Alpha: An Urban Fantasy Novel (War of the Alphas Book 3) Page 7

  “I sure hope so,” Deirdre said, making sure the man had a good grip on his camera. “Don’t drop that, now. Hate to break such a fine piece of equipment.”

  “You are so sweet,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  And then Deirdre leaped over the chain blocking people from approaching the building.

  She bolted for the UN building.

  It took a few seconds for the crowd of tourists to react. Nobody seemed to realize what was happening—why this crazy woman was hurtling across the square, arms pumping at her sides, racing with supernatural speed to reach the United Nations building.

  Once they realized something was happening, the air shattered with screams.

  Security closed in.

  Deirdre reached into Stark’s flannel shirt, where she’d hidden her underarm holster. The gun leaped into her hand.

  She popped off a couple of shots at the security guards who were nearest.

  She’d always had great aim, but after all her time practicing in the range underneath the asylum, she was getting even better. She aimed to disable—thighs and feet and the arms that were holding guns—and she hit each time. Guards stopped with shouts and splashes of blood.

  They couldn’t catch her. She was too fast.

  She shoved her gun into her belt and leaped onto the side of the UN building.

  Deirdre hadn’t just gotten new powers since she died. She leaped higher than she’d ever been able to leap before, launching herself straight onto what should have been the third floor.

  She was so shocked to catch hold of the wall that high that she was momentarily frozen, staring down at the ground so much further down than she’d expected.

  “Oh my gods,” she said.

  Muffled pops broke the air. A bullet smashed into the wall beside her, just inches away.

  It was a silver bullet.

  Deirdre threw herself up the side of the building, committing all of her upper body strength to the climb.

  Her body felt lighter than it ever had before, as though her bones had turned hollow. She flew straight up the side of the UN building, using the runes that mages had stamped onto the supports as handholds, scaling so quickly that the guards couldn’t track her well enough to shoot.

  They gave up within a few seconds. They must have realized that shooting at a building filled with world leaders was probably not a good idea.

  But it didn’t mean that they were letting her reach the top.

  Cables dropped down the side of the building, and OPA agents began rappelling toward her, much the same way that they’d dropped out of the helicopter the night before.

  Magic fogged around the first to approach. It was a witch, battle-trained and clutching hexes in both of his fists. He vibrated with violet energy.

  He didn’t issue any warnings. Didn’t try to tell her to turn back. She’d already crossed too many lines.

  The witch kept one hand on his rope and flung the other toward her. Deirdre leaped, pushing off the building with her toes, and managed to catch another window. The hex sizzled past her, distorting the air it passed through.

  The agent didn’t pause before shooting another spell at her. Deirdre leaped again. This time, she grabbed his foot instead of the building.

  “Hey!” he shouted, trying to kick her off.

  Deirdre scaled his body and grabbed the rope. “I’m going to borrow this, okay?”

  His fingers blazed with fresh magic. “Let go!”

  She didn’t give him an opportunity to activate that spell. Deirdre was already scrambling up the rope, faster now that she had the help. Other witches rappelled down the building and tried to hurl spells at her, but she was a blur, almost as speedy as Stark was on the ground.

  It only took moments to reach the upper floors. She leaped onto the open dirigible dock. It was a large open space with machinery on the wall to help catch and tether airships. The UN logo on the wall glistened alongside the OPA logo.

  The decorations were sparse, so there weren’t many hiding spots. Nowhere she could take cover.

  And the agents she had seen with the telephoto lens were waiting at the top.

  She threw herself out of the way of the assault she knew to be coming, and the mundanes with all their mundane reflexes couldn’t react quickly enough. She pounced on the nearest agent, slammed his head into the ground, and his eyes blanked.

  A witch lobbed a spell at her, and Deirdre lifted the agent she’d knocked out as a shield. He took the spell in the chest, instantly turning icy-cold and rigid as the dead.

  She yanked the frozen agent’s gun out of his holster.

  One of the witches hurled a fistful of magic at her, and she rolled underneath it. The spell passed so close that the tips of her hair froze, so cold that it burned against her neck.

  She fired her stolen gun. Got her attacker in the hand.

  Then she turned and fired again, hitting the next agent in the wrist before he could shoot back.

  One of the remaining agents fired. Deirdre moved a fraction too slowly. It grazed her shoulder, scalding a path over her skin.

  The other agent leaped, wrapping her arms around her from behind, making both of them fall to the floor. She smashed into the tile face-first. “Get off!” she said, squirming in his grip. He was strong for a mundane. She couldn’t get him off of her.

  Deirdre twisted so that she could see the airship. It was so close. Its windows loomed large at the edge of the building. The dirigible hadn’t moored yet, but it looked like it was already leaving again, without ever having unloaded in the first place.

  Rylie would be in there.

  “Get off!” Deirdre repeated, and this time, she put the full force of her willpower behind the words.

  Flames flared over her.

  The agent screamed as he leaped away, slapping at his shirt. She hadn’t incinerated him as swiftly as Chadwick Hawfinch—but it looked like it must have hurt.

  Deirdre didn’t hesitate to dispatch the last agent. She shot him in the foot so that he fell with a cry.

  Then she pounded across the room, reached the edge of the floor, and leaped into open space.

  For an instant, Deirdre was suspended in the space between the airship and the building. There was nothing holding her up. Nothing between her and a drop of two hundred stories. The tourists were dark pinpoints on concrete so far below.

  Even a shifter wouldn’t survive that fall.

  Deirdre slammed into the aluminum underbelly of the airship.

  She scrambled to grip a round window frame that looked like a porthole. Her legs dangled underneath her. Her hands were slick with sweat from her earlier climb, so the momentum of her swinging body almost made her slip off.

  But she clung to the window, adjusted her grip, held firm.

  There was no time to consider what a precarious position she was in. The wind was shockingly strong now that she was dangling from the belly of a dirigible, maybe even stronger than a shifter’s muscles, and it felt like it was going to pluck her right off of the airship.

  She slammed her fist into the porthole. One good blow was all it took. The latch broke, and she wedged it open, squirming inside.

  Deirdre tumbled to the floor of the airship.

  There were people around her instantly. They radiated with magic, distorting the ship around her so that it looked like the walls were twisted into curlicues, blurring everything beyond Deirdre’s arm’s reach.

  She’d seen that aura too frequently to be able to mistake it.

  The pair standing over her were seelie sidhe, members of the Summer Court. Both crackled with magic. One of them was Trevin, a member of the Summer Court who protected Rylie Gresham. Both looked like they were prepared to kill Deirdre.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Rylie Gresham pushed past her guards to stand between them and Deirdre. Her hair was a mess and she only wore a slip and pantyhose. She must have still been getting dressed for the meeting at the UN building. And for the first
time that Deirdre had ever seen, Rylie looked angry. “Don’t hurt her until we get a chance to talk.”

  They didn’t dock with the United Nations building. The airship remained suspended a few hundred feet away, far enough that Deirdre wouldn’t have been able to leap the distance safely.

  She was taken to a meeting room decorated with the sanctuary insignia. It was like sitting in a really nice hotel that just so happened to be hanging over New York City. If not for the soft hum of the engines and the gentle rocking of wind, Deirdre never would have known that they were in the air.

  Trevin approached her with silver chains. “Hold still.”

  Deirdre lifted her hands in a defensive gesture, though she wasn’t sure if she wanted to attempt to set fire to him or punch his seelie face. “What are you doing? You can’t tie me down.”

  “Really?” Rylie asked, planting her hands on her hips. “You expect us to trust you after everything you’ve done?”

  “You have my word that I’m not going to try to attack.” The seelie sidhe had taken Deirdre’s guns. Without silver bullets, she was no match for Rylie.

  The seelie guards stood back against the walls, not so far that they couldn’t be on Deirdre in an instant if she moved. There were about a dozen OPA agents in their black suits, too. More than enough security to take down Deirdre. Maybe enough security to take down Stark himself.

  She was being treated like a serious threat.

  That was nothing new. Deirdre had always been a big question mark—someone that other shifters feared.

  At least she had earned the reputation now.

  But Deirdre definitely wasn’t going to try to attack against these kinds of odds.

  “Can we talk alone?” Deirdre asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Rylie said. “You took something from my sanctuary. I trusted you, Deirdre.”

  “I trusted you, too,” she said. “I thought that you were someone else, and now I’m thinking…” She glanced up at the OPA agents again. They were watching her closely, faces blank. “Are you sure you want to talk about this where other people can hear it?”

  “What are we talking about?” Rylie asked. “I don’t think there’s anything left to discuss. You’ve made your allegiances clear, and you’ve left us with no option but to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me? But you sent me to work with Stark.”

  “I didn’t send you to help him kill people. Your allegiance is supposed to be to me.”

  Deirdre searched Rylie’s face for any hint of guile.

  Rylie had to know that Deirdre had figured her out. That finding the Ethereal Blade implicated her as the Godslayer. And that because the swords existed—because the Godslayer existed—it meant that everything else mythology said was true, including the part where Rylie would have killed the gods to make the world the way it was now.

  It meant that Rylie was responsible for Deirdre losing her father.

  “How could I ever give my allegiance to someone like you?” Deirdre asked. Her voice came out hoarser than she intended. It made her sound weak. “You never gave me what I asked for when I fulfilled my obligations to you. The least you can do is not arrest me.”

  Rylie sank onto the chair across from her, massaging her temple with two fingertips. “Deirdre…” She sighed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk to you about the election. You’ve set it up because of that last conversation we had. Didn’t you?”

  “Not just because of you. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. The nature of my office, the responsibilities that I hold…” Rylie gazed out the window at the clouds, which were heavy with rain and the color of steel. “I was bitten by a werewolf when I was fifteen years old. I became Alpha when I was sixteen. I was a kid, chosen by fate. I’m not sure I ever deserved this much responsibility.”

  “Then you should yield,” Deirdre said. “Don’t run for reelection. Stark’s in second place. He’ll win even if you drop out.”

  Rylie gave a tiny laugh. “Do you really think I’d do that?”

  “You said it yourself. You don’t deserve the responsibility.” She bit out the words, flinging them at Rylie.

  “I didn’t deserve it when I was chosen. I’ve earned it now. I think the voters will agree with that, and that’s why I’m running.” Rylie folded her arms. “If you want me to drop out, then I take that to mean Stark’s not willingly participating in the election.”

  Damn. The Alpha wasn’t stupid. “Yeah, Stark’s pretty pissed about it.”

  “The man’s not easy to please.”

  She had no idea how much that was true. “He thinks that offering to pass your privilege on to someone else is political theater. He says that shifters don’t elect Alphas and nobody would obey the winning candidate.”

  “I expected that reaction, which is why I’m taking steps to legitimize the election,” Rylie said. “You met Marion when you were at the sanctuary—the mage girl.”

  “The one who’s half-angel and half-witch,” Deirdre said.

  “Yes, that one. Mages can cast spells that human witches can’t, and they can make their enchantments stick to anyone. That includes all kinds of gaeans. Shifters, seelie, unseelie…”

  “Vampires.”

  “Vampires don’t have Alphas and they’re not in the running for the election,” Rylie said.

  “Don’t you think that’s kinda jacked up?”

  “It’s not within my power to change the nature of gaean breeds. Marion will bind all of the Alpha candidates together. Her spell will guarantee the outcome of the election. If I win, the other potential Alphas will be forced to submit to me. If the King of the Summer Court wins, I’ll be forced to submit to him.”

  This must have been the oath that Darryl had mentioned.

  “And if Stark wins?” Deirdre asked.

  Rylie pulled her robe tighter around herself. “He’ll have to take Marion’s oath for it to be applicable to him.”

  “But if he took the oath and then won, would you let him?” she pressed.

  “If that’s what the popular vote decides, then yes. I was coming to the United Nations to pick up the Secretary of the Office of Preternatural Affairs. Fritz Friederling will be taking the oath, too. Even the government will have to recognize whichever Alpha wins. It should prevent civil war after the election, since the Alphas who lose will have no choice but to obey the winner. And the oath forbids Alphas fighting before the election, too.”

  “So the candidates won’t be able to send assassins after each other? Nice,” Deirdre said. “Too bad Stark won’t take the oath. And arresting his Beta isn’t going to make him want to participate, either.” She was bluffing. At this point, Stark probably didn’t care what happened to her.

  Rylie’s voice took on a hard edge. “Arresting Stark’s Beta wouldn’t be an issue if you hadn’t attacked the United Nations building.”

  “You didn’t answer my call and I needed to talk,” Deirdre said. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “Write a letter? I have a lot more demands on my attention than waiting for you to call!”

  That stung more than Deirdre expected. Rylie had let Deirdre believe that she was important to her—or at least, important to the cause. But whatever was between them, it couldn’t have been that important.

  “What demands?” Deirdre asked acerbically. “Sending an army to try to slaughter Stark’s people?”

  “Secretary Friederling and I have been trying to arrange meetings with the sidhe. We’ve got an appointment with the King of the Summer Court. We haven’t been able to reach the Winter Court, though.”

  “That’s because they’re in the middle of a coup.”

  The Alpha’s eyebrows lifted. “What makes you say that? We haven’t heard about a coup, and we have a lot of informants among all of the gaean factions.”

  “Who do you think killed the army that the OPA sent to the asylum? That wasn’t Stark. It wasn’t me. It was the unseelie on a vendetta against
Stark.”

  “The unseelie wouldn’t kill OPA forces. We’re allies.” Rylie bit her thumbnail, falling silent as she thought for a moment. “I’m going to need more than your word on this. Good thing we’re going to the Summer Court—they’ll have a way to contact the Winter Court.”

  “Aren’t the seelie and unseelie enemies?”

  “You can’t bitterly loathe someone you don’t love a little bit. Trust me, the two factions talk. A lot.”

  Deirdre made up her mind in an instant. If the meeting with the seelie king was a critical part of the election, then she wanted to attend it, too. Stark was going to win the role of Alpha, dammit. Even if that meant Deirdre handled all of the campaigning and negotiating without his help. “I’m coming to the Summer Court too.”

  “That’s going to be hard to do when you’re in an OPA detention center,” Trevin said. The seelie guard was lounging against the wall, bouncing sparks of magic between his fingertips.

  Deirdre’s hands balled into fists atop her thighs. “Cutting me out of election proceedings means cutting Stark out. That’s bad politics.”

  Rylie looked exhausted. “I’m not trying to cut anyone out, but Stark doesn’t need to be involved in negotiations with the sidhe.”

  “You need someone from his side to testify to your good intentions,” Deirdre pressed. “You’re not going to get Stark to play along with this election if you get hostile with him. Making deals under the table with the seelie, putting his Beta in prison—”

  “Fine,” Rylie said. “You can come as a representative of Stark.”

  Trevin stood up straight. “You can’t let one of those people into the Summer Court. You’re exposing the king and queen to a massive security threat.”

  “The king suggested I bring a liaison for Stark’s camp anyway.” Rylie finally dropped her hand from her temple, composing herself. “But you have to understand something, Deirdre: You’re going to have to face consequences soon. Not just for what you’re doing with Stark, but what you did today to the guards at the UN.”

  Deirdre just couldn’t let that rest. She couldn’t let the Alpha turn things around on her like everything was her fault. “You’re the one who was hiding the Ethereal Blade in your stupid enchanted mausoleum. Which one of us is really the bad guy here?”