Free Pas by S M Reine Page A

down—there were just so many people on the platform now, both OPA witches and Lucifer’s vampires, that nobody could see where they were going.
    Deirdre tried to shove people away, struggling to stand.
    She was knocked over again.
    Have to escape.
    More gunfire. Deirdre looked through the legs of the people surrounding her to see blood in the audience, rioters who had been struck by bullets.
    Gods, this wasn’t what she had wanted to do.
    “Deirdre!”
    Vidya wrenched her off of the stage. It was a short fall, only a few feet.
    Someone had untied the valkyrie’s hands. And when they had unleashed those limbs, they had also released the magic that prevented her from unfurling her wings. With swift gestures of razor-sharp feathers, she sliced through the silver cuffs burning stripes into Deirdre’s wrists.
    Her muscular arms wrapped around Deirdre. “Hold my neck,” Vidya said. She flapped her wings, beginning to lift her from the ground.
    “We can’t go!” Deirdre cried, kicking wildly. “The sluagh—the protestors—”
    “You can’t do anything for them.” Vidya took off, kicking away the agents who reached for her. Bullets pinged off of her wings.
    From above, Deirdre saw the sluagh’s deadly limbs snapping closed on a handful of civilians who had come for the execution. It bundled them into a bouquet of limbs. They shrieked as they were dragged into its core.
    Other tentacles shattered the posts holding up the stage. They smashed into the screen, which had once shown Rhiannon’s face. They slithered free of the circle—and they came for Deirdre in the air.
    Vidya was right. There was nothing Deirdre could do for the rioting crowd.
    She wrapped her arms tightly around the valkyrie’s neck, and they flew, abandoning vampires and OPA agents to the sluagh’s nonexistent mercy.

VII

    They couldn’t return to the high-rise. When Vidya flew overhead, they found it crawling with OPA personnel—people who worked for Rhiannon, whether they knew it or not.
    Vidya wasn’t daunted by their supposed safe house and its bounty of lethe being swarmed by enemies. She spiraled back around to head in the opposite direction without missing a single beat of her wings.
    They alighted in a courtyard at the center of an abandoned complex.
    “The asylum,” Deirdre said softly, releasing her grip on the valkyrie’s shoulders. Her boots splashed into a muddy slurry that was overgrown with weeds. “We’re back at the asylum.” She hadn’t been there since she’d been reborn from the ashes in the incinerator—the same incinerator where Gage’s body had burned.
    Little had changed in the ensuing weeks. Nobody had attempted to repair the shattered walls and windows, nor had anyone tended the garden. There were still scorch marks from sidhe magic and blood splatters.
    It was quiet. So quiet.
    It was also probably the safest place for Deirdre in New York City at the moment. Who would expect her to return to a known hideout?
    “When Lucifer and I discussed contingency plans, we agreed that Rhiannon would be unlikely to look for us here,” Vidya said
    Deirdre wandered between two trees. She brushed her fingers over the trunk. There were so many memories in that miserable place. Memories that she had been happy to leave behind.
    She swallowed down saliva that tasted like blood, tonguing the gaps in her teeth where Rhiannon had performed amateur dentistry. New teeth were already growing back. Soon that pain would be nothing but miserable memories, too.
    “Have you and Lucifer been talking about plans without me very much?”
    “Only a little. These kinds of logistics didn’t seem worthy of your time and attention. You’ve been distracted.” Vidya’s tone was bland.
    “Good idea,” she said.
    Deirdre stepped over the rubble to enter the asylum—or at least, what used to be the asylum. She had blown the roof apart using Melchior’s triple-barreled revolver. More of the roof had collapsed since then. What had once