Friends and Enemies

Alan Wolfe entered Alex’s large house. The place was getting to be familiar to him, especially the music room and the bedroom. Of course the Venture noticed the dark glasses, everyone would. And they would all know what it meant.

The Gangrel was grateful that the loss of his blue eyes, replaced by fierce yellow ones, was not too disturbing a mark. He would be able to pass his eyes off as very odd, but necessarily supernatural in many cases, though it would bring him attention he may not want. It could have been antlers like Johnny, or like the tails that both of the other Gangrel had. Perhaps it was because he was a watchman, a sentinel, that his beast came out in his eyes first.

But Wolfe was no less ashamed. Alex looked into his golden eyes thoughtfully, they didn’t disturb her. It was her opinion that kindred were monsters, a statement that Alan rebelled against. Yes, they were cursed, but they had free will, and they could choose their actions, their courses, even as Alex said, to choose to end their life and escape the curse entirely. Matters of the soul had been much on Alan’s mind since his frenzy, and he’d spent his quiet hours as the moon dimmed to a crescent thinking about his beast and his soul.

Alex frustrated him. At one moment it seemed that she actually had some affection for him, that she was attracted to him. But the next she said that some other bestial mark would only have been interesting to her, that she found Black Johnny and Brightwind intriguing. Alan was a little surprised about himself that he cared if she was attracted to him specifically. Well, as he was arguing, he was still very human, and humans had feelings, had desires, had egos.

Alex was different, older, and she had lost much of what made her human. But not all of it. There were times when that human part surfaced and Alan actually liked Alexandria, when his desire for her went beyond paying off a debt, beyond the physical attraction to a beautiful woman. And then there were the times when she was all vampire, distant and calculating, and it was only his obligation that forced him into her bed.

It was different with Sasha. She was still human, and she was so alive. They picked up the lab equipment she would need and began to set it up. Alan asked her about it and the bright young woman chatted amiably about the function of each machine and how she was going to use it. For a man who had been educated during the civil war, the actual functions were beyond his understanding, but he enjoyed listening to her.

He was sorry that he had to go back to Alex, as…enjoyable as those meetings were. It was a very different sort of companionship, the two women. Alan even began to wonder if Sasha could be attracted to him. The last weeks had been full of reminders of his living days, living needs and desires. While he had suffered at the hands of the beast had the mark to show it, the remains of his human soul had been fed and nurtured as well.

While it might have been nice to have Sasha stay at his apartment to sleep, he had to understand that it wasn’t well furnished, and he couldn’t quite see fit to complain that she asked him to dive her home, the young mortal wrapping her arms around his middle and laying her head against his back.

What enjoyment there was vanished with the car that hit them and then sped away. Wolfe gripped the handlebars, trying to keep control of the bike, but Sasha was slipping. He reached for her, but had to abandon that attempt to keep the bike from tipping and she fell. Wolfe planted his foot and spun the bike around. Sasha was hurt, but alive, though Alan didn’t get to worry about that for long before the sudden rush of premonition. He didn’t know if Auspex heightened a sort of sixth sense as well as the traditional five, but he was grateful enough as he threw himself over Sasha and flame lit up the night.

They were further from the blast than he had been the first time, but chunks of flaming debris rained down around them, and pelted Wolfe’s back. The Gangrel scooped her into his arms, feeling the strangeness of a mortal heart beating rapidly against his chest, and cleared the area.

He stopped the bike when they were safe. Sasha was dazed and she’d said something had cracked inside of her. He’d been talking to her just before the blast. She needed help. A hospital was the first place to go, but Alan also knew that what would take weeks of healing, his blood could do in moments.

Alan wasn’t about to ghoul her when she wasn’t able to talk about it, so he left her at the hospital. Dawn was close and he couldn’t stay, but he promised to call her and visit if he could.

She’d been drugged when he called the next evening, but her ribs were only cracked, not broken and she said that she would probably be discharged by morning. Alan closed his phone gratefully as Alex appeared in her front door.

The Ventrue woman had demanded eight hours of his time tonight to make up for lost time. It was going to be a real test of his stamina and creativity. By the time he left, she’d know everything that he knew or had even heard of. But when he saw her in a suit, rather than the elegant but sexy dresses she usually greeted him, he knew that there was going to be more lost time.

She led him to her car and they set out to the Gangrel Preserve to meet as primogen. She held his yellow gaze and made it clear that tonight he was not present as interpreter, but an advisor. Alan soon found that none of the primogen, even Alexandria, were pleased at the lack of action concerning the bombings. Prince Dorian seemed unconcerned, and the police and media only seemed to be going through the motions of dealing with the situation.

They asked Wolfe to relate what he knew of the bombings since he has been nearby both explosions, and Alex asked permission to view them in his mind.

Valerton had never had a vampire sheriff before, not under the loose control of the Gangrel, and not even under the Camarilla control of the Ventrue. The primogen were beginning to think that Valerton needed one, and that Alan was best suited to the task.

Wolfe considered that carefully. No one had ever asked him to ride his scouting trips around the city, or to fight off the few Sabbat incursions. No one ever asked him to stand up and protect them, it was just something he did. He did it because no one else was and it needed to be done.

If he became the Camarilla Sheriff, he would have authority to back him up, the power to call on others or to question them, even the ability to argue his mind with the prince or primogen. And if Brightwind lost control again… But it would also place him under the control of the prince and elders, force him to abide by Camarilla rules, and at times, it might also turn him against other Kindred, even his own Clan.

Johnny argued the cons with Alan in private, almost trying to talk him out of it. Wolfe thought that it might be the fact of his friendship with Sasha more than the office of Sheriff that angered him, though. He was not pleased that Alan had followed his own judgment in that matter.

But Alan was able to decide. They couldn’t force him to do anything as Sheriff, just as he didn’t let his sire force him to kill Sasha. Gangrel feet were not nailed down, and there was no problem that couldn’t just be left behind. Alan wouldn’t turn against his clan any more than he would turn against the mortal woman he had decided to protect, and he would use the powers of the Sheriff to do what no one else was doing.

The trip back to Alex’s house was as quiet as the trip out to the Preserve, but this time Alex kept her beautifully sculpted face turned towards Alan, watching him. Her smooth white face seemed troubled, though she showed so little that Wolfe always had a hard time reading her. But the reason for her disquiet troubled Alan more.

As she watched his thoughts, she saw places in his mind where his memories had been taken. Cut out or rewritten like film in the editing room. And not just recent memories either, but someone had taken old memories from before the embrace even.

If it wasn’t bad enough that someone had violated him in this way, Alex refused to restore his memory. Her arguments that it may have been done for a good reason and the implication that she could take the very memory of her revealing the changes to him only made Alan more angry.

He stalked the grounds of Alex’s manor while the Venture waited inside, expecting a lover to return. Tonight, she was the elder, the primogen, the vampire. Even as they made love, Alan was lonely.

The next evening Alan paid a visit to Sasha’s professor, Doctor Marshal. She’d received a message from him, threatening that if she did not go public with her findings about the Robin Red, that he would publish it without her. Until he arrived on the campus, Wolfe actually thought that this was going to tumble into bloodshed. Johnny would not take kindly to the interference of mortal scholars in this matter and it could very well drive him to kill Doctor Marshal and Sasha, yet killing Doctor Marshal might be the only way to prevent that violence. Alan cursed and wished again that he had mastered Alex’s teachings already.

But as he approached the professor’s office, it occurred to him that everyone at the school was under the impression that he was her boyfriend. He thought up the story even as he told it, using as much truth as he could. Truth, he was quickly discovering, makes the best lies.

The professor agreed to wait for Sasha to recover from her accident before taking away her first major discovery, and no one had to die. Unfortunately, Sasha was no longer at the hospital and all records of her had been moved. Someone had taken her.

Alan clashed with Alex over it. Nothing could happen in the hospitals without her knowing and this was too much of a coincidence for it to be anything other than by someone’s doing. Alexandria had Sasha moved to the downtown hospital and had given a sample of her blood to Johnny, who had been able to identify her as a kinfolk.

Wolfe knew that as primogen and as the woman holding his life boon, that she could ruin Alan for his outburst. As an elder, she was well within her power to kill him for it. But it didn’t stop Alan from yelling and arguing with her. After all he had done to protect her, that shield of secrecy was torn away. Alan felt vulnerable and exposed, and angry. It became an argument of the worth of mortals and the fate of Sasha.

To Alan’s surprise, Alex gave Sasha up. While she could have been a bargaining chip, could have been used against Alan or lupines or to curry favor with Johnny Tempest, she just let her go. Wolfe was always stunned to see the human in Alex emerge, but also very glad.

Wolfe surprised himself with how much he missed Sasha, and with how worried he had been. He called David and asked him to meet with him and Sasha’s roommate Janice at the hospital. Johnny and Brightwind now both knew about Sasha and her heritage, though he didn’t think they knew about her ability to see spirits yet. But it was a dangerous time, if it hadn’t been already, and Alan knew that he might need David’s help protecting her.

David was obviously attracted to her, which annoyed Alan. He had no personal claim on Sasha, he didn’t really know what he was to her, but he was annoyed all the same. He comforted himself by reminding David that Janice and most of Sasha’s friends thought that he was her boyfriend.

David and Janice left them alone and even though she was lying on the couch in the living room of the apartment, the evening took on a more intimate air. Alan filled Sasha in on what was happening, realizing just how much trust he was placing in this mortal girl. He was reluctant to leave, but already he had delayed a visit to Johnny for some time. After all the favors and errands he had done for the elder Gangrel, he finally had the opportunity to learn from him again.

His lessons in the powers of Protean and Dominate took up much of the night and it was growing late by the time that Alan and Alex fell exhausted into the sheets. He stroked her damp hair as they talked, and the Ventrue agreed to remove the earliest block in his memory.

They were fragmented and painful, but powerfully vivid. He saw his youngest sister Anastasia in bed at the Wolfe house in Valerton. This must’ve been after she changed. Anastasia was sick, trembling, unable to even keep her form. She whimpered and shifted from woman to wolf painfully. Alan saw the woods around Valerton, branches and roots encrusted with the Robin Red lichen. He saw the forest in flames, red-tinged smoke rising into the daytime sky, birds dropping from the air. He saw himself carrying Anastasia from the woods, the gutted carcass of a deer behind them, its spilled entrails dark with Robin Red. The memories were disjointed and shuffled about, occurring out of sequence and still with gaps, but the overall picture was clear.

The Robin Red lichen had plagued Valerton before. Alan was willing to bet that the other blocks in his memory hid other outbreaks of the parasitic lichen. But what did that have to do with the bombings in town? Why would the Prince alter his memory of that? Had he discovered who the bombers were? But Alex was too tired to pursue those answers now.

Wolfe checked in with Sasha and promised to visit the following night and was surprised once again, not by his own impulses, but by the hurt tone in Sasha’s voice. He’d said he’d return tonight and see her, but had not. She’d waited for him, hoping to see him again. Wolfe had to wonder again just what she was to him, and what he might be to her. Friends? Definitely…he’d even told her that, and it was a rare honor. In fact, she was the only friend he had.

Tomorrow evening he would wake with Alex. He owed her his time and attentions, but maybe tomorrow night would bring no new surprises. Maybe he could visit Sasha and make sure she was well, and they could have an evening where they didn’t have to worry about anything else.