The Devil's Wolf

"I can't believe I am driving a stolen car through a take-away drive through," Alatar muttered under his breath as they waited for the car in front of them to finish ordering, the bright neon lights of the takeaway shop illuminating the cabin harshly. "Considering that Cael and I are covered in blood, and we just busted you out of a police jail, I think a stolen car is the least of our worries," Ashlynn pointed out looking at the devil next to her. Cael grinned, his teeth white against the dark gore that smothered his face like a mask, the details of his clothing lost beneath it. There was a heavy metallic stink that had a faint undercurrent of a slaughterhouse around him, and a few suspicious chunks clung to his clothing. "And everyone is starving." Less so, she thought, having taken a good look at her lover in the overbright lights. "Lots of towelettes, please, uncle," she added. "Or maybe we need to run Cael through a carwash."

"Yes," Alatar leaned out the window in order to yell into the speaker which squawked static at him. "Three classic, one hot and spicy, jumbo meal deals, and extra towelettes, as many as you can and then double it, please. I have two exceptionally filthy children in the back seat.

"You are paying Raiden, I don't have my wallet, which is just another item to add to the list of illegal activities we are doing tonight - driving without a licence." He added to the werewolf.

Raiden made a noise in the back of his throat that might have been a smothered laugh. Ashlynn send her father a suspicious look, but the alpha werewolf very determinedly looked ahead as Alatar eased the stolen car towards the next window. "Thanks Uncle Alatar," Ashlynn grinned as he leaned out the window to pay. She saw the cashier do a double take spotting her and Cael in the backseat through the window, and lean out a little trying to work out exactly what they were covered in. "Early Halloween party," she called out to him. "And thanks for paying dad."

"Yes, thanks dad," Cael smirked earning a side eye from the werewolf. "He is coming around," the devil said to Ashlynn cheerfully. "He will grow to like me, eventually. We did, after all, come to his rescue," he added pointedly.

"I was rescuing myself just fine," Raiden muttered. "I prefer the vampire."

"Oh, now that hurts my feelings," Cael pouted.

They collected their order and parked in the shadows of a tree, Raiden passing Ashlynn back the towelettes. She tore them open and scrubbed her hands with one, whilst Cael tried to remove the blood from his hands ineffectually. It was caked blackly in his nailbeds and the creases of his knuckles, and the towelettes only seemed to make the blood run like paint rather than clear the skin.

"I am hungry," the devil complained impatiently. "I want to eat, not wash. I will wash later."

"It is not hygienic to eat with hands covered in other people's guts," she scolded him, taking a towelette to his face and scrubbing despite his protestations. "Oh, there you are," she exclaimed as she cleared a skin-colored spot.

"I think this has to be in my top ten list of things I never thought I would do," Alatar commented to Raiden conversationally. "Sit in a stolen car, eating take away, with a blood covered angel in the backseat."

"He is not an angel. He is a devil." Raiden replied grimly. "In every sense of the phrase." There was a pause. "What else is on the list?" He asked intrigued.

"Pretty much anything involving you," Alatar stated mildly. "You are like a magnet for the unexpected. The better question is: what isn't on the list? When it comes to you and your whole family, Rai." Raiden looked as if he was considering arguing and then he pulled a face. "Fair enough."

When she decided the devil was clean enough to eat and released him from her ministrations, Cael fell upon the food like a savage. Ashlynn watched impressed as he finished whilst she was still halfway through her burger. "Don't choke," she said to him. "Did you even chew twice? We should enter him into an eating contest," she added to the men in the front of the car, impressed by Cael's consumption of his meal. "I think he just inhaled his chips..." The devil eyed off her half-eaten meal optimistically.

"Because I love you, you can have my chips," she surrendered them to him. "But not my burger. I'm hungry too."

"We can't walk the streets with them like that," Raiden commented to Alatar around his burger. "And we can't exactly drive up to Vampire Square through the roadblocks."

"Cael can fly us in," Ashlynn suggested. "One by one. It will be a pain," she glanced at her mate. "But it might be the only way in."

"Sure, because I trust him not to drop me," Raiden retorted sharply.

"I won't drop you, sire of my mate," Cael smirked. "Or, at least, not far enough to kill you."

"If we put a shield around an entire building," Alatar chewed a chip speculatively, his mind on a different problem. "It is going to be hard to disguise from the humans. It is sort of noticeable when there is an invisible force field around an entire building. Not that they don't already suspect, I guess," he added thoughtfully. "I saw the news broadcasts of Ashlynn using her powers on the highway a few days ago."

"People were writing that off as some sort of special effects, a prank or some stunt for a new movie," Raiden replied.

"Yeah, I read that, too."

"I think the time has passed for secrecy," Ashlynn leaned her elbows on the backs of their seats and leaned forward. "The Other world has let the vampires shield them from the humans for the last twenty years, and now they are the focus of the humans' attacks. If the Other world revealed itself, the humans would think twice about what they are doing, as they will realize they are up against more than the vampires."

"The vampires act as a shield for a reason," Raiden retorted half turning in his seat and the Other flashing in his eyes causing Ashlynn to recoil against Cael who put his arm around her shoulders. "They are responsible for their own exposure to the humans. They let Lucian grow his power to the extent that he exposed them. Shielding the rest of the Other world is their penance. You, of all people, Ashlynn, know this, you know what your mother endured because of Lucian."

"Lucian would not have destroyed the hierarchy of the vampires if he hadn't had mum's blood," Ashlynn pointed out trying to disguise her retreat from her father's anger and regain her ground.

"Something the vampires were also permitting him to get away with until it became an issue for them. Your mate knew your mother was being held as a blood slave by Lucian and did nothing," Raiden growled. "Until it was to his advantage to do so."

"But he did something in the end, returning her to you, and then fought against Lucian during Armageddon. And he has worked hard to protect werewolves and the Other world from humans ever since," Ashlynn pointed out reasonably. "Again, to his advantage. He was handed a position of unparalleled power over his people by your mother, and she has continued to supply him with blood so that he can maintain it. He has failed to uphold his side of the bargain, when he let this war escalate to this extent," Raiden was furious.

"He is doing everything in his power," she growled back at him. "With pitiful little assistance."

"We are sheltering him in our house," Raiden's Other flashed in his eyes again. "Or did that escape your notice?"

"You are sheltering him because you know that if he loses, you will have every opportunistic vampire at your door, seeking mum. Elior has protected mum for the last two decades. We owe him for that."

"He has been paying a debt owed and in return has received the blood that keeps him strong."

"And this is the entire reason why the humans are able to rise against the vampires - because the Other world view vampires as the enemy, as owing a debt. Elior and the vampires beneath him, were victims of Lucian too. Elior lost his entire family, did he not? You told me that, dad."

"You will never convince the Other world to expose themselves," Raiden dismissed the idea, turning back around. "You are naive to think so."

"If the werewolf community stepped forward..."

"Impossible. For many reasons," Raiden shook his head and exchanged a look of frustration with Alatar. "We are just one pack, Ash. We cannot make a decision that affects all packs, without a meeting between all the pack leaders, and that sort of meeting takes time and needs to be done right, or it will cause issues for decades to come. You know how pack politics goes."