by Harry Nix
“If it helps you, please be assured that this vampire is just as bad as any other vampire. Vicious and cruel, his finger in all the pies, a hideous monster, a leech on this realm, amassing his ill-gotten fortune that we will relieve him of. Besides, this is my favor you promised me. I want it. I want you to help me rob him,” Ruby said.
Alex felt a strange pressure in the air as she spoke. It almost felt like the Great Barrier, as though there was something waiting near him, ready to snap down on his body if he said no. Juno had finally got her shoelaces undone and stood up. Her face had gone serious as her grandmother had spoken.
Alex sat back in his chair, realizing that it appeared he had no choice. Although he just managed to collect around four and a half thousand, it was becoming quickly obvious he’d need a lot more, especially if he wanted to stay alive.
“I’ll do it. So, how much gold is there? How much of it do we get to keep, and what is this vampire's name?” Alex said.
“I think it's well into the millions, you can have fifteen percent, and one of the names he uses is Prince,” Ruby said.
“Fifteen percent! That's highway robbery” Juno exploded.
Alex took himself to the kitchen and made himself another coffee as the two of them started arguing about the percentage that Alex and his pack would be able to keep, Juno waving her arms around and Ruby doing the same. He didn't top this coffee up with whiskey, but instead took it back to the lounge and sat down the sofa, putting his feet up. The chair wasn't quite as comfortable as the one at Roma’s but it was good enough. As Alex sipped his coffee, his mind strayed back to her. He saw the image of her walking ahead of him, following that cute little butt, swaying from side to side into the back room that was half woodshop and half apartment. He saw the bed with the silks draped from the ceiling. Alex blocked out the two witches arguing and sipped his coffee, letting his imagination run free.
18
Three days passed quickly, and Alex spent most of them down in the basement, enchanting rings. He fell into a pattern. Get up, eat breakfast, go to the basement, and enchant rings, until he exhausted his natural mana and the sex magic. Then he'd return upstairs, and once Juno got back from selling the rings, he’d drag her to the bedroom to recharge, rinse and repeat. Juno’s silence spell was coming in handy although it would have been obvious to anyone what they were doing.
In just three days they had close to thirty thousand. The rings, according to Juno, selling like hotcakes. Although Alex dreamed of suddenly becoming a multimillionaire, something that seemed that would solve a lot of problems all at once, by the third day sales were starting to slow as Juno exhausted all the places to sell them. There were only so many the market could take.
She’d even visited Roma’s and came back to make some pointed comments about how pretty she was.
Alex wisely kept his mouth shut.
On the morning of the fourth day, Alex awoke alone in bed to the sound of excited talking in the lounge room. He quickly got dressed and rushed down there to find Nia and April had returned. They and Juno were talking a mile a minute. As soon as he saw them, they both jumped on Alex. If Ruby hadn't been in the kitchen cooking and Alex hadn't been so hungry, he would have just dragged them straight to the bedroom then and there.
After getting reacquainted, they quickly went back to talking about the amount of money they'd made from enchanting and selling the rings. Although they were all excited about it, soon the conversation turned to the black liquid that had come out of Jasper.
“Well, the bad news is, I couldn't discover how it works at all,” April said.
“Why’s that?” Alex said.
“It's otherworldly,” April said.
“As in not from this planet?”
“As in not from this realm. Not from this plane of existence. There was stuff in it that liquid that doesn't exist here at all. I couldn’t even identify what it was,” April said.
“So, the conspiracy rumors about black liquid coming out of dead leaders, like maybe it’s being used to control them now has a new level? It’s more other realms stuff?” Juno said.
April shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I'm damn good at what I do, and I analyzed it as much as I could in every single way and it's not from here. There’s a kind of signature on everything, and the signature on that stuff is totally different.”
“Those other realms nutters are gonna go crazy if this gets out,” Juno said with a sigh.
“Can someone catch me up please?” Alex said.
“There are some scholars,” Nia began.
“Crazy people,” Juno said.
“Scholars, and possibly crazy people, who think there are other realms of existence. You know, parallel dimensions and all that. But it's always the same. Someone finds a rock or a gem or something they claim is from this mysterious other realm, except of course no one is allowed to study it or it vanishes or whatever. There are powerful magic users around and if there are other realms, they would have found their way to them by now,” Nia said.
“So, that black liquid is proof in an ongoing magical argument?” Alex said.
“Not really. Even the sample I had was degrading, and although there’s some back home in the village, I think it’s going to be useless before too long,” April said
The three girls went back to talking about the money, especially what they could buy with it while Alex chewed over what April had told him. If the black liquid exerted some kind of control, that meant someone was influencing or controlling Jasper. That the liquid possibly came from some other realm of existence didn't really matter. After all, from what Alex had seen, werewolves had been screwed over the centuries, marginalized, and shoved off their land, and given a token seat at the table that ultimately meant nothing. What did it matter if there was some other force trying to screw them over? Just get in line, buddy.
“Breakfast,” Ruby called from the kitchen. Breakfast today was a bacon and egg and mixed vegetable scramble. To Alex, it tasted a bit like a pizza as Ruby had added olives, chopped tomato, and even dropped in dollops of pizza sauce into it as it was cooking. It looked like a horrible, churned-up mess on the plate but tasted amazing.
April repeated her findings to Ruby, but she didn't have anything new to add. Ruby had heard the rumors too.
As they were finishing breakfast, Juno took a call, then grabbed Alex by the arm and dragged him downstairs, to where the house wards were, telling him that Jacob, Esme, Lydia, and Jeremiah were in town.
“This is how you add someone to the wards so they can find the house,” Juno said. Beside the house ward batteries was blank wall. As Alex watched, Juno pressed a hand against it. He felt a minor ripple of magic in the air.
“Please add Jacob and Esme,” Juno said. Then she removed her hand and told Alex to do the same. He pressed his hand against the wall, then to his surprise saw a spell screen open.
“Please add Lydia and Jeremiah,” he said aloud as their names appeared on it, first in red and then they changed to green. Then he took his hand away and the spell screen disappeared.
“And that's it,” Juno said.
Alex thought back to when Nia had brought him to see Juno.
“Did you have to add me to this that first time I came here?”
She shook her head. “Some people have a type of open permission, so if they willingly bring someone here they’re included as well. Nia is on that list, so she brought you and it was all fine.”
They went back upstairs, and it wasn't long before there was a rap on the door.
“Nice place,” Jacob said as Alex let them in. The teenager immediately gravitated over to the pile of truly awful movies that Juno had collected. That'd also been part of the last three days, Juno forcing Alex to watch yet another in the horrifically bad Airbud series. Thankfully, Ruby had taken pity on him and served him coffees that were ninety-five percent whiskey.
“Esme, Lydia, Jeremiah, welcome, come in,” Alex said.
Jeremia
h just nodded, while Esme and Lydia walked through the place like they owned it, going straight to the kitchen where they met Ruby. Within minutes they were suddenly getting along like a house on fire. Nia, Juno, and April soon joined them in the kitchen, leaving Alex, Jacob, and Jeremiah in the lounge room, listening to the noise.
“While they're doing that, let’s get the hell out here,” Alex said. He braved the kitchen briefly to get a handful of cash and Boris’s keys, slipping in and out before anyone noticed what he was doing. Soon, he was driving away from the house with Jeremiah in the passenger seat and Jacob in the back.
“Good trip?” Alex asked.
“It was okay,” Jeremiah said. Alex hadn't had much to do with him, but already understood that Jeremiah barely spoke.
“Jacob, any troubles along the way?” Alex said.
“Just that bad smell as you get closer to the city,” Jacob said. He had the window open and although he was in human form, he was still sniffing at the air. Now they'd been back long enough, Alex had desensitized to it.
Soon they were at the Grease Trap, Alex telling them to order whatever they wanted, and then buying half the menu himself. The food came quickly, and Jacob was like a kid in a candy store, eating a bit of everything, stuffing his mouth full of bacon followed by a pancake and gulping down juice and coffee. Jeremiah ate at a steady pace like an unrelenting machine, polishing off three plate plates of bacon and eggs with all the sides. Alex did much the same. Although he was focusing on his food he did notice there was a table of teenage girls nearby who were openly gawking at Jacob but, as usual, the young werewolf was completely oblivious.
Eventually they finished, Jacob crudely letting out a loud burp, causing the girls to break out into laughter. It was the kind of noise designed to get him to look at them. Alex and Jeremiah shared a glance, and for the first time the big man broke a smile at the young werewolf's obliviousness.
“So, what's been going on back home,” Alex finally asked.
“Things are still running as they usually do,” Jeremiah said.
Alex didn't want to start pumping Jacob for information, not in front of Jeremiah who, although he wasn't in charge of the pack in Alex's absence, was definitely one of the senior figures. Another idea came to him, something his stepmother used to do and only admitted to him years later. Whenever she wanted to talk with him, she would take him for a drive.
There was something about focusing on the road and what was around them that got teenagers talking. Alex figured it would work on Jeremiah so he paid the bill and they got back into Boris, heading off in a random direction.
“No more signs of mages or anything like that?” Alex asked, once they were underway.
“We’re patrolling the territory as best we can. There have been a few footprints of other werewolves, but no mages,” Jeremiah said, looking out the window.
“I have a lot of shield rings now, and also fireball and healing rings, that you can all take back. Enough for every member of the pack and some spare, so the next time someone tries something they’re getting a big surprise.”
“A fireball ring! Awesome!” Jacob said, bouncing around the back seat. Alex suddenly remembered the kid gulping down cups of coffee along with his meal. How many had he had exactly?
“That's good,” Jeremiah said.
“I have some more money too, so I think we can start up food shipments. I also have some plans to buy security cameras and set them up in the territory,” Alex said.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jeremiah frown.
“Werewolves don't usually use security cameras,” Jeremiah finally said.
“I get that it's defend the territory with the pack you have, but when people are walking out of the forest with guns, why shouldn't we use any technology we can? I mean, what's the difference between the shifter charm, the fireball ring, and a trail cam?” Alex said. For a moment he thought he might have pushed it too far, and that Jeremiah would shut down but then the big werewolf just sighed.
“You’re right, there’s not really a difference. It's just that magic is uncomfortable for werewolves. Those that hurt us use it all the time. So, if we buy shifter rings and other things, ultimately, we’re funding mages. No one wants to buy weapons from their enemies. That spreads out to other technology too. You tell the pack that you want to buy security cameras and they’ll accept it. You tell you want to get together in a bloodthirsty pack and go on a rampage they’ll love you,” Jeremiah said.
Alex nodded but didn't say anything, turning in random directions, not really paying attention to where they were going, until he suddenly recognized the street. They'd headed out to the industrial area of the rundown factories and abandoned homes. It was out here that the fairy had attacked him and Monroe.
Alex realized with a shock that he’d completely forgotten about her after three days of enchanting and dragging Juno to their bedroom and being forced to watch Air Bud sequels. He’d just wandered out of the house to get breakfast like there wasn’t a bounty on his head.
He also realized it wasn't far to the Xavo address that Stephen had left behind. Alex turned down a street, slowly approaching the familiar abandoned factory. It was still abandoned, of course, and there in the entranceway, the concrete was smooth like glass, the result of Alex interfering in a spell that somehow trapped mages and their car inside it, incinerating them to nothing.
“What is all this out here?” Jacob asked. He had his head out the window like the family dog on a road trip.
“Abandoned factories, abandoned homes, it’s all empty and worthless,” Alex said. They passed the factory and the decaying homes around it and then Alex turned, finally heading in a vague direction towards the city.
“Why don’t you buy some of it and set up an outpost of your own?” Jeremiah said out of nowhere. Alex had to check to see whether the werewolf was joking, but he was staring out the front, his face completely smooth.
“Don’t werewolves hate the city?” Alex asked.
“Initially, yes, all the pollution and how disgusting it smells. But after a few days, no. You can't get bacon and eggs like that. There’s a lot to be said for civilization. Besides, if those mages are going to keep coming to try to kill us, shouldn't we set up part of the pack out here, to at least to keep an eye on them and then as a staging ground?”
“Wow, living in a rundown, abandoned old home. Sounds awesome. I'm so glad I joined this pack,” Jacob said with as much sarcasm as only a teenager could muster.
Alex had to laugh, although he knew Jacob was being at least eighty percent truthful. He slowed a little as he looked at the various factories and abandoned homes around them. There were for-sale signs everywhere. Some of them had been up so long that they'd had rotted away or been vandalized. It would be possible to buy out here for next to nothing.
As Alex’s mind started churning over, he started to see all kinds of advantages. There wasn't really anyone living out here except for a few squatters, which meant if he built a high enough fence the Great Barrier would largely leave them alone. There was rarely any traffic in the area either which meant if there was ever an attack, he would hopefully hear and see it coming.
One of the main advantages he could see was that plenty of the factories had fences around them and had been built to keep people out. Even now as they drove, they passed a high brick fence that had a dominating factory behind it. It had been a steelworks at some point in the past. It had enormous spiked iron gates locked with a rusted chain. Alex had sudden visions of enchanting for days on end, getting a chunk of money, and buying up properties, moving some of the werewolves into them. Although staying at Juno's was amazing, there was no way that house could hold any more than it already did.
“You know, it's not such a bad idea,” Alex murmured.
“It wasn't distance that kept the Greenacre pack safe,” Jeremiah said.
Alex hadn’t really talked much about Jasper and the suspected corruption. Even the costs of keeping a
small pack well-fed were quite high, and from what Alex understood, although werewolves would go to the city to work and send money back, most of the Greenacre pack stayed out in the wilderness. So, Jasper had to be getting the money from somewhere and corruption was an easy answer.
“If I split the pack doesn’t that mean another pack will just come and take the land out there?” Alex said.
“Yes, that is what will happen. But I'm not sure that's a good place for our pack right now,” Jeremiah said.
“Why not? It has fresh air, places for us to live, and it is ours and there are boars and all kinds of things to hunt,” Jacob blurted out from the backseat.
Jeremiah didn't even turn around. “Our alpha is under attack which means we're under attack. At the moment, that's a large territory we can't defend and it’s a great distance away from resources. If you want to live in a place that made it easy for mages to kill us without a single witness, that's where you’d pick,” Jeremiah said.
Alex was surprised at what he was hearing. At first, he assumed Jeremiah was just a strong and silent type but he’d seen there was a greater depth, more than he had known.
Still, the idea of abandoning the territory entirely? Alex knew the pack would do what he wanted, but really, what was the endgame here? Abandon the territory, bring them all to Baxter and put them in falling down homes, so they could be on a permanent war footing?
Although Alex knew he could enchant more rings and bring in more money, the big question would be what would the werewolves do all day? Try to get jobs driving taxis and serving coffee?
Looking around at the urban blight, Alex wasn't entirely sure he liked the idea much either. The wolf inside him certainly didn't. Although it would put up with it, he wanted trees, open spaces, and prey to hunt.
“So, you think I should move the pack here, buy some land, then go hunting mages?” Alex said.
