It was an odd choice for a queen. Usually their lives were designed for maximum luxury with minimal publicity. Having such a well-known face made it harder when the time inevitably came to disappear and start a new life as someone else. Already the speculation had started on what work she’d had done to retain her youthful good looks so long. It wouldn’t be too many more years before Maria del Fuente’s brilliant career would have to be cut short by a tragic accident.
That is, unless someone decided to kill her now her name was out there. They might get a surprise when they discovered how difficult that was.
But the attempts, whether successful or not, would surely come. This list changed everything. It gave targets to those baying for our blood already, put faces to the names. No more hiding in our comfortable anonymity. The cracks that had started when Valeria took to the sky above Sydney Harbour had been blown wide open, and the world would never be the same again.
I started the video and she began speaking. Half a dozen reporters thrust their microphones at her face. She was on the steps of a ritzy hotel, her usual look of boredom twisted into a sneer.
“Ridiculous.” She spoke English with a hint of British upper-class in her accent. “This is obviously some hoax by a rival fashion house. And no, I’m not going to name names. My new spring collection is going to be the talk of Fashion Week and they’re looking for ways to cut me down.”
“Ms del Fuente, do you know any of the other people on the list? What do you think the connection is between you?”
“I doubt there is one,” she said. “They’ve named people at random to divert suspicion from their real aim. Excuse me.”
She pushed her way through the reporters, ignoring their cries of “Ms del Fuente! Ms del Fuente!” and got into a black Merc waiting at the kerb. The video ended with two reporters chasing the car down the street.
No doubt the other queens on the list were getting the same treatment. They were all richer than Midas, though none were as well known as Maria del Fuente. They wouldn’t be hard to track down, though.
I ran my eye down the other articles on the site. More than half were to do with the list in some way, either profiling people named on it or trying to find links between them. Conspiracy theories ranged from the bizarre—they were all terrorists and the list had been circulated by the FBI in an effort to get vigilantes to take them down—to the more credible: that someone with a grudge was trying to harm their enemies. No one knew where the list had come from. Someone “highly placed” in the Australian government, according to some reports, though the CIA and even the UN got a mention. The fact that Australians were over-represented in the list seemed a compelling argument for the Australian government connection to most. Some thought it was a hoax, but most seemed to think the list itself was genuine, though debate raged about whether the people it named were really “supernaturals” or not. The press hadn’t adopted our name for ourselves yet. “Supernaturals” sounded so much more angels-and-demons than “shifters”, and the press loved a good scare tactic.
Nowhere was Taskforce Jaeger mentioned, though ASIO got a lot more publicity than they probably preferred. The Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation wasn’t part of the everyday vernacular the way the CIA and the FBI were for Americans. Nobody made thrillers featuring their operatives playing cloak-and-dagger with the Russians or al Qaeda. If Australians ever thought about them at all, they probably assumed they had glorified desk jobs listening in on tapped telephone calls.
I was every bit as ignorant as any other Australian, but I didn’t believe that Taskforce Jaeger operated under an ASIO umbrella. Though well set up, they’d had a cavalier attitude to legalities that made them seem more of a cowboy operation. Patel’s sick experiment seemed way out of line even in the current climate of fear. The anti-supernatural laws might allow for arrest without charge but I was pretty damned sure that medical experiments weren’t mentioned anywhere. That was the problem with giving a lot of power to men with an agenda. Even my friend the prime minister would surely be horrified at how far his hounds had gone once they’d slipped their leash.
We’d killed a lot of them, but they were just grunts. Poor glorified police officers just doing their job. Wilson and Patel were still at large, and they could easily re-establish themselves somewhere else with new recruits. Maybe even without the thin veneer of government legitimacy they’d had before. They’d have plenty of work now. But how would they cope with the extra publicity the list had caused? Those guys really didn’t want the government—or the media—poking into their affairs and finding out what atrocities had been committed on behalf of the people of Australia. Publicity would make it harder to attack people and spirit them away to an underground lab. Those people would be watched now, and it would be noticed if they went missing. That, more than anything else, convinced me that our friends at Taskforce Jaeger couldn’t be responsible for the leak.
But then who was? And what did it mean for the people who’d been named?
Steve’s phone buzzed in my hand, making me jump. I passed it back to him to answer, but a moment later he was offering it to me again.
“It’s for you. Valiant.”
“Valiant?” I took the phone. “How did you get this number?”
“I rang the queen’s palace, and your wyvern gave it to me. She thought you’d want to hear from me.”
“She was right. I suppose you’ve heard about the list?”
“Of course. That’s why I’m ringing.” A quiver in her voice told me she wasn’t as confident as she was trying to sound. “It’s all over the Internet, the TV, the radio. What are we going to do?”
By the end of that sentence, she sounded like the teenager she was. If she’d been human, she’d still be in high school. To have a disaster of this magnitude land in her lap must be stressing her out of her tree.
“First of all, we’re not going to panic. We’re going to beef up our security, keep our heads down, and deny, deny, deny.”
“Some of the others thought you might have leaked this list.”
“Me? Why would I do that? My name’s on it too. So are half my staff’s.”
“Maybe as a way to set the humans on us, so you didn’t have to share. You could have put your own name on it to divert suspicion.”
She sounded like she couldn’t decide whether to accuse me or beg me to deny it.
“Easier just to not offer to share in the first place, don’t you think? Landing myself in the shit right next to you doesn’t seem a great trade-off for keeping the domain to myself.”
“No, I suppose not.” There was definite relief in her tone. “Who do you think released it, then?”
“Obviously a shifter.” Although it could have been a herald, come to think of it. They knew all the shifters. I wasn’t going to put that idea in anyone’s head, though. I didn’t want to set anyone on Ben’s tail. “Someone who wants to watch the world burn.”
“What about Taskforce Jaeger? They attacked us—and they killed Faith.”
“She’s dead?” I hadn’t heard that.
“Yeah. Her people got her out of the building before it burned down, but she was already dead when they found her.”
I’d love to know how she died. Had removing her channel stone killed her? Or had its removal weakened her to the point where she could be killed by ordinary means? It didn’t seem like the right time to press for details, though.
“This isn’t going to go away, is it?” she said. “I mean, once it’s on the Internet, it’s out there forever. How are we going to deal with it?”
“In the long run? I think we’ll have to come to some agreement with the humans.” It felt odd to speak of “the humans” as something “other”. “The world is changing, and we’ll have to change with it. It makes it even more important for us to be able to work together. Do you think your sisters will agree to share the domain?”
“I think so. I’ve talked Charity, Justine and Prudence round already. I only
have to persuade Hope and Virginia now, but I think this list will have scared them. They won’t want to face this on their own.”
“Good. Let’s work on getting them on board and getting through the coronation first. That will get the foreign queens off our backs. Then we can work out how to handle this going forward.”
“Maybe the queens will be too busy with their own problems now to bother us.”
“Maybe.” From what I knew of them, that didn’t seem likely. “You keep your head down. We’ll talk again soon. Take care of yourself.”
“You too.” She hung up.
“That’s a good sign, that she wants to talk,” Steve said when I handed his phone back.
“Yes.”
I stared out the window, watching the world unfold beside the motorway. We passed a cheap motel, just like the one Garth and I had stayed at the night we went to the cemetery and dug up Lachie’s grave. The night I discovered that he was still alive.
We had spent too much time apart. I needed to hold my boy in my arms again, to know he was safe, to make sure he was eating properly. He was such a picky little eater. I needed to know he was happy, and not lying awake at night worrying what his father might do next. The poor kid needed a life. He’d spent so much of the last year shunted around, abandoned, endangered.
“You’re very quiet,” Garth said.
“Just thinking. What will we do if Jason goes to ground and takes Lachie with him?”
What if I was in Japan and Jason just disappeared? All that risk and effort to free the kitsune, and Jason might do a runner and it would all be wasted. Lachie would be gone.
“Ain’t gonna happen.” Garth sounded very assured. “Daiyu isn’t going to let him out of her sight, however many lists he gets his name on. Besides, we’ll be watching. Just because you’re away doesn’t mean the rest of us will be sitting around on our arses.”
Just as well. I couldn’t bear it if the fallout from this stupid list put Lachie into more danger.
“God, I wish this was over.” I couldn’t wait to get on that plane. I felt so helpless. I needed to do something.
“Amen to that,” said Garth.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I was all set to ring Kasumi straight away. No time like the present, right? I’d waited long enough, and I was itching to set things in motion to free Lachie. Every moment that he spent with Daiyu was a moment he was at risk. Sure, Jason was allied with her now, but she knew he was my son. The thought of using him against me must be very tempting. I just prayed that Jason didn’t offer her any reason to be dissatisfied with his alliance.
Mac met us at the door. She usually looked sad—it wasn’t that long since Jerry had died—but now her face had that fake cheerfulness that meant she had bad news and was trying not to worry me. I’d seen it enough times to know.
“What’s wrong?” My first thought was for the leaked list of shifters. “Are there more names?”
“No. Detective Hartley wants to see you.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“It’s eight o’clock at night. Doesn’t she have a home to go to?”
“I’ll put Blue to bed,” said Garth, who had carried the goblin in behind me. The orange head, damp with sweat and covered in the kind of muck you’d expect to gather crawling around a cave, lolled against the werewolf’s shoulder. He was barely awake.
I smoothed my own hair, conscious that it probably didn’t look much better. “Get someone to look at his chest.”
“I’m on it.”
Mac watched them disappear down the corridor towards the staff quarters. The cheerful mask slipped, showing the troubled look in her big puppy dog eyes. “What happened to him?”
“Goblin magic. It’s brutal stuff. What did Hartley say?”
“She was very insistent. Said it was urgent, and that if you didn’t show by nine o’clock she was sending a squad car round to arrest you.”
“Geez. What’s the rush?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I sighed, and scrubbed at my face with a weary hand. “All right, just give me a few minutes to get cleaned up. Where does she want to meet?”
“At the Park Hyatt. Room 330.”
Oh, Lord, not that again. That was the room Jason had booby-trapped and blown up. I’d hoped my part in that investigation was over. No such luck, apparently. Just what I needed—more complications. Would I never get to Japan?
I cocked an eyebrow at Steve, still hovering at my elbow. “You up for another run tonight?”
“No problem.”
In twenty minutes I was showered and changed, and feeling much better. Dinner would have been the icing on the cake, but Mac was so unnerved by Detective Hartley’s threats that I didn’t stay long enough for that, though the smells emanating from the kitchen were certainly tempting. Instead I grabbed a bread roll to snack on.
“You need to eat,” Dave said, giving me a disapproving look. His apron had “Kiss the Cook” blazoned across it in big red letters. “You’re getting too skinny.”
“What are you, my mother?” I brandished the bread roll at him. “Besides, I am eating.”
“Proper food. Man doesn’t live on bread alone, you know.”
“Lucky I’m a woman, then.”
I headed for the car, Steve on my heels. Luce had offered to come too, but it was only a meeting. It would look weird if I turned up with a cast of thousands.
“Why are we meeting at the hotel?” Steve asked. “Did she say?”
Though she’d threatened me with arrest before, in the past Detective Hartley had always come to me. The change bothered me. So late at night, too. Something was different.
“No.”
Steve drove, and one of the thralls took the passenger seat, at Luce’s insistence. Evan, his name was. Unlike Leandra, I could tell my thralls apart. Naturally Garth had wanted to come, but his skills weren’t exactly suited to diplomacy, and I didn’t need shifter protection from the police force. Besides, I needed to focus on Detective Hartley and I was finding him more and more distracting.
Steve pulled up in front of the hotel’s arched entry.
“Stay with the car,” I told him. “Evan can come with me. This won’t take long.”
At least I hoped so. Did I need a lawyer? What reason could she have for asking for a meeting here?
Evan and I stepped into the lift, and I remembered to check. No camera. Well, that was one weight off my mind.
The lift pinged and the doors slid open on level three. No camera in the lift lobby either, or the corridor. So the only footage she had of me was from the hotel lobby. Nothing there that would contradict the story I’d given her. So why was I here?
We walked down the familiar brown-toned corridor, past the weird little phallic sculpture. Room 330 had a new door, its dark wood as sleek and undamaged as all its neighbours’. It was closed, so Evan knocked. Footsteps approached, then the door opened and a pair of familiar eyes squinted at us with suspicion.
“She’s here,” Detective Franks called over his shoulder, then he opened the door wide and stepped back to let us through.
The sour tang of smoke lingered on the air inside. The windows had been replaced, and the litter cleared away, but no effort had been made otherwise to repair or repaint. There were no lights on, which seemed odd.
I don’t know what saved me. A hint of something, a smell? I sensed movement behind me as Franks stepped between me and Evan. He felt close, and I turned to see his arm upraised. My shocked brain took a fraction of a second to realise I was under attack, and then the fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and I leapt back just in time to avoid the syringe slamming in a vicious arc toward my neck.
I caught my foot on something and went down. Guns barked in front and behind as Evan and someone silhouetted by the windows opened fire, but I only had eyes for Franks. He hurled himself on me and I caught his arm with both hands, straining against him. He was a big guy, and my arms quivered despite
my dragon strength. The point of the syringe glistened a handsbreadth from my face.
Evan cried out, but my ears were ringing from the gunfire, and I couldn’t make out his words. He lunged forward and caught at Franks’s broad back in an effort to drag him off me, but the gun behind me barked again and Evan collapsed limply to the floor.
A bullet struck my shoulder, and the strength in that arm melted away in an instant. The needle hovered closer to my face, drawing inexorably nearer. I squirmed, trying to throw Franks off me, but his bulk pinned me down. Panic’s claws dug into me, sharp as knives.
I panted for air, but I couldn’t hear myself. Blood crept along my shoulder, spreading its wet warmth across my shoulder blades. Franks’s breath was hot in my face, his squinty eyes bulging so close to mine. I glared into them. I’d almost forgotten I was a dragon in the terror of the moment. Gritting my teeth, I pushed into his mind, determined to put an end to this.
Only I found the way barred. Someone had been here before me, and Franks was enthralled to another. There was no way to command him.
Panic consumed me. Only another dragon could have enthralled him, and if a dragon had sent him against me like this, there was only one thing that could be in that syringe. Fear surged like bile in my throat and I struggled like an animal. My left arm collapsed, useless, at my side.
Instinctively I reached for my essence, but fear throttled the channel between the parts of my soul. Trueshape hovered just out of reach as my arm gave way and the syringe slammed down.
It shattered against the armour of my face.
Franks reared back in shock and I backhanded him across the face. He collapsed into the wall and I scrambled to my feet, one scaled arm dripping blood. The gunman by the window emptied his clip at me. I heard the click of the empty chamber. None of the bullets hurt me.
Well, this was new. I was covered in scales but still in human form. Just call me Lizard Woman.
The shadowy gunman turned out to be Detective Hartley. She still pointed her gun at me, though she was out of ammo, and her hands shook so much I could see the movement from across the room. I closed the gap between us in three quick strides and punched her hard enough to drop her to the singed carpet, out cold. Then I fell to my knees at Evan’s side and fumbled his phone out of his pocket.
Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) Page 17
