Tooth: An Alpha Like No Other (A Song of Starlight Book 1) Page 5

  “Ursa,” I say, voice cold. “You’re still alive.”

  She grins sternly. She’s taken the trouble to cast a masking spell on her hair, which should be sparse and thin and old, but not on her face. Wrinkles stacked upon wrinkles are etched into her skin.

  “I’m still alive.” She nods. She waves a hand over the three women standing close to her. “These are my apprentices. Helga, Sasha, and Moraine. Wait!” She holds up her forefinger, a long, spindly spider’s leg. “I know what you’re going to say. Some clever quip. Are we fightin’? Something like that, yes?”

  “That’s not a clever quip,” I grunt. “But the sentiment is correct.”

  “Of course.” She inclines her head, as though we are in a ballroom, not standing outside a school filled with terrified children. I feel a twinge. Lila. There are no words, but I get a sense that she’s scared for me. And that she wants me to hurry up.

  I try not to let it show on my face, but Ursa giggles. “Did you see that?” she says, turning to the woman on the sleigh. “You may have missed it. You only feed from the Other, correct? But I touch it. And do you know what I just felt? Little Toothy here is dancing with starlight with the Woman Who Will End the World, the Ragnarok Woman, the Woman to End All Tales.” She claps her hands delightedly. “So you’ve met her, then? Right, Toothy, here’s what I propose. You’ve obviously cast a masking spell on her. A strong one, too. Probably with that demi-god magic all my colleagues are so jealous of. So, here’s what we’ll do. You tell me where you’ve hidden her away and go on your way. We’ll never bother you again. You’ve lived a long time. Why not enjoy the last days in peace? Surely you can’t fear death, not at your age?”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Don’t lie to me—”

  “Not about the Woman of Starlight,” I interrupt. “But you’re wrong about me. I haven’t lived a long time. Before I met her, I didn’t live at all.”

  “Are you in love?” Ursa asks with a mocking smile.

  “That was foretold,” the woman on the sleigh says matter-of-factly. “The First Grimoire said quite clearly that the God Who Walks will, and I quote, fall instantly and irrevocably in love with the Woman of Starlight. The Woman, too, will feel an instantaneous overflowing of emotion which will coalesce into an unbreakable connection. It was laid out by Accius Ajax Octavius, the great spell-scribe of the Roman Empire.”

  I grunt out a laugh. “I knew Accius,” I say. “He was only writing what I told him to.” A lie, or least a half-truth. He was writing what I told him to, but I told him the truth.

  Starlight twists in my belly: Hurry up! Please! Quick! Now!

  I look Ursa in the face. “If I have to touch the Other to kill you, Dark Mage, I will. Turn around and walk away. This is the last time I’ll give you this option.”

  Ursa sighs. “That’s what it always comes to with you, Tooth, isn’t it? You’re such a violent fellow. Have you ever wondered why that is?”

  “Maybe because I wasn’t breast-fed as a child.” I take a step forward. “What’s it going to be?”

  Ursa makes a tut-tut noise and shakes her head. “You know as well as I that we cannot kill you. You are a god. Don’t mistake me. I don’t mean to stroke your ego. But you are a god. Well, a demi-god. And try as we might, the little piggies cannot end the old boar. But we can hurt you, Tooth. I proved as much back in the ’twenties, did I not? Do you really want to risk a great deal of pain—”

  “Enough. I’d risk a whole lot worse for the Woman of Starlight. And you know it.”

  Ursa rolls her eyes, turning to her apprentices. “You see what the Horde has had to deal with all these years? Imagine trying to go about some innocent reaving while this angry beasty is on your tail. So cold, so efficient, so utterly devoid of reason. And now, alas, he has lost his heart!”

  I know what she’s doing. Trying to distract me.

  I stand still as stone.

  Finally, she lets out a long, shaky breath.

  “And so we dance this dance again, Tooth. Blood and smoke and fire and pain. And for what?”

  “For her,” I say without hesitation.

  Ursa lifts her hands and waves arcane symbols in the air. Shimmering letters on the fabric of the Other, pent-up energy waiting to be released.

  “Be careful, ladies,” Ursa says. “A man who has lost his heart is a dangerous man indeed.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lila

  I watch as the black-haired witch makes signs in the air.

  They are meaningless to me. But one thing happens which is not meaningless. The starlight in my belly twists. Tooth is not afraid, but he is close. He recognizes the danger. It’s difficult to believe, when I just saw him take out hundreds of fire-formed creatures as though it was nothing. But I can’t deny it. Butterflies flutter in my stomach, but these butterflies are razor-winged.

  “Ah!” the black-haired witch cries. She throws her hands, dissipating the symbols. Rainbow-colored magic explodes from her fists and lashes at Tooth.

  Tooth raises his hands to his face. The magic cracks into his fists. He slides across the concrete. Fire flutters against his shirt, lights up. He pats it down and faces the women.

  Black Hair’s fingers dance in the air. The other three witches charge at Tooth. One swings her arms, muttering under her breath. Her arms twist and stretch, her flesh reforming, her bone cracking. By the time they’re at her sides, they’ve turned into thick bone-blades. Another launches herself into the air, shimmering with blinding light. I close my eyes. When I open them, she has become a snow leopard. The witch on the sleigh lashes her hounds and they bound at Tooth.

  Tooth leaps forward and meets Blade Arm, ducking under a high slash and punching her in the belly. The woman hisses and falls back. Tooth is about to follow up, but then the leopard is on him, its claws slashing. Tooth kicks it in the head. It whines and falls away, but then Blade Arm is on him again. He dances aside, but as soon as he steps clear of the bone-blades, the hounds are upon him. His hands move so quickly I can’t see them, a mad flay of fists. He darts around the hounds, punching. One, two, three fall, collapsing onto their sides. Tooth weaves through the hounds until he is at the sleigh. He reaches out for the woman’s neck, but then Black Hair claps her hands together.

  Light explodes. I cover my eyes.

  Looking through my fingers, I watch as the magic hits Tooth in the chest. He hurtles through the air like a punted football. He crashes into the floor. Black Hair giggles. Tooth makes to stand; Blade-Arm is on him, her bone-blades snapping. She cuts him across the cheek. Blood spurts down his face. She stabs him through the shoulder.

  “No!” I scream. “No! Tooth!”

  I’m shocked by the terror which slams into me. I tell myself it’s terror for Casey, alone and scared somewhere within the school, but I can’t lie to the starlight inside of me. It’s terror for Tooth.

  Blade-Arm lurches forward. The bone-blade buries deep in his flesh. Tooth punches her in the nose. She stumbles, but the blade keeps her lodged in his shoulder. Black Hair throws magic at him. Air-made vipers sink their teeth into his face, clamping onto him until every inch of his skin is covered. The leopard closes its teeth around his ankles. He stumbles, impaled in a dozen places, as one of the remaining hounds wrenches at his knee.

  No! No! No!

  I feel him, the starlight twisting and pulsing. He’s in real trouble. He tries to stand, but Black Hair hits him with another wave of magic. A chain the width of a bodybuilder’s arm swings through the air and wraps around Tooth’s neck. He stumbles—falls. He strikes out with his arms and legs, but it’s no use. He’s pinned to the ground.

  “Cut off his head, Sasha!” Black Hair wails. “Let’s see him heal after that one!”

  Blade-Arm nods and slides her bone-blade from Tooth’s shoulder. His body lurches, but the vipers and the shackles and the hound and the leopard press into him.

  They have him, I think, horror making my head feel heavy, my body weak. They
have him. They’re going to kill him! They can’t kill him!

  I try and reach out with starlight, like I did when I healed his burnt hands. But I don’t know how to wield it. It’s new to me and trying to make it do something intentional is like an amateur guitarist trying to play a complicated song.

  Blade-Arm aims the bone-blade at his neck.

  I can’t watch any longer. I see how this could go. She’ll cut Tooth’s head off and Black Hair will take it as a prize. Then the four of them will charge into the school until they reach Casey. They won’t know who she is, but that won’t matter to them. They’ll kill her without a second thought.

  I push the car door open without giving myself time to think.

  I swallow, nerves wracking me, but it’s my only choice.

  I have to save her. And I have to save him!

  I cup my hands around my mouth and shout: “Over here! I am the Woman of Starlight! I am the one you want! Come and get me!”

  I watch as their heads swivel.

  And then I run.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tooth

  I am not the all-father. I am not all-powerful. I am flesh and blood and bone. I feel pain. And I can be defeated, if not killed.

  I fight hard as the witches descend on me, but in a fury of magic I am thrown onto my back. Pain whispers over my skin. I strain to stand up, but I feel as though I am being pressed into the earth by the hand of a god. But I hold out some hope. If I can just get the shackle loose, I should be able to deal with the rest of it. I just need a moment. The bone-blade is taken from my shoulder. The witch walks around to my head, kneels down, making to cut off my head.

  What will happen if they decapitate me? I have no clue. I have never let it happen before. I’ve been wounded a thousand times and I’ve healed a thousand times. But there’s always the exception. Maybe this really is the end.

  But then Lila screams.

  The witches stand up and face her.

  “I am the Woman of Starlight!”

  No, Lila, no!

  But it is too late.

  The witches take off after her like starving dogs scenting a fresh-cooked steak.

  I climb to my feet as the witches sprint after her, the leopard pulling ahead, Ursa flitting across the concrete far quicker than a woman as rickety as her should be able to.

  I close my eyes. I see it. The massive tapestry of the universes, a billion billion stars throwing out their rays, a billion billion stars spinning around me—and Lila, Lila most of all—a billion billion stars casting out their power toward me.

  I can’t let them get to Lila. I can’t let them have the Woman of Starlight.

  It’s time to touch the Other.

  In my mind, I reach out with my hands and feet, plunging each one deep within a star.

  The power surges through me, setting my body on fire. I know that after this, I will be tired, more tired than I’ve been in a long time. But what’s the alternative? Lila is the most important person. I can’t let them get to her.

  When I open my eyes, my wounds are healed. My teeth grow down to my chest, arcing sabers which extend five times their previous length. My muscles grow bigger, pressing against my skin. Bigger still. My skin tears beneath the strain of them. My knuckles become steel-hard and starlight burns through me, giving me more energy and power than any magic-being, even the most powerful of the Horde, could take.

  When I open my mouth, a sound like a million charging horsemen fills the air.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lila

  My father never hit me. He hit Isaac all the time, but something in his drink-addled mind thought better of hitting a skinny, scared-looking ginger girl.

  Most of the time.

  But sometimes his anger got the better of him and he came for me with a belt. When that happened, I ran until my small legs ached and then I kept on running. Once, he chased me into the garden. The woods were behind our house and I charged through the forest as though flames were licking at my heels. I remember my breathing, far too loud in my ears, and the tension in my chest. I remember looking over my shoulder and seeing his red face, the sweat dripping from him. I remember how he screamed after me; I remember the screaming echoing in my mind long after the chase was over. My mind filled with all the terrors he would unleash on me when he caught me. And I ran, faster, harder. I ran until I keeled over and vomited on my sneakers. But I outran him and by the time I got home, he was passed out on the couch.

  Those feelings come back to me now.

  I run like Dad is after me.

  I reach the bus stop, fly past it, and sprint down the street. My legs aren’t small and weak anymore. They’re strong and muscular through hours of dancing. My breathing is well-trained. Deep, steady breaths. But I know the rapid beating of my heart has little to do with the exertion of running. Behind me, the witches cackle and scream. The leopard growls. I flinch. It sounds like she’s right beside me.

  I keep running.

  Down the road. The road I know so well, the road I’ve driven down every morning and afternoon since Casey started kindergarten. My hair flows around me, strands getting into my face, sticking with sweat to my forehead. But I don’t care. All Tooth has to do is use this distraction and get Casey. What if they catch me? As long as Casey is safe, I’ll count it as a victory. She’s young and she’s already lost her parents. She’ll be scarred, sure, but there are scarred people all around the world. She’ll survive and she’ll go on with her life. I trust Tooth—as strange as it is, I do—and I trust him to take care of Casey if these witches get me.

  I make it to the small cluster of shops which sit about an eighth-mile from the school: a convenience store, a Chinese takeout place, and an accountant’s office. All of them have been abandoned.

  I just have to keep running long enough to give Tooth enough time. I see Isaac’s face looking down at me in my mind. He’s a boy, but he looks like a man. Suffering, more suffering than a boy should have to deal with, sits behind his eyes. Save her, he whispers. Save her, Lila. I’ve protected you all my life. Now protect my daughter.

  I’m about to reply with, I will, when the leopard drops from the sky and lands in front of me. It growls with a rasping noise and takes a step forward.

  It’s about to pounce when a deafening noise fills the air. The leopard pauses, glances beside me.

  I reach up and cover my ears at the sound of clashing shields and screaming men and striking swords, the sound of a thousand battles

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tooth

  All the pain I have caused and all the pain I have felt erupts from me when I scream.

  I am no longer just Tooth, the God Who Walks. An Other trance takes me and suddenly the witches and the town and the entire world of humans and their small struggles seems ridiculous. But not the Woman of Starlight. The Woman of Starlight will never seem ridiculous. I am the son of a god, I have lived eight-thousand lifetimes, and these creatures want to fight me. I feel like a lion who’s just realized that the gnats which bite into its fur are small, insignificant things.

  I sprint at the Dark Mage, the black-haired murderess who thinks she is going to hurt the Woman of Starlight. How dare she? How dare these pathetic magic-wielders try to hurt the most important woman in the world and expect to get away with it? They drink the remnants of the Other, the very best of them even touch it, but none of them can open themselves to it like me. The strength of a thousand vampires infuses my bones. My teeth grow longer and longer as I run until they reach down almost to my knees, polearms of death.

  The black-haired Dark Mage begins waving her hands in the air. The symbols appear and she throws them at me. Ha! The magic splashes over my head like a child’s thrown cup of water, dripping harmlessly to the ground. The Dark Mage’s friends face me. The leopard stalks from its place in front of the Woman of Starlight and creeps toward me. The apprentices look uncertain, looking to the Dark Mage for guidance. But don’t they know there can be no guidance wh
en the God Who Walks opens himself to the Other? Starlight twists around my bones, my muscles. I grow taller. Seven, eight, nine feet . . . and still growing. The pain is immense, but I do not feel it. It is an insect’s pain, a faraway pain.

  I look down at the Horde like the all-father looked down upon me all those millennia ago.

  I chant the words of the Other, the oldest words there are, the words-before-words, words breathed before humanity learnt how to waggle its tongue.

  My eyes burn the color of lava, the color of fire, the color of death.

  The Dark Mage has to crane her head to look up at me. I am a giant. These lowly magic-beings made the mistake of thinking me a man. The power! I could topple cities! I could kill armies! I could withstand a hundred nuclear explosions!

  I am Tooth, I am God, I am the end of the end.

  “Tooth,” the Dark Mage whispers. “Tooth, Tooth, Tooth.”

  Her babble is pathetic. She is trying to call me back from the Other by using my name. She is a child with a pin trying to prick the hull of a great ship. She is baby rolling over and over in an attempt to topple a mountain. She is nothing. Did they really almost beat me? Were they about to kill the Woman of Starlight? I laugh; the ground trembles.

  I reach down and grab the Dark Mage’s skull in my hand. She looks up at me with wide eyes, muttering my name. “Tooth! Tooth! Tooth!” But I am not Tooth. I am more than Tooth. I am the Other-child, birthed in starlight and magic. I am the God Who Fights!

  I close my fist. Her head pops.

  The Dark Mage’s apprentices scream as their master dies. The leopard jumps at me. I backhand it. I move slowly, but to them I move bullet-fast. The leopard slides across the concrete, transforming into a woman, and smashes into the wall of a building. Her spine snaps and her eyes fall closed. The hound-tamer dances at me. They are so slow, I think, as her movements stretch out for an eternity. I kick her in the chest. Her rib cage caves inward and punctures her heart.