What Guild operative would indulge in such arrogance?
I reached for the necklace. Her tissue scalded at my touch.
Shifting in spite of the pain, scales overran the girl’s ruined human form. She screamed with a rush of heat; a precursor that was intimately familiar—and wrong.
Confused, I ducked as fire burst from her mouth. The attack was short-lived. It sputtered out as it hit the wall behind me. She didn’t have the strength for more. But I’d seen enough. The surprising display of a second ability betrayed how truly dangerous my lyrriken opponent was.
I had no choice. I had to take her out now, while she was weak.
I moved in, and her companion dove out from the shadows. He seized a handful of my hair, and yanked me back. I spread fire through the strands, scalding his skin. With a curse, he let go and shoved me into the wall. Concrete—then pain—crashed into the back of my head. My injured shoulder hit, and the strobe lighting grew fuzzy. He slammed my right arm against the wall and held it there. Fire oozed harmlessly from my scaled fingers to puddle on the floor.
I wasn’t fond of the position. It put my attacker, with his stern bearded scowl, far too close. His openly hostile eyes were a lighter shade than mine, but similar enough. His hood had fallen off, and even in the erratic light, I could see the reddish tinge peppering his short walnut brown hair.
Coloring wasn’t always a factor in determining tribes, but many sired by an elder of the firedrake tribe bore features from the same pallet. I started to mention a possible kinship, when he pressed closer. Beneath the hospital scrubs, his clothes reeked of smoke and burnt skin.
“Hello, traitor,” he grinned.
I grinned back. “Hello, asshole.”
Nuzzling his bearded face against the side of my neck, he took a long exaggerated sniff with his hooked nose. “You smell almost human,” he spat in disgust. “You think that makes you better than me, don’t you? Better than us?” He gave a nod to his companion, lying bleeding and raw-fleshed on the floor.
“Not better,” I replied. “Smarter. Because only an idiot would risk the Queen’s wrath with a public kill. Not to mention butchering someone under Aidric’s protection. And betraying your oath to Naalish by leaving a shitload of evidence for the humans to poke and prod and look into things they shouldn’t. I know I’m out of touch, but last I heard, we’re still a secret. Aidric still runs the Guild. He’s still King of our tribe. And Naalish is still scary as hell.”
The man grunted. “You know nothing of home.”
“Then why don’t you enlighten me?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like me to spill my guts, as they say here. How about instead,” menace tightened his words, “I spill yours like I did that useless human upstairs? It’s what traitors deserve.”
My chin lifted defiantly. “I’m a traitor because I wanted to live? Because I didn’t lie down and die at the whim of an elder?”
He laughed, as if he knew far better what I’d done than I did. “Shameless. And foolish,” he said, “if you thought you could flash your name around here and no one would notice. No one would remember. Forgive and forget is a human phrase, a crutch that gives them an excuse to be weak.” He let go of my hair in favor of my face. “Is that what’s stolen your strength? For something surely has. Why else would you have grown so inconsequential to the Guild, despite your crimes? Why would you be allowed to carry on here, when you’re the greatest embarrassment Naalish has ever endured?”
“Do you even know why I was arrested? What crime I committed that was so heinous it required my death? Do any of you know?”
“The Queen owes no explanation for her decrees. All that matters is that you,” he pushed through gritted teeth, “disgraced our kind. The reason is irrelevant. What I question is the elder’s tolerance of your dishonor.”
“Didn’t you just say the Queen was above reproach?”
A taught smile hardened his jaw. “Many have been killed for far less. Yet here you are. So tell me, traitor, how did you convince them to back off?”
I searched the violence in his eyes. “What are you after?”
Ignoring me, he shifted both arms. Black plates rimmed with red emerged from the cuffs of his sweatshirt to cover his hands. Keenly sharpened claws glided down, singeing the fabric of my shirt. “What bargain did you strike for the Guild’s leniency?”
“Leniency?” I laughed. “They hunted me for over twenty years.”
“You must have offered them something to make them stop. Some incentive to make them forgive and forget.”
“The Guild didn’t get a damn thing from me, asshole. And neither will you.” I thrust a fast knee up into his groin. As he bit back a squeal, I pushed the scales out on my face and threw my head forward into his. Pain relaxed his grip, and I struck his arm aside. Grabbing his hand, locking the wrist, I forced the limb behind his back, bending and snapping it with a crack. I bent harder, forcing out bone and a fast spurt of blood as I shoved him into the railing.
Summoning the scales and fire on my free hand, I leaned in. My shoulder, burning and throbbing, felt ten times its normal size. It didn’t want to move. Gleaning satisfaction from the sight of his broken clawed fingers and busted arm, I clamped my jaw on the pain and lifted my left hand. I pressed my palm, reddened with heat, against his back and burned away the cloth protecting it. “I only need one of you alive to question,” I said, as his stolen shirt and the skin beneath sizzled and charred. “Guess you drew the short straw.”
With a roar, my opponent spun and threw a jab. I ducked, but he hadn’t been aiming for my face. His fist struck my dislocated shoulder, and my nerves screamed as loud as I did. He shoved me once more into the wall. My battered head made a wet sound, and I bounced off. Losing hold of my change, I dropped to the floor.
Cursing me, he cradled his misshapen arm to his chest, and backed up.
“Wait...” The girl staggered over to stand beside him. Her seared skin blood-wet and glistening, she stared down at me. “You’re not done. Hurt her some more.”
“There’s no time,” he replied.
“No…” Suddenly manic, she shrieked at him. “I said, hurt her more!”
He pivoted toward her. “Do you not hear the footsteps on the stairs? Getting out will be challenging enough. We can’t afford to engage their law enforcement.”
Pleading thinned her voice. “But…”
“It’s my call,” he growled. “Not yours. And this time, you will listen. We go,” he said firmly, and thrust his boot in my face.
Ten
“Relax. Stay still. They’re bringing a stretcher.”
Lying at the bottom of the stairwell, covered in bruises and water-logged clothes, I shook my pounding head at the husky man in hospital scrubs bending over to check my heartbeat for what felt like the tenth time. He was only doing his job, but I didn’t want a stretcher. I didn’t want to stay still.
He moved the stethoscope an inch.
I batted his hand away. I was glad the power was back on, but the glare of the lights wasn’t doing much to improve the ache in my head. “I need to get up.”
“That’s not a good idea. Your shoulder—”
“Is back in place,” I cut in. “Thank you.”
I moved to sit, and he put a gentle hand on my chest. “Slow. You have a concussion.”
“Yep.”
“Bruised ribs, multiple contusions and burns…”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Not appreciating my humor, the nurse’s eyes tightened. “You were assaulted.”
I knew what he was implying. “If I was, he’d be dead.” Moving the man’s hand off me, I lifted up onto my elbows. My hair was a wet frizz of red. So much blood stained my tattered shirt and jeans. I grunted a curse, and he misread my distress.
“Miss,” he said, getting testy, “you need to lie down.”
I struggled to sound polite. “I’m fine.”
“You heard her.” My new partner came briskly d
own the stairs to stand beside us. “She’s fine.”
“Ah, there he is,” I said. “Detective Alex Creed: the voice of reason.”
They both squinted at me. My unhappy nurse shook his head and looked up at Creed. “She needs to be seen by a doctor.”
“I can’t argue that, but right now, she’s stable and…hard-headed, apparently,” he frowned. The expression transferred to his blue eyes as they landed on me. “Do you know your name?”
I rolled my eyes. “Dahlia Nite.”
“What day is it?”
“Considering you haven’t changed your tie, let’s go with: still Sunday.”
“Do you know where you are? How you got here?”
“I’m at the hospital you brought me to, Detective, looking like I just went through the spin cycle. Because some asshole pushed me down the stairs,” I finished, the deception rolling off my tongue.
Creed smiled thinly. “Sounds normal to me.”
The nurse moved off, muttering under his breath.
“So…” Creed squatted beside me. “Where’s my coffee?”
My throat burned as I laughed. “I never did find that damn machine.”
“No, but you found something else.”
I hadn’t expected the concern in his voice. “Seriously, I’m all right.”
“Your back looks like you went twenty rounds. You sound like you’ve been smoking cigars since you were ten. And I’m starting to think some brains leaked out that gash in the back of your head. You’re tough, Miss Nite. But you are definitely not all right.”
“It’s Dahlia,” I said, wondering if he’d take me up on it this time. After all, I’d earned his curiosity, if not his trust. “And I appreciate the fuss, but I heal fast. See.” I sat up. My head felt weighty. My back and jaw stung. Each breath was a knife in my chest. But as I looked down at myself, it was my ruined clothes that gave me pause. Like my hair, the material was wet yet singed. Scattered slicks of water and charred bits of the blue-haired girl’s beaded top littered the floor. There wasn’t a lot of blood. Our suspects must have taken a moment to wipe up any trace of their own. Still… How the hell am I going to explain this?
“That nurse was right,” he said. “You do need to see a doctor.”
“After. I still have a body to look at, remember?”
“Unfortunately, I do.” Creed glanced around the stairwell, taking it all in. He ran a hand over his face. “Barnes is going to fucking love this. A consultant pursuing a suspect, defenseless and alone, on my watch…”
“I’m not defenseless.”
“Right. You were a cop,” he said, noticeably dubious. “Then you should have known to wait for backup.”
“If I’d waited he would have gotten away.”
“If you’d waited, he wouldn’t have attacked you. And he did get away.”
“She wouldn’t have attacked me,” I corrected. “He jumped in later.”
“Well, I guess that explains the beads. And this...” Creed held up an evidence bag. Inside was Ella Chandler’s necklace. The chain was folded over the pendant hanging from the end, hiding its face. The links looked old and discolored. “Unless it’s yours?”
Telling Creed the necklace belonged to Ella, and that I’d seen it on her neck in a trauma-induced moment of retrocognition, wasn’t an option. So I stared at his newfound evidence without a drop of recognition, and said, “Nope. Not mine.”
“I didn’t think so. I didn’t remember you wearing a necklace.” His eyes drifted to the neckline of my ripped shirt. With only a fleeting downward dip over the wet fabric clinging to my curves, Creed gallantly snapped his gaze back to the bag in his hand. “The clasp is busted. If it was on the woman who attacked you, it could have come off in your scuffle.”
“Maybe. It’s all fuzzy after I hit my head. And it was pretty dark.”
“It’s okay. With any luck we’ll be able to lift a print.” He dropped the evidence bag in his jacket pocket and pulled out another. “Any thoughts on this?”
He held up the bag, and I stared at the piece of dark brown claw behind the plastic. It was thick and wide (the width of a finger to be exact), a little over two inches long, sharp on one end and jagged on the other.
Lifting my eyes from the severed claw of my lyrriken opponent to Creed’s waiting gaze, I said, with detached interest, “Its owner must be large. How did it get into the hospital without being seen?”
Creed’s head cocked to the side. “Don’t you mean, what the hell is that?”
“It’s kind of obvious it’s a broken claw, so…” I shrugged and tried to erase the frustration on his face. “Wonder what kind of animal it’s from.”
“We’ll find out.” He put the bag back in his jacket. “I know you don’t remember much, but I’ll call for a sketch artist anyway. Something might come back to you.”
“Hopefully. How did you find me?”
“One of the officers spotted your wallet on the floor upstairs.”
“The man bumped into me and I dropped it. That’s how I found the body.”
“And stepped in the blood. Your shoe prints led right to the stairwell door. They disappeared after that. Washed away like half our evidence,” he grumbled. “The sprinklers must have been working overtime in here.”
“Yeah, it was coming down pretty hard.”
“You’ll need to walk me through it later. What they said, how they fought. Maybe something will come back on blood samples and the DNA under your nails. Somewhere in all this there has to be something.”
“Let’s hope,” I said, making a mental note to have Oren take care of the results.
“Are you sure nothing else happened before you blacked out?”
I smiled at his concern. “Rest assured, Detective, my virtue is in the same state it was in before I fell down the stairs. The last thing I saw was the door closing when they left.”
He studied me a moment. “A lot of this doesn’t add up. I’ll have questions.”
“So ask them. When I’m done.” I reached my right arm up and Creed helped me to my feet. “Do you mind if I have another look at that necklace?”
“Sure.” He put the bag in my hand. The oval pendant inside looked to be made of amber. In its center was another oval. It was smaller and thinner, like a long, dark slit. The silver chain was badly tarnished. The links were old and thick, made to be sturdy, not fashionable. “Looks antique.”
“It looks like an eye,” he countered.
Because it is. “Eyes don’t look like that.”
“Not human ones.” He took off his jacket and offered it to me. It was a nice gesture, but I hesitated. I wanted more time with the pendant. I wanted to take it out of the bag and hold it.
What would Ella be doing with a dragon eye? Was that why she was targeted?
Was that what Ronan was really protecting?
Badly, I wanted to believe his story. I wanted to believe he wasn’t the third figure at the house. But if it wasn’t Ronan, who was it?
Creed snatched the bag out of my grip. “You’re seeing a doctor. You didn’t hear a damn word I just said.”
“I’m not impaired, Detective. I was thinking.”
“Uh-huh.” Done waiting for permission, he draped his jacket over my shoulders.
“I have coveralls in my bag. I assume it’s here by now?”
“Upstairs. But you might not want to walk around like that.” He nodded in the direction of my wet, ragged shirt. Hints of skin and bra were visible through he singed rips. “It might cause a riot or something.”
“A riot?” I grinned. “Your confidence in my sex appeal is flattering, Detective.”
He peered at me behind his glasses, trying to decide if I was messing with him, or if I’d misinterpreted his words. “I was going for chivalry, not flattery.”
“Either works.” I slid my arms in his jacket and buttoned up the front. .
Creed went back to questioning me. “Did they say anything to you?
I thought abou
t how much I wanted him to know. I settled on, “Shhhhhh...”
His mouth twitched in a shocked grin. “Did you just shush me?”
“No, that’s what she said. I know it doesn’t help.”
“More might come back after you rest. You’re lucky you got out of this as easy as you did. I’m still not sure why they didn’t kill you.”
“The Chandlers weren’t random. Our killers had a reason for what they did. Me, they just wanted to slow down so they could get away.”
Creed fell quiet. Did he know I was lying, or did he simply think me wrong?
We headed up the stairs. He put a hand on my arm to steady me. “I’m going back to the station for a while. I want to see if the Chandler’s financials and phone records are in. I’ll come back in a couple of hours and give you a ride home.”
“Thanks, but I can get a cab.”
“Or you could go home now. Either way, you don’t have to do this.”
“I need to see the scene while it’s fresh.”
“I know. I mean, you don’t have to pretend you’re okay. You can leave. Get some rest. Hell, you can quit. I don’t know what the city’s paying you to consult, but it’s nowhere near enough for this.”
“I can’t quit. I need the money to replace these boots.” I lifted up my foot, showing him the broken heel.
His straight face didn’t crack. “You don’t have to act like nothing happened.”
“And you don’t have to make me into a victim.”
“You are a victim.”
“Only if I feel like one.”
Not liking my stubbornness, Creed glared at me openly. I glared back.
It was obvious he didn’t know how to handle me.
The feeling was mutual.
Still, it was better if he thought me a ridiculously rash and pig-headed woman, than a half-dragon creature hunter whose body could heal in record time.
Creed broke our gaze. We started walking again, and by the time we’d made it up one flight, I was feeling better. My energy was returning. The ache in my head was easing. I would improve a lot faster once I ate and slept. Regardless, by tomorrow, I’d be moving like the attack never happened. The discolorations would take longer to disappear, which would help mask my rapid healing for a day or two.
Nite Fire: Flash Point Page 11