Twiceborn (12 page)

But I knew the tapes would show nothing. I’d been betrayed. It happened to us all in time. Dragons were a backstabbing race by nature. But this was my first time, and though I’d expected the rage, the pain truly surprised me. I hadn’t realised how fond I’d grown of Jason.

And Luce too. Was she a willing participant in this, or had Jason betrayed her as well? If he had she was likely dead by now. I clenched my fists so hard my nails cut into my palms. The pain helped me hold back shameful tears.

“It’s lucky for him his child is already dead,” I said when I had mastered myself. “Otherwise I’d wring its neck with my bare hands.”

Then I remembered the female. “But there’s still the wife …”

Garth’s face was white with shock and something that looked like fear, but he drew me back downstairs and urged me into a chair in the sunlit kitchen. I stared at my bare feet, cold on the tiled floor, and didn’t realise I was shaking till he pressed a fresh cup of coffee into my hands. Little ripples trembled on its surface, its delicious aroma strangely out of place in this new, darker world.

“They split a while ago—before the kid died,” he said. “They hate each other now. You might be doing him a favour if you got rid of her.”

Well, that would never do. I drew in deep shuddering breaths, trying to think. The steel benches gleamed in the first light of the day; the cheery red appliances looked the same as they had five minutes ago, but everything had changed. “Call Trevor. Get the pack out here to hunt him down. Find out where he’s gone, and if Luce is involved.”

Garth recoiled. Clearly he believed her innocent, but I could rule nothing out.

“I’ll kill him myself if he’s hurt her,” he said, his grey eyes fierce.

I nodded, barely listening, dreaming already of vengeance for my battered heart. When I was queen, Jason would pay.

CHAPTER TEN

Déjà vu. Another night journey on the M1, this time heading south. A tense silence filled the car. Ben’s body pressed against mine, but his warmth did little to reassure me.

The smell of smoke filtered in from outside. Fires in the national park again, most likely. Summer was peak bushfire season. At this point a bushfire almost seemed preferable to whatever Nada had in store.

No one spoke. The road unrolled before us, the steady drone of the engine the only sound. The lights of passing cars whooshed past like little beacons of normalcy in the darkness. I edged a little closer to Ben.

After a time I realised I could see other lights. In the tense darkness of the car, the nimbus around each of our kidnappers glowed softly. All three were different colours. Damn. I wished I’d had more time to find out what Ben knew about this.

Micah shone with a faint orange tint, like the man I’d seen at the shops in Curtin Road. Was that really only yesterday? So much had happened since then. The werewolf who’d attacked me had also carried that same faint orange aura. Were they all werewolves? Or were the colours random? Another question to add to the list.

Nada’s aura was blue, a pale arctic shade. Suited the cold bitch. Maybe she was a were-polar bear.

I frowned, something struggling to the surface of my mind. As if a bubble popped, the knowledge suddenly appeared. She was a griffin, blue as all the lesser creatures of air were. And I’d seen her before.

What the hell? I shivered, my skin crawling. Where had that come from?

I sneaked a glance out of the corner of my eye at the man next to me. His aura shone a dull muddy brown. No miraculous bubble-popping this time. He could be anything. Or maybe his soul was just dirty. Not surprising, if he made a habit of kidnapping people at gunpoint.

He’d put the gun away now, but I daresay he could draw it fast enough if he needed to. Not that either of us were much threat with our hands tied in a car travelling at 110 kilometres an hour. What were we going to do? Open the door and jump out? It’d be certain death.

Where the hell were they taking us? Sydney, or further south? The cable tie was already cutting into my wrists. Sydney was an hour away. That would be bad enough. What if we were headed for Melbourne? Ten hours in the car with these clowns and jumping out might start looking a whole lot more attractive.

I glanced at the door. If they had any sense they probably had the child-safe lock on anyway. I went back to staring out the window and reading road signs as they loomed out of the dark. Anything to avoid seeing those strange coloured auras around my fellow passengers. I tried not to think about what might happen when we got wherever we were going. I tried not to think at all.

After nearly an hour of this my wrists had passed through agony into blessed numbness, and at last we turned off on to the Pacific Highway. In a couple of hours the city would start to stir, and this road would be choked with traffic, funnelling toward the Harbour Bridge and the central business district, but for now it was quiet. As the skyscrapers of the CBD appeared glittering out of the night we turned off down Military Road, whizzing past silent shops and restaurants.

I hadn’t been this way since last time I took Lachie to the zoo. We did our animals proud in Sydney—Taronga Zoo had a prime piece of real estate right on the northern shore of the harbour, with million-dollar views across to the Opera House and the city. Funny how tame even the most exotic of Taronga’s residents looked now compared to the creatures in the car with me.

We joined the right-turn lane down towards Taronga. Wherever we were going must be close; much further and we’d end up in the harbour.

At the big roundabout before the zoo we turned off and purred through the dark side streets. The closer we got to the water, the bigger the houses grew. This was Mosman, enclave of the offensively wealthy. You wouldn’t get much change out of three or four million for any of these places, with their city views and their “architect-designed” structures. Some of the oldest ones sat on huge blocks and looked more like small country estates than suburban houses. The land alone probably cost more than I’d earn in my lifetime. Old money.

At last we turned into a driveway barred by high iron gates. The sandstone wall on either side looked so old it might have been built by the convicts. The gates slid open and the car crunched across gravel into a huge courtyard featuring a fountain to rival the Trevi in Rome. Behind it loomed a house that looked as if it had come straight off the set for
Gone With the Wind
, complete with huge portico and massive Corinthian columns.

No grand entrance for us, though. We followed the drive around to a separate garage the size of a small barn. From the back the house was no less huge, though not as imposing, and it tickled at my memory. Micah and his mate hustled us out of the car and we crunched across more gravel—there would be no sneaking up on this place—to a side door of ordinary size, and suddenly I had it. I’d been here before, dropping off one of those mysterious envelopes.

“Valeria’s house,” Ben whispered as Micah shoved us inside. “Don’t tell them anything.”

Well, that should be easy. I couldn’t tell what I didn’t know.

We entered a huge kitchen/eating area, all gleaming steel and granite. Utensils hung from ordered racks and two outsized ovens stood side by side. Jamie Oliver would have been proud to call it home. At least twenty chairs were spaced along a long table. How many people lived here?

Our captors marched us down a carpeted hall till we arrived at a large lounge room. One long wall made entirely of glass offered a stunning view of the Opera House and Bridge across the water, with the lights of the city behind them.

A man rose from a chair by the windows. The short hair threw me for a minute, but then he turned, and the shock of seeing that face again felt like a kick to the gut.

This just got better and better. What in hell was my ex doing here?

Jason looked as shocked to see me as I was to see him. We stared at each other for a long, horrified moment, then he whirled on Nada.

“What’s
she
doing here?”

Ben moved closer. Funny, though; he didn’t look a bit surprised. I glared at him, and he looked away, abashed. Clearly, if this relationship was going to last, we had to work on his communication skills.

Nada looked like the cat that ate the cream. She stalked forward in her designer heels, all fluid and smug and ready to pounce.

“Why don’t you tell me?” she purred.

“What are you talking about? I haven’t seen her in months.”

I stared at him. The last time we’d met had been at Lachie’s funeral, when I’d still been so angry with him I couldn’t even bear to look at him. With that new haircut he looked as he had in my dream. And with the dark glass behind him—what the
hell
?—I could plainly see the faint red glow pulsing off him.
You have
got
to be kidding me
. What next? If someone had told me my mother was an alien I couldn’t have been more surprised.

“And yet here she is, turning up in such unexpected places, with that low-life friend of yours. Very suspicious.”

Jason glanced at Ben, as if he’d just realised he was there too. Emotion flashed across his face, too fleeting to identify. Fear? Anger?

“He’s a herald, Nada. What do you think you’re doing? Why are they tied up?”

“Kate’s a herald too,” said Ben.

I doubt Nada even heard him. She was too busy giving Jason the death stare. I felt like joining her. It was hard to believe I’d ever loved this piece of scum. Was there no end to his betrayals?

“Very convincing.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “You play the innocent so well. I hope Valeria finds your act as entertaining. You told her you poisoned Leandra. You were the golden boy then, weren’t you? But word on the street is that this thrall of yours stabbed her to death. What game are you playing at, Jason?”

Ben leapt to my defence. “She hasn’t stabbed anyone!”

“You’re out of your mind. If she’s anyone’s thrall, it’s not mine. She hates me. There’s a reason we’re divorced, you know.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared out over the harbour as if the conversation held no further interest for him.

Nada clenched her fists. “We’ll let Valeria be the judge, shall we?”

His glance was contemptuous. “I’m sure Valeria will be simply
thrilled
at your assault on two heralds. Do what you like. It’s your funeral.”

We seemed to have reached an impasse.

“Jason, this is insane. You know the penalties for interfering with heralds,” said Ben. “We have nothing to do with this. Tell her to let us go. The queen’s peace—”

“Shut up, messenger boy,” Nada cut in. “Micah, take these two away. Put them in separate rooms.”

“And cut off those ridiculous cuffs,” Jason added. “Are we afraid of humans now?”

Micah obeyed. As I rubbed the circulation back into my wrists a familiar ringtone, slightly muffled, broke the tense silence. My phone, in my handbag, which Micah had brought in from the car along with Ben’s first aid kit.

“Get it,” Jason told the gunman.

Without comment Micah passed the bag to Jason, who dug out the phone and checked the display. For a moment I thought he was going to let me take the call, as if we were partners again and answering my phone was something he did all the time.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Nada. “Give me that!”

She snatched the phone from his hand and ripped the battery out of the back, cutting the sound off mid-ring.

“Get them out of here,” she snapped.

Behind her, Jason still held my bag. Horror flashed across his face as he reached into it again, but by the time he looked up he’d got himself under control. He slipped something into the pocket of his jeans and dropped the bag on the nearest couch.

His eyes met mine as Micah took my elbow to lead me away. Only one thing in there could cause such consternation. The mysterious black stone.

He still watched me as I left the room, his expression unreadable.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The pack had tracked Luce to a dingy warehouse near the airport. Rain hammered the car roof as Garth drove through the industrial area. At this time of night the streets were deserted. Ugly grey buildings loomed out of the downpour as we passed, locked behind their steel mesh fences. Fast food wrappers and other junk swirled in the water running down the gutters. Lovely neighbourhood.

I checked my watch as a jet roared overhead. Probably one of the last; it was nearly eleven, which meant the airport would soon close for the night. Though if the thunder rumbling in the distance got much closer the point would be moot.

A couple of blocks from our destination Garth pulled in next to a heavily graffitied bus shelter. A man waited there, coat collar turned up against the weather, cap jammed down on his head: Trevor, the pack leader. The rain pelted down so hard he got drenched just getting into the car.

“What a night.” He wiped his face; a pointless exercise. Water dripped off him all over the Merc’s leather seats.

“The storm seems very localised.” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the rain and the rhythmic thud of the wipers.

The clouds had gathered the closer we got to the airport. Thunder rumbled ominously, like a beast prowling closer.

“That’s because she has an ala in there.” Trevor’s expression was sour.

Ah. That made sense. The ale were demons of bad weather, often appearing as a black wind or a storm. We didn’t get many in Australia; they preferred their climate a little cooler, and getting them to forsake the ice and snow of the northern hemisphere took some doing, though they’d make an exception for a good cyclone now and then. I wondered where my sister had managed to find this one—or what she’d promised it to work for her.

They liked to eat children, and our royal mother would not be impressed if that had been the inducement. She’d become ever more conservative as she aged, and didn’t like anything in her kingdom that might set the humans aflutter. She was paranoid about the shifter world being discovered, which in this internet age of mobile phones with their ever-present cameras seemed inevitable. A modern queen should have a disaster plan already in place. Modern technology was not some passing fad. We’d had a few close calls already. Fortunately the preference of most humans to dismiss as hoaxes anything they didn’t understand or wish to believe in worked in our favour.