The gryphon stood at ease. As he rested his hands on his hips, his jacket parted to reveal a glimpse of his two gun holsters. In the last week, with Gideon moving in, and his friends from both the WDVC and the army dropping by with the casual air of those hoping to be fed, Alice was growing used to the sight of large muscular people wandering around armed. She and Gideon had also bought a larger fridge and a larger dish set.
“I know what you meant,” said Bayne. “You found your friend murdered, discovered your mate and caught a killer, all in less than eighteen hours. To top it all off, the killer was someone you knew and had trusted for years. You think you weren’t entitled to throw a little bit of a fit?”
She chuckled. “Well, when you put it like that.” Then she sobered. “I keep trying to make sense of what Alex was saying at the end, and I can’t. I think he was quoting the Bible, of all things.”
“Don’t waste your energy on trying to make sense of it,” said Bayne. “If you’ll excuse my language, the dude was effing nuts. You wouldn’t believe what we found in the basement of his townhouse. He had made plans to start up the True Colors support group before he ever took that first trip down to Jacksonville seven years ago. He had books and scribblings from all the major religions, and prayers painted on the walls and ceilings. He’d added up and subtracted all kinds of numbers that told him the pope was the fricking antichrist. He had this whole messianic delusion going on, about repopulating the Earth with chameleon Wyr after he had sacrificed what he most loved to the gods—his people. He planned to keep on killing until he had gotten some kind of divine sign. I’m telling you—Whack. O.”
They had found more than books and scribbling in the basement. Stewart, his mother Leigh, and Jim Welch had been found bound and gagged, but alive. Alex’s guards had been looking to keep a killer out of his house, not to keep Alex inside. He had given them the slip by going out his back gate when he had come after Alice. If he had not been quite so obsessed with form and ritual, Stewie and his family wouldn’t have survived. As it was, he had told them once he had sacrificed Alice, he would be able to kill the rest of them over the next several days. Leigh told Alice, in a phone call several days later, that Alex had seemed astonished at their distress. He couldn’t understand why they weren’t aware of the honor he was bestowing upon them.
“It’s all so hard to believe,” Alice whispered. She shuddered and rubbed her bare arms. Alex had always been a little tight-assed, a little too buttoned up, but no one had ever conceived of him as being anything other than normal.
“Well, hell,” said the gryphon. He regarded her with chagrin. “Gideon’s gonna shoot me. This was supposed to be your night out for fun, and here I’ve got you looking like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s all right,” she told him. “Talking it through is much better than trying to ignore it. It’s just going to take a while to process.”
She spotted Gideon’s light blond head over the crowd. He was working his way back to them. The joy she felt as she watched him approach was almost too much for her body to contain.
Bayne had also turned and caught sight of Gideon. The gryphon told her in a quiet voice, “We all think very highly of him. He’s one of the finest men I know.”
Her eyes fixed on her mate, Alice said, “He’s one of the finest men I know, too.”
At last Gideon reached them. He presented her with a plate piled high with delicacies and petit fours. In his other hand he cradled two glasses of champagne. “Sorry,” he said to Bayne as Alice took one of the glasses from him. “I didn’t think I could juggle three glasses without dropping something.”
“S’all right,” said Bayne. “Champagne’s not my drink.”
Gideon gave Alice a swift kiss. “What were you two talking about while I was gone?”
She and the gryphon looked at each other. “Mating,” she said. “And how fast it can hit.”
“I blame it on the air,” said Gideon. He winked at her. “There’s an awful lot of Wyr mating pheromones floating around these days.”
“Well, you both look very happy, so good on you,” said Bayne, with a hearty clap to Gideon’s shoulders that threatened the plate of food. “As for me, I just might start wearing a gas mask.”
At that moment, the crowd parted and the procession of the gods started. They were led by the god Taliesin who was portrayed this year by a slender male. Taliesin was followed in short order by the other gods, each sumptuously costumed, and the crowd in the hall swept into a low bow as they passed.