Twiceborn (19 page)

At the end of the hall a smaller staircase continued up to another hall that sloped up and around a corner. Must have been an attic once, or servants’ quarters—no point bothering with level floors for mere servants. The sound of a TV drifted faintly from around the corner.

Still in the lead, Garth strode confidently around the bend and rapped on the lone door at the end of the corridor.

“Room service!”

I froze, uncertain what to do, but Luce moved up behind Garth. Guess they’d done this kind of thing before. Footsteps approached the door. As the handle began to turn Garth hurled himself against the door.

The guy who’d been opening it fell back with a cry as the door slammed him in the face. Luce and I rushed in on Garth’s heels as a second man rose from his chair. Garth bore him to the floor, where they flailed and grunted. Luce snatched up a table lamp and watched for her chance. When the other guy rolled on top, hands clenched around Garth’s throat, she smashed it over his head. He went down like a sack of potatoes and lay still.

Garth clambered to his feet and checked on the first guy. He was dazed and groaning, his nose gushing blood. Garth punched him in the head, putting him out cold, then kicked him on to his side. The casual brutality made me wince.

Suddenly I registered the other person in the room. I flew over to the big four-poster bed where Ben lay, cuffed to the bedpost with cable ties, and ripped the gag away from his mouth.

“Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

“Better now,” he said, as Garth sliced through the ties. He looked exhausted, but his smile warmed my heart.

I grabbed him.

“Thank God you’re okay.” His arms around me felt so good, I never wanted to let him go again.

His kiss left me in no doubt he felt the same. When I finally came up for air, he wore a serious expression. “How did you get here? Who are your friends?”

Garth snorted, probably at the idea of being mistaken for a friend of mine. I ignored him. “Luce and Garth—friends of Leandra’s.”

“Oh.” He eyed Luce, his expression guarded. “I thought I recognised you. You’re Leandra’s security chief, aren’t you?”

“Former security chief.”

“I’m sorry. I heard she died.”

“She didn’t
die
.” Garth clenched his massive fists and stepped closer. “Somebody
killed
her.”

“Don’t look at me,” I said.

Ben put a protective arm around my shoulders. “We had nothing to do with it. We’re heralds, not fighters. See, there’s my charm.”

He crossed to a table by the window. Our charms nestled side by side on its polished surface, his on its leather thong, mine on a silver chain. I slipped mine around my neck again.

Garth wouldn’t leave it alone. “I thought those things were supposed to protect you. Maybe you’re only pretending to be a herald.”

He stepped closer, aggression in his hunched shoulders and clenched fists. He made the generous-sized room feel smaller. I eyed the elegant couch and the delicate legs of the side tables. How long would they last if Garth decided to start another fight in here? Ben was taller but Garth had a good twenty kilos of pure muscle on him.

“‘Those things’ nullify any aggressive magic in the herald’s vicinity, but they don’t stop bullets. If someone waves a gun in my face, there’s not a lot I can do.”

“Garth,” Luce snapped. “Protecting the herald is only a by-product. They’re really meant to reassure the clients that the herald isn’t bringing any magical surprises with their delivery.”

She turned to Ben. “So why would Valeria break the queen’s peace and snatch two heralds out of their bed? It certainly looks like you’re involved.”

“That wasn’t Valeria, it was Nada. Who knows why she does anything? She’s mad as a cut snake.”

“But Valeria must have known. Have you seen her?”

“She was here last night.”

“And what did she say?”

“Nothing much. I got the impression she wasn’t that interested in me.”

Garth swore and Luce held up a slim hand to forestall another explosion. “Then why was she holding you? She must have said
something
.”

His face was bleak. “I think she wants Kate.”

“Me?” All three looked at me, Garth’s face suspicious as ever, Luce’s impossible to read. “Don’t tell me she believes that rubbish Nada’s spinning about me and Jason?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. They didn’t say anything in front of me. But there’s something going on there.”

“Bloody convenient,” Garth muttered.

Luce silenced him with a look. “Very. But also entirely probable. She hasn’t got this far without being paranoid. Frankly, I’m surprised she let you live, having taken it this far. Perhaps she’s still a little afraid of Elizabeth. Maybe she thinks as long as she wins the proving the queen will overlook the abduction of her heralds.”

Horrified, I edged closer to Ben, breathed in his familiar Ben smell. I couldn’t bear to lose him now.

“So what happens now?” he asked. “Are you going to let us go?”

“I don’t have what I came for yet.”

“And what’s that?”

“A black stone. Have you seen it?”

He shook his head.

“It’s not here,” I said. If I concentrated I could feel it, pulsing on the edge of my awareness, but nowhere close by.

She stared. “How do you know?”

Damn. When would I learn not to blurt out the first thing that came into my head? Luce’s stare would unnerve anyone. Sharks probably looked like that just before they ripped you in half. I licked my lips.

“I just do.”

And wasn’t that the freakiest thing? Why did I feel this bizarre connection to that stupid stone? What was a channel stone even
for
?

Ben looked from one to the other of us, confused, but he’d have to wait till I could get him alone. I wouldn’t be telling Luce I’d remembered its name, that was for sure. There were already too many things I couldn’t explain. Maybe Ben had heard of channel stones, even though he hadn’t recognised it when I’d shown him.

“Garth, search,” she said.

He turned the room upside down, looking as though he enjoyed the excuse for a little mayhem. I winced as he toppled the delicate tables to check their undersides. He ripped everything out of the carved wardrobe and emptied the drawers on to the floor, scattering T-shirts and underwear all over one of the unconscious men who lay there. He even went through the pockets of the two downed men. It was soon clear the stone wasn’t in the room. I resisted the urge to say
I told you so
.

“It seems you’re right,” she said. “Which means it’s probably gone to Alicia’s with the rest of them.” Her gaze rested on Ben. “Do you know where that is?”

“I’ve delivered there before. She has a house on the ridge overlooking the National Park.”

“Then that’s where we’re going. You can wave your Hermes charm and get us in to see Alicia.”

Hermes—of course. Not Robin Hood, but the messenger of the gods. Which meant the dragons thought of themselves as gods, I guess. Arrogant bastards.

“They’re not going to let you in just because you’re with me. Heralds work alone.”

“We’ll work something out.”

“Look, no offence—I appreciate the rescue and all—but it won’t work. You’ll endanger us all for nothing.”

“But we have to!” I blurted. That damned stone nagged at the back of my mind, impossible to ignore. “They helped me rescue you, now we have to help them.”

“No, we don’t,” he said gently. “This isn’t some game where each side keeps score. The proving is dangerous stuff. We need to stay right out of it.”

“But I
want
to help.” Panic tightened my throat. I had to persuade him. I needed that stone back, though I couldn’t tell him so. The first question would be “why?” and I had no answers. “If we don’t get to the bottom of this business with Leandra, I’ll never be safe.”

Ben looked less than thrilled at the thought of being dragged in front of another dragon. He glared at Luce. “What’s the point of seeing Alicia anyway? How’s that going to help get your stone back if Valeria’s got it?”

“It won’t,” she said. “But I have to warn her that Valeria’s about to unleash dragonfire, or Valeria wins and I never see the stone again.”

“Unleash—? But that’s taboo!”

She pinned him with a hard stare. “So’s kidnapping heralds. Do you really think that will stop Valeria?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

They like to call them villages up here, these suburbs sprawled either side of the Great Western Highway as it snakes its way up the mountains, as if harking back to some romantic cobblestoned English ideal. But they’re as full of concrete, glass and asphalt as any other part of Greater Sydney. McDonald’s hasn’t gained a foothold, which is a source of great pride among the residents, but there’s not much else to show you’re in the mountains, till you round a bend and catch a glimpse of tree-covered slopes falling away to the side of the road.

“Can you smell smoke?” I asked.

Garth, at the wheel again, frowned at me in the rear vision mirror. “You can smell that?”

“Sure.” It seemed pretty strong to me, but Luce and Ben shook their heads.

“How come your nose is as good as mine?”

It was a fair question. Suspicion was his natural state, but for once he had a point. Was I going to turn into a werewolf? Or did I have to wait till the full moon? But surely Garth of all people wouldn’t be asking if that was the reason. He’d know if he’d infected me.

So why was my sense of smell as good as a werewolf’s?

“There were fires at Lithgow this morning,” Luce said. “Maybe they’ve spread.”

Maybe. There was certainly enough fuel. The bulk of the Blue Mountains was national park—hectare after hectare of bushland, all dry as tinder at this time of year. Its beauty made the area a popular place to live, but every summer the residents paid the price with months of living on alert. Some years bushfires raged unchecked in the more inaccessible areas, burning out thousands of hectares. If it was a really bad year, homes were lost, but every year the threat of fire hung over the area like a pall of smoke.

I stared out the window and sighed. It wasn’t only the heightened sense of smell. There was that conversation in the motel last night. Even though Luce had dragged Garth into the bathroom to whisper to him, I’d still overheard. Much as I’d have liked to blame it on shoddy insulation, taken with the acute sense of smell and my new party trick of seeing auras round shifters, it all pointed to some supernatural explanation.

And the aura thing had started
before
Garth attacked me.

I let my head fall back against the seat and tried to ignore the other three. They’d been arguing since we’d left Leura, and all through the meal we stopped for on the way.

“Even if they let
us
in, they’re not going to accept you two,” Ben said for the third or fourth time. “They must know who you are.”

“There are precedents,” Luce said, “if you go back far enough.”

“From what I’ve heard of Alicia, she’s even more paranoid than usual for a dragon. She’s never going to trust someone so highly placed in a rival’s camp.”

“I don’t see why we’re bothering with Alicia anyway,” Garth grumbled. Luce started to speak and he cut her off. “Yes, I know, I know, we don’t want Valeria to win, but why not go straight after her? Forget Alicia! You know what it’s like once an attack starts. It’s all confusion and screaming. And the sun’s going down. There’s bound to be a chance to get to Valeria.”

He was eager as a child begging for a new toy—and I’d had some experience with that. Life with Lachie seemed further away than ever. The biggest drama on an average day had been standing in checkout lines, saying no to Lego and lollies. When had things become so surreal? In the back seat I snuggled next to Ben, who’d morphed from best friend to … well, something much more than friendly. He worked for Magic Fed Ex and apparently so did I. In the front seat, a werewolf begged his wyvern boss to let him kill a dragon. Partly to avenge a dragon’s death I may or may not have had a hand in—but I’d never know if I couldn’t recover my memories—and partly to get back a magic piece of rock. Mustn’t forget that part.

On reflection, “surreal” hardly did it justice.

Glimpses of red and pink sky peeked through the trees ahead, but it was nearly dark. We’d turned off the highway and drove along smaller roads, past houses perched among the trees and up on sandstone bluffs, their lights softly glowing in the dusk.

Gradually the houses thinned out, becoming grander as the blocks grew bigger. The road climbed higher and higher, till we were running along the ridge line, densely forested valleys falling away to either side. In daylight the view would have been spectacular.

We rounded a corner and Garth stomped on the brake, jolting us all forward against our seatbelts. A huge gum tree lay across the road.

As soon as we got out, the sap-and-sawdust smell of freshly cut timber hit my nostrils.

“Well, that was no accident,” said Luce, surveying the clean cut made by what must have been a super-large chainsaw. “Looks like we walk the rest of the way.”

“Do they know we’re coming?” Garth glared into the darkness at the side of the road, looking for something to attack. “Is Valeria trying to stop us?”

Luce snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. Valeria’s not scared of us. This isn’t to keep anyone out. It’s to keep someone in. I bet any other access roads to Alicia’s are blocked too. Valeria doesn’t mean there to be any survivors.”

That wasn’t the most comforting thought. People persisted in building on these ridge lines because of the glorious views, but they were the most dangerous place to be in a bushfire. Fire could race uphill faster than a person could run. Or a wolf. Luce was probably the only one of us with a fighting chance if it came to that.

Garth stopped at the fallen giant and lifted his head. He appeared to be sniffing the air.

“What?” asked Luce. “Is someone there?”

“No.” He laid a hand on the trunk and scowled as if he thought he could move the tree by sheer bad temper.

“Come on, then.”