The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) (22 page)

At the end of the report was a curious note.
Strange growth noted on subject’s left rib. Spherical, 1.6 cm across, black in colour, with silver striations. Substance unknown. Slight electric shock on first contact. Refer to Taskforce Jaeger.

I looked up from the report and met Kasumi’s eyes.

“I have heard of this Taskforce Jaeger,” she said. “I believe its purpose is to gather information on the possible existence of supernatural creatures such as dragons.”

She smiled. The “possible existence”. Right. Our Japanese friend had a dry sense of humour.

I passed the paper to Ben to read. Garth leaned over to scan it too.

“It’s your turn, Uncle Ben,” Lachie said, impatient with this interruption.

“Sorry, mate.” He threw down a careless card, and Lachie trumped it with glee.

“Ha! I still had the king!”

Ben rolled his eyes. “The kid’s a card sharp. Save me.”

“Lachie, you’ll have to take a break. We need to talk to Kasumi. Why don’t you go see what the guys in the comms room are up to? You can come back and finish thrashing Uncle Ben later.”

Ben laughed. “Thanks for the vote of support.”

Kasumi nodded approvingly as Lachie headed for the door. “Your son is very obedient.” She grinned, a hint of that humour I’d seen before peeking through. “Good at cards, too.”

Garth quirked an eyebrow at me. He and Ben both knew what the black stone was, though Kasumi most likely didn’t. Dragons weren’t in the habit of sharing the secret of their channel stones. In fact, dragons were just secretive, full stop. “Should we be worried about this taskforce?”

“I don’t think so.” It wasn’t as if we didn’t have other things to occupy our minds, without fretting about a bunch of scientists turning up waving dissection tools. “I doubt they’ll get any further with that line of investigation. But speaking of investigation …” I turned back to Kasumi, and she sat a little straighter, eyeing me expectantly. “You are aware that Carl Davison’s dead?”

Something flickered in those dark eyes. “Yes. I waited outside the day you went to meet him. After you got away safely I went in and saw that someone had beaten me to it.”

Whoa. “
You
wanted to kill Carl Davison?”

“He was the man my sister became entangled with. The one who encouraged her to take up Elizabeth’s deadly cause.”

There was no expression on her face, the words merely a statement of fact, and I felt a chill run down my spine. She was not a person I wanted as an enemy.
But are you sure she’s not?
a little voice whispered.
You
did
kill her sister
. If she was ready to kill Carl just for setting her sister up for a fall, how much more must she hate me?

I took a hasty sip of coffee to hide my disquiet, the warmth of its aroma flooding my senses with reassuring pleasure. Give me a good cup of coffee and I could take on fifty murderous kitsune.

Well, maybe not
fifty
.

“He said he had some information about what my sisters were doing.”

She waited expectantly.

“I only have one—that I know of. The others are dead. It makes me worried that Elizabeth has held one back.”

“Another claimant in the proving? That would be most irregular.”

“It would.” Which made it odd for the ultra-conservative Elizabeth. I still couldn’t understand her reason for favouring one untried daughter over the others. No one could ever accuse our mother of being sentimental. She only ever made decisions based on cold hard logic. “But I need to know for sure. Can you help me?”

She nodded, her expression thoughtful. “I should be able to find something to pattern one of Davison’s followers. He may have left papers, or perhaps I can question the staff, if any remain. Someone will know something, I am sure.”

“Hang on,” said Ben. “Let’s look at all the angles here. Carl could have made the whole thing up. Maybe he was trying to lure
you
into an ambush, and he thought hinting about mysterious sisters would be guaranteed to get you to turn up.”

“Worst ambush I’ve ever seen,” said Garth.

Ben smiled, and the two shared a rare moment of agreement. “True. It certainly didn’t turn out as he planned, if so. But we don’t even know what he intended to tell you. It might all have been rumours. We’ll never know.”

“So what are you saying? That we should wait and see?” I didn’t like surprises any more than Garth did. “Why, if Kasumi can find the answers for us?”

He waved his good hand impatiently. “We have plenty of real threats, without going looking for ones that may only be imaginary. I just think Kasumi’s skills could be put to better use.”

“In what way?” I glanced at Kasumi. She sipped her tea and followed the conversation with polite interest. It didn’t seem to bother her that we were talking about her as if she wasn’t there.

“Why don’t we send her to assassinate Alicia? Then you’d be the heir and Elizabeth would have to call off her bounty hunters. She could impersonate one of Alicia’s people perfectly and get close before Alicia realised anything was wrong.” He turned to Kasumi. “You could do that, couldn’t you?”

She shrugged. “Certainly, if I had something to pattern one of them with.”

“Yes, but how would we get that?” We’d had this conversation before, only then it had been Garth suggesting using a goblin seeming to get close to Alicia. Kasumi’s impersonation might be flawless, but the original problem was no easier to solve: how to get something to work the magic with in the first place.

“Actually, I think we’ve already got it.” He looked at me. “Those leshies you killed in the street—I grabbed a handful of ash before we left.”

I remembered him running across the road just before we left. In the chaos I hadn’t noticed what he did.

“You picked up the ashes of a dead leshy? What the hell for?”

“Because I thought we might be able to use them in a goblin spell.” Enthusiasm gleamed in his eyes as he turned back to Kasumi. “But this would be even better. That would work, wouldn’t it? You said you could do it with hair or fingernails, and they’re just dead tissue.”

“But not
burnt
tissue,” I objected.

Kasumi shook her head regretfully. “I am sorry. It is possible to assume the form of a dead person, but only if their body has not begun to decompose. I’m afraid in this case I would only be able to transform into a pile of ashes.”

“Damn.” Ben looked crestfallen.

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Garth said. “Imagine Luce if someone she thought was dead turned up alive after two days. ‘Suspicious’ wouldn’t even begin to cover it.”

True. Luce hadn’t lived as long as she had by being trusting. If only she was still on my side. I shuddered to think what new plan of attack she’d be coming up with. I needed a way to remove her from the equation.

“Back to Plan A, then.”

Kasumi nodded and rose from the table. “I will find Davison’s people and see what I can discover about this mysterious sister.”

She gave me one of her little half-bows and left the room.

Garth watched her leave with his usual scowl.

“I don’t trust her,” he grumbled. “She smells wrong.”

I rolled my eyes. Werewolves and their delicate noses. “Maybe she just smells like fox, and you want to chase her.”

“I’m not a dog.” He gave me a flat stare, but I was long past being cowed by Garth.

“I’m heading out to the stables,” I said to Ben. “Want to come?”

That earned me a raised eyebrow. “Why? Are you planning a roll in the hay?”

I grinned. “Tempting, but no. Come out and I’ll show you.”

We went outside, followed by Garth, who mumbled dire warnings about exposing ourselves outside the protection of the house. I ignored him. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny but with enough breeze to cut the heat—a day to lift the spirits and make you glad to be alive. Yes, there were a lot of people trying to kill me, and some of them had magical abilities, but a short walk between buildings wasn’t much of a risk. No one could even sneeze within earshot of the estate without being caught on camera.

Besides which, I needed room for what I had planned.

A row of stalls opened onto the outside of the stables. In days past they would have housed a whole herd of happy horses checking out the view across the fields and the training ring, but now they stood empty. Leandra’s only interest in horses had been in eating them.

The inside of the building had once been divided into more stalls, tack rooms and other essentials, but Leandra had hollowed it out, and now it was a great empty shell, dark and cool.

“See? No hay.” I flicked on the lights, then waved my hand at the vast empty space. The weak bulbs did little to chase away the dimness. It smelled of horse, and hay, and honest sweat and leather, together with the not-altogether-unpleasant aroma of old horse dung.

“You could hold a ball in here,” Ben said, his footsteps echoing as he moved into the centre of the emptiness.

“Or a soccer game,” said Garth, pulling the big sliding door closed behind us with a crash.

“Why so much space?” Ben asked. “What did Leandra use this for?”

“Let me show you. Garth, face the wall.”

He did as he was told, and I pulled off my T-shirt and stepped out of my shorts. Ben’s eyebrows climbed into his hair and disappeared.

“What are you doing?” He threw a mischievous glance at Garth’s broad back. “You want to try it
without
hay?”

“Life isn’t
all
about sex, you know.” I peeled off my underwear, feeling a little of the old Kate’s self-consciousness, despite my best attempt at shifter pragmatism. He was a very new partner, after all.

His gaze roamed appreciatively over my body.

“Of course it is. What fool told you that?”

Garth snorted, but didn’t turn around.

I stepped into the middle of the concrete floor to give myself plenty of room, its rough surface cool beneath my bare feet. Then I closed my eyes and gave in to the urge for union that always nagged at the back of my brain. I felt the familiar rush of warmth and elation as the barrier between the two parts of myself dropped away. Dimly I was aware of my body expanding and changing as I revelled in the sweet release of oneness.

When I opened my eyes my vision was different, sharper. I could see every speck of dirt on the floor, every tiny mote of dust that floated in the beams of sunlight from the high windows. Colours were brighter. Garth’s aura blazed orange, outlining him in fire. He’d turned around—hopefully
after
I’d taken dragon shape.

Ben’s face was a different, bleaker, picture. I bent to bring my massive head closer to his.

“What’s wrong?” My voice echoed in the empty building, deep and powerful. He stepped back as my breath huffed across his face, lifting his hair.

He shook his head. “This is just hard to get used to. Every time I see you like this I remember how much I hate dragons. I couldn’t bear it if you became like one of them.”

He looked away, and some of the pleasure I felt in being in my trueshape leaked away. This was me, just as much as my human form. If he couldn’t even look at me in this form, we had a problem.

“I’m still Kate. I’m not going to change.”

He shrugged, as if to say I already had, which was kind of hard to argue with, considering I was currently the size of a bus and armoured in scales. But inside, where it counted—I was still the same person, wasn’t I?

It was too much to deal with right now. I spread my wings and reared up on my hind legs, enjoying the chance to stretch muscles that rarely got a workout these days. Most dragons had a place like this—a warehouse, a remote clearing, a barn—where they could take trueshape unseen. It felt so good.

And sometimes it had a purpose. I lowered my head to my front leg and nuzzled at it, trying to hook a tooth under the edge of a scale. Humans didn’t know how lucky they were to have hands. Clever little monkeys.

“What are you doing?” Garth asked. His expression was one of childlike wonder; he’d only seen me change a couple of times before. Shame Ben didn’t see my trueshape the way Garth did.

I didn’t reply. Proceedings were at a delicate stage. I tugged with a quick jerk of the head, and succeeded in prying a scale loose. It lay on the floor, catching the light from the windows like a piece of shimmering golden glass. I rested one taloned foot on it.

“What does it look like?” Again my voice boomed, filling the emptiness. Some dirt shook loose from the rafters above and pattered down onto the concrete floor.

“You’re sending a message to someone?” Smart wolf. “Who?”

“Alicia.” This time I remembered to keep my voice down.

Ben frowned. “A death threat? Really?”

Something dark stirred in me at the doubt in his tone. Did he think I was weak? Powerless? Dragon thoughts came more easily in dragon shape, and no dragon liked to be questioned. I drew in a deep breath. It took an effort to remember that this was Ben, and I loved him. His human doubts were only realistic, given my current circumstances.

“Yes. Really. Summon a herald.”

I placed a talon on the glittering scale just so, then leaned my weight on it. It snapped with a distinct crack. Satisfied, I regarded the broken halves. This was a most ancient threat, one that no dragon could misunderstand.
I will break you as easily as I broke this scale, and all your mighty armour will be no protection
. Once Alicia received this, she would be looking over her shoulder every minute, waiting for my shadow to fall on her. Nothing Luce could say would prod her into action.

Meanwhile, I would be moving in a different direction entirely.

“Is Uncle Ben a dragon too?” Lachie bobbed up out of the pool again, wet curls slicked down against his head, and hurled another question at me. He shook his head and water sprayed across me where I sat on the edge, dangling my feet in the clear blue depths. The rippling water cast dancing reflections on the glass walls of the pool house, long shimmering streamers of light. We were in our own little chlorine-scented world, just the two of us again, at least for an hour or two, and he’d been peppering me with questions the whole time.