War Of The Alphas: Alpha - War of the Alphas: Alpha Part 7
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War of the Alphas: Alpha Part 7

Her life would probably be a lot happier if she tried not to imagine it.

"So if I tell you to leave this woman alone, you'll leave her alone?" Deirdre asked.

The vampires exchanged looks. Deirdre couldn't tell what breed the male one was, but she suspected the female was a vrykolakas, judging by the ruddy skin and shaggy hair. A Greek vampire. They really got all types in New York.

"It's just that she's with GCD," Vince said.

Deirdre had no idea what the GCD was. "I don't care if she's with the OPA or the NFL or any other three-letter organization. If she's not trying to kill you, then you don't get to try to kill her. Let's be a little more civilized than that, huh?"

"But we're against the GCD." He said this with the tone of someone worried that there was a hidden camera recording the conversation, like it wasn't possible that Deirdre was serious.

She made a shooing motion with her hands. "Go find someone to drain. I'm sure there's a volunteer spread-eagle at Original Sin with your name on him as we speak."

"I am pretty hungry," the vrykolakas muttered.

Gods, they were pathetic. Deirdre was confident that her former roommate, Jolene, could have done far better if she'd unleashed her predatory side. These things were shriveled, underfed, and pale-hardly any kind of threat.

"All right," Vince said.

He tugged his vrykolakas companion down the alley.

Deirdre lifted the woman out of the trash. "Thank the gods you found me when you did," she said, clinging to Deirdre with a little too much familiarity.

It wasn't until they got to the nearest street light that Deirdre realized whom she had rescued. "Mallory? You're Mallory. You're the witch from the safe house. What are you doing in vampire territory?"

"This is where you ditched me," Mallory said. "You-you just left me here, like three hours ago. Five hours ago. I don't know."

"Then what are you still doing here?"

"You were running really fast when we left the safe house. I have no idea where I am. Where else would I go?"

"Somewhere, anywhere, outside of vampire territory in the middle of night." Deirdre glanced at the moon. She didn't feel any urge to howl at it or shapeshift or anything else. She was probably safe to hang out with a helpless witch. "Okay, let's find somewhere safer for you to be."

Mallory edged away from Deirdre. "Aren't you a shifter?"

"Not really," she said, heart aching. "Where do you live?"

"Scarsdale."

"Wait, really? And you work for the OPA?"

"I want to help shifters," Mallory muttered. She wouldn't meet Deirdre's eyes.

Deirdre warmed to the witch a fraction. "Okay, I can't get you to Scarsdale. Do you have any friends or family nearer than that? Preferably accessible by subway?"

"There's a GCD polling station somewhere in Chelsea. They're probably there tonight, getting stuff ready for the election. It's at this old school, William Harris."

She knew where that was. "All right. I can get you there. Come on." The vampires who attacked Mallory had already vanished, leaving the streets empty and quiet again. The rain was so light that Deirdre couldn't even feel it. She only saw the signs of it in the faint ripples on the damp pavement. "So what's a GCD polling station?"

"For the election?" Mallory patted down her pockets. She produced a crumpled flyer. "We're the Gaean Citizens for Democracy, a volunteer organization. We're setting up polling stations, transporting people on voting day, providing security to make sure everyone can vote safely... That kind of thing."

Deirdre hadn't heard of them, but she hadn't exactly been paying attention to the news since Rylie's announcement. She'd been a little too busy hiding out with Stark. And also being dead.

"You guys have gotten your act together quickly," she said, turning a quick circle to get her bearings. They weren't far from the elementary school.

"We've been hoping something like this would happen for a while. There was actually a petition a couple years ago. We already had a lot of volunteers from that, and it made it easy to get mobilized."

"Huh." She pulled Mallory around the corner. "I'd be curious to see what you guys have got going on there."

Mallory tucked her hair behind her ear, glancing nervously around the empty street. "You probably shouldn't go inside the school with me. As the vampires showed, you're kinda recognizable, and most people don't know what I know."

"What do you know?"

"That you're not like him," the witch said. "You're not his Beta. You're his Jiminy Cricket."

Deirdre lifted her eyebrows. "Say that again?"

"Haven't you ever seen Pinocchio?"

"Can't say that I have."

"You're Everton Stark's conscience," Mallory said. "You're the force of good trying to push him closer to a political center."

Deirdre snorted. That was an awfully romantic way to say "terrified woman who was volunteered to spy on his pack."

Mallory seemed to recognize where they were now. She picked up her pace, taking obvious care to stick to the lighted parts of the sidewalk. "Don't laugh. Stark would have killed me if you weren't there tonight. I can only guess how many lives you've saved by working with him."

"You wouldn't guess how many people I've killed working with him," Deirdre said.

The witch missed a step. "Um, it's over here."

She didn't need to point out the polling station. It was the only lighted building in the neighborhood.

"There you go," Deirdre said, stopping at the edge of the block. The windows were so bright that she could see inside, but it wasn't enough to sate her curiosity. "I guess I'll leave you here."

Her wistfulness must have come out in her tone because Mallory stopped halfway to the fence. "Do you want to come in?"

"No, you're right. I shouldn't."

"Five minutes should be okay. You can see the setup for the election. It's the least I can do now that you've saved my life twice."

"Okay." Deirdre pulled up her hood and shrank into her jacket. "Lead on."

The gymnasium was warm, dry, and barely bigger than the cramped rooms at the asylum. Deirdre had a hard time imagining how children had ever gotten much recreation in there, even before the neighborhood lost all of its children.

A row of curtained booths were set up along the back, opposite the narrow stage. A group of people were clustered around the sign in table.

"I thought you were working tonight," said one of the men, whose eyes widened at the sight of Mallory.

"Yeah, I ran into a friend," Mallory said. "So I took the rest of the night off. How's it going here?"

"The registered voters list showed up while you were out. Take a look at it." He pushed a clipboard toward her.

Deirdre wandered toward the booths while Mallory conferred with the other volunteer.

The setup looked just like a normal election, with one major difference: each of the booths had a large rune printed on the side. Deirdre spread her fingers over one of them. The rune was a little bigger than her palm, and she didn't recognize it. She had never paid that much attention to the spells people cast around her.

She flipped the curtain open. Instead of a computer on the inside, there was a single page, like those in a witch's Book of Shadows. There were names printed on each side and no obvious way to mark a vote.

She traced her fingertip over Stark's name. It glowed at her touch.

"It's not active yet," said a man from behind her.

Deirdre turned to see the volunteer that Mallory had spoken with. He was a stocky guy with an open, friendly face. "It looks pretty cool. When's it gonna go live?"

"Day of the election," he said. "It'll run from midnight to midnight. But we're asking to get a couple extra days to make sure everyone who wants to vote can get in."

"Are you using the normal voter registry? Like Democrats and Republicans and Green Party and...?"

"We've got those lists, yeah. But the spells are set up so anyone can vote once. Anybody with gaean blood in them." He looked incredibly smug about that. "The OPA planned on pushing for voter IDs, but what are vamps supposed to do if they can't get out during business hours to register? Or the shifters living out on the farms? Everyone deserves a voice."

Deirdre felt a smile growing over her lips. "How are those vamps and shifters going to vote?"

"Absentee ballots, mostly. We've been organizing those too. We're sending them out tomorrow."

"Seems like you've thought of everything."

"How often do we get a chance to influence our lives on this scale? The Alpha is a big deal. Everyone needs to get in on this." He thrust a hand toward her. "I'm Darryl, by the way."

She shook his hand. "Uh...I'm, um..." She tried to think of a fake name and failed. The only thing she could come up with was Niamh, and just the idea of the swanmay made her stomach churn.

"You're Deirdre Tombs," Darryl said. "Mallory told me."

She glanced at the witch, who was talking to more volunteers now. Judging by her vigorous hand gestures and all the nervous glances cast in Deirdre's direction, Mallory was relating the confrontation in the alley. And probably what happened at the safe house, too. She was going to get the news out before January Lazar did.

It wouldn't be long before everyone knew who Deirdre was.

"I should go." Deirdre only made it two steps to the door before Darryl stopped her.

"You belong here as much as anyone else," he said. "We're not going to call the OPA or anything."

It might help Deirdre if they did. Maybe they'd be able to get a hold of Rylie Gresham, even if she couldn't. "Thanks."

"We're hoping Everton Stark's going to throw in with the oath," Darryl said. "Any word on that?"

Deirdre had no idea what he was talking about, but she hated to look stupid. Obviously she needed to catch up on the news. "That's not up to me. I just shoot things that he wants to be shot."

"But you can talk to him. It'd make a big difference if he agreed to the terms." Darryl toyed with the curtain to the voting booth. "I know it's a lot to ask, but if you could just talk to him..."

"Nobody just talks to Stark," Deirdre said.

"If anyone could, it'd be you."

Sure, if she wanted to get her face broken. Or kissed. She wasn't sure which would be worse. "I should go," Deirdre said, backing away.

Darryl followed her. "There's been a lot of talk about how the OPA isn't going to let him win, even if he gets the popular vote. People are afraid. Worse than that, they're getting angry." He waved his tablet vaguely at her. "People are talking about rioting on the forums."

"People talk about a lot of stuff on the internet they don't actually plan to do."

"Not like this," Darryl said.

Deirdre glanced over at the sign in table again. The volunteers were watching her talk to Darryl.

The volunteers looked like normal people. Mothers, sons, neighbors from down the street, the guy who ran the bodega on the corner. If there were riots, these volunteers wouldn't be the people causing pain. They'd be the people getting hurt.

"Anyway...thanks for bringing Mallory to us," Darryl said. "It means a lot to us."

He didn't try to stop her when she headed for the exit this time.

But when she passed the voting booths, a label on the back of the nearest one caught her eye. It said, "Manufactured by Hardwick Industries."

The name tugged at her.

"Hardwick," Deirdre muttered.

Like Pierce and Jaycee Hardwick, two of the unseelie sidhe?

She hadn't seen them since the meeting at Original Sin. They hadn't been at the assault on the asylum. But they were definitely working for Rhiannon, and their name was on the back of the voting booth.

She waved to Mallory. "Hey! Over here!"

The witch jogged over to Deirdre. "Something wrong?"

"Is Hardwick Industries related to Hardwick Medical Research?" Deirdre asked, pointing out the label.

"I think so," Mallory said.

"Are you telling me that Hardwick Industries is behind the design of the voting booths?"

"No, they just donated them for the election. It's old stuff. I think these were built before Genesis."

"Did you know that the owner of Hardwick Industries is a high-ranking member of the unseelie?"

Mallory shook her head. "This is all a magical election. They just donated the booths, not even the books inside. There's no magic in the equipment that they gave us."

"Are you sure? What about this?" Deirdre tapped the rune on the side.

"That was added after they were delivered. It couldn't have been interfered with. Trust me, we're watching this election for integrity. We're watching very closely."