The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2)

by Finlayson, Marina

  I grabbed a towel and attacked my wet hair. Mustn’t get maudlin again. I heard footsteps on the tiled floor, and came out from under the towel as Garth approached. He wore jeans despite the heat, and a plain white T-shirt that clung to his muscled chest. For once there were no Star Wars characters on it. Beads of sweat clung to his upper lip, and sparkled on the tips of his short, greying hair.

  “You look like you could use a swim,” I said.

  His gaze swept over my body, and for a moment I felt naked. Then he bared his teeth in the most feral grin I’d ever seen. “I’ve got something much better in mind. Mac and I are heading off now.”

  I wrapped the towel around myself, suddenly self-conscious. Full moon tonight. The pair of them were going bush, disappearing into the national park around Berowra. It wasn’t far from here.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay? We could lock you in the stables.”

  I’d made this argument before, reluctant to risk them to the wide open spaces. What if someone saw them? What if they attacked some poor hiker? Full moon was the one time when werewolves couldn’t control their change. Other nights they could choose to change or not, but at full moon it was forced on them, and the strength of the compulsion sent them wild. All except the oldest and most experienced lost any trace of their humanity.

  As a result they either spent the night locked safely away, or found some remote location far from accidental contact with humans. I worried about what might happen to them outside the safety of these walls.

  “No thanks. I need a run.” With an effort, he dragged his gaze back to my face. “It’ll clear my head.”

  He walked away, something of the predator’s prowl already in the way he moved. Should I have insisted? The back door of the house opened and Kasumi came out. Garth angled his steps more toward the garage so he wouldn’t have to pass too close. She also gave him a wide berth. No love lost there.

  Ben followed my gaze. “Don’t worry so much. He’s big enough and ugly enough to look after himself.”

  “Maybe.” What was wrong with me today? I saw doom everywhere. “But what about Mac?”

  “I wouldn’t want to meet either of them in the dark tonight.” He watched Kasumi approach. “Let’s hope this is good news.”

  I felt even more awkward than usual having Kasumi bow at me while I stood dripping in my bikini.

  “You really don’t need to do that. We’re pretty laid-back round here. How did you go?”

  “Not well. None of his thralls survived his death. All mind-wiped. I found a human servant, but she knew nothing of any sixth sister.”

  “What about his shifter servants? Those three wyvern brothers?”

  “It was one of them whose form I used to question the servant. She didn’t know where they’d gone, but I couldn’t press her too hard without it looking odd. The goblins have disappeared too, perhaps back to their clans. Not surprising, in the circumstances.”

  True. Everyone would be ducking for cover after the murder of their master, afraid they might be next.

  “So basically we’re no better off than before,” said Ben. “We should find Blue and see if he can do something with those leshy ashes.”

  God, was he still on about that? “You know that’s not going to work. Lachie, get out now.”

  Lachie dragged himself up the ladder in slow motion, reluctance in every movement.

  “Why wouldn’t it work? Just because Kasumi can’t use them doesn’t mean Blue couldn’t.”

  I sighed, exasperated. “Blue is unco-operative, and a drunk. Plus now he’ll be hiding even more carefully than before. He made his opinion on helping us again quite clear.”

  “Well, what other options do we have?” He looked as exasperated as I felt.

  I had an idea in mind, but I wasn’t ready to share it yet.

  While we bickered, Kasumi retrieved Lachie’s towel and held it out to him. He accepted it with a polite “thank you”, then looked up at her.

  “Could you turn into me?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes grew round. “Wish I could turn into you.”

  She studied him gravely. “It takes years of practice. My own children play a version of hide and seek where they must hide in another form, and see if their friends can pick them out.”

  “And can they?” He swiped ineffectively at the water on his skinny arms.

  “Usually. A pine tree with a fox’s tail tends to stand out.” She smiled, and her whole face softened. “For some reason the tail is the hardest part to change. I had terrible trouble with it when I was your age. It was forever peeking out from under my clothes.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  She shot me a look at the wistfulness in his voice, half-guilty, half-apologetic. Then she answered him in a brisk, no-nonsense tone. “Not at all. It’s a lot of work. No more exciting than doing homework is for you. And my children are so busy practising they don’t have time to play with Lego.”

  “Lachie, you’re dripping on Kasumi’s foot,” I said, a little more sharply than I’d intended. The yearning was still plain on his wet face. Ben took one look at me then removed the towel from Lachie’s unresisting hands.

  “Bet they don’t play cards either.” He flicked him playfully with the towel. Lachie squeaked and jumped out of the way. “When are we going to have a rematch? I reckon I’m going to thrash you this time.”

  “Not a chance. Race you!”

  He hurtled out of the pool house, his bare feet leaving a trail of little wet footprints all the way back to the house.

  “Thanks, Ben.”

  He nodded and followed Lachie more slowly. So, still annoyed with me, but prepared to help out by distracting my son. Guess it really was love. My exasperation with him eased a little, and I turned back to Kasumi.

  “I didn’t know you had children.”

  “Two. A boy and a girl, back in Tokyo.”

  We walked side by side back to the house. The sun sat just above the trees, a white-hot orb. “Do you miss them?”

  “Of course. But they have their father, and their uncles. They are probably too busy to miss me.”

  “You all live together?”

  “We are a close-knit family.”

  Ah. And I had killed her sister. Probably not the best direction to take the conversation.

  “I should not have spoken of my children to your son,” Kasumi said, a little hesitantly. “I can see he wishes …”

  She paused, and I filled in the silence. “Lachie’s obsessed with shifters at the moment. Understandable, I guess. So’s most of the rest of the world.”

  She nodded. “He longs for what he cannot have.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  A little house in the suburbs, filled with laughter and the sounds of two male voices, one deep and one high and piping. Just the three of us, living a regular life.

  We paused at the back door. Pink tinged the high clouds to the west. The sun was going down, and soon the moon would rise.

  “Where are the wolves spending the night?”

  I sighed. “Running around the bush.”

  “You wish they had stayed here?”

  “You’ve very perceptive.”

  “I have to be. Kitsune are trained from an early age to study people. You cannot imitate something you do not understand.” She held the door open for me. “Why did you not command them to stay if that was your wish?”

  I met her searching gaze. “They wanted to go. This isn’t a prison. I’m not going to hold people against their will. You said it yourself: I’m not like other dragons.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A terrible grinding crash jerked me awake. What the hell was that? I sat up, still groggy from sleep. Last thing I remembered was falling asleep curled up against Ben’s back. That felt like hours ago. The room was dark, but moonlight crept in the window, enough to show me that his side of the bed lay empty now. The clock said 3:09.

  I staggered up. Somewhere a car eng
ine roared, accompanied by the squeal of metal. I ran to the door, snatching up a dressing gown as I went, and out into the hall.

  “What’s going on?” I shoved my arms into the sleeves and tied a hasty knot around my waist. An alarm shrilled from the control room.

  “Someone just rammed the gates!” Steve’s deep voice, from his station at the monitors.

  I took the stairs two at a time. Down the corridor to the east wing, doors slammed as Thommo and Dave turned out in answer to the alarm’s shrill summons. Both wore shorts and had obviously been asleep. Thommo’s hair stood up like a broom. Dave looked more alert, and was buckling a shoulder holster as he ran.

  We’d need more than handguns. “Break out the assault rifles,” I told him, and he ran back down the corridor to the armoury.

  I heard the squeal of tyres, then the roar of a high-powered engine as I arrived at the comms room. I was just in time to see the gates explode off their hinges onscreen as a dark van rammed them again. Momentum carried it through the gateway and halfway up the drive. Sparks fountained as it dragged one gate with it, entangled in the wreckage of its front bumper. It listed drunkenly off the driveway onto the grass, and rolled to a stop. Dark figures spilled out of the back doors and sprinted towards the house, bent low over their guns.

  “Steve, Thommo, take the front.” They ran, collecting guns from Dave as they passed. “Dave, you’re on the roof with me.”

  I pelted back up the stairs, meeting Alex on the way down.

  “Where do you want me?”

  “Stay with Lachie. Have you seen Ben? Or Kasumi?”

  He shook his head and took off toward Lachie’s room, while Dave and I sprinted down the hall to the door that opened out to the rooftop garden. Snuggled between the peak of the main house’s roof and the western wing, it looked out over the back of the estate, with a view across the surrounding bushland. Tonight I wasn’t interested in the view, and I scrambled up the slope of the roof to the ridgeline so I could see what was happening at the front of the house.

  Dave dropped beside me and rested his gun on the ridge. The sharp rat-tat-tat of rapid fire sounded already from below us, as Steve and Thommo opened fire from the house. Some of the invaders threw themselves down and returned fire, while others kept running. Still more poured in through the open gateway.

  Of course they picked full moon to attack, when Garth and Mac were out of action. I scanned the darkness. Where the hell were Ben and Kasumi?

  “Where did they all come from?” breathed Dave. Then, in a very different tone: “What the hell are those?”

  Creatures erupted from the grass all around the invaders. Someone had shot out the floodlights, but the full moon, riding high in the sky, provided plenty of light for my shifter vision. Dave’s gun rained death down on the invaders, but it was like shooting fish in a barrel, because suddenly all those figures on the lawn were fighting for their lives against a new threat.

  Half a dozen were pulled down into the earth before they even realised they were under attack. Then the screaming started. Guns had no effect on the shadowy creatures. Bullets passed right through them as they faded to mist. Next minute they were all too solid as their claws slashed the throat of a slow-moving invader.

  “Dragons’ teeth,” I said, with grim satisfaction. It was nice to know Leandra’s money had been well spent. And it had been an exorbitant amount. Looked like Blue wasn’t a bad mage when he tried. Ironic that his spell was now being used against fellow goblins, for that was what our unexpected guests were, judging by their murky auras. Not that Blue would have cared.

  Dave spared me an incredulous look as he paused to reload. “Dragon’s teeth? They look like scarecrows.”

  Particularly vicious scarecrows, but yes, they did have that rather thrown-together look about them, and their movements were jerky and unnatural. Effective though. I watched another skewer a goblin through the guts. The goblin folded forward around the fatal blow, vomiting blood that looked black in the moonlight.

  “Well, these were made from scales, actually. ‘Dragons’ teeth’ is just a nickname, from the Greek legend.” He looked confused. “You know, the field sown with dragons’ teeth, and they all sprouted into warriors? No? Well, never mind. They’re just constructs. A good enough goblin mage can transform almost anything into something else.” Like sticks and vegetables into a copy of a boy so exact even his own mother had been fooled. A precious boy, who I’d mourned after Jason had “killed” the changeling in a car accident. “These pieces of Leandra’s scales have been lying dormant underground. Any attack on her triggers the magic.”

  I stood up on the ridgeline to get a better view of the carnage below, a fierce joy in my heart. If only all my enemies would die so easily. Shame the dragons’ teeth didn’t last a bit longer. They were already fading, falling back into the earth, though a handful of enemies remained.

  A massive blow slammed me in the back. I went cartwheeling off the roof, screaming as the sky spun about me. No time! Quick! I reached for union as the ground loomed, but I was caught mid-change. Agony stabbed through me as the bones in my legs shattered on impact.

  I whimpered, pinned in place by blinding pain. A figure loomed over me, a goblin, snarling in triumph as he levelled his gun at my face. Stupid goblin. That was no way to kill a dragon.

  Then another appeared beside him, armed with a chainsaw, of all things. Yes, that would do it. I shut my eyes and pulled as the machine roared into life.

  Just in time. I surged to my four enormous feet and bit the chainsaw-wielding goblin in half with a contemptuous snap of my teeth. His companion screamed and turned to run, his useless gun hurled away in panic. I leapt on him too, then spat to the side. Ugh. Something about goblins just didn’t taste right.

  A bright form streaked down from above. Then another and another. Moonlight glinted off perfect red-gold scales. Wyverns. I guess that explained where Carl Davison’s followers had disappeared to. These must be his goblins too, out for revenge—or more likely, the bounty on my head.

  Except for Luce, the only good wyvern was a dead one, though you couldn’t even eat the corpses; they were full of poison. Poisonous spurs on their feet, poisonous fangs in their snakelike mouths—even their skin oozed poison like some kind of vicious flying cane toad.

  I leapt into the air to meet them. Their poison wouldn’t kill me but the effects wouldn’t be pleasant if the three of them got within spitting range and coordinated their efforts.

  But they weren’t trying to. I spiralled higher, chasing the elusive creatures. I’d almost have one, then another would dart in from the side and in avoiding that one I would lose the first. I belched flame, but they were so quick, zipping all over the sky, that my flames went wide.

  We’d climbed some distance from the house when I realised I’d been hearing gunfire again—more and more of it. I looked down and saw creatures streaming toward the back of the house from the bush behind. This triggered another wave of dragons’ teeth.

  But some of the gunfire was single shots, and it came from inside.

  I folded my wings and dived, consumed by sudden fear. Those damn wyverns had been leading me on, drawing me away as new enemies arrived. Like an idiot I’d fallen for it.

  I swooped low behind the house, my fire carving a deadly path through the enemies I found there. Goblins screamed and died, engulfed in dragonfire. The pool house went up like a torch as I sent gouts of fire raging across the lawn.

  The wyverns joined the fight too, now I refused to be lured away any more, their slashing claws more effective against the dragons’ teeth constructs than the bullets of the goblins. They were clever, timing their attacks to strike the constructs as they formed out of the shadows into something solid.

  I landed amid the devastation, blasting a group of goblins who huddled together in futile resistance. Their bullets bounced harmlessly off my scales. Two others escaped into the house. I had to let them go for fear of firing the house itself. Once dragonfire took hold
nothing would put it out.

  The night was alive with the crackle of flame, its light dancing on the buildings, sending shadows flickering everywhere. A wyvern dived to buzz me and I turned my head and caught it full in the face with dragonfire. It fell like a flaming meteor to earth and crashed through the roof of the burning pool house. Its two companions darted away, giving up the fight now their goblin allies were all down.

  Heat from the blaze behind me licked against my back as I stalked toward the main house, pushing some of my mass back through the link so that by the time I reached the door I could squeeze through it. I wasn’t much bigger than a wyvern myself now, and I wouldn’t be as effective at this size, but I didn’t dare relinquish trueshape yet. A naked human form would be useless, and there were precious lives at risk inside the house.

  I found Thommo dead in the hallway outside the comms room, his body ripped open by a hail of bullets. I startled a goblin inside the room and leapt on it, spraying the monitors with its blood. A moment later it fell limp under my slashing claws.

  Upstairs. Lachie! Dread sunk vicious claws into my heart. I ripped apart two more goblins who stood in my way, then bounded up the stairs. At the top I found Steve, slumped against the wall, but still alive.

  Faster! I rushed along the hallway towards Lachie’s room, following sounds of a struggle. Something crashed into the wall. Someone grunted.

  And someone screamed, a high-pitched wail torn from the throat of a terrified child.

  I hurled myself through the doorway with a roar of anguish. Kasumi fought two goblins, holding them off from Lachie, who cowered behind her. She’d disarmed them both, but her whole right arm ran with blood from a bullet wound to the shoulder, and she didn’t move with her usual smoothness. The goblins turned as I entered, and I leapt on the one closest and tore his head from his shoulders.

  The other froze for a brief, shocked second, and Kasumi stepped in and dropped him with a smart blow to the temple.

  “Kasumi! You’re hurt.” Though the shoulder obviously pained her, it clearly hadn’t been a silver bullet, which suggested that whoever planned this attack hadn’t known I had a new shifter in my camp. With the wolves away for full moon, they’d assumed there’d be no point bringing silver to a gunfight against humans and a lone dragon.