Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) Read online

  Blue crouched by the black pool. I weaved through the gleaming pillars, past a shawl of rock so thin the light glowed softly through it, highlighting the different-coloured streaks that twisted through it like veins. Blue had removed his shirt and his pale skin glowed a sickly hue in the green goblin light. A fresh scar on his chest just above his left nipple looked nasty.

  “Do you have the hairs?” he asked.

  I withdrew the envelope from my pocket and passed the three dark hairs to him. His fingers were cold, his naked skin already beginning to sprout goosebumps. It was noticeably colder in here than in the first cavern.

  “You all right in there?” Garth called, his voice echoing oddly through the crack.

  “Fine,” I called back.

  “You may as well take a seat,” said Blue. “This will take a while.”

  I perched myself on a rock and settled down to watch the goblin’s preparations. He started a fire in a small circle of rocks that had obviously been used for the same purpose before, feeding it from a pile of sticks that must have taken a long time to drag in here through the little crawl space. If there was another way into this cavern I couldn’t see it in the dim light. The fire did little for either the warmth or the light in the vast, cold space. I could feel the chill of the rock I sat on seeping through my jeans, sending my butt to sleep and numbing my legs.

  Blue filled a large earthenware pot with water from the dark pool and set it over the fire to heat. He sat cross-legged beside the flames, feeding them the occasional twig, while he carved a little figure from a twisted piece of root. He muttered to himself in the sibilant goblin tongue as he worked, little offcuts flying from under his knife. His sharp features lit from beneath looked like some grotesque Halloween mask.

  When the first wisps of steam began to curl from the pot, he wrapped Kasumi’s hairs around the head of the finished mannikin. It didn’t look like anyone in particular, but I guess that wasn’t the point. He took trueshape, which made his human form look like a movie star. Goblins, with their knobbly blue skin, big ears and hairless heads, were not one of the better-looking types of shifter. Still muttering his chant, he turned the knife on himself and cut a long shallow slice down his forearm. Blue goblin blood welled, and he wiped it all over the little figure, until it was well and truly coated.

  When the water was boiling he dropped the disgusting mannikin into the pot. The stench of superheated goblin blood made my nose twitch in distaste. He added leaves and powders from various containers to his mannikin soup, prodding at the foul-smelling mess with a stick every now and then until he seemed satisfied. I thought that was the end of it, but no, the ritual entered a whole new phase.

  Still chanting, he began to carve short lines into his chest. Guess that was where the angry-looking scar above his nipple had come from. I’d never realised goblin magic required so much blood. The knife trembled as he cut. I could see his hand shaking even in the dim light. He never paused in his chant, though his voice rasped and his breath came in short pants. Gradually it dawned on me that the new cuts were not random, but were forming words cut into his flesh. Now I wished I’d learned to read goblin script.

  He was swaying now as he chanted, eyes shut, his upper body swinging over the fire and the boiling pot, backwards and forwards like a demented, blood-soaked metronome. I shifted uneasily on my cold stone. Should I be ready to grab him in case he toppled into the fire?

  The smell from the pot was enough to turn my stomach. Whatever those powders were, they hadn’t done anything to improve the aroma of boiling blood. Blood sheeted down his chest, obscuring whatever words he’d carved there. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and one drop hung from the tip of his pointed nose, despite the cold.

  The chanting rose to a shrieking crescendo, then a cloud of stinking green vapour rolled off the pot like a storm cloud, making my eyes water.

  I leapt up, eyes streaming. Garth was calling me from the other cavern, his voice panicked, but I was more concerned with Blue, who’d keeled over like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Fortunately, not into the fire, but the rock floor wouldn’t have done his head any favours either.

  “Blue? Are you okay?”

  Stupid bloody question. Of course he wasn’t okay. He was back in his human form, but he had more blood on the outside than the inside, judging by the mess he was in. The fire had gone out, as suddenly as if it had been doused with water, and all the green goblin lights had faded almost to nothing. Probably connected to his essence, which wasn’t in the best of shape at the moment. I grabbed his shirt, ready to make a bandage for his bleeding chest, but when I picked it up I saw the bleeding had stopped already. That was probably tied up with the ritual too.

  I rolled him onto his side and draped the shirt over him for some warmth.

  “Garth! Shove a couple of those blankets through.”

  “What’s happening? Was that Blue screaming?”

  I could see Garth’s shape silhouetted against the brighter light behind him as I wriggled a little way into the tunnel that separated us to retrieve the blankets.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Blue just needs a little time to recover.”

  Not that I would know if something had gone wrong with Blue’s ritual. The only goblin magic I’d seen performed before was the very minor spell Blue had cast to dispel the traps on my old house, and the scrying he’d done in the fountain—and frankly, I’d be perfectly happy if I never had to watch anything bigger than that again, thank you very much. There was way too much blood involved for my taste. No wonder Blue was a little ambivalent about his gifts. Sure, he would heal easily, but shifter healing didn’t protect you from the pain in the first place. If I had to go through an ordeal like that to call on my magic I mightn’t be too keen on using it either. No wonder goblin mages charged a king’s ransom for their services.

  I hurried back to Blue’s side and wrapped the blankets securely around his skinny form. He was awake, but watched me without saying anything.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked. “Something to eat, or drink?”

  “Whiskey and soda might be nice,” he said. “Don’t suppose you’ve got one of those on you.”

  “Afraid not. I can give you a double when we get back, though. How are you feeling?”

  “Fantastic.” He levered himself up on one elbow, moving like a little old man. “Never better. Pass me that bottle, would you?”

  I picked up the bottle lying by the dead fire, a tiny little pill bottle no longer than my thumb. I caught a whiff of the contents of the pot as I passed. Disgusting.

  He sat up. “And you wonder why I hide out here? This is why. Look at me! I can barely move. People might notice if I lay on the floor of my hotel room for a few days. Magic strips my defences.”

  He picked up the pot, and for the first time I noticed it had a lip on one side. There was barely anything left in it, just a smear of darkness in the bottom. He tipped the pot carefully, his hands shaking so much I wondered if I should offer to do it for him, and let the evil liquid ooze into the tiny bottle.

  It seemed like a lot of effort for such a small result, but he regarded the bottle with satisfaction.

  “Damn, I’m good. At least ten hours right there.”

  He screwed the lid on and offered me the bottle. That was when it hit me—I was going to have to drink that shit.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to conceal my revulsion as I took it. Yep, I could see definite downsides to goblin magic. I thrust it into my pocket and stood up. “We should probably get going, if you’re up to it.”

  “Sure.” He shifted the blanket so it covered more of his shoulders, his hand still shaking. “As long as you carry me.”

  Well, that could be a problem. I eyed him in the dim light, trying to figure if he was messing with me or not. Probably not. That shaking looked real. So how were we going to get him back through that tight little tunnel?

  I got his arm over my shoulders and helped him to his feet, but he was righ
t, he really couldn’t walk. We reeled like a pair of drunkards as I basically dragged him across the uneven floor to the little crawl space. He was clammy with sweat and smelled atrocious. His greasy head lolled against my cheek and he moaned softly.

  “Garth?”

  “Here.” The reply came immediately. Thank God for Garth. I could always rely on him.

  “Blue’s in bad shape. I’m going to have to push him partway through the gap. Can you grab him and pull him through the rest of the way?”

  “Sure.” A man of few words, but they were nearly always the right ones. As long as he wasn’t arguing, of course.

  I almost shoved Blue into the claustrophobic little gap headfirst, but thought better of it before I gave the poor bastard concussion along with his other ills. Much better to work his feet through to Garth, so I could support his head from this side.

  It was still an awkward job, and I don’t know if I could have managed it without my dragon strength. Forcing a limp, unresponsive body through a tight space is one thing; trying to do it without hurting the body adds a whole new level of difficulty, and I was breathing hard by the time Garth called out: “Got him!”

  Then it went much easier. All I had to do was commando-crawl on my elbows while protecting Blue’s head from bumping along the rough floor of the passage. Not exactly a picnic, but at least the tunnel was short, and the torture came to an end as I popped out of the crawl space at last. Garth dumped Blue on the bed and the three of us hovered over him like anxious parents.

  He cracked an eyelid and demanded food. Steve hurried to open a tin of baked beans. Blue seemed to spill as many as he ate, but he looked a little better for it, so we found him another one, and he hoed into those too. We gave him water from the flasks we’d brought, and I even tried to clean him up a little, but he pushed me away with a snarl.

  “What’s the time?” I asked Garth. I had no idea how much time had passed in the inner cavern. It felt like an eternity, but it might have only been half an hour.

  “After four,” he said. “We’d better head off soon.”

  We still had nearly a three-hour drive ahead of us, and that was after we’d hiked back to the car. Clearly Blue wasn’t going to make it there under his own steam, so that would slow us down too.

  In the end Steve drew the short straw. Garth led the way, since neither Steve nor I could find the trail, which meant Steve had to carry Blue. He held him in his arms like a child, since I was worried about the pressure of a fireman’s carry on all those wounds sliced into his chest. He was covered in dirt and blood and stank like three-day-old meat. Garth was probably thrilled to keep his sensitive nose as far away as possible.

  We had to stop a few times for Steve to rest. My dragon muscles would have been up to the job, and I offered to take a turn carrying him, but Steve wouldn’t hear of it, and I didn’t argue as hard as I might have.

  It was nearly five by the time we got back to the car and hit the road again, though, being daylight saving, there was plenty of sunshine. I relaxed into the passenger seat with a sigh when we made it back to the tarred road. Civilisation felt within reach again, and the sudden silence as we left the dirt surface was a relief.

  Garth glanced across at me but didn’t comment, and there was silence in the car for another ten minutes. Then we must have come into signal range again, because Steve’s phone chirped at an incoming text. And then another. And another.

  “You’re a popular guy.” I leaned back against the headrest and shut my eyes. I was yet again without a mobile phone. Garth and I had both had ours taken by Taskforce Jaeger.

  The texts kept coming in. Steve’s phone sounded like a party in a hen house. What was going on?

  He looked up from his screen and met my curious gaze.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What’s wrong?”

  A million possibilities flashed through my mind. Lachie was hurt. Daiyu was threatening him to bring Jason to heel. Someone else was hurt. Luce? Ben? One of my sisters had done something stupid. All of my sisters had done something stupid. My heart sank. It was Faith. She was dead.

  Why should I care so much? Okay, maybe someone else was dead. Taskforce Jaeger was at the gates. Daiyu was at the gates. Daiyu had found out Kasumi had told us about her pilots. How would I ever free the kitsune now and win Lachie back? Maybe Kasumi was dead.

  “A document’s been leaked. It’s all over the Internet.”

  My racing heart slowed. Was that all? A document. No one had died. “What document?”

  “A list of shifters. Luce says it’s gone viral. Everybody knows.”

  “What? Give me that!”

  I scanned the texts, horror blooming in my gut. There were texts from all over the place, from Luce, Mac, Dave, other shifters, people I didn’t even know, but they all said the same thing.

  I punched in Luce’s number. She picked up straight away, as if she’d been sitting on top of the thing, willing it to ring.

  “Lucinda Chan.”

  “Luce, it’s me. What the hell is happening?”

  “Hell is about right. It’s hitting the fan good and hard. Where are you? Everything okay?”

  “We’re fine.” I didn’t waste time going into details on Blue’s condition. If he wasn’t quite “fine” now, he soon would be. He was sleeping like a baby in the back seat, drooling all over the headrest. “It just took a little longer than we expected. Tell me about this list. Who’s on it?”

  “You. Me. The sisters and all the overseas queens, plus a few other dragons, including Jason. Garth and Mac, but none of the Sydney pack except Trevor. It seems almost random. Corinne and Bear and Yarrow, but not the other leshies that joined us with Yarrow.”

  She named a few more familiar names, most of them well-known overseas identities. Considering how few dragons there were, dragons seemed over-represented on the list.

  “And then there’s a whole pile of goblins. Most of the Stromboli clan, all the Baders, the Everharts, a few others … it makes no sense.”

  “But they’re all really shifters? There’s no humans on there?”

  “No. This list is from someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s got to be a shifter.”

  “But why would a shifter leak a list like that? They’ve got to know it’s going to come back to bite them in the arse. Once people start finding real shifters, they’re not going to stop poking around until they’ve uncovered them all.”

  Could it have been that traitor, Patel? He was already working with Taskforce Jaeger. But how could it benefit the taskforce to have all these names out in the open? Their work was better done in private, without the glare of publicity this information would bring. Besides, he was a goblin himself. With that many goblin names on the list, one of them was bound to lead to him. It would be suicide to let this kind of information out.

  “I don’t know. If it was just dragons, I’d say it was someone who wasn’t happy with the status quo—maybe one of the males who thinks he’d like to go it alone without a queen. I could see someone like Gideon Thorne pulling a stunt like this.”

  Except he was dead. Could he have released this list before he died? But he’d been perfectly happy with the rule of the queens. He just wanted to have one in his pocket.

  “But who gains from putting the goblin clans out of business?”

  “It’s got to be someone local with so many from this domain.”

  God, what a mess. As if the shifter world needed any more attention focused on it at the moment. People had already been killed just on suspicion of being a shifter. What would happen now the haters had real targets? “What’s the reaction been like so far?”

  “As you’d expect. Some group calling themselves Christians Against Demons is whipping up a storm on the Internet. Talk-back radio is running hot. The nutters are out in full force. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the same clip of the prime minister calling for calm on TV—but the stations have also
interviewed enough people frothing at the mouth about the threat to our children, our way of life, our whatever-you-care-to-name, to make sure that nobody’s listening.”

  Not that calls for calm meant much from the man who’d rushed his divisive hate-filled legislation through Parliament. He’d make pious noises about national security and be first in line for a pitchfork when the burning started.

  “Okay. Everything quiet at the house?”

  “Yeah. I figure we’ve got a while before they trace any of the names on the list here.”

  “Hope so. Well, sit tight until we get there. We’ll be a couple of hours yet.”

  I hung up and stared out the window, mind whirling. Nothing made sense.

  Garth cocked an eyebrow at me. “So I’m a wanted man, am I?”

  Baby, you have no idea how much.

  “Probably not for the first time.” I dragged my mind back from contemplating how his smile lit his whole face and handed the phone back to Steve. “See what you can find.”

  Steve had the list in no time flat. It wasn’t hard; it was all over every social media and news site. He found the footage of the prime minister that Luce had mentioned, but I didn’t want to see it.

  “Here’s something. Maria del Fuente’s made a statement.”

  He passed the phone back to me and the familiar face of the Spanish queen filled the little screen. She was based in Argentina these days, since she held the whole of the South American continent, but was still known as “the Spanish queen” in the same way Celeste Rousseau was “the French queen”, despite France being the smallest part of her extensive domain. She was the public face of a hugely successful fashion house in her current incarnation—the “designer”, though I’d be surprised if she actually did the designing. More likely she had some dryads on staff. They were wizards with a needle. High fashion wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.