Dragons Luck

“Right, dragon. Got it,” Harrison said. “I can deal with that . . . later. What I can’t quite get my head around is that you are trying to tell me that, despite having a violent lunatic knocked out practically at my feet, I’m looking for another psycho running around my goddamned town, shoving stakes into people’s hearts!?”

Griffen nodded, the adrenaline rush fading fully now. A wave of sadness filled him, followed by an almost crushing press of exhaustion. Griffen turned toward Tammy, who had gone still in the shifters’ grips.

“One who didn’t leave a murder weapon. Or throw it in the river, because it wasn’t a weapon exactly. She did it by hand . . . or at least limb,” Griffen said.

“And it took the big bad dragon this long to figure it out,” Tammy said.

The arrogance and smugness in her voice was just as ugly as her fury. Griffen took a step forward, and took a tight hold on himself. It wasn’t his way to hit a woman, much less one someone else was holding. But the temptation was there.

“Why, Tammy? What did Slim ever do to you?” Griffen said.

“Nothing, nothing at all. It wasn’t about him. It was about you! Making you hurt because you hurt me, and making you look like the shit you are in front of these idiots who worship you because you are a dragon.”

Tink stepped out of the crowd and up to Tammy. The changeling spokesman had been gentle, coolheaded, serene throughout the entire conclave. One of the biggest helps, in many small ways, to Griffen in his role of moderator.

When he struck the back of his hand across Tammy’s jaw, it was a cold, calculated gesture. The sound of it reverberated through the ballroom, and when he spoke, his anger was as cold and harsh as a blizzard.

“You little hypocrite! If he wasn’t a dragon, you wouldn’t have given him a second glance. You killed a man who had given you no cause, out of spite?” Tink said.

“Tail or the other shifters would have been too hard, they might have healed. Slim was . . . vulnerable. Human. And one of the scale bag’s biggest supporters,” Tammy said.

She shrugged as best she could with two other men holding her arms.

“It sounded like a good idea at the time,” she added. She looked at Harrison, then at Griffen. “The human police will never prove anything. And Griffen won’t do anything, not to me. Will you?”

She pursed her lips and took a half step, hips cocked and small breasts pressed against her shirt. Her voice dropped several registers, still sounding girlish but also husky and wanton. The whole act disgusted Griffen.

“I would never have imagined you so cruel, so manipulative, Tammy. Your bubbly, enthusiastic self is one hell of an act,” Griffen said.

“Oh, but it’s not an act; neither is this. I’m fey, I change with the winds.”

Tink nodded and sighed.

“That is an aspect of all changelings, but Tammy more than most. I expected the winds to blow her despair away, not to push her into . . . this,” Tink said.

Which made a disturbing sense to Griffen. He had seen the mutability of the changeling moods, and it was only one step past that to personality. And the shifts would be all the more dangerous than, say, the mood swings of someone like Lizzy. Where Lizzy was obviously broken, the changelings were just responding to what was natural to them. Making them subtle, deadly.

Griffen felt himself feeling in a very small way grateful that things hadn’t been much, much worse.

“And when I asked you to help the investigation?” Griffen asked.

“The nerve! Asking me to help you, when you didn’t want me, want to help me.”

A tear welled up in the corner of Tammy’s eye and she bit into her bottom lip.

“I did help you, Tammy,” Griffen said.

“Humph. Not enough! So I scried about for a big, nasty-looking power that looked unconnected to the conclave, and led the garou to it. Figured while they were getting the tar beat out of them, I could skip town.”

Griffen nodded, having figured out that much. What he couldn’t figure out was how the other shifters had caught her. The only possibility seemed to be . . .

“You were following the garou, figuring that they were better trackers after all but that you might be able to beat them back to me with any information they found?” Griffen said to the lesser shifters.

There were some embarrassed glances about, and one of those who wasn’t holding Tammy at the time nodded. In other circumstances, Griffen might have smiled at how the young man blushed.

“Not all of us, just one, me, keeping tabs on them. I saw Tammy break away from them as they went into a building, and a few seconds later the sound of fighting. I called the others and decided to follow Tammy. When she caught us, she tried to shove her fingers through my skull, and that kind of clinched the whole thing for us.”

Griffen looked through the crowd for Jay, Tail, and Kane. The various representatives of the shifters gave embarrassed looks and shrugs back. Silently, he agreed with them; there were other things that took precedence just now.

“You are all missing something very important,” Harrison said.