Beta (28 page)

And Everton Stark swung into the airplane.

“Tombs,” he said. His eyes focused on the sword. “
Tombs
.”

Deirdre was furious to see him. She was furious, and frustrated, and miserable, and yet somehow…relieved.

The grateful warmth that unfolded inside of her was sickly and foreign. She was actually happy to see him—this man who had allowed her to avenge all of her youthful grudges upon Dr. Landsmore and liberate the students at St. Griffith’s.

“Stark,” she said faintly.

He crossed the airplane in two steps, seized her by the shirt, and kissed her hard.

Deirdre’s eyes went wide. She stared at Stark from half an inch away, too stunned to know how to react.

His lips were dry. His beard itched against her chin. He tasted of blood and wilderness and the monsters that haunted the darkest nights of the new moon. It was fierce and angry and desperate, as though he hadn’t been certain he would see her again, and Stark blamed her for every moment of fear.

What the hell?

She tried to pull back, but Stark’s hands seized her wrists. His fingers dug into the tender skin on her inner arm, squeezing so tightly that her muscles spasmed and she almost had to release the sword. The blade shivered beside them, severing the tension with its razor-sharp blade.

He was distracted.
Really
distracted. Deirdre could have plunged the sword into his heart and he never would have been able to react in time.

But she didn’t.

If she was going to be honest with herself, she didn’t even want to.

He had given her so much. She owed him everything.

Maybe she even owed him
this
.

Deirdre let the Ethereal Blade fall to her side. His hands slid up her shoulders, nearly crushing her bones with the force of it.

And then Stark shoved her away and delivered a swift right hook to her jaw.

Deirdre slammed into the bulkhead. She almost dropped the Ethereal Blade—almost. But instinct kept her hanging onto it.

She gaped at him.

Hatred filled Stark’s eyes. Hatred and disgust.

“Let’s get out of here,” he repeated. “And never touch me again.”

The first night that Deirdre spent with Gage, he had wrapped his arms around her as she cried in her sleep. It hadn’t been a conscious choice. He hadn’t even been awake. That was just the kind of person Gage had been.

Even trapped in the darkest pits of depression, he had reached out to her to offer comfort.

Deirdre would have loved a chance to know Gage better. She wished that they had gotten more than one lousy night of passion together. She wanted to know more about the boy who had come from a family of berserkers, yet had grown to become a man with such empathy. He had been a beautiful, aching soul.

But that wasn’t ever going to happen.

He was gone.

And now Deirdre was being dragged through cornfields by the wrist by a very different man who showed no sign of similar empathy. It felt like Stark’s hand was going to rip her arm right out of the socket. After the way that he’d looked at her, he was probably considering it.

“Faster, Tombs!” Stark shouted.

Black helicopters buzzed overhead, so low that the wind from their rotors shook the crops like a hurricane. They were OPA vehicles coming to find out why Rylie Gresham’s private jet had made an unscheduled landing.

What was Rylie going to think when they found those bodies in the airplane?

The sword was heavy in Deirdre’s free hand. So much heavier than when she’d pulled it from the table in the memorial.

Rylie would be able to come to no conclusion other than the truth: Deirdre had truly defected.

What was I thinking?

“Faster!”

Stark urged Deirdre on, and she ran as fast as she could, struggling to keep up with his preternatural speed. They blazed a path through the cornfields as searchlights began sweeping over the farm behind them.

Deirdre darted across a dirt road. Engines roared somewhere in the distance as SUVs approached.

She plunged into the next field with Stark.

It was impossible to tell how long they were running. The world didn’t extend beyond Deirdre’s pounding heart, her heaving lungs, the beat of her feet against dirt, the slap of jagged leaves against her face. She glimpsed Stark in flashes through the stalks.

He ran faster than Deirdre had ever thought possible, and she ran with him.

At some point, the sound of helicopters faded. But they kept running long after the last of the engine growls faded. They ran and ran until they suddenly weren’t running anymore, and Stark was throwing open the storm cellar on a farmhouse, shoving her inside, and leaping in after her.

He slammed the doors shut and shoved a broom through the handles.

Deirdre stumbled down the stairs, staring around at the storm cellar. It was dusty and empty aside from a single table and the shelves of dusty canned goods along the walls.

“What are we—?” she began.

He cut her off with a gesture.

Stark remained on the stairs, eyes turned to the ceiling, as though listening.

Deirdre didn’t hear anything.

That must have been the goal, because he finally came down the stairs to join her, extending a hand. “Give that sword to me,” Stark said.

Deirdre lifted the Ethereal Blade between them, bicep trembling at the weight. She was hot all over. Hot and tired and filled with fear.

This was it. This was her chance to kill Stark.

Her lips still hurt from how hard he had kissed her.

“Give it to me,” he said again. There was still no hint of compulsion in his voice.

Deirdre turned the sword around and offered it to Stark hilt-first.

He took it from her, and as soon as the white stone left her fingers, all her strength vanished. She was trembling. It felt like Deirdre was telling Rylie that she was going to leave their cause and join Stark’s for real—because she kind of had.

Double agent. Liar. Betrayer.

Omega.

“The Ethereal Blade,” Stark said. “It’s
real
.”

Deirdre sank into the chair beside the table, resting her forehead on her hands. “I’m as shocked as you are.”

He didn’t look shocked, though. He looked fiercely triumphant. It was a look that should have scared Deirdre, but she couldn’t find the strength for it now that they had finally stopped running. “Where did you get this?” Stark asked. “How did you go from arrested by the OPA to possessing the Ethereal Blade?”

Deirdre hadn’t made up a story to tell Stark about her time at the sanctuary. She hadn’t expected to see him so soon.

She didn’t dare hesitate to answer his question, though.

Kiss or not, he would surely kill her if she confessed to her alliance with Rylie Gresham. In fact, the kiss might mean he would kill her even faster.

“They detained me at the sanctuary for questioning,” Deirdre said. “I escaped from the room where they were keeping me, and I found that sword while I was trying to get out of the sanctuary.”

His eyes narrowed. “And they didn’t take it from you when you were arrested again?”

“They didn’t even search me.” She swallowed hard. “They must have decided I was too risky to keep at the sanctuary, so as soon as they found me, they shoved me into that plane. They probably haven’t realized the sword is gone yet.”

“That sounds ridiculous,” Stark said.

He was right. It
was
ridiculous. But Deirdre gave him a level look, trying not to betray the lie with her expression. “I’ve got the sword and all of them are dead, so I don’t know what other proof you want. How did
you
know where to find me? And how’d you get to the pilot?”

Stark set the Ethereal Blade on the table. It glimmered in the sunlight that radiated through the cracks in the storm cellar door. “There’s a radio in the farmhouse here that communicates with planes. It helps them coordinate with crop dusters. I used it to compel the pilot that was flying you.”

She hadn’t realized he could compel people remotely. That was a terrifying talent he’d kept close to the chest.

“But you already knew I was on that plane,” Deirdre said. “You had to know I was up there in order to attempt to make contact in the first place.”

He gave her a steady look, offering no explanation.

Stark knew that she was lying about the sword somehow, and he wasn’t going to be forthcoming with his information when she was being oblique with hers.

He didn’t need to explain how he’d found her, though. Stark must have had a contact at the sanctuary. It was the only way he could have known. And he wasn’t going to tell Deirdre who it was.

Deirdre met his eyes and nodded slowly, silently acknowledging their detente. “When I was in custody, the agent struck me. He wouldn’t let me make a phone call, told me I had no right to a trial, said I couldn’t even have a lawyer.”

Stark’s brow lowered over his eyes. “Are you surprised?”

Surprised wasn’t the word she’d use for it. More like she was disappointed. She’d wanted Rylie and the OPA to prove that they were better than she suspected, but they’d sunk to meet her expectations.

“You saved me,” Deirdre said.

He folded his arms. “And?”

“I didn’t expect you to.” She felt stupid for saying it. She felt stupid for a lot of things.

“I’ve invested this much in you now,” Stark said, startling her. “It’d be a waste of my time to let them detain you indefinitely. It’s not every day you meet someone willing to bite a dragon’s tongue off.”

She caught herself starting to smile and forced herself to stop. “I guess I’m lucky you and I didn’t set the airplane on fire,” she muttered.

Stark almost looked amused. Almost, but not quite. “I knew you’d be dangerous when we met. I couldn’t have imagined exactly how dangerous at the time.”

“Why’d you kiss me?” Deirdre asked. And then she lifted her hands to keep him from answering that question. “No. Wait. Why did you kiss me and then punch me in the mouth? What is your malfunction?”

“I have a wife,” Stark said.

Of course he did. And Rhiannon Stark was the whole reason that he’d gone to war against Rylie in the first place.

“That’s not my fault,” Deirdre said. “I’m not the one mashing my lips on your face.
You
did that to
me
.”

“You think that you had nothing to do with that?” Stark asked.

“Don’t try to turn that around on me, Stark. You don’t do the kissing-and-hitting thing and try to convince me that it’s my fault. I put up with all that crap when it comes to how you represent yourself in front of the pack, and I’ll keep putting up with it because I’m your Beta, but this? This is something else.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t play stupid,” Deirdre said. “It’s not flattering to either of us.”

“Careful what you say. Don’t forget who I am.”

That wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

“You’re a madman. That’s what you are. And in the future, you’re going to keep your lips to yourself, or I will steal that sword right on back and cut you with it. Hear me?”

Stark surveyed her coolly, fingers resting on the hilt of the sword. “My wife might still be alive. Until I find her…” He trailed off, and his jaw clenched. “What might be able to happen after that doesn’t matter. I have a wife.”

“Yeah, right,” Deirdre said. “Got it. No problem.” She gave him an ironic thumbs-up.

He didn’t look amused anymore. Not even a little bit.

Deirdre wasn’t amused, either. But if there was any time to confess what had happened at the sanctuary, it was probably now, when he was still all confused with the lusty man-hormones that had gotten him all up in her business. “You should know that they questioned me while I was in custody. They handcuffed me to a chair and asked me questions about you. A lot of questions.”

“What did you tell them?”

There was no point trying to lie about it. “I told them everything they wanted to know. Where we’ve been based. How many people are at the asylum. The sewer entrance to the basement.”

He unleashed a string of curses—the kind of colorful obscenities that only a military man could master.

“We need to get everyone out of the asylum if it isn’t already too late,” Deirdre said, interrupting him.

“I have a hundred safe houses. We can move to any of them.” Stark glared at her. “I just thought you would have been too strong to succumb to their questioning.” He grabbed a set of car keys out of a can on the shelf. “Wrap the Ethereal Blade securely. Guard the cutting edge.”

She reached under her shirt and wiggled the sheath out of its makeshift scabbard. “Got it covered.” Deirdre slid the sword into place. She wasn’t sure if she was imagining the way the bone-white blade sighed once it was concealed.

Deirdre rewrapped her shredded tank top around the hilt of the sword, binding it tightly to the sheath.

“Has it occurred to you that the sidhe must have known that the Infernal Blade wasn’t at Holy Nights Cathedral?” she asked, tucking the sword under her arm and following Stark to the stairs.

He pushed the door open enough to peer through the crack. “Of course it has.”