The Devil's Wolf

Raiden pressed his face into Cecelia's dark hair and breathed in her scent, using proximity to his mate to center 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 center 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.

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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.

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"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?"