Beta (31 page)

She seized it and twisted underneath Jacek to fire directly into his gut.

All three barrels discharged simultaneously. The gun rocked in her hands, kicking back with more force than she’d been braced for. The smell of sulfur filled the air.

A fireball the size of Deirdre’s fist punched into Jacek. It sent him flying. He was flung into the air and hit the ceiling above her.

He broke through two rafters before bouncing down again, landing a few inches away with a wet
splat
.

She stared between Jacek and the gun in her hands.

Melchior’s gun had ripped the viper shifter open below the breastbone. The hole between ribs and pelvis was a scorched, bleeding cavern. She could see his spine at the back.

Jacek tried to get on all fours and collapsed with a whine of pain.

The roof groaned. It cracked.

“Oh, hell,” Deirdre said.

She hurled herself away from Jacek, leaping out of the room an instant before everything came crashing down.

The bedrooms upstairs collapsed into the foyer, covering Niamh’s makeshift studio, the bodies of the OPA agents, and Jacek in rubble. The walls sagged inward. Pipes snapped and sprayed water over the shattered drywall and brick.

She froze on the opposite side of the doorway, wondering if she should keep running before more of the asylum collapsed.

But nothing else fell. Within moments, the building was still.

Jacek didn’t emerge from the debris.

Melchior’s gun was blazing hot, even hotter than Deirdre’s skin had become as her body struggled to heal her nose. “Whoa,” she said, easing her finger off of the trigger. She was afraid it might discharge again on its own.

She tried to suck a breath in through her nose. Blood caked her nostrils shut.

Deirdre wiped some of the blood away as her shoulders began to shake. She wasn’t sure if she was giggling or crying. Her face hurt. She was drenched in blood. But Jacek was dead. He hadn’t known she was a traitor, he couldn’t have betrayed her to Stark, and now he was dead in the most satisfying way possible.

She didn’t care if Melchior ripped the rest of the asylum down around them. Deirdre was never going to let him have his revolver back.

Stark and Vidya weren’t waiting for Deirdre in the courtyard.

But several of the unseelie sidhe were.

“Crap,” Deirdre whispered, hiding behind the park bench.

The sidhe were arguing in low voices on the far end of the courtyard, where they stood in the shadow of the building. They were debating who was going to investigate all the noise that had come from the foyer.

“He almost compelled Jonah,” one of them hissed. “If he catches our eyes and says so much as a single word, we’re boned. We’ll all be dead.”

“
And
he has a valkyrie,” said another.

“You people are useless! Did you leave your testicles back in Ofelia’s bedroom? One of us might be vulnerable against Stark, but two of us? Three of us? He won’t stand a chance. Now
come on
.”

“No! I’m going back to the Middle Worlds!”

“I think he’s got a point, Donovan. If Stark pins one of us with his Jedi mind powers and the valkyrie takes the other with that freaky-ass sword of hers—”

“Jean Claude, so help me God, I will end you.”

Deirdre tried not to laugh. In truth, the unseelie were right to be afraid of Stark and Vidya. The pair was practically an army unto themselves. Heck, Deirdre was afraid of them, and they were supposedly allies.

But where had they gone?

She weighed Melchior’s gun in her hand. The chamber had originally held six rounds; she was pretty sure that firing on Jacek had eliminated three of them. That meant she had one more shot.

The fireball it created was impressive, sure—but was it impressive enough to take down three sidhe?

Probably not.

The unseelie named Jean Claude gave a shout of surprise.

Deirdre looked up to see an angel of death descending on the courtyard. Her wings were spread wide to catch the air, Ethereal Blade lifted above her head.

Vidya swept the sword in an arc.

The first sidhe didn’t stand a chance at escaping. She cleaved him neatly in two. There was no blood this time—only the spraying of tree sap and the eruption of ivy from his severed veins. His hemispheres fell to the earth and were absorbed by it.

One of the sidhe flung his hand toward Vidya. He shouted a magical word that made Deirdre’s ears pop, and the valkyrie was flung backwards, smashing into the wall.

Deirdre leaped to her feet, raising Melchior’s gun.

But then Stark was there. Not in his human form, but as a beast that was too big to fit through a normal doorway.

He made his own doorway.

His massive furred body crashed through the windows, slamming into the nearest of the sidhe.

The sight of Stark in his animal form was no less shocking or awe-inspiring than the first time Deirdre had seen him. He so seldom shifted that it was frightening to see how much deadlier an already deadly man could become once he had fangs and claws.

He ripped through his sidhe victim effortlessly, ripping her head from her shoulders.

The severed head rolled across the ground and came to a stop at Deirdre’s feet, mouth gaping.

Stark shifted back as he approached Deirdre, shedding his animal skin easily. He was almost as hairy as a human as when he was shapeshifted. Curly reddish hair matted his chest and thighs.

Shapeshifters were casual about nudity. It was impossible to transition between their bodies and remain clothed, after all. Deirdre had grown up around naked men and women of all ages, so the bare human form didn’t bother her one bit.

At least, not usually.

But Stark had kissed her earlier, and now she was fighting hard to keep her eyes somewhere respectful. Somewhere that wouldn’t inspire him to pluck her eyeballs out when he was in the midst of his “do I have lust or loathing for Deirdre Tombs?” confusion.

“What the hell
are
you?” she asked, staring hard at his eyes, his chin, his shoulders. Everything above the waist.

“Amphicyonidae,” Stark said as soon as he had human lips again. “I’m a bear wolf.”

“A what now?”

“Bear wolf,” he repeated. “Prehistoric animal. It’s been extinct for millennia. You’ll only find others like me in museums.”

“Is that even possible?” Deirdre asked.

“Obviously,” Stark said dryly. “What happened inside?”

Deirdre hefted Melchior’s gun. “Jacek thought he’d use all the commotion to try to kill me. I brought the asylum down on his head.”

Stark’s eyes crinkled at the corners. It was a smile, no doubt about that.

“Took you long enough,” he said.

Deirdre shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a patient soul.” Stark turned to walk away, but she sidestepped to remain in his vision. “I saw the news while I was in my room. Rylie Gresham’s announced that she’s going to hold an election to replace her as Alpha.”

Stark stopped. His eyes widened. “
What
?”

With a grunt, Vidya cut the head from the final sidhe’s shoulders. The body fell with a wet
splat
and was consumed by fresh grass and white blossoms within seconds. Her fingers remained tangled in her victim’s hair, letting it dangle from her hand. Blood so thick that it was nearly black dribbled from the severed neck.

There was so much blood on her wings, but the Ethereal Blade still shone bright and pure.

Stark stared at Deirdre, oblivious to the death behind him.

“It’s a trick,” he said. “Nobody with power yields it willingly.”

“That’s exactly what she’s doing,” Deirdre said.

He shook his head. “No. This is some kind of trap. This isn’t even how shapeshifters work. You can’t
elect
an Alpha!”

Vidya sauntered over to their side. “I talked with one of the other sidhe in the asylum before killing him. He told me that the queen of the unseelie is in the medical bay.”

“We’ll have to talk about Rylie Gresham later. Let’s take the queen of the Winter Court down while we have the chance,” Deirdre said.

Grim resignation crossed Stark’s features. “This, Tombs. This is why I picked you to be my Beta.”

Because she could be just as horrible as he was.

They really were a matched set.

“Let’s do it, Vidya,” Stark said.

The valkyrie smiled warmly again at Deirdre, as though they were about to do something wild and silly. Maybe something like vandalizing a building. Breaking into a grocery store overnight. Going skateboarding around city hall. The kind of irresponsible shenanigans that Deirdre had done with her friends as teenagers.

Vidya’s metal wings sang out as she led them to the medical bay. It wasn’t far. They didn’t run into any opposition on the way.

The door was barricaded by dressers and shelves and broken cabinets piled in front of it. It looked like members of the pack had been trying to lock someone into the room. But they were all dead now, bodies scattered across the hall, blood seeping from their pores, flesh mangled and melted.

“Open the door,” Stark said.

Deirdre and Vidya set to work, hauling the furniture off the floor and tossing it aside. There were more bodies underneath the barricade.

It was hard for her to see people she knew thrown about like pieces of driftwood. They weren’t friends. Deirdre’s friends at the asylum were few and far between. But they were faces she recognized, shifters she had talked to at breakfast. She had trained for combat with them, used the shooting range shoulder-to-shoulder with them, and now threw them aside as garbage.

The door was freed with a few minutes’ work.

“You know, our comrades probably barricaded this door for a reason,” Deirdre said.

“Probably,” Stark said.

He kicked the door open and rushed inside.

The stainless steel tables had been tipped onto their sides. Glass jars had been shattered, leaving nothing but a fine dust behind. The fluorescent lights swung as though there had just been an earthquake.

A massive portal swirled on the far wall of the lab, opening into a dark, wintery world that smelled faintly of fish and seaweed and frozen places. The wind gusting from it was frosty. The floor in front of the portal was slicked with thick ice.

A woman stood on that ice in spiked heels, as steady as though she always walked through winter weather on five-inch stilettos. Red hair so dark that it was nearly black whipped around her pale shoulders. The layers of her dress were made of powdery cobwebs and harsh lace that looked like it should have scratched her fragile skin. Its back was open all the way down to the swell of her shapely rump, exposing the dimples at the small of her back.

She held Colette’s throat in one hand. The feline shifter kicked as the life went out of her.

“Freeze!” Deirdre shouted, leveling Melchior’s gun at her.

The woman let Colette’s body fall to the floor and turned to face Deirdre.

Stark went pale at the sight of the unseelie queen. Deirdre had never seen him shocked before—not like this. Not like his world was falling apart around him.

He recognized the queen of the Winter Court, and apparently he didn’t expect to see her here.

“Stark?” Deirdre hissed. “Should I shoot?”

He wasn’t responding.

Screw it
. She was going to fire. She wouldn’t give up her life because he had chosen the worst possible moment to go stupid.

She lifted her gun.

“No,” Stark said, shoving her arms back down again. “Don’t.”

“But
why
?”

The woman stepped down from the ice, sadness lingering around her eyes as she looked Stark over. “Hello, Ever,” she replied softly.

Deirdre had only seen that name in one other place before.

For Ever.
That was what his watch said. And as soon as she heard the name come from this woman’s lips, Deirdre knew who she was.

The unseelie queen was Rhiannon Stark.

Rhiannon Stark wasn’t a beautiful woman. In another age, she might have been described as handsome. Her face was square, her lips eternally frowning. The adornments on her hair and dress looked like ceremonial additions meant to meet the requirements of her station rather than signs of vanity.

She wasn’t beautiful, but she
was
frightening. The sight of her gave Deirdre the same nauseated feeling that she experienced whenever she saw Stark, even to this day.

He took two steps toward her and stopped.

Deirdre wanted to shout at him,
Draw your gun! Shoot her! This is a trap!
But she couldn’t manage to speak. The wind from the portal was so cold. It sank into her bones and dimmed the heat that had been following her as soon as she entered the battle at the asylum.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Stark said. “I’ve been searching for
years
.”

“I know,” Rhiannon said.

It was a blow so powerful that it looked like it caused physical pain for Stark.

“The girls?” Stark asked.

“In good company. You sent them so many friends. I made sure they know that you’re the one who did that, and they’re grateful.”

She meant the students of St. Griffith’s.