Beta

by Reine, SM

  Deirdre wavered. Her finger flexed slightly on the trigger, pulling it back almost to the point where it would go off.

  January stood from her stool. She clutched the microphone in both hands. Her knuckles were white.

  “But…” January began.

  It seemed like the reporter felt she should say something to stave off what was happening, but didn’t know what. Now there was fear in her. It filled the room like the stink of rotten meat.

  Stark didn’t acknowledge January Lazar. There was nothing in the abandoned shop except the Alpha and the Beta and the gun that both of their hands cupped. His fingers were warm, but her skin was hotter than the surface of the sun.

  “Do it, Deirdre,” he said softly. His breath breezed over the fine hairs behind her ear.

  Dr. Landsmore deserved to die.

  Deirdre was better than that. She didn’t need to murder a man to bring him to justice. And she wasn’t his victim anymore—she was an adult, and she should have long since moved past the grudges of her youth. Besides, they’d removed Dr. Landsmore from the boarding school and released the children. He wasn’t going to hurt those kids anymore.

  And yet the system had put him in that position in the first place, which meant that they would put him back, too.

  There would be more children.

  The OPA would approve of more caregivers like Dr. Landsmore.

  Or Deirdre could set an example.

  “Do it,” Stark whispered, and there was no compulsion in his voice. “You deserve this.”

  She did deserve it. And so did Herb Landsmore.

  Deirdre squeezed the trigger.

  —X—

  Deirdre and Stark returned to the asylum later that night. He had given her more lethe on the way home, so she was riding high on the drugs, the exhilaration of saving those children, and the vindication of Herb Landsmore’s death.

  It felt like she was flying.

  “Thank you,” she told Stark in the empty asylum foyer, uncertain of what, exactly, she was thanking him for.

  He had made her kill Gage. He had crushed the berserker’s tooth as she watched. And he had slaughtered so many innocents. But Deirdre looked at him and all she saw was Dr. Landsmore’s skull fragments splattering to the ground at January Lazar’s feet.

  Stark was vindication in the form of a man.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  His fingers brushed against her elbow one last time.

  Deirdre actually smiled at him, and she meant it.

  She moved to go to her room, but Stark stopped her. “Put on something attractive.”

  “Attractive?” Deirdre asked. She didn’t understand. Her fuzzy mind was stuck on Herb Landsmore’s inability to continue experimenting on shifter children.

  “You heard me.” Stark gestured vaguely at her body. “Something revealing. Make it aggressively sexual. Visit Niamh at No Capes if you need help.”

  She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand to muffle the sound. It felt wrong to laugh in the desolation of the asylum, with all its boarded windows and water-stained walls, but she couldn’t help herself. “Aggressively sexual, huh? Since when does being your Beta mean being a sex toy?”

  A disapproving growl rumbled through Stark. “We’ve got to make a delivery to the Winter Court. They trade in sex. Your job is to look appealing and dangerous. Will that be a problem?”

  It was kind of a problem. Deirdre hadn’t exactly packed to look sexy at the asylum.

  She forced herself to stop smiling. Her hands tingled from when she had fired the gun at the doctor. “What are we delivering to the sidhe? Did you get something from St. Griffith’s?”

  “I’ll meet you in Niamh’s basement in twenty,” Stark said.

  He stalked away. She called after his back. “It takes women a lot longer than twenty minutes to get pretty!”

  Deirdre could hear his grunt of annoyance from across the foyer. It made her giggle again. Only when she was high could she manage to laugh at Stark—and only when he was in a good mood did he allow her to do it.

  He didn’t turn back to slap her, so he must have been in a very good mood.

  She didn’t need to go back to her bedroom to get dressed. She already knew that she didn’t have anything that would suit Stark’s requirements of “aggressively sexual.”

  The sewers underneath the asylum were busy, even though dawn was less than an hour away. Denizens of the night were rushing through the shadowy depths, hurrying to reach their destinations before the swift arrival of sunlight, too busy to bother Deirdre.

  She would have been afraid of them at any other time. But she was still smiling as she wandered through the sewer toward No Capes.

  They couldn’t touch her. Not Deirdre Tombs, Beta of Everton Stark’s rebellion, second most powerful shifter in the pack.

  Demons and vampires weren’t the only ones in the sewers underneath New York City that morning. There were unseelie sidhe, too—roaming members of the Winter Court. They were easy to pick out now that she knew what to look for. Their crystalline skin was luminescent, even in the darkness of the sewers, and the walls seemed warped behind them.

  They stared right on back at Deirdre. Jewel eyes cut right through her, as though they could see into her thoughts.

  She didn’t care if they could. Let them see her memories of murdering Dr. Landsmore. Let them know she was happy to have spilled his blood.

  Deirdre was still smiling when she climbed into Niamh’s basement and emerged in the store.

  “Well, look at you,” the swanmay said by way of greeting. She was sitting at her counter and sorting through Magic: The Gathering cards. Crushed cans of Red Bull were piled underneath her chair. “You’re awfully perky for four o’clock in the morning. Did you get laid?”

  “No, but I’m guessing you did,” Deirdre said. Niamh’s feathers were quite literally ruffled, and the lump hidden under a blanket on her sofa was Kristian-shaped.

  Niamh grinned. “You’re darn right I did. Poor boy won’t be able to walk when he wakes up. Don’t worry about being quiet—I put him through his paces, so he’s going to be out for a while. What are you doing here at this hour? Are we on a mission?”

  “Just got back from one and about to go on another. I need you to sex me up.” Deirdre struck a pose, arms over her head, hips cocked. It was a mockery of the cheesecake comic book posters on the walls of No Capes.

  “Don’t swing that way, girlfriend,” Niamh said. “Sorry. Also, you’re being very silly for someone who just returned from an errand that I assume involved murder.”

  Deirdre shucked her jacket and removed her underarm holster. “I’m just in a good mood. Can’t I be in a good mood?”

  The look Niamh gave her was much too knowing. Her eyes fell on Deirdre’s wrist, as though looking for an intake bracelet. It wasn’t there. She’d taken it off in the van.

  “I’m serious, though. I need to borrow something slutty to wear,” Deirdre said.

  Niamh rested a hand on her heart. “And you think I would have something slutty? A good girl like me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’re not wrong!” She hopped off her barstool and led Deirdre to the back room, where she kept her cosplay costumes on racks. None of them were even tagged. Niamh had no interest in selling her clothing. “What are you thinking? Lingerie? Fluffy lacy things?”

  “Sexy and dangerous. Maybe leather? I’m going to the Winter Court,” Deirdre said.

  Niamh’s smile slid off her face. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.” She started tossing items at Deirdre, starting with underwear. “Am I going with you?”

  “I think this is just Stark and me again.”

  “Huh,” Niamh said. Deirdre stripped down and pulled on the more minimal underwear that the swanmay provided. Niamh ran her finger underneath the bra’s gusset. “You’re losing weight. I don’t think we’re the same size anymore.”

  “What
can I say? Murdering people takes it out of a gal,” Deirdre said.

  “Protein shakes will help. Coconut oil, avocado, almond milk, a little chocolate-flavored whey protein…”

  “Help with what?”

  “When you’re doing so much lethe,” Niamh said, “you should eat at least twelve hundred calories a day or your body will shut down.” She plucked at Deirdre’s hair. “Your hair will fall out, your skin will get dull, and don’t even get me started on the muscle mass you’ll lose. It’s easier to drink a fatty shake than force down food when you’re not hungry.”

  Deirdre rolled her eyes. “Shove off, Niamh. I’m not doing too much lethe.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you’re not. Why don’t you finish getting dressed while I make you something to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry.” She wiggled her butt into one of Niamh’s skirts. It was short enough that it wouldn’t hinder movement if she needed to fight.

  “Exactly,” Niamh called over her shoulder as she pushed through the curtain to the front room again. She made a blender and a box of almond milk materialize from behind her counter.

  The so-called “shirt” that Niamh had selected was cropped to bare Deirdre’s stomach and cut low enough that the lacy edge of the bra showed around the neckline. Once she pulled on the thigh-high boots, she looked like a monochromatic hooker.

  “Where am I going to hide the guns?” Deirdre asked.

  “Honey, you’re not hiding anything in that.” Niamh punched a button on the blender. It screeched as the blade whirled. Kristian didn’t even twitch in his sleep.

  Deirdre laced up the boots, and Niamh returned to shove a cup of smoothie into her hands.

  “Drink up.” She pinched Deirdre’s butt. The bottom curve was exposed by the skirt. “I have to say, lethe looks good on you. You’re getting skinny. I used to be skinny.” Niamh sighed. “Anyway, you’ll want your guns to show, or else the unseelie will eat you alive.”

  Deirdre forced herself to take a sip of the smoothie. At Niamh’s hard look, she swigged the whole thing as quickly as possible, grimacing at how heavy it felt in her stomach.

  “Stark’s got a funny idea of how he wants to present his Beta.” Niamh plucked the empty glass out of Deirdre’s hand. “Far be it from me to question him, though.”

  Deirdre pulled on her holster again, buckling it across her chest. Then Niamh tossed a long leather jacket over her.

  “I got that for my Trinity cosplay,” she said. “You know, from The Matrix? It’ll keep you warm while you’re in the cold Middle World. Just leave it open and don’t be afraid to flash gun. And have fun. Maybe you should let the unseelie eat you alive, if you know what I mean. Get the Gage out of your brain.”

  Even the lethe wasn’t enough to keep that from sparking anger in Deirdre. But it buffered the insult.

  She shut her eyes, drifting on the memory of Gage’s fur curling in the oven.

  They had only shared one moment of intimacy—of blinding orgasmic bliss that had momentarily carried Deirdre away from the misery of the asylum. Deirdre thought he would have liked how she looked in Niamh’s slutty clothes. She would never be able to find out, though.

  “Sir,” Niamh said.

  Her voice drew Deirdre’s attention back to earth. Stark had arrived. He stood in the doorway to Niamh’s room of costumes, surveying Deirdre’s outfit with his jaw tightened hard enough to make veins bulge in his neck. He didn’t look happy. But he must have been satisfied with it because he didn’t criticize.

  “Come on, Beta,” he said.

  Deirdre turned from Niamh without saying goodbye and followed the Alpha down to the basement.

  Stark had dressed up, too, though his idea of dressing up wasn’t so much monochromatic hooker as “not wearing flannel.” He’d swapped out his usual denim for slacks. He wore a button-down shirt that looked too tight around the shoulders. They probably didn’t sell clothes off the rack big enough to fit Stark’s broad stature.

  “You’re overdressed,” Deirdre said. “I want to see you fight in a miniskirt and heels.”

  “If all goes well, we won’t be fighting,” Stark said.

  She laughed. “How often does all go well with us?”

  “We had luck at St. Griffith’s. Cross your fingers and hope it continues.”

  Vidya was waiting for them in the basement. She wore jeans and a t-shirt with David Bowie’s face on it, which Deirdre recognized as belonging to Niamh.

  “Oh, so Vidya’s coming too?” Deirdre asked. “Why isn’t she all whored up?”

  “Tombs, do yourself a favor and shut up,” Stark said.

  The door to the Winter Court was closed, but not locked. Vidya opened it to expose the dark hallway that Deirdre had glimpsed earlier. Cold breezed through the open passage.

  “Don’t let anyone kiss you,” Stark warned. “Either of you.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Deirdre said. She saluted.

  He growled his annoyance.

  The three of them stepped through together.

  As soon as Deirdre’s boots crossed the threshold, the basement vanished.

  Time and space distorted. Deirdre floated through nothingness, detached from her body.

  Even though it was dark, she felt like she was burning up with heat, as though she’d stepped into the warm embrace of a wildfire. It engulfed her. Made her swell with it.

  And then her boots connected with concrete and reality returned.

  Music pulsed through her bones, pounding with a dirty industrial bass line. It came from beyond the hallway they’d appeared in, down at the end where strobing lights flashed the silhouettes of dancing bodies onto the floor.

  Artificial fog spilled across the floor, stirring around Stark’s legs as he strode forward. Lasers tracked across his shirt.

  “This is the Winter Court?” Deirdre asked skeptically, joining him in the doorway.

  If it was, then the Winter Court looked surprisingly like a club that Deirdre had once visited with Jolene.

  In fact, it looked exactly like the club they’d visited. It was in an old warehouse in Williamsburg. Black light and strobe lit the fog, permitting Deirdre to glimpse the club’s patrons. White teeth flashed. Bodies gyrated. Lethe was passed from person to person by hands or by lips, exchanging the glowing cubes as freely as they did alcohol.

  “Hey, I know this place,” Deirdre said. The music was so loud that she could barely hear herself speaking. “This is Original Sin, isn’t it? I went to a Christmas party here. This isn’t in the Middle Worlds.”

  Stark muttered something that sounded like “need to drop the dose” and then led Deirdre and Vidya onto the dance floor.

  They cut through the press of bodies without being touched. The crowd effortlessly parted around them.

  Deirdre didn’t think she was imagining the way that the club itself seemed to pulse in time with the music. The railings around the dance floor were distorted, warped, like the wrought iron had come to life. The squares of lights under her boots were twisting, too.

  She smelled roses and the musk of deer as people stepped around her.

  The dancers were sidhe.

  Not just sidhe, with all their reality-distorting powers, but shifters as well, and even a few black-eyed demons that must have been incubi and succubi. Their infernal energies made the air a hot slurry of arousal and glitchy beats. Deirdre waded through liquid hormones exuded by all the preternaturals. It would have been overwhelming to a human.

  Eyes like gemstones and shards of glass glittered as they watched her pass, inviting her to join them.

  Deirdre let Niamh’s coat fall open to reveal her underarm holster. And she stuck close to Stark.

  Vidya looked immune to the forces surrounding them. She reached the stairs on the opposite side of the dance floor with serene grace and inhuman calm.

  “What are we doing here?” Deirdre shouted to Stark.

  His eyes skimmed the crowd on the second floor, looking at each person at the bar in turn.
“We’re looking for them.”

  There were booths along the wall, formed by couches that looked comfortable yet fashionably sleek. Pierce and Jaycee Hardwick lounged at the booth in the corner. The female sidhe gleamed with internal light so bright that it tinted the couches surrounding her a pale shade of sapphire. Ice spread from her fingertips to consume her hurricane glass in crystalline fractals.

  “You found us,” she said when Stark stopped by her side. She almost sounded disappointed.

  “What have you got for me?” Pierce asked.

  Stark folded his arms. The motion stretched his jacket over his back. “Nothing for you. I want to talk to the queen.”

  “She’s not here,” he said.

  Deirdre rolled her eyes. “Obviously, since this is Original Sin. How did you rig that door to dump us here instead of the Winter Court?”

  “We’re sidhe,” Pierce said, as though that explained everything. His eyes skimmed over Deirdre’s outfit. “If you want to make an offering, then I’m sure someone will take what your Beta’s advertising.”

  “The queen,” Stark repeated. “We agreed that we would meet in court. It looks like you’re backing out of our deal.”

  Jaycee stood smoothly. The world was darker behind her, as though she absorbed the laser lights and strobes into her flesh and radiated it in a diamond shine. “Did you do it?”

  “I held up our end of the bargain. Yes.”

  “Then I’ll give you what we agreed upon.” She extended a hand to Stark. “Come with me.”

  “Watch Pierce Hardwick,” Stark muttered to Deirdre. “Don’t let him leave. Vidya, come with me.”

  He left with the women, and Deirdre was alone with Pierce—as alone as she could be in a club filled with beautiful, inhuman monsters.

  A smile played around Pierce’s lips. He took his time looking over Deirdre’s body, though he looked more amused than appreciative. “Does Stark think you could kill me?” he asked.