Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3)

by Finlayson, Marina

  I settled on the grass by the fountain, letting Garth down gently. He groaned and rolled into a sitting position. I released trueshape and knelt beside him. Wordlessly he reached for my hands as two figures raced from the house.

  “Took you long enough,” I said to Steve. “What if I’d been Gideon Thorne invading?”

  “I can tell the difference between a black dragon and a gold one,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at me. “God, what happened to him?”

  Garth did look pretty scary, his face a mask of dried blood.

  “Where’s everyone else?” asked Dave, helping Garth to his feet. The big werewolf staggered and Dave wedged a shoulder into his armpit, helping to prop him up.

  Steve and Dave both had the tight expressions of professional men expecting bad news and trying not to show their anxiety. They kept their gazes firmly on Garth, avoiding my naked body. Such gentlemen. It was something you had to get used to when you worked with shifters. Kasumi was the only shifter I’d ever met who could take clothes with her when she changed forms. Garth had no such compunction about staring at me.

  “I’ve always had a thing for redheads,” he said, in that chatty way common in the truly drunk. Guess a blow to the head could have the same effect. He seemed to be having trouble focusing.

  Steve and Dave exchanged a startled glance.

  “It’s the head wound.” Please shut up, you idiot. They’d already seen us holding hands. “He’s not quite himself. And the others are on their way home from Canberra.” I hope.

  “Canberra?”

  “We had an unexpected detour. Taskforce Jaeger crashed the party at Thorne’s house. They had silver ammo, so it was a little hard to resist their invitation to visit.”

  “Shit.” Steve rocked back on his heels, meeting my gaze for the first time.

  “We didn’t lose anyone,” I assured him. “But Garth got shot, and I had to rip a chunk out of his head to save him.”

  “You saved him?” Both of them stared at me now, never mind manners, wearing identical shocked expressions.

  “Well, I know he’s annoying,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding, “but I’ve got kind of used to having him around.”

  “You said they were using silver bullets. Werewolves always die of silver.” Steve looked back at Garth as if to assure himself that the big werewolf really was alive.

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” That sounded more like the Garth we knew. He explored his bloodstained head with tentative fingers.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer for a long moment, and I had to look away from the intensity of his gaze. That look spoke of things that couldn’t be addressed in front of Steve and Dave. Things that maybe I wasn’t ready to face at all.

  “I owe you my life. Again.” Then he broke the solemn moment with a lopsided grin. “And I feel like shit. But at least I’m alive to feel like shit.”

  “Get some rest.” Werewolves were exceptional healers, as long as they were given enough rest and protein to work with. A good feed and a decent sleep would work wonders for him. And maybe for me too. I needed time to think.

  I motioned for them to lead the way into the house. They might be gentlemen, but I knew where their eyes would be if my naked butt was walking in front of them. Especially Garth’s.

  Ben met us just inside the door, a dressing gown draped over his arm.

  “I thought I heard voices.” He held it while I shrugged into it. “Saw you out here.”

  “Thanks.” He held out his arms and I stepped into his embrace a little stiffly, conscious of Garth watching.

  It was uncanny: I could feel where he was, as if an invisible cord connected us. Dave helped him up the stairs, and he didn’t look back, but I could see the tension in his thick neck and the way he carried his broad shoulders high.

  Ben saw me watching Garth and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  I sighed. “I need coffee. Come into the kitchen.”

  Steve came too, since he was next in command with both Luce and Garth out of action temporarily. By the time I’d filled them in on the events of the night, sunlight lay warm across the kitchen tiles and I’d drunk three cups of coffee. Dave cooked breakfast and sent a tray of bacon the size of the great outdoors up to Garth’s room. I made a fairly decent dent in the world supply of bacon myself. Flying sure worked up an appetite.

  At last I pushed my plate away, the bacon and the story all finished. “So what’s been happening here? Anything?” Has there been any news about Lachie? But I didn’t ask that. I knew there wouldn’t be any good news until I created it myself.

  Ben shook his head. “All quiet. Wonder what the official line is on your demolition job in Canberra?”

  “See if there’s anything on the news,” I said to Steve, and he turned on the TV that hung on the far wall. Dave liked to watch it while he cooked. Steve flicked between the various morning shows till he found one giving the news.

  “—has died in a house fire in Sydney’s west overnight,” the newsreader was saying. “Neighbours alerted the fire brigade at two o’clock this morning after hearing the sound of glass shattering, but by the time they arrived the house was well alight. Our reporter has more on this story.”

  They crossed to the scene, where the reporter stood in front of a blackened shell that had probably once been a neat brick bungalow like the houses on either side.

  “I’m here in Church Street outside the home of fifty-one-year-old mother of two Elise Woods. Mrs Woods was home alone last night when someone threw what police believe to have been a Molotov cocktail through her front window. Neighbours heard the sound of breaking glass and a car leaving the scene at high speed. Next-door neighbour Geoff Burrows was first on the scene. Geoff, can you tell me what happened last night?”

  Geoff looked like he hadn’t slept. His stubbly face held the expression of a man who’s seen things he would rather forget.

  “Yeah, I was in bed with the wife when a noise woke me up. Sounded like glass breaking. And then I heard the squeal of tyres.” He gestured vaguely behind him. “Our bedroom’s at the front of the house, so I looked out but I couldn’t see nothing, and then I smelled the smoke. So I come outside and Elise’s house is alight. I tried to get in, to see if anyone was there, but the flames were too much, you know?”

  He rubbed a hand across his bald head, his face anxious, and it was then that I noticed the bandages on his hands. “I was yelling at the missus to call the fire brigade, and screaming out to Elise. Her bedroom was at the front too, same as ours. I tried, I really did. Burnt me hands.” He shook his head. “That poor woman. She was a lovely lady, much nicer than the last one. I can’t understand why anyone would do this to her.”

  Ben made a strangled sound, and I turned away from the poor man on the TV trying to convince himself that he’d done everything he could to try to save his neighbour.

  “What?”

  He was staring at the screen, a look of horror on his face.

  “Did you know her?” I racked my brain. Should I have heard of Elise Woods? Or Geoff whatever-his-name-was?

  “No.”

  The TV news moved on to the now-familiar story of the demonstrators picketing Parliament House. Some thought the new anti-shifter laws were the first steps on the slippery slope to dictatorship; others thought they weren’t harsh enough and were agitating for the death penalty. There were a lot of angry faces on the TV.

  “I didn’t know her,” said Ben, “but I know that house. I’m betting she hadn’t lived there very long.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it used to belong to a rusalka named Melina.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was a herald for ten years. I’ve delivered to just about every shifter in Sydney.”

  Right. It was hard sometimes to remember there’d ever been anything before our current bizarre existence, always running and fighting. I’d been an ordinary person myself, living in a house not much different fro
m the one we’d just seen smouldering on the TV.

  “Melina was one of Valeria’s people. I bet she did a runner when Valeria went down, and this poor woman moved in instead.”

  “What are you saying? You think the attackers meant to kill Melina?”

  “It makes more sense, doesn’t it? Why firebomb the house of some suburban mum? You heard the guy—she was much nicer than the last woman who lived there. Rusalkas don’t make the best neighbours.”

  “But why would anyone be trying to kill Melina?” Steve objected. “No one’s going after Valeria’s supporters. She’s out of the game.”

  “No shifters would be trying to kill her.” He gestured at the scene on the TV now, where people chanted and waved their hate-filled signs. “But what about them? There’s some nutjob frothing under every rock you turn over these days. I bet someone remembered the scary lady in Church Street and decided she was a witch or something.”

  I sighed. “A werewolf, probably. They all seem to be obsessing over werewolves.”

  Weren’t we all?

  “Right. So they lob a Molotov cocktail through her window and go off congratulating themselves on a job well done. No more werewolf. Except they didn’t bother to check first if she still lived there.”

  God. I closed my eyes. That poor woman. If he was right, she’d died for nothing. And I thought shifters were bad. Humans could be just as violent and hateful.

  “Turn it off.”

  Steve clicked off the TV, and we sat in silence for a moment. If people could do this on a mere suspicion, what might they do if they ever found proof? The old queens had been right to keep the shifter world hidden. Shifters were powerful, but there were so many more humans. They might be ants in comparison, but enough ants could pick clean even the corpse of an elephant.

  And these ants came with pitchforks and torches. Welcome back to the Middle Ages. What next? Witch trials? Parliament seemed to be heading that way with their new laws. I’d say they were draconian but that wasn’t even funny.

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,” I said, “except warn everyone to lay low.”

  “Says the woman who just flew into Sydney in trueshape.” Ben gave me an exasperated look. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Déjà vu. Ben was mad with me again for taking trueshape. The way he was looking at me right now, you’d think he didn’t even like me. It was a slap in the face every time, reminding me how much he hated something that was a part of me.

  “Maybe I was thinking that I needed to get Garth to safety.”

  “That bonehead is indestructible. By tomorrow he’ll be bouncing around like nothing ever happened.” Back to that again. Shifter strength—particularly werewolf strength—was a bitter demon that gnawed at Ben’s soul.

  “What is your problem? Are you jealous of Garth?” This was treading on dangerous ground. What was the matter with me? Was I trying to provoke him? The dragon side of me was tired of all this pussyfooting around.

  “Of course I’m jealous of Garth! He’s a friggin werewolf.” He threw his arms up in frustration. “He goes everywhere with you. He protects you. He’s useful.”

  And he doesn’t look at me as if he’d tasted something nasty every time I take trueshape.

  “You should be worrying more about yourself,” he continued. “Don’t we have enough to deal with without you leading the foaming nutcases straight to our door?”

  I shoved my chair back, swallowing an angry reply. I couldn’t deal with this now.

  “I’m going to get some sleep. Wake me when Luce and the others get back.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I jolted awake as Ben laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “What time is it?” I’d pulled the blinds, but a thin streak of bright white light glared through the gap at the bottom. Still daytime, then. For a moment I’d been afraid I’d slept the day away.

  “Just after eleven. Luce is back.”

  “She’s just got back now? That was a long trip.”

  “No, she’s been back a while, but I thought you needed the sleep.”

  I frowned. I’d left orders to be woken as soon as she arrived. It wasn’t his place to decide something different. I shut my eyes again and drew a deep breath. Sometimes the rage caught me by surprise. It seemed to be always simmering just below the surface. Did all dragons feel this way, or was it just me, with my screwed-up head?

  Take a chill pill, Kate. He’s not your thrall. But there was so much to do. Had everyone but me forgotten about Lachie, still in the claws of that bitch Daiyu? I bet no one was fussing over how much sleep he needed. I didn’t have time to lie around.

  “Everyone okay?” Firmly I shoved the rage back down into the dark recesses of Leandra’s dragon sense of entitlement.

  “They’re fine. Luce stomped off to check on Garth, and pronounced herself satisfied with his condition. She’s off making Steve’s life miserable in the comms room now, trying to work out how she can beef up security.”

  That would be my fault, I guess. She too was worried about what I might have led to our door with my flight home. Bet the radar operators at Sydney airport were still scratching their heads.

  “A herald came while you were asleep, too. Kasumi—”

  “Kasumi?” I bounced off the bed as if it were a trampoline, my fury returning. Kasumi had been here and he hadn’t thought to wake me? “She came again?”

  “No, no. It wasn’t Kasumi. A real human herald with a message from Kasumi.”

  That was almost as bad. “Where is it?”

  He handed me an envelope. Already open. I glared at him. Not even another dragon would dare open the queen’s mail. Who did he think he was?

  Geez, what was wrong with me? I must be more tired than I’d thought. Usually I had better control. I drew a shaky breath, struggling for calm, and lifted the flap of the envelope.

  “Be careful,” he said. “There’s some hair in there.”

  Hair? Gently I withdrew the paper. Three dark hairs lay within its fold. Kasumi’s? Why was she sending me her hairs? Quickly I scanned the note.

  Daiyu’s pilots on standby at the Airport Hilton. Thralls. No contact until there are orders for them.

  That was it. No mention of the hairs. The writing scrawled across the page, as if she’d been in a hurry. No signature. I frowned, chewing over the possibilities. Did she mean me to abduct them? But what good would that do if they were thralls? They’d only take orders from Daiyu, or someone she’d deputised.

  “Why do we need Daiyu’s pilots anyway? And what’s with the hair?” Ben said. “I assume she means for us to steal Daiyu’s plane, but why would we risk that when we could catch a commercial flight, or take our own private jet?”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and read the note again. She certainly wasn’t big on detail. But if Kasumi had the authority to pass orders on to these pilots …

  “The commercial flights are probably always monitored. If not, they certainly would be now, with Daiyu up to her traitorous neck in plots. That goes double for private jets. Probably the only way to get into Japan without being picked up is in Daiyu’s own plane, disguised as someone they would expect to be using it.”

  “But what if Daiyu discovers it’s gone? All it would take would be one phone call and you’d be walking into a death trap the minute you landed.”

  “True.” No contact until there are orders for them. “But the note basically says Daiyu only bothers with the plane and its pilots when she wants to use it. As long as she has things to amuse herself with in Sydney, she won’t even know it’s gone. You can stay here and cover for me. Ramp up the preparations for the coronation. She won’t be going anywhere while there’s still a chance she can get to me before I get that crown on my head.”

  “Stay here?” You’d think I’d asked him to eat raw sewage. “While you go off to assault the Japanese queen’s stronghold singlehanded? I’m not letting yo
u go alone.”

  He wasn’t letting me? Rage boiled in my chest. “As if you have any choice.”

  “What did you say?”

  A terrible silence filled the room. Each of us stared at the other as if we were strangers. I had a sense of teetering on the brink of something momentous, something there was no going back from.

  “I said you have no choice. I am the queen and I decide.” My words were clipped; there was no disguising the anger simmering inside me.

  “Spoken like a true dragon.” The way he said “dragon” made it sound like a swear word.

  I took the step into the abyss.

  “If you hate dragons so much, what are you doing here?”

  He laughed, a brittle sound. “I’ve been wondering that myself. I thought I was here for Kate.” His mouth twisted. “But I don’t know where she’s gone.”

  Falling, falling. I’d never seen that look in his dark eyes before.

  “Every time you take trueshape, you change a little more. It’s like a drug, an addiction, isn’t it? You just can’t stop, whatever the consequences. You won’t be happy until you bring down the world on our heads. Go be a dragon, then. Play with your shifter friends. I’ve seen how you look at that werewolf.”

  A shaft of guilt pierced my anger. “This is not about Garth. This is about us.”

  “What us? There’s only you, running off, saving the world or damning it, while I wait here and wonder if you’re coming back. Do you even care about us?”

  “I do care. I care about you.” But not enough. Not in the way he meant. I took a deep breath. “But I don’t think this is working.”

  His shoulders sagged, and he turned away abruptly.

  “I don’t think it is either.” His voice was so quiet I barely caught the words.

  I stared at his rigid back, contemplating might-have-beens. If we’d found each other sooner, when I’d still been fully human. If I’d never gone on that courier job to Leandra’s house.