Fire Born (City of Dragons Book 5) Read online

  “I’ll pay for your time, of course,” said Lachlan. “I realize that’s valuable.”

  She regarded him, pursing her lips. “You’ll pay the blood rate?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Why do you want to know about Collins?” said Minnie.

  “Just do,” said Lachlan. He wasn’t about to tell her that he’d been following a long and twisting trail trying to find out more information on the mythical blood dragon, a figure in an ancient prophecy who was supposed to save the world from some weird things called the children of the deep who followed the Green King.

  Lachlan wasn’t going to tell her that, because she’d think he was nuts. He would think it was all insane too, except for the fact that he was fairly sure that his son was the blood dragon, and Lachlan was going to do everything in his power to try to take that burden from his little boy.

  “Well, he’s old, you know. Ancient. They say he’s thousands of years old.”

  “I know what they say,” said Lachlan. “I need to find him. Have you met him or not?”

  She licked her lips. “You know, you’re asking me to remember stuff that I actively try not to remember.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lachlan. “But I need to know. Do you want more money?” He reached into his back pocket and got out his wallet. He counted out six hundred dollar bills and set them next to the beer bottle that Minnie was using as an ashtray.

  She picked up the bills and ran her fingertips over them.

  Lachlan set down another hundred.

  “I was never going to end up like this, you know?” Minnie laughed a little. She snatched up the other bill. Tucked the money inside her cleavage. “I was going to college. I was majoring in English literature. I was thinking about getting my masters in library science.”

  “I majored in English,” said Lachlan.

  “Really?” said Minnie, cocking her head at him. “And what do you do for a living now?”

  Lachlan licked his lips. “Rather not say.”

  “Bet it’s got nothing to do with literature.”

  He shrugged. “Comes in handy sometimes.”

  She laughed. “You ever read Ernest Hemingway?”

  “Which one?”

  “Maybe The Sun Also Rises?” she said. “Any of the ones where the guy comes back from the war wounded in some way.”

  “That’s all of them.”

  She laughed again. “Well, I’m kind of like that, I guess. I didn’t go to a war, though, I went to Collins. I met him at a party on campus once, and he seemed charming and sophisticated. It was my choice to go home with him, but that was the last choice I made for years. He compelled me to stay with him, to let him use my body for whatever he wanted it for. I was aware of what I was doing, you know, but I couldn’t control myself. He was in control of me. I thought he’d kill me eventually. But one day, he let me go. Said he was bored with me. Gave me some money, as if that was going to make up for it.” She laughed again, and the sound was raw. “Anyway, that’s what I know about him.”

  Lachlan took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sure, you are,” she said. “Anyway, now I do this. Because being with him for so long, being used like that… it changed me. Now… now, I like it. It gives me a charge to be used. To surrender my body to other people for their pleasure. It’s twisted and it’s wrong, but it’s who I am now. I can’t stop.” She gave him a sultry smile. “Sure you don’t want to fuck?”

  “Sure,” said Lachlan. “So, um, so you know where he is?”

  “I know where he kept me for years. Don’t know if he’s still there.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Since he let me go? Three years? Maybe four.”

  “You could tell me where he kept you. Tell me the address.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “All right.” She cocked her head to one side. “Anyone ever tell you that it’s easy to talk to you?”

  “Actually, I get that a lot.”

  “You should be a cop,” she said. “I bet people would line up to confess all their deepest darkest secrets to you. It’s something about your eyes…”

  He shrugged. “The address?”

  She told him.

  He whipped out his phone and typed it into his note-taking app. “Thanks.” He headed for the door. Hand on the knob, he stopped and looked back at her. “I am a cop, by the way.”

  She shot to her feet, fear in her eyes.

  He raised a reassuring hand. “Not here in an official capacity. But, uh, Minnie?”

  “Yeah?” She was wary.

  “That feeling of being drawn to the thing that makes you twisted and wrong? I know about that. You don’t have to give in to that feeling. You really don’t.” And then he left.

  * * *

  I eyed Lachlan, who was glaring at his blood across from me at the Pink Flamingo. The Flamingo was the restaurant next door to my hotel, the Purple Dolphin Hotel and Suites. I had a deal going with the owner of the Flamingo, Ophelia Diaz, to do a continental breakfast for my guests. Right now, I had no guests, since it was February, but I was still paying Ophelia for the breakfast, so it was out. I was famished all the time at this point in my pregnancy, which meant that I could practically put away the entire buffet by myself.

  I shoved hash browns into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “You look like you didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  He glanced at me. “Huh?”

  “Which reminds me, why do you sleep at all, anyway? I mean, technically, you’re dead and you don’t need sleep to rejuvenate your body, because it’s only being kept alive by magic, so why not stay up all the time?”

  He took a drink of blood. “Because I get sleepy.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I guess that makes sense.” Even though it didn’t, really. Maybe it was like breathing or something. Vampires technically didn’t need to breathe, but they all did. It was habit. “So, did you have trouble sleeping last night? Was it because I was up and out of bed a gazillion times flushing the toilet and stuff?”

  “No, I barely heard you. You’re fine.” He smiled at me, but he looked haunted and haggard—more so than usual, and he usually looked a little bit like he carried the world on his shoulders. Months ago, that look used to fade from his eyes when he saw me, like I was the sun and I chased away the clouds. But now, nothing chased them away. Nothing at all. He looked at my plate, which was nearly empty. “You want me to get you some more eggs or something?”

  I shook my head. “I shouldn’t.”

  “Are you hungry?” he said. “If you’re still hungry, you need to eat.”

  “I’m not,” I said. But the truth was our little guy was smashing my stomach as well as my bladder, and I was now forced to eat a bunch of little meals, because I was always hungry, but would feel full after two minutes of trying to eat anything. God, I was going to be glad to get this baby out of me.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive,” I said. I threw my napkin over my plate. “You done? I’m done. Let’s go back to the hotel and get ready for work.”

  “How about you stay home today, and I’ll call you if I need you?” he said. “It’s not good for you to be on your feet all the time.”

  I was the magical creatures consultant for the Sea City Police Department. I didn’t need to go in to work unless my expertise was necessary.

  “So,” I said, “I’ll sit down, then. But you know I can’t hang out doing nothing. I’ll go stir crazy.”

  “I thought you’d need to do that nesting thing,” said Lachlan. “Clean everything and paint the walls and stuff.”

  “Nope,” I said. In fact, we didn’t even have a nursery, just a crib in the living room and a co-sleeper that I was going to attach to the bed. The co-sleeper was a tiny little bed that sat level with my own bed, meaning I could have the baby at arms’ reach, but also in his own space, so that I wouldn’t roll over onto him.

  I figured that I’d turn the guest room into the baby’s room
eventually, but since Lachlan was sleeping in there right now, it didn’t seem to make much sense to bother with it for now.

  Felicity thought I was insane. She said that I wasn’t going to have time to decorate a nursery with a newborn.

  Everyone in the world, it seemed, was fond of telling me what I would and wouldn’t be able to do with a newborn. I couldn’t figure how babies took that much effort. All they did was sleep and eat and poop.

  And Felicity knew even less about babies than I did.

  I guessed the truth of it, though, was that I was afraid to be too prepared. I still remembered losing my little girl at eight months pregnant when I’d still been married to Alastair. She had been perfect when I’d delivered her little motionless body. I still remembered her tiny fists and her little bow-shaped lips.

  Afterward, I’d gone into her nursery every day for months and sat in the rocking chair that I’d purchased to sit in and rock her to sleep. I’d clutched a little stuffed bear that I’d bought for her. And I’d sobbed and sobbed and rocked and rocked—

  The point was that it was better not to have a damned nursery.

  I knew that little girl had died because my ex-husband had beaten me and had hurt her. He had killed her inside my womb with his fists. I knew that this little boy would most likely not die. No one was around to hurt me or to hurt him.

  But until he was in my arms, alive and breathing and bawling, well, I wouldn’t be able to really believe it was real.

  “I’m coming to work with you, Lachlan,” I said. “I need to do something useful.”

  He checked his watch. “We better go, then. We’re not both going to have time for a shower if we don’t head back.”

  “We could shower together,” I said, grinning at him.

  He gave me a wide-eyed look of terror.

  “Or not,” I said. What was I thinking? Naked together in the shower? That was a recipe for disaster right there. We’d both want him to drink my blood. “Let’s get back to the hotel.”

  We left the Flamingo and bundled up for the cold walk back to the Dolphin. Truth be told, I was glad that it was cold right now. It was better for it be really freaking cold while I was the size of a house than really freaking hot.

  “You sure I can’t convince you to take the day off?” Lachlan asked as we walked. “I really think you should be relaxing right now, not traipsing all over with me.”

  “Well, what’s happening right now?” I said. “I thought you said that there was a magical murder the other night.”

  “There was a drake killing,” said Lachlan. “But last night, when Dirk was working, the perp came in and confessed. He was in tears and all broken up about it. Guess he regretted it later.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling a little disappointed. There hadn’t been a good murder case in a while now. I was itching to do some detecting. “Well, I still want to come in.”

  “You know,” said Lachlan, as we got closer and closer to the hotel, “doing a little preparation for this baby is not going to hurt him. He’s tough, remember?”

  “Right,” I muttered. “He’s a blood dragon, whatever the hell that means.” My fingers went to the talisman at my neck instinctively. It muted my child’s power to draw rogue dragons to himself. He apparently had enough power to bend them to his will.

  We didn’t know how rogue dragons got to be the way that they were, but they weren’t like me. I was a dragon shifter, and when I was in dragon form, I could still think and reason like a human. The rogues were empty inside, bundles of rage and fire and destruction. They did nothing but burn and kill. Before we got the talisman, they’d been following me around. Now, though, we hadn’t seen one in months.

  “Look.” He rubbed my back. “I know you’re worried. I know you’ve barely made it past the time in the pregnancy that you lost the last baby. So, you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. But maybe you could consider the possibility that it won’t.”

  “Maybe,” I muttered. Honestly, I had been better at this before, back when Lachlan and I were still touching. Now, it felt like all my neuroses had flooded back. I even had occasional bad dreams about Alastair assaulting me. I knew that the blood bond had done terrible things to us, but it had also made us stronger, ironing out all our issues and fears. Now, without it, I was vulnerable again. “But I seriously can’t stay home and do crafts, okay?”

  “Who said anything about crafts?”

  “I’m not the kind of woman who makes mobiles by hand out of yarn or who stencils the kid’s name on the wall or something. I saw all that on the youtube pregnancy vlogs, but that is not me. Okay?”

  “I’m not asking you to do crafts.”

  We were walking up to the door of the hotel.

  “What are you asking me to do, then?”

  “Maybe we could settle on a name? We talked about it, but every time I bring it up these days, you shut me down.”

  I sighed, tugging open the door to the hotel’s lobby. “I like Wyatt. Wyatt’s fine.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you ever call him Wyatt?” Lachlan was right behind me.

  I stepped inside the warmth of the lobby and rubbed my tummy. “I …” I looked up at Lachlan, who was shutting the door. “I can’t, okay? Can we not do this right now?”

  He made an apologetic face. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to upset you.”

  I sighed, looking around the lobby. There was no one behind the desk. There was a sign on it that said to ring a bell for service. That would summon whatever staff member I’d paid to hang out and watch the phones. This morning, it was Becky. She was lying on one of the couches in the lobby, watching some trashy talk show.

  And there was someone sitting on the couch opposite her, which was weird, because—

  “Penny!” The person leaped up and ran at me. She was pregnant too, and she looked familiar…

  “Vivica!” I exclaimed. “Oh my God, Vivica, what the hell are you doing here?”

  My cousin Vivica practically tackled me, giving me a huge bear hug. “Hey, Penny, it’s so good to see you.”

  I hugged her back. “Likewise.” I pulled back. “I thought you’d been forbidden by Gran and Gramps from ever speaking to me again. I thought I was a bad influence.”

  She shrugged, pointing at her stomach. “That ain’t a full-fledged dragon growing in there, so it turns out I’m a bad influence too.”

  “Oh my God!” I said.

  “Yeah, can you imagine how the family is freaking out?” She laughed and turned to Lachlan. “You must be the vampire.”

  Lachlan nodded slowly. “Uh, yeah, I guess that’s what I am.”

  “He’s Lachlan,” I said, grinning up at him. “Lachlan, this is Vivica, my cousin.”

  “Good to meet you,” said Vivica and threw her arms around Lachlan as well.

  Lachlan coughed, awkwardly patting Vivica on the back. “Nice to meet you too.”

  She released him, still grinning. “Well, I’m so glad this really is your hotel. I wasn’t sure. I mean, I found it on the Internet, and it said your name, but I wondered if there could be more than one Penny Caspian or if this was really you. And it is, so I’m glad.” She let out a noisy breath. “Anyway, I found you.”

  “You did,” I said. “And it’s good to see you, but…”

  “But what am I doing here?” Vivica laughed. “Well, um, I kind of need a place to stay.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, wow.”

  “You can say no,” she said. She was still smiling, but she looked nervous. “I mean, I was no paragon of loyalty or whatever. When Gran and Gramps disowned you, I didn’t stand up and tell them they sucked or anything. I went along with it. So, you have every right to be angry with me and all. But, the thing is, Penny, I really have nowhere else to go.” And then her face crumpled.

  “Sweetie, you’re family, of course you can stay,” I said, putting my arm around her. “Tell me what happened.”

  She took a shaky breath. “Well, I was dating this guy? He was gre
at, and he wasn’t a dragon or anything, but no one was making a thing of it, because, I mean, you know how it is before people get mated. Everything’s a big party. So, if I wanted to slum it with a human, it was no big deal. Everyone assumed that I’d get over it when I met my mate.”

  “Which you probably would,” I said. The dragon mating bond was intense.

  “Well, whatever,” she said. “I don’t think so. I think I would have chosen Dan. But it doesn’t matter now, because he’s gone.”

  “Gone?” I said.

  “He’s, um, dead.” Her voice broke a little. “Committed suicide, actually.”

  “What?” I pulled her into a hug again. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  She pulled back. Nodded. Bit her lip. And then burst into tears.

  This time, when I hugged her, she let me hang onto her. She sobbed for several seconds.

  “That’s awful,” I said. I looked up at Lachlan. “Uh, maybe I will stay home today.”

  He nodded.

  I patted Vivica on the back. “Lachlan, you can go on to the office, though.”

  “You sure?” he said. “If you need me here, I can be late.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “Get in the shower already.”

  Vivica wiped at her eyes, taking a couple steps back. “Am I keeping you from—”

  “No, from nothing,” I said, smiling at her. “Were there… signs?”

  “Signs of what?” she said.

  “With Dan,” I said. “Did he seem depressed?”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” she said, shaking her head. “It was completely out of left field. And they found him…” She shuddered. “He hung himself naked in this hotel room, and there was gay porn everywhere. I didn’t even know he liked that sort of thing. I mean, I guess he was ashamed or… but I would never have…”

  “He was gay?” I said, feeling confused.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been talking to all his friends. No one knew anything. It was like repressed or something.”

  “That’s awful,” I said.

  “It’s surreal,” she said. “I know that denial is a phase of grief and all, but I keep feeling like it’s impossible. The Dan I knew was not sexually attracted to men. And he wasn’t suicidal either. Every morning I wake up, and I remember it happened, and it’s like the world shatters again.”