by Harry Nix
Jacob, as usual, was completely oblivious to the attention on him. Alex wondered how it was that Yvonne had finally made her intentions clear. His bet was that the young werewolf must have just jumped on him at some point, and it wasn’t until they were having sex that Jacob realized that Yvonne liked him.
“Let’s get the hell out of here before something goes down. I like the burgers this place makes. I’d hate to have to destroy it in a magical battle,” Alex said.
They quickly finished up and walked out, the gust of cold from the air conditioner over the door like a cruel joke before they were out into the warm, muggy night air. They quickly disappeared across the street into the dark alleyway and then back up onto the roof. Their scouts gathered and told them that no mages had appeared.
They resumed their positions, Alex sitting in the dark next to Jacob, occasionally looking through the bejeweled binoculars. Eventually, the manager reappeared and even came out to the front of the shop onto the sidewalk, looking up and down the street. Shaken was probably the best way to describe his demeanor. Alex couldn’t see the flyer anywhere but he hoped his message had got through. He was more than willing to use force on Xavo if it came to it, tearing off some more heads. But if he could get in contact with Henry, maybe there was another way to crack that enclave wide open.
4
Alex finished enchanting flame shield on a ring, watching the spell compile and take hold before tossing it into the appropriate box and added a line to the tally on the paper he’d been using to keep track of numbers.
Failing was bad, but there was a downside to success as well. When Julius had volunteered to make alliances, Alex had expected maybe one or two at best and possibly none. But for some reason, perhaps because of Alex’s growing notoriety, Julius had managed to make alliances of a sort with fifteen packs.
In return for Alex supplying them with a variety of magical rings, he could call upon them. While Alex knew it was better to seal such alliances in person, he didn’t have the time. It was also dangerous to go heading out to the territories for weeks on end simply to trade rings. The werewolves now sent their own representatives back to designated pickup spots, where Alex’s pack would hand over the rings.
Alex had spoken to some of the alphas via satellite phones, the friendlier ones at least. Others delegated it to their second in command, which had forced Alex to do the same at Nia’s urging. She explained that the alphas were intending to insult him, saying that he was only worthy of dealing with a subordinate. Alex had followed Nia’s advice, handing over the negotiations to Jeremiah, adding it to the increasing number of tasks Jeremiah was taking charge of.
Julius had done his best in negotiating but still the burden on Alex was immense. He owed hundreds upon hundreds of rings now.
Despite the fact many of the new werewolves in his pack had tried to find jobs, only some of them were successful. As a result of his growing pack, just the grocery bill was in the thousands. The costs just kept mounting: power, water, food, clothing, bedding. Jeremiah had dropped a thousand just buying plates, cups and cutlery. He’d also shown Alex projections of just when their money would run out, which in some ways was more terrifying than what the vampires were doing to them.
Alex was under pressure, to not just create the rings for all of the agreements he’d made, but also to keep everyone fed and clothed. This included the Slipways fortress where the various packs had agreed to send werewolves. There were now three hundred werewolves living there, and because it was Alex’s arrangement, the burden fell to him to keep it funded. Three hundred werewolves meant nine hundred meals for just a single day. Even cooking so frugally that it was down to a buck a meal, that was still a thousand a day just to feed them.
Alex picked up another ring, getting ready to enchant it, but then dropped it back onto the table. Back when he was making his post-apocalyptic game with Howey and Puzo there were ideas they’d discussed a few times. One was the difference between working in your business and working on your business. The dumb entrepreneur felt that if they worked in their business hard enough, pedaling that bike as fast as they could, that would reach success. Whereas the smart entrepreneur would sometimes stop, take several steps back, and have a look at the structure they were working on to figure out what they could do better and also assess if what they were doing was right at all.
Alex could see an immense lump of work ahead of him. Just fulfilling the agreements would probably take a few more weeks and that was if he spent every day enchanting. What he really needed was people working for him, but so far the only mage he knew who could enchant was Stephen, and the kid had vanished.
Alex brought up his spells screen and the purify spell. He’d been working on how to shrink this spell because it was too large to fit onto a ring. That was yet another problem with Stephen the necromancer going missing. They’d only worked together a short while and done incredible things. Alex just wanted a few more days, even a week or two, and he knew that he’d be able to make rings of all kinds, perhaps even spells no one had seen before. Such things he could sell for high amounts of money to fund his army of werewolves.
Purify was stubbornly refusing to compress itself. Fire and electricity had done so, seemingly on their own, giant chunks of code shrinking down to a single symbol. When Alex concentrated on them he could expand them out again if he wanted to dig into the code, but shrinking them had allowed him to make new spells.
Only two days ago, the healing flame had compressed by itself. Now he had a small symbol of a pair of scissors, a needle, and thread. That, along with Alex expanding his memory, left him with a lot of space to work with, but once more he was beginning to hit the limits of what he could do.
He’d tried talking it over with Juno and April, but the way they saw magic was no help to Alex. April saw it as music, playing a song, and although she’d written her own spells and had cut pieces of them apart, she didn’t dig down to the granular level that Alex needed. Juno was the same: her spells were images, complex and interlaced. Cutting pieces out left holes, which meant they didn’t work most of the time.
“Come on, you son of a bitch, just compress already,” Alex murmured, flicking through the purify spell code.
After the attack on Julius’s pack and his land being silvered, Alex had been desperately trying to get purify to fit onto a ring, something he’d discovered that no one had done. Although there were rings that provided similar abilities, they were incredibly expensive.
When mages or vampires silvered werewolf land, the werewolves were forced to clean it up. Alex figured if he could make a bunch of purification rings, then at the very least if a werewolf stepped on a piece of silver, they’d be able to immediately get it out of their body, which would reduce the number of injuries.
He was deep in purify’s code, reading three lines over and over, willing himself to understand what it was saying, when the door to his office swung open, kicked from the other side. He spun in his chair to see his three mates wearing dresses with low-cut cleavage and slits up the side, showing their legs. They were also wearing heels. Nia had a gold chain around her neck, whereas Juno was wearing a brown leather cord with a red ruby hanging from it. April had braided her hair and looked like a Swedish milkmaid who’d suddenly decided to dress up.
“Get up, get dressed, we’re going,” Nia commanded. Alex gave a double blink at the sight of the three of them. The sight of them looking so well dressed made Alex went to howl at the moon. He glanced past them and saw it was far later in the day than he’d assumed. He’d been so deep in the code, he hadn’t noticed the time passing.
He stood up and took a step towards them, but they all took a step backwards, Juno waving her finger.
“No deal, werewolf. Inside and shower. Get dressed. We’re going to be waiting in the car that has the awesome air-conditioning.”
With that, the three of them turned on their heels and slinked out, Alex following behind them, his tongue practically flopping out of h
is mouth. At the front gate they sent him on his way as they got into one of the cars that Jeremiah must’ve purchased recently. Although the rest of the so-called fleet they owned were generally wrecks, this one wasn’t so bad.
Alex wasn’t quite sure what they had planned, but he liked how it was going. He went inside and immediately was greeted by a grinning Lydia. She waved him to the bathroom, where a new suit was hanging. Evidently the girls had gone shopping despite their money troubles.
As he showered, Alex could faintly hear the sound of the generators over the flowing water. The electricity was still out, but Jeremiah had neatly sidestepped the problem, throwing cash at generators, which wasn’t an ideal solution, but at least they had air-conditioning again and refrigeration.
Alex grimaced as he thought about it and then shook it away. They’d come up against a faceless bureaucracy. Every time they called, it was as though they had never called before. They were promised that someone would come out, but then no one ever did. Jeremiah was asking around the pack for anyone with any electrical experience because if the company wasn’t going to come and fix it, they might have to.
He got himself ready, quickly shaved away stubble, and then dressed. He was wearing dark pants and a blue shirt. He rolled up the sleeves and then grabbed the suit jacket from the back of the door before coming out where Lydia was waiting, this time with her co-conspirator Esme by her side as well as a bunch of children.
“Looking good, Alpha,” Lydia said. Esme glanced at the children then back at Alex.
“You know if you want any of these, there’re certain things you need to do,” she said with a wicked smile.
“I’m well aware,” Alex said. The two old ladies, both of whom drank like fish, were always talking about him having babies, using the slow grandparent thumbscrews. When the thrall hit Alex, both of them had brewed up a potion which had prevented his three mates from becoming pregnant. At the time Alex had thought it was a good idea, but sometimes he wasn’t so sure.
As Esme and Lydia had put it: werewolves had been under the attack of mages and vampires for decades if not centuries. If he waited for the perfect time, he’d never take the leap.
There was also the issue of the thrall itself. It most often hit alphas who had no children.
The thrall was a kind of mindless desire, but with it came a rage… and Alex had actually attacked some of his own pack after slipping into it for a moment. If it hit him while they were under attack by mages, what would happen then?
One of the little kids gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up as Alex walked past. He gave him a high five and then went out the front door, past the guards and out to the car. April was in the passenger seat and Juno and Nia were in the back, leaving Alex to drive. He got in, passing his suit jacket over the back so it wouldn’t get wrinkled, feeling the delicious air-conditioning wash over him.
“So where are we going, girls? The cheapest burger joint in Baxter?” he said.
“Just start driving to the city, wolfie,” Juno said and pinched his ear.
When they’d got underway April turned to him. “We have an incomplete list of things we’re not talking about tonight. That includes mages, vampires, stuff that mages and vampires are doing, the power going out, renovations we need on houses, how much money we have, how many rings we need to enchant. Basically anything that’s a problem is off the menu,” she said.
“Okay. So… read any good books lately?” Alex said.
“It’s funny you say that because when we were shopping in the bookshop, I’m pretty sure I saw Rose,” Nia said.
“Do you mean Rose with the nose or Rose with the hair?” Juno asked.
“Rose with the hair. Man, Rose with the nose is such a bad nickname for her, especially after she had the surgery,” Nia said.
“With a nose that big it follows you even after it’s been fixed,” Juno said.
“So you didn’t talk to her?” April said. Alex listened as his three mates chatted about Rose with the hair who maybe Nia had seen. As he drove into the city, his mood, which was already pretty good from the sight of his three mates in their slinky dresses, started to get a hell of a lot better. Part of it he knew was simply the air-conditioning. It was just so damned hot in the houses, which meant not much sleep and the constant drone of air conditioners, which was now joined by the sound of generators.
As they neared the city, he was given more directions, until eventually they parked in an area known for its expensive restaurants.
“I take it we’re going in one of these so I have to enchant fifty more rings just to afford the entrée?”
Nia karate-chopped him in the arm and then Juno grabbed his hand and bit his thumb, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to let him know that she was serious.
“No talking about enchanting,” April warned, waving her finger at him. They got out of the car and he looked them over again, seeing what delectable morsels they were. Although he was hungry, he had other thoughts on his mind. His three mates must’ve seen it on his face.
“We booked a hotel room, so hold that thought,” Nia said. Then as though they had rehearsed it the three of them turned on their heels and headed down the street. They came to a restaurant called The Lady. It was French and looked ridiculously expensive.
Alex followed his three mates inside, feeling the welcome transition from the warm air to the cool. They were greeted by a maître d’ with a French accent and Alex discovered he had a reservation. Soon they were sitting at a table with romantic lighting.
The waiter handed them glasses of champagne along with the menu and told them he’d return. Alex took a gulp of his champagne and then looked at the menu, almost coughing it back up at the prices.
“Should I get this entrée or should I save the money for a house deposit?” he joked.
“Definitely get the entrée,” Nia said.
Alex couldn’t help but feel a touch of guilt at the four of them sitting in this expensive restaurant wearing expensive clothes, eating expensive things, when all that money could go to better use.
Juno pinched him on the back of the hand.
“Sometimes you need to get out of your sweaty hothouse where you’ve been sleeping on mattresses on the floor to remember there’s a better life out there,” she said.
“I was using that hand,” Alex said, flexing it. It was the hand the old lady had torn off once upon a time. Since then he’d burned off one hand and frozen the other after being captured by some unknown group. There were lines of gray dots around his wrists where pieces of metal had been used in the healing process.
Thankfully, they were dull, unlike his eyes which in the right light glittered with silver.
Alex realized that Juno might just have a point. They were at war and at times it felt all consuming, like every moment Alex was thinking what can I do now? Am I doing enough? Should I be sleeping? Or should I be working? His mates sometimes had to fetch him, dragging him to bed because otherwise Alex would stay up all night, churning out rings like some kind of machine.
A tired alpha wasn’t a wise alpha as Nia had explained to him. He agreed but it felt like there was no choice.
Alex lifted what remained of his champagne. After he’d taken a gulp, he had only a quarter of it left.
“To my three beautiful mates,” he said, as they clinked their glasses together. He looked at each of them in turn. Juno gave him a wink back that was positively filthy. April smiled and briefly touched him on the hand and Nia nudged her leg against his under the table.
It was easy to lose track of what was important. Yes, although this would be expensive, it was a worthy reminder.
The waiter returned and the orders were made and soon the food began to flow. As they talked, Alex realized how many of their conversations now centered around the banned topics. He had to keep pushing away the desire to speak about enchanting rings or other mundane things, like making sure every house had at least a table and chairs in it.
T
he conversation eventually built up steam aided by plenty of champagne. River’s cooking was excellent, but restaurant-quality food was amazing. Alex had duck l’orange for the first time in his life, the delicious taste of the meat and the sweetness of the orange bursting on his palate. They were eating their way through dessert, laughing away the conversation, sometimes heavy on sexual innuendo, when Nia sighed and tapped Juno on the hand.
“What is it?” Alex said through a mouthful of food. He was eating something that involved prawn and bacon and some kind of dipping sauce that was spectacular.
“Not that we want to disrupt the night but we’re being watched,” Nia said. Alex saw Juno’s spell screen flicker to life. He felt a faint tug on the magic. She cast a spell before nodding and letting it go.
“There’s a dude sitting in the car across the road. He was following us when we parked and he’s definitely watching us. He has a notebook with our names written in it,”. she said. Alex wished once again that he could use Juno’s scrying spell, but it was so ridiculously large that he couldn’t copy it even with all the extra space he had.
“So what should we do?” he asked.
“I say we don’t do anything. We finish our meal, head down the street, go to our show, and then eventually go to our hotel room,” April said.
“I agree,” Nia said. They ate their dessert but the mood had definitely changed. After he’d paid a sum that would have been a decent deposit on a reasonable car, they left the restaurant and began walking down the street.
“Why don’t we just go to the hotel now?” Alex said.