The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2)

by Finlayson, Marina

  “Do you think it’s a trap?” Jerry asked.

  I swivelled in my seat to look at her. Chewing gum, she looked the picture of casual who-gives-a-toss with her tatts and her flaming pink hair. She was dressed all in black, with black combat boots that laced halfway up her shins. One arm lay casually along the back of the seat, but beneath the surface I sensed an undercurrent of nerves, which wasn’t a bad thing. Nothing wrong with nerves if they kept you alive. Some shifters figured they were bulletproof, and found out the hard way they weren’t.

  “It’s always a possibility.” I shrugged. “But Davison’s not stupid. Elizabeth won’t last forever. It makes sense to hitch his wagon to someone else’s star.”

  “Wish it was dark,” Mac muttered. She shifted restlessly on the seat next to Jerry. I had trouble picturing Mac as a ravening beast, despite her clothing matching Jerry’s tough look. If she made as cute a wolf as she did a girl, she’d have preschoolers lining up to pat her and kiss her fluffy nose.

  “He probably picked the time so you guys couldn’t change,” I said. Any dragon who followed the proving would know by now of the werewolves in my camp. Jerry cast me an anxious look. “But that doesn’t prove he’s planning a double-cross, just that he’s taking precautions. You know how paranoid dragons are.”

  She nodded, and we got out of the car at Eric’s signal. The thunder from the building site pounded my sensitive dragon hearing, and I saw Jerry flinch as the wall of sound hit her. The three of them watched the street, while I ignored the noise and the butterflies fluttering in my stomach as best I could and tried to recall everything I knew about Carl Davison.

  He was young for a dragon; only about a hundred years old. It was a measure of his ambition that he’d risen so high in Elizabeth’s court in that relatively short amount of time, shouldering aside older dragons. According to some sources, he was a regular visitor in her bed, but that was hardly surprising. The combination of long life and healthy sexual appetites meant that, for the older dragons like Elizabeth, there would hardly be a male dragon left she hadn’t slept with. And probably quite a few of the females too.

  The human persona he’d adopted was that of a businessman who’d taken the stock market by storm with a start-up software company a few years back. It had been so successful it now had the big market players looking nervous, and Carl’s fortune was made.

  In fact, he’d most likely already amassed a fortune in a previous “life”. One of the drawbacks of living for centuries without ageing was that you had to arrange regular “deaths” and reinvent yourself in a new place. That had been easier before photography became widespread, but the real problems had only started with the rise of the Internet. With facial recognition software and global connectivity it was much harder to start over if your face was already well known.

  Still, no one had been caught out yet, and people like Carl continued to build their fortunes and enjoy the high life. He was a regular in the society pages, a real hit with the ladies with his dark good looks and goatee that proclaimed him not just some boring businessman, but an artistic soul. An artistic soul with money. He had B-graders lining up to hang off his arm.

  His other big claim to fame from a shifter point of view was the number of wyverns he had on staff—three that I knew of. Wyverns generally preferred to keep to themselves. He must have a lot to offer if he could coax three of them into joining him.

  Garth waved us in, and it was a relief to put a closed door between us and the thunder of the jackhammers next door. I glanced around as we entered the foyer, a narrow space between the dentist and the empty shopfront. A faint smell of urine lingered, as if no one came here but homeless people and drunks. The space opened up further in, to a lift lobby with three lifts and a door to the stairwell. A board on the wall listed the building’s tenants. Level two, where we were meeting Carl, housed a firm of solicitors.

  If Carl owned the building I bet it wasn’t one of his more profitable investments. The décor of the foyer was dated, and it looked as though the cleaner worked with one eye shut. Only two of the lifts showed lights on their display; the third one appeared to be out of order. More likely, the place had nothing to do with him, and that was why he’d chosen it as a rendezvous point.

  “Stay here,” Garth said to Alex. “Make sure no one sneaks up on us.”

  Alex nodded, his sweating face serious, and took up position where he could see the lifts and the two doors. Eric called the lift and the rest of us stepped in. It smelled a little musty, and the worn carpet was badly stained, as if they’d had a water leak that no one had bothered to fix. I certainly wouldn’t feel too confident of my lawyers’ skills if they worked in a place like this.

  Confidence was in pretty short supply at the moment. All of us were on edge. Garth looked positively grim. Werewolves didn’t like enclosed spaces, and he burst out of the lift the minute the doors opened like the cork from a bottle of champagne. If anyone had been waiting for the lift he would have scared three years’ growth out of them.

  But no one was there, and it wasn’t hard to see why. The double doors opposite the lift were locked. The lawyers’ company name was still written on the glass, but the rooms beyond held nothing but carpet, showing darker patches where furniture had once stood.

  Garth turned a full circle in the foyer area in front of the doors. “So where is he?”

  Eric tried the doors again, but they were definitely locked.

  “Maybe he’s late,” I said, trying not to feel insulted. Wolves weren’t the only ones who played dominance games. Usually the person who arrived last had the most power.

  Jerry pulled something from her back pocket that looked like a Swiss army knife, but turned out to be a set of lock-picking tools. In a moment she had the doors open. Luce would have been proud.

  “May as well have a look,” she said. Without waiting for orders she strode inside. Mac and Eric hurried after her, and after a minute, so did Garth and I.

  It didn’t take long to confirm our initial impression: the place had been abandoned, probably some time ago. The air smelled musty and stale. The only sign of life was the odd cockroach, skittering for cover as we disturbed it.

  Garth checked his watch as we filed back out to the lifts, clearly uneasy. “Where the hell is he? If he’s not here in two minutes, we’re leaving.”

  I caught his eye, knowing what he was thinking. If it was a set-up, we’d taken the bait. Enemies could be closing in right now to spring the trap. I had my mouth open to tell him to call Alex when the lift pinged. I turned toward the sound with relief. Davison was here.

  It took me a second to react when the doors opened. Yes, Davison was here. A body lay on the floor of the lift, its head kicked into the corner like a discarded soccer ball. Underneath all the blood the head sported a natty little goatee and a look of surprise.

  Frozen with horror, I was still staring when the door to the stairs flew open and bodies started pouring through.

  Garth snarled and hurled himself on the first man through the door. The guy’s gun went flying as he hit the floor, and he scrabbled at Garth’s big hands as they closed around his throat. The next two managed to get shots off before Eric took them both out with a neat bullet to the head, his feet planted wide and his arm unwavering, a look of calm concentration on his bearded face. At least the racket from the building site next door should hide the noise of gunshots from the outside world. And that was the last coherent thought I had for the next few minutes.

  In front of me Jerry collapsed with a howl like a wounded animal.

  There were too many bodies for the small space. My claws snapped out between one breath and the next as I leapt for one of the attackers. His gun roared and I felt a stinging pain in my shoulder.

  I stumbled as I landed, but my claws still caught him, half severing his head. His blood sprayed me as he went down, and another took his place. My ears rang from the gunfire and the terrible unearthly screeching noise Jerry still made. What was wrong wi
th her? I couldn’t spare a second even to look.

  I could hear Garth shouting. From the corner of my eye I saw dainty little Mac tackle a guy twice her size. I turned to help her, but I wasn’t needed. The man was dead before he even hit the ground, blood fountaining from his slashed throat. Mac stood over the body, teeth bared, dripping knife in hand. I caught her eye and she gave me a feral grin.

  No more gunfire. I looked around, bemused, as the last attacker bolted for the safety of the stairwell. With a roar Garth lunged after him.

  “Garth, wait!” I yelled. “Jerry’s hurt.”

  He turned back, frustration plain on his face, but he let the door slam shut. Jerry’s shrieks were like nothing that ever came from a human throat before, high and agonised. She writhed on the dirty carpet like a trapped animal. I sank down next to her.

  “What’s wrong? Where are you hurt?”

  She couldn’t answer. I don’t think she even knew I was there. Her T-shirt was covered in blood, and I ripped it open, searching for the bullet wound.

  Behind me Mac gasped.

  Garth knelt next to me, his face grim. “Silver bullet.”

  A small, neat hole in the top of her breast peeked over the unexpected red lace of her bra like some baleful third nipple. Monstrous black lines radiated out from it as her veins swelled in reaction to the poisonous metal. I gripped one of her hands, though I doubt she felt the pressure. She burned to the touch. Before our eyes the black lines twisted across her skin, mapping the poison’s spread.

  All shifters were susceptible to silver poisoning, but werewolves reacted particularly badly. It would take a hundred such bullets to kill a dragon. One would only make us sick. But one was more than enough to bring agonising death to a wolf.

  Mac sank to the floor on Jerry’s other side, leaning over her doomed friend with a look of such anguish on her face I had to look away.

  “Can’t you help her?” she begged. “You have to help her!”

  I felt sick. Removing the bullet would make no difference now. Nothing could stop those evil black lines from spreading, carrying death through her veins.

  Tears streamed down Mac’s pretty face.

  “Eric could …” I gestured at the gun, hating to say it out loud. “It might be kinder.”

  Jerry still cried out, but her screams had faded to whimpers. Her once-spiky hair lay flat and sweat-soaked against her scalp. She struggled now to breathe.

  Mac shook her head once, emphatically, and leaned down to bring her face close to Jerry’s ear. I didn’t hear what she whispered. Jerry probably didn’t either.

  “Where the hell was Alex?” Garth growled. He crouched next to me, his face as black as thunder.

  I met his bleak gaze. Was Alex dead? We both knew the lack of warning from him was a bad sign.

  Jerry struggled for breath, each more laboured than the last. Her face had quickly become so discoloured and swollen she was unrecognisable. Greenish foam burst from her lips. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she went still.

  I got to my feet, feeling shaken. Jerry looked as though she’d been attacked by a psychotic tattooist. Her skin was covered in crazed black lines, her face and neck swollen and shiny with sweat. No one spoke.

  Then Garth looked at me and he surged to his feet, face drained of colour. “You’re bleeding!”

  I’d forgotten that stinging pain in my shoulder. Hastily I ripped my shirt open to inspect the wound.

  “It’s okay.” Surprisingly enough, it was true. “It actually doesn’t hurt that much.”

  “Let me see.” Garth pushed my hands aside with urgent fingers. “Are you sure? Wouldn’t they have all the guns loaded with silver?”

  “It would take more than a silver bullet to kill me.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t want to be out of action with silver fever for a week, either, do you?” He laid an anxious hand on my forehead, checking for any sign of fever. Touching Jerry had felt like laying my hand on an oven door.

  Dragons were notoriously hard to kill. It took something like bane leaf poison, which had killed Leandra, or a catastrophic severing of the brain/body connection. Like Carl Davison’s grisly end. My eyes strayed toward the lift, but the doors had shut again, hiding the body within. Our bodies healed with supernatural speed, even from injuries that would kill a human or lesser shifter. Already the pain in my shoulder had dimmed, and I felt a weird movement inside, as if something were burrowing its way out.

  That would be the bullet, being forced out by my healing body.

  “Relax, Garth.” I put a hand to my shoulder. It really was the most peculiar sensation. I gritted my teeth, feeling as if some parasite were chewing its way through my flesh. Best not to think about it.

  In a moment I could feel the lump, a pea-sized mass rising toward the surface. Then, with a little welling of blood, it broke the skin and I caught it between thumb and forefinger and yanked it out with relief.

  “See? Nothing to worry about.”

  I held the bloody little lump of metal out to Garth, who took it.

  Then he yelped and dropped it back into my palm.

  “Damn it!” He sucked his fingers.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He showed them to me. The burn marks were already blistering. “That’s definitely silver.”

  I turned the bullet over, perplexed. Though the effect wouldn’t be nearly as obvious on me as it was on Garth, there should be something. Some reaction, some sign. But my shoulder barely ached, and I felt none of the dizzy sickness I should be experiencing from silver fever. As if it were no more than an ordinary bullet.

  Still, now wasn’t a good time to stand around pondering the mysteries of the universe. Garth seemed to realise it at the same instant I did.

  “We need to leave,” he growled.

  I nodded and shoved the bullet into my pocket. At a word from Garth, Eric bent and picked up the small form of the dead werewolf, while Garth helped Mac to her feet. Then he checked the other bodies for ID, but predictably they carried none.

  I sighed. Did it even matter who they were, or who’d sent them? I had so many enemies. I could take my pick. I had to do something about thinning their numbers before someone managed to thin me right out of existence. Although I would like to know whose door to lay Jerry’s death at. Someone would wish they’d never dreamed up that little double-cross.

  At least I could rule out Carl Davison as a suspect. The lift doors had closed, but when I pressed the call button they slid open again, revealing their gruesome cargo. I stepped inside, trying to avoid the pool of blood soaking into the carpet, and squinted at the gory head in the corner. Yep. Definitely Carl Davison. The stock market would have a meltdown when word got out.

  We took the stairs to the ground floor, not trusting the lifts any more. Didn’t want any more nasty surprises. Alex lay against the wall, out of sight from the street, as if someone had dragged him there. My heart sank.

  Garth tried to see in three different directions at once as he crossed the empty foyer to Alex’s side, jumpy as only a werewolf under threat can be. He knelt and laid his fingers to the pulse point in Alex’s neck, then looked up in relief.

  “He’s alive.”

  As I joined him Alex groaned, and in a few moments Garth had him sitting up, groggy but functional.

  “What happened?”

  Alex felt gingerly at a lump on the back of his blond head. “Not sure. Two guys came out of the lift, and I was watching them when someone hit me from behind. I don’t know where they came from—I didn’t hear a thing. Too much bloody noise from next door.”

  “You good to go?” asked Garth.

  “Sure. Just give me a minute.” He got to his feet and laid one hand on the wall, swaying a little. For the first time he noticed Jerry in Eric’s arms, her pink head lolling against his shoulder.

  His eyes widened. “What happened?”

  “Tell you later. Let’s get out of here.” I could see our car from here. It wasn’t far. I
f we made sure no one got close enough for a good look at Jerry, people would probably assume she’d collapsed. It would still draw attention, but that couldn’t be helped. No one was running and shouting, or pointing at our building in alarm, so the noise from the building site must have covered our brief gun battle. “Garth, check the street.” I caught at his muscled arm. “And be careful.”

  He nodded and stepped outside without hesitation, though he must have felt like a sitting duck. There were two guys smoking on the opposite pavement outside the door of another office block. Legitimate smoke break or enemies watching for us?

  They paid him no attention, apparently absorbed in their conversation. He ducked back inside.

  “There’s a group of women coming this way. When they’re past we’re good to go.”

  Eric faded into the background with his burden, while the rest of us stood watching the street. Soon enough, five women dressed in neat office attire strode past, the sound of their conversation drowned out by a chorus of jackhammers and nail guns. Once they’d passed Garth stepped out again, then motioned the rest of us to follow.

  As he reached the car a figure rose from its crouch between our car and the next, gun levelled at Garth’s chest. He had no time to react. A shot rang out …

  And the unknown gunman crumpled to the ground. The women scattered, screaming, while the two smokers stood rooted to the spot. Across the street a small dark-haired woman lowered her gun and slipped into an alley between two buildings.

  “Run!” Alex shoved me hard in the direction of the car.

  We ran.

  With great presence of mind, considering he’d just escaped death by a fraction of a second and the keen marksmanship of a complete stranger, Garth stepped over the body, jumped in and started the car. We all piled in, Mac diving over the middle seat into the back, Eric and I manhandling Jerry’s body in with us.