Table of Contents
TOOTH: An Alpha Like No Other
Copyright
About the Author
Chapter One – Tooth
Chapter Two – Lila
Chapter Three – Lila
Chapter Four – Tooth
Chapter Five – Lila
Chapter Six – Tooth
Chapter Seven – Lila
Chapter Eight – Tooth
Chapter Nine – Lila
Chapter Ten – Lila
Chapter Eleven – Tooth
Chapter Twelve – Lila
Chapter Thirteen – Tooth
Chapter Fourteen – Lila
Chapter Fifteen – Tooth
Chapter Sixteen – Lila
Chapter Seventeen – Tooth
Chapter Eighteen – Lila
Chapter Nineteen – Tooth
Chapter Twenty – Lila
Chapter Twenty-One – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Two – Lila
Chapter Twenty-Three – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Four – Lila
Chapter Twenty-Five – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Six – Lila
Chapter Twenty-Seven – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Eight – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Nine – Lila
Chapter Thirty – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-One – Lila
Chapter Thirty-Two – Lila
Chapter Thirty-Three – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-Four – Lila
Chapter Thirty-Five – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-Six – Lila
Chapter Thirty-Seven – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-Eight – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-Nine – Lila
Chapter Forty – Lila
Chapter Forty-One – Tooth
Chapter Forty-Two – Lila
Chapter Forty-Three – Lila
Chapter Forty-Four – Lila
Chapter Forty-Five – Lila
A Message to the Readers, From Tooth
TOOTH: An Alp
ha Like No Other
A Song of Starlight: Book One
by Billie Blaire
Copyright © 2017 by Billie Blaire
All rights reserved. This book o
r any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
About the Author
Billie Blaire is an author who lives in Bristol, England, with a supportive spouse and a creaky bookshelf. Billie loves everything romance and dreams of one day owning a skyship.
Subscribe to Billie’s newsletter for updates on future projects: http://eepurl.com/cBY-pT
Inquiries, fan mail, diatribes: [email protected]
Contents Page
TOOTH: An Alpha Like No Other
A Song of Starlight: Book One
Copyright
About the Author
Chapter One – Tooth
Chapter Two – Lila
Chapter Three – Lila
Chapter Four – Tooth
Chapter Five – Lila
Chapter Six – Tooth
Chapter Seven – Lila
Chapter Eight – Tooth
Chapter Nine – Lila
Chapter Ten – Lila
Chapter Eleven – Tooth
Chapter Twelve – Lila
Chapter Thirteen – Tooth
Chapter Fourteen – Lila
Chapter Fifteen – Tooth
Chapter Sixteen – Lila
Chapter Seventeen – Tooth
Chapter Eighteen – Lila
Chapter Nineteen – Tooth
Chapter Twenty – Lila
Chapter Twenty-One – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Two – Lila
Chapter Twenty-Three – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Four – Lila
Chapter Twenty-Five – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Six – Lila
Chapter Twenty-Seven – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Eight – Tooth
Chapter Twenty-Nine – Lila
Chapter Thirty – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-One – Lila
Chapter Thirty-Two – Lila
Chapter Thirty-Three – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-Four – Lila
Chapter Thirty-Five – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-Six – Lila
Chapter Thirty-Seven – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-Eight – Tooth
Chapter Thirty-Nine – Lila
Chapter Forty – Lila
Chapter Forty-One – Tooth
Chapter Forty-Two – Lila
Chapter Forty-Three – Lila
Chapter Forty-Four – Lila
Chapter Forty-Five – Lila
A Message to the Readers, From Tooth
Chapter One
Tooth
I was not born. I was ripped from the Other and thrown into this world.
My memories of that time are hazy. I see a hard-eyed man, chasing me into existence. The image of the all-father is lost in a mist of fog. I close my eyes and I think of the time when the Other was all I knew, but I can’t bring the details into the present. They dance out of my reach, jesters in my mind.
But one thing does not dance away.
The words spoken by the all-father ring out clear no matter how many times I think of them: “A woman will arrive, a Woman of Starlight, and the Horde will descend upon her for the power inside of her. They will kill her and use her power and end this world.”
With the words, an image. An image which has haunted me for eight-thousand lifetimes.
Her hair is fire-red and her cheeks are freckled. Her eyes are the green of a summer grove. She is slender, a body made for dancing. I’ve seen this image for millennia. I’ve ached for it. The Woman of Starlight is the only thing which has dragged me through these long years.
I stand up now, stretch my arms above my head. I look out across the icy plains of Antarctica, where I have been for ten years.
I haven’t truly touched the Other for years, but I monitor it all the time. The Other is where I was breathed into this life and I still hold a piece of it inside me. Perhaps it’s what makes my teeth dagger-sharp.
I spot a polar bear loping across the plains, charging toward a river. It’s spring, I think, watching its powerful body move. How did spring come so quickly?
I monitor the Other because I am waiting for her, have been waiting for her my entire life. At first, I thought she would be with one of the roaming bands of humans, the hunter-gatherers which seemed to take an age—which really did take an age—to turn into something more. I lived apart from them, still struggling with my earthly form, but I watched, and I waited, and I felt. Countless years passed and the humans remained wanderers. Advances were made. Somewhere along the way, one of them had the idea to put seeds into the ground. They stopped roaming. They settled and they farmed.
And I waited. The Horde kept me busy some years; some years they were quiet.
The Horde is made up of all sorts of evils, vampires and wargs and werewolves and warlocks and wizards and zombies and ghosts and a hundred other clawing, murderous things. They squeeze between the cracks of the Other, infecting this world. The Other is what allows me to feel them. Like a man pressing his cheek up against a wall, I can feel the reverberations of everything which touches the wall. Werewolves in England and vampires in South Africa and a zombie outbreak in the States.
In the quiet years, I roamed. I’ve becom
e skilled at creating new lives. Now I am Michael, now Adrian, now Daniel, now John, now Timothy, now Zach, now Kane . . . but always I leave these names behind. I am just Tooth.
I feel the Other now, but I don’t truly touch it. I feel for the Woman of Starlight. She is a magical nuclear bomb, capable of tearing a hole in the fabric of the Other and collapsing the universes. If the Horde gets their hands on her, they will use her for just that. The Horde, for their own misguided reasons, want to bring about the end of the world. They want the Other to rip open, the earth to be consumed by evil.
And that is why I have to protect her, I think.
I walk down the slope from my igloo and to the river where the polar bear sits. It growls at me, but doesn’t step toward me. Animals smell fear and I am not afraid. I kneel down next to the river and place my hand in the ice-cold water, letting it flow between my fingers. The cold is refreshing.
I close my eyes and search the Other.
Where are you? I ask the vast expanse of the universes. Woman of Starlight, where are you?
I have to be ready for her. Most Horde cannot feel the Other, but the all-father told me that they will be able to feel her. Her power will be too strong. Perhaps I can cast a masking spell upon her, I muse. I am not a warlock, but the Other gives me certain powers.
I bring the icy water to my face and splash it over my skin. It runs down my cheeks and into my mouth. Beads of water cling to my teeth.
I do not expect an answer. I have asked the Other countless times to show me the Woman of Starlight. And countless times I have been given nothing. I have lived through castles and palaces and sieges and gunpowder and wars and blood and all the great span of human history and in each age I have asked the same question. In each age, I have been given the same answer.
Silence.
I sink onto my haunches and duck my head under the water. I throw my head back, water splashing onto the ice. The polar bear waddles over to me and rests its nose against my arm.
“Good boy,” I say, rubbing it behind the ears.
It whines and licks my hand, its tongue rough. I tickle it under the chin. It whines again. That’s when I remember. This is the same bear that came to me last spring. The beast has remembered.
“You’re hungry,” I say.
I look into the river, watching with my honed senses. Fish shimmer beneath the surface.
“You’re getting slow,” I tell the bear.
I dart my hand down, grab a fish, and throw it onto the ice. It flaps wildly and then the bear lunges upon it, sinking its teeth in.
I stand up.
That’s when I feel it, like an alarm in the back of my mind. I bring my hand to my ears, closing out sound.
I touch the Other, caressing the fabric of the world. I feel the Horde, roaming across the globe, and I feel . . .
Can it be? After so long, can it really be?
But I can’t deny it. I feel her, the Woman of Starlight. I run my hands along the Other, searching for her. She’s in America, I sense. I follow the trail. California. I go closer, deeper into the Other, barely able to contain my excitement. It takes me a moment to find her, but when I do a smile spreads across my face. Love’s Spring, a small town in California.
A second later, my smile drops.
I’m not the only one who’s sensed her. The Horde are coming for her. In great numbers.
I open my eyes, walk across the ice, and pat the polar bear on the back.
“It’s time for me to go,” I say. It grumbles, chewing its fish.
I turn away and sprint across the ice.
Chapter Two
Lila
Come on, please!
I don’t let the anxiety show on my face. Mr. Peppers, the local banker, looks over my folder through his horn-rimmed glasses. He’s an old man, with a slick comb-over which does little to hide his sweaty dome of a head. He holds my folder with long, thin hands. My heart hammers in my chest. He makes a tut noise.
I’ve been teaching dance for two years, one-on-one sessions with kids from the Spring. I’ve gathered enough students to easily fill a dance studio. The only problem is I have no money except the three-thousand dollars I’ve stowed away in savings. But that’s for Casey, I think. If she ever wants to go to college. I think of Casey, how she looked this morning, her hair—red, like mine—all mussy around her shoulders. She smiled up at me and said: “You’ll do it, Auntie, I know you will.” I smiled back, pretending I was super-confident. But if I was super-anything, it was super-nervous.
Mr. Peppers reads over my file several times, making more tut noises than I can handle. I tot up the number of students I’ve gathered. Around thirty, I think. Most of their parents said they’d send their kids to group classes. All I need is for my loan to be approved and I can go into business. And it’s been a long slog, I think. It’s only these last couple of years I’ve made teaching my career. And of course there was Casey to care for after Isaac and his wife died. In a car crash, just like Mom and Dad.
I realize I’m letting my mind run away with me
I focus on Mr. Peppers, but he gives no sign of even being close to finished. I glance at the clock. A quarter to three o’clock, fifteen minutes until I have to pick Casey up from school.
I pick at the fabric of the chair and look out the window over Mr. Peppers’s shoulder. It is autumn and the sky is bruised orange. People walk up and down Main Street, to the café and to their cars. I glance back at Mr. Peppers.
How much longer can he take!
Finally, he turns his gaze to me. He does this laboriously, as though he doesn’t want to look me in the eye. “Lila Fisher,” he says.
“Uh, yes.” I swallow, a huge lump in my throat.
“Daughter to Andrew and Samantha Fisher, correct?”
“Yes,” I say, and I know what he’s thinking behind those thick glasses. The alcoholics who killed themselves on the way to get more booze.
“And you want, let me see, a loan of fifty-thousand dollars to purchase a dance studio and start your own business.”
He speaks mechanically, like a robot. Hearing my hopes and dreams laid out in such a robotic fashion is disconcerting.
I nod shortly, plastering a smile to my face. “That is correct,” I say.
“Hmm.” He strokes the edge of the file. The clock tic-tic-tics behind him. I think of Casey, standing at the school entrance, looking through the glassed doors for me. Mr. Peppers takes a deep breath, and then says: “You must understand the problem I have with reviewing your file. Your parents owned a lovely—what was it, four-bedroom home?”
“Five,” I say. The word thuds in my chest.
“But they sold it,” Mr. Peppers says. His face is unreadable.
“Yes,” I say.
“And you have no collateral.” He states this coldly.
“That’s correct.”
He lets out a long sigh. “You must understand, Ms. Fisher, that after the financial crisis banks have to be exceptionally careful not to make . . . uh . . . unsafe loans. You can’t really expect us to give you fifty-thousand dollars.”
“I have my tax forms,” I say, gesturing at the file. But of course he has already seen those. “I’ve made decent money these past two years. I would have no problem with the repayments.” My mouth is dry. I want to reach for the jug of water on the desk, but I’m afraid if I do, my shaking hand will knock it over.
“Yes, I suppose you have made decent money. But your income stream is what we would call untenable.”
“Untenable?”
“What I mean to say is that you are a dancing teacher, Ms. Fisher. You are not employed by a corporation or a big business. Your income is dependent upon the whims, and the incomes, of the parents of the children you teach. What if they decide they no longer want their children to be dancers? What if they come upon hard times? What if the children themselves want to, oh, I don’t know . . . practice archery or soccer instead?”
“They enjoy it,” I say, but my words
sound like empty air.
When he lays the file on the desk, I know I’ve lost.
“I’m sure they do,” he says. “But this bank cannot loan fifty-thousand dollars based on the whimsical enjoyment of children.”
“Some are older—around fifteen and sixteen.”
He brings his hand to his mouth. He pretends that he’s coughing, but he’s stifling a laugh. I clench my teeth, my jaw throbbing. Anger rises in me. I push it down with an effort.
When he recovers, he shakes his head. “That makes little difference, I’m afraid.”
Five minutes to three o’clock . . .
I lean back in the chair, getting ready to stand up. “What you’re saying is there’s zero chance of you lending to me.”
Mr. Peppers flinches. “I wouldn’t put it like that—”
“I’m a big girl, Mr. Peppers. I’m sure you’ve heard my story. Love’s Spring isn’t exactly renowned for its secret-keeping. Lila Fisher, alcoholic parents, died when she was just out of school, brother died years later, leaving me his niece. Ya-da-ya-da-ya-da. I’ve been knocked down before. Please, don’t hold back.”
“Then yes,” Mr. Peppers says. “I am saying that your loan is denied.”
I don’t let the pain show on my face. Over the years, I’ve gotten good at hiding my emotions. I had to hide them around Casey when Isaac and Tiffany died. When we were kids, I hid them from Isaac as often as I could to try and take the load off him. My belly feels tight and my heart is a jack-hammer in my chest. But all Mr. Peppers sees is a stone-faced woman.
“Fair enough,” I say, tone impassive. “May I have my file back?”
He slides it across the desk. I take it and rise to my feet.
“I’ll see myself out,” I mutter.
I walk through the office, past the receptionist, and onto Main Street. I look at my phone. Almost three o’clock. I walk down Main Street, past old men sitting on stools and playing chess, past truckers sitting in the café, past single mothers pushing strollers. When they greet me, I greet them back, smiling as though I have no cares in the world.
Tooth: An Alpha Like No Other (A Song of Starlight Book 1) Page 1
