The Devil's Wolf
Chapter 8

There wasn't much other choice in the bags when it came to underwear. Lots of barely lingerie, garter belts and thigh high stockings. "For someone who disapproves of me f-king her daddy, she sure outfitted me for seduction," she noted. High heels in, surprisingly, the right size. Several dresses, all on the short side, and a very nice coat. Make-up, and a toothbrush and toothpaste.

She took a selection into the en suite and showered. Showering revealed a variety of bruises from her escape attempts and the car accident, and carpet burn from her interludes with Elior. She smirked a little over the latter and then sighed. Trouble. Yes, definitely plenty of that.

Her mate had threatened to kill her, and she had taken a vampire as a lover. One who had to suspect that Ashlynn's blood probably held the same properties as her mother's did. How much of what Elior said and did was genuine, and how much was motivated by his desire for her blood?

Oh, come on, Ashlynn, she offered herself a pep talk. The man had a voracious sexual appetite, and that couldn't be faked. Her blood might be a perk, and a reason for the vampire to keep her around, but the desire was genuine, from both parties.

And then there was the attacks on her car and apartment. If the attackers were Wingless, how had they found her when she had been warding herself religiously since leaving pack lands? And if they weren't Wingless, who were they? When she left the bathroom, there was a tray on her bed. She fell upon it, famished, and then brushed her teeth and put on some makeup, taking the time to wing her eyeliner and apply the magnetic eyelashes, because the vampire who didn't like her had provided them. She batted her eyelashes at herself. "Sexy barely-there lace undies, garter belt, thigh highs, and come and f-k me makeup. No matter what blondie says, she had an ulterior motive in mind when she was shopping." She twisted and turned in front of the bathroom mirror. Her normal clothing choices ranged more to jeans and t-shirts, rather than little dresses and high heels, but it was cute, she decided, even if it was impractical. And very, very sexy. "I think the phrase is vampish," she told her reflection with a wink. "All dressed up, and trapped in a mausoleum," she complained.

She turned on the mobile phone and programmed in the numbers that she remembered, before calling her father.

"Raiden." His tone was guarded.

"Hey, dad."

He released his breath. "Ashlynn. Are you okay?"

"Still fine," she opened the door into the hallway. "Elior is taking good care of me." Really good care, she smirked as she stepped into the elevator. She selected the ground floor. "This is my new phone, so save it to yours. Elior says we will leave tomorrow. He has some things he needed to take care of today."

"I would be happier if you were already on your way home," he complained.

"I know, but we can't expect Elior to drop everything in order to take me home, can we?"

The elevator opened and she stepped out into a battleground. The room seethed with violence, so much so that her mind blanked, and she groped for the close button on the elevator door, before curiosity won, and she stepped out instead. "Shit," she pressed against the wall as a tangle of limbs and snarling teeth landed at her feet.

Gunshot chewed its way erratically through the wall, and she threw herself to the ground in a crouch, hugging her knees. The human man in front of her met her eyes in a sightless stare that was explained by the fact that his head was facing the wrong way for his body. A trickle of spit and blood tracked from the corner of his mouth. Despite TV's representation, she noted dully, it took time to die when your neck was broken. "Ashlynn!" Raiden's voice was urgent. "What the f-k is going on?"

She recalled herself into the moment, breaking the hold of those sightless eyes. "The vampire embassy is under attack from humans in blacks. Army, I think, from their equipment. Or very well-equipped militia." "Shit."

She saw Elior rip the arm off the man wielding the machine gun, tossing limb and weapon aside as the man screamed, falling to his knees. The vampire's eyes were entirely red, and his mouth and chin and the front of his expensive and fashionable suit were stained with blood as if he had used his teeth to tear out the throat of someone.

He jerked as a bullet ripped through his chest. Ashlynn cried out, and he turned his head in her direction. His movement was so fast that he appeared at her side before she could blink.

"You should be upstairs," he lifted her to her feet and propelled her back towards the elevator, pressing the call button.

"You are bleeding," she pointed out.

He looked down at himself. "I liked this suit," he complained.

The battle was winding down, with the vampires victorious. She saw the blonde who had brought her clothes snap the neck of the last man, before dropping him carelessly onto the floor.

The front windows of the building were shattered, the opulent furniture broken, curtains torn, bullet holes traced crazed passages across the wood paneling, and blood pooled darkly on the red carpet around the bodies of around twenty men. The entry door hung off its hinges, though one of the vampires set it back in place.

Through the windows, she could see pedestrians pointing and gaping, and cars slowing so their occupants could stare. Four black 4WDs, doors left open, parked haphazardly, half on the pavement, half blocking the road.

"Military," a man appeared next to Elior. He was the same man, she thought, who had come in and stared at her the night before whilst she had been waiting for Elior and, like Elior, must have had her mother's blood in order to move so swiftly as to be unseen. She suspected he was also the one at the door when Cael had broken in through the window. "This was a sanctioned hit."

"Shit," Elior closed his eyes and rolled his head from side to side, loosening his shoulder muscles. "Get Rebecca to call around the embassies and see if it was just this location, or on a grander scale, and be ready to roll out in ten minutes." The elevator's door chime was cheerfully loud. Elior put his hand under Ashlynn's elbow and propelled her back into the box as the doors opened and he selected the floor. As he waited for it to move up floors, he tore off the waistcoat and shirt, using them to wipe the blood off his face, before casting them into the corner.

The bullet had gone straight through him, and blood seeped down his chest darkening the waist band of his trousers. He inspected the hole with an irritated sigh.

"It is not like in the cartoons," Ashlynn observed. "I can't see through it."

He laughed, and looked astonished by his laughter, before shrugging wryly. "Well, you know what they say. Don't believe everything you see on the television." "It is not healing."

"Takes a while. It is healing inside, or it would be bleeding more," he dismissed it as unimportant.

"So, what is going on?"

Before he could respond, she heard her father's voice, the tone strident but muffled and tinny, and looked down at her hand bewildered before recalling the call she had been on. "Shit." She put the phone to her ear. "Hi dad." "F-king hell, Ashlynn," Raiden was overwrought. "What the f-k is going on?"

Elior took the phone from her. "Hi Raiden. There has been a military hit on the embassy. My team is fine, but the embassy is, sadly, done. We are trying to establish if it is just unrest on this continent, or more widespread.

"There have been murmurs that the human governments as I am sure you are aware... Mhm... Look, I don't have time at the moment to get into it," Elior looked at his wrist where he wore an old-fashioned time piece. "I have to change, and we need to leave before they have the opportunity to regroup or send in a second wave. I am sure I don't have to say that we may be a bit late returning Ashlynn."

The elevator doors opened, and he handed Ashlynn back the phone. "Stay here," he instructed and went into the room that Cael had smashed the window into.

"Ah, coat," Ashlynn remembered and ducked into the room she had left. She put the phone to her ear, holding it pinned between her chin and shoulder. "Hey dad." She grabbed the phone charger and stuffed it into her coat pocket. "Ashlynn," he had his serious voice on, full of alpha command, although she suspected it would not work over the phone. "Stay with Elior for the time being. Hopefully, it is just local trouble, and he can extract you both easily. But, if this is on a bigger scale, staying with him is not wise. He is too well known, and too easily recognized. I will let you know what I can replace out, and if I say to bail on him, do so."

She sighed as she made her way back into the hallway, carrying the coat over her arm. "I am f-king him, and he thinks I am his mate, or whatever the vampire equivalent is, so that is probably going to be a bit difficult." "Ashlynn," Raiden groaned. "No."

"Sorry, dad." In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. "And there is more."

"God." His tone was thick, a werewolf on the edge.

"Cael pulled me out of the car wreck, and," she took a deep breath. "He is my mate." She heard the plastic casing on his phone creak beneath his tightening grip, and there was a moment of static on the line. "Don't break your phone, dad. You know mum hates it when you do that."

"Ashlynn." She could imagine that his Other was vivid in his eyes from the way he said her name. She heard the murmur of her mother's voice rising anxiously in the background. "Stay away from Cael. He is... unbalanced and dangerous." Elior appeared before her. He was dressed in another charcoal toned three-piece suit and adjusted his tie as he waited for the elevator doors to open. The blue pinstripe through the white and grey tie was optimistically cheerful, she thought. "Right, then," he said, tie knot complete, turning to her as he smoothed his hair back and tied it into a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck with a black band that would disappear into the darkness of the locks. "Still talking to your dad?" "Put me on to him," Raiden growled.

She pulled a face and passed the phone over to Elior.

"Raiden," Elior said, and blinked. He was silent for a long moment.

She could not hear her father's voice, which meant bad things, she thought, taking Elior's hand, knowing how her father could be when angered and feeling Elior might need the support.

"I understand." Elior said quietly. "We will stay in touch."

He handed the phone back to her. The call had been ended so she slid it into her coat pocket.

"Well?" She asked him.

"I am glad he has time to digest our relationship before we see him in person," Elior commented mildly. "I might not otherwise survive it." The elevator doors opened.