city of dragons 07 - fire and flood

by Val St. Crowe

  Standing out in front of my ruined hotel, wrapped in a blanket and holding my sleeping son wasn’t really a great place to have the discussion anyway. So, when he didn’t respond to what I said, I wasn’t exactly surprised.

  And before I could press the issue, Ophelia Diaz, the owner of The Pink Flamingo Cafe, which was just down the street, hurried over to us. Ophelia was a short black woman with a big, resonating voice. “Penny, child, what is going on?”

  “Hi, Ophelia,” I said, gesturing at the hotel. “Crazy, isn’t it?”

  “Was your restaurant damaged?” asked Lachlan.

  “Not a bit,” said Ophelia. She reached out her hands and took Wyatt’s sleeping body from me. With anyone else, I would have protested, but Ophelia sometimes got in this kind of mother-hen mode that was tough to fight her on. “You’re soaked to the bone and this little man looks heavy. You let me hold him.”

  “Thanks,” I said, even though I had refused to surrender him to anyone, including Lachlan.

  Lachlan raised his eyebrows at me.

  I pulled the blanket tight around my body.

  “Come to the cafe,” said Ophelia. “I’m making a big batch of vegetable soup for all your refugees. You can’t stand out here anymore.”

  It wasn’t raining anymore, and it was sort of pointless standing around while the emergency crews were doing their work. “Okay,” I said.

  But Ophelia was already walking away with Wyatt, not waiting for us to agree.

  Lachlan and I went after her.

  It was a short walk to the Flamingo. Before Wyatt was born, I used to walk down here for breakfast nearly every day, and lunch too, more often than not. Nowadays, it wasn’t as easy towing along a toddler and Lachlan, but we did manage to get down here at least once or twice a week. Ophelia and I had worked out a deal wherein she provided a breakfast buffet for my hotel guests. It was free for them, and I paid Ophelia. I liked the arrangement, because it saved me the trouble of trying to handle breakfast at the hotel.

  The Flamingo was a cozy little place, with a wraparound porch that allowed outdoor dining with a view of the ocean. Inside, the decor was pink and loud, with paintings and sculptures of flamingos crowding the walls and the corners.

  The restaurant was already full with guests from my hotel. I guess Ophelia had been rounding them up for this vegetable soup she was talking about.

  Ophelia led us up the stairs to the second level, which she only opened when the restaurant got extremely busy. Right then, there was no one up there except us. Ophelia sat down in a rocking chair that faced the windows and looked out over the ocean. She began to rock Wyatt. Lachlan and I sank down at a table next to her.

  “So,” said Ophelia, “what is this? This isn’t something natural, I can tell that. It’s magic. It’s got dark power all over it.”

  I looked at Lachlan. Let him explain it.

  He rubbed his forehead. “My stepson is dead.”

  “What?” I gaped at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You had a stepson?” said Ophelia.

  “I used to be married before I came here,” said Lachlan. “It didn’t work out.”

  “Oh,” said Ophelia. “Well, I’m sorry.”

  I furrowed my brow. “The stepson that, um…”

  Lachlan nodded. “Yeah, the one who killed Hallie. The only stepson I had.”

  Ophelia raised her eyebrows.

  Lachlan turned to her, and explained it all in a quiet voice.

  She stopped rocking, her features troubled. “That is an awful story, child,” she said softly. “I’m very sorry.”

  I was confused as to why he was bringing this up right now. Sure, hearing something like that must be traumatic for him. I couldn’t even imagine how he felt. I was sure he wasn’t glad that a boy was dead, even if he had been his daughter’s murderer. But no matter how he felt about the boy’s death, hearing about it could only bring back all the emotions that he’d felt when he lost Hallie.

  However, we’d just barely survived an attack from the Green King. Wyatt had been in danger. I’d watched my little boy nearly drown. The hotel was destroyed. And that had just happened. Certainly, that was all anyone could focus on right now.

  “She said he was locked in his cell,” Lachlan said to me.

  “Who said?” I asked. “Who was locked in his cell?”

  “Debra said,” said Lachlan.

  “Debra? Your ex? You talked to her?”

  “That’s how I found out about Timmy,” he said. “He was locked in his cell. But he was smothered to death with a pillow. He struggled. So someone was in there with him. How’d they get in?”

  I took a deep breath and then let it out, trying to steady myself. “I’m sorry. I know hearing about Timmy must be hard for you, but this is what you’re focusing on right now? This?”

  The sound of footsteps.

  We all turned to see that a girl in an apron had come up the steps to the next level. “Miss Diaz?”

  “Yes?” said Ophelia.

  “Amara in the kitchen is trying to add black pepper to the soup you’re making. She says it needs it. I told her that you said not to touch it, that you were in charge of the seasonings, but she’s not listening.”

  Ophelia sighed. She got up and handed Wyatt back to me. “Let me take care of this right now. I’ll be back to see you, okay?”

  I nodded. Picking up Wyatt, I went over to the rocking chair she’d gotten out of and settled down into it. I stared out at the ocean, which now looked so calm. The sky above it was cloudless and bright blue, no sign of the storm that had blown in. “Lachlan, that was the Green King.”

  He stood up. He walked over to the window and peered out. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

  “So… what do we do?”

  He turned to look at me. “I don’t know.”

  “He took our home.” I felt rage suddenly start to light a fire in my core. This evil monstrous thing had destroyed the one place that was truly mine, that I had built myself. He’d destroyed the place that I felt safe. And it had only taken moments. Now, we were homeless.

  Lachlan didn’t say anything for a long time. He turned back to the window, thoughtful.

  I looked down at Wyatt, still sleeping. I started to rock the chair.

  “It’s like one of those classic locked-room mysteries,” said Lachlan quietly. “I think Agatha Christie did one. I’ve never read any. I don’t have much taste for murder as entertainment since I deal with it every day. But it’s almost… literary, killing him like that.”

  I glared at him. “Lachlan, focus.”

  “On the Green King?” he said. “What’s there to focus on exactly? We’re out of our depth. We need to regroup, get ourselves together, try to find some way to fight him.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, let’s do that.”

  He moved away from the window and sat down at a table again. “Maybe we could do that in Texas.”

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s only that Debra asked for my help trying to solve Timmy’s murder, and we don’t have anywhere to stay right now, and the part of Texas that I’m from is pretty landlocked, so if the Green King needs access to the ocean—”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t,” I said. “I’m sure he can get in anywhere there’s water. Hell, he probably killed your stepson. Came up through the sink, flowed over the cell floor and smothered him.”

  Lachlan gave me a look. “With a pillow? Why would he use a pillow?”

  “To throw you off, so you wouldn’t know it was him,” I said.

  “But why would the Green King kill my stepson?”

  “To show you what he can do.”

  “If he was showing me what he could do, then he would have made it obvious it was him, wouldn’t he?” said Lachlan.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. I don’t know why we’re talking about this anyway. I think we need to focus on what happened here in Sea City. We were attacked. It’s an act of war.”

&nb
sp; Lachlan got a funny look in his eyes. “Well, the death of Timmy did happen just before the attack on the hotel, didn’t it? Maybe the Green King is involved.”

  * * *

  “What are you going to do?” said Felicity from the couch in her living room. “I mean, can’t you even get back in to get clothes?” Felicity and Scott lived in a condo in a high rise building on the bay side of the peninsula that was Sea City. It had three bedrooms and a big combination living room/dining room, which was where we were all gathered. Me, Lachlan, Wyatt, Vivica, Jackson, Felicity, and Asia, who was Felicity’s boyfriend’s daughter.

  “They said maybe tomorrow,” I said. “They still need to check some parts of the foundation or something. They said the hotel was hit during the hurricane of 1954, and that it sustained damage then. There were repairs, of course, but they aren’t sure how strong the building is.” I had nothing to wear, but Felicity had lent me something of hers. We were pretty close in size, and it fit okay. I was comfortable. All of us were going to be bunking down here for tonight at least. We’d see if we could go back to the hotel any time soon.

  “It’s just awful,” said Felicity. “Completely horrible. I don’t even see how this could have happened. You guys must have been terrified.”

  Vivica nodded. “Freaking wrecked. I saw that wave coming, and I grabbed Jackson and ran, but it crashed over our heads. I held onto him as hard as I could, but it was like the water was trying to pull him away from me. I was so scared. I didn’t have any idea what to do.”

  “You got out of there,” I said. “And faster than Lachlan or I could. I’m glad that you were safe, because we didn’t have any time to even look for the two of you. We were so focused on Wyatt.”

  “Oh, me too,” said Vivica. “I was focused on Jackson. I wasn’t thinking about anything else.”

  Felicity shook her head. “You know what we need?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Wine,” she said. “We need wine to deal with this. Actually, we probably need liquor, but I don’t have any. I only have wine. And it’s rosé, so I hope you guys are okay with that.”

  I got up from the couch. “I’ll help you pour wine.”

  “No,” said Felicity, waving me back into my seat. “You guys just went through hell. I’ll get it.”

  I didn’t sit down. “You only have two hands. There are four of us.”

  She glared at me, but she didn’t protest as we went into the kitchen area together. It was separated from the living room by a breakfast bar that wrapped the stove and microwave.

  Felicity stopped at the refrigerator and got out the bottle of wine. “Can you get the corkscrew?” She pointed to a drawer.

  I opened the drawer and fished out the corkscrew and handed it to her. “Thanks for letting us crash here. It won’t be forever. If we can’t get back into the hotel, we’ll rent a place or something.”

  She snatched the corkscrew from me. “You guys stay as long as you need. Don’t be crazy. You’re not putting me out.”

  “It’s only that we’re crowding you.”

  “You’re not crowding me,” she said, twisting the corkscrew into the wine bottle. She lowered her voice. “So, this is bad, though, right? This is magic? This is the Green King?”

  I licked my lips. “Yes. It’s got to be.”

  Felicity shook her head. “What are we going to do? He just took away your home. The monster fights dirty, doesn’t he?”

  I drew myself up. “Well, maybe it’s because he sees us as a threat. Maybe it’s good news. Maybe it won’t be as hard as we think it will be to take him down.”

  “Take who down?” said Vivica, who was standing on the other side of the breakfast bar.

  I hadn’t seen her approach. “Uh, it’s a long story.”

  “Yeah?” said Vivica. “Maybe you should start talking. I know that I generally stay out of whatever crazy crap it is that you guys are always dealing with, but that craziness has never threatened Jackson before.”

  Felicity thrust two glasses of wine into my hands. “Here. We drink these, and then we try to talk about it, okay?”

  I gave one to Vivica. “That’s maybe a good idea.”

  Vivica took the glass. And then suddenly went stiff all over. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped the wine glass. It shattered on the floor. Vivica started to convulse.

  I set down my glass and took her by the shoulders, letting out a little cry. “Vivica?” I clutched her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I will take you all, just as I took your home,” said Vivica in a strange, grinding voice that was not her own. “I am the king of the dark children. I am the deep water. I am the cold and the night. You are going down, down to the deep places, where you will be no more.” She let out a throaty, humorless laugh.

  And then she collapsed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “What the hell was that?” said Vivica, who was now sitting on the couch, gulping at a new glass of wine, eyes wide.

  “No idea,” I said.

  “It was like one second I was there, and the next, something else had taken over my body,” she said. “It made me talk. It made me move. I couldn’t control myself. I could only watch.”

  Jackson was clinging to his mother’s legs. He kept looking up at her face, a worried expression on his own.

  “Possession,” said Lachlan.

  “What?” I said. “What does that even mean? Like… The Exorcist or something?”

  “Seems like,” said Lachlan. “It was a message from the Green King. He was taking responsibility, threatening us.”

  “Who is that guy?” said Vivica. “What’s he a king of?”

  “We don’t really know,” I said. “He and the others like him are nightmares from another world. They were sent here so that world could be rid of them. Centuries ago, the dragon shifters and mages of the world fought the children of the deep back. They forced them to slumber under the waves. But we’ve woken them up. They’re back.”

  “Well, can’t you just make them go back to sleep?” said Vivica.

  “We don’t know how,” said Lachlan. “We were hoping to have more time to figure out how to fight them.”

  “There isn’t any way to fight what happened to us today,” said Vivica. “We barely survived.”

  “I can control dragons,” said Lachlan. “I have power to fight him. We think that using fire against him maybe works.”

  “Water puts out fire,” said Vivica.

  No one said anything.

  I gulped at my wine. “I guess I just don’t understand this possession thing. That’s not possible. We don’t know anyone who can possess someone else. Even mages don’t have a spell for that. There are three kinds of magic. Telekinesis, compulsion, and power over fire. That’s it. There’s no possession.”

  “They have magic that we don’t have,” said Lachlan. “All the magic in our world comes from dragons, but they don’t have the same magic as dragons.”

  “So, they can possess people?” said Felicity.

  “Apparently so,” said Lachlan.

  “So, at any time, they could just sail into our bodies and make us start killing each other?” I said. “That can’t work. We need protection against that.”

  “Well,” said Lachlan, “it possessed Vivica. She’s the only one of us not wearing a talisman of some kind. Maybe it’s easier to possess people who have less magic.”

  “Vivica’s a magical creature,” I said, looking at her. “She’s a dragon.”

  “I haven’t shifted in a while, though,” said Vivica. “My magic has worn off.” If a dragon didn’t shift every two weeks or so, his or her magic wouldn’t stay charged up.

  “Maybe that’s it,” said Lachlan. “She was the only one not magical.”

  I looked down at the boys, who were playing on the floor with Asia. “Except the kids, that is.”

  “Maybe it wanted an adult vessel,” said Lachlan. “Anyway, if that’s all it takes, it’s an easy fix. Talismans
on everyone from here on out.”

  “It was in my head,” said Vivica, shivering. “It made me feel cold all over.”

  We talked about it for a little while longer, but talking about it didn’t make us feel any better about the situation. Instead, I think we all felt a gnawing sense of fear at the edges of our consciousness, like we were all waiting for something dangerous to begin picking us off one by one.

  Eventually, Scott came home, and he brought pizza. We all ate together, talked together. It was loud and boisterous. There was laughter. Things almost seemed… normal.

  But when it came time to go to bed, instead of letting Vivica and Jackson stay in the spare room, we all pulled out sleeping bags and couch cushions and bunked together in the living room. I don’t think any of us really wanted to be alone.

  * * *

  The next day, we were able to get back into the hotel. It wasn’t structurally damaged, so it was safe to walk around in there, or so we’d been told by the experts who’d inspected the building. Seeing the inside of the hotel was devastating.

  The entire bottom floor was destroyed. Water had come in and swept out all the windows. The furniture was all ruined. The flooring was warped. All of Vivica’s and Jackson’s possessions had been ruined, considering their suite was down on the first floor. It was going to take time and money to fix all this. I could afford it, but it hurt my heart.

  The upstairs was in better condition. Much less water had made it up there, but it wasn’t untouched. The carpets in our family’s suite were soaked in sea water. Some of our furniture was wet on the bottom. Overall, none of us could live there right now. The upstairs would probably be inhabitable much more quickly, but we were still homeless for now.

  I spent the afternoon making phone calls, scheduling time for various tradesmen to get inside and give me some estimates on how quickly they could fix everything and what it would cost. I was hoping to have work start by the end of the week. Lachlan had been right when he’d pointed out that this was coming at peak season and costing the hotel a lot of revenue. It made me sick, but there was nothing I could do about that.