14. Alaric
ALARIC
Iused to think my fangs were my best feature, but I am coming around to the view that it’s actually my patience.
The old Alaric would have kicked in Leland Brooks’ ribcage and called it a day.
Possibly before noon. But tonight I allow myself the luxury of restraint, which is what the situation demands, and perhaps Birdie has rubbed off on me.
I hope not too much. The last thing I need is to care what she thinks of my process.
I leave her in the care of Dandy the Witch and her coven, in a warm kitchen that’s all spoon-carved counters and vials of suspiciously fizzing something.
The forest outside presses close to the windows, and I get the distinct sense it’s trying to listen in.
Birdie watches me go, arms crossed over her chest—not frightened anymore, just taut with a worry she won’t put into words.
She bites her lip once, quick and sharp, before catching my sleeve.
"Be careful."
Three little words. They shouldn't matter nearly as much as they do.
"I always am."
She gives me a look that says she finds that statement wildly optimistic.
I smile despite myself and make myself scarce anyway. Better not to give her another reason to fret.
Thistlebrook is a shabbier twin to Blackthorn Bay, except instead of crammed cryptid bars it has an open harbor and a strict closing time; the buildings are salt-caked and a little desperate, and the locals look at me like I’m expiration-date milk.
Even in a hat and a perfectly drab trench coat, I stand out.
If Birdie were here she’d call it "main character syndrome.
" She's probably right. I walk the docks a few times and let the wind rearrange my hair, then loiter outside the Crab & Quiver until the bar lights go up.
Leland is exactly where a man with a price on his head should not be: the center of the loudest table, half his crew around him and the rest at the bar making predatory eyes at anything with legs.
He wears a suit that cost more than most people’s cars and knows it, and he’s nursing a hand of cards with an air of counterfeit ease—the kind that only comes from never having actually needed to be at ease.
I watch him from the balcony, just inside the steam-cloud windows.
It’s a bit like watching old family movies—except in mine, everyone’s a bastard and no one gets out alive.
I’m not in a hurry. Predators rarely are.
Instead, I pick off the easy marks.
First it’s the lookout: a sour man in a pea coat who takes his smoke breaks on the side deck, never noticing the shadow that blots him out until it’s too late.
I never understood the point of lookouts, honestly.
You can see a threat coming a mile away and still walk right into its teeth.
By the time anyone notices his cigarette still burning against the railing, he's already at the bottom of the harbor wondering where he went wrong.
The second is a girl, barely out of apprenticeship, gutted for this kind of work.
She’s doing shots alone at the end of the bar, hands shaking just enough to make me sad.
A little gentle coercion, and she’s following me into the alley, where she gives me a sob story about her sick mother and how she only took the bounty because she needed the money.
I believe her.
Bad people lie.
Desperate people usually tell the truth.
"Go home," I tell her.
"I don't have one."
"Then find one."
She studies me for a long moment, decides I'm serious, and runs. I suspect she'll think twice before accepting another bounty, and if that's the only good deed I accomplish tonight, I'll consider the evening moderately successful.
The third is a man with arms like butcher’s haunches and a face that’s already been broken and reset a dozen times.
Him I kill. Quiet and fast, in the old way, because he wouldn’t have hesitated if the situation were reversed.
That’s how I know I’m still myself: I can tell which ones are worth the mess.
When I slip back inside, Leland's table is three men lighter. One of the remaining bounty hunters glances toward the door, then toward the empty chairs, frowning. Another checks his watch. Someone mutters that Eddie should've been back by now.
Leland doesn't notice.
Not yet.
He's too busy pretending luck is the same thing as intelligence.
Inside the Crab & Quiver, the air tastes like spilled rum and varnish. Right before last call, Leland tosses down his cards with a theatrical sigh and excuses himself for the head.
I slip after.
He’s waiting for me.
The gun’s in his left hand, which is wrong—Leland’s right-handed, always has been—and the hammer isn’t cocked. He’s bluffing, which would be cute if it wasn’t so fucking stupid.
"Hello, Alaric," he says, keeping the barrel leveled at my chest.
"Leland. You look like hammered shit."
"I've been busy. Your doing, mostly." His mouth twitches into something that almost resembles a smile. "I was hoping we could avoid this."
"Were you?"
"I assumed we could come to an arrangement."
Of course he did.
Everything in Leland's world has a price tag attached to it. Loyalty. Friendship. Love. He honestly believes the only difference between a good man and a bad one is how much it costs to buy them.
"I assume you're here for the bounty."
"There was a bounty."
"There still is." He shrugs. "Name your price."
I can't help smiling.
"You still think I'm here because someone hired me."
"Aren't you?"
"I took the bounty."
His shoulders loosen just enough to notice.
"I kept the girl."
For the first time all evening, his expression cracks.
Not with fear.
With confusion.
Exactly where I want him.
He hesitates.
"You're here for her."
I shrug. "Technically, I'm here for the bounty. But honestly, you're more interesting."
He studies me for a long moment, as though he's trying to decide whether I'm bluffing.
"We could work something out, you know. You hand her over, I take my fiancée home, and you can fade back into your self-pity. Isn't that what you want?"
There it is.
Not the witness.
Not the girl.
His fiancée.
He still believes she's something he misplaced.
I smile, slow and fanged.
"Oh, Leland. I have never wanted anything less."
His finger trembles on the trigger. I can almost feel the panic rippling off him.
"You're not going to kill me."
"Why not?"
He straightens, trying for bravado. "Because you lost your stomach for it. That's what they all say about you, Alaric. You got soft."
I let the silence stretch between us. My eyes burn, the way they always do before things go sideways.
"You know what I love about rumors, Leland?"
He doesn't answer.
"They're almost never true."
Before I can blink, I'm on him. The gun buckles in my hand, and the shot tears a ragged hole through the wall behind me. My fingers curl beneath his chin, tipping his head back. He opens his mouth to say something clever—
—but footsteps scrape across the wooden floor.
Birdie stands in the doorway.
She isn't hiding.
She isn't crying.
She's simply watching.
Leland's whole face changes.
Hope.
"Birdie."
He says her name like she's finally come to her senses.
"There you are."
He tries to smile.
"I've been looking everywhere for you. Come home."
Birdie doesn't move.
She crosses her arms and looks at me instead.
"Need a minute to finish him off?"
I blink.
Leland blinks.
Then Birdie gives one small shrug.
"You do you."
I really am going to marry that woman.
So I reach into Leland's mouth and pull the words free.
They're metallic and bitter, tasting of entitlement and old lies, like promises made only to trap someone into keeping them. He gags, his body folding inward as the magic tears through him, an apology gone horribly wrong.
I let him collapse.
I drag him through the back door and dump him into the alley, where broken bottles glitter beneath the security light and old kegs leak sour beer into the gutters.
By the time I step back inside, Birdie is gone.
Sensible woman. Dandy has probably hauled her back into the woods while muttering inventive curses about stubborn vampires.
The bar empties around me, chairs scraping across old floorboards as the last patrons stagger home. Outside, dawn begins bleaching the horizon a dull gray.
I find them halfway down the docks.
Birdie.
Dandy.
One looking worried.
The other looking murderous.
I wisely choose not to guess which is which.
"Are you done?" Birdie asks.
I glance down at the blood drying across my collar.
"Almost."
"How did you find me?"
She smiles.
"You're not nearly as hard to lose as you think."
"I'll work on that."
"You won't."
She's probably right.
"You shouldn't be here."
"I know."
She steps closer anyway.
Her eyes travel over my face, then my collar, then the blood drying across my hands. She reaches up without hesitation, brushes something from my sleeve, then wipes a streak of blood from my cheek with the pad of her thumb.
The gesture catches me so thoroughly off guard that I forget to breathe.
"Are you hurt?" she asks.
For a ridiculous second, I honestly don't understand the question.
"No."
She nods once, apparently satisfied.
Only then do I realize she wasn't asking whether I'd won.
She was asking whether I was all right.
No one has asked me that in a very long time.
A wet cough drifts across the dock.
Leland.
He's somehow managed to crawl as far as the railing, clinging to it with the sort of determination only truly awful people seem capable of. His face is gray now, his confidence washing away with the tide.
He looks at Birdie.
"Birdie..."
She turns.
For a fleeting second, I wonder if she'll pity him.
Instead, she simply says,
"You should go home, Mr. Brooks."
He laughs—a broken, desperate sound.
"Home?" he croaks. "You're coming with me."
"No."
The single word lands harder than any punch.
"You don't understand," he insists. "I'm trying to protect you."
"I know."
"You belong with me."
She shakes her head.
"No."
He points at me with a trembling hand.
"He's a monster."
"I know."
"He'll kill you."
She looks at me.
Really looks at me.
Then back at Leland.
"I know exactly what he is."
She slips her hand into mine.
"And he has never once tried to own me."
Silence.
Leland stares at our joined hands as though they make no sense.
That's the tragedy, really.
He loved Birdie the only way he knew how.
Like property.
The tide reaches his shoes.
Then his knees.
Then, slowly, it takes the rest.
I don't watch him drown.
I don't need to.
He's been gone for much longer than tonight.
Birdie squeezes my hand.
"I'm not afraid of you."
I smile.
"Never wanted you to be."
She studies me for another moment before asking, perfectly seriously,
"Are you going to eat me?"
"I haven't ruled it out."
She laughs.
Sharp.
Warm.
Relieved.
Behind us, Dandy makes an exaggerated gagging noise.
"You two are exhausting."
"We get that a lot," Birdie says.
Then she looks at me.
This time there isn't a trace of uncertainty in her expression.
"Take me home."
I don't trust myself to answer.
I simply lace my fingers through hers and start walking.
Halfway back to Blackthorn, she asks, "Do you miss it?"
"Miss what?"
"Being alive."
I think about it.
"Sometimes. Mostly at breakfast."
"That's fair."
She smiles to herself before adding, "I always thought you'd taste like hate or regret."
"And?"
"You don't."
"What do I taste like?"
She pretends to consider it.
"Complicated."
I laugh.
"That's not a flavor."
"For you," she says, bumping my shoulder with hers, "I think it is."
The sun climbs over the trees behind us, chasing the last of the night from the sky.
For the first time in longer than I care to admit, walking toward Blackthorn with Birdie's hand tucked safely in mine, I realize I'm no longer simply existing.
I'm finally home.