Clinging to the railing of the airship's deck, Deirdre watched as the giant black bird wheeled around the other side of the envelope to find a better angle for attack. Red curls whipped back from the woman's head.
Niamh was finally flying again-not as a swan, as she was meant to be, but as something a thousand times more monstrous.
And she was angling toward Deirdre.
"I need a gun!" Deirdre shouted, trying to get the sidhe to hear her over the wind. "I can help!"
"No way!" Trevin called back.
Rylie growled, crouched down on her forelegs, tracking the motion of the harpy through the sky.
Niamh folded her wings, plummeting toward them.
She smashed into the wards.
The harpy's body ricocheted off of the magic.
Niamh couldn't get through the magic protecting the airship. As long as they were within those wards, they were safe from the harpy. At least, they should have been. But the dirigible was still falling. They were still under attack.
Violet hauled Deirdre toward the door leading back into the airship.
"Get inside!" the sidhe guard ordered. "Stay with the OPA agents!" She slapped the lock. The door slid open.
A man stepped through the doorway and drove a sword into Violet's gut.
Violet's mouth dropped open. Glistening blood spilled over her chin, splattered on her chest. The sword protruding from her spine was dull gray, like a thorn of iron, and the man holding it was a weedy redhead. His name was Kristian. He was Niamh's artist boyfriend and a serpent shifter in the service of the Winter Court.
He kicked Violet's body off of the sword.
Deirdre backed away from him as quickly as she could without slipping down the pitching deck.
"I didn't believe them when they said you survived," Kristian said, advancing on her. The iron sword sizzled with sidhe blood. "I should have listened to the rumors."
Magic exploded around them again. Niamh had rammed into the wards a second time, and the spells sparked with a waterfall of shining energy.
She was weakening the spells.
Deirdre glanced over her shoulder at Rylie and Trevin. They had edged all the way to the nose of the airship, as far from Kristian as possible. If he'd come armed with a way to kill Rylie's guards, it wouldn't be surprising if he'd brought something silver for the Alpha, too.
He didn't seem interested in Rylie, though.
"What do you think you're going to do with an iron sword?" Deirdre asked, trying not to sound worried. "If a silver knife won't kill me, I doubt that would, either."
"You're probably right," he said.
He flashed across the deck, slamming into Deirdre. But he didn't try to stab her.
Kristian shoved two fingers against Deirdre's forehead.
His lips moved silently, as though speaking a word that she couldn't hear.
And just like that, he stepped back again.
"Hope the mark sticks this time," he said.
"What?" She swiped at the place that he had touched, trying to clean it off. But there was nothing there that she could feel. "What was that? What did you do to me?"
"That's your death," Kristian said.
Niamh's body crashed into the wards protecting the deck a third time. This time, she hit hard enough to punch through the magic, plow into Kristian, and toss both of them into the envelope of the airship.
The point of the iron sword plunged into the airship, ripping a wide hole that vented gas.
"No!" Kristian roared.
Deirdre would have cried out, too, but the gases that gusted from the envelope bowled her over. It was like being punched by Stark.
She flew backwards.
Niamh had shattered the wards, so there was nothing to stop Deirdre from falling. She slipped over the railings with a cry, tumbling heels over head.
The ground was so far down.
One hand flung out, catching the railing. Deirdre dangled. Only two fingers clung to the damp metal.
The airship jerked, battered by the wind.
Deirdre's hand ripped free.
She plummeted toward the ground.
Now would be a great time for wings.
She still wasn't shapeshifting. She couldn't change at all. She couldn't even summon the fire to keep her warm as she hurtled toward the earth.
Time seemed to slow as the windows of the UN building swept past her. The airship dwindled, veiled by the clouds in which it was suspended. Its envelope vented gas in a white column.
Deirdre wasn't the only flotsam shaken free of its deck. Rylie was falling too, and the wolf looked so ungainly with her fur and legs lashing around her.
It was an undignified end for the Alpha.
Even now, Deirdre found some small hint of smugness in the idea that Rylie was going to die.
It's only fair.
Deirdre flipped in the air, unable to control her descent. Her head angled toward the ground. The tourists were still gathered. There were cameras capturing her fall. Just as her fall from grace into Stark's employ had been aired on a hundred news channels, so would her death. Seemed appropriate.
Time dragged to a halt as she tumbled, only a couple dozen feet from the ground.
She was about to hit.
Deirdre's body stopped with a jerk.
But she didn't die. Instead, she reversed direction, moving parallel to the ground a few feet above the heads of the tourists.
It hurt like she'd slammed into pavement, but the arms curved around her were far more forgiving than that.
She twisted to see Vidya's determined face, eyes narrowed as she flew, wind blasting into her face. The wind sang through her razor feathers. Her biceps bulged as her hands tightened around Deirdre's waist, holding her securely as they climbed toward the clouds again.
Deirdre tried to say, "Vidya?" The name wouldn't come out, though. She couldn't breathe enough to speak.
For the first time, Deirdre was flying without the help of an airplane, though the wings weren't hers. They rose and fell by inches every time Vidya flapped.
They alighted on the airship dock at the top of the UN building. Only then did Vidya drop Deirdre.
The healing fever blazed through her. She had to brace her arms on her knees, trying to catch her breath. If the OPA agents were to attack, she would have to trust that Vidya could defend her-there was nothing Deirdre could do for herself.
Nobody attacked. Trevin materialized with Rylie at his side, holding her by the ruff of fur at her neck.
If Deirdre had thought Trevin looked inhuman before, it was nothing in comparison to his appearance now. He was elemental. Raw magic that no skin could contain. He had released everything human about him and surrendered to pure magic.
Even though Rylie couldn't speak, Deirdre could see the gratitude in her wolfish eyes. She was happy that Deirdre had survived.
Deirdre wasn't sure she was equally happy to see the Alpha restored to safety.
Trevin peered over the side of the dock. "Sloppy. Very sloppy."
The airship was still crashing. Deirdre couldn't see Kristian and Niamh on its deck from where she kneeled, but she could tell that there was no saving the dirigible. It made a graceful arc through the cloudy morning, dragging so many OPA agents to death within its belly.
Vidya might have been able to save them if Deirdre asked her to.
Deirdre didn't.
The airship crashed into the water. The waves surged, engulfing the dirigible in steely gray arms, and it vanished into the depths of the ocean.
-VIII-.
If Deirdre hadn't known any better, she would have thought the way that dozens of OPA agents materialized around them on the airship dock was magic. They flooded through the doorways in seconds, ringed Deirdre and Vidya, and isolated them from Rylie.
The agents carried enough guns to overthrow a small country, but Vidya didn't look threatened. She was entirely focused on Deirdre. "Are you okay?"
Deirdre's eyes flicked to the agents surrounding them. There were so many that she couldn't even see Rylie anymore. "At this point in time, yes, I'm okay. In about five seconds...?"
An agent whose name tag identified him as a commander shouted at them. "Hands above your heads! Get on the floor! Do not shapeshift!"
Vidya curved her wings around Deirdre, shielding her vital organs from the bullets. Her wings were large enough to form a solid protective wall without gaps. "Rude men," the valkyrie said. "Can I kill them?"
Tempting thought. "It's probably not a good idea if we want the election to happen." She did feel a lot safer ensconced within the protective circle of Vidya's wings, though. Deirdre edged nearer to the valkyrie. "Did you ditch Stark?"
"I can't ditch him," Vidya said. "I'm bound to him. Permanently."
"Then why were you following me? Not that I'm not grateful to be saved, because I am, but he told me to leave."
"He told me to follow you."
Deirdre had guessed that had to be the case, but hearing it confirmed made her feel tingly.
The OPA agents were getting impatient. The commander repeated himself: "Hands above your heads! Get on the floor! Do not shapeshift!"
"Hold your fire," Rylie said. Her words were slurred. Wherever she stood, she must have been turning back into her human form.
"I can still kill them before we escape," Vidya said quietly enough that they wouldn't be able to hear.
Deirdre needed to be at the meeting with the Summer Court, which meant that she couldn't run back to Stark with her tail tucked between her legs, no matter how tempting the idea was. But they also didn't have much time before shooting started, so she spoke quickly. "I need you to do me a favor. Niamh and Kristian just tried to kill me."
"The harpy and the snake shifter." The words sounded odd on Vidya's lips, as though replaying back a recording rather than saying them of her own volition.
"Yeah, those two. I think Kristian was on the airship when it crashed, but I'm not convinced he's dead."
"You want me to search for them?"
"And kill them," Deirdre said.
Vidya nodded slowly. "Niamh and Kristian. The harpy and the snake shifter. It will be my pleasure to end their lives. But I can't leave you here-you need to come with me."
"I'll be fine. These people won't hurt me as long as I don't attack them," Deirdre said. For now, she added silently. She wasn't certain how long Rylie's good will would last. "Just let me worry about the OPA, okay? You need to take down Niamh and Kristian."
Vidya nodded. "Okay."
She dropped her wings.
Someone had a twitchy trigger finger. At the valkyrie's sudden motion, a gun fired with a small, explosive crack.
Vidya deflected the bullet with a flick of her wing. It ricocheted and embedded into the wall.
Her laser-sharp gaze zeroed in on the shooter, who was being dragged back by Trevin.
"You are all lucky today," Vidya said softly. "I've been called to heel. But don't press my patience."
She stepped to the edge of the dock, and the agents parted to allow her to move, split between tracking Vidya and Deirdre with their muzzles.
Deirdre almost let her go, but she couldn't watch the valkyrie leave. Not without one more question. "Hey, Vidya? When Stark told you to follow me...was it like he was having you spy on me, or was it-"