“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 in 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.
“No!” Deirdre pushed against the harpy. “They have to know the truth!”
“You’re going to be arrested!”
She elbowed her former friend away. “They won’t arrest me. They can’t touch me!”
Shifters were climbing the nearby buildings, dragging their bodies up the vertical faces like Deirdre had when she was doing parkour. But this wasn’t a tribute to Deirdre. They were using their preternatural strength to help haul witches a few stories higher, giving them superior vantage points from which they could hurl magic at the OPA helicopters.
The nearest chopper lifted, getting out of the way.
The BearCats inched slowly but surely toward the stage. They parted the crowd as Moses once parted the Red Sea. People had no choice but to move or get run over—and Deirdre was certain she saw a few of them falling under the wheels.
That didn’t seem right. They should have stopped. Rylie wouldn’t have let the OPA hurt anyone.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
Nobody heard her. The sound system had been unplugged and January Lazar had vanished. People in black combat gear kicked over the towering speakers.
Deirdre searched for Vidya and spotted metal wings flashing as she lifted the reporter to safety.
At least someone would escape to get the word out.
“We really have to go,” Niamh said.
One of the BearCats stopped at the edge of the stage. Rioters leaped onto its roof as OPA agents emerged, magic frothing around their fists.
Times Square seethed with violence and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
So much anger. So much
pain
.
Everyone looked like Gage.
Agents climbed onto the stage. Niamh moved to confront them, screaming a battle cry that sounded feeble in comparison to Vidya’s.
They kicked her down as easily as they’d kicked the speakers over. The frail, anemic redhead offered no real resistance.
“Stop this!” Deirdre shouted, lifting her hands over her head. “Stop hurting people! You can have me!”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” the nearest OPA agent said. She approached with a black bag and a pair of silver handcuffs. “The Alpha wants to see you.”
“Then take me to her,” Deirdre said.
The bag was jerked over her head.
Deirdre didn’t know what happened after that.
All the sounds seemed to indicate violence. The thunder of magic, the popping gunfire, the screams—people had seen Deirdre’s arrest, and they were furious. But then she was inside the BearCat, pushed into a leather chair, her ankles and wrists cuffed.
A door slammed shut. The vehicle’s armor muffled every sound.
Even in the darkness of the hood, she saw Gage and Stark everywhere.
Everything was bleeding.
This wasn’t how she’d hoped the rally would go. Deirdre had just wanted people to know. She wanted
change
.
The BearCat drove slowly at first, and then faster. They must have cleared the chaos at Times Square.
“Did you get the others?” one agent muttered to another.
“We got the vampire guy and the valkyrie,” someone else replied. “That’s everyone the Alpha wanted.”
“Great. She’ll be happy to hear it.”
Deirdre wasn’t happy to hear it. The OPA had arrested Lucifer and Vidya—two people who had no relationship with Rylie, and therefore no protection.
The OPA agents kept the bag over Deirdre’s head while transporting her, allowing her to experience only confusing, jumbled sensory information without the benefit of eyesight to help her interpret it. She heard bodies moving around her. Felt hands on her arms, the top of her head, her waist. They grabbed her like she was meat being taken to a butcher shop.
After some indeterminate length of time, the bag was whipped off of Deirdre’s head. She sucked in air that wasn’t poisoned by her own carbon monoxide. Her vision spun, allowing the OPA offices at the United Nations to come into vivid focus.
And she found a pair of legs right in front of her.
Deirdre’s eyes tracked from strappy ballet flats up the curve of calves to a cobweb skirt draped over broad hips. A leather corset was cinched tightly to form an hourglass shape where there would have ordinarily been a much boxier figure. Small breasts were emphasized by leather and lace, cleavage framed by a choker dangling with leather straps, chains, and a glittering sapphire.
Then the face.
That wasn’t Rylie’s face.
“What the hell?” Deirdre asked.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Rhiannon Stark said. “You wanted my attention with your stupid rally, didn’t you? Well, congratulations. You have it.”
“Where’s Rylie?” Deirdre asked.
Mirth lingered around the corners of Rhiannon’s lips. “The former Alpha?”
Former.
It was all too much.
The failed rally.
Being arrested by Rhiannon.
Seeing Rhiannon taking over the OPA offices at the United Nations building.
And now calling Rylie the “former” Alpha?
“Not until the inauguration,” Deirdre snarled. “You’re not Alpha until the unseelie leader takes over and declares you his mate!”
“Yes, but transition is a long process. I’m getting everything set up for my mate, the king of the unseelie, to take over for Rylie Gresham.” She said the name in a coldly dismissive way, as though naming a centuries-dead President of the United States. Someone old and irrelevant.
“The king of the unseelie. You mean the dragon I skewered like an olive in a martini? That king of the unseelie?”
“The king,” Rhiannon said calmly. “The unseelie faction won. People didn’t vote for a specific Alpha. They voted for a faction.”
“You’re not eligible to be Alpha. You’re not even sidhe.”
Rhiannon didn’t rise to take the bait. She made no confessions or denials. She just stood there, as calm as could be, and spread frost throughout Secretary Friederling’s office.
“You wouldn’t be confessing to murder, would you?” Rhiannon asked.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you come closer and we’ll chat about it?” Deirdre twisted in her bonds. “I want to talk with you without having to shout.”