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.