Free Pas by S M Reine

molasses.
    She knew that she was going to see the sluagh reaching for her.
    But its circle hadn’t broken. It wasn’t free, and it wasn’t about to kill her.
    A different kind of attack was moving in from the edges of the crowd, dropping off of the nearby rooftops. They plunged to the street from windows of office buildings. When each of them hit the pavement, their bodies gave a faint thud . It was an unforgettable sound, like knuckles connecting with a slab of meat hanging from a butcher’s freezer.
    That kind of sound should have meant death.
    Yet once they landed, the bodies kept moving. The force of them pushing through the crowd caused the tides to surge and shift. Deirdre glimpsed pale skin.
    Vampires.
    Lucifer’s vampires.
    Rhiannon was still speaking, unaffected by her surroundings. “I don’t want to be a cruel leader. My only goal is to protect the people and the good of the many must always outweigh the good of the few. These deaths aren’t intended to be a punishment. I’m merely protecting you, the public, from those outliers who would hurt you.”
    She was nearing the end of her speech, and that meant that the execution was meant to happen.
    “Blessed be the merciful gods,” Rhiannon said. “And my blessings upon all of you.”
    The towering screen switched from footage of her face to footage of Deirdre—live footage. There was a camera mounted on the edge of the stage, focusing on the people who were meant to be executed.
    Magic snapped through the air. It stank of ozone, like a lightning strike.
    The wards holding the sluagh broke.
    “No!” Deirdre cried.
    The crowd surged forward.
    OPA agents opened fire. Automatic gunfire peppered the air, snapping through Deirdre’s skull like nails driven into her temples.
    Screams.
    Bodies falling.
    The magical barrier surrounding the sluagh sparked and frayed as its tentacles lashed through the air.
    A vampire launched out of the crowd with preternatural strength, landing smoothly on the stage. Deirdre recognized Stoker, one of Lucifer’s closest generals. He wasn’t a handsome man, nor was he impressive, but he didn’t seem to register any pain as the OPA agents opened fire on him. He also didn’t bleed as the bullets opened holes in his chest.
    He was a vampire, not a shifter. Silver did nothing against him.
    Stoker’s eyebrows furrowed as he walked forward, pushing directly into the gunfire as though it were no worse than a hard wind. He clamped his fists together and swung them toward the nearest OPA agent.
    His knuckles connected. The agent went flying off the stage and vanished into the crowd.
    “Free my hands!” Lucifer roared.
    Deirdre pushed him aside. “No, Vidya! Free Vidya!”
    A body slammed into hers. She smashed into the stage, unable to control her fall. She wasn’t sure if it was Lucifer or an agent who had hit her—she wasn’t sure of anything.
    There was so much motion, so much chaos.
    The magic from the sluagh’s cage was fraying faster. Skeletal hands scraped at the sky. They were enlarged, so much bigger than the hands of a dead body, so big that they seemed like they should have been able to crash shut on the United Nations building.
    It was beyond Deirdre’s comprehension, this bizarre unseelie thing . It didn’t belong in the mundane world. It belonged in the strange dream of the Middle Worlds, where everything was fabricated from imagination and nothing made sense. The edges of its foggy image blurred into the clouds and the ocean and the ethereal architecture.
    She couldn’t tell how close it was to her, but she knew that she would be its first target.
    Rhiannon had made sure of that.
    Deirdre needed to escape.
    She jerked her knees to her chest, twisted her arms, and arched her back. She grimaced as she slid her bound wrists underneath her feet so that her hands would be in front.
    A boot connected with her skull. Her head bounced off the stage.
    It wasn’t a deliberate attack, an attempt to keep her