“Oh, well, then I suppose I’ll have to cut you,” he said. “I’ll cut you, and you’ll shift to heal. I hope I don’t go overboard with you. It’s such a bother hunting down a new dragon. I’d be much happier to just keep you. So, I sure wish you’d cooperate.”
I looked at Lachlan’s motionless form. He had to be okay, didn’t he? He was a vampire, and vampires healed. He wasn’t burned. He still had his head. He was fine. He’d need time to recover, though.
And with these shackles on, I didn’t stand a chance.
Anthony said he’d take them off of me to allow me to shift. Once I was in dragon form, I’d be better able to fight him. It was my only chance at this point.
Glaring at him, I picked up the stupid sandwich and shoved it in my mouth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I awoke lying next to the pool. I wasn’t wearing my shackles. I wasn’t wearing anything.
I flung an arm over my breasts, pressed my legs together.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” Anthony murmured, his voice thick. “More of that, please. It’s quite nice when you try to hide, even though you can’t.” He was leering at me, aiming a dart gun at my head. Unlike the last time I’d been in here, the room was brightly lit. There were fluorescent lights overhead. I could see that the doors and walls and ceiling were all reinforced with steel. I would be strong in dragon form, but not strong enough to burst through that. And it wasn’t as if it was flammable material either. Damn it.
I felt like vomiting. How dare he do this to me? How dare he strip everything away from me, including my dignity? I hated him in that moment. I hadn’t had… emotions toward him before, not exactly, but now all I felt towards him was blinding hatred. I was going to kill him.
I tried to reach out with my magic, but it was gone.
It had been sucked completely out of me by those damned shackles. If I wanted magic, I’d have to recharge by shifting.
“Go on,” he said. “Climb into the water and shift.” He gestured to the pool with the tip of his dart gun.
The minute I shifted, he was going to shoot me with a tranquilizer dart. I wouldn’t stand a chance.
I wasn’t sure what to do. But I wanted the water to cover me. It wouldn’t hide me, but I would feel covered, and that was something anyway.
So, I slipped into the water.
But I didn’t shift. I treaded water and stared him down.
“You’re not shifting,” he said.
I decided to start swimming.
He was standing next to the ladder.
I swam to the opposite side of the pool.
“What are you doing?” he said, looking annoyed.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t need to talk to him. I needed to figure a way out of this. I treaded water down here. Maybe shifting wasn’t the best idea after all, not if he was going to shoot me the minute I shifted. Maybe I should stay in human form. Try to get away. Get help.
He started to walk around the pool. “Now, now, Penny, if you don’t shift, then I’m going to have to get out the knife and cut you. And I thought we agreed that you didn’t want it that way.”
“First you’ll have to catch me,” I said, and I pushed off from the side of the pool and rocketed through the water, heading straight for the ladder.
He started to run after me.
I reached the ladder just as he was rounding the corner of the pool. I hauled myself out of the water.
He was just behind me.
Naked and dripping, I ran out of the room.
“Penny!” he roared.
I really wished that asshole would stop using my first name. I darted up the hallway, and I ducked into the kitchen. I made a beeline for the door that I’d entered through.
The door knob wouldn’t turn in my hands. Locked.
I turned.
Anthony rushed through the kitchen door. He swept a wicked-looking butcher knife off of the counter and dove for me.
I jumped out of the way, but there was nowhere to go. I was trapped here. I backed into the wall, trying to make myself small, trying to cover my body with my arms and legs, protect the sensitive parts.
He slashed at me.
The knife bit into the skin of my arms. I screamed.
He laughed.
I slid down the wall to the floor, making myself even smaller.
Above me, he was all shadows and the shimmering blade. I saw hints of his bared teeth and his glinting scales. I had never thought of drakes as real monsters, just people who’d been dealt an unfortunate hand, but he was a monster. He brought the knife down again.
Pain shot through me. I shrieked.
“Shifting starting to sound pretty good about now?”
I gritted my teeth, glaring up at him defiantly. “Are you kidding? My ex-husband did far worse than this to me on a regular basis. You think I can’t take a few little shallow wounds?”
He was surprised by my insolence. Only for a second.
But a second was all it took for me to piston upwards, driving my fist into his groin.
His eyes bulged, and he let out a small whining noise. The knife clattered to the floor.
And I was up and running, out of the room.
There was a door in the living room, maybe I could—
“You little bitch!” he roared, and his voice was getting closer.
He was on the move.
I rushed down the hallway and ducked into the dark bathroom. I waited.
He lumbered into the hallway. “When I find you, Penny Caspian, you are going to be so sorry that you didn’t cooperate.”
Now that I wasn’t moving, I could feel all the places he’d cut me. Some of them weren’t as shallow as I’d claimed. I was really bleeding, and they all hurt.
I bit down on my lip, but the pain there paled compared to everything else.
Even if I managed to get out of that door in the living room, what was I going to do? Run around naked and bleeding, try to flag down a car on the road? The road was probably a quarter mile away. Close enough to walk, but if he caught me— The door to the bathroom flew open.
I flattened myself against the wall in the darkness, holding my breath.
“Where the hell are you?” he muttered.
I shut my eyes.
“Can’t have gone far,” he said. “I’ll find you. Don’t worry about that.” His voice was moving away.
I opened my eyes.
“This is all your fault anyway. You and that stupid cop, poking your noses where they don’t belong. And then you showed up at the shelter, and I heard you on your phone in the parking lot, talking about how you knew it was me. Well, if you’d just minded your own business, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”
I made a face in the darkness. It was my fault? He was the one who’d made all the stupid mistakes. He was the one who’d shown up at the search party for Dahlia Brooks. He was the one who’d given Sophia’s earrings to the girl who worked the desk at the shelter.
He was moving down the hallway. “Are you looking for your little cop friend? Don’t worry. I got rid of him while you were unconscious.”
Got rid of Lachlan? What the hell did that mean? I felt my body temperature start to rise, and it seemed like the places where I’d been cut stung even worse. Was Lachlan dead?
So help me, if that bastard had killed Lachlan—
I tore across the hallway, back into the pool room.
I dove into the water, and the minute that I was completely submerged, I allowed my dragon form to overtake me.
Seconds later, I surged out of the water, my wings dripping. Magic filled me. Strength filled me. Rage filled me.
I hovered in the air over the pool, flapping my wings. I didn’t see how the hell I was going to fit through that doorway.
I blew a ball of fire through it instead.
“What the hell?” came Anthony’s voice.
I chuckled a dragon-y laugh, which isn’t much of a laugh at all, at least not to anyone who isn’t a dr
agon. I realized that he had been capturing young, immature dragons. Dragons who hadn’t mated. Dragons who couldn’t breathe fire.
He didn’t know who he was messing with.
He appeared in the doorway, and he’d gotten rid of the knife. Now, he had the tranquilizer dart gun and he was pointing it at me.
From my new perspective, he seemed so small. I breathed a wall of fire at his tiny form.
He dodged the fire, going sprawling on the slippering floor next to the pool. But as he fell, he managed to get off a dart.
I flew higher, slamming into the ceiling, barely evading the dart.
“You fire-breathing bitch, I’m going to enjoy tasting your meat!” he screamed.
In response, I blew another wall of fire at him.
At the same time, he shot off another dart.
I felt it pierce my flank. I faltered, falling a few inches before I recovered, flapping my wings and maintaining my space in the air.
He was yelling. He was screaming. He was on fire.
I laughed another dragon laugh, which was mostly just smoky air coming out of my lips.
He was on the ground, and he got off another shot.
I tried to evade this one, but I was already feeling… sluggish…
It lodged in my back leg. I whined, flapping my wings.
He was still burning.
I could smell the scent of his hair going up, his flesh melting.
And then he rolled into the pool, extinguishing the flame.
No. I was starting to feel slow and tired, and it was difficult maintaining my wings, continuing to fly.
He bobbed up in the water, and his face was red and raw from where he’d been burned. He screamed again. “What did you do to me?”
I was falling. Falling down into the water, and he was still alive and…
I hit with a splash.
Water from the pool sloshed out everywhere.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I was losing consciousness, but I needed to concentrate. I used my magic to lift him out of the water, and he was suspended there, dripping and swearing.
“Go to sleep, bitch!” he said. “Go to fucking sleep.”
I gathered as much air as I could into my lungs. Everything was fuzzy, the world was growing dark.
No, I needed to focus. I needed to do this.
He began to fall back towards the pool.
I was losing my magic. I was falling asleep.
Fight, I told myself.
And now he was pushing back, his own magic against mine, pushing my body down, down under the water, and I wasn’t strong enough, and the cold wetness was closing over my head. I sputtered, letting my lungs whoosh out that air, that ineffectual, stupid…
Dark, dark, dark.
Warm dark.
I should just let myself…
No. I needed to stay awake. Maybe… maybe if I shifted back, it would help. What had Anthony said about things being healed both ways? Would going back to human form heal the tranq darts?
With my last shred of strength, I did it. I pulled in my wings and my scales and my teeth and my claws.
And I was just naked Penny, floating in a pool with a half-burned psycho.
But I was wide awake. And, having shifted, I had my magic.
I surfaced.
He was swimming for the ladder.
I swam after him.
He scrambled out of the pool, and crawled across the wet floor, reaching out one hand…
And the tranq gun flew through the air to him. He turned and trained it on me.
Fuck.
I sucked in air again.
He pulled the trigger.
I blew out the air, full of fire, full of rage, full of singing magic, just pouring everything I had into that fire ball.
The tranq dart hit me in the stomach.
I fell backwards. That was a tranq for a dragon, and I was in human form, and it hurt like hell, but…
He was engulfed in flame. He was screaming and yelling and burning and swearing.
I held him in the air with my magic. I wasn’t letting him back in the pool this time.
But I was fading fast. The tranquilizer was working its way through my system, and I was going to fall asleep soon. Soon…
Was that Lachlan in the doorway?
I shut my eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
My head hurt. I stirred. Where the hell was I?
I opened my eyes to find myself lying on a stretcher outside of Anthony Barnes’s house, which was now surrounded by flashing lights connected to ambulances and fire trucks and police cars.
I was covered by a sheet, but I was still naked.
God damn it, where the hell were my clothes? I guessed that Anthony had done something with them. I started to sit up.
“Oh, hey, hey,” said a voice. A smiling EMT leaned over me. “Why don’t you take it easy, hmm?”
“I’m fine,” I said, swinging one leg over the stretcher.
“Just wait.” She put her hand on my chest and gently pushed me back. She turned and called over her shoulder. “Hey, Flint! She’s awake.”
Lachlan appeared from between all of the flashing lights and swarming people. He hurried over to me. “Penny?”
“You’re okay,” I said, reaching out, wanting to touch him and make sure he was real.
He grabbed my hand. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
“Whatever he did to you, I wasn’t sure…”
He sighed. “Yeah, I guess I was out for a while?”
“I don’t know. He drugged me with that damned sandwich, and when I woke up, he said he’d gotten rid of you.”
“I came to outside the house, tied up. I guess he figured he’d get to me after he finished with you, but you put a wrench in that plan.”
“I almost didn’t,” I said. “He had it all figured out. He had those shackles and the pool and the tranq gun, and the doors were locked, and—”
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. We got the guy. They took him away already. He’s headed to the hospital, but he’ll be in lockup there, and he’s not going anywhere.”
“He’s still alive?” I said. “But when I passed out, he was burning—”
“Yeah, I maybe pushed him into the pool and then tranqed him,” said Lachlan.
“You saved him?”
“Trust me, it’s good that I did,” he smiled. “Less paperwork this way.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“We want him tried and convicted, Penny,” he said. “It’s better for the families. If he died out here, even with the evidence we have against him, there would always be a question in the back of their minds about whether or not it was really him or if the killer’s still out there. A guy like Barnes will admit to all of it, anyway. He’ll want the notoriety.”
Maybe he was right. I didn’t know.
“Anyway,” said Lachlan. “It’s over, and I know this wasn’t what you signed on for when you said you’d help out with the case. I never meant to get you in so much danger.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I’m the one who came out here, anyway. I did that on my own, and maybe it was stupid.”
“But I’m glad you were here, because I don’t know if I could have faced him on my own,” he said. “Still, I would understand if you wanted out of this. If you didn’t want to help me with anymore cases.”
“What?” I said.
“Just think about it,” he said.
“I don’t need to think about it,” I said. “I want to help. If you need me, I’m always here.”
“You say that now, but maybe after you’ve had a little bit of time to think—”
“The only thing I want is some clothes,” I said.
He looked down at his shoes, his ears turning red. “Uh, right. Well, I don’t know what happened to them, but I did my best to make sure you were covered up.”
Now my face was flushing, thinking of Lachlan covering my naked body.
“That’s what
I mean,” he said in a quiet voice. “What that monster did to you—”
“I’m fine,” I said, drawing myself up, but also being sure to clutch the sheet to my body.
“I think they want to take you to the hospital to get you checked out.”
“I’m a dragon shifter, Lachlan. I need some water to shift and I’ll be good as new. I don’t need the hospital.”
“Well, you can’t use the pool,” he said. “This place is a crime scene.”
“I wouldn’t get back in that thing if you paid me.” I swung my leg over the stretcher again. “Just tell this EMT that I’m okay, please.”
Lachlan got her attention. “Ms. Caspian’s going to get up now.”
“But—” said the EMT.
“I’m getting up,” I said, and I did. I wrapped the sheet around me as best as I could.
Lachlan looked me up and down and then pointedly looked away. “I would take you out of here, but I have to stay on the scene for now.”
I pointed to my car. “Can’t I just have my keys? Didn’t you find them somewhere?”
“Everything in that house is being tagged as evidence.”
I groaned.
The EMT tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, I’ve got an extra set of scrubs if you’d like to put those on.”
I wanted to hug her.
Once I was dressed, even in bulky blue pajama-type clothes, I felt oodles better. I was able to talk to all the officers on the scene, go over everything that had happened.
Well, I might have left out the part about Lachlan and I snuggling on the mattress when it was cold.
But it all passed in a whir, and finally, we were released, and I got in the car with Lachlan, who drove us away. I’d come back later with my spare key for my car. Right now, that wasn’t my first priority.
Lachlan drove until we found the ocean.
He waited, and I ran into the waves and shifted.
And then, in my dragon form, flying up into the bluest of blue skies, everything was okay.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Out of the way,” I bellowed. I was coming up the steps to Jensen’s apartment, floating about ten boxes in the air in front of me. They all belonged to Felicity. Today was officially move-in day for her, and I wouldn’t be a good best friend if I didn’t help.
Fire Song (City of Dragons) Page 24