Life was good…
True, he had a lifestyle upon which most of his coworkers frowned. The majority of them, for instance, preferred to stay in local convents or rectories while traveling, while Alaric always checked into the finest hotel he could find…which he paid for himself, of course. Why not? He didn’t have any children or parents to support. Was it his fault that an early interest in investing (particularly in precious metals, specifically gold, which he couldn’t help noticing there seemed to be a great deal of around the Vatican) had made him his Zurich banker’s favorite client?
Still, in no way did Alaric Wulf consider himself a snob. He could “rough it” like anyone else. He was, in fact, “roughing it” now.
Sitting in his rental car outside a large discount retail establishment in Chattanooga-Chattanooga; what a name for a city!-Alaric watched as the lunchtime crowd flooded toward the store. A sketchy report from a pair of frantic parents had worked its way to his superiors at the Palatine Guard: A young woman who worked at this particular Walmart had been attacked by a vamp in this very parking lot on her way home from work one night. She still bore the telltale puncture wounds on her neck.
The problem was that she insisted to her parents that the marks were not from an “attack” at all but were the result of a “love bite.”
In other words, she adored her attacker.
Of course, Alaric thought with his customary cynicism. They all do. Society had romanticized vampires to the point that many impressionable young women threw themselves at the actors who played vampires in movies and on television.