Raiden pressed his face into Cecelia’s dark hair and breathed in her scent, using proximity to his mate to centre himself, as was a werewolf’s way. He closed his eyes as he considered Ashlynn’s words.
“Raiden,” Cecelia murmured, tilting her head up to him.
He sighed as he opened his eyes, the Other flashing golden in his eyes. “It is no one’s benefit to further disrupt the situation,” he decided. “But I expect you to keep a rein on Elior, Ashlynn. He was entirely too well prepared for this situation to have not known to some degree what would happen.”
“Fair enough,” Ashlynn grinned cheerfully. “I will collar my vampire. He will look great in leather.”
“Oh god,” Cecelia groaned. “Ashlynn. Please. Some things should just be private.”
Ashlynn chuckled at her mother’s dismay. “I love you mum. I love you too, dad. Sorry about the mess downstairs. I did my best to keep it on the drop sheets, but blood squirts. You might need to send dad down with a stepladder and some soapy water before it dries.”
“F-k,” Raiden grimaced. “What am I supposed to do with a bunch of vampire pieces?”
“I will get Elior to sort it out, I am sure he is used to that.” Ashlynn picked up the vampire woman. “Want to help me take out the trash?”
“Do I need to put a drop sheet into the boot?” Cecelia fretted moving around the kitchen bench. “It is a new car, Ash.”
“I will take the Ute, and these ones aren’t bleeding… much,” she amended when Raiden picked up Caleb Roth, a puddle of blood having gathered beneath the vampire. She pulled a face. “That one had holes in him already before I got here,” she pointed out. “I am not responsible for that.”
“I expect the Ute back in one piece,” Raiden took the keys off the hook and threw them to her. She snatched them out of the air, and both parents stilled. “You are as quick as Elior.”
“I was hoping that I am quicker,” Ashlynn pouted. “I have got to have something over the man.”
Raiden followed her to the Ute and slid back the lid so that they could fling the vampires into the back. “Are you sure they will stay down? Vampires heal quickly,” he commented. “They are still breathing which means they will be healing.”
“I broke their necks,” she considered them. They had not been placed with care into the tray of the Ute and lay in a jumble of oddly angled limbs. It did not matter, she decided, they would slip and slide around anyway within the tray as she drove, and once she handed them over to Elior she doubted that they would live for long so any injury incurred during transportation would not be suffered for any duration of time. “It seems excessive to break more of them. It is only a short drive. We will have to cross our fingers and hope they are slow healers.”
They rolled the cover over them, and Raiden locked it.
“That is so not going to hold them if they heal,” Ashlynn giggled at the ineffectiveness of the restraint.
Raiden grinned back. “I know. It just seems slack not to try to lock them in.”
“Alright,” she stood on tip toe and kissed his cheek. “I do love you dad. And trust me, I have the Elior situation under control.”
He ran his hands through her hair and held her head, tilting her face up so that he could search her eyes as he had done since she was a child. “I hope so, Ashlynn. I really do.”
“He didn’t mean for Lucian to turn out like that. It has been a lot for him to carry on his own, dad,” she said it very quietly, so it would carry no further. Werewolves had sharp ears, and they were in the centre of pack lands. “He admitted that he was suicidal before Cael and I came along.”
“Shit,” Raiden sighed in a breath. “I want to be angry at him, Ashlynn. I don’t want to feel sorry for him.”
“I know,” she wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. “But you are too good a man. Elior and Cael are my mates. It is odd that they are both men that for one reason or another you have good cause to hate. Perhaps it is fate telling us all that the way forward is forgiveness?”
He pressed his lips to the crown of her head, and hugged her back, a fierce werewolf embrace that compressed her rib cage, and she pressed her face into his chest, breathing in the familiar, safe scent of her father and alpha male wolf, before he released her.
“Give me time, Ash. Don’t bring them here. I might find forgiveness eventually, but now is not that time. You had best go. I don’t want those vampires to heal and damage the Ute getting free.”
He stood, a strangely forlorn figure considering his size and strength, watching her pulled out the drive. She raised her hand in farewell as she shifted the Ute into gear and guided it onto the street, and her heart ached a little. It was another farewell in a way, she thought. She was mated now, and she would not be returning again to live in her family home but would be making a new one with her mates. There was a sadness to that.
Driving on empty streets with two semi-conscious vampires in the tray of the Ute was disconcerting, Ashlynn thought. And creepy. It reminded her of the Western Cowboy midday movies she had watched as a child with her dad when she had been home sick from school. She half expected a tumbleweed of thistle to blow along the street, and she hummed the famous refrain that always seemed to accompany moments of drama in such movies.
She stopped at a red light and looked at the empty road. A green-eyed orange tabby cat on the sidewalk met her eyes and seemed to challenge her intrusion to his private domain, his leg flexed at an impossible angle and his grooming interrupted by her arrival. He stared at her with an expression reminiscent of someone interrupted in the shower, with a side of cat-aloof-disdain.
“The world belongs to the tabby cats now, eh, my liege?” She asked him.
He rose unhurriedly, pointed his tail her way, and swaggered off down the sidewalk before slinking between the poles of a front yard.
There was not a single person in sight, and not a single car shared the road with her. She turned on the radio to static and turned it off because the noise was too jarringly evidence of the chaos of the world around her. No annoying radio DJs manned their radio stations to fill the air with their inane blather about minor celebrities they had brushed shoulders with.
She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel instead.
“Come on Ashlynn,” she told herself as she grew increasingly edgy waiting at the stop light and began to realise how ridiculous it was that she was doing so when she was utterly alone on the road. “Your mate owns the f-king world, put the damned car into gear and run the red. What can anyone do? You are f-king the boss of everyone.”
The light turned green before she had to debate it further.
She eased the car forward, the diesel engine grumbling. The Ute was old enough, or her dad was old fashioned enough, to still have a CD player in it, and so she selected CD on the touch screen and a punk band singer declared that she was a b-tch loudly.
“Go dad, listening to big boy music,” she said with a grin of amused approval, and turned it up singing along with the lyrics and shouting out the swear words. She imagined that her father probably did the exact same thing. The music suited her mood exactly, she decided. Hadn’t she, after all, taken out Elior’s enemies single handed, and didn’t she have a trunk full of vampire? Yes, hell yes, she did.
As she entered the shadow of the city buildings, she finally came upon other life – a blockade. Vampires in black uniforms ran to her car and pointed their guns at her as one of them knocked on the window so that she would wind it down momentarily blasting them with the punk band before she adjusted the volume.
“Hi,” she smiled up at the tight faced woman who seemed startled by the profanities being screamed from the stereo system.
“Civilians are not permitted on the streets except in emergency situations,” the woman told her crisply. “You will be escorted back to your residence, and we recommend you remain there.”
“Yeah, okay. My current residence is ahead though.”
“We will need to search your vehicle before you are permitted further then. Please exit the vehicle.”
“Sure thing,” Ashlynn put the car into park and the woman lowered her weapon and opened the door. She stood slowly keeping her hands in sight and the woman patted her down efficiently, finding nothing.
A shadow dragged along the asphalt, and the soldiers lifted their heads in reflex.
“It is just the gargoyle triad doing their patrol,” Ashlynn assured them. “Don’t shoot them, they are allies.”
They watched the gargoyles circle and then wheel almost lazily in to their building’s balcony, where they assumed their perches on the balustrade, looking out over city streets occupied only, Ashlynn smirked her sense of humor tickled, by the pigeons, the soldiers, and herself.
“Is there anything you need to declare?” The woman asked her, shifting her focus back to Ashlynn now that the gargoyles had taken their roost.
“Oh, probably,” Ashlynn debated how to proceed. “A couple of bodies in the tray of the Ute.”
“Madam,” the woman was not amused, and her tone was very clear about how unimpressed she was.
“The back is locked,” called a soldier from the back whilst a third rifled through the Ute cab, finding nothing but a selection of other CDs, some breath mints and small change.
“You need to unlock the tray,” the woman told her.
“Yeah, I could do that, but it would just upset someone,” Ashlynn said. “Don’t shoot me, alright?” She extended her wings, grimacing as they broke through her skin, stretching them out to their full spread with a feeling of muscles releasing. She stretched her neck and shoulders into it with a groan of enjoyment before settling them closed against her back. “Hurts like f-k when they come out, but it is like having a cramped limb – the stretch is awesome,” she told the stunned woman. “Recognize me now?”
There was a yell and a sudden flurry of activity. She found herself pressed into a half squat and circled by body armour as the vampires used their bodies as shields between her and the world. She could smell the oil of their weaponry, blood on the breath of a man to her left, and the perfume of one of the women, her sense of smell sharpened by her Other.
“Careful of the feathers,” she told them shifting her wings. “They don’t like to be bent.” She had hoped to be passed by the barricade and had not anticipated this level of excitement from revealing her wings. Probably should have, she admitted to herself, she was f-king the boss of the entire world, after all.
“Mrs Cohen-Jovil,” a man said with urgency. He was close to her, on the right. “It is not safe for you to be out and about without a body-guard.”
“I had to get some milk, though,” Ashlynn grinned, amused by herself. “Nah, seriously, I had to do something for Elior. I have a package in the back of the Ute that I need to deliver to him promptly. Don’t look in the tray, it is not pretty. So, can I get on with it?” She retracted her wings, the press of the vampires around her uncomfortable against her feathers.
She heard the static of a walk-talkie and hushed voices as they discussed what to do. She was an unexpected problem, a disruption their orderly barricade. She heard someone mention a press conference and another vehicle approaching which seemed to galvanise them into making a decision.
“You will be escorted,” the man told her severely. “And someone will drive for you.”
“Alright, I can work with that.” She straightened slowly. “I am going around to the passenger side now. The package is a bit time sensitive, so let’s get a move on.”
She shuffled around the bonnet of the car with the shielding bodies following her movements like heavy footed dance partners, until someone opened the passenger door and she slid into the seat. A man already occupied the driver’s seat and adjusted the seat to his height.
He slid her a wary look. “Buckle up, ma’am.”
“Yes sir,” she put on her seat belt. She had learnt the value of a seat belt when the Wingless had totaled her Audi, she thought wryly.
“What is the address?”
“I don’t actually know, and I am not sure if it is meant to be a secret or whether Elior has put the word out where we are, so we will just park nearby and you can help me bring in the packages from the tray. You might not be free to leave again, you do realize that, don’t you? If it is meant to be a secret, they will probably want you to stay with us.”
“Understood, ma’am.”
“Just go straight towards Vampire Square and I will tell you when to stop.”
He drove at a sedate pace as if afraid to jostle her with his driving, the Ute crawling down the empty city street.
“I am not going to break.”
“Ma’am?”
“If you put your foot down a little.”
“Ah,” he slid her another look and accelerated just a little – indulging her request whilst keeping the vehicle at a sedate pace.
“See the scaffolds up ahead. Park somewhere near it, off road though. This car has my dad’s signwriting on it. It is a bit of a target as a result – like, look at the werewolf’s car. He and his mates named the business before all this happened, when humans thought werewolves were just stories. They thought they were being funny at the time.”
He pulled into a narrow lane way. “Will this do, ma’am?”
“Yup, happy with that.” She hopped out and went around to back of the Ute, unlocking the cover before he had exited the vehicle.
“You are very fast,” he observed, the red Other flashing in his eyes as he joined her, alarmed by her movements.
“Yeah, sorry,” she hadn’t realized that she had moved fast, she had just moved. The vampire speed would take some getting used to, she thought. “I am still getting used to being a vampire, and I am getting hungry, so I was thinking about food.”
He smiled, the corners of his eyes creasing, and the expression taking some of the severity from his face. He was very stressed out, she realized, by this escort duty. “Yeah, you are pretty newly turned. I remember how it was. Hungry, hungry, hungry.”
“I am absolutely f-king starving, and I know Elior’s going to make me drink refrigerated blood,” she pulled a face, trying to inject some levity into the conversation. “I suddenly understand why vampires keep harems. Warm blood on tap sounds great.”
“I have a harem,” he said. “Just the three.”
“Not blood slaves?”
“No, blood slaves are discouraged by Elior.”
“My man, he is pure gold. Maybe I need to get a harem,” she contemplated it, and then remembered her reaction to Elior feeding from someone else and decided it probably wouldn’t go down well with either or her men. And would she stock the harem with men, or women, anyway? She wondered. “I expect it is a bit like owning pets, though, having to feed, water, and take them for walks all the time, and I am not sure I am up to that level of responsibility.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he was amused. “It is a responsibility, but it is more like having three mates.”
“Two is plenty,” she snickered. “Don’t judge me on the contents of my tray,” she said to her companion as she threw the cover back revealing the tangle of Caleb Roth and his wife within in.
His eyebrows raised. “Ma’am.”
“I know, I might have over-done it, but as a wedding present, I think Elior will be thrilled,” she grabbed Caleb Roth and lifted him from the tray with a grunt. The vampire’s legs twitched a little and his fingers clawed – beginning to heal from the injury. “Bring the ball and chain. Best hurry, they are starting to get frisky again.”
They made their way around the back of the building and laboriously up the fire escape. “Bodies don’t get lighter when they are vampire, do they?” She observed as she stepped onto the fragile balcony, feeling it creak underfoot.
“No ma’am.”
She opened the door into the hallway only to come face to face with Jacinta, her teeth peeled back from her teeth, and a sharp knife in her hand.
“Hi, honey,” Ashlynn said, the blade against her throat. “I am home.”
The blade relaxed. “You should not be out of your room,” the blonde vampire reproved.
“Yeah,” Ashlynn wrinkled her nose. “But these situations do occur and here we are, with Caleb Roth and his wife. Surprise.”
Jacinta took Caleb Roth from her. “You are forgiven.”
“Thank you,” Ashlynn smirked. “I knew you liked me. Very deep down inside.”
Rebecca moved down the hallway to the door ahead of them into the room that Elior had chosen as their room. “He has been very worried about you,” she told Ashlynn with disapproval. “He is too busy to be worried about his mates.”
“I will try to behave myself better,” Ashlynn rolled her eyes feeling like a naughty child. “But really, I had a good reason to go out after curfew.”
Elior, in full suit, was on the phone looking out the window at the street, and in the bathroom, she could hear the shower running. The bed was empty, the bedding rumpled, and the scent of sex heavy on the air. Her boys had kept themselves entertained, she thought with a smile, in her absence.
Elior had turned as the door opened and ended his call abruptly. He stepped up to her, capturing her face between his hands and kissed her hard. “I am…” His eyes took in Jacinta and the vampire behind her, and their burdens. “Astounded and bewildered.”
“Caleb Roth and following appealed to my parents for sanctuary,” she leaned up and kissed him again, tasting Cael on his lips. “With some far-fetched tale of your general wickedness. My dad, of course, didn’t believe that for a moment, so sealed them into his den and called me to address the situation. You were busy, and Cael was napping. Honey,” she tapped his chest and simpered. “This is a very nice suit.”
“Hands off the suit,” Elior’s eyes wrinkled in the corners. “What have you done to Caleb and Celeste?”
“Crushed a couple of vertebrae,” Ashlynn stroked her hands up his chest. “Nothing irreversible. The question is, what are you going to do with them? Your glass coffins were in the building that exploded.”
“That they were,” he fought back his smile as he captured her roving hands. “I am sure we can come up with something appropriate. Jacinta and Rebecca,” he raised an eyebrow at his children.
“This way,” Jacinta directed the soldier from the room. Rebecca closed the door.
Cael stepped out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel through his hair, his skin flushed from the heat and the mist fragrant with soap as it billowed out behind him. The Other flashed red in his eyes as he grinned at Ashlynn. “Our vampire was very upset to find you missing. I had to comfort him several times. He is very inventive in seeking his pleasure.”
“You will have to stop calling me our vampire,” Elior pointed out mildly. “I am now not the only vampire in our triad.”
“You will always be our vampire,” Ashlynn purred trying to free her hands from his grip. “And all pretty in your suit too.”
“Hands off the suit,” Elior repeated as he released her, a smile tugging at his lips. “I have a press conference in half an hour.”
“That is half an hour away,” Ashlynn edged closer again mischievously, watching him retreat. “I know you can achieve a lot in thirty minutes. Inventively, according to Cael.”
“Don’t make me throw Cael at you,” Elior laughed as she continued to stalk him towards the bathroom.
Ashlynn caught the sharp scent of magic on the air a moment before static lifted the fine strands of her hair, and she exclaimed, shoving Elior towards Cael, as a portal opened between the end of the bed and the windows, the shifting air currents generated tossing the curtains on their rods as if a storm had blown in.
The three Wingless leapt onto the bed as the portal closed behind them with a scream of air suction.
Cael’s shield sparked as it deflected a spell. He pushed Elior behind him, and dove into a roll that saw the loosely tied towel around his waist left behind on the carpet, seizing his sword from the table-top and driving it into the shield around the Wingless, as Ashlynn cast every offensive magic spell in her repertoire.
A pillow exploded under the foray of spells, sending fine white down into the air. Another spell gouged a smoking line across the wall, blistering the paint into bubbling and releasing the toxic smell of burnt plastic. The carpet smouldered, smoke filling the room to sting the eye and clog the lungs.
Cael roared between clenched teeth, directing his power into the sword so that its glow sharpened, forcing Ashlynn to avert her eyes, momentarily blinded by its brilliance. She directed her power into her hands and poured it into the shield seeking to overwhelm their magic with the outpouring of her own.
The Wingless’ expressions of triumph shifted to fear as their shield collapsed beneath the combined power of the sword and Ashlynn, and all three vampires leapt, bringing them down upon the bed and tearing into their throats.
The man beneath Ashlynn clawed at her back, trying to fight her off, crying out as she sank her teeth into his throat. The blood pumped into Ashlynn’s mouth, driven by the beat of his heart, until she felt his heart stutter and then stop, his hands losing strength and then falling limply onto the bed. She sucked hard, trying to draw the last mouthfuls out of him, and then slid from the bed onto the floor.