Rise of the Alphas

by Alexis Davie

  “Another?” Harry asked, his expression not changing as he grabbed Garrick’s now empty pint glass.

  “What do you think?” growled Garrick. His voice was surprisingly gravely for his slim frame.

  Harry raised his eyebrows. “Just doing my job, boss.”

  Garrick half nodded, stubbed out his cigarette. In the ashtray, not on the bartender, whom he actually rather liked, or at least was used to. Anyway, he supplied him with a steady flow of ale. In fact, Harry put Garrick’s new pint in front of him in extremely quick time. He was, Garrick suddenly noticed, busy cleaning. Blearily, Garrick looked around the pub, twisting on his bar stool.

  “What are you doing, Harry?” The place was almost clean. Sure, the bulbs were still almost burnt out, and there was no way the carpet was ever going to be anything but sticky, but the tables had been wiped, and there was a smell of…

  “Is that air freshener, Harry?” Garrick asked, screwing up his face in disdain. Harry was pouring a bucket of very dirty looking water down the sink.

  “I don’t like it either, mucker, but I’ve got to bring in the crowds somehow.” Garrick scoffed, intentionally loudly, though it was only himself and Harry in the bar.

  “It’s a Wednesday, Harry. Never crowded in here on a Wednesday. Not for years.”

  “Exactly!” Harry wiped his hands on the dish cloth tucked into the waistband of his blue jeans. “We’ve not all got the sway you have, Garrick. Funds are running low. And there’s generations of our lot that lap up the new. Lots of them are still having fun, if you remember what that’s like?”

  Garrick’s shoulders, though wide, had already been slumped. If it was possible, they became more drawn in.

  “Yes, thanks, Harry. I’m a miserable git, I get it. But what are you doing to my bloody pub?” Harry put out a chubby hand for Garrick’s packet of cigarettes and pulled one out. “Of course you can have one, Harry my old friend,” Garrick said, gesturing with one pale, long-fingered hand. Harry grabbed the lighter.

  “My pub, Garrick, no matter what you’re king of. And we’re having a quiz. Immortals only, the questions will be about our world, and we’ve had the place enchanted so it still looks boarded up.” He lit his cigarette and took a puff, shook it at Garrick a little as he got into the flow. “Let me tell you, though, we’re going to have to up the sickness charm if we want to keep the developers away. The bastards must always be sick with something, or have stronger stomachs than I can imagine, ‘cos they’ve been sniffing around.”

  Garrick let out a small sigh. “I suppose you want me to get that done?”

  “Well,” Harry said, “unless you want your tab totted up. How many years has it been?”

  “Fine, fine,” Garrick said, looking down at his beer and wondering how many he had drunk sitting on that very stool. More than one visit to the bank’s worth, that was for sure, and he bloody hated the bank.

  “Great.” Harry stood back from the bar, where he had been leaning. “Also, it would look good for you to stick around. No participation required, and you always spend your Wednesday nights here, so don’t try telling me you have some important meeting. Our people want to drink where you are, you know that. Just sit here looking miserable and wiping that greasy mop out your face, hmm? And the beer stays free, and I stay open. I’ll put the dirt back once I’m done.”

  Garrick wanted to argue, but Harry was right. Where else would he go on a Wednesday evening. Or a Tuesday, or a Thursday? No, Harry knew he’d stay. He’d known it all along, hadn’t even had to give that bloody speech, really. They were always so insubordinate, the vampires. But it had long been that way. Always hungry these days, too, Garrick supposed, since the treaty banning drinking from innocents.

  Harry was levitating, writing in ornate letters onto a chalkboard with some special kind of pen. Garrick watched him. He tried to think bad thoughts about Harry, but he couldn’t be bothered. He pushed his jaw-length hair back from his face, smoothing in the pomade. Then he stopped, looked at his greasy palm. Bloody vampires and their mind tricks. Even worked on him after a couple of pints.

  2

  Brinley

  Brinley had traveled to the other side of the city using her father’s last ready-enchanted teleportation stone and her legs after that. It was a surprisingly nice day for spring, really, with only the threat of rain, but Brinley was getting tired.

  It was the book, obviously. The book was so heavy in her backpack she suspected it may be enchanted to argue, impede, when stolen from its master. But it knew her well. She had been sneaking into her father’s office and thumbing through it, staring at the stick-figure illustrations, running her hands over the old parchment, smelling the years and years of dust and enchantment in the thing, since long, long before she could read the ancient script. And even longer before she had learned her first spell. Anyway, her father didn’t deserve it.

  The thing was, the book was big. And she didn’t remember the spell for making a small space larger properly yet, so her pack was the thirty-five liters it had been sold as, and fit only clothes, sentimental bits and bobs, and the book. She had a little human money but was loath to use it so quickly. She needed to find other immortals, and she had been looking for hours without any sign of them.

  Brinley knew the city fine; well, she knew the center, and she knew the south. This was the East End, and she had rarely visited. Never alone. She had started in narrow alleys named for old professions: fishmongers, Threadneedle, probably laundrette, who knew. Lanes and streets. Some cobbled. And then she had passed through an area of factories and canals, fancy new breweries and pizzerias, and a lot of very expensive looking flats. Now, she was back in something like the real world. Bus stops, a park, a few pubs… but no sign that any were full of her people. She was getting desperate enough she was about to walk into an establishment full of humans, when she spotted the sparkle out of the corner of her eye.

  Brinley had been looking down at her tired feet in her black boots, wondering if her laces were going to come untied, so she hadn’t seen it at first, but then she had felt a tickle at her back, and as she turned, there was a little glimmer. Finally, finally, there was a moment of an old pub, windows boarded up and bad graffiti coating everything, paint peeling, sign swinging but indecipherable… and then it was in front of her. The Gimlet.

  The sign was red and gold, chipped but beautiful, swinging just lightly in a wind that wasn’t there. And sure, the paint on the place was still peeling, but the stained-glass front windows showed scenes of witches rising above fork-wielding villagers and a werewolf larger than the house beside it, looking up at an orange moon. Her people.

  Brinley wriggled her shoulders, readjusting the weight of her bag. She stood up straight, shook out one sore foot and then another. She reached up and ruffled her damp fringe, made sure her short red bob wasn’t sticking up everywhere, and took a moment to breathe. She hadn’t decided on a story, had been too busy walking. Little witch in the big city was going to have to do for now. For once, her youth would be on her side for this ruse. She couldn’t mention her father, of course. Or Xander. There was a possibility that other immortals would have heard of them, whatever kind they might be. It was easy to get lost in a city this size when not yourself, but any city could be a village, too. Tomorrow, Brinley decided, she would consult the book about changing her appearance. Hopefully by then it would have calmed down and stopped messing with her, be willing to help.

  Brinley took a deep breath, closed her green eyes for just one more courage-building moment, and stomped as confidently as she could towards the double-doors of the pub.

  The smell of bleach hit her first, then the smell of cigarettes and stale beer. There was a couple in the corner, huddled together, almost whispering. They were both wearing double denim. Matching couples, Brinley thought, were disgusting. She gave them a wide berth and headed to the bar, where the only other customer and the barman were talking. The barman was sallow and chubby, a slightly receding hairline…
vampire? He looked like a vampire. He had that hungry look in his eyes, and by the state of his skin, he didn’t see the sun. Then he could be any bartender with that description. Brin smiled at her own internal joke and hopped up onto a stool. It dipped in the middle from years upon years of arses upon it, and she had to grip the bar for a second to settle herself in a way that meant she wouldn’t slip off.

  The barman turned his gaze to Brin but didn’t say anything, just looked at her. Brinley smiled at him, daring him to keep being misanthropic.

  “Drink?” he asked, slowly wiping his hands on the dish cloth tucked into his waistband.

  “Beer,” Brin said, “whatever’s cheap.” The bartender made a slightly huffy noise and turned to grab a glass. Brinley’s eyes were drawn to the man next to her. He was hunched over, intentionally not looking her way, one hand wrapped around a pint and the other holding a cigarette.

  “Can I bum one?” she found herself asking. She hadn’t meant to, but there was something about this bar and the veneers of misery coating these two men that made her want to poke, made her want to find out what was underneath. It was irritating being an empath sometimes, and her father had seen no use in honing those abilities. Girls’ magic, she’d heard him saying to her sorcery tutor when he’d brought up the innate abilities she had. So she just felt feelings ricochet off her and burrow into her at random. She could be walking down the street and suddenly be in love with some unknown pair of eyes she half-remembered, or crying about… was it a work presentation? She couldn’t see it clearly…

  “What?” asked the tall man.

  Brin put her smile on again. “A cigarette. Can I bum one?”

  He raised his eyebrows, light brown and barely there, and blew smoke out of his nose. But he held the packet out to her. It was a packet of Lucky Strikes, no health warning, no plain brown-green packaging. Brinley took one, put it between her lips, and leaned towards him to light it from his. To her surprise, he leaned forward, too, sucking on the cigarette in his mouth, and she did the same, and hers was lit.

  When he leaned back, he took the cigarette from his lips and, as if feeling a need to explain the intimate gesture, said, “Harry took my lighter.” He pointed his cigarette at the balding barman, who ignored him and put her pint down in front of her.

  Brin nodded and took a sip of the flattish warmish beer. She looked at the cigarette between her fingers.

  “When or where are these from?” she asked. “The packaging laws came in a decade ago. More.”

  The man pushed his hair back. It was thick with product, almost looked greasy. He needed it cut. Then he looked at her, right in the eyes, and she nearly choked on her ale. His eyes were a reptilian green, glinting with flecks of yellow gold. He blinked slowly.

  “I have them in storage,” he said. “They’re from before you were born, I’d guess.”

  Brinley didn’t look away from him. “Probably, but I’m very well educated, and I’m a witch. I can get you more when you run out.”

  He laughed. It was a growly laugh. All the cigarettes, she supposed. “Well educated? Are you still learning?”

  Brin shrugged, looking at the side of his face now as he concentrated on his drink. “Aren’t we all?”

  Harry came over, must have heard the laugh. “Is Garrick making you uncomfortable, little witch?”

  “Garrick?” Brinley asked, still looking at the side of the tall… of Garrick’s face. “No, I think I’m making him uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s that ridiculous suit. I think the ’60s might want it back, Garrick.”

  Harry made a noise halfway between a laugh and a cough and held up his hands, backing away from the pair of them.

  Garrick turned to her again, looking her up and down with those impenetrable eyes. She couldn’t get past them. It was like she bounced back at herself, saw herself reflected. Her baggy t-shirt tucked into old Levis, rolled cuffs, boots, the wet jacket hanging on the back of her chair, the yellow backpack hung on the hook under the bar, her heart-shaped, girlish face… but she could only feel him processing. Feel him seeing, but not what came next. It was like being sanded, like being raked across. She almost gasped.

  He pointed to a blackboard behind the bar. “It starts in half an hour, little witch. Better find some teammates. Or are your school friends meeting you?”

  She glanced at the board: PUB QUIZ - MAGICAL LORE - 7:30 UNTIL LATE - BAR TABS FOR TOP TWO TEAMS, HUMILIATION FOR THE LOSERS! Then she looked back at Garrick, who was still watching her with those almost unblinking eyes of his. She couldn’t quite keep her gaze steady, let it flick down to his chest and back up again. His white shirt was open by a couple of buttons, his chest below it smooth, breathing slow.

  “I’m not really a pub quiz kind of a girl,” Brinley said. Garrick took a draw on his cigarette and let the smoke out.

  “What, don’t want to use all that education?” Brin was annoyed enough she had forgotten about her little witch in the big city plan.

  “My father isn’t big on lore. He insisted my education was a practical one.” She felt her fingers crackle and caught the sparks out of the corner of her eyes. Even Garrick looked down as she balled her hands into fists.

  “Uh oh,” he said, “the little witch is powerful. Can’t control it yet, though, can you?” Her hands were hot. “Come back when you can, hmm?”

  Brin took a swig of her drink to calm herself down and give herself a second. She looked at Garrick again, his rye, thin-lipped smile, his smooth pale skin, and those eyes.

  “I will,” she said. “Seems fitting—you’re living in the past, I’m about to be the future.”

  There had been a growing hum of conversation in the bar up until this point, with immortals wandering in pairs and small groups every few minutes, keeping Harry something like busy, but it stopped when Garrick suddenly stood up. It was like everyone in the bar was holding their breath.

  He was, Brinley had to admit, quite intimidating at full height. A long, sinewy, undeniably beautiful man, with an ethereal quality about him. And the stupid suit quite suited him. Had been made for him, probably, his wide shoulders and slim waist.

  “Little witch,” Garrick growled, “if that was anything like a threat, I’d advise leaving right now.”

  Brin’s heart was in her throat. Actually, it was trying to get out. That, or she was about to vomit. But she wasn’t going to give this jumped up misogynist the pleasure.

  Little witch. He sounded like her father.

  “I’ll go over there then, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” she said, hopping down off her stool and grabbing her bag and drink, turning, and walking towards a small side table near the loos.

  3

  Garrick

  Garrick watched the young witch walk away, though he knew he should turn back to the bar and ignore her. She had flinched, sure, but she’d stood up to him. It wasn’t often that happened. She had something. And those sparks, that power…

  Her red bob just brushed the back of her neck, which was freckled, the straight collar of her t-shirt showing where her skin turned paler again. To his surprise, she walked around the small table, put her stupid yellow rucksack down, and sat facing him, one leg crossed over the other. She didn’t look at him, just got out a slim volume and began to read.

  Ah! What was…? Garrick looked down at his hand, where his cigarette had burned right down and the red of it was right at his fingers. He dropped it in the ashtray and looked at his index and middle finger—they were patched red for a second, a flash of scales, and went back to their normal creamy-white hew.

  “I won’t serve her again, boss.” Garrick looked up at this. Harry was in front of him, muttering out of the corner of his mouth, polishing a glass. “I can get our people to throw her out, too? Madgrigal’s boy is over in the corner, and I can get El here in a jiff…”

  Garrick held up a hand. “Nah, Harry, she’s just a fresh little witch with some attitude. Does she even know who I am?”

  Harry shrugged. “Doe
sn’t everyone?”

  Slowly, Garrick shook his head. “Not anymore, they don’t.”

  Harry faded back into his bar work, in that vampire way of his of disappearing even as you looked right at him. He whispered to some scrawny young shifter girl at the other end of the bar and then walked around the bar to move boxes from the stage area in preparation for this damn quiz.

  Garrick had to give it to him, he’d never seen The Gimlet this busy on a Wednesday night. Looking around, it was a rough bunch. There were mohawks and nose rings, bowl cuts and frosted tips and fur coats and… Garrick was not sure he understood fashion anymore. The realization came as something of a blow, and he had to pull his eyes away from the froth of immortals lining the walls of the pub, where long leather benches ran.

  He took another look at the young witch. He wished he knew her name, but why? Why would he need to know it? Anyway, he could find out easily enough. He still had his networks, though they might be surprised to hear from him.

  It was like the girl was fizzing not just with magic, but with energy. It was irritating. Garrick was determined to leave before this stupid quiz got underway, even if Harry had asked him not to. Besides, he had a council meeting later, and that was the fault of Harry’s people. But he also needed to get away from the girl. He needed to be able to think. He’d let her say things to him he wouldn’t usually let anyone say. Was he that far gone? He’d be insulted by a newly adult witch, appeared from nowhere, in front of his own people?

  He felt like a limp old thing. Like he had never made a decision in his life, like he had always felt like this… felt nothing at all. Garrick called Harry over.

  “I’m off,” he told the vampire. Harry sighed.