city of dragons 02 - fire storm

by Val St. Crowe

  “I can already take care of myself,” said Connor.

  “Be serious,” I said to him.

  “You think I’m a big wimp.” He sounded hurt.

  “I never said that.” I turned around so that I could see him between the passenger’s and driver’s seats. “I think you’re incredibly brave. You volunteered to come along on this mission, and that’s huge.”

  “Well, after we faced down that vampire gang on the beach, I’ve felt different. It was, um, what’s the word? Empowering.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at him.

  “If I get really good at magic, maybe I’ll just start being a vampire killer on my own,” he said. “I can’t spend the rest of my life working the front desk at your hotel.”

  I laughed. “I doubt being a vampire killer is going to pay better.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s not exactly lucrative.” He scrunched down in the seat, thinking about it.

  “What did that vampire mean when he said that your blood was tainted?” said Felicity.

  “Is that what he said?” I said. “I thought he said my blood tainted him.”

  “Is that different?”

  “I have no idea what he meant,” I said.

  “He said you were linked to one of his kind,” said Felicity. “Do you think he means Lachlan?”

  “What?” said Connor. “Lachlan’s a vampire? Since when?”

  “I didn’t tell you that?” I said to him. “Sorry.”

  “Has he always been a vampire?”

  “Well, since before I met him anyway,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Connor. “You’re dating a vampire? But we were going to be vampire killers. And now both of you are sleeping with the enemy.”

  Felicity laughed. “You’re just jealous.”

  “Oh, you know it,” said Connor. “Where’s my hot vampire boyfriend?”

  * * *

  “We’re so pleased, Penny, really,” said Melinda on the phone. She had called me in tears, saying she’d just heard the news that The Dungeon had been burned from the inside out. Apparently, Jenna was really upset about it. Melinda, on the other hand, was overjoyed. She wouldn’t stop thanking me.

  “I just didn’t want the dragon youth to be in danger,” I said. “I wanted to do what I could.”

  “And it’s wonderful,” she said. “Are you sure we can’t pay you?”

  “Positive,” I said. “Anyway, it’s not the solution to the problem. The Dungeon may be gone, but that doesn’t mean that Jenna and the others aren’t going to go searching for vampires elsewhere or that they aren’t going to go out looking for some other dangerous pastime. It’s what younger dragons do.”

  “I guess you’d know that better than me,” she said. “I was mated so young, and then the babies came along so quickly, and… well, I just never did any of that. I feel like I don’t even understand Jenna.” She sighed.

  “I think it’s typical for parents not to understand their children,” I said gently. “I’m sure you’re doing the best you can, and I’m sure your best is amazing.”

  “You’re sweet to say so. You were always sweet, Penny.”

  “Was I?” I wasn’t sure. Alastair told me that I was a spoiled, selfish, shallow brat. I knew that he’d said that to manipulate me, but it wouldn’t have been so effective if part of me hadn’t already believed it.

  “Of course you were. And now you’re so… independent and strong and capable.” She let out a breath. “You really have it all, don’t you?”

  What? I was an outcast to dragon culture. But… well, it wasn’t as if my life was empty. I had my hotel. I had Felicity and Connor. “I’m lucky,” I murmured. “But you’re lucky to have your family.”

  “I am,” she said. “Oh, Penny, I can’t thank you enough for this. And I really want to do something. If you won’t accept money—”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Really, it’s fine.”

  “Maybe you need something for your hotel? Maybe you could let me buy it?”

  “Tell you what,” I said, “How about we just say you owe me one? If it’ll make you feel better.”

  “All right, sure,” she said. “Anything you need. You let me know.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  We exchanged a few more pleasantries—and she thanked me nearly eighty more times—before we hung up.

  I had been pacing in the kitchen of my apartment, where I was browning ground beef and onions for nachos. I was starving after doing all that magic.

  Felicity and Connor were lounging in the living room, arguing over the music. I’d put something on, but neither of them approved, so they were trying to find something better.

  I spread tortilla chips out on a parchment-paper-lined cookie sheet. “Hey guys, just put something on and forget about it, huh?”

  Felicity came over to the kitchen. It was only separated from the living room by a half-wall partition. It honestly wasn’t much of a kitchen, just a long line of appliances and a sink against one wall.

  “You’re off the phone?” she said.

  I nodded. “Yeah, Melinda’s really grateful we took care of The Dungeon.”

  “Good to know,” said Felicity. “About this being-joined-with-Lachlan thing.”

  “Look, that vampire was really old,” I said. “Sometimes when they’re that old, they go insane.”

  “Really?” said Connor from the living room. Suddenly, the music shifted to something bright and poppy. He made a triumphant noise.

  Felicity rolled her eyes. “He really wanted to suck your blood, and then he didn’t. And we got away, and I don’t think that’s just because he was crazy.”

  “Why do they go insane?” asked Connor, coming into the kitchen. He leaned over me and snagged a tortilla chip.

  I slapped him away. “You know how there’s that nasty, empty undercurrent to everything?”

  “What?” said Felicity.

  “You know how when everything’s okay in your life, when you’ve accomplished all the things you wanted to accomplish, and there’s no drama, nothing to worry about, you sometimes look around and think, ‘Is this all there is?’”

  Felicity and Connor both furrowed their brows.

  “Well, anyway, over hundreds or thousands of years, that gets pretty intense, or so I hear. Drives vampires nuts.” I picked up the skillet containing the ground beef mixture, which I’d seasoned up with a taco seasoning blend that I’d learned when I took a cooking class at the local college. I was actually a pretty good cook, but I almost never did it. I began spooning it over the tortilla chips.

  “You’re avoiding the subject of Lachlan,” said Felicity.

  “Because he’s a train wreck,” I said. “He’s a walking, talking disaster, and getting involved with him, when I’m basically a train wreck myself—”

  “Seems to me you’re already involved,” said Felicity. “You’re sleeping together.”

  “What?” said Connor. “Why does no one tell me anything?”

  “We’re not sleeping together,” I said. “We slept together. Once. Past tense.” I pointed at the refrigerator. “Someone get the shredded cheese out, please.”

  Connor opened the refrigerator. “Was he terrible in bed or something?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You want the cheddar or the Mexican blend?” he said.

  “Both,” I said.

  He handed the bags of cheese to me. “So why is it past tense?”

  “Because he didn’t call me,” I said. “He told me he would call me, and he didn’t. And I’m too old for games like that. I’m too old to call him up and find out that he says he wants to sleep through Wednesday or whatever the hell he told me, and… I’m not joined to him. I’m just not.”

  * * *

  But then later, after Felicity and Connor were gone, when it was me alone in my house, and midnight was fast approaching, and I couldn’t sleep, I called Lachlan again, anyway.

  Because I was weak. Because I couldn’
t help myself. Because…

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Listen,” I said. “I know you probably don’t want to hear from me, because you’re so busy working yourself through the night so that you don’t have to call me or acknowledge whatever the hell happened between us, and I’m only calling because I want you to know that I don’t care. We should just pretend that it never happened anyway.”

  He laughed on the other side of the line. “You’re really pissed off, aren’t you?” His words were slurred.

  “Are you drunk?”

  He laughed again.

  “Oh, forget this. I’m not talking to you anymore. I’m not having a conversation with you if you’re completely inebriated.” I hung up the phone.

  I threw it down on the couch in my living room.

  I was shaking.

  God damn it, I didn’t need this drama in my life. I didn’t need it at all. Why had I let myself get involved with this man, anyway?

  I thought about the two of us lying in my bed together, only two nights ago, and how nice it had been to be wrapped in his arms, and now it was all ashes in my mouth, and…

  I felt like crying.

  I refused to do it. No tears over this. I had been through worse than this. I had faced down my abusive ex-husband. I had gone toe-to-toe with a serial killer while drugged on tranquilizers. Just tonight, I had beheaded an ancient vampire. I could handle something as stupid as the guy that I liked not liking me back.

  Because that was what it had to be, right?

  Maybe there would be some other spin on it, like that he was trying to protect me or that he was too confused to handle the new direction, but in the end, it would come down to one thing—he wasn’t willing to put being with me ahead of whatever excuses he could think of. Which meant that he didn’t care about me enough.

  I didn’t want to think about it anymore, so I put on my pajamas, found something to watch (a bloody horror movie, which would hopefully not remind me of anything romantic at all), and curled up in front of the screen. I hoped I’d fall asleep while it was playing.

  But I was barely through the credits when there was a knock on my back door.

  I went through the apartment and opened the door to the balcony.

  Lachlan was standing there. He was wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a white tank top that clung to his chest.

  “Did you drive here?” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He was having trouble standing, he was so drunk. He reached out for the doorway to steady himself.

  “If I shut the door in your face, are you going to get back in your car and drive again?”

  “I thought I was going to be able to deal with it, but it was just like last year.” He hung his head.

  “What are you talking about?” I said, standing aside to let him come inside. I couldn’t let him go out there and drive and kill himself.

  He took a stumbling step inside, and then he started to fall.

  I reached out and caught him, steadied him.

  He laughed, but then he pushed away from me, and collided with the wall. He let himself slide down it until he was crouched there. “I’m sorry, Penny. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t try and talk.” I reached down to haul him up. “We’re just going to get some water into you, or maybe you should throw up or something, and then you can sleep on the couch.”

  He pushed my hands away. “I should explain,” he slurred.

  “No, it’s fine. I get it. You’re not ready for a relationship, and I’m not really ready either, so there’s no reason for you to bother going through it.”

  “You’re not ready?” He looked up at me. “Are you saying that because it’s what you really feel or because you’re angry with me?”

  I let out an exasperated sigh. “Lachlan, just let me help you up.”

  “It was today,” he said.

  “What was today?”

  “Two years ago today,” he said. “Unless it’s midnight. I was waiting for midnight, but it didn’t seem like it was ever going to come. Tell me it’s midnight, maybe it will be better.”

  I sat down in front of him, furrowing my brow. “What happened two years ago?” Then I shook my head. “You don’t have to say. This is the day your daughter…” I didn’t finish. It was the day she died. The day she’d been killed by Lachlan’s stepson.

  He nodded. And then he hung his head between his knees.

  “Lachlan,” I reached out and touched him tentatively. I felt awkward now. I didn’t know if he would want me to touch him more or not. And I was reeling. This was why he was drunk and crazy? Why had I assumed it was all about me? Maybe I really was spoiled and self-centered.

  “Last year, it was bad.” He was speaking to the floor, his head still between his knees. “But I think maybe I blocked it out because it was too bad to even really fathom. And then this year, I could feel it coming, but I just kept pushing the thought aside, because I didn’t want to deal with it. I wanted to run from it. And then you. And biting you and kissing you and making love to you and—I thought maybe… maybe I dodged it. Maybe this year, I’d be all right. But then looking back, when I see the way I was being with you, I realize it was already affecting me. It was making me reckless and impulsive. And you don’t even think you’re ready for a relationship, and here I am, and I’m just…” He raised his head to look at me. “I need you, and I have no right—”

  I wrapped my arms around him. “Shh.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered into my hair.

  I hugged him tighter. “It’s okay.” I pulled back, and I brushed his hair away from his forehead. “And it is midnight.”

  He gave me a small smile.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “She had big blue eyes,” Lachlan was saying, a smile twisted over his lips. “And she adored me. I never felt anything like adoration before, you know? She’d see me pull into the driveway, and she’d start squealing. She’d run to the door, and she’d be waiting for me there, jumping up and down, and I’d pick her up, and she’d wrap her tiny little arms around me, and…” He bit down hard on his bottom lip. Tears were starting to spill out of his eyes.

  I hugged him. We were sitting on the couch in my living room, and the angle was awkward. I was smaller than him too. I didn’t feel like I could comfort him.

  But he slid down, his cheek against the slope of my breast, his arms around my waist. He gazed out at the dark room. “She was perfect, Penny. And the idea of her being gone is too much to handle and still exist. Nothing makes sense anymore, and yet everything keeps going on and on.”

  I stroked his hair. “I’m sorry. I don’t know exactly how you feel, of course, but I’ve experienced loss too. I know that feeling—the feeling that the world should have stopped, but it didn’t.”

  He turned. Now his head was in my lap. “You do know how I feel. You lost children too.”

  I swallowed. “Not the same,” I managed.

  “Worse,” he said, reaching up to touch my face. “In some ways, worse. I got to play with her. I got to teach her to ride a tricycle. I got to hear her tell me stories and call me Daddy and watch her run and play. I got four years, Penny. You got less than me. And it happened more than once.”

  Tears were starting to flow down my face. “Don’t, Lachlan. Don’t. I can’t…”

  “Sorry.” He was crying too. He forced himself into a sitting position and he pulled me into his lap, and we clutched each other. “I shouldn’t have said anything to you.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said, my breath hitching. “Because it’s good of you to acknowledge it. People don’t know how hard miscarriages are.”

  His arms tightened around me. “No one knows anyone else’s pain. Not really. And everyone’s walking around with it. We’re all scarred and ruined somewhere.”

  “It isn’t worse for me,” I said. “What happened to your little girl, it’s the most horrible thing I can think of.”

  “No,” he said, and he sucke
d in a breath. “There are worse things. Things in war-torn countries. Things that happened in the past. The capacity of the human race to commit atrocities—”

  “Does thinking that help? You’re just minimizing your pain.”

  “I guess sometimes I look for a reason to keep going.” He eyed me. “How do you do it? After everything you’ve been through. Your parents. Your babies. Your insane ex-husband. How?”

  I rested my cheek against his chest. I sniffled. “I guess I just channel it elsewhere. Like I didn’t get to take care of my babies, so I try to take care of other people to fill that desire.”

  “You would have been an amazing mother,” he said. “Scratch that. You were an amazing mother. You still did it. You were a mother to them while they were alive.”

  I bit down on my lip. “Thank you,” I said in a choked voice. “And you were an amazing father.”

  He smiled sadly. “And what are we now?”

  I kissed his forehead. “We help people. We solve murders. We do good things.”

  He gazed into my eyes. “God, I want to believe that.”

  “Believe it,” I said.

  * * *

  We slept together in my bed, but that was all we did. Sleep.

  Okay, maybe there was a little bit of kissing.

  But not much, because Lachlan was incredibly trashed, and he fell asleep pretty quickly. He slept like a brick, sprawled out on the bed, taking up all my space.

  And I didn’t mind.

  It was nice, having him there. I liked the invasion of my space. And I didn’t mind taking care of him. I liked having people to take care of. It was like I had told Lachlan. Being pregnant had ignited my maternal instinct, but then there had been no child to lavish that affection on, so I’d turned to other needy people for an outlet. It felt good to take care of people who needed it.

  And yeah, Lachlan was a train wreck. But my anger had melted away. I couldn’t blame him for what he was. He was a victim of tragedy and circumstance, the same as me. We were both wounded souls, and we were just doing our best to try to move forward.