by SM Reine
The stranger closed the trailer. Money exchanged hands.
He drove away.
Stark pulled the loading bay door shut, blocking out the scent of the damp night air. The stench of blood and horse droppings lingered.
When he was done, he turned to see Deirdre standing by the elevator.
“You’re supposed to be upstairs,” he said.
“Geoff and Ember are entertaining Lucifer.” She glanced into the nearest stall. All that remained was a smear on the floor that could have been any bodily fluid. “What did you—where did they go?”
Stark folded his arms, frowning at her. “I sold them.”
“You gave him money,” Deirdre said. “I saw you give him money.” She rubbed her temples. “Am I hallucinating?”
“Yes, you probably are.”
“So, what, you’ve sent them to a glue factory? Ignominious end for horses that were tortured their entire lives?”
“How much lethe have you taken, Tombs?” Stark asked.
“Not nearly enough to be okay with this,” Deirdre said. “We need to talk, Stark. Not about the horses. You just went and told all our allies that we’re not participating in the election.”
“We aren’t,” he said.
“But we need to. I thought you understood how this was necessary to ultimately defeat Rhiannon.”
“That’s what you seem to think, yes,” Stark said. “I have plans. I don’t need your help, and I don’t need Rylie Gresham’s election.”
“If you don’t agree to this, Friederling is going to have me arrested.”
“How will he arrest you if he’s trapped in a cell upstairs?”
“There’s an outstanding warrant with my name on it. It doesn’t have to be Friederling doing the arresting. Next time I cross paths with any OPA agent, they’ll toss me in jail.”
“That’s the life we’re living together, Tombs,” Stark said. “You don’t get to be the double agent anymore. You can’t stand by my side and slip favors to Rylie Gresham under the table. If you’re really loyal to me, you’re just going to have to deal with being a fugitive from justice. And yes—that will be for the rest of your life. However many lives that may be.”
“I don’t know why I’m surprised you won’t act like a decent human being,” Deirdre said. “You sold the blood factory horses for dog food or whatever. All you care about is your stupid vendetta against your wife.”
The corner of his mouth lifted in something that might have been a smile. “I want you to return to Lucifer. Don’t leave his side. We might be allied with the vampires, but I don’t trust them.” He took a pamphlet from his pocket and handed it to her.
“What is this?” she asked, trying to focus her eyes on the pamphlet.
“Go upstairs and entertain Lucifer,” Stark said.
He went downstairs to the sub-basement, leaving her alone with the empty stalls.
It was a pamphlet for a rescue that handled animals abused by factory farms. There were happy sheep with scarred faces on the front and pictures of tiny pig cages on the inside.
“What in the world?” Deirdre muttered.
She flipped the pamphlet over. There was a picture of the man with the polo shirt and baseball cap on the back.
Stark must have given the horses to the rescue along with…what, a donation?
It didn’t make her feel better to realize how unpredictable he could be. It made her feel like the remaining time in Rylie and Secretary Friederling’s lives could be counted by hours rather than years—however long it took for Stark’s mercurial mercies to swing toward the murderous again.
The high from the lethe must have been stronger than Deirdre realized, because she soon found herself unlocking the cell door without any memory of how she had gotten upstairs.
Those four powerful captives were waiting for her. They stood against the back wall of the room, speaking in low voices. But when Deirdre entered, all eyes fell on her.
Rylie broke away from the others. She was moving well for a woman whose neck had been broken just hours earlier. There was nothing quite like Alpha healing. “I take it from your expression that you don’t have good news.”
“Stark isn’t going to participate in the election, and he’s probably going to kill you all,” Deirdre said.
Rylie nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“I assume Marion let you guys get abducted because she has a plan. I need to hear it now. Before you say you don’t trust me, just remember I’m the closest thing to a friend you have in this situation. You’re not going to talk Stark into helping you.”
“We do actually have a plan.” Rylie hesitated, as though debating internally, then plowed forward. “Basically, we need to figure out what’s happened to the unseelie queen and rescue her.”
Deirdre stared. “That’s your plan?”
“Please try to withhold your awe,” Friederling said. He was playing with his cell phone. Deirdre wondered what he could have been doing—Stark’s many wards should have prevented him from communicating with the outside world. “We didn’t become such important people without incredible powers of strategy, after all.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“I also still plan to arrest you,” Friederling said. “Does that meet your standards of having a plan?”
Rylie spoke loudly, as if trying to drown him out. “If we don’t find the true queen of the unseelie, Donne won’t take the oath. We won’t have an election. Worse, we’ll have all-out war between the sidhe factions. It will spill onto Earth. A lot of people will die.”
“Rhiannon and Melchior have the Ethereal Blade,” Deirdre said. “This true queen is probably already dead.”
“Then there will be lots of blood and screaming and people running and general deadly mayhem and I won’t get to have a weekend to myself for months,” Secretary Friederling said. “There’s already talk of riots among the preternatural population. Do you want riots? I don’t want riots. The overtime cost alone would be absurd.”
“That’s what you care about? Overtime and weekends?”
“I really enjoy my weekends,” Friederling said.
Deirdre was tempted to see how much he’d enjoy his weekends with a bullet in his stomach.
Stark really was rubbing off on her.
“We will save the unseelie queen and get the Ethereal Blade back. That’s our plan,” Rylie said in a measured tone.
How could she sound so calm? They were being held captive by an insane terrorist. Stark was going to kill them, and at this rate, Deirdre wasn’t going to help them escape. She’d thought she might let them go—at least Marion, who was just a kid—but her urge to be altruistic was rapidly being replaced by the hot snap of rage.
After all Deirdre had done for them, and after everything Rylie had done to her, they were still treating her like a nobody. An Omega.
Deirdre’s eyes stung with angry, unshed tears. “And what are you going to do once you get the Ethereal Blade back? Are you going to use that power to bring the factions in line, or will you just go and kill more gods?”
Rylie laughed. It was a weak, humorless laugh, more from surprise than actual mirth. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t bother denying it,” she said savagely. “I know that you’re the Godslayer and that it’s your fault everyone died, including my father. Everything that’s happened is your fault.”
“I’m not the Godslayer,” Rylie said.
“Then why did you have the Ethereal Blade? Don’t give me that crap about how I don’t deserve to know again. I deserve to know, dammit!” She slammed her fist into the opposite palm.
“Because…” She glanced back at Marion, then returned her gaze to her feet. “She gave it to me. The Godslayer. She gave me the Ethereal Blade for safekeeping. Like I told you before, there isn’t anyone else who could be trusted with it, so I’ve been keeping it for her until she needs it again.”
“I used that line on cops a couple of times,” Deirdre said. “
‘It’s not mine. I’m holding it for a friend.’”
Rylie shot a pitying look at her. “The world is so much bigger than you realize.”
“Oh yeah? So that’s it. No apologies. Just cold denial.” Deirdre didn’t have to stand there and listen to that. Not anymore. She backed toward the door. “Fine. Forget the election. Stark’s going to kill you on camera, and I’m going to enjoy watching it.” She wasn’t sure that she actually meant that, but it felt good to say.
“Stark’s inconsequential at this point,” Friederling said.
“I wouldn’t call the guy holding you captive inconsequential.”
“Actually, we’ve already escaped,” Brother Marshall said. “We only stuck around to see if you wanted to come with us, but I’m guessing by your outburst that you don’t.”
“What?”
“We’ve been gone for over an hour. I left an exit if you want it.” He gestured to the wall. Deirdre didn’t see anything. “Walk through that, and you’ll come where we are.”
“I don’t understand,” Deirdre said.
Marion reached out to touch Deirdre’s arm—and her fingers passed through the skin, as though she was made of nothing but smoke. A chill tingled down Deirdre’s spine.
Deirdre swiped at Rylie, but her hand passed through the Alpha too. She was intangible. A ghost.
They were only projecting images of themselves into the cell.
“Think of who you were trying to hold captive,” Marion said. “A mage, the Secretary of the Office of Preternatural Affairs, a werewolf Alpha, and a monk with mastery of unseelie artifacts. Do you think that there is anything on this Earth that can hold the likes of us?”
Deirdre was feeling faint. “Honestly, I kind of did.”
Friederling barked a laugh before vanishing.
Just like that—gone.
“Walk through the wall, and you’ll follow us,” Brother Marshall said. “I don’t care if you don’t.”
And he disappeared, too.
Deirdre’s heart began to pound. It wasn’t excitement from the lethe, nor was it anger at watching the people she’d thought to be her prisoners slipping from her fingertips.
What was Stark going to think when he checked the security footage and saw everyone disappearing after Deirdre visited them?
“Oh, hell no,” Deirdre whispered.
Marion and Rylie vanished, and the room was empty.
XIV
Deirdre didn’t take the portal that Brother Marshall left for her.
She had only a few short minutes before Stark realized that she hadn’t gone back to Lucifer, and even fewer minutes before he realized that their prisoners were missing. He’d want answers from her once that happened. He wouldn’t be reasonable about it.
How deep did this bond Stark felt between them run? Was it deep enough that he would listen to her explanation, or would he skip right to killing her?
The only thing that Deirdre knew for certain was that Stark would kill her if she ran away.
She returned to the security room across the hallway. With the push of a button, she could view the party in the lobby on the monitors. The vampires were everywhere, lounging on the couches and floor among the shifters.
Stark wasn’t in sight.
Deirdre flipped through the different cameras. The basement was empty without the horses, its blood stains black on the grayscale image. The cameras to the sub-basement had been disconnected, so there was nothing but static on those. And then she moved to the rooftop cameras.
Still no Stark.
He might have already been on his way upstairs to find her.
“Gods,” Deirdre said. What was he going to do when he found her?
She was about to click back to the lobby cameras when she saw movement on the roof of the high-rise. A massive bird soared past the corner of the monitor. Deirdre stared intently at the image, watching for it to return.
A few seconds later, the bird flitted past again.
It was much too large to be a bird. But the image was too blurry to tell if those wings had feathers or razors.
Deirdre raced upstairs.
The wind was cold and miserable. Deirdre hugged her jacket and turned into the breeze to look for the winged creature she had seen on the monitors. There was a storm brewing over the ocean. It was a distant wall of clouds. Most likely artificial, created by witches who would get a thorough spanking from the Office of Preternatural Affairs once caught.
But this particular wind died as quickly as it had risen. It didn’t look like that hard blast had come from the storm.
A screech echoed over the city.
She looked up in time to see a dark shape rushing past the waning moon.
“Niamh,” Deirdre whispered. She imagined in the haze of her lethe high that the name would be carried on the wind and reach the former swanmay’s ears.
Something heavy thudded to the roof beside her.
She leaped back with a cry, reaching for her gun.
But the body that had hit the roof was crumpled, broken, motionless. It wasn’t about to try to attack her.
Deirdre looked up at the moon again. The harpy was still flying high overhead, as though taunting Deirdre with her presence.
She edged toward the body that had landed beside her. It was a tangle of limbs that she didn’t recognize until she drew near enough to see the long charcoal ponytail and the Marines insignia tattooed on her shoulder.
“Vidya!”
Deirdre dropped to her knees beside the valkyrie. She checked for a heartbeat and found a strong pulse.
But Vidya didn’t stir at the contact.
How good was valkyrie healing? Was it at shifter level, or more like the frail vampires who could die if someone poked them with a twig in the wrong spot?
Niamh shrilled again in the night sky.
“All right, you bitch,” Deirdre muttered, extracting the Ruger LCP .380 from her shoulder holster. “You want my attention? You’ve got it.”
The range on the Ruger wasn’t great. It was a tiny peashooter, the kind of handgun that most gun enthusiasts laughed at, so it couldn’t send bullets real far. It also had a hell of a kick. Aiming with the thing was a challenge, and even more so if she didn’t hit her target on the first try.
The silver bullets were each worth thousands, and Deirdre was pissed.
She wasn’t going to miss her target.
“I’ll be back,” she said, smoothing her hand over Vidya’s forehead. The valkyrie was so cold.
Deirdre leaped off the high-rise to reach the nearest building, body moving easily through practiced motions that had only become easier since her second death and rebirth. It was as though her bones had hollowed, making her leaps effortless, her ascent rapid.
One rooftop at a time, she closed the distance to Niamh. The harpy surely could have escaped in the time that it took Deirdre to catch up, but she remained nearby, just out of reach but never out of sight.
Deirdre climbed to the top of a skyscraper and ascended its spire antenna. She kept an arm hooked around it. The friction of her leather jacket kept her hanging.
Extending her other arm to its full length, she tracked Niamh’s shadowy form through the sky, sighting her down the short length of the handgun.
Niamh circled lower, close enough for the beat of her wings to stir Deirdre’s hair.
“Come on,” Deirdre whispered.
At that range, even in the depths of night, Deirdre could see the gloss of her black feathers, and the smooth silvery flesh that transitioned easily into those feathers. Tangled in her red curls were those white feathers that belonged on the graceful body of a swan.
She was a monster. An abomination. Someone who had just tried to kill Vidya.
Niamh had sold her soul, and her best friend, for the ability to fly again.
Deirdre hoped that it was worth it.
Her finger squeezed the trigger, and she knew by the scream that punctuated the blast that her bullet had struck true.
Niamh pitched to the left, her wing damaged.
Deirdre jammed the gun into its holster and dropped off of the spire to land on the roof, boots slamming into the top of the building. The harpy struggled for altitude, flapping wildly.
She was falling. But as she fell, she was still coasting on the air, putting distance between herself and Deirdre—enough distance that she might be able to land beyond the vampires’ territory, where Deirdre wouldn’t be able to find her.
The wind battered Niamh’s fragile body like a kite.
Deirdre could still catch her.
If she had wings.
She’d shifted once while in the Winter Court, so why couldn’t she do it again? Melchior had shown her the way.
She needed anger as fuel.
Deirdre spread her arms wide, letting the fury burn through her.
Anger was easy. She’d never been so angry as she was now, not for so many years. The ability to be truly angry had been beaten out of her by the system that had broken her down. It had forced her to direct all her energy into survival without thinking of what that survival might mean.
Now Niamh had tried to kill Vidya.
Deirdre was furious.
The harpy pitched past the skyscraper, feathers tearing free of her wings as she plummeted.
As soon as Niamh vanished below the edge of the building, Deirdre jumped.
I’m angry. Let me change. I’m so angry.
Deirdre’s skin burned. Her whole body was on fire, churning on the inside, as though her every molecule vibrated with the force of a wildfire. She remembered what it had felt like to fly, carried on the sheer force of Melchior’s power.
It should have been easy to capture that feeling again.
But she wasn’t changing.
“Damn!” Deirdre gasped. The word was yanked from her mouth, breath dragged into the air, lungs emptying and refusing to refill.
In a blink, a dozen floors of the skyscraper shot past her, asphalt approaching rapidly.
Both Deirdre and Niamh were free falling. For a heartbeat, their gazes met in midair. Deirdre’s flames turned her to a comet against the night sky. Niamh’s blood streamed from the bullet wound as a crimson tail.