Alan Wolfe lay in bed, one arm resting under Sasha’s shoulder, her head pillowed on his chest, spilling her dark hair over his neck and shoulder. He smiled, grateful that as a vampire, his arm wasn’t even capable of falling asleep under her.
Their second bout of love-making had been more careful, but equally intense. Alan wondered if he was going to end up spending four hours a night having sex again. Well, if that was the case, he certainly wasn’t going to complain, and at least he and Sasha could be intimate during the daylight hours when there wasn’t much else for a vampire trapped by the sunlight outside to do.
But what was important were the words whispered into each other’s ears during the act, or moaned out during climax. I love you. Alan had dared to say it to Sasha, and he had been surprised to hear her say it back. He’d expected it to turn her off, to make her pull back and dash all chances of sleeping with her. When a girl asks you to take her virginity only so that she is not stuck with it for eternity in the event she is turned against her will, you don’t expect her to react well to “I love you.”
Only it turned out that Sasha was in love with him as well, and maybe taking her virginity had less to do with the embrace, and more to do with love. He doubted that Alex would understand.
And that was something to consider. The elder Ventrue seemed….infatuated with Alan. Or maybe obsessed was the word. The word Wolfe would have used was love, except that Alex fanatically denied it, and professed that she was incapable of love. She had even offered to share the blood bond, an act that would put her in Alan’s power as much as it would place him in hers. But still, she all but vowed that she would have Alan, and that she would wait only so long before she….well, he wasn’t sure. Take steps is what she’d said, but he wasn’t sure what that meant. Would she blood bind him by force? Was she willing to dominate him into being her lover? Would she lever his life boon into the same kind of service that he tangled them in sweaty sheets for the last month?
The one thing he was sure she wouldn’t do was kill Sasha. She knew it would hurt Alan, and it seemed that she wasn’t willing to do that. In fact, she was going to have to work with her.
Alan was too independent to go on blind faith where this prophecy was concerned, but he’d been raised on stories foretelling the Apocalypse and featuring the wisdom of spirit guides. Besides, he was a vampire, and vampires weren’t supposed to exist any more than werewolves or the mysterious power of fate. And there had been two women helping him since the Red Robin returned, just as Brightwind had told Johnny there would be.
Alex listened as Alan spun the tale, adding flourishes of detail and description that weren’t truly necessary, but that Wolfe tended to provide when the moon was gibbous. She agreed to go over Sasha’s notes, and he watched with no small amount of tension as the two women converse in terms so scientific as to be another language. Alex looked down on Sasha as an insignificant mortal, unworthy of notice, and as competition for Alan’s affection. Sasha disapproved of Alex, maybe even feared her as an inhuman monster and a manipulator. But damn if they didn’t work together well. Alan was embarrassed and ashamed that it occasionally spun his thoughts along unsavory lines. Alex had asked him if he would take them both into bed with him. If they worked together half as well in bed as they had in the lab… Alan had shaken his head to banish the thought. It wasn’t like him, a testament to the desirability of the two women.
But he was happy. Content. For the first time in more than a century he was not alone. He had love again. Since discovering that he was lonely the ache had grown more and more powerful, until Alan thought that it might be the death of him more than any Kindred plot. Sasha shifted beside him, throwing a long naked leg over his and pulling herself more tightly against him. He curled his arm around her, holding her close and kissed the top of her head. “I love you,” he whispered to her, even though she couldn’t hear him.
He wondered if this was a part of the prophecy. If it was in his destiny to fall in love with Sasha and to be with her, then he would embrace that destiny fully.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Embrace
Alan Wolfe lay on the couch in his apartment, troubled. When he had returned, for once as promised, the door to the bedroom was locked and Sasha was sleeping on the other side. He didn't realize until he tried the door that he had expected to find, not only Sasha waiting for him, but that they would wind up sharing the bed again.
He was becoming more than a little used to having someone by his side during the daylight hours. In the past week, this was the first night he had slept alone. Alex suspected what he was only just realizing; that his feeling for Sasha were growing.
And into this mix of feelings Wolfe found out that the Brujah have a claim on Sasha, that with the Prince's blessing, they could take her and embrace her at any time. Alan wasn't sure if he wanted to Embrace Sasha, but when he had thought about it, he had always seen her as a Gangrel. He had always thought that if she became Kindred, that he would be her sire.
There was business ahead, serious business. But when it was done, he was going to have to face the Brujah and fight for Sasha...unless she wanted it. Alan didn't want to begin to think of what he would do then...
He was becoming more than a little used to having someone by his side during the daylight hours. In the past week, this was the first night he had slept alone. Alex suspected what he was only just realizing; that his feeling for Sasha were growing.
And into this mix of feelings Wolfe found out that the Brujah have a claim on Sasha, that with the Prince's blessing, they could take her and embrace her at any time. Alan wasn't sure if he wanted to Embrace Sasha, but when he had thought about it, he had always seen her as a Gangrel. He had always thought that if she became Kindred, that he would be her sire.
There was business ahead, serious business. But when it was done, he was going to have to face the Brujah and fight for Sasha...unless she wanted it. Alan didn't want to begin to think of what he would do then...
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Sheriff
Alan Wolfe woke in Alexandria’s bed. Spending the daylight hours with the Venture elder was happening occasionally now. On those nights when the elder vampire showed her hidden humanity at least. And so he woke her pleasantly and they spent the next hours in bed.
Alex left him earlier than she usually did, a meeting with her father the prince waiting for her. And Alan was to be much of the subject of that meeting. Alan drove with her, the new moon casting no light on the road and turning Alan mischievous. Alex was more than willing to be naughty herself as she bent over on the seat and lifted her skirt. They had to be quick, but Alan entered her and spent in her ass, something she wanted to feel during her meeting with the prince of the city.
Alan returned to her home and collected his motorcycle so he could visit Sasha. The college girl was healing well, though in his opinion she moved around far too much for someone whose ribs were cracked. Janice was away, giving them time to be together, under the impression that they were a couple, but it gave them the privacy to talk of things that shouldn’t be overheard.
Wolfe filled her in on everything that was happening, smiling to himself at the joke that fate was playing on him. Here he was a vampire of more than a century and his one friend and confidant was a mortal school girl. He was feeling in a bantering mood, making jokes with Sasha. Each new moon he always felt a little wild, a little like breaking the rules and testing limits. But he had never had anyone to share that mood with.
Sasha wanted to get back to work on the Robin Red problem, and though Alan wasn’t in a working mood, he took her back to the apartment that had become her lab. Besides, it would give Janice the right idea. Alan was feeling mischievous again.
Whatever might have happened was dashed when Alan slowed to go through a blinking yellow light at an intersection. This late at night there were no reds and if he hadn’t have had a passenger with broken ribs on the back of his cycle he wouldn’t have bothered slowing, but the drop in engine noise brought him a sound. Wolfe killed the engine and focused his hearing, holding a hand up to Sahsa to keep her from talking. Her heartbeat was loud enough to make hearing difficult anyways.
There were voices and the slight scraping noise of glass grating on the ground. Alan dismounted, a premonition that had nothing to do with the enhanced senses of Auspex urging him to investigate. He had a hunch that he was catching the bombers in the act. He took only a moment to wonder why every time he road his bike through this town his path took him across this trouble, but at least it gave him a chance to stop it. He ordered Sasha to leave, his own voice booming in his enhanced hearing.
He closed his eyes briefly, calling up his blood to change. It was such a greater change than shaping his fingers into claws, but he was grateful for Johnny’s instruction. When he opened his eyes, ironically, they were the only thing that hadn’t changed. As a great gray wolf, he bounded away, sharpening senses that were already so much more powerful than human’s.
Alan’s hunch was right. A group of men, smelling of vampiric blood, but not their own, were taking what could only be a bomb from a pack. He snarled. Wolfe wasn’t going to let another building get blown up. He leapt into them, growling and biting. He took the one with the bomb first, crushing his windpipe in his jaws and then flinging him to the floor. Blows rained down on him and one of them men pulled a gun.
Wolfe let his blood flow into his body, lending his muscles and nerves supernatural power. Blows and bullets alike struck his pelt without slowing him as he snapped and bit, crushing ribs, wrists, legs. A crowbar struck his flank and the hooked end bit into him, striking deeper than even the bullet that hit his skull. He staggered under the blow, then turned and bit through his femoral artery, tossing him over his shoulder with a jerk of his head.
The last man fled. A prisoner. Alan caught him on the pavement outside and sank his fangs into the ghoul’s calf. He cried out and dropped to the ground. Alan used the man’s own belt as a tourniquet, but glanced up, snarling as someone else approached. It was Sasha, disobeying him. He might have yelled at her another time, she had promised to trust his judgment, to listen to his warnings and to make his job protecting her easier, but in the dark of the moon it was hard for him to give her any more than a token chastisement.
As it was, for all his need to protect her, he was going to have to send her on to his apartment on foot and by herself while he took the captive to the Alex for medical attention. He called the elder Ventrue and almost laughed when she finally picked up. He was most likely interrupting her and her father discussing Alan doing this very job. Well, maybe it would just seal the deal.
At Alex’s advice he called the Nosferatu to clean up the mess and then took his wounded captive to her manor. He explained what happened while the man writhed on a tarp on the floor and the Ventrue woman sutured the torn arteries and bandaged him. She stood to leave and told Alan that questioning the man was up to him. Wolfe swallowed, knowing this wouldn’t be easy. He asked her to stay, her own powers were far greater and would be useful in the questioning.
Not that it meant much. The man knew nothing. He was given this task by a man he couldn’t remember, and given the blood that made him a ghoul by a man he couldn’t remember. Alex nodded. The man’s memories had been ruthlessly and effectively erased. There was not enough left to reconstruct anything.
But perhaps there was something to find out from the dead and from the bomb. Sage was clearing away the bodies, erasing the evidence of what had happened there. In an hour or two, it would look like nothing more than a harmless break-in. But the bomb was gone. Alan cursed, but took the rest of their possessions, hoping there would be a clue there.
As it turned out, Wolfe didn’t have to look far to find the bomb. Sasha had been naughty again and had taken the bomb from the scene. Alan was annoyed, but couldn’t muster the indignation to chide her for breaking rules tonight. Besides, she knew enough chemistry that she might be able to tell him something about the bomb. Sadly, the only thing she could tell was something Alan’s nose discovered already; the bomb included fertilizers.
Alan’s phone rang and Alex’s cool voice requested his presence to meet the Prince of Valerton. He collected the bomb and the map that the ghouls had been following. The ancient Ventrue has resources and powers that Alan didn’t, and these may be valuable clues after all.
He put them in the Princes hands when he arrived, but he began to doubt. The Prince had done little so far to stop this threat and entrusting him with the evidence of it may not get them anywhere. Wolfe wondered again why Dorian would work so hard to stop this from being investigated, even going so far as to change his memories.
But one good thing did come out of it. Perhaps Alex had already persuaded him, perhaps he had wisely chosen to follow the lead of the primogen, or maybe it had been as Alan mused, that interrupting to say that he had caught the bombers had finally been the argument that led Dorian to ask Alan to be Valerton’s enforcer.
Alex walked out with him, favoring him with an almost human smile. When she asked him to celebrate with her, he was tempted. Wolfe liked her best in these moods, but Sasha was waiting. Too many times he’d had to put her off. He felt like he needed her company now, even more than Alex’s companionship. While the elder vampire was sometimes capable of being his friend, Sasha always was.
He left her with a promise to spend all of the following night celebrating. He wondered if there was going to be a party, or if any of the kindred were going to want to meet with the new Sheriff, if it was even going to be announced. But he left those thoughts for tomorrow and sped back to his apartment where Sasha was waiting.
Alex left him earlier than she usually did, a meeting with her father the prince waiting for her. And Alan was to be much of the subject of that meeting. Alan drove with her, the new moon casting no light on the road and turning Alan mischievous. Alex was more than willing to be naughty herself as she bent over on the seat and lifted her skirt. They had to be quick, but Alan entered her and spent in her ass, something she wanted to feel during her meeting with the prince of the city.
Alan returned to her home and collected his motorcycle so he could visit Sasha. The college girl was healing well, though in his opinion she moved around far too much for someone whose ribs were cracked. Janice was away, giving them time to be together, under the impression that they were a couple, but it gave them the privacy to talk of things that shouldn’t be overheard.
Wolfe filled her in on everything that was happening, smiling to himself at the joke that fate was playing on him. Here he was a vampire of more than a century and his one friend and confidant was a mortal school girl. He was feeling in a bantering mood, making jokes with Sasha. Each new moon he always felt a little wild, a little like breaking the rules and testing limits. But he had never had anyone to share that mood with.
Sasha wanted to get back to work on the Robin Red problem, and though Alan wasn’t in a working mood, he took her back to the apartment that had become her lab. Besides, it would give Janice the right idea. Alan was feeling mischievous again.
Whatever might have happened was dashed when Alan slowed to go through a blinking yellow light at an intersection. This late at night there were no reds and if he hadn’t have had a passenger with broken ribs on the back of his cycle he wouldn’t have bothered slowing, but the drop in engine noise brought him a sound. Wolfe killed the engine and focused his hearing, holding a hand up to Sahsa to keep her from talking. Her heartbeat was loud enough to make hearing difficult anyways.
There were voices and the slight scraping noise of glass grating on the ground. Alan dismounted, a premonition that had nothing to do with the enhanced senses of Auspex urging him to investigate. He had a hunch that he was catching the bombers in the act. He took only a moment to wonder why every time he road his bike through this town his path took him across this trouble, but at least it gave him a chance to stop it. He ordered Sasha to leave, his own voice booming in his enhanced hearing.
He closed his eyes briefly, calling up his blood to change. It was such a greater change than shaping his fingers into claws, but he was grateful for Johnny’s instruction. When he opened his eyes, ironically, they were the only thing that hadn’t changed. As a great gray wolf, he bounded away, sharpening senses that were already so much more powerful than human’s.
Alan’s hunch was right. A group of men, smelling of vampiric blood, but not their own, were taking what could only be a bomb from a pack. He snarled. Wolfe wasn’t going to let another building get blown up. He leapt into them, growling and biting. He took the one with the bomb first, crushing his windpipe in his jaws and then flinging him to the floor. Blows rained down on him and one of them men pulled a gun.
Wolfe let his blood flow into his body, lending his muscles and nerves supernatural power. Blows and bullets alike struck his pelt without slowing him as he snapped and bit, crushing ribs, wrists, legs. A crowbar struck his flank and the hooked end bit into him, striking deeper than even the bullet that hit his skull. He staggered under the blow, then turned and bit through his femoral artery, tossing him over his shoulder with a jerk of his head.
The last man fled. A prisoner. Alan caught him on the pavement outside and sank his fangs into the ghoul’s calf. He cried out and dropped to the ground. Alan used the man’s own belt as a tourniquet, but glanced up, snarling as someone else approached. It was Sasha, disobeying him. He might have yelled at her another time, she had promised to trust his judgment, to listen to his warnings and to make his job protecting her easier, but in the dark of the moon it was hard for him to give her any more than a token chastisement.
As it was, for all his need to protect her, he was going to have to send her on to his apartment on foot and by herself while he took the captive to the Alex for medical attention. He called the elder Ventrue and almost laughed when she finally picked up. He was most likely interrupting her and her father discussing Alan doing this very job. Well, maybe it would just seal the deal.
At Alex’s advice he called the Nosferatu to clean up the mess and then took his wounded captive to her manor. He explained what happened while the man writhed on a tarp on the floor and the Ventrue woman sutured the torn arteries and bandaged him. She stood to leave and told Alan that questioning the man was up to him. Wolfe swallowed, knowing this wouldn’t be easy. He asked her to stay, her own powers were far greater and would be useful in the questioning.
Not that it meant much. The man knew nothing. He was given this task by a man he couldn’t remember, and given the blood that made him a ghoul by a man he couldn’t remember. Alex nodded. The man’s memories had been ruthlessly and effectively erased. There was not enough left to reconstruct anything.
But perhaps there was something to find out from the dead and from the bomb. Sage was clearing away the bodies, erasing the evidence of what had happened there. In an hour or two, it would look like nothing more than a harmless break-in. But the bomb was gone. Alan cursed, but took the rest of their possessions, hoping there would be a clue there.
As it turned out, Wolfe didn’t have to look far to find the bomb. Sasha had been naughty again and had taken the bomb from the scene. Alan was annoyed, but couldn’t muster the indignation to chide her for breaking rules tonight. Besides, she knew enough chemistry that she might be able to tell him something about the bomb. Sadly, the only thing she could tell was something Alan’s nose discovered already; the bomb included fertilizers.
Alan’s phone rang and Alex’s cool voice requested his presence to meet the Prince of Valerton. He collected the bomb and the map that the ghouls had been following. The ancient Ventrue has resources and powers that Alan didn’t, and these may be valuable clues after all.
He put them in the Princes hands when he arrived, but he began to doubt. The Prince had done little so far to stop this threat and entrusting him with the evidence of it may not get them anywhere. Wolfe wondered again why Dorian would work so hard to stop this from being investigated, even going so far as to change his memories.
But one good thing did come out of it. Perhaps Alex had already persuaded him, perhaps he had wisely chosen to follow the lead of the primogen, or maybe it had been as Alan mused, that interrupting to say that he had caught the bombers had finally been the argument that led Dorian to ask Alan to be Valerton’s enforcer.
Alex walked out with him, favoring him with an almost human smile. When she asked him to celebrate with her, he was tempted. Wolfe liked her best in these moods, but Sasha was waiting. Too many times he’d had to put her off. He felt like he needed her company now, even more than Alex’s companionship. While the elder vampire was sometimes capable of being his friend, Sasha always was.
He left her with a promise to spend all of the following night celebrating. He wondered if there was going to be a party, or if any of the kindred were going to want to meet with the new Sheriff, if it was even going to be announced. But he left those thoughts for tomorrow and sped back to his apartment where Sasha was waiting.
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