Fire Song (City of Dragons)

by St. Crowe, Val

  I crossed the room and threw myself face down on the bed.

  God.

  Lachlan’s story was messing with my head. I couldn’t handle it. It was too horrible for words. I thought of all the terrible implications of the story. I thought of being mother to a boy like that. What it would mean if my son had shot my other child, had shot the man I loved? I would still love my son, even though he’d done that. But I would hate him as well.

  Trying to contain that terrible paradox would make me insane.

  I still couldn’t see myself having sex with another man.

  But maybe it had been too much for her. Maybe she had felt as if nothing mattered at all. Maybe she had blamed herself. Hated herself.

  Or maybe she’d simply wanted everyone to hurt as much as she did.

  I rolled over on the bed, stared at the ceiling.

  I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I wished that I didn’t know. I wished that Lachlan had just kept his terrible secrets bottled up, because I couldn’t deal with them.

  There was a knock on my door.

  I didn’t answer.

  But the door opened a bit, and Felicity poked her head in. “Hey.” She winced. “Sorry.”

  I sat up. “Are you dressed?”

  She giggled. “Yes. Can I come in?”

  I flopped back on the bed. “You don’t need to. You can go back to Jensen.”

  She came inside. “Nah. He left. He’s afraid of you.”

  “Afraid of me?”

  “Yeah, because he heard about what you did to The Lost Breed. He thinks you hate vampires. I tried to tell him differently, but considering the way you were when he met you, he’s not really buying it.”

  I sat up again. “Oh, hell.” I thought of Lachlan taking a drink of his partner’s cup, getting shot, being a vampire. “Maybe I’ve been a little hard on Jensen.”

  “You think?” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I didn’t think about how it could have really been accidental for him to have become what he is. Growing up dragon, all the other magical creatures are painted as people who either kill us outright or fund the people who do kill us. But I should have known better. You’re different. And you wouldn’t have fallen for someone who wasn’t different as well.”

  “That’s true,” she said. She sat down on the bed next to me. “What brought this on?”

  I shuddered. “I just… I heard the most horrible story I think I’ve ever heard.”

  “What?”

  “Detective Flint? He’s a vampire.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Pot, meet kettle.”

  “I’m not into him,” I said. “I swear to God, we are only friends. He’s very, very screwed up in the head, anyway. More screwed up than me, even.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I relayed the story to her as quickly as I could, filling in all the details and rushing to end it, because retelling it was like reliving it.

  “That is terrible,” she said.

  “I just keep thinking about his wife,” I said. “How that must have felt for her. I keep thinking about my baby, own sweet baby, shooting my other baby—”

  “Hey.” Felicity grabbed both of my hands. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

  “I can’t help it.” My first miscarriage had been too early for me to even know that it happened, but the other two had been later in the pregnancies. I’d had to go through labor, deliver their tiny little bodies. Afterward, I’d been able to dress them up and hold them. And this was the image I had in my head, of those tiny little babies all grown up and hurting each other. “I don’t mean to think like that. I want it to stop.” My eyes filled with tears.

  She hugged me. “You’re too empathetic, sweetie. You put yourself in that story, but it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t your children.” She pulled back, looking me square in the eyes. “You would have loved your little ones far too much for either of them to ever do anything like that.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What if that isn’t enough? What if that boy, Lachlan’s stepson, was born wrong, and there was no way she could have stopped it?”

  “Even if that’s the case, sweetie, it wasn’t you. You’ve had your tragedies. You don’t need to take on other people’s as well.”

  I started to sob. I couldn’t help it. I lay down on the bed, and I cried and I cried, thinking of the feeling of a baby moving in my womb, thinking of how much I longed to watch that baby grow up, and how all of it had been stolen from me.

  Felicity lay down behind me and held me.

  We spooned together there and I cried until I was spent.

  Then we were quiet.

  “You have to apologize to Jensen for me,” I said in a thick voice, wiping at my eyes.

  “Shh.”

  “No, I mean it. You have to.” I turned to look at her. “Because I was horrible to him, and I don’t want him to think badly of me. And I want you to be happy, Felicity. I want you to fall in love and get married and—” I bit off my words. I knew that being a drake made Felicity sterile. She had died, and only magic was keeping her alive now. Her physical body was not capable of having a child. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay.” She smiled at me. “You know that having a baby is your dream, not mine.”

  “Fuck.” I wiped at my tears again. “Let’s, um, schedule another dinner, the three of us. So that I can make it up to Jensen. Would he do that?”

  She rested her forehead against mine. “I’ll make him do it.”

  *

  My phone was ringing.

  I was asleep, and my phone was ringing.

  I groaned, turning over in my bed to reach for it. I answered it sleepily. “Hello?”

  “Penny?”

  “Yeah?” Last night, after crying my eyes out, Felicity and I had raided the refrigerator, which was mostly full of leftovers from takeout that we’d both gotten. Then we’d pigged out and watched movies and talked girl talk until late into the night. I hadn’t gone to bed until… oh, God, I had no idea, but it had been late.

  “It’s Flint. Uh, Lachlan.”

  I blinked. And then I was wide awake. “Um, hi. How are you?”

  “Good, and you?” he said, as if he was responding to a normal inquiry. Oh, okay. He was going to pretend like he hadn’t told me that story the night before. Well, maybe that was a good thing, because I didn’t want to talk about it again. Not really.

  “A little tired, I guess.”

  “Did I wake you?” he said. “It’s nearly eleven.”

  “Oh, well, I was up late talking to Felicity.” I sat up in bed. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “The drake we talked to? Anthony Barnes? He’s at the station, says he has some information for us. You want to sit in on the interview?”

  “Um, sure,” I said. “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

  “Good. See you soon.” He hung up.

  I set the phone down. Business as usual. Right.

  *

  “It just came to me,” said Anthony, sipping some coffee from a styrofoam cup as he sat opposite us. “I saw her picture on the news the other day, and it was a different picture than the one they usually use, and she looked a bit different. And that was when I recognized her.”

  “Sophia Ward, you mean?” said Lachlan.

  “Yes. Now, I don’t think she went by Sophia when she checked in with us. She used some other name, but that’s typical for kids to do that, to keep things to themselves,” said Anthony. “It was only once, and it was just for the night. The next morning, a man in a flashy convertible picked her up.”

  “Do you remember anything about that man?” said Lachlan.

  “Well, I got a good look at him. He was tall, and he had dark hair, and he was trim and in good shape. If I saw him again, I think I’d recognize him.”

  Lachlan slid a picture of Alastair across the table at him.

  “Yes,” said Anthony. “Yes. That’s hi
m.”

  *

  “Now, don’t get excited,” said Lachlan. He and I were at his desk now, and he was pacing in front of the whiteboard. “I think it’s quite likely that this could simply be Anthony’s way of inserting himself further into the investigation.”

  “Because you think he’s the killer.”

  “I don’t know if he is or isn’t,” said Lachlan. “But he might have simply agreed to any picture I showed him. If he is the killer, he’s got motivation to throw us off his scent.”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “But if he’s not the killer, if he’s on the up and up, then this is more evidence against Alastair,” said Lachlan. “I think we need to go and talk to him again. Are you up for that?”

  “Of course I am,” I said.

  “Because if you thought that it was too much, I would understand,” he said. “I don’t need your presence to throw him off this time. I can handle it on my own.”

  “I want to come with you.” I got to my feet, folding my arms over my chest.

  He smiled. “Good.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Alastair had been in the middle of a workout before we showed up. He was wearing a pair of sweats, and he’d thrown on a t-shirt, which was clinging to his sweaty chest.

  His sweat was like some kind of intoxicant to me, and I wanted to punch him for being so male and enticing.

  “I already told you, I was looking out for Sophia,” he said, pushing hair away from his glistening forehead with one thick, muscular arm.

  I remembered the way those arms used to feel wrapped around me. I remembered running my fingers over his solid flesh.

  I shivered.

  Lachlan shot me a look.

  I hugged myself.

  Alastair seemed to notice that I was affected. He smirked.

  God, he was sexy. I wanted to climb him. I wanted to run across the room, jump at him, wrap my thighs around his narrow hips and put my mouth on those smirking lips.

  Lachlan stepped in front of me, as if he somehow sensed my desire and wanted to save me from myself. He took a deep breath. “Look, we know that Sophia’s brother didn’t ask you to look after her. He seemed to take a rather dim view of you, considering you couldn’t keep your own mate.”

  Alastair’s nostrils flared. “You tricked me, Penny. But that’s a mistake I won’t make again. Trusting you. When I get you back, you’re going to be mine forever. I’ll never let you out of my sight.”

  “I’m not coming back,” I seethed over Lachlan’s shoulder, even though I was imagining what it would be like to peel Alastair’s shirt off of his body, let my fingers dance over his sculpted stomach.

  “We’re not here to talk about that,” said Lachlan. “We’re here to talk about Sophia Ward. Did you pick her up at the shelter or not?”

  “Yes,” said Alastair.

  “And why? Why were you seen talking with her the night she disappeared?”

  Alastair caught my gaze. He smiled a particularly nasty smile. “I was fucking her.”

  The words slammed into my body like a punch. I stumbled backward. I felt ill.

  “Okay,” said Lachlan. “Well, Sophia apparently got around, because she supposedly had a rich boyfriend who was the head of an enormous conglomerate.”

  “No, that was me,” said Alastair. “Saying that stuff about me was just our cover story.”

  I was struggling to recover. It shouldn’t have mattered to me. I didn’t care about Alastair. I was free of him. I had no hold on him. But the thought of his being with someone who wasn’t me… it felt so wrong that it made my stomach twist.

  I needed to hold onto something.

  I went to the wall. Leaned against it. Tried to keep my stomach from emptying itself all over Alastair’s white carpet.

  “Deena Walsh, her friend, seemed to think that there was a real connection between Sophia and that boyfriend,” said Lachlan. “That she thought they might get married.”

  Alastair shrugged.

  “I suppose, since your mate was gone, you might have considered finding a replacement,” said Lachlan.

  “I never told her we would get married,” said Alastair. “She was young and she was sexy and I needed someone, because I’ve been pretty broken up over Penny running out on me.”

  “Oh, so you had to go and stick your dick in a teenager?” I said, feeling even more ill.

  “She wasn’t a teenager,” said Alastair.

  “Close enough,” I said.

  He pointed at me. “You’re the one who did this. You left. If you hadn’t gone away, I would never—”

  “Never what?” said Lachlan. “Never have killed those girls?”

  “What?” Alastair turned to Lachlan, angry and confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sophia was the first,” Lachlan said. “We found her body second, but she’d been in the water longer. Chronologically, she was killed first. So, here’s what I think. I think that something happened that ticked you off. Sophia screwed up, didn’t she?”

  Alastair’s face twitched.

  “Am I right?” Lachlan’s voice lowered. “She made you crazy angry, because of something she did. If she wouldn’t have done it, you wouldn’t have gotten so angry. You controlled yourself as best you could, but in the end, you couldn’t help yourself. She deserved it.”

  Alastair swallowed.

  “You ever have to hit Sophia?” said Lachlan. “Just to teach her a lesson?”

  “I’m not saying a word to you,” said Alastair, his voice barely controlled.

  “Oh, come on,” said Lachlan. “We both know how it is. Women sometimes do things that make you insane. And she can get in your face. She can slap you. But if you slap her back, well, that’s not allowed. How is that fair?”

  “Whatever I did,” said Alastair. “I didn’t kill her.”

  “I don’t think you meant to,” said Lachlan. “You only meant to show her that what she’d done was serious, so she’d never do it again. You just went too far.”

  “No,” said Alastair.

  “You lost control,” hissed Lachlan.

  Alastair shook his head. “I don’t lose control.”

  “You did,” Lachlan said. “And then once Sophia was dead, you needed a replacement. A younger, more malleable replacement. Elena Watson.”

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

  “But she needed to be taught a lesson too, and then you needed another girl. This one would work out, would be exactly what you needed. But Dahlia wasn’t right either, was she?”

  “I never even met those other girls.”

  “We both know what you did,” said Lachlan. “It’s just a matter of proving it. And believe me, Mr. Cooper, I will find the proof. And I’ll take great pleasure in putting you away.”

  “There’s no proof to find, because I didn’t do it.” Alastair’s face was red. He was starting to shake. “I think you need to leave, detective.”

  “I’m onto you.” Lachlan pointed at him.

  “Get out,” said Alastair. Then he turned to me. “Penny, you stay.”

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Stay,” he said. “You know you miss me. You’re even jealous. That means there’s still something between us. I still love you. You still love me.”

  “No.” I shook my head. But part of me wanted to stay. Wanted my hands on him, my lips on him, our bodies pressed close together. And that part of myself frightened me. I knew I was stronger than that part, but I just wanted it to go away. As long as it was still there, I had to fight it, and as long as I had to fight, there was always a chance I would lose the fight.

  “Penny.” He reached out a hand for me.

  I turned and fled, running out of the room.

  And I didn’t stop running until I was out of the house and inside Lachlan’s car.

  I slammed the door and locked it, and I sat there shaking until Lachlan came back.

  When he did, he
got in and took his sunglasses out of his jacket. “You okay?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He paused, midway into putting his sunglasses on his face. He lowered them and surveyed me. “I thought you said you could handle it.”

  “I can,” I said. “But it’s hard is all. I thought it would be like other hard things, where it’s hard at first, but then after you conquer it a few times, it gets easier. But it’s not like that at all. It’s not easier.”

  He sat back in his seat, sucking in a slow breath. “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He put on his sunglasses. He started the car.

  We pulled away from Alastair’s house, and the more distance we put between him and me, the better I felt.

  *

  Lachlan surveyed his beer.

  We were sitting next to each other at the bar in Duffy’s Pub and Grill, because I’d decided to use my gift card. I didn’t think Connor would approve, considering that Lachlan and I were just talking about work, but it was kind of like having a social life. Anyway, I didn’t know who else I would have taken out for a drink.

  Maybe, back before Jensen entered the picture, I might have brought Felicity, but not these days. She was always busy.

  “So, Alastair’s still at the top of my list,” said Lachlan.

  “It sure sounded like it,” I said. “You lit into him like he did it.”

  “I thought maybe it might make him crack,” said Lachlan. “But it didn’t. Guy’s too smart for that kind of thing.”

  “What did you say to him after I left?” I said.

  “Not much,” said Lachlan. “More of the same, really. Just trying to get him to give me something. But he just kept insisting that he didn’t even know the other girls, and that he didn’t want Sophia dead. He said he liked her a lot.”

  “But you were right that he was hitting her. The way he reacted—”

  “There’s no way to prove that either, though,” said Lachlan.

  “Maybe she told someone. Maybe we go back to that friend—”

  “She wouldn’t have,” said Lachlan. “Women don’t talk about it to friends.” He took a drink of beer. “You didn’t, did you?”

  He was right. I’d been embarrassed, and I’d been too far under Alastair’s thumb. He had convinced me that all of it was my fault, and the last thing I wanted was to be berated by my friends. Not only that, he hadn’t liked any of my friends. He’d tried to keep me away from them, and he’d mostly succeeded. With the exception of Felicity, of course. No one could separate me from Felicity.