“You’re one of Faith’s people?”
He folded arms that were thicker round than my thigh and scowled as if I were personally responsible for her disappearance. “That’s right. Where is she?”
I pointed at the gaping hole in the corridor floor just beyond them. “Two floors down. They were doing some kind of experiments on her.”
No need to mention the channel stone. A low-level shifter like him wouldn’t know what it was anyway.
His dark face paled. “Is she alive?”
“Last I saw she was. Giving them hell, too.”
He turned without a word and strode into the corridor, bellowing for his friends. Luce helped me carry Garth out of the room in time to see the troll and three equally massive friends leap into the hole.
“Where are they going?” Hope asked. Her wine-red gown was almost black now it was wet, and clung to her legs in a way that looked very uncomfortable. She and my other sisters were milling in the corridor with their followers like a herd of sheep. Yarrow waited by the door. Everyone looked at me, some with suspicion, others with hope. Valiant seemed more friendly towards me, but Hope looked as if she hadn’t made up her mind yet.
“Looking for Faith. I saw her down there.” She didn’t need to know more than that. She had no more love for Faith than she did for me.
“What now?” Luce asked.
“The lifts are that way.” Hope pointed. “Let’s go.”
“Seen any Jaeger men?” I asked Luce, ignoring Hope.
“None. Looks bad.”
I nodded.
“What do you mean?” Hope asked, glaring at each of us in turn.
Bloody teenagers. The girl didn’t have two brain cells to rub together. “It means that if they’re not here shooting at us, they must be setting up to shoot us somewhere else. Somewhere they think gives them a better chance of bringing us down.”
“Like when we get out of the lift,” Luce said pointedly.
That stopped her for a minute. But only for a minute.
“Then we’ll take the stairs.”
Luce rolled her eyes.
“Look after Garth,” I told her, and she nodded, slinging him over her shoulder as if he weighed nothing. She was so short his long legs nearly reached the ground.
“Better to take them by surprise,” I said to Hope, and opened myself to my essence.
She stepped back abruptly, suspicion turning to fear, and took trueshape herself, but I had no intention of attacking her. I turned my attention to the ceiling as the corridor filled with dragons, no one wanting to be the last one left in vulnerable human form. Hope was gold, like most of the others. Valiant was a reddish shade I’d never seen before, a beautiful coppery bronze.
Together we battered through the ceiling. I hurled blocks of concrete and pieces of twisted steel away, sheltering my friends with my body. The boom of exploding concrete shook the building, and I wondered if we might bring the whole thing down on our heads. Yarrow and Luce manhandled Garth up in our wake, though Yarrow could have done it on his own. He’d taken a form that looked like a walking tree, tall and strong.
I spared a glance to make sure Corinne was following too, then turned back to the task at hand. One or more of my sisters had used dragonfire to make the job easier, and bits of flaming debris fell past. The lights flickered and went out as we smashed our way higher, but there was plenty of light for dragon eyes.
Flame glowered below us in the pit we’d made, like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Minus the naked writhing bodies, of course. Concrete dust hung in the air, adding to the otherworldly feel. Somewhere water gushed from a broken pipe, and I bared my teeth in a dragon smile. That would teach them to take on the shifters. Their little hidey-hole was destroyed. But where had the insects scurried to?
We smashed through into a bigger space with high ceilings. The roar of assault rifles greeted us, but their bullets glanced harmlessly off dragon scales. We were in the foyer of a large building, all massive pillars and high ceilings. Outside it was night, and I caught a glimpse of green through the glass walls, but the only interest I had in my surroundings now was to find and destroy the insects that buzzed at us. Their bullets could not be permitted to hurt the one I loved again. I roared, and the building shook with my displeasure. My body thrummed with power, and the joy of the hunt thrilled in my veins.
The insects were using the pillars as cover. I leapt forward and blasted the nearest group with dragonfire, burning out their little nest. The smell of scorched flesh filled my mouth with saliva and my heart with satisfaction. Around me my sisters were doing the same, and the roar of flame and the screams of terrified humans made sweet music together. The fools had chosen a bad place to make their stand. Here we had enough room to move. Perhaps they had thought our size would make us slow, but their lack of knowledge proved fatal.
The chatter of gunfire died away as we hunted through the flames and smoke. We were in our element, fast and unstoppable. Silver bullets meant nothing to us. Even grenades had little effect. This was joy; this was living. There was nothing like the taking of another life, the slash of claws and the spray of blood, to make one feel truly alive. We were death incarnate, sinuous, beautiful. None could stand before us.
One of my sisters took a blast at close quarters. Her scales still sparkled, stronger than steel, as she flowed forward to claim the life of the one who had opposed her. I watched with satisfaction as she tore off the man’s head, his blood running red from her jaws. There was a reason dragons were the most feared of all the shifters. In trueshape, the only thing that could damage us was another dragon. It was time the humans remembered us. Remembered us and feared us.
Gradually I became aware that the crackle of flame was the only sound I could hear. No more gunfire. Not even any screams or groans. I looked around the devastated foyer, eyeing the other dragons hulking through the smoke. My sisters gazed back, gold or silver bodies shining, their reptilian eyes unblinking. No one wanted to be first to resume human form.
I certainly wasn’t ready to die yet, so I kept trueshape as I padded over broken concrete and shattered floor tiles toward the massive hole I’d come through. Dead bodies lay all around and the smell of roasting flesh made my mouth water. I peered through the smoke into the dark depths of the hole.
An improbable sight met my eyes: a grizzly bear holding an unconscious man, cradling him like a baby. Luce was at his side, still in human form. Other familiar faces crept into view, including Blue, thank God.
“It’s safe to come up now,” I said, my voice rumbling deep in my chest. Smoke huffed from my nostrils as I spoke. I hoped it was true—I didn’t think my sisters would attack my friends, with their own supporters equally vulnerable.
Luce nodded and leapt for the edge of the hole, spraying concrete dust and bits of debris on the people below as she hauled herself up. Then she turned and gestured to the grizzly, who passed Garth up to her. Despite her small size, she took his weight and laid him gently down.
Yarrow was next, still in grizzly form. A much more sensible choice than his previous treelike incarnation, given the fire all around. Trees and flames were not a good combination.
The pillar nearest the hole creaked ominously. Luce’s gaze flicked around the smoke-filled foyer, assessing the damage.
“Hurry up,” she called into the hole. “We’ll be lucky if the ceiling doesn’t come down on us.”
My sisters had been a little overeager with the dragonfire. Everything that could have burned, had. At one point during the battle I’d felt a few drops of water as the sprinkler system tried to come on, but someone had blasted that too and melted all the sprinkler heads out of existence. Water was cascading down the far wall from a broken—or more likely melted—pipe in the ceiling.
Now, as my temper cooled, I began to regret all the charred corpses. But I hadn’t been prepared to risk Garth anywhere near their silver bullets, and they’d shown no desire to stop firing until we’d made them. Had they known wha
t they were signing on for when they joined Taskforce Jaeger? I didn’t want a war with the humans, but pacifism isn’t an option when your enemy is trying to take you down. Not unless your name’s Gandhi, and I would be first to admit that I wasn’t in his league.
Outside I could hear sirens wailing in the distance. Fire engines or police—probably both. It was still dark beyond the glass walls of the foyer, many of them shattered by gunfire or dragon tails, and there was no one on the street. Not that I could see, anyway. It would be just my luck if there was someone hidden, filming the whole thing on their damned mobile phone. I was getting mighty tired of starring in Internet videos.
“Let’s go,” I said when my team was all gathered around me. Corinne and Blue huddled close together. The selkie woman’s face was white beneath the heavy fall of her dark hair, and her evening gown certainly wasn’t improved by scrambling over broken concrete. It had been a rough night for everyone. Blue was swaying on his feet. Even Yarrow looked tired as he shimmered back into human form and started stripping the clothes from a dead body.
When he was dressed he hoisted Garth into his arms again. The werewolf was still unconscious, which worried me, but he was breathing and I saw no sign of silver poisoning. That would have to do until we could get him somewhere safer.
My sisters were all reunited with their followers. Faith’s people were still missing. I had no idea if they’d managed to free her, or what condition she was in, but I wasn’t waiting around to find out.
A golden dragon moved to intercept us as we headed for the nearest door. Hope, as imperious-looking in trueshape as she was in human form.
“Where are you going?”
It wasn’t quite a challenge. I was bigger than her, I was pleased to note, and I lashed my tail as I glared at her.
“Wherever I damn well please,” I growled. “Are you going to stop me?”
She glanced over her shoulder at her sisters, but none of them moved. Welcome to the proving, sweetheart. It was every dragon for herself. Together they might have been able to take me down, but none of them trusted the others enough to join forces.
The sirens were growing louder. “I suggest you follow my lead and get out of here before reinforcements arrive.” And cameras.
Hope didn’t appear to like the idea of following anyone’s lead, but the suggestion made such good sense she’d be a fool to ignore it. Valiant nodded her beautiful coppery head to me and shepherded her people out into the warm night without another word. Hope stepped aside, glowering, as we followed, but those sirens were close now, and she didn’t waste too much time glaring. The others began to disperse behind us as we headed off down a side street.
“Where the hell are we?” Yarrow asked.
“Canberra,” said Luce, who had a sense of direction like a homing pigeon. “That’s Black Mountain over there. We’ll need to find some wheels pronto if we’re going to get back to Sydney by dawn.”
We were in some kind of business park. Nothing but neat streets of office buildings surrounded us, with not a car in sight. Taxis were out of the question, even if there’d been any around, with Garth in his current condition. Too many questions.
I looked at Garth, his face a pale blur in the dark. He was stirring, trying to wriggle his way out of Yarrow’s arms. “Give him to me.”
Yarrow stopped and gave me an uncertain look. I reared up on my hind legs and took the groggy werewolf gently in my front claws.
“Put me down,” he muttered. “I can walk.”
“Bullcrap. A newborn puppy could beat you in a fight.”
“I just need a bit of food and I’ll be fine.”
He was well enough to argue. Definitely not dying, then. My heart swelled with joy.
“Keep still,” I hissed. Stupid werewolf needed someone to take care of him.
“What are you doing?” Luce’s voice was sharp.
“I’m not wandering around out here with my homicidal sisters on the loose and half the police force as well.” A blue light flashed past the end of the street as a police car headed for the building we’d just left. A plume of smoke spiralled into the dark sky above it, visible over the tops of the buildings between us. “I need to get Garth to safety.”
I spread my wings. Luce gave me a shocked look.
“You’re going to fly home?”
“Why not? It’s a three-hour drive. I can fly it in two.”
“But someone might see you.”
She’d had centuries of living with the queens’ edicts. The oldest taboo of all was showing yourself in trueshape anywhere humans might see you. And for centuries that taboo had kept the shifter world safely hidden.
“Luce. I’m so popular on YouTube already I’ve got channels dedicated to me. I think we’ve gone beyond the point of observing the old rules.”
Commander Wilson had been conspicuously absent from the battle in the foyer, as had that goblin traitor Patel. Taskforce Jaeger had known enough about us already to turn up at Gideon Thorne’s house and take us all in, easy as rounding up sheep. Hiding didn’t seem to be an option any more.
And I was sick of being a sheep. I spread my wings and leapt skyward.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I kept an eye on the horizon as I flew. I’d headed due east to get myself over the sea as quickly as possible. No point starting a new shifter panic if I could avoid it. Canberra had glittered below me as I passed, its neat circles and grids of streetlights showing the care with which the city had been laid out. It was still a hole, and cold as a dragon’s heart in winter, but at least it was easy to navigate around.
There was no sign of the grey before dawn yet, but I knew it couldn’t be far away. Elizabeth’s home—now mine—was on the very eastern edge of Sydney. With a bit of luck I could drop down out of the night sky with no one the wiser. Just as well I’d had Blue adjust the security spells already to attune them to me instead of Elizabeth, otherwise World War III would erupt when a strange dragon touched down in her garden.
I flew as high as I could without causing trouble for Garth. He was too precious to me to risk any further. Werewolves were sturdy creatures, but they weren’t completely impervious to cold, and at the speed I was travelling the wind tore at us. Damn Wilson and his pet goblin. The evening had been going so well—Thorne dead and my sisters, if not enthusiastic about the idea of sharing the domain, at least not outright rejecting it.
Instead of which, here I was, flying home with an injured werewolf clutched in my claws, the rest of my team reduced to car theft. Not the triumphant end to the evening I’d hoped for. I reckon I could have talked my sisters round given a little more time. Perhaps I still could. And there was probably one less of them to split with now.
Poor Faith. Was she even still alive? And if she was, what kind of state was she in? What Patel had done to her was sickening. She’d had no chance to prepare as Leandra had. Leandra had been a willing participant in the removal of her channel stone, forcing her essence into the stone so that she could colonise my body once I’d swallowed it. Poor Faith had been unconscious when hers was ripped from her chest, and I was very much afraid that that meant the stone was now nothing more than a pretty trinket, and Faith’s connection to her essence had been severed forever. She could never take trueshape again. What did that make her now? Not a dragon, that’s for sure. Certainly not a queen in the making any more. It might have been kinder to kill her than condemn her to such a half-life.
Garth stirred as the glow of Sydney came into view, and I finally faced the subject I’d been avoiding all this way: Garth and my new feelings for him. Everything had seemed so clear, so sharp, as I stared into his golden eyes amid the wreckage of the silver-barred cell. Now doubts were starting to creep in. I stared grimly at the horizon and that glowing city, my wing muscles burning with the labour of the long flight. I’d only known him a short time—could I really be so sure he was my soulmate? Plus he was my employee. That could make for some awkward situations.
And then
there was Ben.
I headed even further out to sea, till the glow of the city was just a smudge on the horizon. I might show up on the radar at Sydney airport, but I didn’t want them getting a look at me.
What should I do about Ben? I still loved him too, didn’t I? It didn’t feel the same as what I felt for Garth, but it was still love. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Ben. He’d saved my life, taking the blow Jason had meant for me. How could I cast him aside so soon? He’d think it was just dragon libido hankering after a new conquest. And maybe he’d be right, in a way. There was no doubt I’d changed. I experienced new heights of emotion every day—lust, hate, and a white-hot rage that terrified me. Dragon emotions were as powerful as were dragons themselves. And there was no doubt that dragons didn’t view sex and relationships in the same way that humans did.
The two sides of my personality struggled to find a compromise that I could live with, but Ben didn’t seem prepared to live with any kind of compromise. Ben had been a rock to cling to as my whole life was torn apart and put back together in a different shape, the only familiar face in a world gone crazy. For that I would be forever grateful. But he couldn’t seem to accept that I’d been changed by what I’d gone through. He still wanted the old Kate, and rejected any signs of the new one. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t give him what he wanted. I simply wasn’t the person Ben had fallen in love with any more. I was both more and less than that woman, and she was gone forever.
I turned homeward as the horizon behind me began to lighten with the first faint hint of dawn approaching. Talk about cutting it fine. Not that a big city like Sydney ever truly slept, but there’d be people up and about already, shift workers heading for work, maybe even fitness freaks out jogging in the cool pre-dawn. It couldn’t be helped. I’d just have to take my chances of being spotted.
Arrowing down out of the east, I scanned the shoreline for Elizabeth’s palatial home. It stood proud on the edge of its cliff, looking out over the ocean. The grounds were well lit. That was a good thing when you were trying to fend off intruders, but not so great when you were trying to sneak in. Hopefully the neighbours were all good sleepers.
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