Rise of the Alphas

by Alexis Davie

  The bell above the door gave a little tinkle. Garrick looked up automatically at the noise and turned to see who had come in.

  He was a tall, thin man. He wore a well-cut suit and a long coat. Gold-rimmed spectacles. He looked to be in his thirties, but they all looked to be in their twenties or thirties. Time showed on them in different ways. He had a bad haircut, mid-brown hair, and, unmistakably, his nose was a harsher version of Brinley’s. His eyes were like hers, too, but a blue-grey rather than her warm green.

  Garrick ate an olive and sipped his drink. He knew this was serious, but he felt a little bit like he was watching a play. Behind the counter, Xander was giving his father a look of disgust. He pulled his apron off and shoved it beneath the till. His hands were still wet, and he wiped them on his black trousers.

  “Martin,” he said, “a pleasure. Let me just…”

  The man who had just come in, Brinley’s father, knotted his brow. He walked with a studied elegance to a booth and slid in. Xander’s father hurried over and squeezed in opposite.

  “Mr Montegue,” he said, “apologies for my son, he’s had a hard morning of work… teaching him—”

  “Yes,” said Martin, with obvious distaste, “responsibility. You said. I do hope you don’t expect my daughter to mix drinks?”

  Xander, out now from behind the bar, was pink-cheeked, though it was hard to tell whether it was embarrassment or anger causing this coloring. His fists were clenched by his sides as he hurried towards the two men.

  “Where was Brinley yesterday?” he asked, almost as soon as he’d sat down.

  Brin’s dad had his elbows on the table, fingers tented in front of his face.

  “Well,” he said, “in light of your son’s recent behavior, Mr Chaffinch…”

  Xander’s father put up a hand. The tension was palpable. Garrick wouldn’t be surprised if someone threw a punch. “Youthful hijinks, Mr Montegue. You know what boys are like—”

  “Pyromaniacs?” Brin’s dad asked, eyebrows raised, a sardonic smile beginning behind his hands. Xander shifted in his seat.

  “That hadn’t happened yet, had it, yesterday when she didn’t turn up…” Xander jumped a little. It looked to Garrick as though his father had poked or pinched him.

  “Things got out of hand. You know the youngsters sometimes have trouble controlling their power. We’ve all had little… whoopsies.”

  Martin’s arms were crossed now. “My Brinley hasn’t, because I keep her under control. As you should your son.”

  Xander let out a bit of a cackle and again seemed to react to a poke from his dad. “Nah, I don’t think you do. I think she refused to come. I think you’re going to screw us on this deal, Martin. We haven’t even seen this bloody book. How do we know it’s even real?”

  Martin, Mr Montegue, looked affronted.

  “Sorry, sorry my friend. Those high spirits again,” said Xander’s father, trying to smile casually but ending up looking like a sufferer of terrible lockjaw. “Everyone knows your wife— your family has had the book for generations. And the wedding… a beautiful melding of our families… well, it’ll make it all of our responsibility. And a great one at—”

  Martin leaned back, though he didn’t look relaxed, arms still crossed. “And what are your plans for—”

  Xander interrupted once more. “Fine, there’s a book, and I want it, and a girl, and I want her. You’re here to up your price, then do it.”

  This time, Xander’s father turned to hiss at him, “Son, this is no way to conduct a deal…”

  “Oh, Dad, you know the old bugger is broke. Just offer him more. It’s easy. He’s come here for more scraps. And I want to see her, too, a proper date. Candles and that. A hotel. Before the wedding.”

  “Not a chance,” Martin said, “that’s not how it’s—”

  “Another mil,” Xander’s father dropped in, loudly. Martin spluttered a little. His face paled. He nodded.

  “Baked eggs?”

  Garrick jumped. He had been tuned in to the booth by the window and forgotten about the… what was it? Branch? “Thanks.”

  The eggs looked good, cooked with cream and covered in cheese. There was toast, too, and butter, and fried mushrooms and tomatoes. When had Garrick last eaten? He was always forgetting about food. He shoveled the meal in and drank his glass dry.

  The door tinged again, and he barely had to glance over his shoulder to see that it was Brinley’s father leaving. Shit, he had stopped listening because of baked eggs of all things. He would make a terrible spy. Thanks to the men’s silent-movie villain level of exposition, he had a good idea what was going on now. Or at least what was going on with Brinley and her father. But he should have stayed listening for dates. It seemed like Brin’s father would be coming to get her, and soon. But how would he find her? And when was this romantic evening planned?

  The thought of the romantic evening made Garrick feel ill.

  “Another?” It was Xander’s smarmy, priggish voice. Looking up, Garrick wanted to grab him by the fat throat. But he didn’t. He just nodded.

  10

  Brinley

  The boarding house was on a side street full of tall, crumbling townhouses. The street, which was one way and full of potholes, smelled of sewage and, at points, of pee. London in general, but especially north of the river and in these post-industrial areas, could go from luxury to squalor in less than a quarter mile. Brin had seen so little of the city she had been born in, she realized. She had seen very little of anything but the inside of her father’s dark house—a house that had been her mother’s at one time. She vaguely remembered having clean windows that let in sunlight, and fresh flowers here and there. Cooking smells. Home stuff.

  Brinley looked down at the scrap of paper in her hand—number eleven, the other end of the road. She walked into a large, grey puddle. It had a bright, scummy sheen and bubbles around its edges. She felt it sink to her socks through the eyelets of her boots, and then the smell hit her. Rotten eggs. Dead rodents. A clearer honk of sewage.

  And there it was, number eleven. It had buttresses on the roof and warped-looking wooden window frames. Under each window was a window box, but all that seemed to live in them were twigs, and in one, a crunched up fizzy drink can. On the building itself, there looked to be bricks that had chipped away at the front. That almost looked spongy… Gingerly, Brin pushed the rusted gate open. Or she tried to. It stuck, and she kicked it. Once she was on the front path, she looked at her hand. Her palm was orange with iron. She was going to need a wash after this adventure.

  The wood of the door made only a soft thump under her fist. It was damper than the window frames. She wondered if this Mollie Meitner character would even be able to pry it open, or if it was swollen into its frame. Anyway, there was no answer, so maybe she wouldn’t have to find out.

  Brin stepped back, surveyed the doorway. She almost slipped down the four brick steps she had just ascended when her heel found a place a brick was supposed to be but wasn’t.

  “Crap!” She grabbed the wall to her side to right herself and then noticed the chain of an ancient looking bell. At least, she assumed that’s what it was. She gave it a tug, this time with the sleeve of her jacket protecting her hand from any errant rust flakes. Inside the house, a bell (and it sounded like an actual bell) ting-ting-tinged. Again, there was nothing for a while, before Brin thought she heard heavily shuffling footsteps.

  Mollie Meitner was a short woman as round as she was tall. She looked on the wrong side of thirty, which was unusual for a rich. So she was either unbelievably old or had lived hard to thirty. The pores of her large nose were visible, and her sandy hair was scraped into a bun. She was wearing an apron covered in flour. She looked Brinley up and down.

  “Yes, dear?”

  Garrick had not been exaggerating when he described the smell of the place. Brinley wasn’t sure she’d ever really smelled boiled cabbage, or boiled socks, for that matter, but she was pretty damn sure this was the reek o
f both.

  “Uh, you have bedsits available?” Brin tried not to contort her face into anything rude while also trying not to breathe in.

  “Oh, no,” the woman she took to be Mollie said, shaking her head, which was comically small atop her large body.

  “Oh…” Brin was almost relieved and about to take a step back.

  “Just single rooms available now, pet. And a week’s rent in advance. How long will you be staying?” Mollie stepped aside, though this left little space for Brinley to squeeze past her.

  “It said, for suitable…”

  “I’m Mollie,” said Mollie as Brin reached the other side of her. Mollie held out a soft hand, and Brin gave it a squeeze, “and I can fair feel the magic crackling off you. Suitable, suitable, suitable!” Mollie didn’t let go of her hand. Brin suddenly regretted not changing her appearance. It had felt like overkill. She’d need a new name, at least…

  Mollie shut the front door, and now she squeezed past Brin. There was a small reception desk in the hall, behind which Mollie wedged herself in a way that looked uncomfortable. The hall was otherwise full of soft furnishings. There were various runners of carpet, all on top of one another, running its length, two small couches, and a very full coat stand.

  “Name?” Mollie asked.

  Crap.

  “Alice,” Brinley said. Then she was silent. She was supposed to be smart, why was this so hard? Mollie, smiling, wrote ‘Alice,’ slowly and in perfect curling handwriting in a yellowing ledger. Then she looked back up at Brinley, who could feel herself blushing. “Hall,” she said too loudly. Well, at least she hadn’t gone with hallway… Alice Hall was probably someone’s name.

  “Will you be wanting meals?” Mollie asked, hovering over a new column with her fountain pen.

  Still pink-faced, Brin almost said, God, no! but caught herself just in time. Instead she said, “No, thank you, I don’t think I’ll be in too much. And just a week’s stay for now.”

  Mollie raised her eyebrows. “Week’s the minimum, most stay much longer. Moving on quickly, are you?”

  “I… uh, I might move in with my boyfriend,” Brin stammered, apparently having become a complete moron in the last few minutes. She would truly make an awful spy.

  “Oh!” Mollie laughed, showing several old-fashioned gold fillings. “I’m only pulling your leg. Shy one, aren’t you, Alice?”

  Brin nodded, tight lipped.

  “No,” Mollie said, “it’s just that most who come to stay a week or a fortnight end up here much longer. Got residents we’ve had for decades. I’d say it was my cooking, but I think it’s the rent I charge. Speaking of which?” Mollie turned with a key on a string in her hand.

  “Oh, yeah.” Brin put a hand in an inside pocket of her jacket where she was keeping a small portion of the money she had been skimming from her father’s pocketbook for weeks. That was what he got for living a card-free lifestyle. And she’d taken everything she could out with the credit card that had her measly allowance on it and then slipped it down the bars of a drain cover. Back then, just a couple of days ago, she had felt herself an excellent spy.

  “A hundred a week,” Mollie said. “That’s everything included.” Brin gave her two fifty-pound notes, and Mollie raised her eyebrows. “Get a lucky scratch card?” Why did this woman ask so many questions?

  “I work cash in hand,” Brin said. Pre-empting the next one, she continued, “Waiting tables. The magic helps with the tips…”

  Mollie squeezed herself out from behind the counter, and Brinley almost expected a pop like a cork leaving a wine bottle. The larger woman led her towards the stairs, which were as misshapen and rickety as everything else in the place, and began huffing up them. On the second landing, Mollie paused. She wiped her brow with her apron.

  “Too many of my own steamed puddings,” she said. “Give me a sec, you’re in the attic.”

  As they were waiting in the landing, where there was a table with a pink rotary phone

  a bowl of potpourri that only added to the disconcerting scent of the place, a very slight man wearing all black came out of a room. He moved almost silently, as shadow-like as his outfit presented him as being.

  “Oh, Mr Belham, you didn’t half give me a fright!” Mollie had started beside Brin. “Alice, this is one of the more permanent residents I was telling you about, Mr Belham. How long have you been here now? Ten years?”

  The slight man smiled a slow smile that made his face look like so much clay. “I couldn’t say, Mollie. Ten, fifteen, what does it matter? I’m not going anywhere!”

  Mollie nodded. “Seems that way, Mr Belham, seems that way.” Then she gestured towards Brinley. “This is Alice, just here for a week, she reckons.”

  Belham did the smiling thing again and held out a slim, limp hand.

  “Honored,” he said, and as his hand touched her sheepishly proffered one, his eyes jumped to hers. “We’ll see how long you’re really here,” he said, and then he almost seemed to float down the stairs. There was silence for a moment after this exit.

  Brin looked to Mollie. “Are all the residents so… uh… unique?”

  Mollie gave her another grin. “He’s harmless, just a bit stuck in the old ways. Lot of them are round here… not many other places for them to go. Just ignore them. Or indulge them. They need it.” She looked up at the final flight of stairs as if it were challenging her to a fist fight. “Shall we?” she said.

  Brin, who was trying to embody the idea of Alice Hall (short for Hallway), nodded and smiled in a way she hoped was meek.

  11

  Garrick

  Leaving the cafe-bar, Garrick’s mouth tasted of tomato juice and tiny pickles. He rubbed the sleeve of his corduroy jacket against his mouth, hoping he didn’t have Bloody Mary mix all over his face.

  The weather was getting better. The sun was out from behind the clouds. But it didn’t cheer him up. Weather came and went; seasons were a little like blinks at this point. He was filled with anger, filled with a rage like he’d scarcely before felt in his long life. It was barely dulled by the two Bloody Marys.

  He had the name of Brinley’s father’s club on a slip of paper. Around the corner from the cafe, on a side street, Garrick leaned against a bin. He pulled out the note she had scrawled the two addresses on earlier, and the other where she had drawn the sweet, ugly little maps. Her father’s club, which would be full of powerful warlocks, was just a few streets away. Garrick closed his eyes and tried to breathe steadily. Warlocks or not, he could burn the place down with dragon fire.

  His fist tightened on the small, rough-edged pages. He could kill her father. Dragon fire would do it. He could start another clearly magical fire in South London and endanger the secrecy of his people further, lose his position entirely. Make the woman he… make her, make Brinley, hate him, most probably. But he wanted to. He wanted to let this heat out, and he wanted to get revenge. He wanted her father not to be the man he was, and he didn’t want to tell her—to be the one to tell her. But if he didn’t, who would?

  Garrick was fighting against himself. But at least today he was putting up a fight. Wasn’t letting darkness and apathy win automatically.

  He let himself imagine doing it. He imagined the hot roar of the fire coming up from him, the heavy strength of being a dragon, his rough skin, claws, the power of his wings, which, even folded, felt like being something close to divine.

  Then he thought of her. Her this morning, the light from his windows coming slanted into his room and making her glow. The faces she made when they were in bed, and she was lost, she was gone, somewhere perfect. Her lovely green eyes—her warm eyes. He thought of them losing the shine they had when they looked at him. Maybe she was too young to see it… but this kind of feeling, it didn’t happen often. Or at least what he felt, and what he thought she felt.

  Garrick screwed the paper up and flung it into the large dumpster behind him. Briefly, he gave the dumpster a stupid punch with the back end of his fist. Then
he came out of the side street. He so wanted to shift. It would help. It would get some of this rage out. But he couldn’t, not here, and not now. Not when he was trying to avert a disaster.

  Brinley wouldn’t be at the pub until late afternoon at the earliest. So Garrick decided to do the next best thing to shifting: he was going to walk home.

  It wasn’t often that Garrick was this side of the city, but London, as much as it changed on the surface—buildings and businesses and the clothes people wore—didn’t change at a bones and blood level. The streets had been laid out roughly like this for hundreds of years, and as he left the garden-city areas of the south and got closer to the river, the layout was much as it had been when the black death had come a-calling. When the fire (started by dragons, actually, to control the epidemic. They were smart enough to start it somewhere plausible, of course, and didn’t leave an actual baker around to take the blame. He was fine. Well, dead now… but they’d given him a settlement) had finished burning, the sentimental humans had rebuilt the city just how it had been before. Or maybe that was what the city itself had wanted. This time, they had used less wood, more stone.

  On his long, long walk, Garrick realized for the first time that he had an almost perfect map of this city preserved in his head. It was almost a straight line, if seen from a bird’s (or dragon’s) view, the walk from almost-Surrey to the industrial heart of the Eastend. But the streets got more and more winding around the Thames. Garrick had been walking three hours, with his long legs and inhuman endurance, by the time he crossed the river and found Regent’s Canal and the network that took him to where he wanted to be. The sun had come out and hidden and come out again, and now it was one of those long summer evenings that you only got in Northern Europe, the sun still warm and promising to stay for ages still, slipping down the sky like it didn’t want to go and leaving the clouds (almost burned away now) backlit.