After about four feet, I came to a door on my left. It was cracked open a bit.
I pushed it open.
Inside, the room was completely dark.
I couldn’t see anything for a second, and then I made out the outline of a toilet and an old claw-foot tub. A bathroom.
I backed out of that room.
I continued down the hallway.
There was another doorway, across the hall. The door stood wide open, but it was pitch black inside.
I poured a bit of magic down my arm, into the palm of my hand. And then I was holding a small flame, like a torch. The flickering light illuminated the room, which wasn’t a room at all.
At least… it didn’t have a floor.
There was just water.
It was an indoor pool. This was the bleach smell, I realized. Chlorine.
What the fuck?
I shone my makeshift torch around the room some more, and I made out a ladder at one end. The pool was half the size of a normal sized pool, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want a pool in here.
The door was odd too, I realized. It was made of thick steel, like some kind of industrialized door in a factory or something. The walls of the room seemed to also be reinforced.
Why would anyone make a room like this?
Whoever had done it did it more recently than the rest of the house. This wasn’t something that had been made in the 1950s. This was much more recent.
I backed out of the pool room, shaking my head.
None of this made any sense.
I looked down the hallway, back into the living room.
And then I started further back the hallway.
Wait.
That wasn’t right.
There was something in the living room. Something was on the couch.
I turned back, and sure enough, there was a figure on the couch. No one had been lying there before. I was sure of it.
Wait. Was that Lachlan?
I started for him. “Lachlan!” I called out.
A streak of movement from behind me.
I whirled, shooting fire at the movement, throwing balls of heat and light and smoke in the direction of the danger.
“Fuck!” A painful-sounding curse.
But before I could see what damage I had inflicted, something bit into my arm.
I looked down to see that a strange metal shackle was around my wrist. It was covered in glowing runes, and I felt…
Cold. My magic, it was…
Anthony Barnes loomed in front of me, his teeth bared. He had another shackle in his hand, and he brought it down on my other wrist.
I tried to throw fire at him.
But all of my fire, all of my magic, it was gone.
“These shackles are seeded with dragon sacrifice,” he said to me.
The strongest kind of magic.
“How else do you think I kept those girls from getting away?”
“You are the killer,” I said.
He shrugged. And then he grabbed a piece of wood that looked like it might have come from the porch. He raised it above his head.
I tried to duck.
But there was only pain.
And darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Penny,” whispered Lachlan’s voice.
My head hurt. My foot hurt from where I’d fallen outside. And the shackles at my wrist felt like icy knives digging into my skin. I forced myself to sit up. To open my eyes.
We were in a tiny, dark room. There was one window, which had been boarded up from the outside, and a little bit of light seeped around the cracks. A bare twin-sized mattress lay on the floor in one corner.
“Tell me you called someone,” he said. “Tell me someone knows where we are.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t have service.” I felt around in my pocket. It was empty. “I guess he took our phones.”
Lachlan sighed. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”
“I was worried about you. When your phone cut off, I thought that maybe he had gotten you. I guess I was right.”
“No, when my phone cut off, it was just because I lost service,” he said. “He didn’t get me until later.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, even though I couldn’t call anyone, people will know where we are, right? You told someone you were coming out here.”
“No,” he said.
“Well, they’ll go through your property searches,” I said. “They’ll find us.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But we shouldn’t wait for that.”
“What are we supposed to do?” I held up my wrists. “He took my magic.”
“What do you mean?”
“These shackle things. They’re seeded with dragon sacrifice. It makes them the most powerful talismans. Dragon sacrifice is how they made the gargoyles, you know.”
“So, we just get them off you?” he said. “Or I drink your blood again?”
“Don’t you still have magic from the last time you drank my blood?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I kind of wanted it out of my system. I sort of used it all up.”
“It won’t work drinking it now,” I said. “The shackles are sucking up all my magic. There’s nothing to get from me.”
“So, we’re back to getting them off you.” He eyed them. “They don’t look that tight. Maybe you can slide them off.”
I tried. They were definitely not coming over my thumbs. “They sort of snapped on. Like handcuffs.”
He seized my hand and surveyed one of the shackles. “Looks like they come off with a key. There’s the lock. Maybe we can pick it.”
“Can you do that? Pick locks?”
“I never have, but necessity is the mother of invention and all that,” he said. “How hard can it be?”
“Great,” I muttered.
He looked around the room. “What the hell can I use to pick a lock?”
I bit my lip. “You think this is where he kept them? Sophia and Dahlia and Elena?”
Lachlan was on his feet, stalking around the perimeter of the room. “Probably. We need something like a paper clip.”
“I don’t see any paper clips around here.” I hugged my knees to my chest. “He said that he put these shackles on them. It made them powerless against him. But I can’t figure out what that pool is for.”
“Pool?” He raised his eyebrows.
“You didn’t see it?”
“I didn’t make it into the house. I got up on the porch and that was it. He must have been hiding in the woods or something.” Lachlan had made an entire circuit around the room. “Nothing to pick a lock in here.” He pointed at me. “Does your bra have an underwire?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not even wearing a bra. I have on like a tank top with a shelf bra.”
“What does that mean?”
“That there’s nothing metal on me,” I said.
“Well, damn it,” he said.
“Sorry,” I said. “Underwire bras are really uncomfortable to me.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” He turned in a circle, looking around the room. Then he went to the door and jiggled the doorknob. “Had to try that. If it had been unlocked, and we hadn’t tried it—”
“That would have been too good to be true.”
He rested his forehead against the door. “All right, he’s got to have the key on him, right? We’ll get it from him.”
“Just ask him for it?”
“He’s a drake,” said Lachlan. “Did you say that drake’s blood—”
“Is practically as good as dragon’s blood to give vampires magic,” I said. “So, if you can drink his blood—”
“I’ll have magic,” said Lachlan. “I can pin him to the wall and force his pockets to empty themselves.”
“Okay,” I said. “Well, I guess we just wait for him to come back, then.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
But he didn’t come back for a long time.
The
light that was coming in through the boards around the windows grew dim and turned orange and then red and then disappeared.
It was pitch black, and it was cold out here. There was no heat in the house, and it was still getting down into the upper thirties sometimes at night. I didn’t know if it was quite that cold, but as the night wore on, we got progressively chillier and chillier.
I shivered on the mattress, my teeth chattering.
Lachlan paced in the darkness.
“So,” I whispered eventually. “Do you have body heat?”
“What?” he said.
“I mean, technically, you’re dead, right? So, does that mean you’re cold?”
“Not when I have blood in my system,” he said. “If I don’t get blood, I get cold, the wound that killed me starts opening back up… I die again.”
“Oh,” I said. “So, when was the last time you had blood?”
“On the way here. I had some in the car.”
“So, that means you’re warm?”
“Oh,” he said. “You’re cold.”
“Never mind,” I muttered, hugging myself tighter.
But then he was on the mattress with me, and he draped his suit jacket over my shoulders. His arm went around me, and the heat of him was nice.
“You should have said something,” he said in a rumbling voice.
I burrowed against his chest, feeling heat fill me. I wasn’t sure if it was the shackles around my wrists that were making me feel so damned cold or what. But this was very good, being close to him.
And then I felt self-conscious. Because this was sort of intimate, I supposed, and things had become somewhat complicated between him and me, and I wondered if I should pull back.
Not a chance. I was freezing my ass off.
“Better?” he murmured.
Oh my. That voice—that lilting soft voice, this close to my ear. I sucked in breath. “Yeah, I’m not so cold now.”
“Good,” he said.
It was silent. I tried to think of something to say, because I was becoming more and more aware of his body, the heat from his skin coming through his thin shirt, and his arms seemed strong, and this close to him, I could smell him, and it was a sort of mingling of sweat and soap and comfort, and I really kind of liked it, and— “How did you not know the thing about body heat?” he said. “You’re supposed to be a magical creatures expert.”
“I don’t know. You’re the only vampire I’ve ever really been friends with,” I said.
“Ah. I guess most of your knowledge comes from the fact you have close friends who are magical. That, and the fact you’re a dragon.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I’m glad I have body heat. You’re really freezing.”
“I think it’s these shackles,” I said. “They take my fire, and they make me feel cold all over.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish there was more I could do. Some friend I’m being right now.”
“This is good,” I whispered. “I need this.”
“Yeah?” His voice was husky. “Least I could do.”
I gazed into his eyes, and he gazed back.
His lips parted.
I looked away.
We were quiet again, and I felt both more comfortable and more confused. Because there seemed to be an edge of something decidedly more than friendly in all of this, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to call attention to it. And besides, we’d been captured by a crazy serial murderer, so it wasn’t really the time to delve into it. And on top of that, the last person to be on the mattress was dead now, and— “I’ve been thinking,” said Lachlan.
“Yeah?” I was glad for the interruption to my thoughts.
“He doesn’t know I’m a vampire,” he said. “I think he thinks I’m dead. I think whatever he did to me, he didn’t just knock me unconscious. He thought he killed me.”
“Then why are you in here with me?”
“To screw with your head. He thinks that he threw you in here with a dead body. Can you imagine how horrible that would be? What that would do to a person? Leaving her overnight with something dead?”
I felt bile rise in my throat.
His arms tightened around me. “You’re still shivering.”
“Maybe more because of what you just said.”
“It would have been awful for you.”
“He’s a monster,” I said. “He’s twisted.”
“No question,” he said. “And I think, when he comes back, we should pretend that I am dead. I’ll lie here motionless, and you act as if you’ve been sharing the space with a corpse all night, and that’s how I’ll jump him.”
“That’s a good plan,” I said.
“I hope so,” he said.
And I let my eyes close. I felt much warmer now, and I was exhausted. It had been such a horrible day. But being close here, sharing our heat, it was better now, and I thought, maybe, I might be able to just relax for a little bit.
*
I woke up tangled up in Lachlan’s arms. At first, everything was fuzzy. I didn’t know where I was, only that I was close to him, which seemed right somehow, and I nuzzled into the crook of his neck and shoulder.
He stirred next to me, his arm tightening around my waist, pulling me close against his body.
“Mmm,” I sighed, slinging my leg over his hip, pressing into him.
A noise.
There was someone walking up the hallway, and—
I sprang away from Lachlan. Damn it.
Everything came rushing back. We were locked up in this house, and Anthony Barnes was outside, and Lachlan was supposed to be playing dead.
I shook him.
He pushed me away sleepily.
I shook him harder.
And suddenly, he sat up straight, his eyes alert. His hair was a little mussed from sleeping, and he had the imprint of the mattress on his cheek. It made him look vaguely ridiculous, especially with the ultra serious expression on his face.
The door knob turned.
Lachlan sprang to his feet, throwing himself into a heap on the other side of the room.
Was that where he’d been when he woke up? I didn’t even remember, because he’d woken up before me. I guessed it didn’t matter. I could have moved his body, I supposed.
The door opened.
Anthony stepped inside. He had a tray with a sandwich and glass of water on it. “Good morning, Penny. How’d you sleep?” He eyed the heap that was Lachlan.
I adopted a wide-eyed expression of disgust and terror. “Take him away. Please, I can’t take looking at him.”
“You don’t like having company? But I thought he was your partner.” Anthony chuckled. “Don’t worry. You have some food here, and it will all be fine.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“I generally wouldn’t insist,” said Anthony. “But as it turns out, my stash of dragon meat is getting low. So, you eat up, and it’s laced with a drug that will knock you out. I’ll take off your shackles and move you into the pool, so that you can shift, and I can tranq you again and get some meat. Then when you shift back, you’ll be all healed up, and I’ll have him out of your way.”
I cocked my head at him. “You were eating them.”
Anthony furrowed his brow. “Pardon?”
“The girls. We thought you were killing them for pleasure, but it really was because you were a drake. You were keeping them here so that you had meat that regenerated.”
“Well,” said Anthony, “that was the plan. I have to admit, I always end up going overboard, though. I like carving your skin up. It’s amazing how it heals both ways. Whatever form you’re in, when you shift, it comes back.”
That wasn’t actually true. If someone cut off my leg or something, I’d shift into a legless dragon, but I didn’t think now was the time to quibble with him.
“Sometimes, though, I cut too deep,” he said. “I don’t mean to, not really. It’s fun to cut, though.” He shrugged. “Don’t
worry. I’m sure I’ll get it right with you. We’ll be here together indefinitely. You shift. I eat. A perfect symbiotic relationship.”
“In a symbiotic relationship, I’d get something out of the deal,” I said, my nostrils flaring.
“Oh, you’re a bit feisty,” he said, setting down the tray in front of me. “Maybe that’s better. I don’t know. I always picked the younger dragon girls because they weren’t mated, and no one watched them so closely. But you’ve left your mate, and that means you’re mature and sure of yourself and—”
Lachlan leaped to his feet and jumped on Anthony’s back, fangs out, jaws gaping.
Anthony let out a high-pitched shriek of surprise.
Lachlan sunk his teeth into Anthony’s neck.
Anthony screamed, reaching back to claw at Lachlan.
I moved forward, going through Anthony’s pockets, looking for the key.
Anthony’s fist shot out, an uppercut to my chin.
My head snapped back, pain lancing through me. I stumbled backward.
Anthony bent over, reaching back for Lachlan, and rolled the vampire off him, so that Lachlan landed on his back between us, gasping.
Lachlan reached up with one hand, and I could see that he was concentrating to let magic flow through him.
Anthony’s body shot up and slammed into the ceiling. He grunted.
Lachlan got to his feet.
Anthony laughed. “You idiots. I’ve been eating dragon flesh. I have it my freezer.” Drakes were wicked strong after they consumed dragon flesh, but only for a few hours afterward. But during that time, they were more powerful than any other magical creature, even dragons themselves. Anthony’s hands glowed orange, and a bolt of magic sizzled down through the air to collide with Lachlan.
Lachlan made a strange gurgling noise. His whole body went rigid and his eyes bulged.
And then he went still and fell to the floor, motionless.
I went to him, grabbing his arm. Lachlan didn’t respond. I felt for a pulse and didn’t find one. Did vampires have pulses?
“What did you do to him?” I said to Anthony.
He lowered himself to the ground gracefully. “Eat your sandwich, Penny. It will be so much easier if you just eat your sandwich.”
“I’m not eating that sandwich. I’m not letting you drug me. And I’m not going to shift for you either.”
Fire Song (City of Dragons) Page 23
