that he had no doubt.
It was even possible that he could defeat all three of them, even if they too shifted. They were not swift of mind and they always had trouble coordinating attacks. But—and this was a huge but—he wasn't absolutely sure he could prevail. Not as tired and weak as he felt.
And then, worse of all, the dragon was very hungry. Starving. Ravenous. The dragon wanted food. Protein. And Tom didn't think he could live with himself if he succeeded in eating another human being. Or even one of these three fools.
A foot—he thought—crashed against his face. It felt like his forehead exploded. Blood flowed down, making him close his eyes.
He screamed "No," as much at the dragon within as at the pain.
* * *
Kyrie had just fallen asleep when she heard something. At first it was a little sound. Like . . . something scraping.
The sound, in itself almost imperceptible, intruded into her dreams, where she dreamed of mice, nibbling on cardboard. In her dream, she was in the back hallway of the Athens, and she opened the back door to the parking lot to find thousands of mice nibbling on large piles of cardboard boxes.
As she stood there, paralyzed, the nibbling grew louder, and louder, and then the mice swarmed all over her, thousands of little paws all over her, insinuating themselves under her nightshirt, crawling up her belly, tangling in her hair.