Alpha: An Urban Fantasy Novel (War of the Alphas Book 3)

by SM Reine

  Mallory edged away from Deirdre. “Aren’t you a shifter?”

  “Not really,” she said, heart aching. “Where do you live?”

  “Scarsdale.”

  “Wait, really? And you work for the OPA?”

  “I want to help shifters,” Mallory muttered. She wouldn’t meet Deirdre’s eyes.

  Deirdre warmed to the witch a fraction. “Okay, I can’t get you to Scarsdale. Do you have any friends or family nearer than that? Preferably accessible by subway?”

  “There’s a GCD polling station somewhere in Chelsea. They’re probably there tonight, getting stuff ready for the election. It’s at this old school, William Harris.”

  She knew where that was. “All right. I can get you there. Come on.” The vampires who attacked Mallory had already vanished, leaving the streets empty and quiet again. The rain was so light that Deirdre couldn’t even feel it. She only saw the signs of it in the faint ripples on the damp pavement. “So what’s a GCD polling station?”

  “For the election?” Mallory patted down her pockets. She produced a crumpled flyer. “We’re the Gaean Citizens for Democracy, a volunteer organization. We’re setting up polling stations, transporting people on voting day, providing security to make sure everyone can vote safely… That kind of thing.”

  Deirdre hadn’t heard of them, but she hadn’t exactly been paying attention to the news since Rylie’s announcement. She’d been a little too busy hiding out with Stark. And also being dead.

  “You guys have gotten your act together quickly,” she said, turning a quick circle to get her bearings. They weren’t far from the elementary school.

  “We’ve been hoping something like this would happen for a while. There was actually a petition a couple years ago. We already had a lot of volunteers from that, and it made it easy to get mobilized.”

  “Huh.” She pulled Mallory around the corner. “I’d be curious to see what you guys have got going on there.”

  Mallory tucked her hair behind her ear, glancing nervously around the empty street. “You probably shouldn’t go inside the school with me. As the vampires showed, you’re kinda recognizable, and most people don’t know what I know.”

  “What do you know?”

  “That you’re not like him,” the witch said. “You’re not his Beta. You’re his Jiminy Cricket.”

  Deirdre lifted her eyebrows. “Say that again?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen Pinocchio?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “You’re Everton Stark’s conscience,” Mallory said. “You’re the force of good trying to push him closer to a political center.”

  Deirdre snorted. That was an awfully romantic way to say “terrified woman who was volunteered to spy on his pack.”

  Mallory seemed to recognize where they were now. She picked up her pace, taking obvious care to stick to the lighted parts of the sidewalk. “Don’t laugh. Stark would have killed me if you weren’t there tonight. I can only guess how many lives you’ve saved by working with him.”

  “You wouldn’t guess how many people I’ve killed working with him,” Deirdre said.

  The witch missed a step. “Um, it’s over here.”

  She didn’t need to point out the polling station. It was the only lighted building in the neighborhood.

  “There you go,” Deirdre said, stopping at the edge of the block. The windows were so bright that she could see inside, but it wasn’t enough to sate her curiosity. “I guess I’ll leave you here.”

  Her wistfulness must have come out in her tone because Mallory stopped halfway to the fence. “Do you want to come in?”

  “No, you’re right. I shouldn’t.”

  “Five minutes should be okay. You can see the setup for the election. It’s the least I can do now that you’ve saved my life twice.”

  “Okay.” Deirdre pulled up her hood and shrank into her jacket. “Lead on.”

  The gymnasium was warm, dry, and barely bigger than the cramped rooms at the asylum. Deirdre had a hard time imagining how children had ever gotten much recreation in there, even before the neighborhood lost all of its children.

  A row of curtained booths were set up along the back, opposite the narrow stage. A group of people were clustered around the sign in table.

  “I thought you were working tonight,” said one of the men, whose eyes widened at the sight of Mallory.

  “Yeah, I ran into a friend,” Mallory said. “So I took the rest of the night off. How’s it going here?”

  “The registered voters list showed up while you were out. Take a look at it.” He pushed a clipboard toward her.

  Deirdre wandered toward the booths while Mallory conferred with the other volunteer.

  The setup looked just like a normal election, with one major difference: each of the booths had a large rune printed on the side. Deirdre spread her fingers over one of them. The rune was a little bigger than her palm, and she didn’t recognize it. She had never paid that much attention to the spells people cast around her.

  She flipped the curtain open. Instead of a computer on the inside, there was a single page, like those in a witch’s Book of Shadows. There were names printed on each side and no obvious way to mark a vote.

  She traced her fingertip over Stark’s name. It glowed at her touch.

  “It’s not active yet,” said a man from behind her.

  Deirdre turned to see the volunteer that Mallory had spoken with. He was a stocky guy with an open, friendly face. “It looks pretty cool. When’s it gonna go live?”

  “Day of the election,” he said. “It’ll run from midnight to midnight. But we’re asking to get a couple extra days to make sure everyone who wants to vote can get in.”

  “Are you using the normal voter registry? Like Democrats and Republicans and Green Party and…?”

  “We’ve got those lists, yeah. But the spells are set up so anyone can vote once. Anybody with gaean blood in them.” He looked incredibly smug about that. “The OPA planned on pushing for voter IDs, but what are vamps supposed to do if they can’t get out during business hours to register? Or the shifters living out on the farms? Everyone deserves a voice.”

  Deirdre felt a smile growing over her lips. “How are those vamps and shifters going to vote?”

  “Absentee ballots, mostly. We’ve been organizing those too. We’re sending them out tomorrow.”

  “Seems like you’ve thought of everything.”

  “How often do we get a chance to influence our lives on this scale? The Alpha is a big deal. Everyone needs to get in on this.” He thrust a hand toward her. “I’m Darryl, by the way.”

  She shook his hand. “Uh…I’m, um…” She tried to think of a fake name and failed. The only thing she could come up with was Niamh, and just the idea of the swanmay made her stomach churn.

  “You’re Deirdre Tombs,” Darryl said. “Mallory told me.”

  She glanced at the witch, who was talking to more volunteers now. Judging by her vigorous hand gestures and all the nervous glances cast in Deirdre’s direction, Mallory was relating the confrontation in the alley. And probably what happened at the safe house, too. She was going to get the news out before January Lazar did.

  It wouldn’t be long before everyone knew who Deirdre was.

  “I should go.” Deirdre only made it two steps to the door before Darryl stopped her.

  “You belong here as much as anyone else,” he said. “We’re not going to call the OPA or anything.”

  It might help Deirdre if they did. Maybe they’d be able to get a hold of Rylie Gresham, even if she couldn’t. “Thanks.”

  “We’re hoping Everton Stark’s going to throw in with the oath,” Darryl said. “Any word on that?”

  Deirdre had no idea what he was talking about, but she hated to look stupid. Obviously she needed to catch up on the news. “That’s not up to me. I just shoot things that he wants to be shot.”

  “But you can talk to him. It’d make a big difference if he
agreed to the terms.” Darryl toyed with the curtain to the voting booth. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you could just talk to him…”

  “Nobody just talks to Stark,” Deirdre said.

  “If anyone could, it’d be you.”

  Sure, if she wanted to get her face broken. Or kissed. She wasn’t sure which would be worse. “I should go,” Deirdre said, backing away.

  Darryl followed her. “There’s been a lot of talk about how the OPA isn’t going to let him win, even if he gets the popular vote. People are afraid. Worse than that, they’re getting angry.” He waved his tablet vaguely at her. “People are talking about rioting on the forums.”

  “People talk about a lot of stuff on the internet they don’t actually plan to do.”

  “Not like this,” Darryl said.

  Deirdre glanced over at the sign in table again. The volunteers were watching her talk to Darryl.

  The volunteers looked like normal people. Mothers, sons, neighbors from down the street, the guy who ran the bodega on the corner. If there were riots, these volunteers wouldn’t be the people causing pain. They’d be the people getting hurt.

  “Anyway…thanks for bringing Mallory to us,” Darryl said. “It means a lot to us.”

  He didn’t try to stop her when she headed for the exit this time.

  But when she passed the voting booths, a label on the back of the nearest one caught her eye. It said, “Manufactured by Hardwick Industries.”

  The name tugged at her.

  “Hardwick,” Deirdre muttered.

  Like Pierce and Jaycee Hardwick, two of the unseelie sidhe?

  She hadn’t seen them since the meeting at Original Sin. They hadn’t been at the assault on the asylum. But they were definitely working for Rhiannon, and their name was on the back of the voting booth.

  She waved to Mallory. “Hey! Over here!”

  The witch jogged over to Deirdre. “Something wrong?”

  “Is Hardwick Industries related to Hardwick Medical Research?” Deirdre asked, pointing out the label.

  “I think so,” Mallory said.

  “Are you telling me that Hardwick Industries is behind the design of the voting booths?”

  “No, they just donated them for the election. It’s old stuff. I think these were built before Genesis.”

  “Did you know that the owner of Hardwick Industries is a high-ranking member of the unseelie?”

  Mallory shook her head. “This is all a magical election. They just donated the booths, not even the books inside. There’s no magic in the equipment that they gave us.”

  “Are you sure? What about this?” Deirdre tapped the rune on the side.

  “That was added after they were delivered. It couldn’t have been interfered with. Trust me, we’re watching this election for integrity. We’re watching very closely.”

  Deirdre wanted to trust her.

  The sight of so many people working for democracy made Deirdre feel hopeful in a way that she hadn’t felt for a long time. Maybe she had never felt hopeful quite like that. Stark certainly inspired her, but it was a fearful feeling.

  These volunteers believed in the election, and they were working to make it happen.

  “Thanks for everything you’re doing,” Deirdre said.

  Mallory smiled nervously. “You’re welcome.”

  VI

  Deirdre spent the next day and night at an OPA shelter for homeless gaeans. The kind of facility she hadn’t had to use since moving in with Jolene in Montreal. The admission process took no more than a swipe of her thumbprint, and then they knew everything about her: name, age, status as Omega. The looks the staff gave her weren’t as friendly after that.

  It was warm and dry at the shelter, though, which was all she needed. It kept her out of the rain. It let her watch January Lazar’s latest report on Stark and provided a dinner of tasteless hamburger.

  And if Rylie Gresham had wanted to find her, she could have. They could have easily flagged Deirdre in the system. Agents could have arrested Deirdre within minutes of setting foot in the shelter.

  But they didn’t.

  She kept her hood up all day. Nobody looked at her long enough to realize who she was, even though she was almost as notorious as Stark these days. The shelter’s other inhabitants were too absorbed in their problems to worry about hers.

  After lockdown and lights out, Deirdre rested on the cot with her head on her hands, staring at the ceiling.

  She listened to the other gaeans shifting in the room. It was a gymnasium that used to hold basketball games before Genesis. There should have been room for everyone, and then some. But every cot was filled. The smell of bodies and blood clogged the air. Someone was coughing, lungs clogged with silver. Someone else was asking around for blood.

  Deirdre didn’t need to sleep there. She would have been far happier finding a bench in a park to spend her night, even with the rain.

  But it was a reminder of the reality that existed outside of her strange, insular world filled with unseelie politics, backstabbing best friends, and the frustrating man named Everton Stark.

  This was the real world. This miserable, dingy basketball court where fifty-six gaeans were sleeping because they didn’t qualify for housing or had lost it for some reason. Rain dripped through holes in the roof. Low-paid staff offered stale rations and synthetic blood as a last-minute snack.

  So many people lived like this all the time.

  This was why Deirdre needed Stark to change the world. Not for personal gain. Not in pursuit of power. Not because Rylie was the Godslayer and she deserved to suffer vengeance—even if she did.

  The gaeans needed Stark because the world was like this, all dark and bleak, and people deserved better. They deserved the freedom that came naturally to shapeshifters, loose in the wilderness as predators hunting prey.

  They deserved an election.

  Deirdre slept somehow.

  Her dreams were filled with fire.

  When morning came around, the gaeans were turned out of the shelter. Deirdre bought coffee, spiked it with vodka she bought at the corner store, and walked to the United Nations to meet Rylie.

  Genesis had wrought large-scale destruction all across the world, and the United Nations building in New York City had been no exception. Like the White House, it had been practically leveled. Unlike the White House, officials had elected to rebuild it from scratch rather than attempting to restore its former glory. They had bought a large plot of land on the shore where condominiums had been pulverized by Genesis and put the design of the building up for bids.

  The ethereal faction had won the contract to build the new United Nations center, and the craftsmanship of the angels was obvious in every inch of the skyscraper. The new tower was the tallest building in the world, and looked frighteningly fragile, like a needle of bone and glass that pierced the clouds. The skeletal upper floors were reminiscent of a tree’s branches, permitting officials both human and otherwise to arrive by air. The building’s root-like tunnels extended into the earth, which was how members of the infernal faction visited.

  The purpose of the United Nations had been expanded after Genesis. No longer did solely human world leaders meet within its radiant walls. Angels, demons, and gaeans held seats during meetings.

  That meant it was also one of the most secure buildings in the world, as well as the tallest. Deirdre couldn’t get within a hundred feet of its ground-floor entrance.

  However Stark had gotten his intelligence, he had been right about one thing: there must have been a meeting that day. A dirigible was trundling toward the spire of the UN building.

  Deirdre hung out with the tourists who were gawking from outside the perimeter. It was early in the morning, but there were already a lot of people using the UN building as a photo opportunity. Schoolgirls made faces in front of it while others pretended to prop it up with their hands, like it was the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  She drained her coffee mug and tossed it aside,
squinting up at the reflective surface of the tower. Even from outside the chain demarcating the perimeter, she could tell that the metal of the building had been textured like tree’s bark. There were grooves in the white metal, some of which were runes, others of which were decorative. Decorative banding marked the windows.

  “I can totally climb that,” Deirdre muttered.

  Someone tugged on her sleeve. “Excuse me, miss? Hello?” It was an old man, probably in his seventies, holding a camera with a very large lens toward her. “I hate to bother you, but would you mind taking a picture of my wife and me in front of the UN building?”

  The tourist couple were close enough that they’d gotten a good look at her face. But they didn’t recognize her as Stark’s cohort. They must not have been big on reading blogs or watching the news.

  Deirdre took the camera. “Sure. Where’s the button?”

  He quickly showed her how to operate it, and Deirdre stepped back to get both of them in the frame.

  The camera had a telephoto lens. She aimed it at the top of the building, zooming in so that she could look at the skeletal upper levels, where they were preparing to moor a visiting dirigible.

  With such fantastic zoom, she could see that there were OPA guards in black suits waiting to receive the airship. A lot of them. Whoever was on the dirigible must have been important.

  She focused on the airship. The sanctuary logo marked the side.

  Rylie Gresham was arriving for her meeting, just as Stark had said she would. The Godslayer was right there. She’d have all the answers that Deirdre wanted.

  “Having trouble?” the old tourist asked kindly.

  “Trying to figure out the lens, sorry,” Deirdre said. “Say cheese!”

  She took a couple of pictures of the couple, who hugged and smiled and were generally adorable. She felt a painful twinge at how happy they looked together. It had been a long time since she’d had a man’s arms around her shoulders in the way that the husband held the wife. And the man who had held her like that was dead.

  It was hard to make herself smile when she handed the camera back to them.

  “Gods bless you,” said the old lady.