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

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Lila

  When the bloodshed starts on Main Street, it reaches us as a series of crashes and cracks, thrown magic, and Tooth’s roaring.

  When he roars, the walls tremble even here. It must be like a full-blown earthquake on Main Street. I hear vampires screaming, werewolves wailing, witches and wizards crying out in rage. One by one, their sounds are cut short. I feel Tooth, deep in my belly, the fury which seizes him when he thinks about what the Horde was going to do to us.

  I pull a stool next to Casey and hold her good hand. I wipe sweat from her forehead. Her head lolls and she looks at me, a soft smile on her lips. “It hurts.”

  “I know, sweetie,” I say, wishing I could use this starlight to heal her, just like I can heal myself and Tooth. But it doesn’t work like that, I know. The connection is in us, not in Casey, which is a joke because Casey deserves it ten times more than me. “It will get better.”

  Casey’s face twists. “I’m going to be made fun of at school,” she moans. “All the kids are going to call me names and make fun of me about my hand. I looked at it and I know it looks funny. It looks funny.”

  I soothe her, doing my best to ignore the sounds of carnage which puncture the walls. Over and over, the Horde wail out in the throes of death. Tooth’s roaring gets louder. One word reaches me, shouted above the mayhem. “Lila.” I kiss Casey on the forehead, her skin salty with sweat, and then give her hand a squeeze.

  “That giant man was scary. He was going to eat me, Auntie.”

  “He wasn’t, baby. It was Tooth.”

  “Mr. Tooth? No way. Mr. Tooth is big but he’s not that big. I saw him. So how stupid do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re the smartest girl who’s ever lived.”

  She nods matter-of-factly. “Good.” Her eyebrows furrow. “What are those noises?”

  “Nothing,” I lie. “Just the wind.”

  Casey giggles between gritted teeth, sounding slightly mad. The pain, I think. “Since when did the wind sound like a scared little kid, Auntie? Huh? Tell me that.”

  “You’re too smart for me. But don’t worry about it. It’ll be over soon and we’ll get out of here.”

  “Me and you?”

  “And Tooth.”

  “Is Tooth your best friend now?”

  More than that. “Yes, I think so.”

  Casey’s face lights up with excitement. “Is he going to be my new daddy?”

  I lean back, regarding her, the question taking me off guard. “Do you want him to be your new daddy?”

  She nods quickly. “Yes! I like him. He’s funny and he’s strong and he has nice pointy teeth. I think you should be my new mummy and Mr. Tooth should be my new daddy.”

  “If that’s what you want, baby.”

  From outside, Abraham’s voice comes to us, muffled: “You cannot kill the Nightmare Man! You cannot kill the Man in Black! I have lived for five-hundred years!” Tooth’s laughter booms out: “Five . . . hundred?” I see Tooth standing over him, the corpses of the Horde all around, Abraham backed against a wall. I see Tooth lift his massive hand. I see Abraham shrink down. The screams and the cracks of magic have stopped; it’s just Abraham and Tooth left. “You cannot kill the King of the Night! You cannot kill the—” In a sudden moment, everything falls silent. In my mind, I see Tooth’s hand covered in blood, Abraham’s head crushed, the so-called King of the Night lying in the pitch-dark of his namesake night, stone-dead.

  That’s what you get for maiming my niece, I think, wishing I’d been there to see it.

  “You love him, Auntie,” Casey says. “I know you love him because you look at him like Mommy used to look at Daddy.”

  “Tiffany loved Isaac very much,” I agree. I remember when they met, this wonderful woman swooping in and, finally, giving Isaac a chance to rest, a chance to be a person instead of a protector. “I loved them both.”

  “But you love Mr. Tooth,” she insists.

  “I do,” I say, surprised by how little I hesitate. “But it’s more than just love. Or different, at least. It’s—”

  “Mr. Tooth told me all about it,” Casey interrupts. “You are a magnet or he is a magnet and one of you is metal and you get pulled together no matter what.”

  “That seems like a good way to describe it,” I reply.

  Casey smiles sleepily. “I know.”

  She rolls over, resting her head on the folded-up blanket. I leave her and go into the storefront, sitting on the floor with my back to the wall and facing the street. Tooth’s getting closer. His steps grow louder and the ground trembles more and more each second. Magnets, I think. There’s something in that.

  I reflect on these mad couple of weeks. A couple of weeks? Is that it? It feels like so much longer. Time with Tooth is not the same as time with other men. Perhaps it’s because of the circumstances, the fighting, the heartache, chasing Casey; or maybe it’s because of the starlight which claws at my belly constantly, trying to reach him. Maybe it’s our flight through the stars. Or maybe it’s the lovemaking, the transformative, transcendent lovemaking. Most likely, it’s a mixture of all of it.

  All I know is I never thought I’d feel like this about anybody, not after Mom and Dad, not after Isaac, not after I’d assumed that soft fleshly place inside of me had turned black and rotted. I realize, sitting here waiting for my lover, that Tooth has opened up something inside of me I thought closed forever. In a few weeks, he has done what any other man would have failed at in years. He has made me feel, truly feel. He has made me care. He has made me open myself up to the idea that, perhaps, I deserve a little love, a little happiness. Sure, it’s in the midst of hellfire and pain and anguish, but isn’t all love, at one point or another?

  I wonder where our lives will take us when we leave the town I have never left before and venture out into the world. The Horde will still chase us. That can’t be avoided. But when we’re hidden, warded, masked, what will we do? Be happy, hopefully, I think. That’s all I can ask for.

  No matter where we end up, I am bound to this man. If we ever parted, it wouldn’t make any difference. I would still feel him. We could be standing on opposite poles and I would know where he is, how he’s feeling, the pain or the longing or the heartache which drives him on.

  I smile to myself.

  I am the Woman of Starlight, I think, and he is the God Who Walks. But together, we are so much more than that.

  Tooth appears in the hole he made when he crashed onto the street. He’s shrunk down to his regular form and he’s covered in so many layers of blood I can barely see his skin, only flashes of it here and there. Bathed in blood. He walks into the store and stands over me.

  I stand up, face him. “Is it done?”

  He opens his fist. Two black-painted teeth look up at me from his blood-red palm. “It is done,” he says. “They are dead. Those who aren’t dead are running. We can leave, Lila.” A smile touches his lips. “But first, I should clean and dress.”

  “Let me.”

  I grab a few bottles of water from the shelf, a couple of t-shirts, and return to Tooth. I pour the water over his head and the blood runs down his naked body in rivers, pooling on the floor. Slowly, his skin begins to reappear. I pour more water until I’ve gone through ten or so bottles and then take the t-shirts and wipe him down.

  “A sponge bath. I could get used to this.”

  I punch him in the arm.

  He groans, but he’s smiling. “I’ve just gone through a battle the Horde will talk about for generations to come. But that hurt more than anything they did to me.”

  “Was it bad?” I ask seriously.

  He shrugs. “It had to be done. We can leave now. We should, right away, before more Horde can arrive.”

  “There aren’t any left?”

  “Like I said, they’re running. We’re safe for the time being.”

  “And after that?”

  I drop the sodden t-shirts on the floor. Tooth steps clear
of bloody puddle, stretching his arms, rolling his head from shoulder to shoulder. “We live. That’s all we can do now. We find somewhere safe, quiet, and we live. I’ll set us up with alternative identities. I have money, lots of it.”

  “Do you?” My tone is high, shocked. I hadn’t given any thought to money. How things have changed.

  “I’ve invested in hundreds of different businesses under hundreds of different identities,” he says. “I have enough money to last the rest of our lives. Lila, you can have your dance studio. You can have anything you want. We’ll send Casey to a good school, somewhere she can really flower.” As he talks, he wonders over to the clothes section and pulls on underwear, jeans, a t-shirt, socks and boots. “I’ll keep you masked and warded. Maybe the Horde will leave us be.” He doesn’t sound sure about that, but we’ve been through hell and I don’t want to ruin the moment.

  I go to him, place my hand on his chest. “Thank you. For saving me, for saving Casey, for everything.”

  “No, no.” He grips my shoulder. “Thank you, Lila. I’ve lived longer than any man, but I never truly lived before I met you. After four-hundred thousand years, I finally feel ready to begin my life.”

  I kiss him on the lips. He threads his fingers through my hair, pulling me close. We breathe in the pleasure of each other, pressing our bodies close.

  Casey appears at the door. “Ew!” she cries, giggling. “That’s icky.”

  Tooth takes a step back. “I’m going to hotwire a car,” he says, turning toward the exit.

  “Is there anything you can’t do?” I call at his back.

  He laughs and leaves the store, walking into the night.

  I go to Casey and kneel down next to her.

  “It’s time to go, baby,” I say, smoothing her fire-red hair from her forehead.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere safe,” I tell her. “Somewhere nothing will ever hurt you again.”

  As I look into her eyes, I realize why Isaac told me so many times that life would get better, that one day I wouldn’t be a scared little girl, that one day I’d be able to face the world bravely. He told me because it was the only thing he could tell me. He told me because when you love somebody, you do everything you can to make them happy and keep them safe.

  A few minutes later, Tooth pulls up outside the store. He pokes his head out window of the car. “Come on, ladies. We haven’t got all night.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Lila

  I sit at the side of the road outside the rest stop, watching Casey play in the grass.

  Tooth returns with some snacks, sodas, and a newspaper. It’s been a week and a half since we left Love’s Spring and we haven’t stopped driving. Soon, we’ll hit the east coast and then we’ll settle. Tooth’s made some calls—using dozens of different names—and he has money waiting for him.

  He sits down on the floor beside me, leaning against the car door. “Nobody knows what to make of it.” He hands me the newspaper and cracks open a soda.

  For the first few days, the story was on page one. Now it’s been bumped to pages four and five.

  TRAGEDY AT LOVE’S SPRING, CALIFORNIA

  I read through the article. It’s much the same as the others: the police have no clue what to make of it. It turns out the Horde have a cleanup crew for incidents like this. By the time anybody arrived at Love’s Spring, all the corpses of the Horde were gone, leaving only those of the townsfolk there to rot. There wasn’t a single survivor in the end. A married couple taking a road trip happened upon the massacre and called the police, which immediately started everybody speculating. Mass shooting? Satanic ritual? Cult suicide? Nobody knows. The only positive is that Casey and I are presumed dead, since there are so many mutilated corpses in town.

  I drop the paper into my lap and take a soda. After a sip, I say: “It makes me sad, thinking of all the people that died. But the truth is I never had any friends in that town except for Isaac and Casey. I can’t get too sad when I see Casey safe and happy. Does that make me a bad person?”

  “No,” Tooth says at once. “It makes you human.” He turns his face up to the sun, closing his eyes.

  “You seem content,” I note.

  “Yes,” he agrees. “Perhaps that’s foolish of me. But I feel like a new man.”

  “I never asked. Why me? Why did the all-father or whoever choose me?”

  Tooth takes my hand, squeezes it. “I don’t know,” he says. “The behavior of the all-father has always been strange to me. There are a hundred questions. Why did he wait so long to bring you into the world? Why give you the power at all when he knew what damage it could cause? Why bring me into the world so long before you arrived, if my purpose was to protect you? I don’t know. But I try not to dwell on the all-father’s actions. There are other worlds out there. We saw some of them on our flight through the stars. Maybe he has a purpose for us; maybe not. But I know one thing.” He opens his eyes and turns his gaze to me. “I’m glad it was you. I can’t say how glad.”

  “You’ve changed.” I give his hand a squeeze in return. “You’re not world-weary any longer.”

  “I have hope,” he replies with a smile, “for the first time in a long, long time.”

  “Auntie, Mr. Tooth!” Casey skips over. In her hands—her wounded hand is healing well—she holds two daisies, long-stemmed, curled into rings. “I made you something.” Without waiting for a reply, she takes my hand and slides the daisy-ring onto my wedding finger. Then she takes Tooth’s hand and does the same. “There.” She grins. “You’re married now.” She skips back to the grass, stopping only to scoop up a soda.

  “Married.” Tooth leans across and kisses me on the forehead. “I can live with that if you can.”

  I touch his face, move his lips to mine. We kiss. Starlight tingles between our lips.

  “Of course I can live with it,” I say. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  We stay like that for a long time, hand in hand, watching as Casey kicks grass and daisies and dirt into the air.

  THE END

  A Message for the Readers, From Tooth

  I have lived too long to be surprised, but when Billie found me and Lila, just as we were leaving Love’s Spring, and asked me if our story could be written, I was shocked. I have been written about in legend, song, ballad, throughout the histories, but Billie had a different look in the eye, a sort of mad glee. Our story, it seemed, was worth telling.

  Now Billie tells me that it exists on the internet—a brand-new tool to a mind as old as mine—on a platform called Kindle.

  Billie wants me to thank you for reading our tale. I don’t know why. It’s not like it’s over; the Woman of Starlight and I are only getting started. (I have been asked to tell you, patient reader, to keep an eye out for Book Two of the A Song of Starlight series.)

  Billie has also asked me to request that you, the Reader of Starlight, leave a review and share your love of the work on Facebook and Twitter. Billie has also mentioned a newsletter, which apparently makes getting updates ‘easier than ever’. I have tried to explain to Billie that this is shameful self-promotion, but it seems Billie and Lila have something in common. They’re both stubborn as hell.