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

“But you don’t pity yourself,” Tooth says. Starlight passes from my palm into his. He feels my emotions. “You’ve never pitied yourself.”

  “No. What’s the use?”

  “You were worth the wait, Lila. More than worth the wait.”

  I blush. I wish I didn’t look as wet-rat as I do. I wish I had a shower and makeup and a hairdresser and that I could stand before Tooth feeling attractive and sexy, instead of stinking and greasy. But he doesn’t seem to notice. He looks through the dirt.

  “Thanks,” I mumble, aware of the heat in our clasped hands.

  “Oh,” I say. “I need to tell you something. When you were asleep, a girl came to the apartment building. Well, a sort-of girl. She had no eyes and she—”

  Tooth bolts upright, letting go of my hand. “How many times?”

  “I don’t know. A few. Why, is it bad?”

  He clenches his jaw, and then nods. “It’s bad. She’s a child-seer, a tool of the Horde. Sooner or later, she’ll tell her master what she suspects. The only reason she hasn’t already is because the masters of child-seers tend to be pretty brutal. Brutality is required to create one, a twisted and sadistic ritual which involves . . . children. If they’re wrong, their masters . . . you can imagine what they do. Child-seers are strong at scenting disturbances in the Other. The only reason the Horde aren’t upon us now is the masking spell. But she would’ve scented something or she would not have kept returning. And now that Abraham is in town . . .”

  “She’ll give her report?” My voice is tight.

  “She will. We have to leave, now. We have to move.”

  “Don’t you need to rest?”

  “Yes, but we can’t stay here. Not in this building. Where can we go?”

  “I don’t know. But we would’ve had to leave anyway. There’s no food left.”

  “Food . . .” Tooth looks at the empty tins. “Oh, yes. Sorry, I often forget.”

  He rises to his feet. The blanket falls away, revealing his naked body. He limps to the door. “Where can we go?” He bites his lip. “We need somewhere—”

  “Tooth,”

  “Yes?”

  I wave a hand at him. “You do know you’re naked, don’t you?”

  “Oh.” He darts for the blanket, picks it up, and wraps it around his waist like a towel. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve been on my own for so long . . .”

  Sorry? I just saw it all and it was like looking at the body of the strongest man in the world. Every inch of him corded with muscles, every inch of him designed for power. Stronger than any hitman, any MMA star, any soldier, any fireman, any boxer; stronger than any billionaire muscle man or barbarian or anybody. Stronger than . . . but you’re letting your mind run away from you, Lila. You’re getting caught up in things that don’t matter. Okay, so, you’re attracted to him. You’re physically attracted to him as well as magnetized with otherworldly forces. How does that help the situation right now? Focus, woman!

  “It’s fine.” My voice is more breathy than it should be. Dirt and grime coat my skin, and yet a tingle moves over me.

  “We need to think about where to go,” Tooth says. “The child-seer could be giving her report as we speak.” His face twists and he stumbles, falling against the wall, just managing to hold himself up. “Damn the Other,” he grunts.

  I go to him, wrap my arms around his chest, help support him. “Are you going to be able to move?”

  “It’s not a question of able,” he replies, holding onto his side as a man would clutch at a knife wound. “It’s a question of necessity. Why did I have to touch the Other?”

  “There’s no use in asking questions like that. You had to touch it and that’s that. That’s over. We have to move forward.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He manages a pained smile. “Is there anywhere you know, somewhere remote, somewhere we can hole up for a while? I can mask the location once we get there. It will hurt, but if we’re masked, I can rest for longer.”

  Of course!

  “I know somewhere,” I say. “My dancing studio. Well, the studio I rent—rented. It’s a small two-room cabin in the middle of the woods, about a five-minute drive from here.”

  “We can’t drive,” Tooth wheezes. He turns his body so that he’s leaning his back against the wall. “Too loud.”

  “Fine, then around a half hour walk, I guess.”

  “And you know the way?”

  “Yes.”

  Through gritted teeth, he says: “Then that’s where we have to go. But first, I need some clothes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tooth

  As I climb into the jeans and push my feet into the boots, Lila holds up a sweater. It’s green, fluffy, and has a giant picture of Rudolf the Reindeer on the front.

  “Rudi!” Casey squeals gleefully.

  I tilt my head at her. “I have lived eight-thousand lifetimes. I have fought in most of the great wars of this world. I have advised emperors and I have toppled kings. I have travelled every inch of this planet. Do you expect me to wear that?”

  Lila throws the sweater at me. “I expect you to do what you’re told. Anyway, it was freaky enough going into the apartment without worrying about your honor, Sir Tooth.”

  I can’t help but laugh, though my body aches as I pull the sweater over my head. “How does it look?”

  “Fantastic,” Lila says. “Very godly.”

  I go to the window, press my eye against the hole. The street is silent. The only light comes from moon- and starlight. One of the Horde must’ve killed the power to the street lights. That’s a good thing. It’ll make sneaking to the cabin easier. But we’ll have to stop on the way. Food. It always slips my mind that humans need the stuff.

  “No point in wasting time. We should leave.”

  I limp to the door, turn, and wait. Casey and Lila join me a moment later.

  “Is there a store between here and the studio?”

  Lila nods. “McCarthy’s place, a little convenience store that isn’t open half the time because he’s too busy getting boozed up. So small it looks like a Portaloo.”

  “Okay, that should suit us fine.”

  A lance of pain moves through my torso. I stumble, catching the doorframe. Casey gasps: “Are you okay, Mr. Tooth?”

  “Fine,” I lie.

  It’s like the Other has sunk hooks into my shoulder blades and is trying to pull me to the ground. I think about how strong I was a week ago, before I touched the Other, how many Horde I killed. I find it difficult to believe. I feel so drained. A bag of sand, punctured, and the sand just keeps spilling out. But you’re over the worst of it now, I remind myself. And you have no choice but to stay strong.

  “Are you sure?” Lila places her hand against my forehead. It’s small, cold, and slightly moist. It’s a touch I’d happily wait another millennium for. “You’re hot. I think you might have a fever.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If the child-seer returns, she won’t be alone. Her master or mistress will be with her, along with whatever Horde they decide to bring. Abraham, maybe.” I force down rage. I need to stay calm, level-headed. And I can’t fight him now, anyway. I’m too weak. Maybe I could defend myself. But stop him from hurting Lila and Casey? I don’t know. “We have to move.”

  Lila nods with determination. “Then let’s move.”

  We walk out of the apartment and down the stairs. All the other apartments are deserted. Most likely, their occupants were at work when the Horde hit. Now they’re either dead or turned with Horde magic, roaming the darkness with a deep hunger in their belly and a vague half-formed memory of who they once were. We emerge onto the street and Lila points to a small cluster of buildings.

  “That’s the water center. The studio is past that, in the woods, a straight shot. But we need to go around slightly if we want to reach the store.”

  “We do. Let’s do that.”

  “Okay.”

  Lila walks on ahead and Casey paces after her. Gripping my side in a vain
attempt to stop the pain, I limp on. Still, the limping of a god is quicker than the walking of humans—even humans as special as these—and I catch up with them in a few seconds. Lila glances at me and I can read her forest-green eyes. She is worried. I can feel it, too, reverberating inside of her. She wants to tend to me whilst I recover. She doesn’t want me out here; she wants me to go back to sleep. But she also recognizes the necessity of me being awake. It’s a two-bladed sword and she’s forced to grip both ends.

  “I’ll be okay.” I pat her on the shoulder and smile through the pain. “You don’t need to worry.”

  “Hmm.”

  We walk on.

  We skirt around the water center, but not before seeing the corpses of three men and a woman, impaled on a spiked fence. The men are impaled through their throats, the spikes entering under their chins and exiting at the tops of their heads. The woman is impaled in such a horrific and cruel way that even I, who have spent thousands of years seeing the horrific and the cruel, turn away.

  “Why would they do that?” Lila covers Casey’s eyes.

  “Come on.” I put my body between her and the corpses. “Let’s go before Casey sees anything.”

  Lila nods, but she doesn’t look away until the last moment.

  “She was beautiful,” Lila whispers, as we creep across a pitch-dark field. Far away, a wolf howls into the night. “Despite what they did to her, you could see that. She was beautiful, Tooth.”

  “The beautiful and the ugly die alike. An old soldier told me that a long time ago. He’d been beautiful once. Had all the ladies of court after him. The king was jealous, but the soldier was favored by the queen and the king was a weak man. The soldier started an affair and it continued until he went to war. When he returned, he had a gash the size of an arm across his skull and he wasn’t so favored after that. Told me it didn’t matter, though, because when he was finally killed in battle, the axe wouldn’t care how pretty he was.”

  “He sounds like a barrel of fun,” Lila says as the store—she was right, it does look like one of those portable toilets—rises out of the darkness.

  “He was killed the day after he told me that.”

  Lila shakes her head. “How’s the pain?”

  “Bad, but let’s keep going.”

  Casey, hugging Lila’s leg, whispers: “Is it very far, Auntie?” She looks around with eyes which are like saucers.

  “Not now. We just have to get some food and water and then we’re almost there, okay?”

  “Okay, Auntie.”

  We stop a few yards from the store, crouched low. I close my eyes and feel the fabric of the Other. There are Horde all over town, but most of them are in the center. Others are at the edges, scouting for us. A few zombies roam aimlessly across the fields and through the suburbs. But there are none this far out, not yet.

  I lead them to the storefront, force open the door. We loot it as fast as we can, taking tins of food and bottles of water and bandages. We fill Lila’s bag and then find a duffle bag behind the counter and fill that, too. A few minutes later, we reemerge into the night and head into the forest.

  I hold the duffle bag, but the farther we walk, the deeper the strap digs into my shoulders. Ropes, I think, remembering the time I was tied to the mast of a ship in a pagan attempt to ward off a storm. I could’ve broken free, but the captain and his men were good men, guilty of nothing but distrusting the long-toothed god who’d hidden below deck. I’ll never forget the pain. The ropes sunk deep craters into my skin and when I was finally cut down, I curled up on the deck and waited for a day and a night for the skin to grow back. The pain returns to me, the same pain, enhanced by the Other. Something as simple as carrying a duffle bag becomes a herculean test.

  “Come here.” Lila takes the strap of the bag and lifts it with a grunt. Before I can stop her, she throws it over her shoulder.

  “I can carry it,” I insist.

  “I know you can,” she responds. “I’m sure you’ve carried worse under more exhausting conditions. But why should you when I can just as easily help?” She tightens the clasp so the duffle bag hugs her back. She holds the backpack in her hands, squeezed to her chest.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I ask, feeling like a man who’s just let his girlfriend hold the door open for him.

  “Don’t worry.” She smiles at me and all at once I wish we were alone in bed and consequences—whatever they are, whatever the all-father hid from me—can go to the Horde. She looks so beautiful, despite the sweat and the tiredness.

  We walk.

  With each step, my respect for the Woman of Starlight grows. The bags are heavy. She pants, blowing out her cheeks, but not once does she ask for a rest. Not once does she tell me we need to stop. She walks on with steady steps, muscles straining, and she doesn’t bemoan her situation. She holds herself with poise. She holds herself exactly how I imagined and dreamed the Woman of Starlight would. She holds herself like a dancer.

  When we reach the studio, she drops the bags on the floor and walks to a nearby plant pot. She lifts it up and takes out a key. The studio is more like a cabin, a small, rectangular structure built on logs. The windows shielded with heavy black curtains. Perfect for hiding, I think. Lila opens the door. Casey immediately rushes in, glancing over her shoulder at the black of the night.

  I limp into the cabin and Lila locks the door behind me. She presses the light switch, but nothing happens.

  “Power’s been cut.” She drops the bags. “Wonder if that’s because I missed the rent or because the landlord is gone.”

  “Maybe both.” I sit down on the tiles.

  The wall opposite me is a giant mirror, showing in dim shadow me, Lila, and Casey. Off to the right, there is a small room marked toilet in chalk. And off to the left, there is a small nook with dancing equipment piled up in it, separated by a curtain. Casey runs to the nook, takes down a scarf from one of the shelves, and wraps herself in it, sinking into the nook. Then she pulls the curtains, blocking herself in.

  “I’m going to sleep,” she announces.

  After a minute of sitting, I rise to my feet, trying to ignore the pain.

  “Wait . . . what are you doing?” Lila jumps over to me. “You need to rest. If we’re ever going to get out of here, we need you rested, remember?”

  “I need to cast a ward on this cabin.” My body roars at me to listen to Lila, to sit down, to stop the agony. “It will make this place appear like the rest of the forest to low-level Horde. Zombies, seers, hybrids—if any of them stumble across this place, they’ll just see trees.”

  “And what if something else stumbles upon us?”

  “Then I fight them long enough for you and Casey to get somewhere safe.” But even as the words leave my mouth, I know they’re foolish.

  It seems Lila agrees. She grabs my shoulders and stares me in the face. “We won’t be able to go on without you. I’ve seen you fight, Tooth. What do you think I could’ve done against those . . . things you fought?”

  “You nicked that wolf.” I grin. “I saw the wound, and the bloody spike you did it with. You’re stronger than you think.”

  Lila rolls her eyes. “Nicking a wolf isn’t the same as single-handedly fighting off an army, is it?”

  “Let’s bridge that moat when we come to it.”

  Lila shrugs and returns to unpacking the bags. “After you’ve cast your spell or whatever it is, I want you to rest up.”

  “Okay.”

  Perhaps in one of my other lives, I would think: Who does this woman think she is, telling me what to do? Who does this human presume to be, ordering around a god? I am Tooth, I am older than legend, I am cloaked in myth. But when Lila tells me to rest, I do not resent it. I treasure it. I have waited all my life for her.

  “What?” Lila says.

  I realize I’m staring at her.

  “You’re beautiful. You’re as beautiful as the universe.”

  Her expression fidgets like her features can’t decide what mood
to rest upon. Then she smiles. “I’ve never been complimented so poetically before. You’re full of surprises.”

  More than anything, I want to walk through the darkness and kiss her. Bring her into me and kiss her long and deep and drink in the smell and the feel of her. I imagine her pressed against me, her breath touching my neck. I imagine her hands on my body and I imagine the feel of her beneath me. But then I turn away and walk to the edge of the room.

  The power inside of her is too great, I tell myself. The power inside of her could explode this world. Your job is to get her to safety, to protect her. Your job is to stay strong. If you kiss her, anything could happen.

  I walk around the cabin muttering Other words and lighting up the darkness with my shining purple skin. When I’m done, I collapse onto the tiles, curl in a ball, and close my eyes. The cabin is warded now, but the price is pain and spit and blood.

  After a moment, Lila places her hand on my arm.

  “It will be okay.” She doesn’t fully believe it. I can hear it in her voice. But it gives me comfort. “I’m here, Tooth. Everything will be okay.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lila

  Is it starlight or is it more than that?

  I return to the question again and again. Again and again, my mind throws up a dozen answers, all of them more conflicted than the last. It has nothing to do with this strange, starlight-made bond; it has everything to do with starlight. It is his muscles; his muscles couldn’t matter less. His dark almost-black eyes are the cause; his eyes are merely portals into a sea of starlight. His hands, dreaming of his hands, roaming over me; not his hands, the connection, the immutable connection. On and on and on, I search, watching Tooth as he rests after his collision with the Other.

  For three days, I search.

  There is nothing to do but eat, sleep, and talk. For the first two days, Tooth can barely talk. He doesn’t sleep, but lies on his back with his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. I get the sense he’s lost in the past. Every now and then he whispers: “Abraham.” Then he clenches his fist and clamps his teeth. Abraham, the Man in Black, the man who betrayed him.