Fire Brand (City of Dragons Book 6)

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Copyright

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Fire Brand

  City of Dragons

  Book Six

  by Val St. Crowe

  I’m Penny Caspian, and my life is damned near perfect. I have a beautiful new baby who I love so much it hurts, and his dad, Detective Lachlan Flint, is still as wonderful as he’s ever been. We never thought we’d ever be this lucky, but here we are.

  Of course, the Eaglelinx corporation is still using their candies to create rogue dragons. I swore I’d stop them, but I’ve been a bit busy changing diapers and doing night feedings past nine months. When Eaglelinx threatens to use their influence to take my hotel, I realize my time is running out. I have to stop them now.

  But we’ve just taken on a new murder case. Beckett James Stanley, a figure from the early days of gargoyle rights, has been killed while he lay in his hospital bed. We’ve got to find the murderer and bring him or her to justice.

  It’s fine, though. I’ve got this. I can do it all and still be home in time to put my son to bed.

  FIRE BRAND

  © copyright 2016 by Val St.Crowe

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won’t get mad.)

  Fire Brand

  City of Dragons

  Book Six

  Val St. Crowe

  CHAPTER ONE

  ~Lachlan~

  It was a warm day in November. Warm for November, that was. In this part of Maryland, it was typically frigid by the time Halloween rolled around. In the part of Texas where Lachlan was from, it was still sometimes a bit balmy around Thanksgiving. He’d adjusted, he supposed, since he thought it was warm today. Sixty-six degrees was warm, in his opinion.

  He’d decided it was a perfect day to be outside, and so he’d bundled up little Wyatt, who was nine months old and so wonderful it made Lachlan’s heart hurt, and taken the little guy outside to the patio behind the hotel.

  It hadn’t been an easy job finding all the things the little boy needed. Shoes, for instance. Wyatt wasn’t really in the habit of wearing shoes so much. He’d only recently graduated from crawling to pulling himself up on any piece of furniture he could reach. Before that, any contact the bottom of Wyatt’s feet made with the floor was only because of someone placing his feet there. Shoes had been incidental. But Lachlan didn’t think the boy should be out on the concrete patio without shoes, so he’d gone searching all over Wyatt’s nursery for nearly twenty minutes before turning up a pair.

  He would have simply asked Penny where they were, but Penny was out. She and Felicity were doing some girls’ shopping thing. Penny was supposed to be having a baby-free day, and he wasn’t going to bother her with something like that.

  Anyway, he found the shoes, got them on the baby, and put on the little man’s jacket, and out they went into the world to explore together, father and son.

  Currently, Wyatt was holding onto a stack of plastic patio chairs and babbling.

  “What’s that, Wyatt?” said Lachlan. “You want Daddy to take the chairs out of the stack so you’ve got someplace to go? Well, all right.”

  Since Wyatt’s mobility depended on moving from one piece of furniture to the next, he needed something else to grab onto if he was going to get anywhere. So, Lachlan unstacked the chairs, putting them each a few inches apart. And Wyatt, grinning from ear to ear, began to use the chairs to help himself walk from one end of the patio to the other.

  Lachlan watched him, a pretty big smile on his own face. Wyatt always made him smile. The little boy was as perfect a child as he thought he’d ever seen. He knew he might be a little partial to his son, but Wyatt really was adorable and sweet. He had his stormy periods, as any child does, but he was by and large a pleasant little boy, always smiling.

  On the other side of the chairs, the empty beach stretched out, down to the ocean. The waves crashed in the distance, and the seagulls dove down into the glittering water for fish. The sun beamed out bright and warm.

  “Babababaaa,” said Wyatt happily.

  Lachlan knelt down behind him and kissed the top of his head. Wyatt’s hair was baby fine and soft. It had a little bit of a curl to it, and the wispy ends turned upwards. Lachlan loved the feel of that. He was the luckiest vampire on earth. As far as he knew, he was the only one to ever have a child.

  He’d been sure this part of his life was over. That he’d had a chance at a family and he’d failed them all miserably. Back in Texas, his daughter Hallie had been murdered by his stepson. The teenage boy had shot Lachlan too, but Lachlan had died with dragon blood in his system, and he had turned into a vampire.

  After the death of his little girl, his marriage had fallen apart. He had fallen apart. He’d taken dangerous undercover jobs, throwing himself into his work. And eventually, he’d ended up here in Sea City, the magical creatures capital of the world. He’d been hired here to work as the magical creatures cop, considering he was a vampire. At the time, the Sea City Police Department only thought they needed one police officer to handle all of the magical crime in the city, even though the city had huge numbers of magical creatures living there. Now, however, they’d hired another officer. Detective Christiane Dirk worked with him, and his load was a little lighter.

  Which was good, because he had to admit that being a father took priority over the job right now. He hadn’t been sure how he’d feel about it, because back when Hallie was small, he’d still been young and hungry to make a name for himself in that department. He’d been just as focused on work as he had been on family. He’d been intent on getting ahead.

  Lachlan was driven. He loved his job, and he was good at it.

  But he was a different man now than he had been then. And he knew the job wasn’t going anywhere. So, he didn’t have any problem giving the big cases to Christy, as he now called Dirk. She was a capable detective, and she’d closed all the big stuff over the past nine months. She’d taken on the murders, the kidnappings, the big thefts. Lachlan had stuck with easier things. Open and shut stuff that let him be home for dinner.

  About four months after Wyatt was born, Penny had started coming in to help out with cases occasionally. Not always. She was the magical creatures consultant at the SCPD, and they were a team.

  When Penny came in to work during the day, her cousin Vivica stayed with Wyatt. Vivica had a little boy too, only two months younger than Wyatt. His name was Jackson. Vivica lived in the hotel, and s
he was happy to help out when she could. When Penny needed to work after dark, she usually asked her friend Connor, who was a gargoyle. Gargoyles turned to stone during the day, so Connor was only available at night. He was excellent with babies, though, owing to the fact that he’d spent his younger years taking care of his brothers and sisters and cousins in his typically huge gargoyle clan.

  Overall, it was a perfect life, and Lachlan couldn’t have been more grateful or pleased. Certainly, there were day-to-day annoyances, like when he locked the keys in his car or dropped his phone and cracked the screen, but on the whole, things were great.

  Wyatt switched direction and used the chairs to help himself walk back. He let out a string of vowels and consonants, grinning up at his father, showing off the six teeth in his mouth.

  Lachlan grinned back. He held out his hands to the small boy. “Pick you up?”

  Wyatt kept one hand on the chair, but let go with the other, reaching up for Lachlan in affirmation.

  Lachlan scooped his son up off the ground and blew on his belly.

  Wyatt giggled wildly.

  Lachlan breathed in the scent of him—baby shampoo and detergent and the sweet undercurrent that was Wyatt himself. He loved this little boy so much it hurt. Lachlan pointed. “You see the water out there? See the big birdies?”

  Wyatt giggled some more.

  Lachlan squinted. Wait a second. That wasn’t a bird. It was too big. Far too big. And it had a tail.

  That was a dragon.

  Damn.

  He checked Wyatt’s wrist, pushing the baby’s sleeve out of the way to make sure that the talisman that Wyatt always wore was wound around his arm there.

  And it wasn’t.

  Damn it, damn it. The stupid thing was always falling off. When Wyatt was really tiny, it wasn’t a problem, but starting about three months ago, he had started wriggling out of it whenever he could. Lachlan wasn’t sure if the strap was uncomfortable or what. He and Penny had tried to think of a better way to keep the talisman on him, but they hadn’t come up with anything that didn’t involve dangerous stuff like safety pins or something.

  The talisman kept the dragons from coming. Wyatt was the blood dragon and he was destined to lead an army of dragons against the court of the Green King, some monstrous things that lived in the water.

  But Lachlan and Penny had wanted to spare Wyatt, and they had gotten this talisman made to keep the dragons from coming. As long as Wyatt was wearing the talisman, the dragons didn’t come.

  The dragons that were attracted to Wyatt were rogues—soulless monsters who did nothing but burn and kill. Wyatt tamed them somehow, though.

  If Wyatt wasn’t wearing the talisman, the dragons came, and they were docile like puppies.

  If Wyatt was wearing the talisman, the dragons didn’t come. But any rogue they came in contact with by chance was a fire-breathing beast, because the talisman dampened Wyatt’s powers, and his powers were what tamed the dragons.

  Lachlan raised his hand to his eyes to block out the sun. Yup. Dragon was still coming.

  What to do?

  Should he go and look for the talisman and put it back on Wyatt? If he did that, then this dragon would go rabid and attack both him and his son.

  However, if he didn’t get the talisman back on Wyatt, more dragons would start showing up. They wouldn’t be a problem right away, but eventually that talisman would have to go back on, and then there might be as many as four or five to contend with.

  He wasn’t sure what to do.

  If he had more magic—if he was as powerful as Penny was—it wouldn’t be a problem at all. He could hold that dragon off with telekinesis and use his gun to put a bullet in its skull.

  But he was only a vampire, and he only had magic if he had dragon blood in his system. Though he still drank Penny’s blood from time to time, they didn’t do that nearly as often as they had before the baby was born. They were just too busy and too tired. And he was fine with that. He needed blood to stay alive, but he could easily drink animal blood, which was readily available at grocery stores and restaurants.

  Well, typically he was fine with that.

  But watching the dragon sail in across the ocean…

  He gulped.

  Well, there was only one thing for it.

  If he didn’t put the talisman on Wyatt, then the dragon would stay docile, and he could kill it easily enough. Once it was dead, he’d slap that talisman back on his son’s wrist and hope there were no more dragons on the way.

  First, he needed to find the talisman.

  Mind made up, he tightened his grip on his son and hurled himself back into the hotel. He went in the back door and hurried through the hallway to the lobby, where the girl at the desk—whose name was Becky—looked up with wide eyes. “Everything okay?”

  “I need Wyatt’s talisman,” said Lachlan. “He usually wears it on his wrist? Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah,” said Becky, picking it up off the counter. “I actually found it lying on the floor over there. Must have fallen off.”

  Lachlan snatched it from her. “Thank you.” Then he ran up the steps to the second floor of the hotel.

  As they bounced up the steps together, Wyatt found this enormously amusing. He giggled more, showing off his tiny, pearly teeth.

  Lachlan sighed. At least the kid wasn’t terrified or bawling his head off. That was something.

  They reached the suite they called home. Lachlan threw open the door and hurried inside. He set Wyatt down on the floor.

  Wyatt crawled over toward one of the couches in the living room.

  Lachlan hurried back the hall into the bedroom. His gun was locked in the safe next to the bed. Locked in there and not loaded.

  He did that for safety reasons, because Wyatt was mobile these days, and the horror of the baby with a gun was too much to even fully allow himself to think through, so he didn’t.

  But now, as he knelt down on the ground and fumbled to get his keys out, to find the right one, to fit it to the lock, he wondered if not having a gun handy was just another kind of danger. If he couldn’t get to the gun quickly enough to actually use it, what good was it?

  Penny’s usually here, he thought, wrenching the safe open and tugging out the gun. Penny’s usually here, and she has magic, and then we don’t need the gun. He jammed the magazine into the gun, checked to see that it was loaded properly, and then slammed the safe closed.

  He stood up and peered out the window.

  The dragon had landed, and it was strolling up the beach, casual as you please. It had a blank look in its black eyes, and it was coming straight for the hotel, because that was where Wyatt was. They always came straight for Wyatt.

  Lachlan hurried out into the hallway.

  Wyatt was crawling toward him. “Badadada moomoo,” he said, and he sounded a little frustrated. Angry at being left alone, no doubt.

  Lachlan debated. He could pick up Wyatt and attempt to hold the baby and shoot the gun at the same time. Then Wyatt would be supervised. Or he could go out on the back porch, shut the door, and shoot the dragon. Wyatt would be alone, but only for a minute.

  He didn’t have time to think about it. He dropped to his knees. “Hey, buddy, I’m going outside for just a second, and then I’ll be right back, and I’ll put your talisman on, and everything will be okay. All right?”

  Wyatt smiled.

  “All right.” Lachlan stood up and dashed back the hallway. He opened the back door, stepped onto the porch, and shut the door behind him.

  Wyatt began to wail.

  Lachlan winced. But he raised his gun and aimed at the dragon. It was docile and tame, an easy target.

  He shot.

  The bullet exploded in the dragon’s head, and it fell down, dead.

  Lachlan let out a breath, relieved. He opened the door and turned back to Wyatt.

  Wyatt was crawling for the door as fast as he could, wailing, tears streaming down his red face.


  Lachlan hurried to the boy, scooped him up, fastened the talisman on his wrist, and hugged him tight. “It’s okay, buddy. Daddy’s back. It’s okay.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I kicked the dead dragon with my foot. “So, you shot the dragon while you were watching Wyatt?”

  “I had to,” Lachlan said. “Because I couldn’t put the talisman back on him until this thing was dead. If not, it would have gone rabid.”

  “I don’t see why you didn’t call me,” I said.

  “Because you were having girls’ day out,” he said. “You told me you wanted a baby-free afternoon.”

  “Yeah, but Wyatt was in danger,” I said.

  “Not really,” he said. “Without the talisman, the dragons are like scaly collies or something.”

  I glared at him. “You know that’s not true.”

  He winced. “So, you’re mad? Because I was trying to take care of it, Penny. I was trying to let you have some time off and handle things.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I kicked the dragon again. “Yeah.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I turned away from the corpse, sighing. “Seriously, I’m not. Everything turned out okay, so I guess it’s fine. It’s only that if I had thought there was any chance that things would go so badly today, I wouldn’t have gone out with Felicity.” Felicity was my best friend. She was a drake—a person who’d died with dragon meat in her system and come back as a dragon-human hybrid.

  “Things didn’t go that badly,” he said. “It was one dragon. And I killed it.”

  “With a gun, though,” I said. “It was you and Wyatt and a gun.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I had control of the firearm. I’m good with that stuff. It’s my job to be safe with guns.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  He sighed. “You’re never going to leave me alone with him again, are you?”

  “I never said that,” I said. “Besides, I leave you alone with him all the time.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “All the time?”