by S. M. Reine
Deirdre shook him off. “If you’ve got a problem with my place in this house, take it up with Stark. He loves to hear dissenting opinions.”
“You’re nothing,” Jacek hissed.
“And your breath smells terrible. Just because you’re a terrorist doesn’t mean you don’t need to brush your teeth.”
Stark called to them from downstairs. “Now, people!”
Slowly, Jacek stepped toward the stairs. But he didn’t take his eyes off of her.
Maybe it was only one silver bullet, but Deirdre was glad she had it.
—X—
The benefits office they targeted was in small town in Pennsylvania and intended to service the gaeans who had taken over subsidized farms after Genesis. To reach it, Stark’s team drove along the old highway flanked by walls of trees for hours, their van the only source of light on the road.
Stark was crouched at the rear of the van. He wore a tactical vest over a black shirt, and he loaded ammunition into each pocket as he spoke.
“The staff will arrive at seven o’clock, an hour before the office opens,” Stark said. “The office employs five people. Two are administrative assistants. One is a doctor, another a nurse. The fifth is a manager.”
Each name he said prompted Jacek to click to another picture on his laptop, which was turned so everyone could see it. The admin aides were young and golden-eyed—shifters of some kind. The rest looked mundane. All had been photographed wearing Office of Preternatural Affairs ID badges.
“We’ll release the administrative assistants first so they can notify the police,” Stark said.
“Notify them of what?” Deirdre asked.
“The rest of our hostages.” He stuck something that looked like a hand grenade in a breast pocket and buttoned the flap.
They were going to take the doctor, the nurse, and the manager as hostages.
Deirdre was going to take hostages.
She tried to regulate her breathing, but she couldn’t do anything about her heart rate. The adrenaline made her feel lightheaded.
“Don’t kill anyone without my permission,” Stark said, “but don’t let these three escape, either. We need leverage.”
“We’ll take them down at the end,” Jacek said.
Deirdre bit back a protest.
She was surprised when Stark said, “If I say so. Not a minute before. You got that?”
Everyone nodded.
They were accompanied by three other shifters: Niamh, who apparently hadn’t gotten to return to No Capes; the pack’s Beta, Sancho; and a guy named Geoff, who had identified himself to Deirdre as a werewolf. He certainly had the look of it. He even had the faint scarring on his neck indicating that he’d survived a werewolf attack. He must have been turned by another of his kind rather than being reborn as a werewolf in Genesis.
“How do we get in?” Deirdre asked. “All benefits offices are secured with multiple measures. Electrified fencing, security alarms…”
Geoff stroked the top of his gun. “Why’s that? Isn’t all they got in there records and stuff?”
“And food, and medicine,” Niamh said.
Deirdre leaned her elbows on her knees. “Imagine that you’ve got the only drugs known to counteract silver poisoning. And then imagine that getting these drugs requires paperwork in triplicate, which involves explaining how you got injured. They’re in high demand on the black market.”
“They should be freely available to everyone,” Stark said.
“I agree.” Deirdre had seen too many people suffering from silver poisoning who were too ashamed to admit how it had happened. Some shifters fetishized silver burn—a weirdly popular fetish, considering how seriously damaging it could be. Silver poisoning was also a common result of gang fights.
Niamh gave a sad sigh. “Remember what happened to Wil?”
“The cute guy with the Star Wars shirt? Yeah.” Deirdre swallowed hard. “Yeah, I do.” He’d suffered silver poisoning. He’d gotten it while playing with an illegal knife because he’d thought it made him cool.
Instead, he’d ended up having to undergo an amputation to prevent the silver rot from spreading through his body—and his breed didn’t regenerate limbs.
Jacek scowled at the both of them. “Can we get back to the mission, kids?”
Sancho shoved his shoulder. “They’re just talking. Be nice.” The Beta was a grizzled old man with a fringe of white hair and a shiny bald spot on top. “We get into the office by cutting through the electrified fence. I came prepared.” He waved a pair of rubber gloves at Deirdre.
“And the alarm?” she asked.
Stark zipped up his vest. “We want the alarm to go off. We want the police to respond.” He checked the magazine and safety on a small handgun, a Sig Sauer P226 Nitron, and then handed it to Deirdre. She took it. She didn’t want to fire the Ruger and its silver bullet unless she needed to.
Deirdre’s heart felt heavy as she tucked the Sig in her boot. “This is going to be another statement for the public, isn’t it?”
“Exactly.” He didn’t sound happy about it. More like he was resigned. “My Beta will cut through the fence. We’ll follow him in and enter through the rear window. Once we secure the employees, we’ll wait for police to arrive, demand reporters, and deliver our message.”
She wondered what message that would be. Another statement, like the one that Stark had released on social media? Or the dead bodies of a doctor, a nurse, and an office manager?
“How do we get out once the cops show up?” Niamh asked.
“This benefits office is miles from any OPA squad,” Sancho said. “We’ll get mundane police. They don’t have authority to carry silver rounds in the state of Pennsylvania, so they can shoot all they want and we’ll just walk out.”
Deirdre touched her tender cheekbone, still slightly sore from getting smacked around by Stark.
The others would be able to take a magazine worth of bullets without too much trouble, so long as they were normal bullets. Deirdre couldn’t.
“Five minutes away,” Geoff reported. “Make sure you’re all ready to go. The van’s not stopping for long.”
They were almost there.
Panicked thoughts raced through Deirdre’s mind as she went through the motions of double-checking her Ruger’s magazine.
She’d agreed to go undercover in Stark’s pack knowing it was dangerous. But she hadn’t had time to think much about what she might actually have to do. She was immune to Stark’s compulsion, sure—but what was she going to have to do to convince him that she wasn’t?
If he told her to shoot one of the people at the benefits office, could she actually do it?
Should she?
Deirdre was no stranger to violence. A girl could only get beaten down so many times before she learned to beat back. She was pretty sure she hadn’t killed before, although some of the kids she’d fought with in school probably wished she had. Many preternaturals didn’t heal as readily as shifters did. And Deirdre didn’t stop fighting until she was certain that her enemy wasn’t going to attack again.
Everyone she’d fought before had earned the smackdown. They’d been bullies. Sociopaths, even.
The people at the benefits office hadn’t done anything to deserve the violence.
Niamh rubbed a hand along Deirdre’s spine, like she was trying to rub the tension out of her. “This first one will be hard,” she whispered, “but it gets easier. It stops being as scary. You don’t second-guess as much.”
“Second-guessing, huh?” Jacek asked. “Is it because you’re so weak or because you don’t really want to be here?”
Now there was someone deserving of Deirdre’s ire. “Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”
“Big words from a little Omega.”
“Jacek,” Stark said. “I will let her teach you a lesson if you provoke her. This is your only warning.”
He laughed. “Are you messing with me, Alpha? Trying to warn me off this little girl?
She’s practically human.”
Stark just looked at him.
It probably shouldn’t have warmed Deirdre to know that Stark had such confidence in her, but it did. She was even more warmed to know that she’d be allowed to kick Jacek’s ass once the time came.
And it was coming. She was sure of it.
The only question was when.
Franklinsburg was a tiny town that had sprung up around a feed store, a post office, and a gas station that only listed prices for diesel fuel. The benefits office was past a coffee shop that looked like it hadn’t been open since Genesis. It had a big welcome sign out front with a photo of a smiling shifter family that said “We Care Because You Matter”—a stupid slogan that had irked Deirdre ever since they adopted it.
Their driver pulled around behind the office.
“Go,” Stark said, throwing the doors open.
They piled out. The van left quickly and silently, its engine fading into the distance within seconds.
The fence jangled as Sancho worked the wire cutters, slicing from the bottom toward the top. He had shifter strength; it shouldn’t have taken long for him to get through the fence. But he was struggling. “This is some kind of alloy,” he said. “It’s not aluminum.”
Stark checked his watch. “Faster. We don’t have time.”
“As fast as I can,” the Beta said.
Deirdre danced on her toes at the edge of the group, watching the parking lot around the side of the building. Nobody had started lining up for their medicine yet—and hopefully, Stark would be gone before anyone did. She didn’t want innocent shifters caught in the crossfire.
“That’s enough,” Stark said, grabbing the wire cutters from Sancho and tossing them into the bushes. The Beta yanked the hole in the fence wider. It still wasn’t very big—maybe large enough for Deirdre, but probably not for men like Stark.
Niamh wrapped her hair and feathers in a ponytail holder. “My turn.”
She dropped to all fours, crawling through the fence. Despite her height, she was incredibly slender, and built without curves. She slipped through without brushing the electric wire. Jacek openly leered at her ass as she crawled.
Deirdre’s hands clenched into fists.
Not yet. Later. You can have Jacek later.
Niamh slithered between the wires safely and got to her feet. She fluffed out her hair, winked at Deirdre, and whipped a wrench out of her pocket.
The electrical box was on the back wall of the building. It had been bolted shut, but Niamh had it open in seconds.
She flipped a breaker.
“Come on,” Niamh said.
Stark didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the fence barehanded and wrenched the hole even wider, biceps bulging at the effort it took. Surprise crossed his features.
“That is a new alloy,” he said.
Sancho laughed. “Told you.”
They entered one at a time, crawling through the hole with much less grace than Niamh had shown. Deirdre was glad she’d worn leather. The cut metal scraped at her sides and back, digging into her ribs. The hem of her leggings caught. Niamh had to pull her free.
The back door didn’t have an exterior handle, and there weren’t any windows on the rear of the building. They circled around to the shadowed side, where the recycling bins were kept.
“Oh, man,” Sancho groaned.
The windows for the benefits office were barred.
And they weren’t just any bars, but thick black rods that glinted with silver undertones when Deirdre turned her head the right way. A mixture of silver and iron, she was willing to bet. Something to keep shifters and sidhe alike from breaking through.
“That’s not normal,” Niamh said. “I’ve never seen barred windows like this before. Not on a benefits office.”
Deirdre peered closely at the places that they were bolted to the wall. “They tore up some paint when installing them and haven’t repainted. I think they’re new.”
Sancho looked uneasy. “They’re expecting us. Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re expecting us,” Jacek snapped. “We have to get the message out today.”
Everyone turned to Stark at the same time, as though their leader had said something. But he was silent. He rubbed his beard as he contemplated the bars.
His eyes traveled up the side of the building to the roof.
Deirdre followed his gaze. By habit, she evaluated how easy the building would be to climb. It wasn’t made of brick, as many of the older buildings in the area were; it was a much more recent construction, and the vinyl siding was smooth. But there were windows on each of the two stories. Climbing wouldn’t be difficult at all.
Furthermore, she hadn’t seen an air conditioning unit around back—it must have been on top of the building. Which meant that there would be some way into the building from the roof.
She was startled to realize that Stark was looking at her.
“Can you do it?” he asked.
“I told him what you can do,” Niamh said. “The running thing.”
No wonder he’d wanted Deirdre on this mission. “Yeah,” she said reluctantly. “I can do it.”
“Get to the front door, unlock it, and let us inside.”
Deirdre squared her shoulders. Looked up at the building. “Okay.”
She holstered her Sig, backed up to the fence, and took a deep breath.
And then she ran.
Deirdre gave herself a few yards to build speed before jumping. She caught the bottom of the second floor window and pulled herself up on the bars.
Her palms stung where she gripped the metal. Definitely some kind of silver alloy. There wasn’t too much mixed in with the other metals—but then, she wasn’t as susceptible to silver as many shifters were, either. She could ignore the burn. Most people couldn’t.
The blinds on the other side were halfway closed. She glimpsed an office through the slats, along with a couple of filing cabinets, generic blue office carpet. It looked like any of a thousand offices that Deirdre had been forced to visit over the last decade.
She didn’t look at it for very long. Her hands hurt too much.
Deirdre clambered onto the roof.
There was the air conditioner she’d been looking for, as well as a trap door leading down to the second story of the benefits office. She couldn’t lift it open. It was locked from the inside.
In the same way that Deirdre wasn’t as sickened by silver as other shifters, her improved strength also wasn’t as good. She hauled on the trap door with everything she had and it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t get the door to budge.
“Damn.” Deirdre leaned over the side of the building. “It’s locked. I can’t open it.”
Stark handed his gun to Jacek. “Wait there. I’ll join you.” He didn’t speak loudly, but the morning was so quiet that she heard him anyway.
He dropped to a crouch…and then jumped.
Stark didn’t need a running start like Deirdre had. Just like that, he launched himself twenty feet into the air, caught the edge of the roof, and lifted himself effortlessly onto it.
She stared.
“Uh,” Deirdre said.
Stark patted his hands off on his jeans. “Let’s go.”
“If you can pull that grasshopper stuff off, why send me up in the first place?”
“I wanted to watch how you move,” Stark said. It wasn’t a come-on. Deirdre had heard enough skeezy lines to know when a guy was checking her out. No, Stark was watching for feline or canine movement patterns.
He was wasting his time. Deirdre had navel-gazed about all her behaviors for years and learned nothing.
Stark wrenched the trap door open with one arm. The broken padlock on the inside clattered to the stairs. It led to a cluttered attic, filled with boxes of files.
Deirdre rested a hand on the Sig. “Do you want my gun?”
“I don’t need one,” he said.
And he dropped through the trapdoor
to the attic.
Deirdre’s heart clawed up her throat as she jumped in after him. Her ankles throbbed when she hit.
The attic was dark and empty of souls. With a sweep of his hand, Stark shattered the door leading into the hallway. It was solid wood, about two inches thick, and his fist was like driving an ice pick into a car’s windshield. It buckled under his strength.
Deirdre raced after him as he crossed the hallway, blood aflame with fear and adrenaline and giddy excitement.
Stark slammed through another door. One of the administrative assistants was on the other side. She was filing. What was her name? Shawna? Deirdre was pretty sure that her name was Shawna. She should have paid more attention when they were going over the dossiers in the van.
When she saw them, she dropped her papers with a gasp of shock.
Stark was on her in a heartbeat. He hooked his arm around Shawna’s throat, pinning her in a headlock. “Don’t make a sound,” he said as she beat against his forearm, tears glistening in her eyes.
She was hyperventilating. Her breaths were thready, rasping.
To Deirdre, Stark said, “Clear the hallway.”
She opened the door and stepped out, gun lifted.
“It’s clear,” she said.
Stark dragged Shawna out of the room, moving so quickly that she couldn’t keep her feet underneath her. She kicked helplessly at the carpet. One of her shoes slipped off. Every one of her tiny whimpers was another crack in Deirdre’s heart, threatening to make it shatter in her chest.
Deirdre tried to ignore that feeling. She also tried to look like she wasn’t terrified as she checked each of the second floor offices and found them empty.
“Downstairs,” she said.
Stark tossed Shawna at Deirdre. “Hold her and follow me.”
Deirdre didn’t know how to “hold” a hostage, but she did the best she could. She grabbed the assistant’s arm, thumbed the safety into place, and shoved the Sig against Shawna’s temple.
Stark didn’t bother trying to open the door to the first floor the normal way. He unleashed a kick beside the door handle. It exploded open, latch shattering, door bouncing off of the wall on the inside of the room.
