"Don't shift! Don't shift! Don't shift!" Kyrie told herself. But she wasn't at all sure she was listening, and she kept looking anxiously at her hands, clenched tight on the wheel. Her violet nail polish was cracked and peeled from her run-in with the bathroom door, so it was hard to tell whether the nails were lengthening into claws or not. Part of the reason she kept her nails varnished was to make sure that she saw the first signs of her nails lengthening into claws. Today that wouldn't work.
Outside the window, in the palm of visibility beyond the windshield, white snowflakes swirled. Past that, the flakes became a wall of white, seemingly streaming sideways, shimmering. Somewhere out there, in the nebulous distance, there were twin glimmers of dazzling whiteness, which were the only indications Kyrie had that the headlights of her tiny car were on.
"Maybe we should have walked," Tom said. He shuffled in his seat and leaned close to the snow-covered windshield, as though he could lend her extra vision.
Kyrie gritted her teeth. Maybe they should have, except that the three steps they'd taken on the driveway, their feet had gone out from under them, and they'd only remained upright by holding onto the car. From which point getting in the car had seemed a given. She slowed down—which mostly meant defaulting to the fractional amount of sliding the car seemed to do all on its own—and twisted up her windshield wipers' knob, not that it did much good.
"How can you see?" Tom asked.
"I can't," she said, just as a sudden gust of wind cleared the space ahead enough for her to see they were at the intersection of their street and the next perpendicular one. And that a massive, red SUV was headed for them at speed.
"Don't shift, don't shift, don't shift," Kyrie thought, as a mantra, even as she felt her whole body clench and her muscles attempt to change shapes beneath her skin, to take the form of a panther. Don't shift, don't shift, don't shift, as she struggled to keep her breathing even, and bit into her lower lip with teeth that weren't getting any longer, not at all, not even a little bit. She maneuvered quickly with a tire up on the sidewalk, tilting crazily around the corner, even as the SUV went by them and buried them in a shower of slush. Bits of ice rattled against roof and windows.
A moan from Tom reminded her she wasn't the only one worried about panic setting off a shape-shift reaction. "Perhaps," he said, in the voice of a man working very hard to control himself. "I should get out and . . . fly?"
"What? Shift twice without eating? First thing in the morning? And the second time after getting hurt?" she said, and on that, as he moaned again, she realized she'd said the wrong thing. Shifting shapes demanded a lot of energy and, for some reason, it set off a desperate craving for protein. So did the lightning-fast healing of shifters. All Tom had eaten since shifting was half a dozen cookies. And there was no protein at all around. Except, of course, her. She wasn't about to volunteer. And she knew Tom would rather die than eat a person, much less her.
She pushed the gas, taking advantage of a momentary break in the storm that allowed her to see a major crossroads ahead. Too late, she saw the light was red, but she was sliding through the intersection on the power of her momentum and slamming on the brakes only caused her to fishtail wildly and finally pivot halfway through to the left. Fortunately this turned the car right onto Fairfax, where she was supposed to be. Sliding, she pressed the gas cautiously. Their shifting position caused the snow to seem to shift directions, so that she could now see—more or less—out her front window, but nothing on the side.
I'll never find The George, she thought to herself, and glared at her nails telling them they weren't becoming claws, no they weren't, not even a little bit.
A sudden dazzling purple light to the left made her breathe in relief and confusion. The George's sign was still lit. Thank heavens. Anthony mustn't have closed yet, which meant, of course, that light and heat would still be on, and less trouble than turning them on again. It also made the diner easier to find.
She brought the car to a minimally-sliding, almost-complete stop and took a deep breath. Normally, turning left into the parking lot of The George from Fairfax involved taking your life in your own hands. Fairfax was a four-lane road, the main east-west artery of Goldport, and it was heavily traveled all the time. In addition, mistimed traffic lights ensured there was no break in the two lanes of traffic across which you must cut to make it into the parking lot.
Today, it involved another kind of risk. She couldn't see at all through the storm, to find out if any traffic was oncoming. Just white blankness. True, there were very few vehicles out, but she'd managed to almost run into two of those few on the way here. Kyrie took a deep breath. There was nothing for it but to turn. And she wasn't going to shift. Not at all.
She turned the wheel fully expecting to go into a spin, but the tires grabbed onto some bit of yet unfrozen pavement and propelled them in a queasy slide-lurch across the other lanes of the road and up a gentle ramp into the parking lot.
The snow didn't allow her to see any other cars in the parking lot, and Kyrie didn't care. Bordered by the blind, windowless wall of a bed-and-breakfast and a warehouse, the parking lot gave on to the back door of The George and, through two outlets, to Pride and Fairfax streets both. Right now, she waited until the car stopped sliding, then put it in parking and pulled the park break, and leaned over the wheel, breathing deeply. You're safe, you're safe. Don't shift. There was no point even trying to find parking spots in this mess.
When her racing heart had calmed down, she lifted her head and saw the parking lot—as much as could be seen. Drifting snow spider-webbed by the light of two street lamps and the purple glare from the diner's back sign obscured everything save for the two large supply vans parked in the middle of the lot. She looked to the passenger side of the car, where Tom was blinking and, she suspected, had just opened his eyes after calming himself.
"We should really—" Kyrie started and stopped. Through the snow she'd glimpsed something, half seen. She thought it was . . . but it couldn't be. Surely . . .
"Was that," Tom said, his voice small, "a dragon's wing?"