“I don’t remember a lot about it. It was some years back,” Alejo said. “And I wasn’t there. I learned about it from Lance.”
Rigo nodded. Alejo’s boyhood buddy was connected with the Midwest Guardian.
Alejo went on, “What I do remember is they caught the shitweasel behind it, and I’m pretty sure his punk-ass is still behind bars. But I’ll call Lance and ask. I haven’t talked to him for a few weeks, whoa, more like a couple months. Good excuse to catch up.”
“Do that,” Rigo said. “I’d appreciate it. And anything else you can dig up about that incident. Tell him we’ve run into something similar here, and if he has any advice, I’m all ears.”
They signed off, promising to talk to each other on the morrow. Then Rigo set his phone down on the nightstand by the bed, picked up his dog whistle, and stepped back out onto the balcony. In the ochre rays of the vanishing sun he jumped off the balcony and shifted to his basilisk, making certain he was invisible to human eyes.
His wings snapped out and he soared out over the rippling waves below. As he banked and picked up the onshore sea breeze, he gained altitude. Below, the little town was laid out in a grid parallel to the shoreline. As he spiraled upward, the last of the sun vanished beyond the sea, and the lighting shifted to shades of cool blue.
In the town, banks of lights flickered on, glowing steadily. All these years later, and electricity still seemed like magic, at least when seen from above.
His heightened senses swept the area, and he sensed where she was. He had to fight the instinct to follow that link.
HOME, said the basilisk. Three times in one day—that was downright chatty!
Not home until she says so, Rigo thought back.
As usual, silence was his answer.
He veered away and dove down to fly along the shore, sweeping his gaze back and forth as he sought any more zombified victims.
He didn’t find any, but he did see what he suspected were pairs of Joey’s shifter rangers prowling the streets. Seeing that they were on the job, Rigo turned out over the sea, flying high over the waters beginning to reflect starlight as he fought to clear his mind.
An island flashed below, clusters of lights at either end, then faded behind him. When he began to tire, he banked for the flight back. Later on he turned in, wrestling through a long night with broken sleep.
He gave it up when he sensed impending dawn.
Tonight, he thought. He’d see her again. He just had to kill the endless hours between now and then.
He decided to take another flight, this time not to scan for zombies—Joey’s teams seemed to be on top of that—but to seek other mythic shifters. Specifically any red dragon slithering through the skies. He was aware that he was spoiling for a fight with Long Cang . . . but sadly, the renegade red dragon did not cooperate. He was nowhere to be found.
Rigo returned, and whiled away the day as best as he could as the clock crawled from hour to hour.
When it was time to go, Rigo drove back into town, but parked at the end of the street, where he could see the door to the bakery. He waited in the darkness as people began to appear. He recognized Bird with tall Mikhail the silver dragon, then a string of strangers, then a knot of people among whom he glimpsed Jen’s blonde head, accompanied by Nikos. So the entire posse was turning out in force. Oh yeah. This was apparently a regular thing.
Rigo watched them go inside. One or two stragglers appeared. Then nothing.
He was about to give up when a lone car pulled up, and a small, slight, straight-backed figure he’d know anywhere got out with Doris and Joey, and went into the bakery.
Godiva was here.
Rigo made himself count to fifty in English and Spanish, so he wouldn’t enter right on her heels and look as if he’d been tailing her, but he didn’t want to wait so long he might miss her reading. So he rushed the last few numbers, then left his car, his heart pounding.
At last, at last . . . He reminded himself of the disastrous meeting the morning before, and tried to squash down the hope blooming inside him.
Take a breath, he scolded himself as he let himself into the bakery. The front was empty, the display cases bare. Light shone beneath a door at the back. A man’s voice reached him.
“ . . . the girl-assassin cozied her luscious breasts against Stryker’s rock-hard abs. Then she pressed her face into his manly chest hair and moaned, “Oh, Weelhelm, Weelhelm, if you weel give mee just wan naight of pleezhoor, I can face the firing squad smiling for not keeling you . . .”
Rigo backed up a step, looking around the darkened shop in horror. Was he in for a night of that?
But Godiva was in there.
He forced himself to recover that step. To get his chance at last to see her, arrive at some understanding, he would face any torture.
From the sound of it, he was in for the third degree.