Being Alpha

by Aileen Erin

  I wasn’t sure how we’d be better off without her, but at least I’d asked. I couldn’t really blame her for not wanting to get even more mixed up with Astaroth than she already was. “Alright. Well, if you change your mind?”

  She smiled. “Not a chance in Hell—”

  I winced and Samantha laughed.

  “But I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay.” I blew out a breath. “Well, thank you. If you need anything…” It was the same thing that I’d said to the Were driver, but I felt like I owed her even more. She’d risked her life for us.

  She nodded. “I’ll let you know if something comes up.”

  “Great.” I still felt like I was leaving unfinished business with her. I just couldn’t look away.

  Chérie. She’s a big girl. She’ll be fine.

  He was right, but still. “You sure it’s safe for you to go home?”

  “Yeah. Astaroth isn’t after me. Don’t worry about that, but I just want to reiterate the forty-eight hours thing. It’s not precise, just a guess. But be careful.”

  I stepped closer. “Can you tell me what you are?”

  “I can, but you have to promise not to hold it against me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m sort of part demon.”

  My eyes were open so wide, they nearly fell out of my head. “How is that possible?”

  “It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s the easiest way to explain it. My father was possessed and the whole parentage thing is a little blurry. But my mom totally makes up for how evil my dad is.” She shrugged like it was no big deal, but it totally was a huge deal. “Anyway, that’s life, right? Kind of intense for people like us.” She stared off into the distance for a second.

  Jesus. It was worse than I’d thought. I wasn’t even sure what to say to that. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you. The thing is, Astaroth really tied into you. Into your soul. The tie is on both planes, and I don’t know how to break it, but I was thinking on the way here and I have a guess.”

  Yes. This was it. I knew it. “I’ll take it.” Any guess was better than none.

  “You’re going to need something to cut the tie that exists on both planes, and before you ask, no. I’m not it.”

  “Then what?” I needed to know what to look for.

  “I don’t know. A spell won’t do it. It needs to be something more concrete. Maybe a crystal. Or another demon. Or some sort of weapon. Just keep your eyes open to possibilities.”

  That wasn’t as a good of a clue as I’d hoped. “Even if I found something like that, how would I even be able to see the tie to cut it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I blew out a hard breath. “Thank you.” It was more information than I had ten seconds ago, and she might have been saving my life. “Just. Thank you.”

  “No worries.” She gave me a half-smile. “I gotta get home before my mom loses her shit completely. I’ll see you around, okay?”

  I sighed. “Okay, but you’ll let the driver give you a ride home?”

  “Nah. I’ve got an app for that. He’s got a lot to deal with.” She motioned to the empty hole in the car where the door had been.

  “If you’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” She reached for me and pulled me into a hug. “I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but you’ll find a way to get rid of Astaroth.”

  I swallowed. “You think so?”

  “I do. I really do.” She smiled as she spun around and walked away. I watched her go, waiting to see if I could think of something that could change her mind, but in the end, I kept my mouth shut.

  She pulled a pair of earbuds from her pocket, quickly unwinding them and shoving them in her ears. Her head was down as she walked away while looking at her phone, and I let her go. But seeing her disappear in the distance left me with an empty feeling. Like I was leaving something undone.

  All at once, I knew what was bothering me. I’d come here for help, which I’d sort of gotten, but Samantha felt like a kindred sister. I was leaving her here no better off. That felt wrong.

  Had I come with the intention of helping her? No. Not at all. But after meeting her, I felt like I was abandoning her. I was leaving her here alone to fight her own demons—literal and metaphorical—when maybe I could help.

  She’ll be okay. I could feel him moving towards me.

  Will she? Because I wasn’t so sure. Did you hear what she said?

  Yes. And now she knows you have her back if she needs anything. He put an arm around my shoulders, pulling me back toward the private terminal. Let’s get on the plane. We need to start thinking up a new plan.

  He was right. I knew it, but I wasn’t sure what kind of new plan we could come up with. In my visions, I’d seen a lot of new plans, and none of them had worked.

  I spotted a small mini fridge under a counter in the waiting room. A spread of snacks were artfully placed on top of it. I grabbed a Diet Coke and downed it. Lucas said there was going to be food on the plane, but I needed something now. I grabbed a couple bags of trail mix and started eating.

  It took about ten minutes for the personnel at the terminal to check us in and run our bags through metal detectors. We had to walk through them, too, but that was it. No long TSA lines. No fighting for seats at the gate. Before I knew it, we were getting into another SUV to drive us through the busy tarmac. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but there must’ve been plenty of early morning flights today. I watched out the window as the car stopped for planes to pass by us on their way to and from the runways.

  I was quiet as we finally got on the plane. My friends moved around, talking amongst themselves as the pilots got ready. The layout of a small plane was much different than a commercial flight. There were only a few seats that were actually close together, and as much as I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I wanted Dastien close by. Hopefully my friends would sense my mood and not take the two chairs facing ours or the couch beside them.

  I took the seat against the window and settled in to wait.

  Just try to relax. It’s going to be okay.

  I didn’t know what to say to him, so I stayed quiet. My mood was partly Astaroth’s influence, and I knew that, but I was also having trouble processing all of the visions and trying to figure out what not to do. They’d flashed by so fast that in the moment, I couldn’t absorb them, but they were catching up with me and it was making my head hurt.

  I was a Were. We didn’t get headaches. Even if there were a couple extra-strength aspirins tucked away somewhere on board, Weres processed medicine so much faster than humans, I wasn’t sure they’d do any good.

  I rested my head against the cool glass of the window and watched all the people rushing around on the ground. Everyone had problems. I knew that. But from where I was sitting, I envied them. It seemed nice to just be doing your job, and not have it be so life or death or end of the world.

  I closed my eyes as we started to take off. I needed to find a solution before we landed. That gave me a little over three hours. I knew there had to be something that I wasn’t thinking of, but all I could come up with were things we should definitely not do. So many things. I needed a notepad to write all of them down so I could sort through them all, and start opening my mind up to other options. Other solutions.

  What the hell was I going to do?

  In my visions, I’d tried everything. Or at least I thought I had. But there was something I was missing. There had to be. I knew it. But what?

  The pressure to find an answer was suffocating me.

  Everyone had gotten quiet as we took off, but once we were in the air, the chattering started again. Louder than before. Until I couldn’t concentrate.

  I held up my hands. “Stop.” I needed more time to think.

  There was a second of silence before Claudia came to sit across from me. “We’re here to help, but we can’t do that if you sit there staring at nothing, trying to fix everything y
ourself. What did your visions show you? Just tell us, and maybe we can come up with some answers.”

  I knew she was right, but this was on me. At least it felt like it was. I leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling of the plane. “My visions were horrible. Nothing we tried worked. I died—we died. Every. Time. I saw at least thirty versions of the next two days.”

  “No,” Adrian said as he and Chris came to sit on the couch. “You were out for a minute. It couldn’t have been that many.”

  “I think that’s why my head is pounding. Magical overload.”

  “If you tell us what happened, then maybe we can come up with something you didn’t try,” Chris said. “We each have our own perspective. Together we can figure this out.”

  He was right. “I just don’t know where to start.” It felt like I was just starting to process what I’d seen, let alone find the words to explain it all out loud. It had happened too fast, and I felt like I was getting a bird’s eye view rather than living through it. The more I thought back, examining each piece of it, the more freaked out I got.

  Claudia reached across the table, grabbing my hand, but I pulled away. She looked to Lucas, but he just gave her a little nod of encouragement. “Just start at the beginning,” she said. “What was the first vision you had?”

  I took a second, trying to picture it. “We stayed too long. I mean—we left, but we waited for Samantha to quickly gather her stuff. That minute and a half was enough for Astaroth to come through the portal. We thought we were golden, but he was there in the parking lot and…” I rubbed the back of my neck. I could almost hear the snap. “Next time we ran right away. Got on a plane. We went to the meeting with the other Alphas at St. Ailbe’s, but there was too much talking. Nothing was getting accomplished.” I couldn’t remember anything that would’ve triggered Astaroth showing up. “I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly Astaroth was there.”

  “Wait. Where?” Claudia asked.

  “In the conference room at St. Ailbe’s,” I said.

  “That’s impossible,” Adrian said. “He couldn’t—”

  I wasn’t going to argue. “Is anything really impossible at this point? All I know is that he showed up and we all died.”

  “Fuck,” Chris said. “And you lived through this?”

  I nodded. “Over and over again.”

  “No wonder you’re upset.” He got up for a second and came back with a candy bar. “This might help with the headache.”

  “Thanks.” It came out short, so I took a breath. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  “So, Astaroth showed up at the meeting. What happened after that?” Claudia asked, keeping us on task.

  I blinked as I tried to sort one time out from the next. It wasn’t until recently that I’d been able to see the future in my visions, and before I’d lived a possible future—a single future where I’d made a mistake—and then gone back to the present. My visions were a warning so that I didn’t make grave mistakes. Usually it was just one vision—one warning—and I could easily avoid doing that one thing. But this time, I’d had so many visions and they’d come so fast—right on top of each other…it felt like there were way too many ways this could go wrong.

  My head throbbed as I tried to make sense of them. “Next time we went to the compound. We were digging around the remains of Luciana’s house and…” I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the headache that was forming behind my eyes. “I don’t know. He was suddenly there.”

  “Were we doing a spell?” Claudia asked.

  “No.” I tried to remember—it was all getting blurry—but I didn’t remember doing any spells. “No witchcraft. Nothing. Just literally looking through half-burned books and then all of a sudden he was lifting me in the air by my neck. And then…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I need a water.” I started to get up, but Adrian passed me a bottle before I could. “Thanks.”

  “What happened next?” He asked.

  “We went to talk to Tía Rosa. He showed up.”

  “And then?”

  I rubbed a hand across my forehead. “We flew to Ireland. We went to meet up with Meredith, who had some friends she was going to hook us up with. That was a disaster. Innocent humans died. Like a lot of them.”

  “Did we go to Peru?” Lucas asked.

  I laughed. That had been a massive mistake. “We died as soon as we landed. Total shit show.”

  “This has to be a joke,” Adrian said. “If there’s nowhere we can run to… How is he even getting through at all these places?”

  I wished it was a joke and I really, really wished I had an answer as to what we were supposed to go or how Astaroth was managing to beat us every single time. “I don’t know. And I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m open to suggestions. Because running doesn’t work. As far as I experienced in my visions, everyone we went to for help from here on out ended up dying. We never straight up fought him, but I think that’s definitely the worst idea ever.”

  “I agree. He’s too strong, and there’s too much at stake if we lose.” Claudia got up and started pacing up and down the small aisle. “We’re thinking about this the wrong way.”

  If she thought this was the wrong way, then she had to have an idea of the right way. I leaned forward, on the edge of the seat. “How are we supposed to be thinking about it?” If she had an even half-way decent idea, I was down for trying it.

  “Well, you tried running. What about magic?”

  I wasn’t sure. “I think we tried a couple of spells but we never got far with them before he showed up. I don’t think we even finished a spell.”

  “Okay. So, we don’t run. We look for a spell.”

  “What about Eli?” Chris asked.

  I sat for a second. “I don’t know. He never showed back up.”

  “But he said he would if you were on the right path. Right?” Adrian asked.

  “Right. You’re right. So, it makes sense that all of the visions ended badly and that he never showed. I was basically shown a long ass list of what not to do.” I thought back on what the archon told me. “Eli said that with the fey gone and the Seven a mess that the seal between the planes was broken. So, we have to find a way to fix the seal before he’ll show up. It seemed like a tangent to our goal, so we just never focused on that. But maybe that’s where we went wrong.”

  “I think that’s exactly where we went wrong.” Lucas was usually so quiet. When he spoke, my hope soared. “Think about it. This all started with Astaroth breaking free, and that’s what it sounds like we were focusing on in your visions. Literally how to stop him—magic against magic. How to keep him out of our plane. But there’s more to it than that. The meeting that Michael is having is about the reformation of the Seven. Who’s to take the empty spots? And—”

  “Yeah. I was in one of those meetings. It was a bunch of chest beating and a whole lot of wasted time. Not to mention, Astaroth somehow showed up there, too.”

  “The meeting doesn’t matter, but what did you learn in it?”

  Holy shit. Lucas was on to something. “Their bond can’t be restored for five months. They need a lunar eclipse, and we can’t hold on that long. That’s why it seemed like a dead-end. Eli said we had to restore the seal and that the Seven had to be fixed, but we can’t hold Astaroth off for a few days, let alone five months. Plus, it was fey magic that formed the bond, and they’re not going to help us.”

  “No. They won’t,” Chris said. “Even if they knew what was at stake. They’re too pissed at us for messing with their lives when we were outed. They’re so stubborn. So stuck in their ways. They won’t think outside of what they want and their rules.” He crossed his arms and sunk back into the couch. I wondered who he was talking about just then—the fey in general or Cosette.

  “Yes, but the bond of the Seven is the key,” Lucas said, his voice had a quiver of hope. He was on to something, but I was missing it. “Eli isn’t going to show up until you find a way arou
nd all of that and restore the seal between the planes.”

  I crushed the plastic bottle in my hands. “That’s an impossible task. Maybe more impossible than beating Astaroth in a fist fight.” We were so screwed.

  “I know,” Lucas said. “That’s why we weren’t in a rush for the meeting, but something needs to happen. We’re not going to defeat Astaroth until we figure out a way around the rules. We’re just as stuck in our ways as the fey. So, we need to be thinking bigger.”

  I turned to Claudia. “Can we force a lunar eclipse magically?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean…” She twirled the end of her braid in her fingers as she thought. “I’ve never heard of such thing, so I don’t think it’s possible, but I could do some digging. I wish that we’d manage to scrounge some of the books on the compound before it was burned. We didn’t have a library as large as the one in St. Ailbe’s or the one in Peru, but every house had books. The books on craft at the school aren’t great. And without better information…” She slid past Lucas to sit in her seat and grabbed her phone. “I’ll see what I can dig up online but it might not be doable.”

  I got up and started pacing where Claudia had left off. “Okay. So we have to find balance. And the Seven is broken. So…” I froze. Oh, shit. Lucas wasn’t the only one with an idea. And it wasn’t something I’d tried in my visions.

  “You’ve thought of something you didn’t try in your visions?” Chris asked, as if he was reading my mind.

  I nodded.

  “We’re all ears,” Adrian said. “What’s your idea?”

  “Maybe I’d failed because we were too focused on trying to fix what was broken instead of trying something totally different.” I looked at Lucas. “What if we made a new Seven that wasn’t the Seven?”

  Lucas frowned. “I’m not sure I’m following.”

  “The Seven is old news. Done. Past tense. Instead of trying to fix the bond that the Seven had, what if we made something new? Something similar but better. Stronger. Something we wouldn’t need a lunar eclipse for.”

  “I…” Lucas was quiet as he thought. “I guess I’ve never thought about abandoning the the Seven entirely. I just…” He pressed his lips together. “The Alphas are not going to like it at all.”