by SM Reine
“Stark and I disagree.”
“Did he send you?”
“No,” Vidya said. “He hasn’t noticed that you’re gone yet. For all I know, he’s still pulling people out of that burning building. You’re coming back with me.”
Deirdre wished that she could, but even Vidya’s wings wouldn’t be able to protect them if all the OPA battle witches unleashed their magic. “I can’t. I have to go into Original Sin. I have to save the unseelie queen.”
“The queen who has now defeated me twice?”
“No, the actual queen,” Deirdre said. “Saving Ofelia will screw over Rhiannon.”
Vidya studied the surrounding agents, wings whistling softly as metal sang against metal, ruffled by the wind. There was ash on some of her feathers and blood on others. “I don’t think Stark would want you to get involved.”
“Why do you work for him?” Deirdre asked. “Is it because you feel loyal to him after your time in the Marines together, or because you agree with his vision for the future?”
“Both,” Vidya said.
“Trust me when I say that saving Ofelia Hawke is the best way to put Stark in power. At this point, it might be the only way to do it. We have to save her.”
“Okay.”
Deirdre frowned. “Really? I expected more of a fight than that.”
“Yes. What can I do to help?” Vidya asked.
She hadn’t thought that far yet. “Get Geoff and Ember,” Deirdre said, throwing out the first two names that occurred to her. They weren’t men she trusted, but she trusted they wouldn’t try to kill her. “And then get ready to kill a lot of unseelie.”
Vidya’s eyes went distant, as though registering a command. “Get Geoff and Ember. Kill the unseelie.”
“Yep,” Deirdre said.
The valkyrie’s wings snapped wide. Men shouted, leaping out of her reach.
Then she caught the wind and let it carry her over the railing, plummeting back to the earth.
Rylie leaned over the railing, watching her path as she carved a way through the smoke. “We’re close to Original Sin. We can’t openly provide support, but if there’s anything we can do—”
“I don’t need anything from you.” Deirdre climbed onto the railing, rubber soles of her boots gripping the metal. The roof of a tall building was only a hundred feet down.
She jumped.
XVI
From the outside, Original Sin looked like nothing more than the warehouse it used to be. The surrounding sidewalks and roads hadn’t been repaired since the Genesis void whipped through the city—almost nothing in that neighborhood had been.
But the club was drenched in unseelie magic, and Deirdre couldn’t get within blocks of it without experiencing distorted vision. A humming grew within her skull, like a distant song she couldn’t quite hear.
The sidhe were nearby, and they were casting some powerful spells.
Deirdre checked the magazine on her gun. It was fully loaded with iron bullets. Rylie hadn’t given them to her directly, but someone had conveniently abandoned a crate of ammo nearby, and it obviously hadn’t been left behind by rioters. “You ready for this?”
“I’m ready.” Vidya peeled off her shirt, exposing the faint scars on her back. Her wings unfurled, slicing through the straps of her bandeau bra. The valkyrie had only been moments behind Deirdre, arriving at Original Sin with the requested reinforcements at lightning speed.
Deirdre looked over her shoulder. “And you guys?”
Geoff and Ember were digging through the unmarked ammunition crate. Ember had picked out an AK-47 and was stuffing extra magazines into his cargo pants. Geoff had gone for something elegant, a little more traditional—a sword. Deirdre was skeptical that he could do anything with it, but the iron blade looked nasty enough, so she wasn’t going to criticize. It seemed appropriate to use a weapon like Kristian’s while attacking the unseelie anyway.
“Can’t wait to get killing!” Geoff whipped the sword through the air.
“Remember, we have to get the queen out,” Deirdre said. “She needs to survive or the entire election is going to fall apart. What happens to everyone else in there…”
She couldn’t directly condone the deaths of the other unseelie. They were fellow gaeans, and if she had her way, she would be making the world a better place for them to live in as well. But they were currently aligned with Melchior and Rhiannon, which made them enemies. Deirdre wouldn’t weep for their deaths.
“Who’d have thought that this is where I’d end up when I checked in to the safe house that moon?” Ember asked, reverently running his fingers over the AK-47. “I thought my fighting days were over after the fissure to Hell closed all those years ago.”
“I’m glad to have you,” Deirdre said.
He smiled. “I’m glad to help.”
Deirdre peered around the corner at Original Sin. She glimpsed movement within the windows—only a glimpse, a flash of ghostly white.
Unseelie guards were patrolling the inside perimeter of the club. They were watching every entrance.
“We need a diversion,” Deirdre muttered.
She glanced up at the sky again. The dirigible was fleeing the scene as quickly as an airship could, which wasn’t fast at all. There’d be no help from them.
Her mouth twisted as she studied her small army. A valkyrie and two werewolves, neither of them with Alpha potential, but both with a combat history.
There had to be a way to do this without ending up dead.
“I’m going to go around the back,” Deirdre said. “See if I can pull the guards away from the front of the building. Once they’re gone, I want Vidya to get you two inside. I’ll meet you as soon as possible.”
“That a good idea?” Geoff asked. “I know you’re fast and all, but the unseelie are pure magic.”
Deirdre gave a half-hearted smile. “So am I.”
“See you inside,” Vidya said.
Yanking her hood over her head to protect her hair from the rain, Deirdre broke into a jog.
She didn’t make it far.
A dark shape darted across the street. Deirdre didn’t have time to react before it slammed into her, carrying her back into the alley and smashing her body into the wall.
She reached for her gun—too slow.
The hand that seized her wrist was muscled, with coarse hair almost down to his knuckles.
It wasn’t one of the unseelie who had pinned her down.
“Stark,” she gasped, sucking in a painful breath. He was leaning the full force of his weight against her. Vidya stood behind his shoulder, and she didn’t move to save Deirdre. “How did you find me? What are you doing here?”
“I’m killing Melchior,” Stark said. “What do you think I’m doing?”
Deirdre thought he was just stalking the woman he wanted to keep around as his Alpha mate and favorite punching bag. “I’ve got a handle on it.”
“That’s not what Vidya thinks,” Stark said.
Deirdre shot a look at the valkyrie. She was still waiting deeper in the alley with Ember and Geoff, and she didn’t look remotely contrite.
“Tell me that you saved everyone from the burning buildings,” Deirdre said.
“I might have if the sluagh hadn’t arrived.”
“What?”
He put his hand over her mouth to silence her, glancing around the corner to check Original Sin.
Deirdre slapped his hand away. “The gargoyles killed the sluagh.”
“No, it’s much harder to kill than that,” Stark said. “And it’s consumed at least a dozen vampires by now. It’s bigger. If I had stayed…” His lips sealed, refusing to finish the sentence. But Deirdre understood what he was saying.
If Stark had stayed, the sluagh would have killed him.
“It’s still there? Among the riots?” Forget the queen, forget the election. There were so many innocent gaeans being attacked by an unseelie assassin that consumed souls. “We have to go back.”
She tried to step away, but he shoved her against the wall again. “It won’t stay there long. The sluagh has no interest in those people. It’s looking for you. We’re here now, and I have to get Melchior while we know where he is, while he’s in this dimension—while he’s accessible.”
“No, Stark,” Deirdre said. “We can’t be sure the sluagh will leave the tenements alone, and they’re there because of me. This is so much more important than that.”
“What do you think you’ll be able to do to the sluagh?”
“Lure it away? I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
“What about penetrating Original Sin and forcing the unseelie who sent the sluagh against you to recall it?” Stark asked.
She opened her mouth to argue, but then stopped. He had a point.
“That would work,” Deirdre said.
He peered around the wall, still holding her tightly. “We’ll have to move quickly. The unseelie are patrolling the perimeter.”
Her mouth twisted in irritation. She’d already come to that determination, and she had a plan; she didn’t need Stark taking charge like some big Alpha douchebag. “We’re going to have to do an assault from multiple angles.”
“No,” Stark said. “We need to draw them to us so we can annihilate them.”
“That’ll get us annihilated.”
“Not with my compulsion.”
“Your compulsion isn’t that good,” Deirdre said.
His eyes sparked with angry mirth. “Have faith.” The words sparked with a hint of compulsion. He was trying to force a pep talk on her.
How sweet. You asshole.
Stark turned his attention on the others. “We’ll enter through the front and draw them to us. And then we’ll kill them all.”
“How likely am I to get Force-choked if I tell you that’s a really crazy plan?” Geoff asked. “A plan that can only be described very generously as a plan at all?”
Deirdre tensed, expecting Geoff to get killed. That was exactly the kind of back talk that had gotten her face broken more than once.
But Stark didn’t punch him. “I don’t mind dissenting opinions as long as I have your total obedience.”
“Too late for anything else,” Ember said, shouldering the AK-47. “But I agree. You’re crazy.”
“Noted. Stick close. We operate as a unit. We don’t separate if we can avoid it. Don’t trust anything you see within those walls—unseelie magic is strong. But if you do end up alone…shoot everything that moves. Shifters will survive iron bullets.”
Geoff nodded. “Got it, boss.”
“Yeah, boss,” Deirdre said.
She took two steps away, but Stark stopped her. “I will be the one hunting Melchior.” He jabbed Deirdre in the chest with a finger. “If we get separated, and if you find him first, be very careful.”
“I’ll try not to kill him too quickly. Save a few pieces for you if I can,” Deirdre said.
His eyes narrowed. “That’s not what I’m warning you about.”
Stark was telling her not to kiss him again.
As if he owned her.
This coming from a man who thought that he had compelled her to be obedient or dead.
“Happy hunting,” she said, moving to leave the alley.
Stark caught her. He dragged her back to him. And he kissed her with painful ferocity, smashing their mouths together, bowing her back under the force of it.
Panic surged through her—panic that Geoff and Ember would see, that they would know, and they’d tell people—along with a confusing mixture of annoyance and arousal that Deirdre didn’t like, not one bit.
“Don’t die,” Stark growled against her mouth.
“Is that another compulsion?” Deirdre asked. “This one to override the ‘drop dead if you disobey me, bitch’ compulsion?”
“I’m telling you that I want to see you again, alive,” he said. “And I’ll be angry if you don’t keep yourself that way.”
She thought about telling him where he should shove his half-assed sentiments. But there was a pretty good chance that one or both of them was going to get killed by the unseelie, and she was the only one who might come back from that.
What would life be like without Stark?
It would probably be better. A lot better.
That didn’t mean she’d like it.
Life with Stark was life in Technicolor, constant adrenaline and emotion. It was the first time she’d breathed in years. The first time she’d seen light at the end of the tunnel where the preternatural system had buried her, no matter how distant that light may have seemed, or how much violence waited between her and escape.
At least it was there.
She hated him, but she didn’t want him dead.
Deirdre heaved a sigh. “I expect you to come out of this alive too.”
Stark gestured, and everyone followed him into the icy depths of Original Sin.
“Go inside and kill everyone” was a horrible plan. But Everton Stark wasn’t a man who needed to get more complicated than that.
They crossed the edge of the unseelie wards on the sidewalk outside the club, and the protection magic erupted.
In an instant, the club went from a few feet away to a few thousand miles away. It appeared so distant that Deirdre couldn’t have reached it if she flew for days. She knew that it must have been an illusion—that the club couldn’t be as far away as it looked.
Yet the more she railed against the magic, the tighter it held her.
Time slowed, blurring her motions. Her arms pumped at her sides as though she were trying to fight her way through the ocean.
Stark pushed through the magic without looking back. He aimed for that distant front door, unperturbed by the distortion.
The unseelie guards appeared in front of him.
They were beautiful statues, skin glimmering in jewel tones. Magic lashed along their arms and haloed their heads. It was physically painful to look at them, like staring into the sun.
Stark looked. He did a lot more than look.
He plunged his clawed hands into the gut of the man on the left and said, “Die.”
Shock rolled through the unseelie’s body. His eyes blanked, his head fell back, and just like that—he was dead. Sapphire blood gushed from the place that Stark’s fingers were embedded in his gut.
The magical distortion faded.
For an instant, Deirdre could see the street as it truly was. They were right in front of the doors to Original Sin. The city glowed with the fires started by Rhiannon and rioters.
Then the illusion began to rebuild, coalescing around the second unseelie guard.
He grew in size, looming over them.
“Shoot!” Stark shouted.
Deirdre fired on the second unseelie. She couldn’t tell if she hit. He leaped across the pavement to tackle her, and Deirdre barely dodged him. His fingers barely brushed her arm.
Ice immobilized her from shoulder to elbow and the cold penetrated to the bone. It hurt deep inside, as though blasting directly into the phoenix fire waiting within her.
The unseelie knew about her. They knew what she was, and her weaknesses.
Melchior had prepared for her.
Deirdre pushed the pain away, tracking her gun along the unseelie’s body as he leaped for Geoff.
She popped off one clean shot.
Skull fragmented. Blood the color of juicy emeralds splattered to the pavement. He fell against Geoff, and the werewolf gutted him with the iron blade.
The illusion shattered as though Deirdre had driven her boot heel into the surface of a frozen lake. The doors to Original Sin snapped into place, just outside of arm’s reach.
Vidya wrenched the entrance open with both hands, biceps and shoulder muscles flexing.
Magic popped around them. Deirdre felt it in her eardrums, in her skull.
She plunged into Original Sin after Vidya and Stark.
It was freezing inside of the club. Beyond freezing
. The dance floor was slicked with a thick layer of ice, and all the tables and couches had been replaced by silver trees glistening with frost leaves, much like the forest that she’d seen in the Winter Court. There should have only been a few feet between the dance floor and the walls, but the forest looked endless.
There were no walls. Original Sin opened into a vast night filled with stars.
More illusion.
Stalagmites of ice thrust from the ground between the trees, forming crystalline pillars twice Deirdre’s height, distorting and magnifying everything on the other side.
Through one of those stalagmites, Deirdre saw motion.
“Over there!” Her breath came out of her in plumes of mist that froze her lips, chilled her nose, bit at her cheeks.
Three more unseelie swept toward them through the club’s darkness, cloaked in ice, pristine and beautiful. “Don’t let him speak,” said a woman with opal-dark flesh.
Stark opened his mouth to issue another command.
Two of the unseelie slammed into him before he could say anything, and where their hands contacted his flesh, ice sprouted. It was a thick crust that collared him from nose to chest. It should have kept him from speaking.
Focusing that magic on Stark left them vulnerable to Vidya, and she didn’t need words to kill.
Razor feathers flashed through the air. She whipped her wings across the sidhe woman to eviscerate her from navel to breasts.
Shiny black skin tore open. Whatever she had inside was not like a human’s, bloody-red meat touched with orange fat, but like she was pure magic—muscle of liquid silver that erupted on contact.
When she hit the ground, she was already dead. And so was the sidhe beside her. Vidya was a force of nature more powerful than unseelie ice and far less merciful than any of her opponents.
The third launched away from Stark before Vidya could kill him. He spotted Deirdre and went for her instead.
She rolled behind one of the silver trees. Ice blasted past her head. Where the magic passed, the forest distorted, dripping and elongating like a painting left in the rain.
Ember took cover behind another of the ice pillars and opened fire, laying down a spray of bullets that peppered the trees.