Free city of dragons 02 - fire storm by val st crowe Page B

through water, you’re wrong,” said Alastair.
    I needed to use magic. I needed to get us out of this. I could knock him down, maybe I could just summon all my strength and blow Alastair away. I took a deep breath, gathering it up. I stretched out my hand, pulsing magic through it.
    But Alastair grabbed my wrist and he seemed to… stop my magic with his. I had never seen anything like it before. My magic just dissipated, floating away. It didn’t hurt Alastair at all.
    Then Lachlan surfaced, yanking the gun out of the water.
    The shot echoed against the moon.
    Alastair let go of me in shock. His upper thigh was bleeding. He clutched it, letting out funny high-pitched noises.
    Lachlan climbed out of the pool. He yanked a set of handcuffs out of his back pocket. “I’m placing you under arrest, Mr. Cooper.”
    But Alastair used magic to knock the cuffs to the ground. He turned and staggered away from us, diving into the pool. Once submerged, Alastair shifted into dragon form. He had iridescent blue scales. They were beautiful. He was always so beautiful.
    He rose out of the water, flapping his wings and spraying us with droplets from the pool.
    And then he flew into the air and out of sight.
    * * *
    “What the hell happened?” Connor was saying.
    Lachlan was speaking to him in low tones, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. The two of them seemed very far away, over by the doorway to the hotel.
    I was still sitting by the pool where Alastair had left me. My ears were ringing, and my head felt strange—sort of tingling and tender—the way it always did after one of Alastair’s beatings.
    But this one hadn’t been so bad. This one had only been a few punches.
    And now he was gone, and now I needed to shift and heal and be good as new, like it had never happened. Go to the water. Wash it away.
    But I didn’t want to get in the pool where he’d shifted. It seemed too intimate.
    I needed to get up and go to the ocean.
    Except I couldn’t move. I was sitting here, and I was shaking, and I couldn’t move.
    Connor went back inside the hotel, and Lachlan started toward me.
    He knelt down next to me. “Hey there.” His voice was steady and soft. “Would you like me to call this in, or do you think you can make it down to the station to file a report?”
    “Call it in?” I gasped. “What?”
    “I won’t do that if you don’t want. You don’t have to have police here, waking up your customers, causing a scene. But if you don’t think you can handle going anywhere—”
    “Why are we involving the police at all?”
    He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
    “I just need to shift.” I gestured toward the ocean.
    “Penny, he hurt you. He was violent, and you need to report it.”
    “The police can’t do anything.”
    “It was only a couple months ago that you were saying you wished you’d reported what had happened to Alastair so that there was a record of his violence.”
    “That was when I thought he was a serial killer,” I said. “I thought he’d get locked up, and I’d never see him again.”
    “Penny,” he said.
    “I just need to shift.” I pointed to the water. “Please, Lachlan, don’t make me do this.” I started to cry again.
    He sat down on the ground. He was still bleeding. His whole face was cut open from that damned chair.
    I touched him, touched the blood.
    “I won’t make you do anything,” he said in a low voice. A different voice. He sounded defeated and worried, and I had never heard him sound that way before.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”
    “I’ll heal this up,” he said. “It won’t even scar.”
    “He did it to you because of me .”
    “No. He did it because of him. He’s responsible for his own actions. You are not responsible.”
    Right. Right, I knew that. Why did it seem so easy to blame myself? I took a shaking breath, and I let it out. I waited as my sobs ebbed. “Okay,” I said, raising my chin. “Let’s file a damned