Beta

by Reine, SM

  But he thought of something else.

  “Magical overrides,” he said. “There’s a magical override separate from the main system. It locks all the cells permanently by engaging these charms—melts the locks into sludge, keeps everyone inside—”

  “Can you still feed the prisoners when they’re melted in?” Deirdre asked.

  “Yeah, of course we could,” Reuben said.

  They wouldn’t need to, though.

  The magical overrides would also incinerate the prisoners.

  When the Office of Preternatural Affairs detained people, it didn’t plan on ever letting them escape again.

  Those charms were a worst-case scenario thing, so terrible that only a few witches on staff knew they existed, much less how to engage them. But Reuben was one of those witches, and now he was pissed as hell. He’d be happy to turn them on.

  “How do we activate the charms?” Deirdre asked.

  “They’re in the same room as the unlocking mechanisms,” Reuben said.

  “Take me there.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, of course.”

  And then they were going to burn these bastards to the ground.

  Maybe it was going to be a good new moon after all.

  —II—

  Deirdre Tombs dragged the guard behind her, cursing every dead god for the luck that had landed her with such a sorry excuse for a witch.

  Surely she was due good karma for trying to prevent a massive jailbreak. It was the latest in her string of attempted good deeds: saving the werewolf Alpha from assassination, trying to save her would-be boyfriend from himself, getting herself in good with a terrorist so she could bring him down.

  But she’d been failing hard at life, so getting saddled with Reuben probably was karma.

  Silver-suckers.

  He’d actually said those words to her face.

  A few years earlier, some werewolves had been found strung up in trees with silver ben-wa balls jammed in their throats. They’d suffocated from the swelling and nobody had ever been prosecuted for the hate crimes. The only people who called shifters silver-suckers were the ones who thought that it was right to kill werewolves like that.

  It had been so long since Deirdre had spent time around non-shifters that she’d almost forgotten some people felt that way.

  But here was living proof that people really were that ignorant. He was dripping blood and piss as Deirdre carted his wimpy butt up the hallway, and he’d still said that to her face. He probably hadn’t been thinking about what she was when he said it, but he’d certainly been thinking about the prisoners he guarded.

  How many times had he flung those words like daggers into the hearts of the prisoners?

  Silver-suckers.

  What a scumbag.

  “In here,” Reuben said, swiping a keycard through a reader on the wall. It beeped and blinked.

  Deirdre tried the lock. The door wouldn’t open.

  “Why is this stuck?” she asked.

  Reuben slapped a hand to his sweat-soaked forehead. “Double verification. Need two key cards, and one of them with supervisor access. I’ve got the highest level access, but we still need a second card.”

  She pulled a key card out of her back pocket.

  “Like this?”

  He paled. “Where’d you get that?”

  Stark had entered the detention center with guns blazing. The end result had been a lot of dead security guards. She’d had her pick of keycards.

  Deirdre swiped it without answering Reuben.

  The lock beeped, blinked, and unlocked.

  Reuben leaned his weight against the door to shove it open. He winced at the movement.

  The second security room was on the other side of the underground compound, overlooking one of the cellblocks with a reinforced window. Deirdre could watch all the way up the row of cells and see dozens of hands thrusting through the bars. Everyone was antsy, ready to erupt with the moon.

  “No staff in here?” Deirdre asked.

  “No point during night shift,” Reuben said. “Nobody’s supposed to be let out of their cells after lockdown. We only use the master control security room to let people out during the day for mealtimes, labor hours—that kind of thing.”

  “Okay. So how do I open the interior doors?” Deirdre asked. “Not the cells. Just the ones in the hallways.” If she didn’t let Stark into the cellblock, he’d get suspicious and come looking for her.

  Reuben’s eyes were wild. “Why?”

  “Because I told you to,” she snapped. “You going to question everything I do?”

  “You came in with Everton Stark!”

  It did make her kind of look bad. “Just show me.”

  He took her to a row of switches. “These ones along the top do the interior doors. You can tell which ones because they’re numbered to match the icons on the map.” He pointed to the blueprint of the detention center above the panel.

  The numbers did match. It was a very neat system. Easy to figure out.

  “What about these doors?” she asked, touching a part of the map without any lights.

  “Solitary confinement. Those have to be unlocked at the hallway itself using a double keycard system, just like this room.”

  “Awesome, thanks,” Deirdre said. She snapped her fingers at him. “Magic. Locks. Go.”

  Reuben rounded on the lockers against the opposite wall. He fumbled with his keycard, struggling to open them.

  Deirdre started flipping switches along the top row, watching the lights switch from green to orange. Maybe some employees would get a chance to escape before Stark found them. It would also help her beat a hasty retreat when the time came.

  “You’re crazy,” Reuben said. “You’re all crazy.”

  “Probably. But I’m the crazy who isn’t killing you, so your night could be worse. Trust me.” She flipped the last of the switches and stepped back. Deirdre jerked a thumb at the cellblock that the security room overlooked. “What kind of prisoners are kept in there?”

  Reuben was sweating as he opened the cabinets, revealing the charms dangling inside. He mopped at his forehead with an arm. “Uh…those are the nonviolent offenders. Like, you know, minor misdemeanors done so many times they had to get charged for a felony.”

  The back of her neck prickled. “Misdemeanors?”

  “Trespassing, theft, use of lethe…”

  Her hand reflexively went to the opposite wrist, where Everton Stark had inserted a needle only a few hours earlier, injecting lethe directly into her veins.

  He was using it to see if she might shapeshift under the influence. So far, it hadn’t happened. But he kept offering and she kept accepting.

  It was no big deal. A short high, a few visual hallucinations, and no appetite for days.

  These people were imprisoned for it. They would never see sunshine again.

  Just because they had been chasing a high.

  Deirdre watched through the window as Stark and Andrew burst into the cellblock. The walls were so thick that she couldn’t hear them, but she didn’t need to. The prisoners went wild as soon as they saw Stark. He had a lot of fans in the detention center.

  “After you initiate the magical override, we’re going to have to make it look like you kicked my butt,” Deirdre said. “And you’ll have to get out fast so that Stark doesn’t retaliate against you when he discovers my body.”

  Reuben flinched. “Your…body?”

  “Unconscious, not dead.” Deirdre drummed her fingers on the holster of her gun. The tapping reminded her of rainfall. She stopped it. “Got any magic that you can toss around to make things look properly mucked up?”

  “I can make something,” Reuben said. “I’m activating the magic now, just so you know.”

  “Great.”

  Deirdre couldn’t take her eyes off of Stark through the window. At any moment, he was going to realize the cells were locked and track her down in the security room. He’d catch her trying to betray
him. And he’d make her regret it.

  They had to move fast.

  She twitched when Stark leaped toward one of the cell doors. He was barking orders to Andrew. Deirdre wished she could hear him so she could figure out what he was talking about.

  But then she realized that the locks were melting.

  Each one of the cell doors was starting to glow, and the metal was dripping into a white-hot slurry, sealing them closed.

  Reuben’s magic was working.

  She saw Stark’s mouth open in a shout, and he grabbed the bars of a cell in both hands, as though attempting to rip it out of the wall. For a heartbeat, she felt satisfaction in knowing she’d beaten him for once—but then she saw why the hint of panic was flashing over his face.

  It wasn’t just the lock melting.

  The inside of the cell was warped with heat and vibrating with magic. Not just that cell, but every cell around it, too. And it was spreading out in ripples to take the next prisoner, and the next.

  The incarcerated shifters were screaming. They were so loud that Deirdre could hear them faintly through the reinforced glass.

  She whirled on Reuben. He was grabbing more of the charms, activating them as quickly as possible with a resigned expression.

  He’d known that the spells wouldn’t just melt the locks. He had planned on killing the prisoners all along.

  But these were non-violent offenders.

  “Oh no,” she breathed.

  Deirdre snapped a kick at the back of Reuben’s head. She didn’t aim well enough to bring him down, nor did she hit him hard enough to cause damage. She only managed to knock him away from the charms.

  She hurled herself at the wall of switches. It was easy to tell which would unlock the cells because of the helpful, convenient map.

  Deirdre started flipping.

  Reuben smashed into her back. His hands tangled in her hair, yanking so hard that she felt like her scalp was going to rip off.

  She yelped, grabbing his hands. “Let go!”

  “I can’t let you release all those silver-suckers.” His breath stank of pennies, hot and wet on her cheek. He freed a hand to fumble at the holster on her hip.

  Deirdre drove her elbow into his gut. He stumbled away and took what felt like half of her hair with him.

  Niamh had just permed Deirdre’s hair straight again that morning. It had taken hours.

  She jerked the Sig Sauer P226 Nitron out of her holster and fired it into Reuben’s other foot.

  He dropped with a cry. But he wouldn't give up that easily. He reached into the collar of his shirt and pulled out a pentacle necklace that glowed with magic.

  Outside in the cellblock, people were still screaming. Innocent prisoners were dying, melting from the force of the detention center’s magic, and it was because Deirdre had accidentally done the wrong thing.

  Again.

  The witch flung the pentacle toward her. He opened his mouth, prepared to speak another word of power.

  Deirdre shot him in the chest before he could trigger the magic.

  Blood sprayed.

  She didn’t pause to watch him fall.

  Hands shaking, she shoved the gun back into her holster, flipped the rest of the switches, and then ran to the window. Most of the locks on the cell doors disengaged. The doors opened wide and bodies spilled out.

  Some of those bodies were still moving.

  But so many of the cells didn’t open. The melted locks ensured that. Inside, prisoners flamed with the glow of dark magic, thrashing as their skin melted over their bones.

  Stark managed to wrench one of the doors off by its hinges. Magical flames gushed out, splashing over his cargo pants.

  Deirdre needed to help. She couldn’t let the prisoners die like that.

  She ripped Reuben’s keycard out of his pocket. He didn’t react to being touched. Blood was puddling underneath him, spreading outward by the centimeter. Facedown on the floor, he looked indistinguishable from any of the guards that Stark had killed on their way into the detention center.

  Deirdre raced into the hallway. Alarms blared outside the master security room, most likely triggered by something Reuben or Deirdre had done. The sheer volume of it made her brain throb inside of her skull.

  Those alarms were even louder inside the cellblock, as though they thought that they could prevent prison escapes simply by deafening everyone. The sound muted the screams of the shifters still trapped inside their cells.

  Deirdre shoved her way through the escaped convicts to reach Stark, who was struggling to rip the door off of another melting cell.

  The shifter inside was consumed in fire. Electric flames clung to his skin, wet and sticky, eating away at the flesh to expose glistening red meat underneath.

  Deirdre had allowed Reuben to do that.

  She shouldered up beside Stark and gripped the other side of the door. He acknowledged her by saying, “One…two…three!”

  They pulled hard at the same time. The metal bent. Reinforced hinges wrenched out of the wall. And the bars came off.

  Deirdre leaped into the cell. The instant she crossed the threshold, her body was consumed by heat, powerful and suffocating. Sticky blue fire splattered from runes on the walls. She dodged as much of it as she could, grabbed the prisoner by the shoulders, and dragged him outside.

  “Deirdre!”

  Andrew tackled her, his massive hands beating at her shoulders and arms. He yanked her jacket off.

  She wrenched away from him. “What are you doing?”

  He flung her leather coat to the floor and stomped on it. The blue flame had landed on her, eating away at the material.

  Oh. That’s what he’s doing.

  She shot Andrew a grateful, embarrassed smile before helping Stark open the rest of the cells.

  They acted quickly enough to save two more prisoners. Deirdre tried not to think too hard about what she was doing and what kind of people she might be saving. Many of them were addicts, or petty thieves. But what about the woman beaters? The stalkers? The people who might deserve to be locked up?

  She didn’t know who was who. She could have been risking her life for people as bad as Stark.

  But if she didn’t save them, then people who were mostly innocent might die, melted to the bone by hexes that she’d let Reuben trigger.

  She was too late to save a handful of the prisoners anyway. Deirdre ran to the next cell with a melted lock and saw nothing but a husk of a body on the inside. The death looked like it must have been excruciating.

  Stark grabbed her by the elbow, grip crushingly tight. “What went wrong, Tombs?” He didn’t have to speak loudly for her to hear him over the alarms. His voice always felt like it was projected directly into her mind, echoing through her skull.

  “The guard tricked me,” Deirdre said. “He showed me where the locks were and then activated the hexes while I was distracted.”

  “Did he pay?” Stark asked.

  A sudden chill rolled over her at the memory of what she’d done to him. “Yes.”

  He looked satisfied. “Good.”

  Any time Stark approved of what Deirdre had done, she felt like she’d made a serious mistake.

  The cellblock was chaotic with the many prisoners who had escaped: a sea of black-and-white-striped uniforms torn between running for the doors and encircling Stark.

  He turned to address them.

  “Moonrise comes in thirty minutes,” Stark said. “I am Alpha. I’ll control your changes if you let me. If you run, you’ll have to deal with it on your own.”

  One of the prisoners, a burly woman with a shaved head, stepped forward. “We’re with you, Stark.”

  His eyes glinted with a dangerous light. “Get to the surface.”

  Then he turned from them as though utterly confident that they would obey his commands.

  They probably would. Stark was a compelling man in more ways than one.

  Deirdre’s heart skittered when she realized he was moving de
eper into the detention center rather than following the prisoners toward the exit. “We have to get out of here,” she said, stepping in front of him. “These alarms will be going off at the nearest OPA base. They’ll be after us.”

  “Step aside, Tombs.”

  “I unlocked all the doors in the detention center. Everyone can escape. What’s left for us here?”

  Stark shoved her aside. “We can’t go until we find solitary confinement.”

  There was no point in asking him why he wanted to go there—he had his reasons, and he wouldn’t share them unless the whim struck.

  All she could do was hasten their escape.

  Deirdre broke into a run. “I saw a map. I can take us there.”

  Stark and Andrew followed, but there were more than just two pairs of footsteps pounding behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see that several of the imprisoned shifters were with them, too.

  She was halfway down the stairs to the first floor of the cellblock when guards emerged from the opposite hallway.

  Deirdre shouted a warning, hand flying to her gun.

  Not fast enough.

  The guards at the front of the assault dropped to their knees, shouldering assault rifles that were stamped with the bold white OPA logo.

  They opened fire without warning.

  Deirdre dived over the railing, arms over her head. She was still ten feet off the ground. She hit and rolled with practiced ease, getting to her feet in a single motion.

  Her Sig Sauer leaped to her hand as she ran toward the hallway, angling herself so that she approached the guard sideways. Some of them had riot shields—effective protection against her bullets.

  She had to get around those shields.

  Bullets blasted into the wall behind her, ripping holes the size of her fist into the concrete. Debris pelted her bare shoulders like bee stings.

  Deirdre let instinct move her, keeping inches ahead of the line of bullets.

  She ran up the side of the wall. She was fast enough that she got a good six feet off the ground in an arc, rubber treads gripping the concrete as she aimed her gun straight at the line of guards.

  Eyes widened behind helmet masks. Muzzles tracked her too slowly. They hadn’t expected her preternatural speed to carry her up the wall like that, and they didn’t react fast enough to defend against her.