The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) (13 page)

No more gunfire. I looked around, bemused, as the last attacker bolted for the safety of the stairwell. With a roar Garth lunged after him.

“Garth, wait!” I yelled. “Jerry’s hurt.”

He turned back, frustration plain on his face, but he let the door slam shut. Jerry’s shrieks were like nothing that ever came from a human throat before, high and agonised. She writhed on the dirty carpet like a trapped animal. I sank down next to her.

“What’s wrong? Where are you hurt?”

She couldn’t answer. I don’t think she even knew I was there. Her T-shirt was covered in blood, and I ripped it open, searching for the bullet wound.

Behind me Mac gasped.

Garth knelt next to me, his face grim. “Silver bullet.”

A small, neat hole in the top of her breast peeked over the unexpected red lace of her bra like some baleful third nipple. Monstrous black lines radiated out from it as her veins swelled in reaction to the poisonous metal. I gripped one of her hands, though I doubt she felt the pressure. She burned to the touch. Before our eyes the black lines twisted across her skin, mapping the poison’s spread.

All shifters were susceptible to silver poisoning, but werewolves reacted particularly badly. It would take a hundred such bullets to kill a dragon. One would only make us sick. But one was more than enough to bring agonising death to a wolf.

Mac sank to the floor on Jerry’s other side, leaning over her doomed friend with a look of such anguish on her face I had to look away.

“Can’t you help her?” she begged. “You have to help her!”

I felt sick. Removing the bullet would make no difference now. Nothing could stop those evil black lines from spreading, carrying death through her veins.

Tears streamed down Mac’s pretty face.

“Eric could …” I gestured at the gun, hating to say it out loud. “It might be kinder.”

Jerry still cried out, but her screams had faded to whimpers. Her once-spiky hair lay flat and sweat-soaked against her scalp. She struggled now to breathe.

Mac shook her head once, emphatically, and leaned down to bring her face close to Jerry’s ear. I didn’t hear what she whispered. Jerry probably didn’t either.

“Where the hell was Alex?” Garth growled. He crouched next to me, his face as black as thunder.

I met his bleak gaze. Was Alex dead? We both knew the lack of warning from him was a bad sign.

Jerry struggled for breath, each more laboured than the last. Her face had quickly become so discoloured and swollen she was unrecognisable. Greenish foam burst from her lips. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she went still.

I got to my feet, feeling shaken. Jerry looked as though she’d been attacked by a psychotic tattooist. Her skin was covered in crazed black lines, her face and neck swollen and shiny with sweat. No one spoke.

Then Garth looked at me and he surged to his feet, face drained of colour. “You’re bleeding!”

I’d forgotten that stinging pain in my shoulder. Hastily I ripped my shirt open to inspect the wound.

“It’s okay.” Surprisingly enough, it was true. “It actually doesn’t hurt that much.”

“Let me see.” Garth pushed my hands aside with urgent fingers. “Are you sure? Wouldn’t they have all the guns loaded with silver?”

“It would take more than a silver bullet to kill me.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to be out of action with silver fever for a week, either, do you?” He laid an anxious hand on my forehead, checking for any sign of fever. Touching Jerry had felt like laying my hand on an oven door.

Dragons were notoriously hard to kill. It took something like bane leaf poison, which had killed Leandra, or a catastrophic severing of the brain/body connection. Like Carl Davison’s grisly end. My eyes strayed toward the lift, but the doors had shut again, hiding the body within. Our bodies healed with supernatural speed, even from injuries that would kill a human or lesser shifter. Already the pain in my shoulder had dimmed, and I felt a weird movement inside, as if something were burrowing its way out.

That would be the bullet, being forced out by my healing body.

“Relax, Garth.” I put a hand to my shoulder. It really was the most peculiar sensation. I gritted my teeth, feeling as if some parasite were chewing its way through my flesh. Best not to think about it.

In a moment I could feel the lump, a pea-sized mass rising toward the surface. Then, with a little welling of blood, it broke the skin and I caught it between thumb and forefinger and yanked it out with relief.

“See? Nothing to worry about.”

I held the bloody little lump of metal out to Garth, who took it.

Then he yelped and dropped it back into my palm.

“Damn it!” He sucked his fingers.

“What’s wrong?”

He showed them to me. The burn marks were already blistering. “That’s definitely silver.”

I turned the bullet over, perplexed. Though the effect wouldn’t be nearly as obvious on me as it was on Garth, there should be
something
. Some reaction, some sign. But my shoulder barely ached, and I felt none of the dizzy sickness I should be experiencing from silver fever. As if it were no more than an ordinary bullet.

Still, now wasn’t a good time to stand around pondering the mysteries of the universe. Garth seemed to realise it at the same instant I did.

“We need to leave,” he growled.

I nodded and shoved the bullet into my pocket. At a word from Garth, Eric bent and picked up the small form of the dead werewolf, while Garth helped Mac to her feet. Then he checked the other bodies for ID, but predictably they carried none.

I sighed. Did it even matter who they were, or who’d sent them? I had so many enemies. I could take my pick. I had to do something about thinning their numbers before someone managed to thin me right out of existence. Although I would like to know whose door to lay Jerry’s death at. Someone would wish they’d never dreamed up that little double-cross.

At least I could rule out Carl Davison as a suspect. The lift doors had closed, but when I pressed the call button they slid open again, revealing their gruesome cargo. I stepped inside, trying to avoid the pool of blood soaking into the carpet, and squinted at the gory head in the corner. Yep. Definitely Carl Davison. The stock market would have a meltdown when word got out.

We took the stairs to the ground floor, not trusting the lifts any more. Didn’t want any more nasty surprises. Alex lay against the wall, out of sight from the street, as if someone had dragged him there. My heart sank.

Garth tried to see in three different directions at once as he crossed the empty foyer to Alex’s side, jumpy as only a werewolf under threat can be. He knelt and laid his fingers to the pulse point in Alex’s neck, then looked up in relief.

“He’s alive.”

As I joined him Alex groaned, and in a few moments Garth had him sitting up, groggy but functional.

“What happened?”

Alex felt gingerly at a lump on the back of his blond head. “Not sure. Two guys came out of the lift, and I was watching them when someone hit me from behind. I don’t know where they came from—I didn’t hear a thing. Too much bloody noise from next door.”

“You good to go?” asked Garth.

“Sure. Just give me a minute.” He got to his feet and laid one hand on the wall, swaying a little. For the first time he noticed Jerry in Eric’s arms, her pink head lolling against his shoulder.

His eyes widened. “What happened?”

“Tell you later. Let’s get out of here.” I could see our car from here. It wasn’t far. If we made sure no one got close enough for a good look at Jerry, people would probably assume she’d collapsed. It would still draw attention, but that couldn’t be helped. No one was running and shouting, or pointing at our building in alarm, so the noise from the building site must have covered our brief gun battle. “Garth, check the street.” I caught at his muscled arm. “And be careful.”

He nodded and stepped outside without hesitation, though he must have felt like a sitting duck. There were two guys smoking on the opposite pavement outside the door of another office block. Legitimate smoke break or enemies watching for us?

They paid him no attention, apparently absorbed in their conversation. He ducked back inside.

“There’s a group of women coming this way. When they’re past we’re good to go.”

Eric faded into the background with his burden, while the rest of us stood watching the street. Soon enough, five women dressed in neat office attire strode past, the sound of their conversation drowned out by a chorus of jackhammers and nail guns. Once they’d passed Garth stepped out again, then motioned the rest of us to follow.

As he reached the car a figure rose from its crouch between our car and the next, gun levelled at Garth’s chest. He had no time to react. A shot rang out …

And the unknown gunman crumpled to the ground. The women scattered, screaming, while the two smokers stood rooted to the spot. Across the street a small dark-haired woman lowered her gun and slipped into an alley between two buildings.

“Run!” Alex shoved me hard in the direction of the car.

We ran.

With great presence of mind, considering he’d just escaped death by a fraction of a second and the keen marksmanship of a complete stranger, Garth stepped over the body, jumped in and started the car. We all piled in, Mac diving over the middle seat into the back, Eric and I manhandling Jerry’s body in with us.

In a second we were roaring down the street. The smokers had found their wits and hurried inside. Hopefully no one had held it together well enough to note the licence plate of our car.

I glanced down the alley as we passed, but there was no sign of our mysterious benefactor. She was a damn good shot, whoever she was.

“Who the
hell
was that?” Garth eyed me in the rear-vision mirror.

“I wish I knew. I can number my supporters on two hands—hell, most of them are in this car—and I have no idea why anyone else would be running around taking out my enemies.”

“It looked like Luce.” Eric’s voice held a cautious hope. He cradled Jerry against his shoulder, heedless of the blood smeared across his jacket and the white shirt beneath. He didn’t look so debonair any more.

It
had
looked like Luce in the brief glimpse I’d caught—small, dark-haired, Asian appearance. But she’d had a Japanese look to her, and Luce was Chinese. Besides which …

“We’re lucky it wasn’t. Luce would have been taking shots at
us
, not our enemies. She’s Alicia’s now, body and soul.”

And therefore bound to do whatever she could to further Alicia’s cause. Defending my people didn’t come under that heading at all.

Eric shrugged. “I was just hoping she’d found some way around the binding.”

“There is no way.” Though if anyone could find it, it would be Luce. The word “determined” could have been invented for her. “Luce won’t be free till Alicia dies.”

“Let’s hurry up and kill the bitch, then,” said Garth, ever the pragmatist.

Amen to that, brother. It would certainly help to have Luce back in our camp. Alicia’s death couldn’t come soon enough for me. The problem would be staying alive long enough to bring it about, with the bounty hunters out in full force.

“Who were those guys?” Eric asked. “And who killed Davison?”

I looked down at Jerry’s still face. At least they’d paid for her death, but who’d sent them? It could have been any one of dozens of players. Not Carl Davison, apparently. Was he just collateral damage, or was there more to it?

I sighed. “They could have been bounty hunters. Or maybe someone got wind that Carl was talking to me and decided to shut him up.”

Eric raised one eyebrow. The effect was quite saturnine, with his dark hair and beard. “Makes you wonder what he was going to tell you.”

“Sure does. And why they didn’t want me to know.”

I guess it was even possible that Davison’s death and the attack on us were unrelated. It would be a huge coincidence, but stranger things had happened. Hell, stranger things seemed to be happening to me on a daily bloody basis. The fact was, I had too damn many enemies. No matter how fast I ran, one of these days someone would catch me. Somehow I had to take control. Act instead of react.

“We’ve got to do something,” I said. “We can’t go on like this.”

Everyone fell silent. The mood in the car was dark. How could it not be, with Jerry’s body cooling on our laps? I hadn’t even gotten to know her, and now she was dead, just for trying to help me. I couldn’t bear to look at her swollen, distorted features; I stared out the window instead. City streets slid by, a whole world of people living normal lives, going to work, coming home. Lucky bastards.

The sooner the bloodbath of the proving was decided, the sooner life could go back to normal for all of us.

“Anyone know where Jerry’s family lives?” I asked. “Mac?”

Her poor parents would be devastated. No one knew better than me what losing a child felt like.

Mac sniffed. When she spoke her voice was still choked with tears. “I don’t think she has any. She came up from Melbourne last year. I never heard her talk about anyone back home.”

“We’d better take her to Trevor, then. He’ll know.”

“After we get you home,” Garth said. “Every minute you spend outside you’re a target.”

Besides, Garth wouldn’t be welcome at Trevor’s house. In the end we agreed that Garth, Alex and I would return to The Rocks, then Eric and Mac would continue on to Trevor’s with Jerry’s body.

“Mac, you don’t have to come back with Eric. I’d understand if you wanted to go back to the pack after what’s happened.”

“There’s nothing for me there,” she said. “I’ll stay with you.”

Trevor had said there were different kinds of danger when we first discussed Mac and Jerry joining me. What was so bad at the pack house that she preferred risking her life with me?

Garth double-parked outside the house; as usual, the street was parked out. The three of us slid out and Eric quickly took the driver’s seat and pulled away. Garth took me by the arm and hustled me toward the house, as if I were an old lady needing his help to stand up. Damn werewolves got so protective sometimes, they were worse than wyverns.