Tooth: An Alpha Like No Other (A Song of Starlight Book 1) Read online

I have never been more conflicted in my emotions, even with Mom and Dad. That’s saying a lot. With Mom and Dad, I loved them. I didn’t know why I loved them. They never gave me reason to love them. But I did. I hated them, too. It was a strange mixture of love and hate that caused me to weep with both joy and heartbreak when I learned of their deaths. Isaac, I loved, unequivocally, more than anybody alive. He was my protector and he always did the right thing. Casey, too, I love without reservation.

  Tooth . . .

  I am angry at him, but the starlight inside of me does much to dampen it. It’s like there’s another Lila inside of me, a Lila that can’t stomach being angry with Tooth.

  “Lila.” He reaches out, making as though to walk toward me.

  I hold my hand up. “Stop! You should be monitoring the Other. Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me.”

  I go to the other side of the room. The explosions have stopped completely now. I look outside and watch as a burning monster, long-legged and beaked, stumbles onto its knees, chokes, and rests its head on the earth. Its fire fritters out and it coughs once. Then it dies. I watch it for a long moment, wondering if it will do anything magical. But it just lies there. I look deeper into the darkness, trying to see something, anything. Praying for a single ray of sunlight to touch the trees.

  “Tell me if she’s in danger,” I say, without facing him.

  “I will.”

  From an atmosphere of lust to one of panic and now to one of cold distance, tinged with the smell of a dead, rotting zombie. I stare into the darkness and wait, mind tortured by a thousand evils.

  Tortured by the good times, too, because now that Casey is in real danger, I’m falling in love with her all over again. I think of all the times she’s jumped into bed with me on Saturday morning, hopping up and down and demanding that I make her breakfast. Annoying at the time. But now I would trade everything to be lying in bed with her bouncing and giggling all around me. I think of the time I caught her drawing with permanent marker on the bedroom wall. Was I really angry? Did I really care? Now I’d let her deface the whole apartment building just to see her safe.

  “They’re moving her to the town center,” Tooth says. “The town hall. But she’s alive.”

  “Is she scared?”

  “Of course she’s scared. She’s human and she’s young.”

  Toward the end of his sentence, his voice rises an octave. I don’t turn to him. I can’t. It’s too painful and I’m too conflicted. But I find that if I squint into the window, I can make out his vague silhouette in the reflection. His shoulders are trembling, as though he’s just as worried about Casey as I am, as though the last thing he wanted to do was leave her behind.

  But he did, I remind myself.

  I stand at the window for so long pins and needles spread into my feet and I have to hop from foot to foot, all the while watching as the forest, inch by tortuous inch, turns to daylight. I open and close my wounded hand. The blood has congealed and dried, sticking to my palm like a scab. Every so often, I ask Tooth if Casey is still alive. Each time, he assures me she’s unharmed. With each answer he gives, I sense that he’s as confused as I am. Why would they take her only to keep her alive? What purpose could that serve?

  I want to hit Tooth again, want to slap him until he falls to his knees and admits what he did was wrong. But though I want to, the starlight inside of me revolts at the idea. It sends soothing sensations through me and for a moment it’s almost as though it’s talking: This is the only person on the planet who fully understands you. Tooth will protect you no matter what. Tooth’s only objective, for his whole life, is to keep you safe.

  Daytime shadows begin to return to the forest. As the sun rises, the trees throw black reflections across the scorched earth. They are pale at first, but after a few minutes they grow deeper. I look up. The sky is tinged yellow with morning sunlight.

  “Lila.”

  His voice is strained.

  I spin on him. “What?” I say. “Can we leave?”

  “You need to know something,” he says, ignoring my question. “I felt them, just now. They’re in the basement of the town hall and they’re . . .” He cuts short.

  I pounce on him. “And they’re what?”

  “They’re going to change her into a vampire,” he whispers.

  “What?” I squeeze my fingernails into his shoulders. “Now?”

  He swallows. “Right now. It must be why they kept her alive. I feel them in the basement. Casey is in the middle of them. When vampires prepare to change somebody, they send up a scent in the Other. Like a mating scent. Pheromones. Abraham is stinking right now.”

  “Then we have to get to her!”

  I jump at the door, grip the handle, snatch my hand away when it burns into my flesh.

  “Tooth!” I wheel on him. “Open the door!”

  Tooth sighs. “You need to let me speak before it’s too late,” he says. “I guess we have around five minutes before the change begins.”

  “You need to let me out—”

  “Lila!” Tooth snaps. He stands over me. I feel the heat of him emanating from his heaving chest. And the Other heat, radiating from deep within, whispers from his world-old soul. “I have stood by whilst you struck me, screamed at me, hated me. I have stood by because I know I’ve caused you pain. You need to listen to me now or Casey will experience great pain, too. The pain of being turned into a bloodsucking, sadistic, hateful creature. Do you understand?”

  Casey, I think. Just think of Casey. “Yes,” I say, struggling to keep my voice from trembling. “Do you have a plan?”

  “An idea,” Tooth says. “But it will hurt. I don’t even know if it will work. But our romp through the stars has got me thinking . . . But, like I said, it will hurt.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Tooth.”

  He sighs. He doesn’t look old, with his handsome face and knife-sharp teeth and his blue-black eyes. But there’s something in his sigh which tells me he’s feeling his years. It’s the sigh of a soldier who’s been fighting for so long he can’t remember peacetime. “I believe that it would be possible for me to harness your power, transport my mind across town, and kill the Horde that mean to change Casey.”

  Questions whirr in my mind. How can he be sure? Does he know what he’s doing? What if it fails and Casey is turned into one of those black-cloaked monsters? I stamp on the questions like a person stamping on an inconvenient bug. I think: Save Casey. “Do it.”

  “The pain will be massive. I’m sure of it. It won’t be like our journey through the stars, Lila. I’ll be tearing the starlight from inside of you and riding it across town—”

  I grab his hands, squeeze them hard, not caring when my scabby cut punishes me with spikes of pain. What is pain? I think. What is pain when the one person on this planet you’ve sworn to protect is in danger? It’s nothing, less than nothing. It’s a pathetic, pointless shadow. It doesn’t matter.

  “Do it,” I repeat. I look into his eyes. “I want to forgive you,” I say, and it’s the truth. “I want to, but I’ll never be able to if you let Casey get hurt.”

  Tooth lets go of my hands and brings them to my face. “I never dreamed I’d care this much for you.” His voice is faraway, dreamy, and I get the sense he’s talking more to himself than to me. His fingers move over my skin and despite it all—the huge writhing mess of pain and resentment—tingling sensations dance over my face. “I knew it was my duty to protect you, to keep the Horde away from you. I knew that all my life had been leading to the moment when the starlight inside of you would flash into the Other. But I never expected to need you. Is this normal, Lila? You have to tell me.”

  “It’s not normal.” For a fraction of a moment I forget the circumstances. “It’s not normal at all. The connection between us is . . . But that doesn’t matter!” I exclaim, remembering. “Not now! Save Casey, and then we’ll talk.”

  “Steel yourself,” Tooth says grimly. He grips my face in his hands. “I a
m about to tear out a piece of you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tooth

  I hold her face in my hands and stare into her eyes.

  She is incredible, I think. No fear touches her features. Only determination. She wills me to do it, wills me with her eyes and the starlight inside of her. I’m about to tear out a piece of you. It’s the truth, but it’s only half the truth. Causing her pain will tear out a piece of me, too. Not a piece of the Other, not anything magical. It will tear out something more vital; it will tear away my ability to call myself her protector. If I was truly the man I thought I was these eight-thousand lifetimes, I would not consider this.

  The all-father was right, I realize. You love her, he told me, and that’s the truth. It’s my love for her which stops me from simply picking her up and taking her out of town. It’s my love for her which is going to make me cause the worst pain of her life.

  “Tooth,” she says, urgent. “We can’t afford to wait, can we?” Her forehead creases and her cheeks no longer tremble, though anger lingers in her eyes. I want to forgive you.

  I need it, I reflect. I need her forgiveness. I cannot allow the Woman of Starlight to hate me. Absurdly, I want to kiss her, kiss her like I did before, taste her, be close to her. I force down the urge. “No. We can’t. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” she answers quickly. “I am.”

  I love you, I think, caressing her face. I am sorry.

  “Let’s get to it, then,” I say, hating myself for what I’m about to do.

  It came to me amidst the stars. I tasted our connection and I knew it could be used for more than just flight. We are becoming something new, I think. Not a demi-god, nor the focal point of magic, nor the Woman of Starlight. With this, we are, simply, Tooth and Lila. Forever.

  I send the Other through my fingertips, into her head, and then down into her belly. She clamps her mouth shut to stop from screaming. Beads of sweat slide down her face. Don’t stop, she growls, speaking directly into my mind now that we’re joined. Don’t you dare stop, Tooth. The voice is completely at odds with the trembling woman gripped in my hands—one is starlight, energy, bursting with power, the other is a scared woman—but I push on.

  With my Other-hands, I grip the starlight inside of her and then—I yank, harsh, quick.

  I wrench the starlight out of her head and into my fingertips. She stumbles forward. I catch her and lower us both to the ground. The starlight sifts through my arm and into my belly, mixing with the Other, a cocktail of power. I hold her to my chest. She trembles all over, her fingers tapping the air as though typing, her legs running at nothing. Then, as the starlight fills me entirely and my eyes fall closed, I hear her scream.

  I float above us, looking down at the two passed-out bodies on the floor. The man—the old, weary, long-toothed man—looks guilty. Lila screams, eyes squeezed shut, the scream long and without pause. The scream attacks me. I watch as my body winces; I watch as the man brings his hands to the woman’s face and strokes her cheek. I understand that I am both the floating matter which observes and the man being observed; I am within and without. She keeps screaming and for a moment I consider darting back inside my body and giving her the starlight which will soothe her pain.

  But, from somewhere infinitely far and yet whispering close, she talks to me: Don’t stop. Ignore me. I’m fine. Just get Casey. Please, Tooth. Just get Casey. Casey, Casey, Casey . . . please . . . just . . .

  Her screams get louder, both from the woman on the floor and the woman in my mind; they scream as one.

  I’ll be quick, I tell her.

  I aim myself up, away from the bodies, through the ceiling. Trying to ignore her screams—she is in so much pain; I am the cause of the pain; I could stop it; but then she’d hate me; but I love her and I can’t hurt her like this; but she needs her niece; and you need her to love you, Tooth, that’s the truth, that’s the truth the all-father has always known; despite your years and your fights and your victories and your defeats, you are just a man waiting for the woman he loves to love him back—I aim myself at the town center.

  For the second time in my life, I fly.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Lila

  I walk across my bedroom to the mirror.

  Downstairs, Dad sings along to a song on the radio. He’s drunk, like normal, and his words come out slurred and pathetic. I want to take his stupid bottle of whisky and smash him over the head with it. But I won’t. Just the idea makes me scared.

  I wipe my forehead. I’m sweating badly, though it’s winter and the windows are encased in ice. Somewhere far, far away, I hear a woman screaming. I wonder if it’s Mom, but Mom is passed out in bed, snoring like a hog. Isaac? But Isaac is getting older now, almost fifteen, and his voice is starting to sound like a man’s. The woman’s scream is wretched.

  I look in the mirror. Instead of seeing myself, my tangled mess of red hair and my pink face—I’ve been crying again, despite Isaac’s promises that life will one day get better—I see a woman. Younger than Mom, but it’s difficult for me to tell her age. Maybe twenty, maybe thirty. The room she lies in is dark. She’s holding a man. Both their eyes are closed. The man has long teeth.

  I bring my face close to the mirror and squint. What’s happening to her? I wonder, as the woman writhes in agony. She looks like me a little. Maybe what I’ll look like when I grow up.

  The man holding her strokes her hair and whispers: “I won’t take long. I won’t take long. I won’t take long.” He looks like a strong, kind man, despite his long teeth. I find myself wishing I had a strong, kind man to stroke my hair when I’m scared and crying. Isaac is a good brother, but I know he gets just as scared as me.

  My bedroom door opens.

  I snap my gaze away from the mirror, terror making my legs tremble. If it’s Dad, I need to get running. He doesn’t hit me, but he’s tried and one of these days I’m sure he’ll catch me and give me his belt. Leave me with red welts just like he does to Isaac. But it’s not Dad.

  It’s Isaac, wearing his Star Wars t-shirt. He’s had it since he was a kid and it’s too tight for him now, ripped in several places. But he tells me he remembers Dad taking him to see a rerun in an old movie theater a few towns over. Dad was sober, apparently, and it was the best day of his life. I don’t believe him. Dad’s never sober.

  “Lila.” He closes the door behind him. “He has to save her. You have to fight through the pain.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He walks close to me, lays his hands on my shoulders. “He has to save her,” he growls. “You have to fight through the pain. I’m dead, Lila. I took care of you. Now I’m dead. You have to protect my daughter. You’ve had a tough ride, but that’s life. Everyone has a tough ride.”

  I try to take a step back, but he digs his fingernails into my shoulders. Isaac usually cuts his nails short, but now they’re long and sharp. I let out a yelp and try once more to step away. He digs them in even harder.

  “You’re hurting me, Isaac,” I say, lips trembling. Don’t cry, I tell myself. But what if Isaac has gone like Dad? What if Isaac is getting mean and drunk? I sniff, trying to tell if Isaac has drunk some of Dad’s whisky. But he just smells like Isaac, dirt and sweat and teenage boy.

  “Fight through the pain!” he roars at me, the veins on his neck taut. He buries his fingernails in my skin. I look at my shoulders in horror. Blood spreads across the fabric of my sweater in petals. “He has to save her! Fight through the pain!”

  I let out a scream. When I look at the mirror, I realize I’m screaming in time with the woman on the cold dark floor. The scream gets louder, both mine and the woman’s. When Isaac next speaks, his voice is not his own. It’s the voice of a nowhere man, a man of a thousand lives, a man without an accent.

  “I’m sorry, Lila,” Isaac says in this strange voice. “I’m so sorry. I’m going as fast as I can. I’m almost at the town hall.”

  When I was very little I walked in on D
ad one night when he was on the computer. An empty whisky bottle sat on the desk and he held a half-empty glass in one hand and the computer mouse in the other. I made to dart out of the room, but he turned on me with one of his rare smiles.

  “Lila!” he cheered. I could tell by his voice he was so drunk he wouldn’t remember anything in the morning. “Come here!” He waved me over to him.

  I padded across the room. He picked me up, spilling whisky on my leg, and sat me on his lap. Then he turned my face with his sweaty hand and forced me to look at the screen. He was watching a video on mute, a horrible, depraved, sickening video of a man being tortured. Chains and hooks and sticks and hammers. “It’s real,” he told me, laughing. “It’s a bona-fide snuff flick.” The man was screaming and bleeding in a hundred places.

  I feel that man’s pain now. A hundred invisible hooks and hammers and sticks and chains lash at me.

  Isaac squeezes his hands. His fingernails dig through my shoulder muscles and scrape bone.

  “You have to stay strong.” Now his voice is like mine, but older. It’s strange to hear a woman’s voice from his boy’s mouth. “Or she dies. It will be your fault. Stay strong, Lila. Just stay strong!”

  I barely hear the voice above my agony.

  Numbly, I think: The weight of the universe is crushing me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Tooth

  What sort of a protector are you? I ask myself. You’ve waited all your long life you the Woman of Starlight, and now you’re causing her the greatest agony of her life. Who are you, Tooth? What are you? Not a god. A god would never do this.

  I ignore the voice and fly through the town, over husks of cars, corpses, smashed windows and overturned trucks, roaming beasts, zombies dragging ruined limbs, witches and wizards tearing apart buildings with their magic.

  Finally, I reach the town hall. It’s a modest, colonial-looking building which doesn’t hint at the savagery about to be committed within. I float outside for a moment. There are around twenty vampires in the basement, gathered around Casey. The girl is tied to a table, squirming and moaning in fear. But I don’t hear her moans. I hear Lila’s, so loud it’s like they’re booming down from the heavens, louder, even, than the all-father’s voice, the loudest thing my old ears have ever heard. I long to return, to give her back this vital part of herself, to stop the pain. But the second I have the thought, her voice fills my mind: Don’t you dare. Don’t make this pain for nothing!