Pas

by S. M. Reine

  “He’s painfully handsome, that’s what’s wrong with him.” Summer scratched under his chin. He had a mouse skull dangling from his collar.

  “He’s a zombie.” Abel looked more comfortable around Summer than he had around anyone else before. They sat shoulder-to-shoulder, all but cuddling. “Because shapeshifters can’t have normal pets, like a hamster. A living hamster.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Summer cooed to her cat. “He’s just jealous you’re immortal.”

  The cat’s mouth opened in a silent, croaking meow.

  Deirdre tried to think of something to say, but failed.

  “Want to pet him?” Summer lifted him halfway, his legs dangling from her hands. The cat was missing part of his flank as well, exposing ribs. There was something pulsing inside of his body. A heart? Was his heart really sitting out in the open like that?

  “Uh,” Deirdre said.

  “We got a job offer for you,” Abel said, tactfully choosing to redirect the conversation from the zombie cat.

  Summer picked up his sentence where he left off. “Six percent of voters wrote your name on the ballot, Deirdre.” She snuggled the ugly cat against her chest, stroking his exposed skull with a thumb. “You know how much six percent is?”

  “Three out of every fifty people,” Deirdre said.

  Rylie’s daughter laughed, slapping Abel’s knee lightly. “She’s funny! Yes, three out of every fifty people voted for you, but do you understand how absurd a number that is? Instead of touching one of the factions that was already on the page, those people wrote your name down. They grabbed the pencil and wrote.” Summer mimicked the action.

  Deirdre stared at her. “Yeah. They wrote. With pencils.”

  “People are spectacularly lazy. You have no idea how lazy they are. If six percent went out of their way to write your name in, then at least twice that many would have voted for you if you’d been on the ballot. Basically, gaeans love you. A lot.”

  She understood what Summer was getting at now. But the truth wasn’t that the gaeans were fans of Deirdre. They were fans of Deirdre as Stark’s Beta, and all of the things that she had done to help him campaign while he was in the Winter Court. They were fans of the fact that she had allowed vampires to kill a witch at the blood bank. She didn’t think those were the kinds of fans she wanted.

  “That’s…nice,” Deirdre said.

  “Nice? Are you kidding? You must be something amazing.” She captured one of Deirdre’s hands in both of hers. There was something so non-threatening about Summer that Deirdre didn’t even think to draw back. “Rylie has asked me to set up an independent organization that will form a wall between her and the Office of Preternatural Affairs, liaising with the mundane government.”

  “Why are you setting that up?”

  “Well, I’m pretty good at organizing things. My husband and I administrate the academy. Also, Rylie wants to be kept out of the setup so she can’t be accused of bias.”

  “Because her daughter couldn’t be biased in her favor either,” Deirdre said.

  “I’m just setting it up. We’ll need someone amazing to run it who’s clearly much more of an independent agent.” Summer grinned at her. “You get my drift?”

  Deirdre’s mouth went dry. “You mean…?”

  “I was hoping that you would be the head of our new liaison office. You’d have to do lots of lobbying in Washington, help draft legislation, and generally shape the future for gaeans in North America.”

  It was a lot of the more boring parts of the Alpha’s job. Not the parts that required being stronger than other shifters, but all the parts that would require good judgment and paperwork.

  The parts that Deirdre wanted to be involved in.

  Policy making.

  “If I got voted for at all, it means I’m Rylie’s opponent,” Deirdre said. “Plus, I was on Stark’s side through the whole thing. I made some decisions that can only be described as questionable at best.”

  “Even so, people obviously want you to help make decisions. You’ve got firsthand experience with the system and, as Stark’s Beta, had a leadership role with many of the most disgruntled gaeans. You also have a relationship with Secretary Friederling.”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  Summer’s laugh was ridiculously charming. The little snort helped. “Are you interested?”

  Interested? She was more than a little interested.

  But Deirdre was so flabbergasted by the offer—and so overwhelmed by everything that had happened over the last few hours—that she couldn’t wrap her mind around the implications.

  “Would I have to live in Washington?” Deirdre asked.

  “You could have a home there, and one at the sanctuary,” Summer said.

  “We’ll see about that,” Abel muttered.

  Summer elbowed him. “Oh, hush.” She turned back to Deirdre. “Did I mention that it would involve a lot of travel? Not just throughout North America, but all over the whole world.”

  Deirdre liked the idea of traveling.

  Heck, she liked the idea of everything.

  Everything except working with the Office of Preternatural Affairs.

  “I need to think about it for a while,” Deirdre said.

  Summer grinned. One corner of her mouth lifted higher than the other, which made her look a lot like Abel. “Understandably. I just wanted to offer while I was around. And I wanted a chance to meet you after all this time. I’ve heard so much about you. A lot of it has even been good stuff!”

  “Well… I guess it’s nice to meet you.” Deirdre reached out to shake Summer’s hand again, but instead, the zombie cat swatted at her fingers in a silent gesture of back off, don’t touch my person.

  Summer gave Deirdre a business card, holding it out of the cat’s reach. “Call me if you have more questions or come to a decision.”

  Deirdre ran her thumb along the edge of the card. It was on heavy stock, with Summer’s name embedded in gold leaf. “I will. Okay.”

  Abel pushed the limousine door open.

  She knew when she was being dismissed.

  Deirdre stepped out. Abel shut the door. The engine revved, and she watched the limousine’s license plate as it retreated, leaving her on the street by the stage.

  Volunteers were tearing everything down, working even more quickly than they had while setting up the event. It was a strange sort of anti-climax, hanging out after the event was already over.

  Rhiannon was going to jail. Rylie, who had rightfully won the election, was keeping her office. Deirdre’s betraying best friend had died. Stark might have been missing, but that wasn’t Deirdre’s problem anymore. Other people were tracking him down.

  There were no battles left to fight.

  She didn’t need to deal with Lucifer, Gianna, or any of the other rebel shifters again. She could go back to Jolene. Start over again.

  Or take the job.

  “Huh,” Deirdre said, tucking Summer’s business card down her shirt.

  Rylie stepped from behind the stage, still clad in the pantsuit she’d worn for the inauguration. Even in business wear, she looked every inch the predatory animal, a literal wolf in figurative sheep’s clothing.

  “I talked to Summer about the job offer,” Deirdre said. “Wow. I’m flattered. It’s really thoughtful of you.”

  Rylie didn’t even smile. “Come with me.”

  “What? Is something wrong?”

  “We can’t talk about it here,” she said.

  Deirdre glanced around, searching for Rylie’s usual bodyguards. There was nobody nearby.

  It must have been serious.

  “Okay,” Deirdre said. “Should I find Vidya first? Will we need her help?”

  “No,” Rylie said curtly.

  Deirdre had never seen her curt before. That was beyond worrying.

  She followed Rylie into the forest behind the stage. The trees quickly grew dense, since the pack allowed the forest to grow thick right up to the
edge of the sanctuary. Nature was never more than a few hundred feet away from the shifters who lived there.

  It was strange to be alone with Rylie when she was in professional mode. When she was dressed like this, she was meant to be accompanied by aides, politicians, lobbyists. Not just Deirdre.

  The sounds of the stage’s breakdown receded quickly. All she heard was wind, the crunch of their footsteps against pine needles.

  “Are we going much further?” Deirdre asked.

  Rylie led her to one of the rear access roads that cut through the mountains. There was a car waiting at the mouth of the tunnel.

  That was where she stopped.

  Deirdre didn’t approach the vehicle. It didn’t look suspicious—it wasn’t OPA black—but the windows were tinted so dark that she couldn’t see inside.

  Rylie let out a sigh, clutched her hands over her heart…and then she collapsed.

  Deirdre turned at the sound of movement behind her. But she already knew who would be there, even before she looked. She recognized the sound of his footfalls. The weight of his presence in the air.

  Everton Stark stood behind her.

  She took a reflexive step back, heart leaping into her throat.

  “Stark?” she asked. “What have you done to Rylie?”

  He lifted his cell phone. Deirdre’s heart sank when she saw that he was on Marion’s blog page. The picture at the top was unmistakable, as well as the columnar layout.

  Stark knew that they’d figured him out—which meant he knew that Deirdre had tried to trap him. He’d allowed Rhiannon to step into the trap while hanging back.

  No wonder he hadn’t been there. He had been too busy breaking into the sanctuary to compel Rylie.

  “Oh my gods,” Deirdre said.

  She reached for her gun.

  Stark’s arm hooked around Deirdre’s throat, squeezing her esophagus in the crook of his elbow. His other hand clapped over her mouth.

  She tried to scream, but her voice was muffled into his palm.

  His breath was hot in her ear. “I heard that you’re going to be liaison between Rylie Gresham and the OPA, Tombs,” Stark said. “My forgiveness is finite and you’ve found the limits of it.”

  She couldn’t respond. It wasn’t just the hand on her mouth. She was unable to inhale as he squeezed tighter on her throat, restricting her air passage.

  Deirdre’s head swam. Her vision blurred.

  She thrashed against him, lifting her weight from the ground and trying to lean forward to flip him, but he was immobile as a cement wall. Even now, after she had shifted multiple times into her phoenix form, she was weaker than the bear wolf.

  Deirdre needed to use her anger. She needed to set both of them on fire. She needed to save herself from him.

  Or at least make herself a beacon that would attract help.

  But the harder she grasped at her anger, the more quickly it fled from her. Her bird slipped out of her grasp. She couldn’t shift, couldn’t catch fire, couldn’t do anything but beat against Stark’s arms ever more weakly as consciousness faded away.

  He was dragging her toward the car now. Her heels kicked weakly at the ground.

  If Stark took her away, they’d never find her again.

  No. Stop. Please, don’t…

  Deirdre took one long blink, and then another.

  Her eyes shut.

  She was gone.

  Deirdre slid between consciousness and dreams.

  Everything that passed through her mind was so vivid that it might have been real if not for the bizarre things she was seeing.

  She wasn’t in the Summer Court again, racing through the fields with her wings spread wide and the unicorns nipping at her heels.

  Nor was she diving into the frigid ocean beyond the Winter Court, immune to the ice, swimming with the selkies as ice water smothered her nose and mouth.

  Deirdre wasn’t at her childhood home with her father, playing on the swings with Gage while Alasdair Tombs handled business inside, watching them through the kitchen window.

  None of it was real.

  Those beautiful, surreal visions were interspersed with images horrible enough that they could have been nightmares, like opening her eyes to find that she was in the back seat of a car being driven by Everton Stark, his expression grim and intake bracelet gleaming in the dim evening light.

  A heartbeat, and she was braiding Rylie’s hair while seated atop the waterfall, accompanied by the Godslayer from Niamh’s comic books. Rylie looked real. The Godslayer looked like an illustration, a 2D sprite in 3D space with Ben-Day dots tinting her hair auburn. The women talked and laughed and Deirdre couldn’t hear the words they were saying.

  Another heartbeat. Stark pressed the plunger down on a syringe filled with lethe, emptying it into her body. It was a bigger syringe than he had ever used on her before. Ice coursed through Deirdre’s veins.

  He was pouring waterfalls into her. Filling her with drugs. Intoxicating her, breaking her mind, shattering her body.

  Another heartbeat.

  The unicorns’ eyes were rolling. Blood streamed down their long faces, staining their sleek golden fur. They stretched sharp teeth toward Deirdre’s wings and tried to bite the feathers.

  Stark was withdrawing a needle attached to an empty syringe and inserting a second.

  The Godslayer drew her sword and walked toward Deirdre, still smiling from the last thing that Rylie had said, prepared to slaughter both of them where they sat.

  Stark was shooting himself up with lethe, too.

  What was real?

  What was a dream?

  Could Gage really be falling from her swing set and landing in the depths of an oven with white-hot coals, fur burning away, the fat of his berserker body sizzling with the heat? Why would the Godslayer want to kill Deirdre? What had she done to deserve that vengeance? She had returned the Ethereal Blade to Rylie. She had made amends.

  Would Stark really kiss her one moment with the urgency of a dying man, and then fill her with gallons upon gallons of lethe in the next moment? He was sharing the needles, injecting himself as frequently as he injected her, with a dose just slightly higher to adjust for the mass of his body and the power of his shifted form.

  Deirdre was so high.

  Everything was so far below her.

  What was real? What was a dream?

  It felt like she was never going to be awake again.

  XIX

  Deirdre wasn’t sure how long she was unconscious.

  When she woke up, she was resting in a puddle of her own vomit, muscles stiffened by long immobility, partially digested contents of her stomach caked to her cheek.

  Somewhere nearby, children were crying.

  Deirdre’s eyes peeled open.

  Her arm was limp on the floor in front of her face, the only thing close enough for her to focus on. Her fingers twitched.

  There was a catheter taped to her wrist. The plastic tube glowed bright blue.

  She had woken up like this before, though she hadn’t felt quite so horrible that time. The crying children made her head throb in time with their tears.

  Deirdre pushed her arm against the floor, trying to roll herself over. She couldn’t move. She wasn’t strong enough.

  For a few more moments, she rested.

  Get up, Tombs. Get up.

  Pushing herself onto all fours, she wiped at her mouth and grimaced at the sour tang of bile on her tongue. There wasn’t much to the contents of her stomach on the ground between her hands. She hadn’t eaten in far too long.

  Her head throbbed. Her body burned.

  It felt like the healing fever was taking her over. But when she looked at her body, she found no wounds grievous enough to account for the sweep of heat through her muscles, the prickle of shapeshifter energy. All of the bullet holes that Rhiannon had inflicted were gone. They had healed before she suffered…whatever it was she was now suffering.

  Deirdre felt almost as terrible as when Niam
h had stabbed her in the back.

  Her head weighed a thousand pounds, and she struggled to lift it enough to look around.

  “No,” she groaned.

  Deirdre was in one of the cells at the asylum.

  There was no furniture in the room. It was just four concrete walls, a silver-barred window, and a bare floor.

  Stark sat in the corner, elbows resting on his knees, head hanging between his shoulders. He looked as awful as she felt. The rings under his eyes were deep. His cheeks seemed to sag, his spine curved with the weight of suffering.

  “Tombs,” he croaked.

  Deirdre tried to speak, but it just made her whole body buck. Her shoulders hitched twice. Her mouth yawned wide, and acid trickled up her throat to splatter onto the floor.

  She’d already thrown up so much that there was nothing left behind.

  It hurt so much.

  Her body had no resources to heal her throat, scalded by bile.

  The sound of crying children was no hallucination. It echoed throughout the asylum, coming from another room. Alona and Calla were there. Stark finally had his daughters back.

  And they were terrified.

  The wooden box where Stark kept his lethe was on the floor beside him. It was open. There was a needle in it. But there was no lethe in sight.

  He could have fit enough lethe in there to keep both of them flying like kites for a month.

  It was empty now.

  It didn’t feel like he’d loaded Deirdre up with it anytime recently. This wasn’t a lethe high she was dealing with—not anymore. She’d gone from delusions of running with the unicorns to a serious crash, far worse than any she’d experienced while on the drug before.

  Most lethe addicts starved to death.

  Most, but not all. There were few ways to kill shifters without silver, but lethe overdose was one of them.

  “How much did you give me, Stark?” Deirdre asked, a little desperately. She couldn’t seem to speak without crying. She wanted to be unconscious again, no matter how painful or terrifying the visions had been while she was under. “How much?”