Beta (27 page)

Nobody passed Deirdre on the trail leading up to the top of the waterfall. On such a beautiful day, everybody was in the lake, relaxing on the beach, or playing around in one of the fields.

She was alone atop the ridge with the wind and the hot sun. Deirdre was sweating inside her leather jacket, but she didn’t take it off. It felt good to be warm for once. For as long as she’d lived in Montreal, and now at Stark’s asylum, she felt like she was never warm. Deirdre was always so damn cold.

It wasn’t cold that made her shiver as she tested the door to the memorial. She half-expected magical flames to blast her.

The door opened easily.

Apparently the enchantments didn’t recognize her as an enemy. And why should they? Deirdre had first crossed paths with those spells when she’d been trying to save Rylie’s life. They still recognized her as an ally—even if Deirdre wasn’t certain if that was true anymore.

The memorial was cool inside, sheltered from the sun by its thick dome of mud and sticks. Deirdre paced around the table, which was a solid slab of stone with a thin line ringing the top.

At first glance, she’d assumed that line was merely a decorative indentation.

Now she thought it looked like a lid.

The resemblance between the table and the altar at Holy Nights Cathedral was strong. And Abel had said that the angels had given them a weapon. There would be no better place to hide it than the magical fortress where Rylie had hidden from Stark.

“Here goes nothing,” Deirdre muttered.

She leaned her weight against the top of the table and shoved.

Stone ground against stone, scraping so loudly that people would have been able to hear it from outside the memorial. Deirdre kept pushing. It made the muscles in her back cry out to try to shift something so heavy, but she pushed and pushed until it exposed a gap.

The table was hollow on the inside. After pushing a few more inches, she could reach into it.

Deirdre traced her hands around the table’s cavity. Her fingers contacted with something long, hard, and smooth. It was cool to the touch. Some kind of stone.

A sword.

She extracted it from its sheath and lifted it so that she could see it in the light from the doorway.

It wasn’t the Infernal Blade, but it looked almost identical to it. The blade was the length of Deirdre’s arm from elbow to fingertip. It was curved gently with a single cutting edge. There were runes imprinted on both sides, similar to those that she’d seen on the golden chain of charms at Brother Marshall’s cathedral.

The only difference was that this sword was white, not black.

Deirdre hefted its weight. It was pleasantly heavy, though not heavy enough to make her slow. It was solid. Fast.

Magical.

“The Ethereal Blade?” she whispered, turning the sword slowly to watch the way the light slithered over the white stone.

Why would Rylie Gresham have one of the Godslayer’s swords?

Unless…

Stark had said that Rylie was responsible for Genesis. He blamed her for all the ills of the world, even if he wouldn’t tell Deirdre more specifics than that.

What if Rylie was the Godslayer? The woman who had killed the gods to end the world. The person responsible for the death of Deirdre’s father.

Rylie didn’t look anything like the character from the comic book, but what did that mean? It was a comic. Mismatched hair color would probably be one of a thousand liberties taken by artists like Niamh’s boyfriend.

It was the only reason Deirdre could think that she would have the Ethereal Blade.

She couldn’t leave it behind.

Deirdre wore a black tank top under her leather jacket and t-shirt. She stripped down and shredded the tank with her fingernails, making one long strip like an orange peel. It took some dexterity to strap the Ethereal Blade to her spine, but once she knotted the remnants of her shirt under her ribcage, the sword felt secure in its positioning.

Then she pulled her shirt and jacket back over it.

Nobody was outside the memorial when Deirdre stepped outside. When she turned to inspect her shadowy silhouette, she was surprised to see that there was no bump to indicate the presence of a sword. Almost like the blade wanted to be hidden and helped conceal itself.

She stepped up to the edge of the cliff. When she moved, the hard edge of the sword scraped lightly against her back.

Deirdre gazed at the werewolf sanctuary far below. Somewhere down there, Rylie Gresham was living her life, making decisions that influenced all gaeans, letting other people die while she relaxed with her family in paradise.

“Your ride’s ready.”

Deirdre turned to see Trevin, the sidhe guard, waiting for her near the trail.
 

Her heart leaped. She swallowed hard. “Where am I going?”

“Up to you,” Trevin said. “But Rylie’s said that it’s time for you to leave now, with her apologies.”

“Because I left my cottage without permission?”

He shrugged. “You get it, don’t you?”

“I get it,” Deirdre said. “It’s crap, but I get it.”

“Rylie did say that she’s sorry.”

Even when Rylie was “punishing” Deirdre, she was kind about it.

“I want to go back to Montreal,” Deirdre said. “Collect some of my stuff. And then I’ll go into hiding on my own.” She felt her lips moving, heard the words coming out of her, but she was too numb to register any of them.

“You’re the boss.” Trevin gestured to the trail, stepping back so that she could walk ahead of him. She knew where the airstrip was. He didn’t need to lead the way.

The air vibrated when Deirdre walked too close to Trevin. He exuded the smell of wildflowers. Even when he wasn’t casting a spell, he was drenched with seelie magic.

Deirdre was fairly certain that even one of the sidhe wouldn’t stand a chance against the Ethereal Blade. If she wanted to, and if she was fast enough, she could kill Trevin. She could return to the sanctuary and force Rylie to give her answers.

It would be a bloodbath.

That thought kept Deirdre’s arms relaxed at her sides. She didn’t reach for the sword.

She didn’t want to start a fight that could only have a very ugly finish.

Trevin followed her up the trail. His feet didn’t make a sound on the dirt, but she could hear the faintest hum from where he stood behind her, as though quiet music were constantly playing around him. The hum made Deirdre think of people dancing around a maypole, the laughter of children, smiles and celebration—the warm, joyous opposite to the much colder unseelie of the Winter Court.

He was standing at her back, so he must have been able to see the sword. At the very least, he had to realize Deirdre was walking stiffly.

But Trevin didn’t say anything.

The private jet was waiting at the airstrip, and he walked Deirdre up to the stairs.

“Montreal,” he called up to the pilot standing in the doorway. Then he turned to Deirdre. “Here are the rest of the possessions the OPA confiscated when arresting you. Rylie wanted to make sure you noticed that your silver ammunition is still in the Ruger, so be careful.”

Deirdre took the bundle from him gingerly. She would be very cautious with her guns until she could inspect them herself.

“Thanks,” she said.

“There are a couple of werewolves on the plane who will make sure you get home safely. I’m staying with Rylie, so this is goodbye.”

Deirdre wasn’t at all sad. “Goodbye.”

“Safe flight, Deirdre.”

“Thanks, Trevin,” she said.

The fact that she managed to smile made her feel sick.

She got on the airplane. The tan leather seats were familiar now, as were the tinted windows, the bar, the short carpet. The werewolves seated near the front smiled in greeting at the sight of Deirdre, then resumed their conversation in low voices.

She sat stiffly in one of the chairs closest to the door. The sword pressed into her spine.

The flight attendant approached. Deirdre tensed, hands clenching into fists on her lap.

“Can I get you something to eat or drink?” the flight attendant asked.

Hunger gnawed at Deirdre’s stomach. Had she eaten anything since leaving the asylum? She couldn’t even remember. Food had seemed so unimportant at the time. But now the idea of eating made her nauseous. “Just water. Thanks.”

“I’ll fetch that for you. In the meantime, get buckled, please. We’ll be in the air very soon.”

Deirdre buckled.

The sunlight and fresh air cut off as the door closed.

She was tense as the airplane taxied. Deirdre expected the werewolves to rip her apart for stealing the sword at any moment.

The engines roared, the wheels lifted off the tarmac, and they were soon in the air.

For a half an hour, it seemed like the flight was going to be uneventful.

Deirdre sipped from a water bottle and watched the clouds drift past. Turbulence made the small plane jitter, and glass clinked within the flight attendant’s station. But it was all normal. Quiet. The werewolf guards didn’t even try to talk to her.

Then the airplane began to descend.

The werewolves exchanged looks. “Alicia?” asked the male.

He must have been speaking to the flight attendant because she emerged from her station and glanced out the window. “We’re nowhere near Quebec. I’ll see what’s going on.”

She rapped her knuckles on the door to the cockpit, then tried to open the handle. It was locked.

Alicia knocked louder. “Captain?”

Prickles spread over Deirdre’s flesh.

They must have realized she’d taken the Ethereal Blade. Now the OPA would be en route to arrest her, and this time, Rylie surely wouldn’t have Deirdre released from custody. She would really be taken away forever.

Except that Deirdre still had a weapon that could kill anything.

She rolled her shoulders and shifted her hips, contracting her belly so that the makeshift strap holding the sword against her back loosened. It shifted against her spine. The hilt tipped an inch to the right, where it would be easier for her to grab.

There was no way Deirdre would let the OPA take her this time.

Now the two werewolf guards had gotten up to try to open the cockpit door. They shook it and pounded their fists against it and tried to force the handle open.

The lever broke off in Alicia’s hand.

“Oh no,” she said, showing it to the guards.

They were descending faster now. They’d dropped below the clouds, and Deirdre’s head felt thick at the sudden change in altitude. She swallowed. Her ears wouldn’t pop. They were moving too quickly.

Fields swelled underneath them—vast farmland with no city in sight.

They weren’t heading for an airport.

Deirdre got out of her seat.

“We’d better buckle up in our seats,” Alicia said, glancing nervously at the seatbelt sign. It hadn’t illuminated. That switch was in the cockpit with the captain.

Deirdre forced a laugh. “What’s the point? We can heal anything.”

“It’s policy,” Alicia said.

But Deirdre didn’t move. If the werewolf guards attacked her, the seatbelt would slow her reaction time by a second or two—enough time to make the difference between life and death.

“I’ll stay right here. Thanks.” Deirdre kept a hand braced on the bulkhead just above the window, watching as the plane banked, tipping toward an empty highway.

They were going to land on the road.

The whole plane shuddered with turbulence. It was hard enough to make her reconsider the seatbelt. The werewolves both sat down.

The floor bucked under Deirdre. Her stomach rose into her throat, acid bile stinging the back of her tongue.

She clapped a hand over her mouth.

The road was so close. It was getting bigger—and
fast
.

Alicia clicked her seatbelt just in time for the wheels to connect with the pavement.

It wasn’t an easy landing. They bounced twice, and the jerk threw Deirdre to her knees on the carpet. Her palms planted on the outer ring of Rylie’s political seal.

The brakes roared. The fist of the G-forces pressed against Deirdre.

For a panicked instant, she was convinced the plane would flip. Even shifters probably wouldn’t survive that—and it would hurt if they did.

But then everything stopped.

The engines went silent. There was no noise in the cabin except for the hiss of the air blowing through the vents.

“There better be a damn good reason for this,” the male guard said. He unbuckled and shoved out of his seat, striding toward the cockpit door.

As Deirdre got to her knees, he raised his fist to knock again.

The door swung open before he could.

The jet’s captain stepped out, lifted a small sidearm, and shot the werewolf in the heart.

Alicia screamed. The captain aimed at her and fired again. Then he shot the second werewolf guard, too. The foul tang of silver filled the air as both bodies dropped to the floor.

He was armed with a small-caliber gun no bigger than Deirdre’s Ruger, but he didn’t need much stopping power when he had silver and good aim.

The pilot’s aim was
very
good.

Deirdre hid behind one of the seats, jerking the Ethereal Blade out of her makeshift scabbard. The sheath caught on her shirt, so the naked blade came free in her hand. She felt the faintest brush of its cutting edge on her scapula.

“Drop the gun!” she shouted to the captain, clutching the Ethereal Blade’s hilt in both hands.

Another gunshot.

She cried out, expecting to feel the bullet punching through the seat to kill her.

But the pilot hadn’t shot her.

A fourth body thudded to the floor of the airplane.

Deirdre peered around the edge of the seat to see the captain sprawled on the floor in a growing puddle of his own blood, the gun inches from his hand. His eyes were blank, pupils dilated, chest sinking as one final breath left his body.

He’d shot the other three shifters and then committed suicide.

Something heavy banged into the other side of the airplane’s exterior door—a door where nobody had any right to be.

The door wrenched away from the bulkhead, exposing cornfields and blue sky beyond.