city of dragons 03 - fire magic (9 page)

Just then, the back door to Connor’s suite opened, and Brian came out, with Connor trailing behind him.

Darrell stiffened, looking at both of them. “What the hell is this, Brian?”

“Hey,” said Brian.

“You need to leave,” said Connor.

Great. Connor was antagonizing him. This was going to go well.

“Leave?” said Darrell. “And who the hell are you? You fucking my boyfriend?”

“No,” said Brian. “He’s just a friend. I didn’t have anywhere to go after what you did to me.”

Darrell shifted on his feet. “Look, I never meant it to go so far. You just made me so fucking mad when you wouldn’t lend me that cash.”

“I don’t have any cash to lend you,” Brian said. “I have our rent money, and that’s it.”

“So, we’re late with the rent,” said Darrell. “What’s the big deal?”

Brian shook his head at him. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re not here to apologize. You’re just looking for money for dice.”

“Come on, Brian, of course I’m trying to apologize.” Darrell started for the other man. “I love you, baby. You know that.”

Connor stepped in between the two of them. “You need to leave.”

Darrell’s nostrils flared. “Hey, how about you keep your nose out of things that aren’t your business?”

“You’re outside my home,” said Connor, “so it’s my business.”

“Then we’ll leave.” Darrell held out his hand to Brian. “Come on, let’s go. We’ll talk this out. I really
am
sorry.”

Brian didn’t respond. His face was bruised and swollen, and it looked worse than it had earlier. “I don’t have any money for you,” he said in a low voice.

“Just come with me,” said Darrell. “We’ll talk about that at home.”

Brian shook his head. “No, not tonight. Not yet.”

“No?” said Darrell, shaking his head in disbelief.

“You heard him,” said Connor. “Now get the hell out of here.”

“What are you going to do without me, Brian?” said Darrell. “How are you going to make it without me? No one else on earth is going to put up with you. No one else is going to love you. You know that I’m the only person—”

“Stop talking to him,” said Connor.

Darrell reached out with one hand.

Suddenly Connor was pinned to the wall of the hotel, held there by magic.

Crap. If Darrell had magic, that wasn’t a good thing. Drakes who ate dragon flesh were crazy strong. Their magic didn’t last that long, but it was intense and powerful.

Connor reached up and clutched his magical talisman, which hung around his neck. He concentrated, but he couldn’t do anything. He was stuck.

“Let him go,” I said in a warning voice.

Darrell looked over his shoulder at me. “What are you going to do about it?”

I sucked air into my lungs and when I expelled it, I let out a few puffs of smoke. “I’m going to stop you.”

“She’s a dragon,” said Connor. “And I bet she’s pissed you’re
eating
her people for kicks.”

I saw fear flash in Darrell’s eyes. But instead of complying, he picked Connor up and used magic to throw him into the pool. Then he made a wide gesture with one hand and all the lights around the pool shattered, bathing us in darkness.

It was pitch black for a moment, and then my eyes adjusted.

I could see the shadow of Darrell, and he was heading for Brian. I blew out a bright tongue of flame—a warning. I didn’t let it touch anyone. I just wanted Darrell to know that I could and would burn him if I had to. “Stop right there,” I said.

He kept going.

I blew out more fire. This time, the flames licked the back of Darrell’s neck.

He cried out. He turned to look at me, fists clenching and unclenching.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

“God damn it,” he muttered. He looked back at Brian. “This isn’t over. You got that?” And then he stalked past the pool, the glass from the broken lights crunching under his feet.

We all watched him disappear around the building.

Connor climbed out of the pool, sopping wet. “Thanks, Penny.”

I smiled at him. “What are friends for?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I was sweeping up shattered glass outside the pool the next morning when Lachlan showed up in a pissed-off mood.

Okay, I wasn’t actually doing the sweeping myself exactly. I was using magic to control two brooms and two dustpans. Still, I wasn’t sure it was really less exertion that way. Using magic took it out of me just as much as actually sweeping. But it was easier on my muscles, anyway.

“Fucking bastards!” I heard Lachlan yelling. “Penny, where are you?”

“Out back,” I yelled. “Can you not swear so loudly in front of my customers?”

He came out the back door. “There were no customers anywhere.”

“People heard you on the moon,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

He looked around the pool at the sweeping brooms. “What happened here?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“Did you kill someone else?’

“No,” I said. “Connor has this friend who has an abusive boyfriend, and I told Connor that his friend could stay here, and then the boyfriend showed up last night—”

“Jesus, Penny, you should have called me.”

“I handled it,” I said. “Connor and I did.”

“But should you be handling things like that?” he said.

“Look, just because you think it’s horrible that I fight magical creatures when I have to doesn’t mean that—”

“I meant that it could be dangerous,” he said. “And I would think you’d be trying to be careful.”

“I
am
careful,” I said.

He started to say something else. Stopped. Shook his head. “Call me if something like that happens again.”

“It was the middle of the night. You would have been asleep. And it would have messed up your ability to do your job if you hadn’t gotten your beauty rest.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not going to be a problem anymore.” He went over to one of the chairs by the pool and threw himself down in it.

“What?”

“I’m on suspension,” he said.

I made the brooms stop sweeping and came over to sit next to him. “Suspension.”

“You are too, as a matter of fact.”

“Me? They can’t suspend me. They don’t even pay me.”

“Well, that’s only because you refused compensation,” said Lachlan. “But you’ll find that you’re locked out of the computer network if you try to log on.”

My jaw dropped. “That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, they took my keys and my badge and my gun and they kicked me out of the station.”

“But why?”

“Because of the shit with Alastair,” he said. “Because they suspect us of murdering him.”

“You are kidding me,” I said. “They can’t suspend you over that.”

“They can and they did,” he said. “It’s with pay, if that means anything. But they said that if I was a murder suspect, I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly.”

“Lachlan, this is insane.”

“I know. And I think that if they’re suspending me, it’s not just because we’re suspects. It’s because we’re the number one suspects in the case.”

“But he was killed by a slayer.”

“Apparently not. They must know something that we don’t know. They must have some reason to be pretty convinced that it’s us.”

“But it’s not us.”

“You know that. I do too. But that doesn’t mean that they’re just going to take our word.”

“Well, we have to prove our innocence, then,” I said.

“Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing,” he said. “And we’re going to have to work fast, because they’re going to be looking for something that they can use to make an arrest.”

“What? You think they’ll arrest us?”

“They need some kind of proof, Penny, and there’s no physical evidence, because neither of us did it, so we’ve probably got time. We’ll need to make a list of all the people who could have killed Alastair.”

I chewed on my lip. “I can’t think of anyone.”

“Guy like Alastair? People had to hate him.”

“He was very charming to people he wasn’t close to,” I said.

“Maybe someone who did work for him. You can’t tell me he was charming to the help.” Lachlan raised his eyebrows.

“Um… well, he was.” I got up and picked up one of the brooms. Maybe I’d think better if I was doing something. I started to sweep.

“Jesus, Penny, let me do that.” Lachlan was on his feet, coming for me.

“I can sweep,” I said.

He took the broom from me. “Sit down.”

I furrowed my brow. “I’m perfectly capable of sweeping up glass. And it needs to be done before it gets much later, because I don’t want to have the pool closed today.”

“You don’t need to overexert yourself,” he said.

“Sweeping is not exactly climbing Mount Everest,” I said. “What’s up with you?” I sat down on one of the chairs.

He wouldn’t look at me. “I’m worthless as a detective currently. I can be helpful here, at least. I can sweep your damn patio. You just sit there and think about who hated Alastair.”

I shook my head. “Besides us? No one.”

* * *

Lachlan was drinking beer, but he hadn’t offered me any. Which was fine, I wasn’t drinking while I was pregnant. But I was kind of annoyed that he didn’t even seem to think it was rude that I didn’t want any.

We were nowhere near coming up with any suspects in Alastair’s murder.

“Look,” I said, “it has to be a slayer. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Let’s go talk to that Clarke Gannon person we talked to last time. She seemed marginally more together than that Otis guy, but we could talk to him too. Maybe one of them knows something.”

Lachlan took a long drink of beer. “I’ve got it.”

“You do?”

“Fletcher Remington’s family. Maybe his dad. You remember how aggressive his father was when we were interviewing him?”

Fletcher Remington was the heroin-addicted dragon that Alastair had sacrificed in order to gain his powers.

“I don’t know, Lachlan,” I said. “None of this makes any sense. Alastair was crazy powerful. How could anyone have killed him?
We
couldn’t kill him, and it wasn’t for lack of trying, and we have the blood bond.”

Lachlan grimaced. “I don’t know either. Is there anyone powerful who hated Alastair?”

“I’ve been telling you,” I said. “No one hated him.”

He sighed.

And then someone was banging on the door to my apartment.

I got up, heading across the room to open the door. Who the hell was knocking like that? I hoped Brian’s stupid boyfriend wasn’t back again, itching to pick another fight.

“SCPD,” called a voice on the other side of the door.

I froze, turning to Lachlan. “You said we had time. You said they’d need evidence.”

He was on his feet as well, his face pale. “Penny, listen to me—”

“Open up!” called the voice, rapping on the door again.

“Open the door,” said Lachlan, “or they’ll break it down.”

“But…” I hesitated. I lowered my voice. “We should fight them.” I held out my wrist. “Drink.” Lachlan and I needed to charge up the power of our blood bond by his drinking my blood.

“No, that’s a bad idea,” he said. “We don’t know what would happen if I drank your blood.”

“You’ve done it tons of times,” I said.

“Yeah, but not now that you’re—”

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.