Fire Song (City of Dragons) (9 page)

“Jensen is your new beau?” I said. “The one you seem to be spending every night with?”

“That’s him. I really want you to meet him.”

“I’m game. When are we doing this thing?”

She got up from the couch. “Maybe tonight? Maybe tomorrow night? I’ll get back with you, okay?”

“Sure thing,” I said.

“I’ve got beds to make, floors to vacuum.” She headed for the door. “You want to do lunch at the Flamingo today?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you there around one,” I said.

She waved, made a silly face, and was gone.

I sagged into the easy chair.

*

It turned out that Jensen was free for dinner that night, and so Felicity and I met him at Lombardo’s, a pizza and pasta joint on Atlantic Avenue. When we arrived at the restaurant, he was already at our table, and the waitress escorted us over.

That left a bad taste in my mouth. Why couldn’t the guy just wait out front for us? Why’d he have to go and get the table? It wasn’t as if the place was real busy. No place was real busy in March.

When we got to the table, Jensen got up to give Felicity a kiss. When they broke apart, I got a good look at him. He was unremarkable. Average height, average build, sandy hair, glasses. He wasn’t overly handsome. He wasn’t ugly either.

I was probably being hard on him. I sat down.

Jensen and Felicity sat down too.

The waitress scampered off, but not before I caught her giving Felicity a dirty look. “There goes her tip,” I muttered.

“What’s that?” said Jensen.

“That waitress obviously doesn’t approve of drakes,” I said. “That kind of bigotry makes me sick.”

“Me too,” said Jensen, reaching over to stroke Felicity’s cheek. “She’s a treasure, this one.”

Treasure? Seriously?

“Anyway,” Jensen continued, “that’s why I got this table before you guys showed up. I didn’t want to get shunted into some drafty corner somewhere because of prejudice.”

I pressed my lips together. Sure, sure, sure.

“You know I don’t care about that crap,” said Felicity. “People want to be dicks, that’s they’re thing. I swear, between the two of you both trying to protect me, it’s a little much.”

“I’m never going to stop trying to protect you,” I said.

“And neither am I,” Jensen said.

The waitress came back with a wine glass full of thick red liquid. She set it down in front of Jensen. “Your cow’s blood, sir.” She turned to me. “What can I get you to drink?”

I couldn’t speak. I was too stunned to even think. I just shook my head. Inside my skull, I could hear the sound of my own blood rushing at my temples, like an ocean of anger.

“We’ll have a bottle of wine,” said Felicity. “House red would be great.”

“Sure thing,” said the waitress, going off again.

I put both my hands on the table top to keep from reaching out and strangling Jensen. Or from using my magic to smash him against the floor really hard. “You’re a vampire?” I said in a barely-controlled voice.

He raised his eyebrows. “Felicity didn’t tell you?”

I got up and went over to Felicity, yanking aside her shirt collar.

She shoved me. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Looking for bite marks,” I said.

“Oh, no,” said Felicity, glaring at me. “Do
not
act like this Penny. This is ridiculous. He’s not drinking my blood.”

“Yet,” I said. “He’s just biding his time.” I turned to Jensen, putting my finger in his face. “That’s the reason you’re dating a drake. All the blood you might want. Magic damned blood. Everyone knows that drake blood works almost as well as dragon blood to give vampires magic powers.”

“What?” said Jensen. “Magic what?” He looked thoroughly confused. “Look, I didn’t mean to become a vampire. I had cancer. I tried an experimental treatment of dragon blood, but it didn’t work. I died anyway, but I came back, since I had the blood in my system. I never wanted this. When the treatment was explained to me, the risk of becoming a vampire wasn’t even mentioned. Felicity and I have a lot in common, considering we were both changed by accident. That’s why I’m dating her. I would never
use
her.”

“Whatever.” I grabbed Felicity by the arm and dragged her to her feet. “We’re leaving. You’re not going to see this guy again.”

She pushed me away. “
You’re
leaving. You’re incredibly rude, and I don’t even want to look at you anymore.”

“Felicity, you have to realize what it is that he’s doing to you.”

“No, I don’t.” Her face was flushed red and her scales were starting to turn even an deeper green-blue. “Either apologize to my boyfriend or get away from me.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Oh, right now, I don’t even want to
look
at you,” she snarled.

So, eventually, I left.

We all did, because the owner of the restaurant asked us to. We were causing a disturbance.

Felicity had come with me in my car, but she got in Jensen’s in the parking lot, and she didn’t even say goodbye to me. She was clearly pissed.

I tried to tell myself that she’d be okay. After all, she’d been spending every night with the guy for weeks and she didn’t seem to be hurt. Plus, having his plan to drink her blood outed by me would make him a bit more cautious. I’d bought her some time.

But I was going to have to convince her to get away from this guy, who was clearly bad news.

However, by the time I drove back to the hotel, I wasn’t so sure that I had done the right thing after all. Maybe I was overreacting.

Felicity said that I always thought the worst of men, that I was overly cautious because of what had happened between me and Alastair. I thought everyone was out to get me or out to get her.

She kept trying to assure me that there were men out there that were good. That, in fact, the men who were bad were few and far between. The good men outnumbered the bad.

I knew she was right. Not every man out there was trying to take advantage of her.

But I couldn’t bear the thought of my best friend being hurt the way I had. I just never wanted anything like that to happen to her.

Still, maybe I should give Jensen the benefit of a doubt.

Maybe I should apologize.

Ugh.

That was when I realized the light was off in the lobby.

Weird.

Connor was supposed to be working the front desk. Why had he turned the light off?

I pushed open the front door. “Connor?” Inside, it was dark, and the television that hung over the door was lying on the floor, its screen shattered.

“Connor!” I yelled.

“Here,” came a strained voice.

I ran in the direction of the sound and found him behind the front desk, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall.

“What happened?” I said, kneeling down next to him.

“It was the vampires,” he said. “I tried to stop them. I should have been able to hold my own. I’m a gargoyle. I was created to fight dragons. I’m supposed to be strong as all hell.” He was clutching his stomach.

I could see a dark stain on his shirt. “You’re bleeding.”

“One of them had a knife,” he muttered.

“Okay, we’re calling an ambulance.” I got up, digging my phone out of my purse.

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “It’ll be okay. I heal fast. Besides, doctors never know what to do with gargoyles.”

I knelt back down. “Let me see it. If it looks too deep, you’re going to the hospital.”

He grunted, moving his hand.

Carefully, I peeled his shirt away from the wound. His skin was ashy, the blood dark and black. I snatched some tissues off the desk and began to gently dab at the wound.

Once I got the blood away, I could see that it was a long, shallow cut. It was already knitting itself back together.

“They had a message for you,” said Connor.

“Let’s get you bandaged,” I said, helping him to his feet.

“He said he hoped your husband would help you take care of all the people they were going to hurt,” he said.

I snorted. “Screw that. If he was going to Alastair, he would have already. He’s afraid of him. No vampire has the balls to call up a dragon out of the blue.”

“Maybe not,” said Connor. He leaned on me as we headed back the hallway to the bathroom.

Once inside, I turned on the light, put the seat on the toilet and had him sit down. I worked on cleaning up the wound. “No, they aren’t going to Alastair, but hurting you is much worse.”

“I’m sorry I was such a waste of space,” he said. “I really tried to save the TV.”

“You are far more important than a television set.” I applied some ointment and then bandaged him up.

“Thanks,” he said, touching the bandage. “This is probably overkill. I’ll heal up before morning.”

“You were bleeding a lot,” I said. “You don’t want it to scar.”

He shrugged. “I guess not. Although scars might make me look really sexy and butch.”

“Butch?” I said. “You?”

“What? I could be butch.” He stood up and squared his shoulders, flexing his wings.

I patted him on the arm. “Of course you could.”

“You don’t have to patronize me just because I’m hurt. It’s not even that bad. If I hadn’t been so freaked out by the blood, maybe I could have done something to stop them.”

“They outnumbered you,” I said. “Stop blaming yourself. But we are going to have to do something about this. It’s getting to be a big problem. I won’t let those vampires hurt my friends.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know yet, but this is going to stop. I will never let anything like this happen to you again.” I looked deep into his eyes, promising. “Ever.”

*

“You came,” said Flint at the door to Happy Harry’s Bar and Grill. The place was a hole in the wall that seemed to be frequented by a mix of drakes, vampires and slayers. It was an odd mix, considering most slayers didn’t do much fraternizing with magical creatures, but I guessed they had to get intel someplace.

“You said you might need my help,” I said. “Of course I came. But I’ve got to tell you. I don’t know much about slayers.” Apparently, that was the suspect we were interviewing. Even though these murders weren’t typical slayer killings, Flint said this guy might be involved.

“I know that,” he said. “But it might be good if you were along for all the interviews from here on out, I think. You could be a sort of sounding board for me.” He gestured with his head, and we entered the bar.

Inside, the place was dimly lit with recessed blue lighting. There was a jukebox in the corner, blaring out some gangsta rap from the late 1990s. A group of drakes sat at the bar. One had a face entirely covered in scales. When he spoke, a tiny forked tongue unfurled from his mouth, as if he were a serpent. Another had ridges and horns all over his back and shoulders.

They turned to look at me and there was hunger in their eyes.

Could they see I was a dragon?

Could they tell somehow?

There were stories about drakes going mad if they hadn’t had any meat to eat in a few days. Turning into terrifying monsters that ripped apart anyone and anything in their paths.

These drakes weren’t insane, were they?

I stepped closer to Flint, feeling unsettled and unsure. I was pretty confident that no one could sense that I was a dragon, but I wasn’t sure. At any rate, a drake was addicted to dragon flesh. I wasn’t in my dragon form. They wouldn’t be interested in me.

Abruptly, Flint sat down at a table and tugged me down next to him.

There, sitting by himself was a man covered in tattoos. He had a purple mohawk and the seat next to him was taken up by his huge bow and quiver of arrows.

“Otis! Good to see you.”

Otis looked both of us over. “You’re the cop, ain’tcha? Whose the girl?”

“She’s my associate,” said Flint. “Want to answer a few questions?”

“Not really.”

“We can do it here or downtown,” said Flint, smiling easily, as if he weren’t threatening the guy.

“I ain’t got nothing to say to you,” said Otis. “I done told you that I just use this here bow to hunt me some deer out on the other side of the bay. You keep saying I’m a dragon slayer, but I ain’t.”

“Oh, come on, Otis,” said Flint, laughing. “We both know that you hate dragons. You despise them.”

“I got no feelings about them one way or the other,” said Otis.

“That so? What happened to your little twin sisters, Otis? Bobby Sue and Etta Mae? They were five years old when they got lost on that camping trip, weren’t they?”

“You don’t know nothing about my sisters.” Otis sneered at him.

“You thought it was a dragon, didn’t you? When you found their tiny little singed bodies, you were sure—”