by Reine, SM
Obviously, the “tough love” philosophies of the foster homes had been gaining popularity since Deirdre had become an adult.
Hot fury flooded her veins. “Are they here? The teachers who do this?”
“It’s mostly the dean conducting punishments,” Blythe said.
“Where does she sleep?”
The groundskeeper caught onto what Deirdre was saying. Her eyes widened. “But Stark told us to wake up the kids.”
“Where?” Deirdre asked, drawing her Sig Sauer.
Blythe handed her a key. “He sleeps on the third floor, down at the end. He likes the corner windows.”
Stark was right. The children needed to be released from St. Griffith’s.
Deirdre clutched the key in her fist. Its teeth dug into her palm. “Wake the kids up. I’ll see you in the foyer soon.”
She broke away from Blythe, jogging up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She didn’t try to be quiet. She hoped someone would find her so that she could deal with them. Liquid anger flowed through her body. She stung with the memory of corporal punishments she’d endured, and she wanted to share the pain.
But Deirdre didn’t run into any adults patrolling the second floor, nor the third.
The number on the room key was 315. Deirdre found it at the end of the hallway and around the corner, where the view of the gardens was surely the best. Just as Blythe had told her.
She unlocked the door and slipped quietly inside.
The dean slept with the curtains open, allowing the moonlight to spill into the room. The furnishings were nice. Mostly antiques. A four-poster bed, a big mahogany wardrobe, a lovely vanity. Filmy white gauze hung from the posts of the bed, fluttering in the cool wind that blew through the cracked window.
Deirdre stepped between the cloth. It swayed around her as she studied the man sleeping in bed.
He was slender, gray-haired, and wearing silk pajamas. His hearing aid rested in a shallow plastic tray on the side of the bed—a contraption of plastic and metal that would cover him from temple to jaw when he wore it, sparkling with magical enchantments.
She would have remembered that hearing aid anywhere.
The memory of the man who’d worn that hearing aid made Deirdre feel sick.
“Dr. Landsmore,” Deirdre whispered under her breath. “You changed careers.”
No wonder Stark had asked Deirdre about Dr. Landsmore earlier that night. And no wonder he had told Deirdre she would like going to the school. He had known Herb Landsmore was at St. Griffith’s, and he had brought Deirdre there like he was giving her a present.
Deirdre hadn’t known she had a revenge fantasy about Dr. Landsmore until she stood over his prone body.
The man stirred in bed, as though he could feel Deirdre’s hatred radiating from beyond the fluttering gauze. His eyes opened slowly. Once Dr. Landsmore saw Deirdre, his eyes shot open the rest of the way and he sat up with a gasp.
Deirdre pointed the Sig at his forehead. “Quiet.”
Dr. Landsmore was quiet.
He didn’t need to speak to fight back.
The witch flung his hand toward Deirdre, mouth opening silently in a word of power.
An invisible fist of magic punched her in the gut.
Deirdre’s feet left the floor. Her body rushed through the air. Her back smashed into the dresser, and she fell to the floor in a shower of books and writing implements.
Dr. Landsmore was out of bed in seconds, cramming the hearing aid into place and plunging a hand into the drawer on his bedside table. He yanked out a notebook and ripped a page free.
It was a spellpage—a piece of paper with a rune that had been infused with magic.
Reuben Wheatley had used a spellpage on Andrew at the detention center and nearly burned him to a crisp.
Deirdre wasn’t familiar with enough runes to have a clue what it’d do to her. But if Dr. Landsmore could throw Deirdre across the room with a word, then a whole page would surely do something deadly.
There wasn’t time to restrain him nicely. Deirdre lifted the gun in both hands and shot Dr. Landsmore in the wrist. Blood splattered onto the gauze dangling beside him.
The witch screamed as his fingers went limp. The spellpage fluttered to the floor without being activated.
Deirdre scrambled to her feet as Dr. Landsmore opened his mouth again, surely to unleash another word of power. But before the man could speak, Deirdre shoved the muzzle of the gun into his mouth, letting him taste gun oil.
“Shut up,” Deirdre said through gritted teeth.
Recognition flashed through Dr. Landsmore’s eyes. He tried to speak around the gun. It didn’t come out clearly, but she understood what he was saying. “Deirdre Tombs?”
“Good to know I’m memorable,” Deirdre said. “I know I’ll never forget you. What are you supposed to do against an adult who can fight back? Don’t try to answer that. I’ll make you swallow a bullet.”
Dr. Landsmore wasn’t the type to cry when his life was threatened. It only made him angrier, cheeks reddening and eyebrows lowering.
Deirdre slid the gun out of his mouth and grabbed a fistful of Dr. Landsmore’s thinning gray hair.
“We’re going for a walk.” Deirdre pushed the Sig into Dr. Landsmore’s temple and used it to propel him out of the room.
There was a woman in the hallway—a teacher patrolling the floor. She stopped dead at the sight of Dr. Landsmore coming out of his bedroom at gunpoint.
Deirdre moved the Sig and fired.
She was kind enough to go for the teacher’s thigh rather than somewhere more critical. Her aim seemed to have improved in her fury, too. She hit right in the meat of the teacher’s leg.
The teacher staggered, clutching her hands to the wound as blood flowed down her thigh to her calf.
Dr. Landsmore gave a little cry of shock, clapping a hand to his hearing aid. He twisted, as though trying to escape the loudness of the gun, but Deirdre tightened her grip on his hair. “You’ll pay for this!” Dr. Landsmore said. His tone was a little flat. He’d always spoken funny, since the hearing aid made it difficult to hear himself.
“I’m pretty sure I told you not to talk.” Deirdre marched her hostage past the woman that she’d shot.
But Dr. Landsmore didn’t shut up. “I still have friends among the OPA. Many friends, and many of them in very high places! They’ll see to it that you’re executed for this!”
Unfortunately, if the OPA caught Deirdre, the punishment would surely be much worse than a mere execution. They didn’t seem to kill their prisoners, after all. They locked them up in little boxes and experimented on them, just like Dr. Landsmore used to.
Vidya was proof of that. Poor, broken Vidya, covered in her own effluence. And all the children who had been chained in the dining room of St. Griffith’s, fragile little wrists burning, feet kicking helplessly against the antique hardwood floors.
No, death wasn’t the cruelest punishment that the OPA could exact on shifters.
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised that your behavior over the years has resulted in payback,” Deirdre hissed into his ear. “Did you think you’d get away with all the shitty things you’ve done?”
“Medicine isn’t advanced by people handling their patients with kid gloves,” Dr. Landsmore said. “It’s good for society to experiment. I helped people by what I did with you.”
Deirdre yanked hard on his hair. “Is that why you’re a dean now instead of a doctor?”
“Every genius makes enemies,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s how you know you’re doing something right.”
No regret. Not even an acknowledgment he might have done anything wrong.
When they got to the first floor, they came up behind Blythe’s herd of students, all dressed in their pajamas and looking very confused. Deirdre shifted the gun to the small of Dr. Landsmore’s back so that the kids wouldn’t see it. No need to scare them more than necessary.
Stark was waiting at the front of th
e foyer, arms folded, papers tucked under his arm. His usual neutral expression had been replaced with one of frustration as Blythe brought the children down.
Whatever he’d hoped to find in Blythe’s files, it hadn’t been there.
Deirdre shoved Dr. Landsmore to his knees in front of Stark’s feet. She planted the Sig against the back of his head. “You knew,” she said. “You knew that this man was here.”
“Yes, I knew,” Stark said. There was actual compassion in his voice. It made her waver on her feet as her heart gave a little hiccup in her chest. Her gun didn’t waver, though.
“You did this for me?” She couldn’t manage to speak above a whisper.
“You’ve given me everything you have, Tombs,” Stark said. “You’ve been loyal.” His fingers brushed against her arm, just above the intake bracelet on her wrist. Goosebumps shivered up her shoulder. “Are you happy?”
Deirdre shut her eyes, drawing in a long breath.
With Dr. Landsmore at the end of her gun, she felt something much more powerful than happiness.
Happiness was what the lethe gave her. It was uncomplicated and illusory.
Now she felt vindication.
Deirdre steadied herself before opening her eyes to meet Stark’s harsh yellow gaze. “This man beats the students here. He locks them in closets and whips them with silver. He’s probably been performing medical experiments on them, too.”
“I’m aware of that,” Stark said.
“So what are we going to do to him?” Deirdre asked.
The corner of Stark’s mouth twitched. “Anything you want. This is for you, Tombs.” Dr. Landsmore made a strangled sound, as though he was choking on a bite of food.
“All the students have come down,” Blythe said, standing on her toes to look over their heads. “Or most of them, anyway—there are always some stragglers.”
There weren’t nearly as many as Deirdre had expected. It looked to be more in the range of a hundred students rather than five hundred. Still, it was a lot of little bodies in the room, all of them wide eyed and baffled by the experience.
They were probably only used to waking up at night to get whipped, after all. This was something completely different.
Deirdre expected Stark to give some kind of speech to turn the children’s attitudes in his favor. There were a hundred malleable minds waiting to be told their anger was justified.
He wouldn’t even need to wait for the kids to grow up to recruit them into his army. Preteen gaeans could be just as deadly as their adult counterparts, if not even more so, with the wildness of hormones in their bodies.
But he only gave Blythe a sharp nod and opened the front doors.
The night outside was growing cooler. Beyond the gates, the town of Haversham glimmered.
“Follow me,” Stark called.
He marched down the long road through the gardens, Deirdre and Dr. Landsmore at his side with Blythe herding the many children from behind.
Some of them were crying now.
It felt satisfying, even triumphant, to walk those gaean students away from the shackles, the whips, and the dark little closets that had contained them. Their lives wouldn’t unfold behind barred windows anymore.
“We could do this at all the schools,” Deirdre said, speeding her pace to keep up with Stark. “I know all the bad ones. We can do it again.”
Stark didn’t share in her enthusiasm. A storm seemed to follow him as he walked to the end of the road.
There was a news truck waiting for them outside the gate.
A woman stood alone on the other side of the bars, camera mounted on her shoulder, hair pristine despite the hour. It was January Lazar, the reporter who had made her career interviewing Rylie Gresham.
And she was getting footage of Stark walking out of the boarding school with children behind him like he was Moses leading the flock.
Blythe hurried forward to unlock the gates.
“Help me!” Dr. Landsmore shouted. “I’ve been taken by—”
Deirdre jerked so hard on his hair that half of it tore free.
Dr. Landsmore’s pleas for help were useless anyway. There were no police or OPA waiting with January Lazar. She had come alone.
“Everton Stark, it’s a pleasure,” January greeted, thrusting her hand out to shake his. She was delicate and tiny in comparison to him. He could have broken her with a pinky finger if he wanted to. But she must have been stronger than she looked—her shoes were stained with blood from the dead OPA agents, and she didn’t look remotely fazed by it.
Stark acknowledged her with a nod, and then turned back to take care of business. “Take the children to the hospital,” Stark told Blythe. “I’m sure some of them will need treatment for silver poisoning.”
“Of course,” she said.
January filmed his instructions. She filmed all of it.
The camera turned on Deirdre and Dr. Landsmore, the light mounted on top blazing directly into her eyes.
“Herb Landsmore, right?” January asked.
Stark put his hand in front of the camera. “We’ll do the interview in private.”
The reporter wasn’t bothered by his admonition. She only smiled brighter. “Oh, of course. This way. I found an empty store we can use.”
She bustled down the street to a door that had already been broken open. January Lazar was prepared to talk with Stark in private. And apparently she wasn’t the type of woman to be worried about petty things like legalities or personal safety any more than she was worried about dead OPA agents.
The shop used to be a clothing store, although January had put in lights and a stool similar to those that Stark used back at the asylum. Her equipment was powered by an extension cord running back to the news van.
“Here we go,” she said, using a display case as a mirror while she fluffed her hair. “Are you ready?”
“Almost.” Stark gestured to Deirdre. “Bring him over here.”
Deirdre had been planning on waiting with Dr. Landsmore until Stark was done. She frowned at him. “Do you want me to…?”
“Yes,” he said.
Deirdre pushed Dr. Landsmore to the floor in front of the chair, allowing the camera to film his squirming and whimpering.
“Who do you have here?” January Lazar asked, extending the microphone to Stark.
“This is Herb Landsmore,” Stark said. “He’s the dean of St. Griffith’s Boarding School.”
“That’s a state-run school for orphaned gaean children, yes?” January asked. She had a cell phone balanced on one thigh, scrolling through information while holding the microphone steady by Stark’s mouth.
“Yes. And he used to be a pediatrician who was approved by the Office of Preternatural Affairs to perform medical experiments on gaean children,” Deirdre said.
January’s forehead wrinkled delicately. “May I ask who you are?”
Deirdre shut her mouth. She didn’t want an introduction. She didn’t want anybody to know who she was. But Stark replied. “This is my Beta.” He didn’t give her name. There was no way to tell if that was deliberate, a courtesy, or if he merely didn’t consider her identity to be relevant.
“What’s a Beta?” January asked.
“A Beta is the second-in-command for an Alpha shifter,” Stark said. “She’s also the second most powerful person in my pack, after me.”
Deirdre’s eyes widened. She couldn’t hide her surprise.
After spending her entire life branded as an Omega—the weakest shifter—Stark had just gone on camera for a national news network declaring her to be almost as strong as he was.
“You sound angry when you talk about Herb Landsmore,” January said, drawing Deirdre’s attention back to her. “Do you have a personal stake in this?”
Now the microphone was aimed at Deirdre. She had a platform. Rather, Stark had a platform, but it was her duty to contribute.
She was his Beta. The second strongest of the pack.
“I was one of Dr. L
andsmore’s patients,” Deirdre said. “I was a victim.”
January’s eyes brightened. “When was that?”
“Seven or eight years ago. I don’t remember now. He injected me with silver nitrate repeatedly.”
The reporter looked like her birthday had come early. It would be quite an exposé: the state-sanctioned behaviors hidden behind closed doors of the schools, a motivation for the terrorist behind so many murders, and, most exciting of all, something that would take Rylie Gresham down.
How quickly January Lazar’s loyalties changed.
“Was that a common experience?” January asked. “The experimentation?”
Deirdre glared at the camera. The reporter probably wanted her to elaborate. She would have loved it if Deirdre went on about all the abuse she’d sustained over the years. “Yeah.”
She wasn’t going to get into it more than that.
“You can’t air any of this,” Dr. Landsmore said. Deirdre had almost forgotten the man—as much as she could forget anyone whose head was in front of her gun. “You have to call the police.”
“Is the camera still rolling?” Stark asked abruptly.
“Yes,” January said, “yes it is.”
“Keep it focused on Dr. Landsmore. You’ll want to have record of what we’re about to do to him.”
January stuttered when she tried to speak. “You mean you’re… Are you going to…?”
For once, she seemed to be at a loss for words.
Deirdre didn’t care what the reporter was thinking. Stark was touching her arm again, the lightest brush of callused fingers. The sensation was enhanced by the lethe. Her skin was blazing.
His hand traveled to her wrist, and he pushed the gun harder against Dr. Landsmore’s head.
“Do it,” Stark said, the broad warmth of his chest pressing against her back. His voice was in her skull, rattling around in the darkest corners, dredging up ancient demons that longed for vengeance.
Her finger tightened on the Sig Sauer’s trigger. His thumb stroked her knuckles.
“What will his death accomplish?” Deirdre asked. “Will it help any of his victims?”
Stark’s eyes were intense, as though there were nothing more interesting to him than Deirdre at that moment. He didn’t even seem to care about Dr. Landsmore at all. This wasn’t about the doctor—this was about his Beta, and what he thought she wanted most. “Does it matter? It’s justice. He did this to himself.”
