Twiceborn

by Marina Finlayson

  A huge white cloud of smoke billowed about halfway up the slope at the back of the house, ghostly pale against the night sky.

  “The fire brigade has been summoned,” Adam said. “You’re much safer in here than out there, believe me.”

  “The fire brigade won’t be coming.” Luce sounded as cool as ever. “I told you, the roads are blocked. Nothing will get through. If you’re relying on them you’re in big trouble.”

  “We’re not relying on anybody. As Lady Alicia said, we’ve been through this before and we know what to do.” He gestured at the activity outside the window. “If the fire comes this way we will close the shutters, but in the meantime Lady Alicia would like you to observe.”

  Outside one of the hose-wielding leshies went down in a tumble of long limbs. Probably not what Alicia had meant us to see. “What the—!”

  Dark figures moved in the smoky tree line. Another leshy stumbled, hose spraying wildly as he clutched at his arm. Shouts of alarm filled the smoky air.

  “We’re under attack!” Adam’s face paled. I had the feeling he’d believed us all along about Valeria, but loyalty to Alicia had kept him quiet. He met Luce’s eyes. “Come with me.”

  He probably meant only Luce, but Ben and I tagged along. Hell, I wasn’t staying here on my own if Valeria’s forces had arrived. My heart pounded. But where was safe?

  Not outside, but that was where we went, plunging down a set of steps and into a frightening world. Straight away I started to cough; the smoke was thick and the heat intense. The flames were close now, roaring up the slope with a noise like a jet engine, and stinging embers pelted us as we ran.

  “Get behind the barn!” Adam shouted. “Try and stay out of trouble.”

  I barely heard him over the noise of the fire front. Ben caught my hand and dragged me behind him into the lee of the barn, where at least we were protected from the embers. The wind drove them almost horizontally before the front, like sand in a sandstorm. My bare arms stung with a dozen welts that were already blistering.

  The barn had its own sprinkler system, and we hugged the wet walls, letting the cooling spray soothe us. Ben ducked inside and returned with an axe and a shovel, which he passed to me.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” I shouted. Dig my way to freedom? “Where did Luce go? We have to help her!”

  “Stay here,” he shouted back. “Remember we’re heralds, even if nobody else does. Self-defence only.”

  He stepped protectively in front of me, axe at the ready. Self-defence only. Right. As if I would run out and attack someone with my trusty shovel.

  I strained to see what was happening through the choking smoke. Visibility was down to only a few metres. I blinked tears away from my stinging eyes and searched for Luce as figures loomed out of the smoke then disappeared again.

  The leshies gave as good as they got, now that Valeria’s forces had lost the initial advantage of surprise. Right in front of us, one dodged a knife thrust from a hard-eyed man. The knife scored his arm and green blood dripped. The leshy snarled, baring pointed teeth, then snapped his fingers. Strands of grass surged out of the ground in response and whipped around the knife-wielder like green tentacles. They dragged him down so fast the guy didn’t even have time to scream before he disappeared into the churning earth. I swallowed hard and shrank back against the barn wall, but the leshy took no notice of us. Sprouting thorns all over his body, he plunged back into the smoke in search of another opponent.

  Another seemed to remember his race’s ancient affinity for bears. A grizzly appeared out of the haze, towering on its hind legs over the man who faced it. The man backed away, a look of desperation on his face, as he emptied his pistol into the snarling bear. The bullets may as well have been flea bites for all the notice the bear took of them. It swatted the gun away and seized him in its massive claws. The man screamed, and I turned away as the sound abruptly cut off. I didn’t want to see what happened next.

  There were wolves among the attackers, and some on Alicia’s side too. Three ganged up on a leshy, snarling and growling as they dragged him down like an animal and tore into him. Two others rolled across the ground not far from us, biting and snapping at each other in a frenzy. One was black like Garth. Could it be him? I couldn’t tell. Luce had disappeared into the haze; I hoped she was safe.

  Not that any of us were. I eyed the wall of flame headed our way, lighting up the night with an eerie orange glow. It flared the height of the gum trees, roiling and snapping in their crowns, spitting burning debris ahead of it.

  I leaned closer to Ben and yelled in his ear. “They need to stop fighting each other and start fighting the damn fire!”

  Could none of them see the danger?

  I was soaked to the skin from the barn’s sprinkler system, my hair dripping in my eyes, but I knew that was scant protection. The heat was scalding; the air so hot and smoky I could hardly breathe. Maybe the fire would go around us. All it needed was a wind change to set it on another path.

  But as I stared at the looming wall of flame I knew that was wishful thinking. Unless the leshies had some magic tricks up their sleeves we were in real trouble. Not even firefighters, with trucks and proper hoses, would stand a chance.

  The grizzly-leshy still fought, its deep, full-throated roars rising above the noise of the fire. I couldn’t see as many of Valeria’s men. A couple were down, unmoving on the grass, but most had faded back into the gloom. Some of the leshies had rushed to their hoses, trying to stop the grass from catching. Looked like Alicia’s side had won. I searched for Luce again, unsettled. Was it just me, or did that seem too easy?

  No time to think about it now. I glanced back at the house, with its huge picture windows now protected by steel shutters. We had to get back in there. The heat out here was blistering.

  Gradually another noise became apparent over the roar and crackle of the fire, a kind of rhythmic whumping. Helicopter? Could be one of those big firefighting jobs that scooped up megalitres of water then dumped them on the fire from above. My eyes stung and watered from the smoke, but I strained to pierce the gloom, searching the dark skies above the flames.

  “There!” I caught Ben’s arm, heart in my mouth. “Is that—?”

  A shape, glimpsed through smoke, but all wrong for a helicopter. A plane? No. It arrowed through the sky, in and out of the roiling smoke cloud. An impossibility, looming larger, huge wings labouring. She really was going to do it. My mouth dropped open.

  “Dragon!” Ben screamed. “Get down!”

  The nearest leshies heard him and turned, faces wreathed in horror. One was Adam; he ran for the dubious cover of the barn where we sheltered.

  “Inside, quickly!” Ben grabbed me, but Adam stopped him.

  “No!” he shouted. “This way!”

  He ran towards the fire. Was he crazy? The dragon was nearly on us, so close every beat of its massive wings battered at the fire below, sending it gusting and writhing in unexpected directions. We stumbled after him, coughing. Into the mouth of hell, it felt like, the roaring flames billowing waves of heat against us.

  The dragon passed overhead, long and sinuous, tail flicking behind it. The light of the fire reflected gold and orange off the glinting scales of its underbelly. Screams and shouts pierced the smoky air, and then came a noise like a thousand furnace doors opening at once. A concussion wave knocked me screaming to the baking ground, Ben half on top of me.

  And Alicia’s house erupted in a spectacular fireball.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I lay stunned, my head ringing from the blast. Fear held me immobile, a deep ancestral terror that set my pulse racing and my body trembling. I was a mouse frozen in place by the screech of a hunting owl. The dragon filled my vision as it soared on past the flaming wreckage that a second ago had been Alicia’s proud mansion.

  Its body glittered and winked, reflecting the fire from a thousand mirror-like scales. It was hard to tell what colour it really was. Its head looked disturb
ingly crocodilian and its bat-like wings brought to mind every half-remembered nightmare of things that dropped from the night skies on to the unwary. I thought I’d been frightened when Garth had turned wolf in my kitchen, but that was nothing to what I felt now.

  I might have lain there frozen till the fire front rolled right over the top of me but for a hand that reached down and hauled me to my feet. A green hand.

  Adam had lost his urbane humanity and now looked all leshy. His hair had turned to grass and his eyes glowed a brilliant emerald. His other hand had a firm grip on Ben’s bicep. Ben looked like he needed the help standing up, as dazed as I felt.

  “She’s coming round for another pass,” Adam shouted over the roar of the flames. “Come on!”

  He dragged us toward three giant water tanks grouped together a little way back from the barn. Closer to the advancing fire front. My insides churned with terror. Dragon or flames? Either way meant death.

  We crawled into the gap between two of the tanks and hunkered down. My legs shook so much I had to sit, knees pulled up to my chest. I dragged my shirt up over my nose and mouth, gasping for a breath that wasn’t full of smoke. I was light-headed and panting in between coughs. Much more of this and I’d pass out from the heat. My skin prickled with it and my eyeballs burned in their sockets.

  Above me Adam sprouted vicious four-inch claws on one hand and raked them across the side of the tank. The screech of metal set my teeth on edge. Water gushed from the slashes all over us.

  I looked up at the small slice of sky between the tanks and caught a glimpse of the dragon banking on one wingtip. Despite the heat a shiver ran down my spine.

  Down on ground level chaos reigned. The fire had started its run across the lawn with a roar like a jet engine. All the combatants had scattered, seeking shelter. One group of leshies hid in the barn, while another couple sprinted for the garage. In a moment they reappeared in one of the four-wheel drives, its headlights bouncing dizzily as it crunched across burning debris.

  “They’ll never make it,” said Ben, even as spot fires leapt ahead of them into the trees lining the driveway. “They’ll get trapped somewhere on the road.”

  Adam made a noise of distress. I heard the buffeting of the dragon’s wings again and this time I saw as flame belched from its mouth, engulfing the barn in an instant. The sprinkler system had no chance against the white-hot heat of the dragon’s breath. The poor bastards trapped inside probably didn’t even have time to scream before they vaporised.

  The fleeing car zigzagged in a desperate effort to avoid its fate. The dragon followed with a lazy wing beat. Beside me Adam coaxed the grass into a thick sodden blanket with desperate fingers. It poured across the ground and into our little hidey-hole, knitting itself into a thick carpet. The fire front roared at our backs. He pulled the heavy blanket over us, shutting out the noise and light.

  The last thing I saw was the four-wheel drive exploding.

  The next two minutes were the most terrifying of my life. The noise as the fire front leapt over us was indescribable, like a thousand freight trains roaring down on us. Every second I expected to be incinerated by the dragon. But we stayed safe under Adam’s dense blanket of grass and earth, protected by the water gushing from the tank all over us. There was nothing for the fire to catch hold of, and after an eternity of heat and smoke and terror we emerged, still in one trembling piece, hardly able to believe we’d survived.

  Adam stared at the blazing inferno that had been the mansion. “I can’t believe she did it.” His voice trembled ever so slightly. “To defy every edict and actually take trueshape in a populated area, for any mundane to see. It’s an outrage. And for this she thinks to become queen?”

  Sounded like a pretty fair bet to me. After all, she was the only candidate still standing. Clearly Valeria thought the end justified the means—and who was left to argue?

  I put one hand on the leshy’s slender arm. He had that dazed look I knew so well. “I’m sorry. You’ve lost a lot of friends today.”

  He turned his glowing green eyes on me. “Thank you. But there’s no time yet to weep. Your friend Lucinda was right. We must fight.”

  The rhythmic thump of wing beats heralded the dragon’s return. Oh, Lord, not again. There were only a couple of outbuildings still standing. Was she determined to burn everything?

  “Don’t throw your life away for nothing, mate,” Ben urged. He caught hold of Adam’s arm as the leshy made to crawl from our shelter. “You can’t take on a dragon, and getting yourself killed won’t bring Alicia back.”

  The dragon settled on the burnt grass near the blazing barn, sending a whirl of sparks eddying through the smoky air. God, it was huge. I felt the vibration through the ground beneath me as massive clawed feet touched down.

  Adam bared pointed teeth in something halfway between a grin and a snarl. “But my lady is not dead—at least, I hope she’s not. We have a fire bunker beneath the house. It is her custom to seek shelter there when danger threatens.”

  I could hardly tear my eyes from the dragon. Something about it called to me. I wanted to touch it, to—be it? To take to the skies, feel the wind in my face as I soared. Without realising I started to move towards it.

  Ben caught my arm and hauled me back. “Hey! What are you doing?”

  It wasn’t quite so graceful on the ground with its massive wings folded away. A man approached, and the huge head swung to regard him. He looked like a toy next to the creature’s bulk.

  As I stared, mesmerised, the dragon’s outline flickered. At first I thought it was an effect of the fire’s heat, but then the dragon kind of shimmied and disappeared.

  In its place stood a naked woman.

  Whoa. How did that work? Werewolves were one thing—the mass of a wolf and an adult human were very similar, after all—but this boggled my mind. How did that huge creature become a woman less than a tenth its size? Where did the rest of it go?

  The woman in question had large breasts and a mass of dark blonde hair braided around her head, which was all I could make out from this distance. She surveyed the damage she’d wrought with evident satisfaction, unconcerned with her nakedness. The infamous Valeria.

  The man offered her a white garment, which turned out to be a long white dress when she slipped it on. Very Greek goddess-like, and pretty much the last thing I would have chosen to wear to a bushfire-cum-shootout. But hey, I wasn’t a homicidal dragon. What did I know?

  She said something to the man and he laughed. With a start, I realised it was Jason. I’d been so focused on Valeria I hadn’t even recognised my own ex. And the bastard stood in the middle of all this death and destruction, laughing. A body lay practically at his feet.

  That body suddenly leapt for his throat. Not dead after all. As if at a signal, leshies materialised from the ground. They must have been using Adam’s camouflage trick with the living grass blankets. Valeria’s surviving men poured from one of the outbuildings, and suddenly there were struggling figures scattered everywhere.

  Adam sprinted toward the action and Ben scrambled out after him, hefting his axe.

  “He’s going to get himself killed! Stay here and keep your head down.”

  So much for self-defence only.

  I clutched my shovel, heart in my mouth, terrified Valeria would turn dragon again. But she backed away from the onrush and headed for the house with half a dozen men, leaving Jason to direct the fighting. Probably going to make sure Alicia was dead.

  Ben swung the axe at a man Adam had just dodged. He blocked the blow with an upraised arm against the axe haft. I winced. That would have broken most people’s arms. I looked closer, squinting against the smoke. A tell-tale orange glow surrounded him. Werewolf. They must be made of stronger stuff.

  Lachie and I had learned taekwondo together for a while, so I knew all about the bruises a good sparring match could inflict. I’d made it as far as brown belt, but I harboured no illusions as to my abilities. These guys were professionals, and
this was no polite sparring match. The werewolf struck back and Ben leapt away, narrowly avoiding the knife blade he wielded, then spun into a series of kicks. The last one sent the knife spiralling away. Seemed Ben knew what he was doing. As long as he kept the wolf too busy to shift he should be okay.

  Further on I caught a glimpse of Luce through the smoke, struggling against an ordinary human. Thank God she was still alive—I hadn’t seen her since we’d left the house. Wonder where she’d ridden out the firestorm. She landed a blow that sent the guy reeling and darted back to help Ben.

  I looked around for Garth, the last of our little band. Scanning the smoky distance, l nearly jumped out of my skin when the water tank behind me reverberated with a blow.

  Snarling and snapping, two wolves rolled past, locked together, each trying to find the other’s throat. One was black and the other more brindled, with brown streaks among the darker fur. They were clearly on different sides of this battle, but which was which?

  I sidestepped, hefting my shovel, trying to stay out of their way. I should hit one, but what if I picked the wrong one? The black one might be Garth—but then so might the other. I’d only ever seen him in wolf form in the dark, and admiring the colour of his coat hadn’t exactly been a top priority.

  Then again, maybe neither of them was Garth. How did I know a strange werewolf would appreciate the rescue? I might have to fight them both.

  I lifted the shovel, hesitating. Black or brindled? The black wolf had lost an ear, and bled heavily from deep gashes on its chest. It still fought, but couldn’t seem to get back on top. It yelped as the brindled wolf raked its belly again, and twisted in a futile effort to get away. The brindled wolf snarled and sank its teeth into the black wolf’s throat.

  Enough. I raised the shovel and slammed it down on the brindled wolf’s head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The black wolf whimpered and tried to wriggle out from under its opponent, but the brindled wolf was out for the count. I dropped the shovel and got down on my knees and heaved at its bulk. God, these things were heavy. The black wolf watched, yellow eyes intent. It made no move to attack though my efforts must have hurt it. At last I managed to shift its unconscious opponent enough to free it. With a groan it dragged itself clear and collapsed in the mud around the water tanks, its sides heaving.