The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2)

by Finlayson, Marina

  “Come look at this,” I called to Ben once I’d watched it through. He came into the study and stood behind me, massaging my neck with his good hand, as I hit replay.

  The world watched in shock and amazement as two dragons fought over Sydney Harbour in the early hours of New Year’s Day, the voiceover began. The familiar footage rolled and Valeria stooped upon me once again. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat at the memory. That had been too close.

  Dragons exist! The supernatural live among us. Or do they?

  On screen I fled under the Bridge, Valeria in hot pursuit.

  How could anyone doubt the evidence of their own eyes? Here they are, captured on film for all the world to see.

  I backwinged and landed briefly on the bridge before taking off again. I’d been dropping Lachie to safety, to free myself up to fight Valeria, but the view was too distant to see the small figure stumbling from my cradling claws.

  But how closely is the world looking?

  The camera zoomed in, as it always did at this point in the footage, and the picture shook, presumably because the cameraman’s hands were shaking too. None of the videos I’d seen were perfectly polished. Despite the presence of a gazillion TV cameras around the harbour earlier in the night, this had taken place at least two hours after the fireworks had finished, and the camera crews had all gone home. Only amateurs, mostly with iPhones, remained to capture the action.

  But this time, as we took to the skies again, the familiar footage shook even more than usual. A dark, boxy mass could be seen under the bellies of the two dragons. Both dragons moved far less naturally.

  Close enough to notice the engines that powered these two “dragons”? Notice how slowly they’re moving now? What if we speed this footage up again and add a little CGI magic?

  As if at the touch of a magic eraser, the engines gradually disappeared and the jerky movements became graceful, showing realistic muscles flexing beneath golden skin.

  Let’s see that again.

  The screen split in two, and the same piece of footage played on both sides. But one side had the “before” image, with engines showing and jerky robotic dragons. The robotic dragons appeared smaller against the backdrop of the Harbour Bridge. The “after” side showed large, lifelike dragons waging acrobatic war.

  Are you still amazed that dragons exist? Or are you just amazed at what computers can do these days?

  I spun in my chair to face Ben. “What do you think?”

  “Pretty impressive. Plays well to the sceptics. Elizabeth, I suppose?”

  “Probably. Either her or the government, but she seems the most likely candidate. I can’t imagine the government getting its act together this fast, for a start. And they haven’t got her money to throw at something like that. It must have cost a bomb.”

  “And she has more to gain from sowing doubt.”

  I grinned, swinging in the chair. “Oh, I don’t know. I heard yesterday some African country was considering declaring war on Australia. That might have stirred them up in Canberra.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Something about wiping out all the black magicians we’re supposedly harbouring.”

  He snorted. “You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”

  “Apparently not. Do you think many people will believe this? What about all the people who saw it in real life?”

  He leaned against the desk, looking thoughtful. “Most people won’t take much persuading. They don’t want to believe it, so they’ll grasp at any plausible explanation. And if the media run with it … Things don’t have to be true to be believed. Ask any politician. As long as you shout it long enough and loud enough you wear people down.”

  “True. If it muddies the waters enough we’ll only have a few crackpots convinced we’re real by the time it all dies down.”

  “Let’s hope so. The last thing we need at the moment is more publicity.”

  A proving was hard enough to keep secret at the best of times, with people turning up dead all over the place. Having the eyes of the world on us made it that much more difficult. And I already had the police interested in me. I couldn’t afford to feature in any more of their reports.

  I turned back to the computer and checked my Twitter feed. Predictably, it was running mad with speculation. I watched tweets fly past at a furious rate. The world was still enthralled by the dragon spectacle.

  I suppose that was to be expected. It was a huge story, at a very quiet time of year, and everyone had an opinion. At least it was keeping Elizabeth too busy with damage control to take any action against me for causing the whole mess.

  Ben leaned over my shoulder. “What’s this not the Middle Ages hashtag?”

  I ran a quick search, and my heart sank as I scanned the resulting column. The tweets flashed past almost too fast to read, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Talk about a hot topic. Seemed like half the world wanted to get out the pitchforks, and the other half was trying to persuade them that this was “not the Middle Ages”.

  We’re all Australians. This is #nottheMiddleAges

  Civilisation has moved past the age of witch hunts. #nottheMiddleAges

  You can’t accuse someone of being a werewolf just because you don’t like them. #nottheMiddleAges

  I winced a little at that last one. It would be happening soon, if it wasn’t already. True or not, people would be accused. Neighbours would insist they had a right to know; they had children to protect, and before you knew it someone’s house would be firebombed. Maybe someone would take pot shots at the old lady who lived in the creepy old house, or kill a little boy’s dog because they thought it was a werewolf. Someone else would be driven out of town. Someone would lose their job, or their girlfriend—or their life.

  Humans were so goddamned tribal. If you weren’t Us, you were Other, and Other was to be feared. And where Fear walked, its big brother Hate followed in the shadows, growing stronger and more powerful.

  I blew out a heavy sigh. Not that people would always be wrong to fear. God knows there were plenty of shifters only too ready to do them harm. I just felt sorry for the innocent ones caught up in the mess, and the humans who’d never heard of shifters who would now be victimised just because.

  A tweet caught my eye and I frowned. Dead woman a dragon? I clicked the link and arrived at a feature article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

  “Damn. Look at this.”

  Ben read aloud, his breath stirring my hair. “Sources close to the coroner have suggested there could be a link between the mystery woman pulled from the harbour in the early hours of New Year’s Day and the dragon battle that took place on and around the Harbour Bridge that morning. Sources close to the coroner? What does that mean?”

  “Don’t know.” My thoughts flashed to Detective Hartley. The death of the “mystery woman” would be treated as a murder investigation. Would that one cross her desk too? But nothing tied Valeria’s naked body to me. I was jumping at shadows. “I guess cause of death is pretty obvious. She’d have a giant hole through her chest. But I don’t see how the coroner can link that to the dragons, even if he can prove that she died at roughly the same time as the dragon hit the water.”

  “He’d have to officially recognise the supernatural first,” Ben said. “And that’s not going to happen, especially with Elizabeth doing her damnedest to convince people it’s all a giant con trick.”

  If only everyone would be convinced. The spectre of the Middle Ages loomed over me. If people died, it would be my fault, but what choice had I had? Once Valeria had turned dragon there’d been no other way out.

  In other news, the Prime Minister announces the formation of a special taskforce to investigate allegations of supernatural activities in Australia. Taskforce Jaeger will begin its investigations with a review of evidence and eyewitness accounts of the alleged dragon sightings over Sydney Harbour in the early hours of January 1st.

  I sighed and rubbed at my face. Alleged dragon sightings. Ri
ght. Not even one o’clock in the afternoon, and I was already exhausted.

  Ben dropped a kiss on my hair. “Don’t sweat it. They’ve got nothing. Let’s focus on more important things.”

  There sure were a lot of those. We had to find more men, and I desperately needed allies in the shifter community. I had to keep Detective Hartley at bay, keep my nose clean and keep Ben alive. I had to find out who’d tried to kill him and where Jason had got to.

  “Which ones?” I asked, feeling the weight of all those enormous and often-incompatible responsibilities.

  He turned the chair around and drew me gently to my feet. For once we were alone, which was pretty unusual these days, though my enhanced hearing picked up other voices elsewhere in the house. A bright square of sunlight lay on the carpet, and dust motes danced through it, swirling with the movement of our bodies. He stood a head taller than me, though I wasn’t a short woman, and I lifted my face to his.

  “Lachie will be busy for hours with his Lego. I thought we might have a little nap. Afterwards, of course.”

  “Afterwards?” He stood very close. I gulped in a deep breath, full of his fresh woodsy aftershave and a warm Ben-smell. My pulse sped up. “But your arm …”

  “I have an injured arm. I’m not dead.”

  “True.” I pressed against him and felt his body respond. “In fact, you seem … rather lively.”

  Amusement glittered in his eyes. His good hand slid down my back, producing little shivers of delight, and cupped one cheek firmly. “Come upstairs and I’ll show you just how lively.”

  I wound my arms round his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. The world would just have to burn without me for a while. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sex is a wonderful stress release. Dr Ben was prepared to prescribe a great deal of it, but even his enthusiastic assistance couldn’t produce more than a temporary relief. I had an appointment with Trevor, the leader of the Sydney werewolf pack, the next morning, and my nerves grew as the time ticked away till the meeting.

  Garth and I waited in the study. Leandra had preferred to call it her office, but come on—who was she kidding? Sure, she had the big antique desk, the plush carpet and visitors’ chairs so padded you could lose yourself in them. She had state-of-the-art computer equipment and a bank of filing cabinets that looked the part, but she barely worked. Those cabinets were so empty you could have hidden a body in them. She lived off the interest from a bucket load of investments, but the most she ever did in this room was sign a few papers. She had an accountant and a financial planner who handled everything for her.

  She hadn’t even earned the money in the first place—it was the “seed capital” a dragon queen provided to each of her queen daughters when they left her protection to face the rigours of the proving. It wasn’t much of a risk for the queen—only the winner got to keep it. The losers’ assets came back to their mother, and if they’d managed the money well, often with a substantial profit. Leandra—or her financial advisors, at least—had turned a small fortune into a significantly larger one.

  I was now the beneficiary, and determined Elizabeth wouldn’t see a penny of her money back.

  Garth sighed and checked his watch for at least the third time since sitting down across the desk from me. The chair next to him awaited his brother, the pack leader. It amused me to receive Trevor from the position of power behind a desk, as he’d done to me only last week. I wanted him in no doubt as to who was in charge.

  “Do you want me to call you when he gets here?” I asked, as Garth shifted restlessly. Not for the first time that morning, I rearranged the pens on the red leather that was set into the desk top. His nerves were catching. “You could go make Steve’s happy life miserable instead of waiting around.”

  I’d considered not having him present at all. Though they were brothers, Garth was an exile. Some pack leaders might take offence at his inclusion in the interview. But I had Trevor pegged as a fairly level-headed guy, and last week he’d seemed to reject Garth more because of pressure from the rest of the pack than from any personal inclination.

  Besides, Garth might be able to push his brother to join us in ways I couldn’t. I had to take every advantage I could find.

  “I’ll wait,” Garth growled.

  Yesterday’s playfulness had disappeared. Grumpy Garth was back.

  “When’s full moon?” I asked.

  The scowl deepened. Asking a werewolf when full moon was due was like accusing a woman of having PMS. But it was a valid question. The proximity of full moon did affect werewolves’ moods, no two ways about it. And if Trevor was feeling its pull he’d be more prickly and unreasonable than normal.

  “Not for eight nights.”

  That was common too. Ask a schoolteacher how long it is till the holidays, and they’ll answer you to the hour. Werewolves were the same. They knew exactly when to expect the moon. It was never “about a week” or “in a fortnight”. Eight nights. Eight nights exactly until they were forced to change, whether they wanted to or not, and either run wild or lock themselves safely away. Any other night they could take wolf form or not as they wished. But on full moon they couldn’t resist the pull of their darker nature.

  Full moon night was a bad night to meet a werewolf.

  Not that there was ever a great night to meet a werewolf. I’d had personal experience in how terrifying such an encounter could be.

  “How long have you been a werewolf?” I asked on impulse.

  Also not a polite question in shifter society, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t reply. Leandra had taken him on as a favour to Trevor after the pack leader had been forced to exile him from the pack. She’d found him a useful addition to her team, but she hadn’t been interested in his personal history. Whereas I felt very close to him, despite only meeting him a week ago, in less-than-ideal circumstances. Funny how bonding it can be to dig up a grave together. They should include it in team-building management courses. But I still knew very little about him. He’d mentioned last week that he’d been turned, but hadn’t gone into detail.

  “Sixteen years,” he said eventually. “Coming up seventeen in June.”

  Leandra had assumed he’d been born shifter, as most wolves were. Turned werewolves were rare, which was just as well, or the secret existence of werewolves wouldn’t have stayed secret very long. Only a person who was bitten on the night of full moon would become a werewolf—and didn’t I wish I’d known that the night Garth attacked me and I was panicking about transforming. Unfortunately for the victim, wolves were so crazed by the influence of the moon that night that the attacks were usually too frenzied to leave survivors.

  “And Trevor? Was he turned at the same time?”

  “No. He’s a born.”

  I blinked. “But you’re brothers. How does that work?”

  “He’s younger than me. Mum was turned after she had me.”

  “What about your father? Was he turned too?”

  “He died.” He crossed his arms and stared down at the carpet, as if he’d found something fascinating in its design. “She met Trevor’s dad after she joined the pack.”

  I stared at the top of his bowed head. His defensive posture made it clear he didn’t like discussing this. I supposed I could drag it out of him if I had the patience for playing twenty questions, but really, it wasn’t any of my business. I was only trying to distract myself from my own nerves. I shifted the pens again instead.

  It made sense, though. Ever since I’d discovered Garth wasn’t born a werewolf I’d been wondering how on earth his brother had managed to work his way up to pack leader starting as a rank outsider. Though packs weren’t strictly dynastic, it was more common than not for the offspring of a pack leader to become leader in turn, and absolutely unheard of for a newcomer to the shifter world to make it that far. Trevor was an unlikely enough candidate as it was, given his relatively small physical size and his rather bookish air.

  Not t
hat I had any illusions about his mild-mannered exterior. I knew he could be a ruthless bastard when the situation called for it.

  Before I could change my mind and subject Garth to a thorough grilling on his personal history, Steve knocked on the door. The ruthless bastard himself followed Steve into the room, looking surprisingly small next to the big half-Maori. Garth and I both stood.

  I offered my hand, and Trevor shook it. His grip was firm but not crushing. He was shorter than his brother, only a little taller than me, and looked to be in his early thirties, though his hair had already started to recede.

  “Please, have a seat. Can I offer you something to drink?”

  Trevor sat—though not till after Garth did. Wolf dominance games were as natural as breathing to them. He declined a drink, so Steve left, closing the door with a definite click, cutting off the noises of the house.

  In the silence Trevor cocked his head to one side, an expression of polite puzzlement on his face.

  “Not that I’m not happy to see you survived the … drama … since we met, but I understood this meeting was to be with Leandra.”

  “It is.” I leaned back in my chair, projecting a relaxed assurance I didn’t feel. “You’re speaking to her.”

  He frowned and looked around as if expecting Leandra to jump from behind the filing cabinet. “I don’t understand.”

  “At our last meeting you said you couldn’t take sides with me against Valeria. You said if only Leandra herself were standing in front of you asking, your answer might have been different.”

  “I remember what I said. And my answer hasn’t changed. If Leandra wants something from me she can ask me herself.”

  I put my hands flat on the desk, the leather inset giving slightly beneath my fingers, and leaned toward him. “She is. I am. I am Leandra.”

  He rose from the chair, his expression chilly. “Don’t waste my time. I know what Leandra looks like. And I’ve seen her on the news, like every other man and his dog, killing Valeria, so I know she’s still alive. Is she injured? Is that why she’s hiding?”