The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) (8 page)

That’s probably what I’d be thinking if I was still plain Kate. And Lord knows, if anyone should have suspected, I should have. For crying out loud, I’d been married to a dragon for five years—how could I have missed it completely? I mean, sure, it’s not the first explanation that springs to mind if your husband starts acting a little strange, but not even a hint? In five years?

No one would think it possible. No one who wasn’t in the know, that is. To other shifters it seemed entirely reasonable. Dragons had powers of persuasion bordering on total mind control. In the right circumstances they could convince a human black was white. Leandra had managed to entrance me into cutting her open, extracting the channel stone that controlled her magic and swallowing it—all while she was dying of poisoning. And I hadn’t been able to remember doing any of it afterwards. Covering up any little indiscretions or diverting suspicion in a wife would have been child’s play for Jason in comparison.

“I know, right? That’s what I think too, though Roy’s a believer. I always said he read too many of those stupid fantasy novels. Have you seen that new video?”

“What new video?”

“It came out this morning. YouTube crashed, they had so many hits. It shows you how they did it. Just search dragons and CGI.”

“CGI?” Even though it was in my own interest to act convinced, I couldn’t help sounding incredulous. Who the hell would believe that? “That was done with
computers
? Says who?”

“Oh, they’re not saying it was
done
with computers. They had remote-controlled models. They used CGI on the video to make them look bigger and hide the engines.”

I opened my mouth to argue. Surely anyone who’d been there wouldn’t buy that story. Those dragons were huge—way too big to be remote-controlled craft. And the way we’d moved, so organic, so clearly not robotic.

Still, even though it was New Year’s Eve and thousands of people
had
seen it in person, there were still millions who hadn’t, who might possibly be persuaded by this new “truth”.

“There’s more than one video on the Internet, though. Are they all supposedly doctored like this?”

Tanya shrugged. “Most of them are a bit blurry, you know, or taken from too far away. It makes it look more convincing if there’s more than one, from different users. But there’s only that one that the news programs have been replaying where you can actually see much. Someone spent a lot of effort planning this.”

Someone certainly had spent a lot of effort—but on this new cover-up, not on the original “stunt”. It had to be either the government or Elizabeth, and my money was on Elizabeth.

“Makes you wonder why they bothered, doesn’t it?”

“Probably some massive publicity stunt. Bet you someone comes forward in a few days and it’ll turn out to be part of an advertising campaign for a new beer or something.”

“Probably.” I moved toward the door. She’d talk all day if I let her.

Thankfully she got the hint. “Well, I’d better leave you to it. Call me, okay? Let me know how you go.”

I promised I would and she finally left, though not before waving goodbye to both Garth and Steve. I went back into Lachie’s room and found the guys had stripped it nearly bare, so I grabbed a suitcase out of the hall cupboard and packed a few of my own things too. Leandra had the best of everything, and her clothes fit me pretty well, but we’d been two different people. Her taste in music, for instance, sucked. And she didn’t appear to own a single pair of running shoes. Too busy prancing around in designer outfits.

Lucky we’d brought the big car. Even with the back row of seats laid flat we barely managed to squeeze everything in. Poor Steve had boxes piled up all around him. I felt a wrench as we pulled away from the kerb, and had to resist an urge to wave goodbye to the old house. Who knew when I’d see it again? But Garth already thought I was mad enough.

He kept glancing in the rear vision mirror as he drove, a preoccupied look on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“We’ve got someone on our tail. No, don’t turn round!”

I froze guiltily, then tried to pretend I hadn’t had any such intention. Not that I would have been able to see past the piles of boxes.

“Who is it?”

“Don’t know. I don’t recognise the car. They’re sitting two cars back.”

“Are you sure they’re really following us?”

I don’t know why I should feel so surprised. People had followed me all the time when I’d worked as a herald delivering messages for shifters, though at the time I’d had no idea of the real nature of my job. I thought there were just a lot of secretive people in the world who were prepared to pay well for keeping their messages private—and a whole bunch of other people busy trying to find out where those messages were going. Delivering the messages undetected had been like a kind of game.

When I thought about it now it didn’t make that much sense, but at the time I’d been in a very different headspace. With Lachie dead I didn’t give a crap about anything else, and I moved through the world in a kind of fog of despair, detached and completely lacking in curiosity. In fact I’d liked the thrill of adrenalin being followed always brought. It was the only time during those dark months that I’d ever felt alive.

“Of course I’m sure.” Garth changed lanes and took a random left turn. In the rear-view mirror on the passenger side I caught a glimpse of a white sedan making the same turn. The driver had dark hair, but I couldn’t make out anything else in the tiny reflection.

“Is that them? In the white car?”

“Yep.” Garth checked his mirror again as we drove through a roundabout. “It’s a woman. Seems to be alone. She’s hanging back now—she’s let that guy in.”

A car entered the roundabout from the right and slotted in behind us. The woman in the white car now sat two cars behind again.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

He gave me a toothy grin. The big werewolf seemed to enjoy the adrenalin rush as much as I used to.

“What would Luke do?”

In the back seat Steve groaned. I shook my head. Garth and his damn Star Wars obsession. “Probably blow them up. Sadly for you, this is a Mazda, not an X-wing.”

“Faith you must have,” he croaked in his best Yoda voice. “Show you I will.”

I groaned too, but in truth I wanted to grin back. Garth so rarely showed a playful side. Always worrying. Always scowling. He looked about ten years younger when he smiled. Maybe he wasn’t as old as I’d thought. I was glad he wasn’t freaking out.

For a time nothing happened. We continued along Epping Road. The sun shone and a catchy tune played on the radio. Around us the traffic flowed normally. The woman in the white car never got closer than two cars behind.

We’d stopped for three red lights before we found ourselves the first car in line at the next one. We were in the middle lane. Garth stopped the car. The cars on either side pulled up too.

Then he floored it, charging through the intersection as the cross-traffic started to move. Horns blared, but no one hit us. We were through and the intersection behind us filled with cars from the cross street. The woman in the white car couldn’t follow, trapped behind stationary cars.

Garth roared down Epping Road, doing at least fifty over the speed limit. Two intersections later he picked his gap and ran the red arrow, turning off into a residential area. I clutched at my seat as we skidded through the turn. Then he ducked and weaved through side streets, still heading in the general direction of the city, as Lego rattled and slid around in the back. I held on tight and hoped there were no police around.

Finally he slowed to a more sedate pace, a smug look on his face.

“We won’t be seeing her again.”

“I may not be seeing my stomach again any time soon either. Where’d you learn to drive like that? A dodgem car ride?”

He grinned. “You talk too much. I definitely should have killed you.”

I grinned back. “You and whose army, Skywalker?”

Lachie was overjoyed to be reunited with his beloved Lego. Even Garth had to smile at the squeals of delight as each new set was carried in from the car. I left them to it and went to Google “Sydney dragons CGI”.

I found Tanya’s video straight away. Was this supposed to be the same CGI program used by the big special effects studios? But those big movie effects took months. How could people believe this had been done in a matter of days?

“Come look at this,” I called to Ben once I’d watched it through. He came into the study and stood behind me, massaging my neck with his good hand, as I hit replay.

The world watched in shock and amazement as two dragons fought over Sydney Harbour in the early hours of New Year’s Day
, the voiceover began. The familiar footage rolled and Valeria stooped upon me once again. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat at the memory. That had been too close.

Dragons exist! The supernatural live among us. Or do they?

On screen I fled under the Bridge, Valeria in hot pursuit.

How could anyone doubt the evidence of their own eyes? Here they are, captured on film for all the world to see.

I backwinged and landed briefly on the bridge before taking off again. I’d been dropping Lachie to safety, to free myself up to fight Valeria, but the view was too distant to see the small figure stumbling from my cradling claws.

But how closely is the world looking?

The camera zoomed in, as it always did at this point in the footage, and the picture shook, presumably because the cameraman’s hands were shaking too. None of the videos I’d seen were perfectly polished. Despite the presence of a gazillion TV cameras around the harbour earlier in the night, this had taken place at least two hours after the fireworks had finished, and the camera crews had all gone home. Only amateurs, mostly with iPhones, remained to capture the action.

But this time, as we took to the skies again, the familiar footage shook even more than usual. A dark, boxy mass could be seen under the bellies of the two dragons. Both dragons moved far less naturally.

Close enough to notice the engines that powered these two “dragons”? Notice how slowly they’re moving now? What if we speed this footage up again and add a little CGI magic?

As if at the touch of a magic eraser, the engines gradually disappeared and the jerky movements became graceful, showing realistic muscles flexing beneath golden skin.

Let’s see that again.

The screen split in two, and the same piece of footage played on both sides. But one side had the “before” image, with engines showing and jerky robotic dragons. The robotic dragons appeared smaller against the backdrop of the Harbour Bridge. The “after” side showed large, lifelike dragons waging acrobatic war.

Are you still amazed that dragons exist? Or are you just amazed at what computers can do these days?

I spun in my chair to face Ben. “What do you think?”

“Pretty impressive. Plays well to the sceptics. Elizabeth, I suppose?”

“Probably. Either her or the government, but she seems the most likely candidate. I can’t imagine the government getting its act together this fast, for a start. And they haven’t got her money to throw at something like that. It must have cost a bomb.”

“And she has more to gain from sowing doubt.”

I grinned, swinging in the chair. “Oh, I don’t know. I heard yesterday some African country was considering declaring war on Australia. That might have stirred them up in Canberra.”

“Really? Why?”

“Something about wiping out all the black magicians we’re supposedly harbouring.”

He snorted. “You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”

“Apparently not. Do you think many people will believe this? What about all the people who saw it in real life?”

He leaned against the desk, looking thoughtful. “Most people won’t take much persuading. They don’t want to believe it, so they’ll grasp at any plausible explanation. And if the media run with it … Things don’t have to be true to be believed. Ask any politician. As long as you shout it long enough and loud enough you wear people down.”

“True. If it muddies the waters enough we’ll only have a few crackpots convinced we’re real by the time it all dies down.”

“Let’s hope so. The last thing we need at the moment is more publicity.”

A proving was hard enough to keep secret at the best of times, with people turning up dead all over the place. Having the eyes of the world on us made it that much more difficult. And I already had the police interested in me. I couldn’t afford to feature in any more of their reports.

I turned back to the computer and checked my Twitter feed. Predictably, it was running mad with speculation. I watched tweets fly past at a furious rate. The world was still enthralled by the dragon spectacle.

I suppose that was to be expected. It was a huge story, at a very quiet time of year, and everyone had an opinion. At least it was keeping Elizabeth too busy with damage control to take any action against me for causing the whole mess.

Ben leaned over my shoulder. “What’s this
not the Middle Ages
hashtag?”

I ran a quick search, and my heart sank as I scanned the resulting column. The tweets flashed past almost too fast to read, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Talk about a hot topic. Seemed like half the world wanted to get out the pitchforks, and the other half was trying to persuade them that this was “
not the Middle Ages
”.

We’re all Australians. This is #nottheMiddleAges

Civilisation has moved past the age of witch hunts. #nottheMiddleAges

You can’t accuse someone of being a werewolf just because you don’t like them. #nottheMiddleAges

I winced a little at that last one. It would be happening soon, if it wasn’t already. True or not, people would be accused. Neighbours would insist they had a right to know; they had children to protect, and before you knew it someone’s house would be firebombed. Maybe someone would take pot shots at the old lady who lived in the creepy old house, or kill a little boy’s dog because they thought it was a werewolf. Someone else would be driven out of town. Someone would lose their job, or their girlfriend—or their life.