The refrain in Tom's mind had changed to oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, and he jumped up from the seat. Kyrie and Rafiel were being stalked by someone called the executioner for whatever the Ancient Ones were.
He ducked into the storage room and dialed Kyrie on his cell phone. There was no answer. It rolled over much too fast, in fact. He bit his tongue, thinking. Kyrie never charged her cell phone. Which meant, he had to get to her—somehow.
Oh, maybe Old Joe was dreaming it all up, but this seemed a bit complex, and the man's hesitations about time and place were much too realistic, and unless Old Joe's dreams came in technicolor and surround sound, Tom didn't think it was a dream at all. No. Tom thought that Old Joe was somehow trying to reassure him and claim loyalty points for not having turned him in.
Had he not turned them in? Who knew. Maybe he had. Or maybe he had turned Kyrie and Rafiel in. His primary loyalty seemed to be to Tom, who fed him and looked after him. Everyone else was a distant concern. He might care for Kyrie because Tom did. On the other hand, Kyrie thought that Tom encouraged Old Joe to hang around, and endangered them, and she made no secret of her feelings.
Tom came out of the storage room and dove behind the counter, kitten in hand. "Here," he told Keith, handing over the small, orange fluffball, and ripping off his apron over his head.
"What am I supposed to do with him?" Keith asked, holding the puzzled creature, who was meowing and hissing at having his sleep disturbed. "No matter how much Old Joe wants him, I'm not grilling him."
"No," Tom said. "He's not dinner. Just put him somewhere. I have to go out . . . uh . . . for a few minutes. I'll be right back, I swear."
Keith looked closely at the kitten who was wearing the universal kitten expression that means let them come, all together or single file. I have my claws. "How am I supposed to keep him from wandering around? Let me tell you how many health violations—"
"Oh, I'm sure. But if we let him go, Old Joe is likely to eat him. Just tie him up or something. Some sort of a leash."
"A leash? A cat?" Keith asked, in the vaguely horrified voice of someone who's just been instructed to confront a savage creature.
"Well, something," Tom said. "Please? And mind the place. I need to go out. Truly." He looked doubtfully at the kitten trying to claw at Keith. "Give him some food or something. Cats stay where they're fed, right?" And to Keith's look of incredulity. "Look, just try."
Tom had wanted a pet. The closest he'd come to having a pet was having fish. But those were more like animated swimming plants, as far as he was concerned. From the ages of five to ten, he had spent hours dreaming of various pets, from cats to horses. But his parents' lifestyle did not include time for animals. Truth be told, it barely included time for Tom. So he didn't have much idea what one did with pets, beyond a vague idea you told them what to do and they did it. At least, that seemed to be the interaction of owner and dog that he observed at various parks and in various streets. Except perhaps in the matter of bodily functions, dogs pretty much obeyed. It was all go here, come here, and stay. And by and large, the various mutts did. Surely cats couldn't be that much different. He had a lurch of doubt when he realized that save for a very old lady with a hairless cat on a leash, he'd never seen a cat be walked. "Er . . . just don't let him poop anywhere, okay?"
"Right . . ." Keith said in that tone of voice that indicated that as soon as Tom left the diner, he was calling the men in white coats to go after him. And Tom thought he very well might, but it didn't matter. He ran down the hallway to the back door, and out in the blinding storm where, more by instinct than by sight, he found the car where Kyrie had parked it. Fishing in his pocket, he found the car keys. He undressed, shivering under the snow and shoved his clothes and shoes into the car trunk, and shut it with a resounding thud, even as he felt his skin bunch and prickle with cold. He hooked the keys to a link in a bracelet that Kyrie had made for him. It was silver, but made of the sort of elastic weave—somewhat like chain mail but not really—that adjusted to his changes in size as he shifted from man to dragon and back again.
A brief thought of Conan came to him, with a sharp stab of annoyance. Don't let Conan see him. Don't let Conan realize he was gone. The last thing he needed, right now, was Conan's intervention, or to have to drag Conan with him on this dangerous expedition. Conan was a complication he didn't need. He wished with all his strength, with everything he could, that the Red Dragon shifter wouldn't realize he was gone until Tom was well away.
And then he forced his body—unwilling and fighting and screaming with pain and begging for more time to recover—into the series of spasmodic coughs and twists that changed the shape of bones and muscles, and made wings grow from the middle of the shoulders.
Wings that spread and flapped, once—twice—powerfully, lifting the dragon aloft in the blinding snow.