Dr. Wolf, the Fae Rift Series Book 2- Demon Spiral (5 page)

“A father’s love is a powerful thing,” Aleric replied, keeping his voice level. He pushed open the door to the parking lot, grateful Gregory had given them the use of his car again.

“And that bothers you, why?” Dartan pressed. He pulled his hood over his head to keep the sun off his sensitive skin.

Aleric shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

Dartan climbed into the car. Aleric could feel his searching look when he turned the key, but he refused to meet the vampire’s gaze.

“What did your father do to you?” Dartan asked.

Aleric shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

Dartan sat back. He pulled the seatbelt over to clip it, then shook his head and let it go. “The last thing I need to do is survive a car accident and wake up in the hospital. This whole situation will start all over again. Nobody wants that.”

Aleric rolled his eyes as he pulled the car into the road. “Who says I’m going to get us in a car accident?”

Dartan gave a triumphant grin. “Nobody, but it got you out of your hole of self-pity.”

“I wasn’t in a—”

“Look out!” Dartan shouted.

Aleric swerved around the car that was heading down the wrong side of the road jerking back and forth in a manner that made vehicles steer out of the way and pedestrians cringe on the sidewalks.

“Dartan, did you see that?” Aleric stared behind him in the direction the car had gone.

“What?” Dartan asked, craning his neck.

Aleric took advantage of the other drivers who had pulled to the sides of the road and did a U-turn. He didn’t know if something like that was legal, but at the moment, he didn’t care.

“Are you really going after the car that nearly killed us?” Dartan asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Aleric replied.

“Give me one good reason why that make sense,” the vampire demanded.

“Because there’s a goblin on the car.”

Dartan’s eyes widened. “After that vehicle!”

Aleric sped down the road, following in the car’s wake of disaster. Someone had hit a fire hydrant and water shot up into the air. The car sped through the next light and Aleric followed close behind. Only Dartan’s shout told of how close they cleared the intersection.

“I’d like to be alive when we return to the hospital,” Dartan muttered.

“You’re a vampire,” Aleric replied.

Dartan let out a grunt of annoyance but didn’t respond. Both of them watched the small creature clinging to the roof of the car they followed.

“Why won’t she pull over?” Aleric asked, guessing by the bushy hair of the person in the driver’s seat that she was a woman.

“She’s driven by fear,” Dartan replied. “Look inside the car.”

Aleric’s eyes widened. There was another goblin inside the vehicle. It clung to the back of the passenger seat, its spider-claws sunk into the upholstery. The driver glanced back and then drove faster as if she could get away from the Dark fae just by driving.

“She’s not going to stop,” Dartan said. “I’m going to help her.”

“What are you talking about?” Aleric asked.

Dartan picked up the small tranquilizer gun and moved toward the window.

“What on Blays are you doing?” Aleric demanded.

“Helping the driver,” Dartan said. “I’ll shoot the goblin on the roof, toss it inside, and climb in after the other one. When it’s tranquilized, the driver should stop.”

He climbed out the window as easily as if they were standing still.

Aleric cursed the vampire’s reflexes. “I don’t think humans are that rational!” Aleric shouted after him.

Dartan crouched on the hood of Gregory’s little blue car. Aleric wondered if the orderly would mind if he returned the car with shoeprints on it. It was then that he realized the vampire wasn’t wearing shoes. Aleric let out a breath and shook his head. A vampire in scrubs and a werewolf behind the wheel. They were in trouble.

At Dartan’s gesture, Aleric pulled closer to the car. It was getting dark out, so he switched on his headlights to better illuminate the bumper. Dartan threw him a grateful smile.

“Don’t smile yet,” Aleric muttered under his breath. “This is a horrible plan. My plans are much better.” He didn’t admit to himself that he didn’t have a plan any better than Dartan’s at the moment, but he was sure he would come up with one if the vampire would just climb back into the car.

Instead, Dartan waited until the car was close enough and jumped onto the back with an ease that belied how fast they were going. The vehicle swerved from side to side. At the same time, the goblin’s head swiveled on its shiny black body. It glared at Dartan.

Aleric was sure the goblin would pounce during the time it took the vampire to draw the gun from his waistband and aim it, but the dart struck the goblin in the abdomen before it could act. Its legs gave out and it rolled toward the edge of the car.

Aleric’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and he prepared to swerve when the Dark fae creature fell, but Dartan scooped it up at the last moment. The vampire climbed to the top of the car and crouched. He tucked the goblin under one arm and leaned down. To Aleric’s amazement, the vampire knocked on the passenger window as casually as if he was asking to sell one of Grimmel’s finely manufactured products.

The driver ignored Dartan. The vampire looked back at Aleric and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. He crouched back down and used the gun to tap on the window. When the driver continued to swerve back and forth, Dartan gave a harder tap and the window shattered. The other goblin climbed higher on the seat. Dartan chucked the first goblin at it and slid inside when the creature ducked out of the way. Dartan spun and shot the goblin before it could regroup and attack.

The vampire grinned at Aleric through the back window and turned to say something to the driver. His mouth froze in the open position. Aleric read true fear on his friend’s face. Adrenaline surged through the werewolf. He was tempted to ram the back of the car, but the driver turned down a side street with no traffic and stepped on the brakes.

As soon as the vehicle came to a halt, Aleric threw Gregory’s car into park and darted out the door. He ran to the driver’s side of the car and glanced in. His heart slowed.

“Climb in the car or I’ll turn your friend into stone.”

Aleric heard the woman’s voice through the window without a problem. The words were echoed in hissing whispered by the snakes that made up her hair.

Aleric reached for the handle to the back door with purely automatic actions. He couldn’t break his gaze away from the medusa in the driver’s seat. Fearing for Dartan’s life, Aleric slid into the seat behind her. Several of the snakes turned back to watch him. The medusa glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

“Make one move and your vampire friend will become nothing more than a handsome statue,” she said.

The hissing whispers of her snakes sent tingles of fear down Aleric’s spine.

“I won’t move,” he said quietly.

The sound of his voice seemed to break Dartan from his trance. The vampire glanced at Aleric.

“We’re in big trouble,” the vampire said.

Chapter Five

“We fell right for their trap.”

Aleric paced the edges of their cell along the same path he had followed so many times he had lost count. The room was rectangular, cement, and with a glass ceiling so high he couldn’t reach it even standing on Dartan’s shoulders. The fact that they had still tried showed of their desperation.

“You’ve said that before,” Dartan pointed out.

The vampire lay on his back in the middle of the room, his gaze on the stars just visible through the light-polluted night sky.

“And you’ve yet to acknowledge it,” Aleric shot back. “We were idiots.”

“We were attempting to find a cure for the goblin victims at the hospital. Seeing one on top of a car just happened to be more of a coincidence than we took the time to consider. I’d do it again.”

“And end up in an inescapable prison again,” Aleric replied.

Dartan shrugged from his place on the floor. “Probably.” He paused, then said, “Don’t you just love the stars?”

Aleric gave a huff of frustration. “What are you talking about? We’re probably going to die here, and all you can talk about is stars?”

“You didn’t look at them,” Dartan said calmly.

Aleric’s hands clenched into fists. The voice in the back of his mind pointed out that hitting his friend wasn’t going to do anything other than bloody his knuckles.

The thought sent a tingle of cold through Aleric’s limbs. He glanced at the vampire.

“Dartan, are you hungry?”

Dartan nodded without taking his eyes off the night sky.

Aleric realized what he had taken as his friend’s nonchalant attitude was actually extreme concentration to control his vampiric urges.

“We’ve been in here for hours,” Aleric said as the knowledge dawned on him with sickening realization.

“They want us to turn on each other and give in to our primal urges,” Dartan replied.

“Do you have to say it like that?” Aleric asked. When the vampire kept silent, Aleric found himself pacing around the room again. He counted twenty steps to the wall, fifteen to the next one, twenty, and then fifteen. The small door in the middle of one of the fifteen foot walls was two feet wide and smelled of Dark fae. Aleric fought back the urge to sneeze every time he passed it. He had checked many times, but the construction of the door was solid and metal. It was another dead end.

That was an ironic, morbid thought. Aleric glanced at Dartan. The vampire’s pale jaw was clenched and his chest barely rose and fell with each breath. He hadn’t moved for a quite some time. It was obvious to Aleric now that the vampire planned for a long siege.

“This isn’t going to work,” Aleric said quietly.

“Sure it will,” Dartan replied with his gaze on the stars. “They obviously don’t want to deal with both of us, so why not let one of their medusai turn us to stone? The only reason I keep coming back to is through sheer morbid curiosity, as demons are known for having. Which will win out? They have the perfect battle, the vampire against the werewolf, bloodsucker against moonbound, Dark fae against Light. It’s a fight as ageless as Blays.”

He glanced at Aleric this time. The werewolf was taken back by the deep red of the vampire’s eyes. Even in the Emergency Room they hadn’t been so red. But they had hunted goblins, extracted serum, and tested Lilian since that time. The stress of following the car with the goblin on it and attempting to rescue the woman had no doubt taken their toll on Dartan’s system. Add to that several hours in the cement room and whatever blood that had remained in the vampire’s body was long gone.

“I’ll die before I drink your blood.”

The vampire’s statement was flat and absolute. He turned his gaze back to the stars.

Aleric stared at him. There was no doubt by the resolve on Dartan’s face that he meant every word.

“I won’t let that happen,” Aleric said.

“You have to,” Dartan replied.

Aleric shook his head. “No, I don’t. You’re my friend. I’m not going to let you die when I can do something about it.”

Dartan looked at him again and Aleric read true sorrow in his gaze. “You don’t get it, do you?”

Aleric crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I get that we’re trapped in a cell, they want some fae feud spurred on by centuries of endless race bickering, and we’re not going to give them what they want. That’s what I get.”

Dartan lifted one finger to point at the ceiling. Aleric followed his gaze. The barest shadowing of gray showed overhead.

“If you or I don’t do it, the sun will.”

The vampire’s words rang true. Why else would the demons have put them in a room with a glass ceiling? They had also made a point of taking Dartan’s trench coat. The fact didn’t strike Aleric until that moment.

“That can’t be right,” Aleric said. “Why kill you? They could just have easily turned the medusa on me.”

Dartan opened his hands, then closed them again. “Demons entertain no envy worse than what they feel for vampires because, while we are both fae of the night, my race of revenants lives for centuries while their days are numbered like a human’s. They’ve hated my race since time began.”

Aleric gave his head a numb shake. “But the demons helped the vampires wipe out werewolves after the Fallow Conflict.”

Dartan gave a small shrug. “Demons can be manipulated once you know what drives them.”

“What drove them to help the vampires?” Aleric couldn’t help the bitterness that crept into his tone.

“A common enemy,” Dartan replied. “Wipe out the Ashstock, which both races hate. It was an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.” Dartan’s brow furrowed. “Also, my father promised them the human realm.”

Aleric stared at him. “Your father did what?”

Dartan sat up slowly and met Aleric’s gaze. “When my father found out about the banshee’s ability to cause a Rift in the divide between our world and the human one, he knew coming here would get us away from the Armistice so that our kind could drink real blood again. He wanted us to be strong, stronger than all the fae.”

“Why?” Aleric forced himself to ask.

Dartan studied the cement floor in front of him. “Because then he wanted to return to Blays, slay the government, and rule Drake City and beyond his way.”

Shock filled Aleric. He slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

“He felt vampires were the strongest race and taking away the fae blood would only make us weak. He decided it was time for the vampires to show their superiority and rule Blays the way we were always meant to,” Dartan said, his voice bitter. “And using the human world would be the way to do it.”

Aleric was quiet for a moment as he thought through what Dartan told him. He finally broke the silence to ask, “And what do the demons have to do with it?”

“Demons have ways to control humans,” Dartan said.

Horror dawned in Aleric’s chest. “Through the goblins.”

Dartan nodded. “My father made the agreement with Ashdava, the Demon Queen, to allow Archdemons to enter Edge City so that they could make the humans more, how did he put it…more amiable to being vermin for the revenant to feed upon. When the vampires were strong enough, the plan was for our kind to return to Blays and the demons would stay here and rule the humans.”

“And when we sent Lord Targesh back to Governor Hornsbellow…,” Aleric began.

“I let the Governor in on my father’s plans,” Dartan replied in a hollow voice that told of how hard it had been to betray the vampire lord. “Governor Hornsbellow said he would deal with Queen Ashdava himself.”

“Now we know that at least one Archdemon came through,” Aleric said. “Do you think he’s continuing his side of the agreement to control the humans?”

“I do,” Dartan replied. “There would be no reason not to. I didn’t know any goblins made it through, let alone an Archdemon, or I would have told you the rest of Father’s plan. I thought we thwarted it when we sent him back to Blays to be thrown in the troll dungeon at Great Oak.”

The silence fell like a thick cloak around them. Aleric felt it pounding against his ears. Dartan had been forced to betray his father to protect the human world. It wasn’t his fault the Archdemon came through. The question was, which Archdemon were they dealing with and how many goblins did he have at his disposal. Archdemons were known for their flippant use of the Dark fae creatures.

“So he lets you die,” Aleric began.

“Or you kill me,” Dartan replied. At Aleric’s frustrated expression, the vampire held up a hand. “Werewolves are known to phase to protect their lives. If I attacked you to save my own skin,” he glanced up at the gray light of dawn showing through the overhead windows, “Quite literally, I may add, then your instincts will kick in and prevent me from killing you.”

Aleric shook his head. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said.

“What if I asked you to?”

The question caught Aleric off-guard. “What?”

Dartan’s tone was forcibly nonchalant when he said, “Given the choice between the long, painful frying beneath the light of the sun type of death or having my throat torn out, I choose the latter.”

“You don’t get to choose,” Aleric replied.

Dartan gave him a humored look. “It’s my death. I should be able to choose.”

“They’re my fangs,” Aleric shot back. “It’s not your choice.”

The morbidity of their conversation must have struck Dartan’s funny bone because he started laughing.

“Shut up,” Aleric said.

Dartan fell to his back and held his sides, laughing so loud it echoed around the room.

“Stop laughing,” Aleric barked.

Dartan ignored him. Aleric pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He pointedly ignored the vampire in return.

Dartan rolled to his stomach and pounded the ground with his fists as he gave several great, dramatic chortles. His laughter finally reduced to chuckles, and then subsided to the occasional humored sigh. He eventually let out a breath and pushed up to his knees.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed like that in my life,” he said, moving back to a seated position. “Who knew it would feel so good?” When Aleric didn’t say anything, Dartan said, “Hey, Wolfie, look at me.”

Aleric refused.

Dartan’s voice was quiet when he finally said, “Why does it matter so much to you? You’ll finally be rid of me. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted since the Rift threw us together?”

“No, that’s not what I want!” Aleric shouted. The outburst surprised him. His chest heaved and he stared at the vampire. “You’re my best friend, Dartan. Why in Blays do you think I would want to kill you?”

He wished he could take the words back as soon as he said them, but they had already been spoken. The ghosts of his words lingered in the air, repeating in his ears and whispering in his memory.

“I’m your best friend?” Dartan repeated, his tone unreadable.

Aleric rubbed his eyes with one hand. A headache was forming. He knew it was from not eating for so long. He couldn’t imagine the pain Dartan was feeling as his insides began to feast on the fluids in his body now that the blood was used up.

“What of it?” Aleric asked. There was a small rip in the knee of his scrubs. He knew Nurse Eastwick would give him her ‘I don’t have enough clothes to keep you in’ speech if she saw it. He hoped she would have the chance to lecture him again.

Dartan’s voice was quiet when he said, “We haven’t known each other for very long. If I’m your best friend, you must have had pretty slim pickings back in Blays.”

Aleric allowed the silence to answer for him.

Dartan let out a breath and admitted, “I guess, if I think about it, you’re really the only friend I’ve ever had. Vampires don’t make very good friends; they really suck.” He paused. When Aleric didn’t say anything, he continued with, “That was a joke.”

“I got it,” Aleric replied.

“A good friend would laugh,” Dartan told him.

Instead of smiling, Aleric met Dartan’s gaze. “A good friend wouldn’t rip your throat out.”

“He would if I asked,” the vampire said.

Aleric should his head. “No. He wouldn’t.”

“What if I said please?” Dartan pressed.

Aleric gritted his teeth. “It’s not happening.”

Dartan let out a dramatic sigh. “Fine. Death by sunburn. Looking forward to it.” He settled onto his back again.

Aleric rose and paced around the room once more.

“You’re not going to find it,” Dartan said.

Aleric glanced at him. The vampire’s gaze was on the windows above. “Find what?”

“The exit,” Dartan answered. “There isn’t one.”

“I can’t just sit here and let the inevitable happen. There has to be a way to fight back.”

Aleric had reached the door for the thousandth time. He pounded on it with his fist. When nobody answered, he pounded harder. He put his werewolf strength behind it, slamming his fists into the metal without result.

“Watch your knuckles.”

By the sound of his voice, Dartan had changed position. Aleric glanced over his shoulder to see that the vampire had moved to sit against the far wall.