Beta (15 page)

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. Landsmore’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.”

Deirdre wavered. Her finger flexed slightly on the trigger, pulling it back almost to the point where it would go off.

January stood from her stool. She clutched the microphone in both hands. Her knuckles were white.

“But…” January began.

It seemed like the reporter felt she should say something to stave off what was happening, but didn’t know what. Now there was fear in her. It filled the room like the stink of rotten meat.

Stark didn’t acknowledge January Lazar. There was nothing in the abandoned shop except the Alpha and the Beta and the gun that both of their hands cupped. His fingers were warm, but her skin was hotter than the surface of the sun.

“Do it, Deirdre,” he said softly. His breath breezed over the fine hairs behind her ear.

Dr. Landsmore deserved to die.

Deirdre was better than that. She didn’t need to murder a man to bring him to justice. And she wasn’t his victim anymore—she was an adult, and she should have long since moved past the grudges of her youth. Besides, they’d removed Dr. Landsmore from the boarding school and released the children. He wasn’t going to hurt those kids anymore.

And yet the system had put him in that position in the first place, which meant that they would put him back, too.

There would be more children.

The OPA would approve of more caregivers like Dr. Landsmore.

Or Deirdre could set an example.

“Do it,” Stark whispered, and there was no compulsion in his voice. “You deserve this.”

She did deserve it. And so did Herb Landsmore.

Deirdre squeezed the trigger.

Deirdre and Stark returned to the asylum later that night. He had given her more lethe on the way home, so she was riding high on the drugs, the exhilaration of saving those children, and the vindication of Herb Landsmore’s death.

It felt like she was flying.

“Thank you,” she told Stark in the empty asylum foyer, uncertain of what, exactly, she was thanking him for.

He had made her kill Gage. He had crushed the berserker’s tooth as she watched. And he had slaughtered so many innocents. But Deirdre looked at him and all she saw was Dr. Landsmore’s skull fragments splattering to the ground at January Lazar’s feet.

Stark was vindication in the form of a man.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

His fingers brushed against her elbow one last time.

Deirdre actually smiled at him, and she meant it.

She moved to go to her room, but Stark stopped her. “Put on something attractive.”

“Attractive?” Deirdre asked. She didn’t understand. Her fuzzy mind was stuck on Herb Landsmore’s inability to continue experimenting on shifter children.

“You heard me.” Stark gestured vaguely at her body. “Something revealing. Make it aggressively sexual. Visit Niamh at No Capes if you need help.”

She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand to muffle the sound. It felt wrong to laugh in the desolation of the asylum, with all its boarded windows and water-stained walls, but she couldn’t help herself. “Aggressively sexual, huh? Since when does being your Beta mean being a sex toy?”

A disapproving growl rumbled through Stark. “We’ve got to make a delivery to the Winter Court. They trade in sex. Your job is to look appealing and dangerous. Will that be a problem?”

It was kind of a problem. Deirdre hadn’t exactly packed to look sexy at the asylum.

She forced herself to stop smiling. Her hands tingled from when she had fired the gun at the doctor. “What are we delivering to the sidhe? Did you get something from St. Griffith’s?”

“I’ll meet you in Niamh’s basement in twenty,” Stark said.

He stalked away. She called after his back. “It takes women a lot longer than twenty minutes to get pretty!”

Deirdre could hear his grunt of annoyance from across the foyer. It made her giggle again. Only when she was high could she manage to laugh at Stark—and only when he was in a good mood did he allow her to do it.

He didn’t turn back to slap her, so he must have been in a
very
good mood.

She didn’t need to go back to her bedroom to get dressed. She already knew that she didn’t have anything that would suit Stark’s requirements of “aggressively sexual.”

The sewers underneath the asylum were busy, even though dawn was less than an hour away. Denizens of the night were rushing through the shadowy depths, hurrying to reach their destinations before the swift arrival of sunlight, too busy to bother Deirdre.

She would have been afraid of them at any other time. But she was still smiling as she wandered through the sewer toward No Capes.

They couldn’t touch her. Not Deirdre Tombs, Beta of Everton Stark’s rebellion, second most powerful shifter in the pack.

Demons and vampires weren’t the only ones in the sewers underneath New York City that morning. There were unseelie sidhe, too—roaming members of the Winter Court. They were easy to pick out now that she knew what to look for. Their crystalline skin was luminescent, even in the darkness of the sewers, and the walls seemed warped behind them.

They stared right on back at Deirdre. Jewel eyes cut right through her, as though they could see into her thoughts.

She didn’t care if they could. Let them see her memories of murdering Dr. Landsmore. Let them know she was happy to have spilled his blood.

Deirdre was still smiling when she climbed into Niamh’s basement and emerged in the store.

“Well, look at you,” the swanmay said by way of greeting. She was sitting at her counter and sorting through Magic: The Gathering cards. Crushed cans of Red Bull were piled underneath her chair. “You’re awfully perky for four o’clock in the morning. Did you get laid?”

“No, but I’m guessing you did,” Deirdre said. Niamh’s feathers were quite literally ruffled, and the lump hidden under a blanket on her sofa was Kristian-shaped.

Niamh grinned. “You’re darn right I did. Poor boy won’t be able to walk when he wakes up. Don’t worry about being quiet—I put him through his paces, so he’s going to be out for a while. What are you doing here at this hour? Are we on a mission?”

“Just got back from one and about to go on another. I need you to sex me up.” Deirdre struck a pose, arms over her head, hips cocked. It was a mockery of the cheesecake comic book posters on the walls of No Capes.

“Don’t swing that way, girlfriend,” Niamh said. “Sorry. Also, you’re being very silly for someone who just returned from an errand that I assume involved murder.”

Deirdre shucked her jacket and removed her underarm holster. “I’m just in a good mood. Can’t I be in a good mood?”