Beta (19 page)

Stark took a cell phone out of his back pocket and pulled up a map. “Yes. The coordinates for the Infernal Blade are centered on an empty patch of forest near Northgate.”

She took the phone to look at it. He’d centered the map on the coordinates, but there was nothing for miles other than trees, rivers, and trails. “Our legendary sword is buried somewhere in the Appalachians? That’s…random.”

“Niamh is downloading more detailed GPS photos. We’ll have a better idea of what we’re facing soon.”

“Dragons,” Deirdre said. “We’re facing
dragons
.”

“Dragon, singular. He’s the only one we have to worry about. And obviously he won’t be wherever the Infernal Blade is, or else he surely would have already retrieved it on his own.” Stark gave a low growl. “Thank the gods that he hasn’t.”

“You can’t compel Melchior, can you?” Deirdre asked. She didn’t really expect him to concede that particular weakness, so she pushed on. “What else is different about a dragon shifter? Is he more like a werewolf or a swanmay?”

“Neither,” Stark said. “But he isn’t vulnerable to silver. There’s no known way to kill Melchior.” His mouth twisted with disgust. “I’ve tried.”

The beginnings of excitement drained from Deirdre. She was susceptible to silver. Even if she was immune to Stark’s compulsion, she couldn’t have been a dragon like Melchior. “Oh.”

Stark slammed a fist into the wall. The sudden noise made Deirdre jump.

“The Infernal Blade will fix everything,” Stark whispered, eyes bright with anger, fixed intently upon Deirdre. “I’ll be able to kill Melchior. I’ll get revenge against Rylie Gresham for bringing Genesis upon us all. And when I find my wife, I’ll be able to save her.”

Deirdre stared at him, unable to speak.

She felt strangely…pitying. Almost sympathetic.

Almost like she didn’t hate Stark at all anymore.

A change in the picture on the TV caught Deirdre’s eye over Stark’s shoulder. January Lazar’s report was now showing the inside of St. Griffith’s itself. Deirdre hadn’t expected them to get actual airtime on the news, considering Rylie’s tight hold on the networks.

Deirdre stood on unsteady legs to grab the remote control and unmute the TV.

“It’s obvious now that the state-run schools are a nightmare for the children imprisoned there,” January narrated as the camera swept over the shackles, the torture devices, the stained floors. “The only question that remains is what we can do about the abuses of power by the Office of Preternatural Affairs.”

The video of St. Griffith’s cut back to January at the news desk.

“Since editing this report, almost thirty of the students from St. Griffith’s Boarding School have been reported missing,” January said. “The Office of Preternatural Affairs has released a statement claiming that they have nothing to do with the disappearances, but—”

Stark took the remote control from Deirdre and turned the TV off.

A slow sense of unease rolled through Deirdre. “What could the OPA have done to those kids? They would say something if they’d sent them to another school, right?”

“We’re leaving to retrieve the sword soon,” Stark said.

The fact that he didn’t answer her question told her enough.

He moved toward the door.

Deirdre darted into his path, planting her hands on either side of the doorway to bar his exit. He could have easily pushed her aside. He wasn’t much taller than her, but he was at least twice as broad, and far stronger. Yet he stopped an inch away.

Moving so quickly made her feel nauseous again. But that was probably because of the news report, not because of the withdrawal.

“Last night, we let a hundred kids loose from St. Griffith’s. After that, you got the coordinates for the Infernal Blade from Jaycee Hardwick. And now I hear that the kids are missing,” Deirdre said.

“And?” Stark prompted.

“And the unseelie sidhe are known for abducting werewolves,” Deirdre said. “How many of those gaean students would have been werewolves? It’s a pretty good portion of the population, right? Does about thirty out of a hundred sound right to you?”

Stark surveyed her with cool dispassion. “Why wouldn’t those thirty children have been at Rylie Gresham’s sanctuary if they were werewolves?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not. The question isn’t rhetorical. Why wouldn’t Rylie Gresham have taken thirty werewolf children as her own?” He didn’t wait for her to come up with an answer. “Those children weren’t allowed to live at the sanctuary. I don’t know why, but they weren’t. The sidhe wanted me to release them.”

“So that they could be kidnapped by the Winter Court?” Anger and shame chilled her to the core.

She had thought that Stark was trying to free the children for their sake—because the school had been abusing them. Or maybe she’d thought that he’d freed them for her sake, since he knew it was something that she’d want to do.

Deirdre was an idiot. She was naïve and a fool.

She couldn’t believe she’d thought Stark might not be worthy of hatred, even for a millisecond.

“I wish you hadn’t made me Beta,” Deirdre said. “I never would have agreed to help you if I’d known that it meant throwing children to the Winter Court!”

He lifted a hand.

Deirdre flinched, prepared to be struck.

But Stark only pushed her aside so that he could step into the hallway. He wasn’t rough with her, but the brush of his hand made her shoulders explode in chills. “I expect to see you at the group training session this afternoon,” he said. “Do whatever you need to prepare. We leave for the Infernal Blade after that.”

He left without striking her.

Deirdre watched him leave from her doorway, sick and cold and trembling all over.

He hadn’t punished her for insolence this time.

Why did she feel so unsafe?

The shooting range at the asylum was in the cellar. Someone had hauled tons of gravel downstairs and piled it against the wall to stop bullets—probably not Stark, but someone he disliked strongly enough to subject them to manual labor. Deirdre had an easy time imagining a hapless peon carrying that stuff through the sewers bucket by bucket.

Flimsy wires suspended sheets of paper at the far end of the range. They were the kind of targets that anyone could buy at a gun store, some with vague human figures, others with silly cartoon zombies, and still others in the shape of werewolves.

The werewolf targets were popular among gun enthusiasts. Many people believed that gaeans would turn on the mundanes eventually, attacking them in their homes and slaughtering them as they slept. Why not practice shooting at an image of the real thing?

The OPA didn’t promote anti-gaean laws as frequently as they used to, but prejudice festered in America’s heartland.

They should have been afraid. Mundanes outnumbered gaeans for the time being, but mundanes were also weak.

And Deirdre was feeling very unforgiving at the moment.

Gunfire chattered through the cellar as Deirdre shot, fully automatic rifle braced against her shoulder. She tried to spray a pattern within a narrow circle but her shots went wider than she intended.

She released the trigger, let out a breath, and reloaded.

Deirdre was testing some of Stark’s arsenal—an M2 Browning machine gun and an M16 at the moment. She was good with her tiny Ruger despite its big kick, but she’d never had a reason to use bigger guns before. She could kill with them, sure, but anyone could. Just aim and fire.

She wanted to be able to kill well.

If she’d been able to find ammunition that fit Melchior’s revolver, she would have brought that down, too. But it took bullets the size of her thumb that she didn’t recognize. They were some kind of weird metal, something that shimmered with magic. Probably something crafted by the sidhe.

Deirdre hoped she’d get an opportunity to test that gun on Melchior himself.

For now, she stuck to the M16.

She was so focused on shooting that she didn’t notice Niamh enter the range until her friend appeared at the edge of Deirdre’s vision.

“Hey, girl,” Deirdre said, pulling off her protective headgear. “What’s up? Want to shoot some hapless paper with me?”

“I was just coming to get you for the training session,” Niamh said.

“I’m not planning to train today,” Deirdre said. She removed the magazine on the M16, double-checked its chamber, and then set both down. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

Niamh’s eyes were pinched at the edges. “This isn’t an invitation. It’s an order.”

Her hand froze on the scrub brush. “Stark?”

“Stark,” Niamh said.

A familiar chill settled over Deirdre. It was the feeling of dread that she always got right before Stark did something terrible to her.

She’d known that he would punish her for the argument they’d had in her bedroom, and for what she’d done with Melchior. But it had only been a few hours since he had left her. Deirdre had been hoping that he would wait a few days before punishing her. She still felt weak from the lethe leaving her system.

Deirdre put trigger guards on the guns and mounted them on the wall with some of the others. She was tempted to take the M16 with her, but she wasn’t confident that even an assault rifle would be enough to take down something like Everton Stark.

Worse, she wasn’t confident that she’d want to pull the trigger if she had the opportunity to use it on him.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Niamh escorted her to the training room. Deirdre could hear fighting from the hallway. The thumping of flesh against flesh echoed wetly, reverberating through the walls, punctuated by occasional cheers and cries of dismay.

She shouldered into the training room to find that it was packed. The asylum’s occupants sat and stood in a ring around the walls. Only two people were currently on the mats.

Both of them were drenched in blood.

Deirdre didn’t even recognize the fighters. They weren’t friends, or allies, or anyone else that Deirdre would care about. She suspected that at least one of them had come from the detention center.

Yet she felt a peculiar wrenching in her gut at the sight of them pounding on each other. The way they fought was graceless and brutal.

They weren’t training. They were out for blood.

The shorter of the men was obviously losing. He grew weaker with every punch that landed on his face or under his ribs. He swayed on his feet.

Deirdre noticed Stark among the crowd against the opposite wall. His golden eyes were focused on her from across the room, piercing and hateful.

What was the hate for this time? Because he’d dared to be vulnerable with her, sharing his history with Melchior and Rhiannon? Because she had been angry with him for sacrificing the shifter children to the Winter Court? Or because she’d kissed a dragon whom he loathed?

It was probably all of the above.

“This isn’t training. What is this?” Deirdre asked Niamh under her breath.

“Hierarchy establishment,” Niamh said. “I’ve only seen this once since I signed on with Stark. He does it to see who’s the strongest and figure out who he wants to take on missions. He must have something big coming up if he’s trying to pick out a team.” She sounded upbeat about it, but the haunted look in her eyes told another story.

She’d done a fight like that before. She must have won, since Stark regarded her highly enough to leave the asylum in her charge while he was on a mission. But her expression said that Niamh regretted whatever she had done to emerge victorious.

A cry from the ring.

The shorter man staggered. He hit his knees, planted a hand on the ground to balance himself.

That moment where he faltered was a massive show of vulnerability. The other shifter came upon him in a rush, slamming his fist into the side of his head and dropping him to the floor.

The victor stood, bloodied but strong, with his fists raised.

And everyone cheered.

Everyone but Stark.

“Take him to the healer,” he said.

Colette moved forward, grabbing the loser’s ankles. She was a slight woman, but she didn’t struggle in the slightest as she dragged him out the door to the hallway, leaving a trail of blood and sweat in his wake.

The victor stepped back into the crowd. People patted him on the shoulders in congratulations. Gave him water. Dried him with towels.

Stark raised his voice to call out the names of the next fighters.

“Tombs and Niamh,” he announced.

The cheers went silent quickly.

Niamh gave a nervous laugh. “Really, Stark?” She made it sound like they were sharing a joke, and others laughed along with her.

Deirdre swallowed hard. She knew that Stark wasn’t joking. He intended Deirdre and Niamh to fight with as much vigor as the last people had. And if they held back, the punishment would be surely worse than if they refused to fight at all.

This was the line Deirdre couldn’t cross. This was the one thing she couldn’t do for Stark.

She had already shot Gage in the head. She wasn’t going to kill another of her friends to prove her loyalty to him.

The swanmay’s eyes were wide. Her freckles stood out like spots of ink on her cheekbones. She licked her lips, glanced at Stark, back at Deirdre.