city of dragons 03 - fire magic

by crowe, val st

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s fine. Let’s go.”

  I sucked in an unsteady breath.

  He put his arm around me. “Are you crying?”

  “No,” I said, but my voice cracked.

  “Hey.” He brushed my hair away from my face. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. “Let’s go somewhere else?”

  He nodded.

  He drove us back to the hotel, and we went upstairs to my apartment.

  I sat down on the couch in the living room, put my head in my hands, and started sobbing. I couldn’t stop. The waves of sadness just kept racking me, and I thought I might cry forever.

  It was hormones, partly, I knew that. But there was also something deeper underneath it all.

  Lachlan held me, but it was like before, like he was holding himself back, afraid to touch me.

  Finally, my sobs subsided enough that I could talk. “I found out today that it’s my fault that my babies died.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Because they were getting traumatized by Alastair’s beatings, and I thought that every time I shifted, they were healing, but they weren’t. And I just stayed there and let him hurt us, and he killed them. He killed my babies.” I was overtaken by a wave of fresh sobs.

  Lachlan pulled me against his chest. He kissed the top of my head. His voice rumbled. “That wasn’t your fault, Penny. It was Alastair’s.”

  I yanked away from him. “But I stayed.”

  “Still not your fault.”

  I got up off the couch. I felt like I needed to get out of here, just go and run and hide someplace from all of this.

  Was that what the therapist had been talking about? Was this the shift in my thinking I was going to have to do? I hadn’t really listened to her much after all that. I’d just gotten out of there.

  I thought of the way that I’d been sobbing, how the pain of this new knowledge had brought me to my knees.

  No, if I had to sit and wallow in that, it would kill me. I needed to get away from it. Numb it somehow. I turned back to Lachlan, who was still on the couch.

  “Listen, you can’t blame yourself,” he said.

  I went back to the couch, and I climbed into his lap. I kissed him.

  He kissed back, but carefully.

  I thrust my tongue into his mouth.

  He pulled away, surprised. “Penny?”

  “I just…” I swallowed. “I need to be close to you. I want to feel something good right now. And we’ve been apart for so long, and now here you are, and I…” I kissed him again.

  He sighed against my mouth. He responded, his lips and tongue sweet against me, but then he pulled back again. “I feel like I’m getting whiplash here. One second you’re crying, the next you’re—”

  I pulled my shirt over my head.

  He was speechless.

  I unsnapped my bra and dangled it in his face.

  His jaw worked.

  Pressing my nude skin against his clothed chest, I started to kiss him again.

  He stopped me. “What are you doing?” His voice was ragged.

  I took his hands and put them on my breasts. “I want this,” I whispered. “It’s been too long. Last night in bed, I wanted you—”

  “I’m not ready for this,” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  “This is all screwed up in my head,” he rasped. “When I try to even think about sex, I think of you… I think of him…”

  “Stop thinking,” I said, reaching out to loosen his tie.

  He hadn’t moved his hands away from my breasts, I’d noticed. He gave them the barest of squeezes.

  Oh, geez, they were sensitive. I gasped. “Just be gentle,” I breathed.

  “Penny,” he groaned.

  I undid his tie. I started on the buttons to his shirt. “Do you remember what you said to me before all this happened?”

  “I don’t…” His fingers were moving on my breasts again.

  I liked it. I shut my eyes for a second, my fingers still working at the buttons on his shirt, baring his skin an inch at a time. “You said that you didn’t mean to sound like a caveman, but that I was yours.” I undid the last button. I put my fingers on the skin of his chest.

  He sighed.

  I opened my eyes. My voice was soft. “Make me yours again.”

  He rested his forehead against mine. “Ah, hell.” And then he was kissing me.

  * * *

  I was pressed between the back of the couch and Lachlan’s body, but it was nice to be trapped here. I felt languid and warm and pleased. I ran my fingers over his stomach, brushing the trail of his hair below his belly button the wrong way and then back the right way.

  He shifted. “I’m crushing you.”

  “No, I’m okay,” I said.

  “I’m going to fall off the couch, though,” he said.

  I giggled. “Should we move?”

  He kissed my nose. “I don’t want to move.”

  I kissed his chin. His shoulder. Whatever I could get my mouth on.

  “But,” he said, “I’m going to fall off the couch.”

  I crawled over him. “Well, I guess we have to move then.”

  He trailed his fingers over my bare skin as I moved away. “I don’t even know how we made it work on this thing.”

  I giggled again, getting to my feet.

  He was up too, behind me, pressing into me, his hands on my hips. “Your body is… different.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. Shit. What was I thinking? I had just jumped back into bed with him—the couch with him—and I had thought it was a bad idea for us to be this intimate, and now…

  “I like it.” He kissed my neck. “I could swear that you’re sort of…” His hand strayed to one of my breasts. “Bigger.”

  I slapped his hand away. “No way. And why would you say that? Didn’t you like the size they were before?”

  “So they are bigger?” His voice was deep and teasing at my ear.

  I stepped away from him, kneeling down to pick up my shirt. “You can’t say things like that.”

  He sat back down on the couch, shrugging. “You seem to have a long list of things that you’ve decided that I can’t say, you know. And yet, I find myself saying them.”

  I glared at him, yanking my shirt over my head. “I do not.”

  He was lounging there, completely naked and utterly comfortable. “You told me that I wasn’t allowed to say things about being distracted by thoughts of your naked body when we were at The Dungeon.”

  I couldn’t help but take all of him in, every single glorious bare inch of him. “That doesn’t make it a list. That’s one thing.” I felt flustered. I looked around for the rest of my clothes. When I found them, I snatched them up off the ground. Then I sat down on the easy chair to get them back on. I looked up in the middle of it to see Lachlan watching me, one eyebrow raised.

  “This was a bad idea,” he said. “You’re freaked.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. You’re always fine.” He fished his boxers off the floor and tugged them on.

  “Don’t you have to get back to work or something?” I said. “I mean, how long is your lunch break?”

  “You want to get rid of me now?”

  “No, I…” I rubbed my forehead. I had screwed everything up.

  He sighed. He picked up his clothes and began putting them on wordlessly.

  I felt horrible.

  He crossed the room to me, now fully dressed. “Was it…? I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable or afraid or—”

  “You didn’t,” I said. “No, Lachlan, that was… very nice. It was wonderful.”

  “I don’t understand, then.”

  “There’s nothing to understand,” I said. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  He took a long, slow breath, and a shadow seemed to cross his features. He looked away from me, knitting his brow. Then he looked back. “Is there something you
want to tell me?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You can tell me anything,” he said. “You don’t have to keep things from me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  He nodded. “Okay. Well, I’m going back to work then, since that’s where you seem to want me to be.”

  “Lachlan—”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Wait, the drakes did what?” said Felicity, looking horrified. My best friend Felicity was a drake. She controlled her desire for dragon flesh with a steady diet of other meat. She and I had debated whether or not the stories of raged-out drakes could possibly be true, and we’d always thought it sounded crazy.

  Now, here I was telling her that it actually could happen, and that I wanted us to go and take these drakes out.

  “We’ve always gone up against vampires before,” said Connor. He was drinking coffee out of a cup that said, I’m so gay, I can’t even think straight.

  The three of us were sitting out by the pool behind the hotel. It was late, and the pool was closed to the guests, so we had privacy to talk.

  “Look,” I said, “I know it’s crazy, but I think this is the safest way to find out more information on these guys. If I refuse, that might make them even more suspicious, and they’ll keep sniffing around.”

  “What are we going to do to the drakes?” said Felicity.

  “It’s just different is all,” said Connor. “I mean, I’ve been getting used to the idea of us as fearless vampire hunters. Fearless drake hunters just doesn’t have the same ring.”

  “I think if we go in hot, with all our magic, we can make quick work of them. Oh, and we still have the machetes. But the object of the mission will be to find out what’s going on with this Order.”

  “Machetes?” said Felicity. “We’re going to cut their heads off? Would you cut my head off if this happened to me?”

  “This will never happen to you,” I said. “I would never let anything like this happen to you. Now, what I’m thinking is that they sensed the magic that Lachlan and I did together, and they traced it to the hotel, and they did some digging on me, and they think that I did that magic all by myself. Or that I did it with you guys. Whatever. They want a demonstration. So, I’m going to give them one, and they’ll see that I’m not as powerful as they think.”

  “This could happen to me,” said Felicity. “Like what if I got cut off from the world in a remote cabin during a snowstorm or something?”

  Connor took a sip of his coffee. “You should probably travel with beef jerky all the time just to be safe.”

  Felicity glared at him. “This isn’t funny.”

  “I don’t see anything funny about beef jerky,” he said.

  “Guys,” I said. “Can we focus?”

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” said Felicity. “What if we just capture the drakes and then try to find some way to save them?”

  “Darla Tell said that not eating meat for that long caused permanent brain damage or something.”

  Felicity’s lips pulled away from her teeth in horror. “Brain damage?”

  “This isn’t going to happen to you, Felicity,” I said.

  She hugged herself. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have this hanging over your head. You’re not going to turn into a monster.”

  “Neither are you,” I said. I reached out and touched her arm. “Look at me.”

  She raised her gaze to me.

  “No matter where you are or what is happening, I will find you and I will save you. I won’t let this happen to you.”

  “What if you’re in labor?” she said. “What if it’s after the baby is born, and she’s in danger?”

  “It’s a girl?” said Connor.

  “No, we don’t know yet,” I said. I turned back to Felicity. “I will find a way. Even if I’m in labor.”

  She snorted. “Whatever.” But she was smiling now, at least a little.

  “Speaking of the baby,” said Connor, “isn’t this dangerous for you?”

  “Yeah, I thought that you weren’t shifting,” said Felicity.

  “I talked to my doctor, and shifting’s fine,” I said. “But if the baby is hurt, shifting doesn’t heal her. So, you were right, Felicity, about all my other miscarriages being because of Alastair.” I looked down at the ground, fighting the tears that were coming for me. But I couldn’t let that happen again. I couldn’t fall apart. It was hormones. It was— It didn’t matter. I shoved it from my head, sucking in a breath and raising my gaze. “Anyway, apparently, there’s a magical barrier around my uterus and shifting strengthens that magic, so shifting is a good thing.”

  “Penny.” Felicity reached out for my hand. “I’m so sorry that—”

  “I don’t want to talk about any of that,” I said. “We’re focusing on the Order right now. I think that if we can convince them that the power they felt was all down to Alastair, then they’ll go away. They’ll leave me alone.”

  Connor considered. “That could work.”

  “I still don’t see why we have to kill drakes to do that.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Connor. “Penny and I could do this on our own, right? I’ve been practicing with magic, and I am doing amazing stuff, let me tell you.”

  “You’re okay,” said Felicity, rolling her eyes. “But no way am I letting Penny go in there without me. Not when she’s pregnant.” She grabbed my hand. “I know you don’t want to talk about this, but I have to say that I’m sorry.”

  I took my hand back. “I know you want to tell me how much sympathy you have—”

  “I need to apologize,” she said.

  “What? No, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t try to get you away from him. I knew that if I made it a big deal, you’d cut me out of your life, and then you would have no one at all, and I thought it was better to keep my mouth shut and be there for you as best as I could, but maybe if I’d tried to talk you into getting out of there—”

  “Felicity.” I took her hand again. “I couldn’t have gotten out without you. You know that.”

  “I really am sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “Don’t ever be sorry for being my best friend.”

  Connor set down his coffee. “Can we have a group hug now?”

  “Better now than when we’re carrying machetes,” said Felicity.

  * * *

  It felt as if Darla Tell had been shaking my hand for the past ten minutes. She didn’t seem to want to let go of me. And it was one of those hand shakes that involved both of her hands. She gripped my hand with one hand and used the other hand to grip my elbow, where she was sort of, uh, massaging me.

  I felt extraordinarily uncomfortable.

  But she was British, right? Maybe it was a European thing. Still, British people weren’t like regular European people with the touchy-feely stuff, as far as I knew. But then she might not even be British. I knew from traveling in Europe that lots of people in other countries learned to speak English with a British accent. So, maybe it was just a cultural thing.

  “I’m so happy you decided to come and help us with our little problem,” she said. Now her fingers were lightly brushing my upper arm.

  I wanted to yank my hand back, but I couldn’t figure a polite way to do it. Like this problem wasn’t something she could handle herself. “Well, the danger to the populace… I couldn’t let that happen.” I had a burst of inspiration. “Have you met my friends, Felicity and Connor?” I gestured behind me at them. Surely, she would have to let go of my hand now.

  Reluctantly, she did. “Nice to meet you,” she said, offering her hand to Felicity.

  I was so glad to have my arm back.

  She and Felicity shook. Then she shook hands with Connor. “My,” she said, “you really are strong, aren’t you?”

  “It’s a gargoyle thing,” said Connor, snatching his hand
back. He made a face at me.

  It was all I could do not to laugh.

  “Well,” said Darla, “let me give you what information I can about the drakes, shall I?” She went to her desk and unrolled a scroll of paper.

  Darla’s office looked like something out of a medieval dungeon. It was dark and lit by candles. There was an ancient-looking globe in one corner. It had severe and uncomfortable-looking furniture. Honestly, the whole place was like something from the Dark Ages. The Order of Rasmossen and Wolffe was located on the outskirts of town. From the outside, it looked like an abandoned warehouse, but inside it was all velveteen couches and iron grates over the windows.

  “Come closer,” she said, beckoning with one hand. Her fingers were long and thin.

  I really didn’t like this chick. She was raising my hackles for some reason. I cleared my throat. “How, um, how did you find out about me again?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, as I said, your fame precedes you. There’s hardly a magical creature in Sea City that doesn’t know about you.” She looked me over and ran her tongue over her upper teeth. “You’re quite the legend in your own time, Penny.”

  “I, uh, have help,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Your detective.”

  My heart stopped. She knew. She knew about the blood bond. Was this the point in which she showed her true colors, tried to take me prisoner? Well, I was fresh from shifting and brimming with magic. Let her try something. I was ready.

  “And,” she said, “your friends here.” She smiled at Felicity and Connor. “The three of you have been busy, haven’t you?”

  “We do our best,” said Felicity, who was wary. She exchanged a glance with me.

  I shook my head in a barely perceptible motion. We’d let Darla make the first move.

  Darla smoothed out the scroll on her desk. “Here’s a map of the tunnels under the building. If you’d like to come closer, I can show you the area that’s affected by the cave-in.”

  I felt confused. Seriously? She was really harping on this drake thing? If she knew about the blood bond, then she must know that I couldn’t perform magic like that without Lachlan. Did she know about the blood bond? Had I misinterpreted her earlier comment?