Dr. Wolf, the Fae Rift Series Book 2- Demon Spiral by Cheree Alsop Page A

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