Fire Song (City of Dragons) Read Free Page A

the high came on, she was terrified. She hadn’t been expecting it. She got in her car and tried to drive. Wrapped her car around a tree. When she woke up, she looked the way she does now.
    Felicity didn’t have hair anymore, just rows of green-blue scales that started around her ears. She was lucky to be one of the drakes whose face had remained mostly human, and she still had human-looking hands, not claws. But her feet were reptilian, and the scales ran from the top of her head all the way down over her back and legs.
    Drakes were dragon-human hybrids. They got that way by eating dragon meat and dying with it still in their system.
    Thing was, after the transformation, most of them were crazy for more. They were addicted to dragon and most of them got themselves killed trying to get more.
    Felicity kept her lust for flesh under control by eating a lot of meat, preferably rare and bloody. She’d never attempted to hurt me, not even once.
    Thing was, drakes didn’t often get second chances. Vampires could still pass for human. No one knew what had happened to them. But drakes were marked as monsters, and more often than not, they were. They were controlled by their addiction.
    Felicity was different, though.
    “Was,” said Felicity. “She was so young.” Her voice was quiet.
    “I blew my cover,” I said. “I said Elena’s name. I identified her. I tried to lie to the police detective who questioned me about it, tell him that I only knew her because I used to clean houses for dragons—”
    “Hey, that’s my life story,” said Felicity.
    “Well, I needed to think of something believable,” I said. That was how Felicity and I had met. She used to clean the beach house for my family when we came to Sea City. Before my parents were killed by a slayer. Before Felicity got turned into a drake. Before I ran away from everything that I ever knew.
    “He didn’t buy it?” Felicity asked.
    I shook my head. “Not really. He knows. He didn’t come right out and say it, but he knows I’m a dragon.”
    “So, that’s it? One detective figures out your secret and you’re flying around and using telekinetic magic on vampires?”
    There were three kinds of magic and all three came from dragons. Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and compulsion. Any magic that any other half-breed or mage possessed, they got from taking parts of dragons and using them to create magic. Since I was a dragon, I could do all of it on my own. But I usually didn’t.
    “Look,” I said. “They thought I had a talisman. They thought I was a mage. Anyway, it’s not important. It’s only a matter of time before Alastair finds me.” I pushed past Felicity and into the hallway. I started up the steps to my apartment.
    She followed me. She lived up here with me too. We’d been attached at the hip for a long time. Even when she was the cleaning girl, I used to follow her around and ask her questions about what it was like to be outside of dragon culture. Back then, humans had seemed exotic to me, and I’d been curious.
    I’d cultivated the friendship because I was being a rebellious kid, but that didn’t mean that it hadn’t become more than that. Especially after Felicity had become a drake. She’d had no one to turn to, but she’d come to me. And I’d protected her ever since.
    We were devoted to each other. Always would be.
    “You don’t even know for sure that he’s in town,” she said as we emerged in our living room. She threw herself down on a couch. “Argh. I’m starving.”
    “We’ve heard rumors,” I said.
    “But he hates the ocean,” she said.
    “Apparently not anymore,” I said. “You want me to try to cook something?” I veered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
    It was bare, as usual.
    We didn’t eat much here. We had most of our meals at the adjoining restaurant, the Pink Flamingo Cafe. Our friend Ophelia Diaz owned it. We’d worked out a deal with her to offer a continental breakfast for our hotel