Fire Song (City of Dragons) (22 page)

Apparently, while I’d been in dragon form, he’d called in for backup. By the time I was back in human form, they were pulling up, sirens blaring, lights blazing.

Both of us had spent the rest of the time filling in the officers on what happened.

Well, a very abbreviated version.

I’d let Lachlan take the lead, just agreed with whatever he said.

He’d told them that we’d woken up in the field, and the Brotherhood had been shooting at us. There was no reason to mention the cage, since it didn’t actually exist anymore.

Lachlan said that they were terrible shots, which was basically true, and that we’d been able to sneak up on them and get the jump on them.

I was worried about the guns being stuck in the tree, but Lachlan had gotten them down and collected them and handed them over to the police.

After all that, we just stood there together, not speaking.

The police drove away with the arrested men. We watched them go.

Lachlan leaned against his car. He stared at his shoes.

I felt awkward. I didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t help but think about how it had felt when he had his teeth in my wrist, and I wondered how it had felt for him. Obviously, it had been good, because he hadn’t stopped right away, and he had said the thing about feeling guilty, but he really shouldn’t, because it didn’t matter. He’d stopped in time, and we’d been in an impossible situation, and how the hell had I stopped bullets when we were doing that?

I drew a circle in the dirt with my toe.

He took a deep breath and raised his gaze to meet mine. “Listen, I really am sorry—”

“Don’t,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t want to talk about this.” I hugged myself. “I just kind of want to forget it even happened.”

He licked his lips. “Okay.”

“Let’s go see that girl we were going to see. Debby Adair. Let’s cross Brody off our list and try to get something accomplished on this case today.”

He looked away, his jaw twitching.

I studied my feet. Then stared up at the sky.

He still wasn’t looking at me. “I really am sorry. It frightens me that I might have… gone too far—”

“I can take care of myself,” I said.

He did look at me then. His gaze was penetrating.

My turn to look away. I only looked back up when I heard the sound of the car door opening.

He was getting inside.

I walked around to the passenger side and got in.

Lachlan reached in his coat jacket and took out his sunglasses. I thought that the Brotherhood had taken them, along with my talisman and my car keys.

He put the glasses on, then reached into his jacket again and brought out my keys and talisman. He handed them over.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Figured you’d rather they weren’t tied up in an evidence locker.”

I put the talisman over my head, tucking it inside my shirt.

Lachlan started the car.

We didn’t speak on the drive.

*

Debby Adair’s eyes were wide. “Oh, gosh, why are you guys asking questions about Brody?”

“We’re looking into the Dragon Slasher murders,” said Lachlan.

“But Brody didn’t have anything to do with that,” said Debby. “He couldn’t. I mean, he and I spend all our time together. We both work here, and when he’s not working, he’s either with his family or with me. Trust me, he couldn’t get away from his family. And besides, he’s a good guy. He’s not the kind of person who’d hurt anyone.”

“He was angry with the dragons for building on his ancestral home,” said Lachlan.

“But not angry enough to kill.” Debby furrowed her brow. “Look, Brody’s passionate. That’s one of the things I love about him. And he thinks for himself, unlike the other gargoyles out there. But he’s through-and-through good.”

“Thinks for himself?” I spoke up. I almost never talked during these interviews, but I was feeling a little more bold after what we’d experienced that afternoon. “How do you mean?”

“Well, he’s not supposed to have a girlfriend,” said Debby. “I don’t know if you know what gargoyle family structure is like or not.”

“We know,” I said.

“Well, then you know that they treat men like breeding stock and nothing more. They force them to work, to hand over all their earnings to the matriarch, and they won’t allow them to have anything of their own. It’s horrible. All Brody wants is to have something of his own. He wants a family and a legacy, just like everyone else.”

“And he’s going to have that with you?” said Lachlan. “That’s why he bought that house?”

Debby drew back. “You guys know everything. You’re really serious about looking into him.”

“We take these crimes very seriously.”

“I promise you,” said Debby. “He’s innocent. All he’s ever wanted is a family of his own, property of his own, a life of his own, free from his family. Now, he’s right on the verge of getting it. Why would he do something to ruin that? Why would he throw everything away?”

Lachlan gave her a card. “Call me if he ever does anything that you think you need to report.”

She took the card, but she shook her head. “I’ll never need this.”

*

Lachlan squinted at the whiteboard. “Okay, so I’m going to take down Brody’s picture. I’m not saying it’s not still possible that he’s guilty, but I don’t like him for this. You agree?”

I nodded. “Yes. Let’s take him down.”

It was late, sometime after eight o’clock in the evening, and there was no one else in the office with us. The whole room was dark, overhead lights extinguished. Lachlan and I stayed inside the light of his desk lamp, which illuminated a circle only big enough to make out the whiteboard and his empty desk.

“Which leaves us with Otis, Alastair, Anthony, and Killian,” said Lachlan, pointing at each of their pictures as he did so. “And we were going to look deeper into Alastair, if I remember correctly.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But what with the fact that we now know for sure that the Brotherhood has no problem murdering magical creatures, we’ve got to wonder about Otis.”

I bit my lip. “I guess that’s true. Of course, they tried to kill us with guns, and the dragon girls were stabbed to death.”

“Right,” he said, “that doesn’t fit. Still, it doesn’t mean that they don’t vary their weapons from time to time.”

“How would they even have gotten close enough to kill a dragon with a knife?” I said.

“Maybe those girls were drained of their magic?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Still, that could take as long as two weeks.”

“Well, we know that Dahlia disappeared for a while before she was killed. Maybe that accounts for the time.”

I nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

“But we’re just spitballing. We don’t have anything that specifically connects them to the victims. Or anything that specifically connects Otis.”

“So, what now?”

“Well, we’ll want to interrogate the guys we brought in, of course,” he said. He sighed. “But not tonight, I don’t think. I’m not sure I have it in me tonight.”

“Oh, are you doing okay?” I said. “Did you get hurt or anything earlier?”

“No, I feel great,” he muttered. “I imagine guzzling all your blood has something to do with that.” He sank down in his chair, looking defeated. “You should go. Whenever I look at you—”

“What?” I said. “I’m fine. I shifted, and I healed, and—”

“Right, it’s exactly like what you said happened with your ex, then?” He laughed bitterly. “Only this time it’s me. I hurt you, but you shifted and healed, so it’s no big deal.”

I stiffened. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t. Because… “Look, I chose to allow you to do that. So, it’s different. And we were in an impossible situation. And I said I didn’t want to talk about this.”

“Not talking about things doesn’t make them disappear.”

“Well, you never talk about the fact you’re a vampire.”

“And yet, I still am.”

I hesitated. Maybe I should leave. Maybe I should simply run out of this place. That might be the only way I could be sure that I wouldn’t have to talk about what had happened earlier. But then I’d just be running, and after facing Alastair—after facing Ace Gonzales—well, I wasn’t sure that I could stand running anymore.

I took a deep breath. Saying I didn’t want to talk about it was just another form of running away, wasn’t it? “Okay,” I said quietly. “Let’s talk about it.”

His gaze flitted over to me. He looked surprised.

“I changed my mind,” I said. “It’s a woman’s prerogative.”

He raised his eyebrows. And then he barked out a short laugh. “All right, Ms. Caspian, let’s talk,” he drawled.

“Now I’m Ms. Caspian?”

“Penny,” he said, but his voice cracked. He got up and went back to the board. He began erasing all of the words underneath Brody’s name.

I chewed on my lip.

It was quiet.

After he erased, he stood with his back to me, turning the eraser over and over in his hands. “I never did that before. I never drank blood that didn’t come from a butcher shop.”

“Well, you must have once,” I said. “Because how else are you a vampire?”

He glanced at me over his shoulder and then he turned back to the eraser. “It was an accident.”

“An accident? You accidentally drank dragon’s blood?”

“Yes. It was mixed into a soft drink that my partner was drinking, and I had some of it.”

“This the partner that slept with your wife?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He was a real piece of work.” Lachlan set down the eraser. He turned around. “Of course, that didn’t happen until after. She fell apart after. I did too.”

“After what?”

He laughed again, and it was hollow. He drew a hand over his mouth and chin. “I don’t talk about it. I’ve never…”

It was quiet again.

Finally, I said in a tiny voice, “You’re the one who wanted to talk.”

He nodded.

More silence.

Abruptly, words started spilling out of his mouth. “I had a stepson. When I met my wife, she had this little bratty kid. He was about ten then, and, uh, he never liked me. And the feeling was mutual. Kid liked his dad, and I couldn’t fault him for that. Me and that kid never got along.”

I didn’t know what this had to do with being a vampire, but I didn’t say anything.

Lachlan continued. “But I never thought… I mean, he was bratty, but he wasn’t anything special. There weren’t any warning signs. Of course, I didn’t watch him too close, because I didn’t like him, and he only lived with us every other week, because he spent the other weeks with his dad. And his dad was a prick. He was just one of those good old boy Texans who thinks a woman’s place is in the kitchen and he… But it wasn’t his fault either. After, he was devastated. He never meant…” Lachlan sighed.

There was another long silence.

“What wasn’t his fault?” I whispered.

“The kid got a gun,” said Lachlan. “One of his dad’s hunting guns. A shotgun. By this time, he wasn’t ten. He was sixteen. And he was mad. Just angry all the fucking time. Like everyone is when they’re sixteen, so who would have thought anything of it?”

Oh, God. I was starting to get an idea of where this was going.

“My wife and I had a little girl,” Lachlan said, and his voice wasn’t steady. “She was only four years old. But she was in the way, see, because she was mine. And my stepson wanted it go back, back the way it was, before I showed up. He blamed me. So, he shot me.” His voice got gruff. “But he shot her too. My little girl. My tiny, small, sweet, little…”

“Lachlan,” I breathed, horrified. I wanted to go to him, to touch him, but I couldn’t seem to move. I tried to fathom the idea of a person shooting a four-year-old child.

Lachlan looked up at me. “But I didn’t die. Or at least, I didn’t stay dead. Because my damned partner had stolen dragon blood out of the evidence locker, because he was a dumb shit. He didn’t know that the blood doesn’t get you high. No, it’s the flesh that does that. So, he was drinking that stuff, and then he didn’t even tell me when I picked up that damned cup and put that straw to my mouth. He didn’t stop me. So, then, I woke up. And…” His face was haggard, like an old man’s. This was the thing that haunted him, that made him gaunt and hollow and distant. “My baby girl. Just… lying there. And the blood…”

I did hug him then. I wrapped my arms around him and I squeezed for all I was worth.

He resisted, pushing at me. And then all the fight went out of him.

We both sank to the floor, and I held onto him for dear life, and his shoulders shook, but he didn’t make a sound.

But eventually, he pushed away from me again.

My shoulder was wet.

His eyes were red. He scrubbed at them with the heels of his hands. His mouth worked, as if he was looking for something to say. But then he just gave up. He got up, and he walked out, leaving me alone with the whiteboard.