city of dragons 07 - fire and flood

by Val St. Crowe

  Christy turned to me. “Was the damage really bad?”

  “Bad enough,” I said.

  “Such a freaky thing,” she said. “A wave that high to come up only on your property? It’s like you guys are cursed.”

  We both shrugged.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Unless… Does this have something to do with that Eaglelinx thing?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “I thought you guys took care of that,” she said.

  “Well, the Eagle and the Lynx are not a problem,” said Lachlan. “But that doesn’t mean that everything like them is completely obliterated.”

  “Got it,” said Christy. “Bummer.”

  “That’s one way of saying it,” I said, laughing a little.

  She took a deep breath. “Well, look, you two just… be careful and do the best you can, all right? I’m pulling for you. And don’t worry about a thing back here in the office. I’ve got it covered.”

  * * *

  “… that’s right,” Lachlan was saying. “We’ll be there the day after tomorrow.” He paused, listening. He was standing at the breakfast bar in our rented condo. One hand clutched his phone, the other traced nervous patterns on the surface of the bar. “Well, you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to thank me…. Because I haven’t done anything yet. Besides, I’m not even sure I really will be welcome down there…. I know you think so, but you never worked at that department and I did…. Look, just don’t get too excited is all I’m saying…. Yeah, okay…. I’ll, uh, see you soon then…. Yeah…. Bye.” He hung up. He flung his phone down on the bar and let out a tremendous sigh.

  I was sitting on the couch in the living area, nursing Wyatt. I gave Lachlan a watery smile.

  Wyatt didn’t nurse for long periods of time anymore. Mostly, he climbed up on my lap now and then for a little nip, and then he climbed down again. His only big nursing times were before nap and bedtime.

  Wyatt looked up at me.

  I stroked his head, his soft baby hair.

  Lachlan came into the living area and sat down on the other couch, which was catty-corner to the one I sat on. “Well, I told her we were coming.”

  “How did she seem?” I said. I was feeling a strange mix of apprehension and curiosity about this woman. Debra. Lachlan’s ex-wife. I was going to meet her. I didn’t feel jealous of her. She was from Lachlan’s past, and the hell that she’d been through was enough to make me only feel sorry for her. But it was still unsettling considering Lachlan with another woman—kissing another woman, sleeping with another woman. I didn’t much like to consider that, I had to admit.

  “She wouldn’t stop thanking me,” said Lachlan. “It was embarrassing. I guess she thought that there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d come after I hung up on her last time.”

  “Wait a second, you didn’t tell me this,” I said. “You hung up on her?”

  “Well, she sprung it all on me really fast,” said Lachlan. “I couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t process it. So, yeah, I hung up on her.”

  “And this is the first time you got back in touch with her since?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, no wonder she thought you weren’t coming,” I said.

  “I don’t want to… you know, call her and chat or anything,” he said. “I’m not doing this for her.”

  Wyatt detached from my breast and began to climb off my lap. Absently, I patted him as I tucked my breast away. I kept my eyes on Lachlan. “You’re angry with her,” I said. It was a discovery.

  Lachlan shrugged. “I guess I never really worked through it.”

  “Why are you angry?” I said. “Because of Timmy? Because she was his mother?”

  “No,” said Lachlan, dismissing that. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Just because it’s not fair doesn’t mean you don’t feel it.”

  “She did the best she could,” said Lachlan. “She was a good mother to that kid. It wasn’t her fault that he did what he did. It was mine. I never made him feel welcome in our family. If he and I had been closer, he wouldn’t have hated me so much.”

  “Lachlan, you can’t blame yourself.”

  “I do, though.” Lachlan spread his hands. “I was a shitty stepfather.”

  “I’m sure you weren’t.”

  “I was,” he insisted. “And I don’t want to argue about that. I’ve accepted it, and I’ve learned from it. I’m not torturing myself over it, but I know that I could have done a better job with Timmy.”

  I put up both of my hands in surrender. “All right, all right.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “So, then, why are you angry with her?”

  “Well, she slept with my partner,” said Lachlan.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I forgot about that.” I chewed on my lip. “She’s still with him, isn’t she? They’re together? You said they had twin girls.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “So, we’re going to meet your old partner too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whoa.” I took a deep breath. “You sure you want to do this, Lachlan?”

  “Locked-door mystery,” he said. “A real, live locked-door mystery. I want to do this.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Later, when we went to bed, Lachlan and I made love, and we hadn’t in a while. We were often tired and busy, and I didn’t mind that things got in the way of it. He claimed he was okay with it too, and I hoped that it was true. I did know that neither of us had turned down the other’s initiating intimacy yet, so I thought that was a good sign. I wanted to have a strong relationship with Lachlan. I never wanted to lose him.

  There was something desperate in the way we clung to each other, in the way his lips found mine in the darkness. We gasped and clutched and worked and undulated together. When we were done, I lay next to him, arms wrapped around his torso. He clutched my shoulder. We held on, neither of us wanting to let go.

  Lachlan’s fingers raking through my hair. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I murmured.

  We lay together quietly, the length of each of us pressed against the other.

  “I’m not just angry about the cheating,” said Lachlan suddenly.

  “Okay,” I said, reeling a bit from the fact that he’d brought this up right after we’d made love. I tightened my grip on him. This Debra woman had suddenly made an appearance in our bed, and I wanted to hold onto Lachlan as hard as I could.

  “She, uh, she checked out after Hallie’s death. We could have grieved together, but she just disappeared. She left me alone.”

  “Oh,” I said. I thought that maybe that was understandable. Her feelings must have been complex, and she might have been afraid the Lachlan would hate her son. Maybe she herself didn’t know how she felt about her son. And Lachlan had just become a vampire. Maybe she hadn’t been sure that Lachlan would even be the same person. But I didn’t want to defend her aloud, not only because I wanted to support my fiancé, but because I felt threatened by her a little bit.

  The fact that Lachlan was still angry with her, that he still was hurt by her actions, meant that he cared too much. I didn’t like that.

  “Sorry,” he said, his voice gruff. “Is that something I shouldn’t have told you? I know we don’t talk much about our past relationships.”

  “You can tell me anything,” I said. But I was still holding him as tightly as I could.

  He held onto me too.

  We were quiet for several minutes.

  In the distance, I could hear the sounds of cars passing by on Atlantic Avenue, the main drag of Sea City. Even though it was the middle of the night, the city was full of movement in the middle of the summer.

  “What did you go to see Ophelia about?” he asked.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I said I wanted to talk to you about that, didn’t I?”

  “You did.”

  I snuggled into his body. I liked the way he smelled. I liked being close to him. “It
was about the ring that I got from Dasher.”

  “The one that looks like a wedding ring?” said Lachlan.

  “That’s the one,” I said. “I wanted to know if Ophelia could figure out what it was that it could be used for.”

  “Could she?”

  “No,” I said. “But she did tell me that it has limited power. It can only be used for a brief time.”

  “But we don’t know what it could be used for.”

  “Well, Connor had an idea. He said that maybe it’s to help us suppress our evil side when we use the whiteflame.”

  “Hey, that makes sense,” said Lachlan. “I bet he’s right.”

  “But Connor and I don’t think we should test it unless we have no other options. Because if we’re wrong, it could go pretty badly.”

  “Yeah, we went kind of nuts last time we used it,” said Lachlan. “That makes sense to me. Okay. You should bring it to Texas, though. We don’t know if we might need it there.”

  “I’m going to bring it wherever we go,” I said. “I think it’s safer with us than buried in storage somewhere.”

  “Good,” said Lachlan. “I really hope we don’t have to use it, but I…” He sighed. “I have a feeling that we’re going to be needing whatever help we can get.”

  * * *

  Flying with toddlers is quite an experience. Vivica and I had debated about getting them their own tickets. Neither of us particularly wanted to hold the kids the whole flight, but we also knew that there was no chance of them sitting in their seats like little angels either. In the end, we got one extra seat, and we kept it in between the adults and rotated the boys in and out of it. It was a three-hour flight to Texas, and we took a late-night flight, hoping the boys would sleep.

  Jackson did.

  Wyatt didn’t. He was way too excited about everything, finding the plane to be basically the most nifty thing he had ever experienced. Once we were up in the air, he wouldn’t even sit still, not even for videos on the tablet, which he usually loved. Lachlan ended up walking up and down with him in the aisles for half the trip. Finally, during the last hour of the flight, he settled down and slept in Lachlan’s arms. We were afraid to move him for fear he’d wake up.

  But he slept on.

  He slept as we exited the plane, even when I took him from Lachlan. He slept while we collected our checked baggage. He slept while we loaded him into his stroller. He slept while we rented a car—actually a mini-van, so we’d have room for two car seats and an adult in the back. And he slept while we put him in his car seat and drove off for the hotel we’d booked. Jackson slept too.

  We were all exhausted. Lachlan was at the wheel, and I felt like I needed to stay awake for him, so I tried to talk to him to keep him awake, but he wasn’t saying much. Vivica conked out in the middle seat. The boys were all the way in the back.

  Every once in a while, I’d turn back to see them all, just making sure everything was okay.

  It was a bit of a drive from the airport. Lachlan was from Bartle, a smallish town in Texas that didn’t have its own airport. We’d been driving for nearly an hour when I peered into the back to check on everyone again and there was something at the back window.

  At first, it just looked like a dark blob. But I knew it wasn’t right, and my heart started to thud in my rib cage. My senses went on high alert, and I reached for my magic, ready to attack.

  Then I saw it flap its wings, and I was able to make out the shape. It was a dragon. A dark shadow of wings and claws, flying right behind our car.

  I let out a little yelp.

  “What?” said Lachlan, his voice spiked with worry.

  “There’s a dragon behind us.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I wondered when they’d show up.”

  “You… what?” I glanced from him to the dragon and back again. Why didn’t he seem worried at all?

  “I, uh, I took off the talisman that was dampening the blood dragon powers,” he said.

  I gaped at him. “Why would you do something like that?” My voice was strained. I was trying like hell not to be so loud that I woke the boys or Vivica, but I was pretty pissed off.

  He gripped the steering wheel. “It sounds as though you don’t approve.” There was a sarcastic edge to his tone.

  “Of course I don’t approve. You know that if you aren’t wearing the talisman, soon we’ll be surrounded by rogue dragons. They’ll follow us everywhere.”

  “And they’ll be tame like puppies,” said Lachlan. “I’ll be able to control them. In fact…” He squinted, as if concentrating. “Yeah, I can feel that one back there. It’s under my control. And there are two more flying above us.”

  “Oh my God.” I dragged my hands over my face.

  “Penny, we need to be able to fight the Green King,” he said. “We don’t know what this power can do, because I’ve been keeping it under wraps. Maybe there’s more to it than calling dragons. Maybe there are other things that I can do to protect us. Even if there aren’t, I’ll feel better if we have an army of dragons to fight off any attacks. Maybe if I’d had dragons before, I would have been able to save Wyatt quicker.”

  I sighed. He kind of had some valid points about figuring out what the blood dragon powers were. But we were in a strange place, and he’d unleashed all these dragons. It made me nervous. “I guess I don’t even understand what we’re doing here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why are we in Texas?” I said, my voice a harsh whisper. “Why did you bring us here? We’re out of our depth, in unfamiliar territory. Surely taking off your talisman is something better done at home.”

  “This used to be my home,” he said. “It’s not unfamiliar to me.”

  I sighed.

  He shook his head. “Jesus, Penny, don’t fight me on this.” He pounded on the steering wheel for emphasis. A tendril of smoke escaped his lips.

  I pointed at it, making a little whining noise.

  Lachlan’s eyes got big. He pulled the car over onto the shoulder.

  Vivica stirred in the back. “We there?” she mumbled.

  “No,” I called back to her. “Not yet. Go back to sleep.”

  “Mmmmph,” she said and was quiet.

  I turned back to Lachlan. “Smoke came out of your mouth.”

  “Yeah, I saw that.”

  “Maybe as the blood dragon you can breathe fire,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said. “That would be handy.”

  “Do it again.”

  He scrunched up his face, concentrating. Nothing happened. His eyes popped open. “Make me mad again. I think it happened because I was frustrated.”

  I chewed on my lip. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  He sighed. “Look, we can’t sit here on the side of the road trying to make fire forever. We’ve got to get to the hotel.”

  I nodded. “Right.”

  He pulled back out onto the road.

  * * *

  “So,” said the guy at the front desk in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying, “I couldn’t help but notice that some dragons arrived with you?” The lobby wasn’t nearly as nice as my lobby, although it was sure trying. The place was clean, but it was austere. Blank walls, no art on them, nondescript furniture set up around a fireplace facing the front desk. It was like a doctor’s office or something.

  “Um, yes,” said Lachlan, who was filling out paperwork about the car we were driving. “They’re, uh, mentally-challenged dragon relatives. They’re unable to shift back into human form, unfortunately.”

  I gave him a funny look. This was his cover story? I handed the guy at the front desk, who was wearing a name tag that said Tobias, my credit card.

  He took it, but he didn’t do anything with it. “Mentally-challenged?” he repeated.

  “It’s a very sad story,” said Lachlan. “They were living in the wild, scavenging for food. Everyone was embarrassed of them. So, we took them in.”

  “You’re going to want rooms for th
em?”

  “Oh, no,” said Lachlan. “They’re quite happy in the parking lot.”

  “What if people want to, um, park in the parking lot?”

  “I’ll move them somewhere else,” said Lachlan. “There’s a field out this way, right?” He pointed.

  “We don’t own that field,” said Tobias.

  “They won’t be a problem, I promise you that,” said Lachlan. “They’re docile as doves. They do whatever I ask.”

  “Uh huh,” said Tobias, looking doubtful.

  “We have a reservation for two suites,” I said.

  Tobias hesitated. And then he ran my credit card.

  Once we were all checked in, we started to get settled in our suites. Vivica stayed with the sleeping boys, who were still in their car seats, and Lachlan and I set up the pack and plays (which were portable playpens and cribs) we’d brought in both our suite and in Vivica’s. Then we went out and carefully got the boys out of their car seats and carried them inside. By some miracle, they both slept right through it, and were soon snuggled in their beds.

  We adults got settled too, and we were all asleep in no time.

  We were awakened by a knock on the door. An insistent banging.

  Lachlan and I both sat up in bed. There was early dawn light streaming in through the window. I rubbed at my eyes. How early was it? Wyatt usually woke up pretty early, so I was used to early, but this seemed excessive.

  We got out of bed, put on our robes and answered the door.

  Tobias was standing there, and he had another man with him. This man had thinning hair. He was wearing a name tag that said Stan, Manager. Stan smiled at us thinly. “Sorry to disturb you so early in the morning.” But he didn’t look sorry.

  “What can we do for you?” asked Lachlan.

  “Well, it’s about the dragons,” said Stan. “I’m sorry, but we can’t have them here. I understand that they’re relatives of yours or something, but you really should have mentioned it when you were signing up for a room here. We simply can’t accommodate them.”

  “I see,” said Lachlan.

  I groaned.

  “We’ll be happy to refund your money for last night’s stay,” said Stan. “But you need to be out of the hotel by 9:00 sharp this morning.”