city of dragons 03 - fire magic

by crowe, val st

  And the door burst open and my tiny living room was swarmed with uniformed men with guns.

  I panicked. I threw out magic at all of them, and they all fell backwards. I pinned them to the floor, to the walls.

  “Penny, stop it,” said Lachlan.

  More were coming in. I reached out with more magic, still concentrating on keeping the others motionless. I could compel them, of course, but I wasn’t Alastair. I could only do one at a time, and I needed to be able to look into their eyes. Of course, if Lachlan would bite me, then maybe we’d be able to compel them all at once. Maybe we were that powerful too. I didn’t know.

  I pushed the other men down too, blocking the doorway.

  But now the others were starting to twitch, and I redoubled my magic on them.

  Lachlan put his body between me and the men. He started backing up, forcing me back into the hallway. “Listen to me, Penny,” he was saying in a low voice that only I could hear. “It’s a bad idea to fight. It will only add to the things that they charge you with and—”

  “We could run,” I said.

  “To where? For how long?” he said.

  The men were getting up. My magic was faltering, because I was confused.

  “We can’t just let them take us.”

  “Don’t fight them,” he said.

  I pushed all the men back down.

  More came through the door, pushing through the men that I was holding in place with magic. A gun went off.

  A tranquilizer dart hit the wall right next to Lachlan’s head.

  “Don’t tranq her!” Lachlan yelled. “We’re going to come quietly. Give me a minute with her.”

  “Lachlan, I don’t want to be arrested,” I said.

  “Sorry, Flint,” called one of the men. “We’ve got to tranq you both. Can’t risk compulsion. You taught us that.”

  “You can’t tranq her,” Lachlan yelled. “She’s pregnant.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, and his voice lowered again. “Aren’t you?”

  I was so startled that I lost hold on all my magic. “How did you know?”

  “I’m a detective,” he said. “You think I couldn’t figure that out?” He raised his voice. “The darts have never been tested on pregnant women. We’re coming quietly.”

  “But,” I said to his back, “we can’t go to Roxbone.”

  “We’ll get bail,” he said to me. “We’re not a risk. Isolated incident. We’ll be out in days.”

  “Lachlan,” I said, still not convinced.

  A tranquilizer dart sailed through the air and caught him in the chest.

  I shrieked, throwing out magic at all of the men, but I was clumsy and emotional, and—

  Ouch.

  I looked down and there was a dart in my arm. I felt woozy. I stumbled.

  And then blackness swallowed me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I woke up cold.

  Freezing cold. An icy feeling that reached into my bones, leaching everything out of me. I recognized the sensation. It was exactly the way I had felt when I’d been wearing the shackles that Anthony Barnes had used on me to suck out my magic. Those—like Roxbone Prison—had been seeded with dragon sacrifice, the strongest kind of magic and the only kind that could be used to neutralize magic.

  I was in a cell. A tiny room with two bunks against one wall and a toilet and sink on the other side.

  There was a woman sitting, fully clothed, on the toilet. She was staring at me.

  I sat up. I was on the bottom bunk. I felt nauseous.

  The woman’s hair was short and curly. She had dark eyes and tattoos on her forearms. She was wearing a blue jumpsuit.

  So was I, I realized. I was very, very nauseous. I reeled from it. God, if I still had morning sickness, that meant that I was still pregnant, right? That meant that the tranquilizer dart hadn’t hurt my baby? My hand went to my stomach.

  “Destiny,” said my cellmate.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “I’m Destiny,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “Penny.” I gagged, stumbling to my feet and pointing at the toilet. I was convinced I was going to vomit right at that exact moment.

  She got to her feet right away and hurried out of my way.

  I went down on my knees, clutching the toilet, and I retched and retched and retched.

  Nothing came up.

  I settled back on the floor. That was always the way. I always felt like I was going to throw up, but I never actually threw up. I almost wanted to. I thought maybe if I did, I’d feel a relief from nausea.

  “You hungover?” said Destiny.

  I shook my head.

  “Pregnant then?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “That’s immediately where your head goes next? Not hungover so I must be pregnant?”

  She shrugged. “There was another woman here who was pregnant recently. Guess it got me thinking about it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “She’s not here anymore?”

  Destiny shook her head.

  “She got released?”

  “She killed herself.”

  I was horrified. “What? What about her baby?”

  “Well, that was why she killed herself. She had the baby, and then they took it away, of course, and she knew that she would lose her maternal rights before she ever got out of jail, and I think she lost the will to live.”

  I swallowed. “What do you mean, lose her maternal rights?”

  “If you abandon a kid for a certain amount of time, you lose your rights as a mother. She was going to be in jail longer than that.”

  “But… she didn’t abandon her baby,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Counts the same if you’re locked up.”

  “That’s horrible.” I was stunned.

  “Yeah, she wasn’t the same after she came back without the baby. She must have known that they were going to take it from her,” said Destiny, “but she must not have really understood what it was going to be like. I can only imagine myself, but if someone took my baby away from me, I think I’d go insane.”

  If I was locked up in this jail when I had my baby, that could happen to me. I clutched my stomach protectively.

  “So, you are pregnant,” said Destiny.

  My throat was dry. “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s shit,” she said. “What are you in for?”

  “I, uh… you know, they didn’t much say,” I said, which was the truth. “They just burst into my apartment with tranquilizer guns.” I didn’t want to volunteer that I’d been accused of murder.

  “Yeah, same thing happened to me,” she said. She eyed me. “They’re pretty scared of magical creatures. So much so that they don’t care if they violate our civil rights.”

  I gulped.

  “Anyway,” she said, “you’ll find out what they got you for at your hearing.”

  I still felt nauseous. “When do we get to eat?” I needed protein.

  She laughed. “Won’t be for another hour or so.”

  “An hour?” It sounded like an insurmountable amount of time.

  “You want to know why I’m here?” she said.

  I shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

  “They grabbed me for prostitution again,” she said. “I ain’t a prostitute. I just want a little warm blood from the vein from time to time, and if I got to put out to get it, I don’t mind.”

  “You’re a vampire.” Honestly, trading blood for sex sounded like prostitution to me, but I was going to keep my mouth shut.

  “That’s right,” she said. “I can’t make the bail they set, so I just got to sit here until my trial.”

  I furrowed my brow. I was a suspected murderer. Wasn’t it weird to put prostitutes and murderers in the same jail? But I guessed with magical creatures, there was only one jail anyway. Maybe there just weren’t enough of us to separate according to severity of charges.

  “They do it to me all the time,” said Destiny. “Pick me up and make me sit in jail for a
week at a time. I can’t keep down a job anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered vaguely. “That sounds awful.”

  “Eh, it’s not so bad,” she said. “Nothing compared to what it would be like stuck in here with a baby on the way.”

  * * *

  I tried magic.

  I knew it wouldn’t work, but I tried it anyway. I thought that maybe there was some chance that the blood bond I had with Lachlan made me strong enough to break out of here.

  But when I reached for my magic, it was only cold. There was nothing there. I was empty and cold and tired and nauseous and frightened.

  When I lost my first baby, I had no idea that it had even happened until I went in for my regular check-up and the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. I didn’t have the actual miscarriage with the bleeding and everything until a few days later.

  So, I knew that I could have lost the baby and have no outward signs, at least not yet.

  If the tranquilizer darts had taken my child, I would end the police department. I would burn everything to the ground. My rage would have no bounds.

  But then I thought of something possibly worse. What if I hadn’t lost the baby, but the baby had been damaged in some way, some way that I wouldn’t truly appreciate until he was trying to learn to talk and—

  Oh, hell, what was I thinking?

  I was going to lose this baby. I always lost my babies.

  Because of Alastair, spoke up a voice in my head.

  Right. Alastair. The reason I was locked up in this stupid cell. Why did he have to go and get himself killed? If he hadn’t done that, then Lachlan and I wouldn’t be stuck here in Roxbone.

  I wondered what Lachlan was doing right now. I wondered if he was okay, if he felt the same numbing coldness seeping into his bones.

  How long had he known that I was pregnant? When had he figured it out? Why hadn’t he said anything to me if he knew? All those pointed comments about how I was hiding something from him. He’d known all along. No wonder he’d been pissed at me.

  I spent most of the morning this way, lost in thought.

  Destiny made a few attempts at conversation, but they were half-hearted. She was bored, that was it. She seemed like a nice enough person, I supposed, even if she did trade sex for blood. At least it was consensual, I supposed, and I guessed she was drinking human blood, so it wasn’t as if she even had any magic to leach away. Putting her in Roxbone was probably overkill.

  Truthfully, I wasn’t even sure if a magical jail was necessary. My magic would wear off if I didn’t shift into a dragon for two weeks, and other creatures weren’t magical once their connection to blood or flesh or talismans were cut off. Except gargoyles, I supposed, but they didn’t really have outward magic, only their strength and durability and ability to fly.

  I guessed that a dragon could shift, even without water, if he were desperate enough. He’d never get back to human form, but possibly, a life in this prison could be worse than a life trapped in dragon form.

  I couldn’t shift here, of course, even if I was willing to give up my human form forever. The magic stopped it.

  After breakfast, which wasn’t actually that bad—or maybe I was just so hungry that anything would have tasted good—we were allowed out of our cells. There was a common area in the middle of the cell block with tables and TVs. I mostly kept to myself, staring at the television. I wasn’t impolite if someone came to talk to me, but no one really did.

  Destiny spent her time playing cards with a group of gargoyle women who all had matching tattoos. Maybe they were a gang or something. A girl gang of gargoyles. That was actually kind of badass. I was afraid of them too, though.

  I did get in a conversation with one woman who was older, and seemed sort of sweet, like a kindly grandma. She told me that she was a mage who’d been locked up for using magic to steal money for her family. Keeping mages in Roxbone seemed doubly ridiculous, considering they had no magic without their talismans, but I supposed the people in charge didn’t really know that or weren’t willing to take chances.

  Anyway, after chatting with her a bit about how long I’d be there before the bail hearing, she told me it wouldn’t be longer than seventy-two hours. She said any longer was a civil rights violation. She seemed really knowledgeable about the law, and later that evening, Destiny backed up what she’d said, also spouting stuff that made her sound like a lawyer. I guessed that once you got arrested a few times, you started to learn the drill.

  It was late evening before I was taken to my hearing. I half-expected to see Lachlan there, but it was only me.

  The judge read me the charges against me, which were 1st degree murder, resisting arrest, and unlawful use of magic against officers of the law.

  When he gave me a chance to speak, I inquired after my phone call and my lack of a lawyer and a bunch of other things that I thought were problematic.

  He got hostile and asked me to sign some stack of papers.

  I wanted to know what I was signing. I asked if I had to sign it.

  He told me to just sign the papers.

  I refused.

  He set bail for one million dollars and dismissed me.

  Jesus. I hadn’t expected the amount to be so high. I was going to have to put up the hotel as collateral.

  After the hearing, I was given the chance to use a phone, and I called Felicity. I told her about the bail, and she assured me she would take care of it. I didn’t know if I was going to have enough money to bail out Lachlan too if his bail was so high, but Felicity had already spoken to him, because he’d called her after his arraignment. According to her, she could go to a bail bondsman and only put down ten percent of the bail amount. And then the money would be returned after the trial. As long as we didn’t run, that is.

  That amount was within my means.

  Apparently, bail amounts could only be posted at certain times during the day, and there was no way Felicity would make it in time for the last one that day.

  She promised to be there the next morning, though, and to have me out.

  It was the hardest thing ever to go back to that cell. I don’t know what was currently the worst thing about my situation. The cold ache that settled into me that seeped away my magic, the concern I had over the well-being of my baby, the fact that I was terrified of what was going to happen to me in the future, or the simple fact that I was imprisoned. I was trapped. I couldn’t leave.

  It made me feel light-headed and anxious.

  I went to dinner, which wasn’t that bad either. I was actually kind of impressed by prison food, which I had thought would be terrible. But I cleaned my plate.

  And then we were locked back into our cells for several hours before lights out.

  I was convinced there was no way I would be able to sleep, but I was a pregnant lady and it was the first trimester. I was out like a light in no time flat.

  I had long, convoluted, vivid dreams about running through cell block after cell block in dragon form, breathing fire at the uniformed guards who chased me. But in my dreams, I never found the way out.

  * * *

  “Oh my God.” Felicity was hugging me.

  I hugged her back, clinging to her with all my might.

  “I can’t believe this,” said Felicity, pulling back. “I was so worried. I’m so glad to see you.” She looked at Lachlan, who was beside me. “You too, Lachlan.”

  He looked disheveled in his suit—we’d both been given back the clothes we’d been wearing to leave in—and he was digging through the bag of his belongings. He came out with his sunglasses and shoved them on his face. “You ever read ‘Civil Disobedience’ by Henry David Thoreau?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No,” said Felicity.

  Lachlan shrugged. “It’s about spending a night in jail to prove a point. I always kind of thought he was being a sissy about it, but now…” He made a face.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  Felicity gestured.
“Jensen’s with the car over there.”

  “You brought Jensen?” I said.

  “I couldn’t bring Connor. It’s daylight and he’s stone,” she said. “I wasn’t coming alone.” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you ever going to like Jensen?”

  “I like Jensen fine,” I muttered. Truth was, no one was ever going to be good enough for my best friend.

  Lachlan raised his eyebrows over his sunglasses. “You don’t like Jensen?”

  I started for the car, walking as quickly as I could.

  They caught up with me.

  “Hey, are you okay?” said Felicity.

  I had reached the car, so I yanked open the back seat and slid inside. “Not really, no. I’ve been accused of murder and I just spent two nights in jail.”

  Lachlan and Felicity both went around to the other side of the car.

  Lachlan got in next to me. “We’re going to sort this out, you know.”

  Felicity got in up front. “How are we going to do that?”

  “We find the real murderer,” said Lachlan. “We can’t trust the police to do it, because they won’t be investigating anymore, since they’ve arrested us.”

  “Hi there,” said Jensen. “How you guys doing?”

  “So, you can do that?” said Felicity. “Because I thought you were suspended from the force.”

  “Hi, Jensen,” I said.

  He started the car. “Sorry to hear about the suspension, by the way.”

  Lachlan shrugged. “Being suspended doesn’t mean I can’t do detective work. Just that I can’t claim to be doing it for the police.”

  “Okay,” said Felicity. “So, it’s like you’re private investigators or something.”

  “You could get fedoras,” said Jensen.

  Felicity gave him a look.

  “What?” he said.

  “Drive,” she said.

  He pulled the car out of the lot.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lachlan was drinking whiskey on my couch in the apartment.

  I, of course, couldn’t drink anything alcoholic, so I had to content myself with making copious amounts of food. I was in the kitchen, working on making jalapeno poppers. They were really complicated, and thus gave me lots to distract myself with. I still had a towel around my head, because I was fresh from the shower. I had wanted to wash all of Roxbone off of me.