Pas by S M Reine

would have done.
    Yet Deirdre, cold and wet in the ruins of the asylum, couldn’t summon so much as a flicker.
    The vampires slipped into the shadows. Their glowing crimson eyes disappeared one pair at a time, like ghosts vanishing into the ether.
    She was losing them.
    “We have to fight back!” Deirdre said. “Rhiannon is a fraud and we can’t let her take control! There are still things we can do!”
    Stoker sneered over Lucifer’s shoulder. “We’re going to greener pastures.”
    “There won’t be any such thing if we don’t stop her!”
    He’d already faded into shadow.
    Of all his people, only Lucifer remained.
    “I almost admire you for trying to hold everything together after Stark abandoned us.” He hooked a finger in Niamh’s collar and pulled her upright. “But you’ve wasted my time when we could have been running.” He tugged on Niamh. “I’m taking this with me. I’m keeping her. And we’ll call it even.”
    “Wait,” Deirdre said. She wasn’t certain if she was telling him not to take Niamh or if she was just asking him to stay.
    He stepped backward. Shadow slithered up his jeans, making his feet disappear, his hips, his stomach. Niamh’s round, helpless eyes kept gazing at Deirdre as she was drawn inexorably into darkness with him.
    “If you were smart, you’d run too,” Lucifer said.
    And the vampires were gone.

    Deirdre had lost Stark’s allies.
    If he didn’t kill her for defying him, then he would certainly kill her for that.
    She tried not to panic. Panic was a sanity killer, something that would do her no favors now when the crap was hitting the fan. She needed to be clear headed if she wanted to figure out some way to defeat Rhiannon.
    But she was standing in the shattered ruins of the asylum with the sky dumping rain upon her, and all she could wonder was how long it would take the sluagh to find her now that it was out of its cage again.
    Rhiannon had said it wouldn’t stop until she was dead.
    “We need Stark,” Vidya said, giving voice to the words that Deirdre hadn’t been willing to contemplate.
    She was right.
    They couldn’t do anything about Rhiannon without support. Unfortunately, Lucifer’s loyalties, pathetic as they were, rested with Everton Stark himself. The only way to get the vampires and shifters back together was to have Stark make an appearance.
    Which meant that the only way that they were going to be able to defeat Rhiannon and keep her away from the inauguration was with Stark’s intercession.
    If Deirdre could get him out of the Winter Court.
    “He’ll kill me if he comes back to Earth,” Deirdre said. “With everything I’ve done since he left, he’s not going to see any alternative.”
    “Stark’s sentimental,” Vidya said. “He might show mercy.”
    “Sentimental? Mercy? Are we talking about the same Stark here?” Deirdre rubbed her jaw. Her teeth still hadn’t grown back in completely since Stark’s wife ripped them out. Would a merciful man fall in love with a woman like that?
    “He can be very merciful. I’ve known him a long time,” Vidya said.
    “Not long enough.”
    “He’s not like you. Everything he does comes from the heart, not from the mind. There isn’t an objective molecule in his body.”
    “Are you saying I’m objective?”
    “You’re uniquely focused. And Stark is focused on you. We need him to achieve your goals, so let’s get him.”
    Vidya spoke with near-robotic calmness, which was strangely soothing. The valkyrie didn’t care that they had almost been publicly executed, devoured by the sluagh. She didn’t care that the OPA had opened fire on the masses, or that they had lost Stark’s allies.
    She was focused on the battles to come.
    Deirdre needed that kind of pragmatism desperately.
    She slipped a hand into her pocket, feeling the hard disc that Brother Marshall had given her at their last meeting. It looked unremarkable, its magic passive, so the agents hadn’t taken it from her when