by S. M. Reine
The lobby was nearly identical to every other benefits office in the country. There was a desk behind the window and a door leading to the waiting room. A couple of curtained cubicles were behind the desk. That was where they would draw blood, give injections, check out wounds.
She only had a second to size up the office. And then people were screaming and Stark was shouting.
“Get down! On the floor, hands over your heads, now!”
Most of the office’s staff reacted instantly. The other administrative assistant threw himself to the floor, dragging the doctor down with him. The manager followed suit at the front of the room.
The nurse didn’t get down. He went for the desk.
Deirdre didn’t even think. She tightened her grip on Shawna and aimed the Sig at the nurse instead. “You heard the man! Get down or I’ll shoot you!”
She didn’t recognize her own voice.
The man who had been identified as Roger in the files—the registered nurse—froze where he stood, but he still didn’t drop.
Please get down. Please get down.
A heartbeat passed. Two of them.
He wasn’t moving.
Damn it, why wasn’t he moving?
“Shoot him, Tombs,” Stark said.
—XI—
Deirdre couldn’t tell if Stark’s order to shoot was meant to be compulsion or not. He’d said he wouldn’t compel her unless he needed to. But she couldn’t risk letting him know she was immune.
So she shot.
Her hand twitched right before she squeezed the trigger.
It was a small gun, but in a room that size, it was still loud enough to make her whole skull ring.
Blood splattered from the nurse’s bicep.
He cried out with pain. His other hand plunged into a desk drawer, and Deirdre knew he was armed, knew he would shoot back, try to defend the office. They’d been ready with barred windows. They must have been ready with weapons, too.
Stark seized the nurse before Deirdre could decide if she should shoot again. He hurled Roger across the room. The impact of the nurse’s body cracked the drywall.
He bounced to the floor and he didn’t move.
Stark rounded on the manager, grabbing a fistful of his suit and jerking him to his feet.
“You know who I am,” Stark said.
“Oh gods, oh gods, please don’t hurt me—”
“You’ve seen my face on the news.”
“Yes, I’ve seen you, please don’t hurt me! I just work here!”
“As long as you execute the laws our government forces upon us, you’re culpable, too,” Stark said. “Let everyone in.”
It took Deirdre a moment to realize that he was speaking to her.
She dropped Shawna. The woman collapsed to the floor, sobbing into her arms, whole body shaking.
Deirdre had done that to her. She had helped put the fear into every one of those people.
She rushed to the front door. The rest of their team was waiting just outside; all she had to do was unbolt the door and let them in.
Jacek entered first, shoving her aside. He fired the machine gun into the floor. The chatter of bullets was like driving needles into Deirdre’s ears. “Don’t anyone move!” he shouted.
“We covered that part,” Deirdre snapped.
He swung the machine gun around to aim it at her.
“Don’t be that guy,” Sancho said, ripping the weapon out of Jacek’s hands. He turned it on the office staff and held it steady as he locked the door again. “Barricade this, ladies.”
It took both Niamh and Deirdre to push the waiting room couches in front of the door, piling one on top of the other. They did a great job blocking the narrow windows. Once the police arrived, they wouldn’t have a clear shot at the invading shifters.
Once the police arrived. Holy hell.
And once they were locked down, there was nothing to distract Deirdre from what they’d done.
They had taken people hostage.
She felt so numb that she couldn’t think of what this would mean later—these people carrying her face around in their minds, having nightmares about what they’d endured at the point of her gun, seeking therapy and crying on the shoulders of loved ones.
Hopefully they’d live long enough to need that therapy.
The way Jacek was prowling around the room, Deirdre was starting to doubt that anyone was going to escape alive.
Stark lifted Shawna from the floor. She couldn’t stand on her own because she was sobbing so hard, but he managed to straighten her enough to look into her eyes.
“What are you, Shawna?” he asked.
“Wolf,” she said. “Werewolf.”
“Good. I’m Everton Stark, Shawna. I have questions for you and I need you to be entirely honest when you answer them.” His voice deepened. “Tell me the truth.”
She weakened in his arms. Her crying slowed. “Okay.”
“Does this building have a silent alarm system?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Who does it call? The police?”
“It contacts the vendor we hired to do security. Lockdown Systems. If they can’t reach us within five minutes, then they send the police.” Her crying had stopped completely now. Her tone was almost dreamy.
“Which phone does Lockdown Systems call?” he asked.
“The manager,” she said. “He has a cell phone.”
Sancho patted the manager down, searching his pockets. He came up with an old cell phone—the kind that flipped open with physical buttons. An archaic thing. It was buzzing in his fingers.
“Should I answer it, boss?” Sancho asked.
“Let it ring,” Stark said.
The room fell silent as it continued to buzz.
And then it stopped.
Now Lockdown Systems would be calling the police. They would have company very soon.
“Excellent, Shawna, thank you,” Stark said. “Bring the other administrative assistant to me. Andrew.”
Andrew was a heavyset blond man, and he didn’t fight Deirdre’s grip at all when she hefted him to his feet. It was unusual to see an overweight shifter, but even though Andrew’s eyes were golden, he was thick enough that the buttons on the stomach of his suit strained.
“I’m a cat,” he said hurriedly. “Lion. I’m a lion.” He looked like a lion. A big, cuddly, harmless lion.
“What’s a lion shifter doing in Pennsylvania?” Deirdre asked.
“I was born here?” He phrased it like a question, and as though he were afraid it was the wrong answer. Sweat soaked through the collar of his shirt. “Look, I’ll do whatever you want. I know who you are. I saw the video. I’ll do anything.”
“Yes, you will.” Stark let go of Shawna. “The two of you have serviced a system designed to abuse our kind. Quit your jobs and disavow the government.”
“Okay, yes, anything,” Andrew said. “I quit. Done. And the government? Rylie Gresham? Hate them, scum, whatever.” He spat on the floor.
“Convincing,” Niamh said, rolling her eyes.
Shawna was trembling again now that Stark’s compulsion had lifted. She didn’t seem like she could bring herself to speak.
Jacek shoved the barrel of his gun into the back of her head.
“You heard him,” Jacek said.
“I just work here.” Mascara streaked her cheeks.
“Shawna?” Stark prompted.
“Okay,” she said. “Anything you want.” And then she sobbed harder, shoulders shaking.
“Both of you can sit down.”
Shawna lowered herself to the floor again. Andrew dropped beside her so quickly that it looked like his legs had given out underneath him.
The other two staffers were humans. Stark couldn’t compel them, nor could they disavow any allegiance to Rylie’s pack, since they didn’t have one.
Deirdre stood back and watched as Niamh—her friend from school, the girl she used to fight over boys with—pulled the zip ties out of
her pocket and bound the two human men.
“Tombs, put them in the store room,” Stark said. “We’ll need them later.”
“Yes, sir,” Deirdre said. She grabbed both men by the bindings, one in each hand, and hauled them into the storage room.
It was getting to be instinct now, following Stark’s orders. She didn’t have to stop to think about what she was doing or how hard they were quivering. Deirdre tossed them into the corner of the darkened storage room, and they collapsed against the wall.
“What do you people want?” asked Roger, the nurse. “Are you going to kill us?”
She glanced at the door. It had closed most of the way, but not entirely.
“If we have to,” she said. “Don’t give me an excuse.”
Something thumped deeper in the storeroom.
Deirdre drew the Sig again, aiming it at the floor as she slipped toward the sound.
The supplies on the shelves around her were familiar. All families with shifter children received many of those snacks—processed food bars with added protein to help kids grow strong. The sight of the labels gave her an unpleasant jerk of nostalgia.
All the carefully labeled medicine evoked similarly unpleasant sensations. Her pediatrician—a so-called specialist in preternatural medicine—had administered a thousand drugs to see what Deirdre would react to, searching for allergies, inoculating her against diseases they weren’t certain she could catch.
It had been legal, too. The laws surrounding experimental drugs for preternaturals were loose. And with the state as her guardian, Dr. Landsmore had gotten permission to do anything he wanted.
He’d never deliberately tried to hurt her. But she’d still spent years sick from his injections.
Many of those prescriptions had come from offices just like that one.
It wasn’t Dr. Landsmore hiding in the corner, but the man behind the shelves looked essentially the same. He wore the same white coat with the OPA logo on the breast, the same blue latex-free gloves, and heavy-framed glasses that magnified his eyes threefold.
And he was holding a needle in one hand.
The doctor hurled himself at her, syringe raised.
Deirdre wasn’t as fast as many shifters, but she was faster than a mundane man. She jerked out of the way. His hand came slamming down on the shelf. The needle snapped.
She gripped his wrist, holding him steady to inspect the syringe.
“Silver nitrate,” Deirdre said.
She tried not to get angry. She had entered the building with terrorists and the man was defending himself in the only way he knew how.
But even a milliliter of that might kill her.
He tugged against her in vain, trying to break free. “Whatever you monsters want, you aren’t going to get it!”
She plucked the syringe from his hand and set it on a high shelf. “I’m going to let go of you. Don’t run or I can’t help you.”
A line of confusion formed between his eyebrows. “What do you want?”
She slowly let go of his wrist. He didn’t move.
Deirdre inspected the barred window protecting the storage room. There was no way she could let the hostages out that way, not unless she got a power saw. “You have a cell phone, right? I need you to make a call for me.”
“Aren’t you with Stark?” the doctor asked. Funny how quickly Everton Stark had become a household name.
“Kind of,” Deirdre said. “Not really.” She ripped a pen out of the doctor’s breast pocket and grabbed an envelope for prescription drugs. She wrote down Rylie’s phone number. “Call this person and tell her that there are fifty people in an abandoned New York City asylum near No Capes.” Deirdre scribbled that down. “A thousand across the country.” She wrote that down too.
“You’re a mole.” Now he looked even more terrified.
He was right to be scared. Both of them would be dead if they got caught.
She shoved the envelope in his hands. “Stay hidden. Make the call. I have to get back before they realize I’m missing.”
“But—”
“Lives depend on you,” Deirdre said.
She left the doctor, striding out of the storage room without looking behind her.
Jacek and Geoff were still on guard, but they looked relaxed, slouching against the wall like taking people hostage was a normal Thursday morning for them.
Niamh was on the computer. She’d always been good with computers—her fingers flew over the keyboard so quickly they were a blur.
“Printing now,” she reported.
Deirdre leaned over the back of her chair. “What is that?”
Stark shut off the monitor, but not before Deirdre saw the OPA database. It was a list of benefits recipients.
“They’re here,” Sancho announced. He lurked beside the barricaded windows. Morning sunlight sliced through a gap in the stacked sofas, spilling harsh yellow light over his eyes. “Two cop cars.”
“Perfect,” Stark said.
Niamh gathered a stack of papers off of the printer. There were already dozens of pages, and the printer was still chugging along. She started shoving the pages into folders, wrapping them in rubber bands, clamping them shut with clips.
Outside, someone yelled into a megaphone.
“This is the Franklinsburg Sheriff’s Department. The Office of Preternatural Affairs is on its way. Come out with your hands up.”
“It’s time, boss,” Jacek said.
“I’m going to send you out to talk with the police,” Stark said to Shawna, her shoulders trapped in his hands. “Give them this message: I am Everton Stark and I want to speak to reporters from at least three major news stations. If I don’t get them by five o’clock this afternoon, I will kill these hostages. I’m not interested in negotiating.”
He turned her around. She was pliant in his hands, weakened by the compulsion.
Sancho pulled the couches aside enough for the slender administrative assistant to fit through the front door’s narrow opening. Stark pushed her outside.
In a blink, the door was shut and bolted again, the sofas back in place.
“Hold the phone,” Deirdre said. “You want to talk to the reporters by five o’clock? Isn’t that kind of a problem, considering your plan is to run out of here before the OPA shows up with silver bullets and fancy cages?”
“I didn’t say we’d be here at five o’clock,” Stark said. “Niamh?”
The swanmay was dancing nervously over the printer, watching the pages come out. “Almost…like, maybe fifty more. Just another minute.”
Deirdre wanted a look at those pages. She wanted to look bad.
Everything else about the raid—the hostages, the reporters—those were a smokescreen for whatever Stark expected to get out of those printouts.
No mistake, they had gone to that benefits office for database access.
Jacek roared suddenly. “There’s someone else in the building!” Deirdre whirled to see the doctor trying to sneak out of the storage room with the other hostages.
Her heart plummeted.
Had he made the call yet? Was he carrying the paper with her handwriting on it?
Before the humans could flee, Jacek opened fire.
A short pulse of bullets, and that was it—the wall was painted with blood that dripped slowly toward the carpet as the bodies fell.
Andrew screamed.
And the front door exploded open.
The couches skidded across the room as men forced their way inside. Deirdre hurled herself behind the desk, dragging Niamh down with her. The others took cover behind the door to the storage room.
Holes punched through the drywall on the far end of the office.
Cops weren’t supposed to open fire so freely. They were supposed to warn first.
But in the glimpse that Deirdre had caught of the invaders, she hadn’t seen police uniforms. She had seen men in all black combat gear. They resembled the SWAT teams of old, but instead of carrying riot shields and tea
r gas, they had combat-trained witches draped in charms and pentacles.
It was the Office of Preternatural Affairs.
Apparently they’d heard Jacek shoot the hostages.
The agents were still peppering the air with gunfire—and judging by the sickening odor, they were using silver rounds. They weren’t supposed to have silver. There shouldn’t have been OPA agents in the first place.
Geoff leaned around the triage desk and returned fire. He only squeezed off a few rounds before ducking back again.
Silver flame shot through the room, aimed straight at Geoff. It splattered against the desk and gushed across the carpet. Deirdre smelled burning fibers.
When the flames extinguished a heartbeat later, the carpet had burned away completely, and the subfloor was melted.
There was the combat witch.
Deirdre heard Stark’s voice above it all. “Shapeshift, Sancho,” he said. “One of the agents is a shifter. Bring her to me.”
The Beta roared like thunder.
The filing cabinet that Sancho had been using as cover slammed onto its side. The man shifted with a rush of bubbling flesh and breaking bone, rapidly swelling to thrice his usual size. He changed faster than Gage had, as though he were embracing the change, hurrying it along.
Sancho wasn’t afraid of his beast. He relished it.
Considering that he turned into a massive, muscled leopard, he had a lot to relish.
The leopard launched across the office in a single stride, shooting straight over Deirdre’s head to crash into the lobby.
She peeked over the edge of the desk.
It was pure carnage in the lobby, just inches away—almost within arm’s reach. All the OPA agents had turned their guns on Sancho. But they hadn’t gotten a chance to fire. The leopard ripped through them like they were nothing but sheep.
All that remained now was red mist and meat.
There had been six agents when they came in. Six of them. But in just a couple of short seconds, Sancho had gutted four, leaving two people on their feet among writhing bodies, soaked carpet, and splattered wallpaper.
One of the survivors was the shifter agent. Her gold eyes were narrowed with anger as she ripped a shotgun out of a scabbard on her back.
