Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) (13 page)

“In a wheelchair?”

“No, on a hospital bed. You were unconscious. Drugged, I think. Then they strapped you to this chair and fitted the bomb around your neck. They said I would be a familiar face when you woke up to stop you doing anything stupid, and I was to tell you that if you tried taking trueshape they’d detonate the bomb.”

Well, that was a smart move. Whoever was running this show—and I seriously doubted it was Wilson—knew quite a bit about me. They’d used silver nets to capture a roomful of shifters without casualties, and had Corinne bound in silver, so they obviously knew that shifters couldn’t take trueshape or access their other powers while constrained in silver. And somehow they’d discovered that silver no longer had that effect on me, alone of all the shifters. Since Leandra’s consciousness had transferred to my human body through that damn channel stone that had started the whole ball game, I’d been immune to silver. And bane leaf, of course, which was a side effect that had saved my life twice already.

So, how to stop a dragon taking trueshape when you couldn’t use the dampening effects of silver? The collar bomb was quite a neat solution. I would have been all admiration if it hadn’t been my head in the firing line.

“How would they know? Have they got some way of measuring magic flow or something?”

“I don’t think it’s anything that sophisticated.” She pointed to the camera mounted in the corner of the room. “They’re watching us.”

I glared at the camera. Its blank eye stared back, unconcerned. “Are we still at Thorne’s place?”

“No. They took us somewhere in a helicopter. I was blindfolded, so I didn’t see where we landed, but it wasn’t a short trip. We could be back in Sydney. Or even Canberra, I suppose.”

The nation’s capital, where Parliament House proudly flew the Australian flag from atop its green hill. I suppose secret detention facilities for shifters weren’t out of the question, though they’d never come up on any of the tourist guides I’d seen. They’d have to be pretty recent, too.

Or perhaps we were in a hospital. Corinne had mentioned a hospital bed. What had they been doing to me? The back of my head ached where I’d been knocked out, but only mildly. My dragon healing powers had mended that while I slept. Nothing else seemed sore. I had visions of being opened up in some kind of mad scientist’s lab while people poked and prodded at my supernatural insides, but I would be hurting now if I’d been in surgery, so clearly that hadn’t happened. What, then?

I strained my enhanced hearing to its limits, searching for any clues. I heard someone walking down the corridor outside, in high heels from the tapping sound of it. Each step echoed in a way that suggested lots of concrete. Further away I heard the boom of a heavy door closing. Again, concrete and echoes. We could be underground.

“Are there any windows?” The harsh fluorescent light in the room suggested not, but I couldn’t see the wall behind me.

“No, but there’s something like a TV screen back there.”

“Turn me around so I can see it.”

“I don’t think we should move you.”

“Corinne, they don’t want their star prisoner blowing up by accident. I’m sure this thing will only go off if they deliberately detonate it.” “Sure” might have been a little too strong, but I was fairly confident. “They’re just trying to scare you.”

“Well, it worked,” she grumbled, but she tipped my chair and swivelled it carefully on its back legs till I was facing the far wall. Not an easy thing to do when she was wearing handcuffs, and she hissed as they bit into her skin.

The screen was set into the wall, not sitting on top of it, and if it was a TV there were no buttons to work it. It looked more like one of those one-way glass windows you see in interrogation rooms in movies, but since movies were my only experience of such things I couldn’t be sure.

“What do you think’s going on?” Corinne sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall, her silk ball gown puddling around her. She looked exhausted, with dark rings under her big brown eyes, and horribly overdressed for our current situation. Was it the middle of the night? How long had I been out?

“God knows. People have been getting pretty jumpy about shifters lately.”

She nodded. “They’re about to pass that new bill in Parliament, like the anti-terrorist one. Arrest without charge, detainment for seven days. Just on suspicion of being a shifter.”

It was true. The government had responded to public hysteria with a show of force. Parliament had been recalled early from its summer recess. They had to look like they were doing something to combat the new menace, even if what they did was basically useless. It hadn’t bothered me because I didn’t see how they were going to arrest anyone when they couldn’t tell who was a shifter and who wasn’t. Besides, most dragons had politicians on the payroll. We were the last people who should have needed to worry. The new laws were more likely to be used against poor homeless guys as an excuse to get them off the streets.

I closed my eyes, wishing I had a wall to lean against too. “But why target Thorne’s party?”

Someone had told them who’d be there—basically the cream of Sydney’s shifter society. When they’d even known about my immunity to silver, it was obvious they had very specific inside information. Betrayal was nothing new for dragons, of course, but it seemed a dangerous game for a shifter to play. How could they be sure they wouldn’t be caught in the trap themselves?

Perhaps it was Daiyu’s latest move against me. She certainly had the most to gain from the sudden disappearance of the domain’s queen and the seven women with the only other claim to it. But the new laws would only allow our captors to hold us for seven days without charge. What could she accomplish in seven days?

But then, it seemed pretty damned unlikely that the new laws allowed for strapping collar bombs around suspects’ necks. If this taskforce was legit, they were certainly playing fast and loose with the rules. Could they even be in league with Daiyu?

God, things were always so complicated when you were dealing with dragons. My brain felt too woozy from the drugs to attempt to work it all out. It didn’t seem likely that Daiyu would have that sort of pull away from Japan, but who knew?

A crackling noise from the camera made us both jump.

“Ms O’Connor, we would like to ask you a few questions.”

I couldn’t see the speaker, but the sound was so distorted I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.

“Sure. Come in for a chat. You might have to bring your own chair, though.”

“That won’t be necessary. I can see you perfectly well from where I am.”

I glared at the dark glass in front of me, but I could see nothing, not even the suspicion of a movement. “But I can’t see you. I don’t care for talking to disembodied voices.”

“No need to take that attitude. Your associates are depending on you to be co-operative.”

The black glass flickered, and a picture appeared, of a familiar glowering face. Garth stood, arms folded across his bulky chest, inside a cage whose bars shone with the familiar glint of silver. Two guards stood opposite his cage, guns levelled at him. Geez, Louise. Garth was good, but not
that
good. They didn’t need the guns with that much silver surrounding him. There was no way he’d even be able to touch those bars, much less break through them. I suppose they might get scowled to death, but otherwise those guards were completely safe.

“Those guns you see are loaded with silver,” the voice continued. Well,
der
. Of course they were. “If you do not co-operate fully, Mr Maclaren will be shot.”

Now, at last, fear cut through the fog of drugs in my brain.

“Just like that? No charges, no trial, nothing? I thought you people worked for the government. You can’t just go around murdering people.”

“Yes, Ms O’Connor, just like that. Why, did you think dragons were the only people who got to kill whomever they please with impunity? I’m sure Mr Thorne would be interested in your opinion.”

Fear sank its icy claws into my heart. How could I deal with this person? Whoever it was seemed to know everything, and I knew nothing, not even their identity. And Garth just stood there, so vulnerable. All his strength meant nothing against the threat of silver. The memory of Jerry’s face, horribly contorted in death, sent a shiver down my spine.

“What proof do I even have that he’s still alive?”

“Are your eyes not proof enough?”

“You could have recorded this hours ago. He might already be dead.”

There was a crackling sound, then an amplified tap, like someone testing a microphone.

“Mr Maclaren, Ms O’Connor wishes to confirm your wellbeing.”

Garth obviously heard the voice too, for on the screen he lifted his head, searching for the source of the sound.

“Oh, yeah? Let me talk to her then.”

“Garth!” Oh, God, please let him be safe until I could get to him. My panicked heart pounded in my throat, and I had to swallow hard before I could speak. “Can you hear me?”

Garth’s grey eyes softened as he turned to face the camera. “Loud and clear.”

“Are you okay?”

His mouth twitched into a hard line. “I reckon you could call this a glass-half-empty moment. What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“When have you ever known me to do anything stupid?”

Only about three times a day, you daft bastard
. The picture disappeared from the screen before I could say anything else.
Just this once, let him make the smart decision
.

“Satisfied?” said the voice.

“What do you want from me?”

“Don’t be so quick to assume I want something from you—other than information, of course. It’s possible I might be able to offer you something very dear to your heart.”

He meant Lachie. My stomach lurched. Oh, shit, he must be working for Daiyu. Was it Jason? My fists clenched at the thought. I’d kill him.

“Don’t you want to know what it is?”

Corinne was watching me, wide-eyed and scared. I swallowed my fear and put on a brave face.

“Not particularly, but it sounds like you want to tell me, so knock yourself out.”

There was a pause, as if the speaker were hoping I’d cave and ask him. Probably spoiled his big moment. Pretentious jerk. My heart hammered as I waited for his response.

“Your humanity, Ms O’Connor.”

“My—what?” Not what I was expecting. I let out a relieved breath. He didn’t have Lachie after all. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. You started life as plain Kate O’Connor, then became entangled with Leandra Elizabeth, and now—now you are unique among dragons. A human with the strengths of a dragon. A dragon with some unusual human advantages. I want to know how you did it.”

“Why? I thought you only cared about hunting down shifters. What does it matter how I became one?”

“Because if you tell me, I might be able to
un
do it. And I think that might interest you very much.”

As the speaker fell silent, the door opened, catching us both by surprise. Corinne scrambled to her feet as three men entered the little room. They each carried a baton tipped with a silver-plated spike. One took Corinne by the arm and hustled her out the door. She looked back over her shoulder as she left, her eyes wide and desperate.

“Where are you taking her?” I didn’t really expect a reply, but it was worth trying.

“She can rejoin the others now you’re awake,” the taller man said. “We weren’t going to risk a human in here until you knew the situation.” He jerked his head at the collar bomb.

Presumably it would have been fine with him if I’d accidentally blown Corinne up, since she was a shifter.

I studied them as they unbound me from the chair and hauled me to my feet. They were both human. The one who’d spoken wore a pair of glasses like something out of the fifties, with thick black rims. Real glass or goblin glass? I was suspicious of everything now. The other man had grey hair and the beginnings of a pot belly sagging over his belt. Both wore dark blue uniforms. They looked like policemen, but I was past believing everything I saw.

“Move,” Glasses Guy said. “Don’t do anything stupid, and the commander won’t have to press the button.”

My captors prodded me out into a concrete corridor that echoed to the sound of their booted feet. It was grey and poorly lit, and looked like something out of a B-grade spy movie.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Somewhere that knows what to do with freaks like you.” Pot Belly shoved me in the back with his baton, so I started walking.

“And where’s that?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Excellent. My prison came complete with schoolyard taunts.

We arrived at a door painted with a large number three. Glasses Guy opened it to reveal a stairwell, and we clattered down, passing door number four and stopping at number five. Definitely underground, then. And everywhere I turned there were more cameras, so I gave up any idea of compelling these guys. Big Brother was watching.

Level five had blue lino on the floor and more effective lighting. But the long corridor that stretched out from the stairwell was just as deserted as the one on level three, which I’d now begun to think of as the prison level. There was an antiseptic smell here that gave me the uneasy feeling that this was the medical level.

The uneasiness increased as my escorts took me into a room that looked like a doctor’s surgery, complete with an examination table and a selection of medical instruments. A scalpel gleamed invitingly, but the ever-present cameras were watching. Besides, I wanted to know what the hell was going on, so I let them shove me into the chair by the desk.

There was another door opposite the one I’d come through, and in a moment this opened and two men walked in, at which point my escorts left the way we’d come.

One of the men was Commander Wilson, still dapper in his grey suit, and he took the chair on the other side of the desk. The other was a small Indian man wearing a white lab coat over his scrubs. I’d never seen him before, but his aura gave him away.