Fire Born (City of Dragons Book 5)

by Val St. Crowe

  Felicity laughed.

  “But, I don’t yet,” I said. “I mean, I don’t like being the size of a house or anything, but I’m not ready for him yet. I need…” I looked around my suite, trying to figure out what it was that I needed to be ready for the baby to come. I couldn’t figure it out.

  “You’re ready,” said Felicity. “Of course you are.”

  “I hope so,” I sighed.

  “You are.” She was insistent.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ~Lachlan~

  Lachlan parked the car outside the address that Minnie the English major/stripper/prostitute had given him. It was one of those big condo buildings, oceanfront, stretching ten stories up into the night sky. Most of the windows were dark. Lachlan bet that very few people were using these condos right now.

  But if Bartholomew Collins were here, he wouldn’t much care about the sun. Vampires as old as him didn’t go out much. Sun hurt their delicate skin. They turned white and pasty and weak. It was only their power that increased. Their physical bodies began to decline, as if even magic wasn’t strong enough to keep them going.

  Lachlan knew that could happen to him. He didn’t like thinking about it. He wasn’t all for living forever or anything, but he also didn’t want to have to choose to die on his own. It went against every instinct in his body, and he knew that it did.

  After losing Hallie, his sweet little girl, and finding out that he was a vampire, he’d wanted nothing more to do with being alive. He’d tried to end it. He’d stopped drinking blood, waited for the wound that had killed him to open back up.

  When he couldn’t bring himself to do that, he’d built a fire, and tried to force himself to walk into it. He was going to burn himself to death.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to do that either.

  His survival instinct was strong.

  And his ability to heal and grow was strong too. He hadn’t expected there was enough of anything left in his soul for him to ever love again, but he could. At first, he’d felt ashamed of his burgeoning feelings for Penny. He had thought himself incapable of ever feeling happiness again. The fact that he could seemed to dishonor Hallie’s memory. He felt ashamed of his happiness. He wanted to squelch it.

  But he couldn’t do that. And eventually, he forgave himself for moving forward, even though it seemed to fly in the face of the intensity of his feelings.

  Part of it, of course, was the new baby. His son. He had to be there for his son. Had to protect him. Had to be the father that the little guy deserved. And that meant stepping up.

  It also meant finding Bartholomew Collins.

  Lachlan slammed the door to the car and started across the street toward the building of condos.

  He found a door on the bottom floor, but when he tried it, it was locked. There was a keypad to one side of it. Lachlan ran his fingers over the number buttons.

  Then he put his hand on the door. He funneled magic into the door.

  It burst open.

  Lachlan stepped through it. He was now in a small vestibule that contained a set of steps. He started to walk up them. Hadn’t even needed the talisman to go through that door. There was magic thrumming in his veins. Magic from Penny’s blood.

  He felt strong and alive, the way he hadn’t felt in months. He felt, in some odd, horrid way, like he was finally himself again. Penny’s blood seemed to complete him in some primal way, shore up all the weak spots within him that he wasn’t even aware he had. He felt it in him, he felt her in him, and a surge of powerful emotion flooded him.

  He loved that woman more than anything on earth.

  But he couldn’t have her blood. He shouldn’t be feeling this. He shouldn’t feel this ever again.

  A pang of despair cut through him. He needed to feel this way.

  But no. It was only the blood bond taunting him, twisting his thoughts to make him feel as though he was in need of something he didn’t need at all.

  He forced the feeling down, forced the thoughts from his head.

  There was no reason to think of any of that, or to mourn it. He would be fine without Penny’s blood. He’d survived without it before. He could survive without it again.

  Yes, spoke up a voice from within. But it was always only survival. This is living.

  He squelched that voice as well. That voice was a lie.

  The steps petered out into a landing. There were more sets overhead, but there was a door here for the first floor.

  Lachlan took his phone out and checked the address that Minnie had given him. Fourth floor was where he was headed. He wondered if he could find an elevator. He didn’t know if he could handle being alone with his thoughts for the time it would take to climb three more flights of stairs.

  He pushed open the door to the first floor and found an elevator right next to the steps.

  Stepping into the elevator, he pressed the button for the fourth floor. Then he waited for the doors to close and the elevator to whisk him off to his destination.

  The ride was quick.

  The doors opened and Lachlan stepped out onto the fourth floor. He strode down the hallway, which was covered in royal blue carpet, until he reached the door to the place he was searching for.

  He knocked on the door.

  There was nothing.

  His heart sank. It had been a long shot, he knew, expecting to find Collins here after so long. Minnie had warned him that it was possible Collins had moved on, but Lachlan had clung to the hope that maybe, maybe…

  He knocked again.

  The door opened.

  He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

  A girl stood there dressed in layered lacy dresses—no, they were slips, he realized. She was wearing four or five slips as if they were dresses. She was thin and dirty, and the darts at the bust of the slips gaped where her breasts should be. She was flat… flat as a…

  She was a man, he realized. A thin, young man. A pretty man.

  “Hello, ma’am,” said Lachlan, instantly deciding to categorize her as a female no matter what her sex.

  She smiled at that. “Hello.” Her voice was throaty and pleased. She looked him over. This seemed to please her more. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for the person who lives here.”

  “I live here,” she said. But the lights weren’t on inside the condo, and there was no warmth radiating from the inside.

  Lachlan peered over her shoulder to see that the inside of the condo was lit by candles, and that there was no furniture. “You pay rent and everything, huh?”

  She giggled. “Sure do.”

  He sighed. She was clearly squatting there, and that meant that Collins wasn’t there anymore. His heart sank. For a moment there, he’d been so hopeful, but now everything was dashed. “You don’t know anyone named Bartholomew Collins, do you?”

  “I guess he used to live here,” said the pretty mangirl. “Before I moved in.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Someone keeps bringing up his mail for him, putting it in the door handle.”

  “Oh,” said Lachlan. That wasn’t much help. But at least he was sure this was the place where Collins had lived, not that it mattered.

  “I had one of the letters with me once at The Carlisle. It had a coupon in it for free drinks. There was a guitar player there, and he saw the name on the letter, and he snatched it from me, and wanted to know what I had to do with Bartholomew Collins. I guess that guy knows him.”

  “A guitar player? At The Carlisle?” Lachlan said. Well, it was better than nothing.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I stood outside the interrogation room with Dirk. We could watch what was going on inside through a two-way mirror, and we could hear sound as well.

  Lachlan was going in to talk to Caleb Kinnan again.

  Alone.

  Dirk and I had agreed to it. Dirk basically said she didn’t want to waste any more time on Caleb Kinnan, but if Lachlan thought
it was important, she’d do it however he wanted to do it, even if that meant being absent from the interrogation. Once Dirk caved, I didn’t feel like I had a leg to stand on, so I told Lachlan to do what he wanted.

  As long as we got some useful information from Caleb, I didn’t care.

  Caleb was already in the room, sitting chained at the table like he had been before. He looked the same as last time, gaunt and creepy.

  Lachlan entered through the door.

  “Hello, Lachlan,” said Caleb, smiling. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Is it?” Lachlan didn’t sit down, just grabbed the back of one of the chairs and leaned over. “Last time I was here, you acted as though you didn’t want to see me ever again. You said that you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “I changed my mind,” said Caleb.

  Lachlan raised his eyebrows.

  Caleb shrugged. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Lachlan sat.

  “I get bored, that’s the truth,” Caleb sighed. “I want to stick to my principles, but it’s hard when there’s nothing to do but stare at the four walls of my cell. You’re much nicer to stare at.”

  Lachlan smirked. “So I hear.”

  Caleb arched an eyebrow. “You’re really something else, aren’t you?”

  “I’m here because I need your help,” said Lachlan.

  “Help? Mine?”

  “Trying to catch a killer,” said Lachlan.

  Caleb made a tent with his fingers, inhaling swiftly. “Do you have photographs?”

  Lachlan laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Maybe if you had photographs, I could help, but if not, I doubt I’ll be much good on it.”

  “I’m not bringing you porn,” said Lachlan.

  “Porn? Are the victims naked? Male?”

  “Yes, they’re male, and some of them are naked,” said Lachlan.

  Another sharp intake of breath from Caleb.

  “No photos,” said Lachlan. “Get it out of your head.”

  “Then you’ll have to describe it to me,” said Caleb. “In excruciating detail.”

  Lachlan shook his head. “All I’m going to tell you is that they’re compulsion murders.”

  Caleb raised his eyebrows. “Like mine?”

  Lachlan nodded. “Not exactly like yours, but very similar.”

  Caleb sat back in his chair, stroking his chin with long, skinny fingers. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

  “I guess what I was hoping to get from you is a bit of your mindset,” said Lachlan. “How did you choose your victims? Why did you pick the men that you did? What—”

  “Because you see,” said Caleb, utterly ignoring Lachlan, “on the one hand, I might be flattered. Imitation is the sincerest form and all of that. But I find that I have rage roiling in my stomach. I want to find whoever’s doing this and tell him to come up with his own ideas.”

  “Your victims,” Lachlan tried again. “What drew you to them?”

  “They weren’t victims,” said Caleb. “I never thought of them that way. I thought of them as… lovers. Beautiful, beautiful lovers…” He sighed softly. “It was really too bad they all died.”

  Lachlan glanced up at the two-way mirror, and I could almost see that he was realizing that Caleb and the killer might have less in common than he thought they did. “You never intended for them to die.”

  “I started to realize that it was a lost cause after about the third one,” said Caleb. “Still, I didn’t stop.” He rubbed his nose. “But I didn’t take joy in the deaths, you know. That was an unfortunate side effect of my love.”

  “Your love.” Lachlan shook his head. He stood up. “I think I miscalculated, Caleb. I’m afraid that there might not be any way that you can help me after all.”

  “Wait,” said Caleb. “I can help you, Lachlan.”

  “I don’t know that you can.”

  “Oh, but I have a fan,” said Caleb, suddenly grinning from ear-to-ear like the Cheshire cat.

  Lachlan furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, a fan?”

  “He writes me letters all about how much he admires my work. He tells me about things he’d like to do to me, things he’d like me to do to him.”

  Lachlan struggled to mask the disgust on his face. “Caleb, that isn’t—”

  “Sometimes, he tells me how he’d kill, if he had the chance.”

  Lachlan sat back down. “What did you say?”

  Caleb looked quite satisfied. “That got your attention, didn’t it? I bet you want to read the letters. I bet you want to know who wrote them. Well, maybe I’ll let you, if you—”

  “I can get the letters,” said Lachlan. “I can get the name of who’s writing them too. You’re locked up in Roxbone prison, Caleb, you really think you can keep that from me?”

  Caleb made a sour face. “Ruin my game, why don’t you?”

  “Might as well tell me the name.”

  “I tell you the name, and then you never come back. And I go back to being bored,” said Caleb.

  “Never coming back either way,” said Lachlan.

  “Oh.” Caleb clutched his chest. “You wound me, Lachlan. I really thought we had something. I thought the time that I nearly killed you was rather intimate.”

  “I thought you took no joy in killing,” said Lachlan dryly.

  Caleb giggled. “Maybe a tiny bit. A very teeny, tiny bit.”

  “The name.”

  Caleb shrugged. “Oh, why not? Douglas Gray is his name, I believe. And he lives in Sea City too, or has a vacation home here at the very least. He keeps saying he wants to come and visit me, but he never does.” Caleb looked wistful, then indifferent again. “Maybe he’s your killer.”

  “That would be nice,” said Lachlan.

  It was almost never the first suspect we had. Almost never.

  “If I helped you catch him, would I get a… reward?” asked Caleb.

  “Goodbye, Caleb,” said Lachlan, standing up from the table again.

  “Oh, come on, don’t go,” said Caleb. “Stay.”

  “Sorry,” said Lachlan, shrugging. “It’s been interesting, but our time is up.”

  “Mmm.” Caleb shook his head. “Too bad. Too bad, indeed.” He blew Lachlan a kiss.

  I shuddered.

  Lachlan turned to the mirror and made a face at me.

  * * *

  “You lucked out with that, Flint,” said Dirk, shaking her head from the driver’s seat. “You were striking out, and then he pulls that letter writer out of his pocket, and suddenly it looks like a slam dunk for you. But you had no idea that he had an admirer like that.”

  “True,” said Lachlan.

  “And it’s likely that this Gray person isn’t even involved,” said Dirk. “Isn’t there a subset of disturbed people who like to carry on relationships with serial killers? There are those women who have conjugal visits with them and all of that, right? I imagine that it works for men too. If there were more female serial killers who weren’t lesbians, there’d probably be more men doing it.”

  “There aren’t female serial killers,” said Lachlan.

  “You did say that to me once,” I said. “But that can’t be right, can it? I mean, there was that one woman. They made a movie about her? Eileen?”

  “Aileen Wournos,” said Lachlan. “Wasn’t the same thing at all. She was on a revenge spree. It’s a completely different sort of motivation. Serial killers are sexually motivated. They kill for pleasure. She wasn’t doing that. She’s not a serial killer.”

  “She killed a lot of guys,” said Dirk. “Like seven, I think. That’s a heck of a lot of revenge. Maybe she did enjoy it. Maybe she lied and said that she was a sad, hurt little girl, and men like you ate it up.”

  Lachlan leaned forward between our seats. “Come on, Dirk. What’s your problem?’

  “I don’t have a problem.”

  “What’s with accusing me of being sexist?”

  “You can’t help it,”
she said. “You’re all caught up in this protection bullshit, makes you feel… relevant, I suppose. All men have to make us weaker or else they’d realize that they are utterly incidental to women’s continued existence.”

  I paused to digest that. What? I furrowed my brow. “Not utterly incidental.”

  “Pretty much,” said Dirk.

  I pointed at my stomach. “There is this.”

  She shrugged. “Stud service, fine. I’ll give you that. But there’s nothing else that men are good for.”

  “Did you have a terrible break-up or what?” muttered Lachlan from the back. He was sitting back in his seat now.

  “Oh, that is so typical. If I say anything against the male sex, it must be because I’m overly emotional. You are sexist.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s only that it’s difficult to know how to respond when someone tells you to your face that you have no reason to exist simply because of your gender—which, by the by, I have no control over.”

  “Oh, get over it,” she said. “You can handle it, right?”

  “You can’t have it both ways,” he said. “Either it’s sexist to think that men are tough and women are weak or it’s not.”

  “Whatever,” muttered Dirk.

  It was quiet.

  I turned to look at Dirk. “Did you have a bad break-up?”

  She glared at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess probably not? I mean, I was married to a guy who beat the living crap out of me and I’m not soured on the entire gender, so…”

  It was quiet again.

  I cleared my throat. “Lachlan’s a good guy. Maybe he’s protective, maybe that sometimes drives me nuts, but he’s not… I mean, there are some things that men can do that…”

  “It’s okay, Penny,” said Lachlan from the back seat. “You can stop defending me now.”

  I bit down on my lip.

  Dirk chuckled. “Look, maybe I owe you an apology, Flint. You’re not one of the assholes. I know that. It’s only that if you’d worked in this business as a woman as long as I have—”

  She was cut off by the sound of the police radio in her car crackling. “Dirk?” said a voice. “You copy?”

  Dirk seized the radio. “Dirk here.”