Pas

by S. M. Reine

  Where had she put that intake bracelet?

  Deirdre found it under the lumpy, sweat-stained pillow. Her hands shook as she clamped it over her wrist.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Niamh asked.

  “I told you not to talk.” Deirdre wiped away a trickle of blood that escaped the edge of the intake bracelet. “Besides, you’re one to talk. You used to use lethe as a dieting aid.”

  “I’m talking about the video.”

  “You’re talking about nothing because I don’t want to hear your voice.” It came out even harsher than Deirdre had intended, and she meant it to be pretty harsh.

  Guilt raced through her, right behind the twist of anger.

  Gods. My head.

  Deirdre opened the wooden box on the side table. There was only one cube of lethe left. She’d have to venture back to the storeroom again if she wanted to get more. That didn’t sound appealing. The room was being supervised by some of her shifters and some of Lucifer’s vampires, and about as tense as the border between warring countries.

  She pushed it into her bracelet, braced against the sting that never came.

  There was no high, either.

  Not enough. Need more.

  But later, after she finished the video. That mild buzz that made her vision blur was going to have to be enough to get her through it.

  Deirdre slapped her cheeks lightly, trying to wake herself up.

  “Our worst fears about the election have come true,” she said, facing the boarded window. Holy Nights Cathedral was no longer waiting on the other side. It had vanished as soon as she left, and there had been no sign that it had ever been there, not even a dry patch on the street. “I’m holding a rally tomorrow night after sundown, Thursday, in Times Square. Times Square. Tomorrow, Thursday, Times.” She twisted her mouth around the words to try to limber her tongue the way that January Lazar did.

  “What are you announcing at the rally?” Niamh asked. She had lowered one of the lights a fraction of an inch.

  The lethe might have given Deirdre a better buzz than she’d realized. The harpy’s voice didn’t make her feel stabby. “Election fraud. Rhiannon shouldn’t have won.”

  “Who should have?” Niamh asked.

  She hadn’t thought to ask Brother Marshall. He probably didn’t know the results anyway. “Stark should have.”

  “Then why isn’t Stark making the statement?”

  “He’s got better things to do,” Deirdre said.

  That was what she’d been telling everyone lately.

  It wasn’t exactly a lie. As far as he was concerned, hunting Rhiannon down was something better to do.

  Niamh’s knowing eyes said that she knew Deirdre was telling half-truths. She hadn’t been there the night that Stark left. She didn’t know where he’d gone. But she seemed to guess that he wasn’t coming back, and that Deirdre was getting desperate.

  “There’s no way that the OPA will let you get away with this,” Niamh said.

  Friederling had agreed not to arrest Deirdre once she made a statement on Stark’s behalf, so he’d left her alone even as she raided blood banks and other government facilities under Stark’s name.

  But this? He wasn’t going to ignore this.

  Neither would Rylie.

  “Good,” Deirdre said. “They shouldn’t have let the election get this bad in the first place. It’s their fault.”

  Niamh twirled a curl around her finger, studying Deirdre. She was paler and thinner than ever before. The bandages on her throat didn’t conceal all the needle marks. She looked like she was about to die, but she still got that expression that said she was judging Deirdre’s slipshod appearance.

  “You know,” Niamh said, “you’d look better on camera with a little more makeup.”

  It was an olive leaf, a peace offering. Deirdre and Niamh used to spend so many nights doing one another’s hair and makeup as though they were sisters. It had been fun, mindless, an escape from the drudgery of reality.

  Being able to relax while Niamh’s soft fingers spread powder over Deirdre’s eyelids, cool and gentle, sounded like close to heaven. She could even do Deirdre’s hair again. Give it a good flat-ironing. All the moisture in the air had been making it frizz, so she’d been keeping it under a scarf since she didn’t have the time to fix it.

  Nobody knew how to do Deirdre’s hair as well as Niamh did.

  Nobody else had stabbed her in the back with a silver knife, either.

  Deirdre felt Stark’s personality sinking into her as she sat on the stool in front of the green screen again. “I told you not to talk to me,” she said. “Get filming.”

  Niamh picked up the camcorder.

  The red light on the front blinked.

  “Our worst fears about the election have come true,” Deirdre said. “I need New York City’s gaeans to come together and stand with me tomorrow, Thursday, in Times Square. I have an announcement to make. And I’m going to need your help to make the Office of Preternatural Affairs listen…”

  Deirdre didn’t get any sleep before the rally.

  She’d tried, sure. She had crawled into bed, hugged the sheets around herself, and forced herself to keep her eyes shut. For hours, she’d tossed on a sea of tormented hallucinations, like she was having nightmares without any of the rest of sleep.

  Deirdre had given up around nine in the morning.

  She had a rally to organize.

  While the sun was still high, she arrayed shapeshifters around Times Square, finding places for them to hide. Deirdre was worried that they would need to clear mundanes out of the area before they could use it for her rally. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. By the time noon rolled around, Deirdre couldn’t spot a single mundane from her vantage point in a nearby hotel.

  Ordinary humans were smart to stay out of the way. All the rioting, and the dozens of victims, had taught those people a painful lesson.

  That wasn’t to say that Times Square was empty, though. Far from it. People filtered in slowly, their species betrayed by the preternatural grace of their movements.

  They were shifters, mostly. The people who were likeliest to be searching for new videos from Deirdre, who would be angriest about the election. But there were witches, too. Even a few sidhe.

  Sunset approached.

  It was almost showtime.

  Deirdre headed to the walkway leading between buildings. Her people had been setting up a stage for her at the far end of Times Square and she wanted to emerge directly on the rear of the stage. She’d have to jump right down. If she took the time to walk across Times Square, there would be too much opportunity for attack—and she was confident that Rhiannon would attack.

  In fact, she hoped that the would-be queen of the unseelie was on her way. It would give them an opportunity to confront one another publicly. And if Rhiannon did, then maybe Stark would be close behind.

  “The OPA has been sighted moving in,” Geoff said, speeding his pace to match hers as she moved down the hallway. “They’ve got helicopters nearby.”

  Deirdre kept going without pause. “Okay.”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  “No,” she said curtly.

  She would have been worried if they hadn’t seen the OPA anywhere.

  They certainly had the technology, magic, and coordination to break up the rally without ever being seen. They were disgustingly good at covert operations. If Geoff had spotted them, then it meant that the OPA wanted to be spotted. They were playing at security theater. That was all.

  There was no way they could suspect the bomb she was about to drop on their defrauded election. If they’d known, then Deirdre probably would have already been dead.

  “Vampires will be out as soon as the sun goes down,” Gianna said. “We’ve got them positioned in these two buildings.” She showed Deirdre a map of Times Square, pointing to the NYPD substation and a Foot Locker in turn. It would keep them concealed from sunlight but give them the ability to mo
ve in swiftly.

  “Spread them out a little more,” Deirdre said, handing the map back to her. “Can you get a few of them to the north end?”

  “Why? Want them to look out for the OPA?”

  “I’m more concerned about riots,” she said. “There’s been a lot of activity by the theater lately. If there’s going to be any civilian action against us, it’ll come from there.”

  “Think that’s likely?” Gianna asked.

  “I don’t know,” Deirdre said honestly. The rioters weren’t aligned with any single political orientation. It wasn’t like they were all Stark’s supporters, or Rylie’s supporters. They were all over the place. That was part of the problem. It was entirely possible that she could get caught between supporters of the seelie and of the establishment and get ripped in half by the fight.

  Gianna nodded. “I’ll talk to Lucifer. See what I can do.”

  The shifter vanished.

  Deirdre reached the windows at the end of the hallway. The congregation below had tripled in size since the last time she checked on them. Obviously her video announcement was getting around.

  It was like Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve, but populated entirely by gaeans. They filled the streets as far as she could see.

  She shouldn’t have bothered sending Gianna out to rearrange the vampires. If these people rioted, then no amount of allies was going to keep things under control.

  The bitter taste of acid climbed her throat.

  This wasn’t what Deirdre was meant to do. Six months earlier, she had been a debt collector for a nightmare demon. She had lived in a drafty old townhouse with a lone vampire and only two pairs of jeans, both of which had been purchased from a thrift store down the street.

  Now she was here, preparing to break news to an entire nation that could tear apart the gaean populations.

  This should have been Stark.

  “You could fly away,” Geoff said. “If you’re having second thoughts, just whip out your wings and…whoosh.”

  Deirdre didn’t look at him. She pressed her forehead against the glass, watching the sun drop below the buildings.

  Bodies seethed below. Some of those people were going to get hurt when she broke the news. Maybe a lot of those people.

  But what was the alternative? What if she did fly away?

  Rhiannon would be handed the Alpha position.

  If Deirdre didn’t do something about it, nobody would. Stark certainly wasn’t going to fix this.

  It was starting to drizzle rain again. “Damn,” Deirdre whispered. Her breath fogged on the glass.

  “Here.” Geoff nudged her side with something hard. He offered a tray of lethe cubes to her, like the kind that they’d been serving to the vampires during their nightly parties.

  She flashed a grateful smile at him before grabbing a handful of the little cubes. She counted them out on her palm. Four cubes. Deirdre picked out two more and started inserting.

  It was almost show time. She’d need to be on her best game.

  I’m the only one who can save them now.

  As the sun vanished, its last rays consumed by steely clouds, lethe flooded her with heat. Her stomach grew heavy. Her head spun.

  “What are you doing, Deirdre?” asked another man.

  She glanced over her shoulder at Geoff again. His face looked different. Not like the shifter she’d befriended at the asylum, but like a young berserker with tortured eyes.

  They were in the forest. They were standing atop a waterfall. Deirdre was about to jump.

  “It’s time,” someone said.

  She slid the last cube through the intake bracelet. Warmth flushed her. She was so warm that she thought she should have been on fire, but there was no hint of the phoenix’s flaming feathers.

  “Open the window,” she said.

  Self-doubt had been replaced with giddy surety. This was what a savior must have felt before delivering her people from the shackles of a dictatorship.

  This was what a martyr felt like.

  Geoff unlocked the window and cranked it open. Cold air gusted around Deirdre, and she shut her eyes to inhale the sickening scent of rain, imagining that it was blood. Imagining that she was in the courtyard at the center of the asylum, not alone, but with a berserker who treated her with kindness.

  She climbed onto the ledge.

  “Sun’s down,” Geoff said, checking his cell phone. “Vampires are coming out. And January Lazar is heading on stage…now.”

  Deirdre leaned over the side to look down. The reporter greeted the crowd, and they responded with thunderous cheers.

  January had volunteered to be part of the rally when Deirdre announced it, communicating through the email that she believed to still be under Stark’s control. She had offered to warm up the crowd for the announcement—which Deirdre had warned her was likely to create a violent reaction. That hadn’t been a problem for the reporter.

  “Here I come,” Deirdre said.

  She jumped.

  Deirdre landed on the stage with no sense of having fallen through the air. She was on the window, and then she was standing beside January Lazar, who looked startled to have Deirdre fall beside her.

  After her days campaigning, Deirdre was as recognizable as Stark. The crowd erupted at the sight of her. They cheered, shouted, screamed. She couldn’t tell if they were happy or angry. Every single one of them looked like Gage and Stark, Gage and Stark, every last one of them Gage and Stark, from the edge of the makeshift stage to 42nd Street.

  There was a microphone waiting for her. She was confident that microphone was real. It wasn’t Jacek’s viper form coiled around a metal pole, waiting to sink his fangs into her wrist.

  Through the frame of buildings, she saw approaching spotlights. Helicopters. The OPA was coming.

  They needed to make a show of a military presence. They wouldn’t do a damn thing against her.

  “Where is he?” January whispered in a low tone, quietly enough that nobody off-stage would hear her. Deirdre had said in her emails that Stark would be at their rally. She had lied.

  Deirdre’s lips moved. “He’s got better things to do.” She stepped forward to grab the microphone. It didn’t bite.

  She realized that she hadn’t removed the intake bracelet. She jerked the sleeve down to hide it. Didn’t want this on camera on such a historic day. The historic rally that ruined the historic election.

  “My fellow Americans,” Deirdre said.

  Her voice echoed throughout Times Square. She flinched at the sound.

  It wasn’t Stark’s voice coming out of her. That was Deirdre’s voice. Just Deirdre.

  January Lazar’s camera was a couple feet away, off to the right, filming Deirdre’s face as she spoke to an angry public who probably expected a concession speech from Stark.

  Everyone would watch this speech. Not just the people she hoped would see it—like Secretary Friederling and Rylie Gresham—but people she wished would have no clue that she had gotten in so deep. Old classmates. Jolene. Gutterman.

  The only people who weren’t going to see it were Gage and Stark.

  “My fellow Americans,” Deirdre said. “As you know, we had an election yesterday. I fought hard to make this election happen for my sake, for your sake, for all of us. Everton Stark and I had a vision of democracy—a government in the hands of the people. We agreed that the election was the best way to make that happen.”

  Lies, hissed the serpent coiled around the microphone stand. Jacek thrashed in her fist as bloody tears dripped from the sky. You agreed on nothing. You broke Stark’s trust and he’ll kill you once he finds out.

  Words tumbled from Deirdre. “We relied on an oath arranged by Rylie Gresham to maintain the honesty of this election. We strove to get everyone involved—even candidates among the sidhe known for their lack of integrity.”

  Lies, lies, lies.

  “We should have realized that our trust was in vain, and that Rylie Gresham, who hurt our country i
n so many painful ways, wouldn’t be able to pull off an honest election.”

  The sea of faces was stirring. They were turning away from Deirdre to look at the far end of Times Square. At her height, she could see beyond them to hulking black BearCats as they moved in. Those were OPA assault vehicles, armored against attack. They had been a common sight before Genesis, but the OPA had stopped bringing them out as frequently.

  Secretary Friederling was trying to put on a really good show.

  Unless it wasn’t a show at all.

  Deirdre pushed on, speaking faster. “Hardwick Industries donated the voting booths—the same Hardwicks who have been campaigning for the unseelie. Disassembly and analysis of the magic on these booths showed unseelie tampering. That’s why Rhiannon and Melchior ‘won’ the election despite being so far behind in the polls. Because they didn’t win at all. They cheated.”

  The crowd practically imploded with screams.

  Simultaneously, a floodlight bore down on Deirdre.

  It was so bright, too bright for her to see what it was mounted on, but she knew one of the helicopters had moved in.

  The storm of angry gaeans surged. Thousands of vampires, witches, and shifters who looked like Gage and Stark. They raged, they climbed onto the stage, they crashed over her.

  Bodies struck Deirdre’s, but they weren’t trying to hurt her. They were throwing things at the helicopter.

  “This is the Office of Preternatural Affairs. You’re holding an illegal public gathering. Disperse immediately or face penalties.” The words boomed throughout Times Square.

  “Illegal public gathering? Demonstrations are an American right!” She shouted that last bit at the helicopter she couldn’t see, and her voice was repeated by the others who had climbed onto the stage.

  Firm hands gripped her arms. “We have to go.” It wasn’t Vidya—the valkyrie was nowhere in sight. This was Niamh, wearing the black leather collar that Lucifer had affixed to her throat, which highlighted her fang scars rather than concealed them.