city of dragons 02 - fire storm

by Val St. Crowe

  “Lucky?” He pointed at me. “What he did to you, he can get locked up for that, but you don’t want to provide evidence for it.”

  “I…” I dragged a hand over my face. “I think maybe he stopped. So there’s nothing there. And if the police department knows you and I are having sex, then will they let us keep working together?”

  “Whether or not he…” His face twisted. He turned away from me. “You were assaulted, regardless of the extent of it. If you were… close to him, there could be DNA,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  “Let’s go to Andy’s,” I said. “Please. And then, afterward, maybe I can think about this again.”

  He glanced at me. “You really think I could pretend like this didn’t happen?”

  I clenched my hands into fists. “You can’t force me to go to the hospital, Lachlan.”

  He held up both his hands in surrender. “Yeah, okay. We’ll go to Andy’s.” And his voice was constricted.

  * * *

  “This woman,” I said, showing Andy a picture. “Clarke Gannon.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” said Andy. “Clarke.”

  Lachlan hung back behind me, staring at his shoes. He’d refused to say a word since we’d come into Andy’s, so I’d been forced to take control of the interview. Luckily, I was prepared. I’d hunted this picture of Clarke down on social media and everything.

  “You know her?” I said.

  “She comes in a lot,” said Andy. “Usually wrangling her sister. She’s a wild one, that sister.”

  “How do you mean?” I said.

  “Oh, you know, she’s just always causing trouble. Always doing something. I think that night, the night Fletcher disappeared, her sister was dancing on the tables. I couldn’t get her down, get her to stop. Only person Gina ever listens to is Clarke.”

  “Wait,” said Lachlan.

  We both turned to look at him.

  “Gina Gannon,” he said. “Of course.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Of course?”

  He shook his head.

  I waited, but when it became clear that Lachlan wasn’t going to say anything else, I turned back to Andy. “So, was she here that night, then? Clarke?”

  “I can’t say I remember seeing her specifically, but I do know that someone got Gina down off those tables, so I’d say it’s a good bet that Clarke was here at some point.”

  * * *

  “Gina Gannon’s kind of a joke at the station,” said Lachlan, sitting inside his car, turning the keys over in his hands. “She’s always getting arrested for things. Everything from prostitution to drug dealing to drunk driving. You name it, Gina Gannon does it. It’s a name all the cops know. She’s part of the system, if you know what I mean.”

  “So, does that mean anything?” I said.

  He sighed. “Well, she’s a drake.”

  “That’s motive,” I said. “Clarke Gannon kills dragons to feed her sister and keep her from going nuts. I bet she has her hands full, if that girl is as strung out as you say. Gina probably forgets to eat all the time.”

  “Is that true?” said Lachlan. “If drakes don’t eat meat, do they really rage out and start ripping people to shreds?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest,” I said. “But I don’t think Clarke would want to find out, either. Maybe Clarke thought Gina was on the edge that night. Maybe she thought Gina was nearly to whatever the rage-out point is. And so maybe Clarke followed Alastair and Fletcher home from Andy’s. And since Fletcher was the weaker of the two, she killed him.”

  “It’s a theory,” said Lachlan, nodding. “But let’s get back to going to the hospital.”

  “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

  He swallowed. “You might not know how it works, so I want to explain it to you.”

  “I know how it works,” I said.

  “If you go to the hospital and request a…” He fiddled with the keys. “A rape kit, then—”

  “Lachlan, why don’t we go and see if we can track down Clarke at Happy Harry’s or something. Corner her on this.”

  “I know where she lives, actually,” he said. “I got her address after the first time we spoke to her. But you’re trying to avoid talking about this. Because you’re in denial about what happened to you, and… God help me, Penny, I almost want to just ignore it too. Because thinking about him and you…”

  “You have her address? So, let’s go there. Let’s talk to her. Maybe we could lean on her, get her to confess—”

  “Penny, please.” He tightened his fist around the keys. “Listen to me. You go and request the kit. And they do the examination. But that doesn’t mean you have to press charges. It only means that you have the evidence on file if you choose to. You may want to forget it now, because you’re in shock, but this man abducted you from your home and kept you somewhere forcefully. You couldn’t leave. He bruised you. He did God-knows-what to you. When you can think clearly, you’re going to remember all that, and you’re going to want him locked up. And you will not have the chance to collect that evidence again.”

  I licked my lips. I didn’t respond.

  “Now, if you don’t want me to be there, I’ll call Felicity,” he said. “But I think you owe yourself the option of pressing charges.”

  I sucked in a breath. I was starting to shake.

  “We need to go there now,” he said.

  “I think he stopped,” I said in a tiny voice.

  “So?” said Lachlan. “So what? You said he had his hands on you, that you weren’t wearing clothes, and you think it makes it better if he didn’t… God damn it.” He threw open the door to the car and got out.

  I scrunched down in the passenger’s seat while he swore and kicked gravel, sending it spraying into the road.

  He got back inside. “On second thought,” he said in an even voice, “we’ll just go back to his house. I’m going to put a bullet between his eyes.” He fitted the keys into the ignition.

  I put a hand on his arm. “We can go to the hospital.”

  “No, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to kill him. I promised him I would kill him—”

  “I don’t know if there’s anything there, but if you think that I should go, then I will.” I touched his face. “I don’t think you could kill him. He’s got crazy magic right now, and I don’t know why, but—”

  “So not only did he do this to you, but now you’re telling me I’m not man enough to stop him?” Lachlan’s voice cracked.

  And then I did start crying. The sobs just washed over me. I reached for him.

  He pulled me close, his strong arms wrapping around me. He just held me.

  And I cried and cried and cried.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The examination helped somehow. It was clinical, and it was done by a doctor, and it made me feel less like I’d been damaged deep inside somewhere and more like I’d been wounded and that it could all be treated with the proper application of cotton swabs.

  The doctor was professional, but she was also gentle and kind to me, and that made it easier.

  She asked me questions about my recent sexual history and about what I remembered Alastair doing, and she said she couldn’t make any conclusive statements about penetration, so we’d have to rely on the results of the samples she took to know for sure.

  Even if there was nothing there, she said that finding hair or skin cells on other parts of my body would be effective. Any fibers from things in Alastair’s house—like sheets or carpets or things like that—could be helpful. She also insisted on collecting samples from under my nails, though, even though I told her I hadn’t scratched him. I had been compelled not to fight, so I hadn’t.

  She said it was okay not to have fought. “You did exactly the right thing. The most important thing in an assault situation is to get out alive.”

  I tried to tell her it wasn’t like that. This wasn’t some stranger who’d broken into my apartment. It was my ex-husband. And he’d done things like thi
s before, but I’d never reported them.

  And she only said. “Good for you for doing it this time. I know this isn’t easy, but you’re doing a great job, and it’s almost over.”

  And it was.

  Afterward, I found Lachlan, who was pacing in the waiting room. I’d had the option of allowing him to be with me during the procedure, but I’d opted against it, only because I thought it would be too hard on him.

  I’d had to speak in some detail about things that Alastair had done, and I remembered the way Lachlan had reacted earlier, kicking the gravel and talking about killing Alastair. I didn’t want to make things harder on Lachlan than they already were.

  Honestly, I didn’t know how to act around him. I wanted to pull our typical camaraderie over us like a blanket. Just wrap us up in solving this case and pretend like nothing was wrong.

  But I’d tried that earlier, and while it might work for me, it wasn’t going to work for him.

  So, I came out into the waiting room and took his hand and smiled at him. “Do we go to the station and report this now?”

  “How are you?” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, smiling at him. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought. Honestly, when I was pregnant, I had more invasive exams.”

  He cringed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Too much information?”

  “You know you can tell me anything.”

  I looked around the waiting room. “Let’s not talk here.”

  He nodded.

  We went back to his car, but we didn’t get inside. We stood in the parking lot. We were still surrounded by cars and people moving around, but it felt more private here. Maybe it was because we were outside.

  I peered into his eyes. “I think this is harder on you than it is on me.”

  “What? That’s insane. You’re in shock still, and it hasn’t sunk in—”

  “This isn’t the first time this happened to me, Lachlan. I’ve been through this with Alastair before. Worse than this. Much worse. But it’s the first time it’s happened to you.”

  “Nothing happened to me.”

  I reached up to caress his face. “You were right to insist I come here, do that kit, that I press charges, all of it. You were right that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had gone into survival mode, and all I wanted to do was forget about it and move on.”

  “And you’re not in survival mode now?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Yes, maybe. But I’m sort of always in survival mode a little bit.”

  He got his sunglasses out of his suit jacket and turned them over in his hands.

  “You’re treating me like I’m fragile. You’re being careful with me,” I said. “But when you met me, I’d already been through this.”

  “It happened last night. I think it’s warranted to go easy on you.”

  “Okay, yeah, but this isn’t like… It’s not as if I was fresh and innocent as the driven snow and now I’ve been utterly destroyed. I lived through this abuse already. I’m screwed up. I was screwed up when you met me. This is an extension of that screwed-up-ness.”

  “I don’t think that makes it better.’

  “No,” I said. “But I have tools to deal with this abuse now. Back when I was with Alastair, I thought I deserved it, and my spirit was crushed.”

  “How could you possibly think you deserved it?”

  “It was a combination of things. Before Alastair ever laid a hand on me, he started breaking me down. Telling me that I was worthless and vain and shallow. Criticizing me. Slowly chipping away at me, eroding all my defenses. Until I believed him when he said that I was a horrible person and I needed to be punished. And I also thought that he and I were fated to be together. That it was written in the stars or something, you know? So, if that was true, there had to be some reason I was joined to a man like that. I must deserve it.”

  “Jesus.” He put his sunglasses on top of his head and pulled me against him.

  I pressed my cheek against his chest and closed my eyes. I liked being close to him. I liked being held. That was good, wasn’t it? Because earlier, when he’d touched me, I’d pulled away. This meant I was healing. “Anyway, now I know that’s bull. So, when it happens, it’s external. It’s Alastair’s fault, not mine. That makes a world of difference, you know?”

  He stroked my hair. “It’s still a big deal, Penny,” he murmured. “I can’t let you just hand wave it all away.”

  “I’m not,” I said. I looked up at him. “I’m really not. But I don’t want to wallow in it either. So, what’s our next move? We file a report? Press charges?”

  “You want to do that right now?”

  I nodded. “Yes. And then I want to get back to work. I want to go to Clarke Gannon’s house.”

  “No,” he said. “No way. That’s crazy.”

  * * *

  Clarke Gannon opened the door with her hair in two braids, wearing a ratty t-shirt and a pair of sweats. She looked softer, somehow. Younger. I could see the curves of her cheeks and chin. I realized that she couldn’t be more than twenty. She was practically a child. How had she gotten into this? Was she really killing dragons to protect her sister?

  “I don’t think I have to talk to you,” she said, pulling the door closed.

  My hand shot out, blocking the door from closing. I made my voice soothing. “It’s okay. We’re just here to try to understand what happened.”

  Lachlan raised his eyebrows at me.

  He’d taught me well, what could I say? Anyway, I felt a tiny thread of sympathy for Clarke. Not enough to excuse her actions, because she murdered my kind for sport and cash, but enough that I could tap into it and make everything I said to her genuine. “You know that drakes don’t need dragon flesh to survive, don’t you? Your sister would be okay on a diet of steak and chicken.”

  “What’s my sister got to do with this?” Clarke folded her arms over her chest.

  “Can we come in?” I said.

  Clarke sighed. But she stepped back, making room for us to pass.

  Lachlan and I stepped into Clarke’s apartment, which was cluttered but not dirty.

  “How many dragons have you killed for Gina?” I said.

  “That’s what you think?” said Clarke. “It’s not like that at all. Sometimes she steals the meat. She’s addicted to it. That’s how she became a drake in the first place, chasing dragon meat down, doing anything for it. I don’t want to give her that stuff.”

  “You admit that you kill dragons, though?” said Lachlan.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I take down problems,” she said. “And I only sell to mages who can take the curses out of the bones of the mad dragons. That’s what’s made Gina worse, honestly. Eating that tainted meat. It’s bad for her. It’s like I don’t even know who she is anymore.”

  “Mad dragons?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re a dragon, right?” she said. “I saw the stories about you in the paper. How you took Anthony Barnes down. Thanks for that, by the way. His shelter was one of the few places that I could send Gina to dry out where they could actually handle her. Now, that place is gone. No one else knows what to do with someone strung out on magic. She just breaks out.”

  “Anthony Barnes was a murderer—”

  “He had magic,” she said. “He could fight Gina down.”

  “He got that magic from killing dragons,” I said. “But I guess that doesn’t matter to someone like you, since you murder us anyway.”

  Lachlan cleared his throat.

  Okay, okay, so my sympathetic act had pretty much crashed and burned. I guessed that Lachlan was better at this than me after all. I clamped my mouth shut. Maybe I shouldn’t talk.

  “I don’t,” said Clarke. “Like I said, I only kill the mad ones.”

  “There aren’t any mad dragons,” said Lachlan quietly.

  “You don’t know, do you?” She shook her head at us in disbelief. “It’s happening right under your nose, and you don’
t see it. And the money that the dragons are throwing at it. They spend millions to cover it up, and you still don’t know about it?”

  “Know about what?”

  “Know about the rogue dragons. The ones who go crazy and start burning people to death unless someone like me stops them.”

  This wasn’t the first time I’d heard something like this. The other slayer we’d met, Otis, he’d claimed that dragons had murdered his little sisters.

  “This idea that dragons go insane is a fairy tale,” I said to her. So much for keeping my mouth shut. “You slayers whisper it to yourselves before you go to bed at night so that you can sleep with a clear conscience.”

  Clarke pressed her lips together in a firm line.

  “Listen, regardless of any conspiracy about hiding dragon attacks,” said Lachlan.

  “It’s not a conspiracy,” said Clarke. “It’s fact. You can think what you like, but I don’t need to lie to myself about the carnage dragons wreak on the populace. Dragons have always been dangerous, and the more powerful they get, the more they just shove it under the rug. The dragons don’t want to stop the rogues. They just want to throw money at it, pay off the officials, change the reports, donate anonymously to trusts made in the victims’ names. They think that stops it, but it doesn’t.”

  I was aghast. She really believed this was true. But if something like that were going on, I would know about it.

  “We’re here about something very specific,” said Lachlan.

  “Yeah, okay.” She folded her arms over her chest. “What’s this about again? Some missing guy?”

  “Fletcher Remington,” I said. “He was a dragon, and he’s missing.”

  “And you think I killed him?”

  “You do kill dragons,” said Lachlan.

  “Not like him,” she said. “Not like that. He doesn’t fit my profile. I never touched him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Oh, Penny,” whispered Felicity. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t think anything happened,” I said. “I mean, I think when he knocked me out, he stopped. Alastair is horrible, but he always liked me awake and suffering.”