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  Waking the Dragon

  Alexis Davie

  Waking the Dragon

  Text Copyright © 2019 by Alexis Davie

  All rights reserved. This book or 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.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing, 2019

  Publisher

  Secret Woods Books

  [email protected]

  www.SecretWoodsBooks.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Other Books You Will Love

  Thank You!

  About the Author

  1

  Garrick

  Garrick blew a smoke ring. He wasn’t showing off, didn’t need to, and besides, he was drinking alone, but it was a habit, that little pop of the jaw and light breath out.

  This was the only pub in the East End of London, in Garrick’s opinion, worth his time these days. And by that, he meant it was still grimy, sticky, and run by immortals. And they didn’t care if you smoked inside. Well, not when you were Garrick, anyway. Garrick could do whatever he wanted. And god, was he bored of it. Of course, it was all relative. He remembered before there had been any pubs here, before taverns, even. He remembered, vaguely, before there had been a London to speak of. A settlement by a river. Then the bloody Romans, then… blah, blah, history.

  Relative or not, Garrick could not stand gastropubs. And worse than gastropubs was the craft beer, the artisan beer it was now. Ghastly. Awful. And so many people everywhere, noshing and sloshing and generally being loud and happy and not quietly nursing warmish ale like was right and proper. Garrick took a sip of his warmish ale. And it wasn’t just the people-people either, shifter landlords, and vampire landlords… everyone was getting in on it.

  It’s conspicuous not to move with the times, Elfred had said when Garrick had walked into his favorite greasy spoon to find her upgrading to a coffee shop. A coffee roaster, in fact. He just wanted egg and chips. He’d been eating egg and chips at Ellie’s for fifty years.

  Well, Garrick could do what he wanted, and he was done moving with the times. This was it. He was stopping here, in this clapped out boozer by Hackney Downs. Idly, he wondered what would happen if he stubbed his cigarette out on the bartender’s arm. Not that he wanted to, but what would old Harry say if he did? He’d get that look, the same one as when he spilled a drink, knocked over a chair, or put anything but The Velvet Underground on the jukebox.

  The ‘60s had been this place’s heyday. Actually. 1969 was the last time Garrick remembered having fun. He fingered the thin lapel of his suit with his free hand. It was holding up pretty well, he thought. To be fair, he’d bought ten on Carnaby Street, that one day; it had been summer and too hot to wear them, but he’d bought them anyway. It was easy to work the economy, now, as an immortal. Capitalism favored those with money to invest and large networks of friends, acquaintances, and families who owed them a favor, to draw on for knowledge.

  Not that Garrick thought about money. He had a bank manager and a financial advisor, and when he needed money, he went to the bank and got it because he couldn’t do with keeping hold of a stupid plastic card or remembering a single four-digit number.

  “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 insubordi
nate, 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 half
way 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.