Chapter 52: Gabe, Alistair, and a Bet...

Rachel's rooftop had become crowded.

Seeing Gabriel and his entourage approach, the blonde angel gave out a loud, clear whistle heard only by her own kind. Along with the five basketball players were five guardian angels, who pulled away from their charges to meet their brethren on Rachel's rooftop.

"Hey, Timothy! What's up with this?" Rachel asked. Her question was as much a friendly taunt as it was genuine curiosity. She was still in good spirits, despite the haranguing she'd just had to ward off from Taylor's own guardian angel, Julia, who still looked on disapprovingly.

"Hello, Rachel," sighed the one that had walked closest to Gabriel. "This is my charge being very, very dumb, as usual. And he has dragged along some of his friends to share in his dumbness."

"Dumbness?" Hannah asked.

"It rubs off on you," Timothy shrugged.

"Oh no," Julia groaned. "Don't tell me."

Timothy shrugged, dropping his head a bit. "He's out to take out his righteous anger on the man who stole his girlfriend."

"Your Gabriel cheated on my Taylor with five different women this year," Julia scowled.

"I know, I know. It's not like I can just tell him that. I've tried leaving plenty of signs to guide him from this path, but he's willfully blind and of course, very stupid."

"So what's he gonna do about it?" Rachel asked.

Again, Timothy shrugged. "I don't know. Probably beat up your Alex."

Rachel snorted and laughed. "Fat chance of that."

"Do you plan to interfere? Your, erm, condition gives you a freedom of direct intervention that the rest of us lack," Hannah said.

"Yes," Julia fumed, "you could, for instance, pull that abyssal trollop off of my Taylor."

"Or you could've prevented your own charge from soiling my precious dove," sulked Sidney from off to one side.

Rachel groaned, her eyes rolling uncontrollably. Finally she looked up at Timothy. "I'm not gonna do a damn thing," she declared. "And I don't need to. Your boy starts anything, he'll be the one who goes home crying."

Timothy and the angels with him gave a collective snort of skepticism. "Unlikely," said one of them, a short, dark-haired female. "Gabriel and these others are top-notch athletes. They're in the best shape they could be in during the prime of their lives. You should be a little more concerned for the safety of your charge."

"What's your name?" Rachel asked with a curious cock of her head. "Martina," she said.

Rachel addressed the five guardian angels directly. "So are you guys ready to back up all Timothy and Martina's shit-talkin' with anything serious?"

************

For all their frenzied exertion, Alex and Jocelyn did a pretty good job of making themselves look presentable again before sneaking out of Sherri's bedroom. They heard a couple of bumps and moans from the upstairs bathroom as they passed, and shared a self-conscious giggle.

"Wonder who's inside?" Alex had murmured when they went down the stairs. People saw them coming down, but they hardly knew any of the faces at the base of the steps and really didn't care.

"I need a glass of water so bad," Jocelyn announced.

"Yeah, me, too," Alex said as they turned the corner to the kitchen. Then he was abruptly grabbed by the wrist and pulled in another direction.

"Gabriel's here, outside," Drew told him. "Lookin' for you."

"Shit, really?" Alex blinked.

"Yeah. Lookin' for Taylor, too. She was lookin' for you earlier, but she went off to talk with your girlfriend. Meantime I guess Gabe just showed up with his posse like two minutes ago an' he's beefin'. Wade's out there stallin' him."

"Front door?"

"Yeah."

"Man, I really misjudged this one," Alex muttered.

"Yeah, no shit. How many years I been tellin' you to quit expectin' people to act like adults?"

************

"Well, I don't exactly know him," Brittany said as much of the party's populace shifted to the front of the house. "He goes to my school. I mean, I haven't talked to him before tonight, but I've seen him there a lot."

"North Seattle?" Alistair asked. Brittany nodded, but for the third time tonight she slipped away from him because of something going on with others -- and the second time for that one in particular. Ordinarily he would have found such a slight grounds for revenge, but he had greater concerns in that moment.

He had received the sketched images over his phone an hour ago. Alistair hadn't looked at them immediately after the contraption buzzed. Though younger in mindset and therefore more adaptable than many of his kind, even Alistair didn't care for the presumptuous urgency of modern communications.

Serendipity made itself plain when he got around to checking the message. He knew from the ringtone that it was from among his own kind. He didn't expect it to be from his liege, though, calling for all loyal subjects within the city to locate a young man and a woman of striking beauty. There was a name for the woman, but only a likeness for her companion. Alistair could barely contain his pride. The attention-grabbing couple was currently nowhere to be seen when Alistair looked over the images, but he knew they weren't far.

Alistair had just enough time to casually ask Brittany to show him how to work the camera on his phone before Alex was hustled past at the urging of one of his friends. His luck held as he snapped the picture before Brittany shuffled off. With her gone, though, and with a rather solid picture garnered while he had just "happened" to be toying with his phone, Alistair knew that he would be in the good graces of Lady Anastacia for quite some time.

Brittany was gone, then, but at that point, Alistair hardly cared. He immediately sent off the picture along with Alex's name and school. He considered only for the briefest of moments that he could relay his location, but then he would immediately have to share the rewards for further discovery with others. Best to display his unhesitating observance of duty with this immediate response, then later follow up with his hard-won trove of information.

Engaging either target in conversation would perhaps be a touch difficult. Alistair would have to break through either a pack of dazzled girls or a herd of aroused, hopeful young men depending on which one he focused upon. Certainly the sexual persuasion on display implied that he would have the best chance at the female. It was possible that Alistair could charm the young man, but he had less tools at his disposal for that and the target might well be unreceptive to anything more than platonic charms. The woman, though, had such endless confidence and seemed entirely uninterested in the other men at the party. She, too, could be tougher to seduce than the average woman.

A hand touched his arm. "Excuse me?" a feminine voice asked. Alistair turned to see a young, very pretty brunette looking to him. Her expression was a mixture of the sort of shyness he was used to from the ladies and the eagerness of someone who had just learned a secret.

"Yes?" Alistair asked, nodding as if in a subtle bow. "What may I do for such a lovely vision?"

"Aw," the girl grinned. She glanced around self-consciously, but the dining room had already emptied out. The girl leaned in as if to pass along her secret. "Lorelei's been watching you all night. You know who I mean?" Alistair nodded. "She'd like to see you... in the upstairs bathroom."

Of course she would, Alistair thought to himself, though he presented an air of surprise and flattery. "Thank you so much," he said, pausing to take the girl's hand and kiss it. She giggled and squirmed the way girls so often did under his attention, and then winked at him as he stepped away.

He could've sworn he'd heard her mutter, "Douchebag," as he left...but that would be ridiculous.

Alistair glided up the stairs to his rendezvous. It was about time, he thought, that the woman gave up on her feigned disinterest. She was dealing with a master of that game, and sure enough, her resolve had wavered first. At the top of the stairs, outside the bathroom door, Alistair smiled. He could hear the shower running. Intriguing, he thought. He knocked, and a voice full of more than one note of invitation responded with, "Enter."

The water hadn't been running long enough to steam up the bathroom; in fact, the window was open. But it was good enough to fog up the shower door, which somewhat blurred the view of the naked perfection behind it. The little black dress and matching panties lay over the closed toilet lid. Alistair smiled. It was an odd approach to seduction, but it had its charm.

"I was hoping you would join me," Lorelei said. "I hate to shower alone."

"That would be a tragedy," Alistair agreed, already shedding his clothes.

"Lock the door?"

"Of course, of course," he nodded, turning to give the doorknob the requisite twist. "Everyone's distracted downstairs by some tomfoolery in the front yard, anyway."

"Excellent." She slid the glass open just enough to peek around, and to extend a beckoning hand to her pale visitor. "Come to me."

Smiling, Alistair did so. Clearly she wasn't so attached to her "love" downstairs as she had let on. That, too, was something Alistair was used to. She retreated into the shower as he stepped forward to join her. He drank in the vision of her naked, wet beauty, and grinned even more broadly as she gestured for him to join her under the spraying water. Her hands reached for his pale face, sliding around the sides to bring him in close.

Their mouths joined. Their bodies slid together. Lorelei wrapped her arms around his naked waist, pulling him against her as she exhaled into that deep kiss. Alistair's eyes went wide with animal panic. He flailed and beat against her, unable to break her grip, but it was already too late to scream. The flames she breathed into him had gone straight down his throat, after all.

Alistair caught fire from the inside out as Lorelei blew into him. The water cut down on the flare-ups that erupted from various parts of his body as he burned down in her arms. He didn't give off a whole lot of smoke; oddly, vampires rarely did when they went this way. Even so, the open window was enough to take care of most of it.

Lorelei shivered at the exquisite rush of ending someone in her arms once more. It wasn't quite the same as drawing out a victim's soul along the way. Nor could any of that compare to the ongoing joy and satisfaction she derived from her love and master. Nothing, she realized, could compare to him. That was a reassuring thought.

But this would still put a spring in her step.

Soon Alistair was a mere pile of ash, and a wet one at that. Lorelei turned and stepped behind the remains to nudge the lumps apart for ease of rinsing them down the drain. Water ran down her hair, her breasts and her belly, washing away every trace of the hapless vampire as she hummed to herself.

This was, perhaps, a touch further in flirting than her master would have liked. Lorelei was certain that Alex would understand, though. Moreover, she was certain to enjoy making it up to him.