by Reine, SM
She shut her eyes, thinking back on the comics she’d read. “It turns everything it cuts into obsidian. One small slice, and an entire person will turn to stone.” She looked to Pierce. “Right?”
“Correct,” he said.
“And that effect works regardless of breed?” Stark asked.
“It’s known to work against shifters, demons, and angels,” Pierce said.
“And the sidhe?”
Pierce and Jaycee were silent.
So there was the catch.
“It’s never been tested, has it?” Deirdre asked. “The Twin Blades haven’t been seen since Genesis, so they’ve never been used against sidhe.”
“I’m sure it will work,” Pierce said. “It works against angels, for gods’ sake. It must work against denizens of the Summer Court.”
Jaycee brandished her cell phone at Stark. “I have the coordinates stored on a remote server. If you agree, I’ll transmit the location to you so you can retrieve the sword.”
Smart move. It ensured that Stark would have to let them leave the asylum alive. But Deirdre couldn’t resist the urge to poke. “You have servers in the Middle Worlds?”
“Everyone’s servers are in the Middle Worlds,” Jaycee said with an ugly little sneer. “Earth is a Middle World as much as the Winter Court is.”
“And what’s the catch?” Deirdre asked. “I mean, why give us this sword?”
“For one, we’re not giving it to you. You must retrieve it yourselves,” Pierce said. “We won’t help with that.”
“For another, we have a long-standing rivalry with the Summer Court.” Jaycee’s cheeks flushed with excitement, and it sparkled in a dark halo around her hair. “Think of it as a lengthy game of chess. It would be incredibly satisfying to watch the king’s pawns get…taken.”
Stark bristled at the obvious implication that he was one of the Winter Court’s chess pieces.
But his eyes were focused on Jaycee’s phone.
“Transmit it now,” Stark said.
“Not until you give us what we want.”
Deirdre frowned. “You mean something other than the humiliation of your enemies? It sounds like we’d be doing you a favor by going after these guys. And, as you pointed out, you’re not giving us the sword. Just the location. I think it’s a pretty equitable deal without throwing anything else on the pile.”
“Equitability only matters when all factors are even,” Pierce said. “They’re not. Stark wants this weapon. We’re the only ones who know where it is. He can’t get this anywhere else, whereas we can always find someone else to kill members of the Summer Court, and that means there’s a high price.”
And it also meant that it was a price not worth paying.
“We’ll do it,” Stark said. “I agree to your terms.”
The satisfaction of the sidhe radiated. The room blurred around them, taking on a hazy glow. “Fantastic,” Pierce said. He grasped Jaycee’s hand. They glimmered with a diamond shine. The window distorted. The room darkened further.
It was some kind of sidhe magic.
“We’ll be in touch,” Jaycee said.
And then they were gone.
The room was suddenly empty and bright. The sun wasn’t being sponged up by the sidhe anymore.
No wonder Jacek hadn’t been able to stop them from getting into the asylum.
Deirdre felt heavy in their absence, as though it were suddenly impossible to walk. She sank into one of the chairs surrounding the table.
Everton Stark was already a man who could control other shifters with his words and was powerful enough to rip heads off with his bare hands. What would he do with a sword that could turn anything and anyone into stone with a scratch?
“I thought this was a war of media,” Deirdre said. “You told me that killing Rylie would only martyr her. So why are we looking for a sword that will let you assassinate her?”
“It begins as a war of media. But once I win that battle, there will be blood to spill.” Stark wrinkled his nose at Deirdre. He leaned in and inhaled the scent of her hair. “You smell terrible.”
She plucked at her shirt. It was pretty sweaty. It was hard to get clothing clean when their water was so limited, and Deirdre’s lack of showers weren’t helping. “My hygiene’s not a topic of conversation here. We’re strategizing, aren’t we?”
“Not until we get the coordinates. Planning will come after that.”
“What are we giving those people for the coordinates?” Deirdre asked. “It’s gotta be pretty bad.”
“Don’t concern yourself with that.”
“I’m your Beta,” she said. “Everything you do is my concern these days. And if you didn’t want it to be my problem, you wouldn’t have given me the job. Tell me how they’re going to get their pound of flesh, because I am pretty sure it’s not going to be worth it.”
Stark gripped the edge of the table so hard that the wood cracked. The sound was reminiscent of a bone snapping.
He wasn’t glaring at her, though. His eyes were distant. He was lost in memory, somewhere far beyond the asylum.
“Don’t argue with me on this.” His tone was strangely kind—not nearly as angry as she expected. “I’ve made my choice and it’s time for you to move on.” Stark released the table and turned to face the window. “Next time I see you, I don’t want to smell you. Get out of here, Tombs.”
—VII—
If a terrorist hiding in an abandoned insane asylum said Deirdre smelled bad, she figured she must have smelled pretty rank.
She grabbed a fresh outfit, towels, and a shower cap, then headed to the showers.
The asylum hadn’t been renovated since it had been occupied by the criminally insane, which meant that the bathroom had no stalls. It had shower heads on opposing walls with drains set into the floor. It was windowless and lightless, and the ever-creeping mold was kept at bay only because Stark assigned daily scrubbings to his least favorite pack members.
The room was also uninhabited at the moment.
“Damn.” Deirdre’s voice echoed off of the tile.
She’d been hoping that she could catch some of the other shifter women bathing. The felines tended to do it in a group. There were also enough of them to back Deirdre up if Jacek attacked while they were getting clean.
Deirdre was still trying to decide if it would be more humiliating to get killed in the shower or beaten by Stark for skipping a shower when she heard the noise. Motion echoed from the dark rear corner of the showers.
She reached into her towel to touch the Ruger. “Who’s there?”
Nobody responded.
Deirdre stepped inside. The shape of a woman resolved in the corner. She was naked, huddled against the tile, eyes wild.
Vidya.
She was as filthy as she had been the night that Deirdre had found her. The smell of human filth wafted on a draft.
Deirdre didn’t relax yet. “What are you doing in here?”
The shifter pressed herself tighter against the corner.
Something pitying unfolded within Deirdre’s heart. Vidya was dangerous enough that she’d volunteered with Stark, so there was no reason to feel bad for her. But Deirdre did. She’d seen that haunted look in the eyes of too many gaeans that she’d grown up with.
Deirdre approached slowly. It looked like the woman hadn’t scraped off any of the blood or effluence that caked her skin. It must have been building up for a long time if it managed to cling to her after a shapeshift into her animal form and then back again.
“Do you need help with the showers?” Deirdre asked.
Vidya shook her head. A small, fervent motion.
How could Stark have left her like that? It had been two nights since they liberated Vidya, but she was still wandering around alone and filthy. If he’d cared about her enough to save her from the OPA, he must have cared enough to take care of her in other, equally important ways.
But obviously not.
That thought was what made the
decision for Deirdre.
“I’m going to shower. Stick around and I’ll help wash your hair. It’s pretty long. I’m sure you could use an extra pair of hands.” Deirdre casually flipped on half of the lights, keeping the room dim. She started to tuck her hair under a cap. “I can’t shower alone. I have too many enemies.”
Understanding flashed over Vidya’s features.
She stood back as Deirdre jammed a mop against the door handle. It wouldn’t be enough to defend against a shifter’s super strength, but it would give her a moment to grab her gun if they were attacked.
Deirdre turned on two of the showers as hot as possible, which wasn’t very hot with the old water heater. The pressure wasn’t good, either. The water dribbled more than streamed.
She stripped and set everything on a nearby shelf. Distant enough that it wouldn’t get wet, but not so far away that she couldn’t reach it in an emergency.
Deirdre washed Vidya first. The water that sluiced over her body came away a sickening brown color. It swirled into the drain followed by long strands of hair that came loose as Deirdre worked her fingers through the knots.
When she peeled the hair away from the back of Vidya’s neck, she found a tattoo—the seal of the United States Marines.
“Did you serve with Stark?” Deirdre asked, rubbing a smear of blood off of the tattoo.
At this point, she wasn’t surprised that Vidya didn’t respond.
The woman’s back was a mess of vertical scars that ran from her shoulder blades down to the small of her back. The lines were a few shades darker than the rest of her skin, but not bumpy.
“Where did you get these?” Deirdre asked, tracing a finger along the scar. When Vidya didn’t respond, she kept speaking. “They’re kind of cool. I have a birthmark that covers the same part of my back. It’s white, though. Almost as white as Niamh is underneath all the freckles.”
Still, Vidya was silent.
It took three bars of soap and all the hot water to get her clean. The woman didn’t move the whole time. She simply stood under the spray, immobile as a mannequin.
The skin underneath the filth was a pretty coppery color, unblemished despite all the neglect she’d sustained in the detention center. The amount of damage that shifters could absorb never stopped amazing Deirdre.
Once she was done, Deirdre scrubbed herself quickly. The water was much too cold for her to do a thorough job of it. She’d never bathed so quickly before.
She shut off the showers and shivered.
“There,” Deirdre said. “All better.”
She offered a spare towel to Vidya. To her surprise, the woman actually took it.
They dried off just as quickly. There were impatient voices in the hallway outside. Not hostile voices—which meant not Jacek—but people who would nonetheless make Deirdre miserable if she held up the showers for long.
“Thank you,” Vidya finally said. Her voice cracked. It was like she hadn’t spoken in years.
Deirdre was so surprised to hear her talk that her arms froze for a moment. But then she went back to toweling. “Thank you for the backup.”
Vidya glared down at her own body, arms limp at her sides. “I wasn’t always like this. I used to be…more.”
There was such pain in her voice. Such grief for all the things that she had lost.
Deirdre didn’t know her story, but she hated the sound of such despair.
“It’ll get better,” Deirdre said. “Eventually, it will.”
It didn’t look like Vidya agreed. But she managed a small, tentative smile.
That night, Deirdre turned on the news to watch Rylie’s latest speech. More specifically, she turned it on to watch the background for seelie bodyguards.
They kept the camera so close to Rylie that it was impossible to see anyone else. If the werewolf Alpha was grieving Gage’s loss, then she didn’t show signs of that, either. Rylie was composed and smiling and calm, as always.
She looked so relaxed mere weeks after Deirdre had unloaded a magazine into Gage’s skull. Black hatred bloomed within Deirdre’s heart.
“I have no intent of allowing terrorists to harm anyone,” Rylie said. She looked at the camera as she spoke, as though addressing Deirdre directly. “We’ve worked hard to support the growth of gaean businesses, gaean education, and gaean families.”
“Yeah, as long as we toe the line and stay under your heels,” Niamh said to the television. “Look at her. It’s disgusting that she’d wear designer clothes when most of us are living like this.” She gestured toward the kitchen at large with a wide-toothed comb.
Rylie went on, oblivious to the criticism. “Beginning immediately, all state-run schools will be guarded by members of an OPA police force to ensure the safety of our precious children.”
“And to brainwash them from an early age!” Niamh said.
“I don’t think Rylie has those particular powers.” Deirdre didn’t want Niamh getting too worked up while she messed with Deirdre’s hair. In the absence of the right supplies to perform a fresh perm, they were ironing her hair straight instead.
“Controlling early education is the same thing as brainwashing, isn’t it?” Colette asked. The feline shifter was working on combing the last of the knots out of Vidya’s hair while they sat at the kitchen table. “It’s indoctrination.”
Deirdre rolled her eyes. “All of us grew up in the shifter school system, and you see how well we’re indoctrinated. You know, seeing as how we’re hanging out with Everton Stark.”
The TV had cut from Rylie’s speech to a pair of anchors discussing it. They were throwing around phrases like “waste of tax dollars.”
The humans on screen didn’t say it outright, but what they really meant was that they didn’t want their money going toward protecting second-class citizens like shifters. Even if they were children.
Silver-suckers.
Reuben’s slur was still rattling around in Deirdre’s head. It was a painfully effective reminder of what the common person thought of people like them.
It wasn’t like anybody had asked to lose their humanity in Genesis. Nobody had chosen to live these lives.
And yet it still made them lesser beings.
“I’m sick of hearing people talk about us like we’re trash,” Deirdre said. “Turn off the TV. They don’t deserve our ratings.”
Colette didn’t turn it off, but she muted it.
Heat radiated beside Deirdre’s ear as Niamh moved the iron. The oils slicking her hair sizzled softly. “They won’t have jobs once Stark takes over,” Niamh said. “Once shifters are dominant, we’ll get rid of every last one of those mouth-breathing mundanes.”
“It’s not just the mundanes. Rylie Gresham is perpetuating these classist ideas. I don’t get why more gaeans aren’t rising up to stand with us,” Colette said. “There might not be more shifters than humans, but we’re stronger. If we all just stopped obeying their stupid laws, then who would stop us? Even the OPA doesn’t have that many bullets.”
“We’d lose a lot of people in a fight like that,” Deirdre said.
“It’d be worth it,” Niamh said. “It’d be worth every life.”
Deirdre turned to look at her friend. The shift in angle made hot hair fall against her cheek. “Even yours? Or mine?”
“Isn’t that why we’re here? To give up our lives?” Niamh asked. “Don’t move, honey. I’m not done with your hair yet.”
Deirdre relaxed and let Niamh work on her.
Of the four women, only Vidya was silent. She hadn’t spoken again since that one moment in the bathroom. She was now wearing a spare t-shirt and pair of pajama pants that belonged to Colette, and her hair was shiny. Externally, she looked so much better.
But there was still a shadow in her eyes. There were problems inside of her that a shower and makeover couldn’t fix.
It reminded Deirdre a lot of how haunted Gage used to look.
“This is such crap,” Niamh said, gesturing at the silent news c
hannel with the iron. “I spent hours producing that video for Stark and nobody is covering it.”
“Maybe nobody’s seen it yet,” Deirdre said.
“That’s not what the website traffic reports say. Our views are in the mid-six figures. You’d think that a few of those viewers must have contacts at national news networks.” Niamh’s gestures grew bigger as she started getting impassioned again. “But even that number bothers me, too. Hundreds of thousands of views? His last videos have gotten millions!” She shook the iron in frustration. Deirdre leaned away to keep from getting burned.
“The last videos were also on YouTube,” Deirdre said. “You’re hosting this new video on a private server, and the domain name got seized, so people have to type in the IP address to find it. That’s inconvenient. And it means that it’s a whole different traffic game. You can’t expect millions of views.”
Colette tapped her chin thoughtfully. “We have to get the word out somehow. Go viral.”
“I’m open to ideas,” Niamh said.
Jacek sauntered into the kitchen. “Well, well, well. Isn’t this cute?” He was wearing two underarm holsters and swinging a pair of noise-canceling headphones in one hand. He must have been at the shooting range in the asylum’s basement. “Looks like you little girls are having a pajama party.”
“Jealous we didn’t invite you?” Niamh asked sweetly. “I could curl your pretty, pretty hair if you want.”
He sneered. “I’ve got better things to do.” He stopped in front of Deirdre’s barstool. He smiled at her from just inches away, hands on his narrow hips, the guns glinting in the dim light of the kitchen. “Hey there, Beta.”
She clenched her jaw and returned his glare silently.
Deirdre’s gun was at the small of her back. Her draw would be slower than his if it came down to that.
But Jacek was still looking at her, expectant, as though waiting for her to say something. Like she’d just barf up a confession if he stared hard enough.
She wasn’t going to talk first.
“Stop being so creepy,” Niamh said, elbowing Jacek aside. She set the iron on the counter beside Deirdre. “I think I’m done with your hair, Dee. If you want to go work on something else, I’ll wrap it up with Vidya and Colette.”