Arkemoz shrugged. He couldn’t really deny that. He hadn’t exactly been very busy since he’d come to Earth. Not that he’d been busy in Hell since he’d just generally avoided other demons at all times, but the fact that time was measured here just made him realize how much of it he had. He’d always found the idea of having a finite lifespan insane. He’d had no idea how humans could deal with that idea. But he was pretty sure he got it now, at least a little.
“So, which way looks good?” Adley asked, looking from one side of the street to the other. Aside from the wind and snow, everything was quiet, with only the occasional car passing by from time to time, and people walking up and down the sidewalk, talking.
Arkemoz just shrugged again. Neither looked all that great considering it was cold and snowing. Adley took that as a signal to just pick whichever direction he wanted, choosing to go left. It all looked the same to Arkemoz, honestly. The dark wasn’t helping with orientation, but even beyond that—he just wasn’t very good at finding his way around. Or maybe it was that human buildings all looked the same. One or the other.
After a while the snow and wind let up a bit, which made this much more tolerable, but it also led to Arkemoz staring frequently at Adley’s hand, wondering where the urge to take it into his own was coming from. But whatever the reason, he did want to do it. He wasn’t sure if the vampire would approve, though. Arkemoz generally didn’t see many people just holding hands, so maybe this wouldn’t be socially acceptable. And he didn’t want Adley to be mad at him.
So instead he just pouted, grumbling to himself in his mind. Emotions could be so annoying. Especially when they were this confusing. Though that was so commonplace for him at this point he’d probably be unnerved if he did understand.
When Adley stopped at the corner of a street and leaned onto the wall, Arkemoz came to a halt, looking at him. The vampire was giving him the softest of smiles. Arkemoz’s heart started to behave strangely again, and he couldn’t look away. His eyes just kept switching between staring into Adley’s eyes and at his lips. He watched, frozen in place as Adley leaned in, waiting for whatever the vampire would do next.
But then he broke eye contact, taking a step back with a scowl. He sniffed the air, the glare deepening.
“What’s wrong?”
“I smell blood.”
Adley raised an eyebrow at Arkemoz, who gave a firm nod. This could be nothing too serious, though if Adley could smell the blood all the way here, it probably wasn’t. Arkemoz wasn’t sure how strong the vampires’ ability to detect it was, but he was still willing to guess it had to be a lot of blood to catch Adley’s attention.
Arkemoz followed Adley as he ran back towards the center of the town, immediately heading into one of the many alleys. It was always the alleys, wasn’t it?
Adley stopped in front of it, frowning into the dark space lined with wet bricks. “Something about this feels off.”
Arkemoz wasn’t sure what the vampire meant, but he did know he could finally smell the blood too. He crinkled his nose. Arkemoz had no idea how vampires could find the stuff appealing. He took out his wooden stake and nodded at Adley, who nodded back and walked into the alley, looking around.
As they got deeper and deeper into the alley, the pungent, metallic smell of blood got all the more invasive to the demon’s senses. There was just the sound of their footsteps, the wind, and the noise of distant traffic. The relative stillness was putting Arkemoz on edge.
And finally, after turning a corner, they were met with the source of the smell. Surprisingly, there were no bodies, but what was there was a huge, bloody spot on a relatively white wall. It had to be at least six feet in diameter.
“Well, fuck.”
Arkemoz agreed. This wasn’t good. Clearly someone had done this on purpose, most likely to lure them here. They needed to leave immediately. But before he could say any of this, it was already too late. There were vampires approaching them from both sides now. Arkemoz looked behind himself, spotting another two blocking their exit. So that was six in total. That wasn’t good at all. The only silver lining here was that these vampires weren’t with the Circle since Arkemoz could easily tell what they were.
“So the great James Adley graces us with his presence,” said one of the vampires, a woman, who walked up to Adley while the others stayed behind. “Well, not so great now since Aegis defanged you.”
“Can we please skip over this and kill each other already?” Adley said, rolling his eyes. The female vampire laughed and shrugged.
“Sure thing. Let’s see how long it takes to kill you and your demon boy toy. He’s been causing a lot of trouble for us.”
The other vampires started advancing towards them. Arkemoz glared at the ones on his left, taking a few steps to face them. There were two behind them too, so Arkemoz would have to focus on drawing the fight away from the alley they had gone through to get here. He exchanged a quick look with Adley, who gave a nod and pulled out his own stake, already charging towards the one on his right.
Arkemoz followed suit, grabbing the arm of the vampire about to stab him with a knife and pushing him into the wall hard with a crunch. Arkemoz wasn’t sure if he’d broken the vampire’s arm or something else, but he had no time to find out as the other two attacked him at once.
Arkemoz quickly dodged, backing up against the wall so he wouldn’t lose sight of all three of them. He wanted to check how Adley was holding up, but he had no time as he had to try fighting off three vampires at once. Just because he was faster and stronger didn’t mean he could beat three of them at once. He needed to kill at least one of them, and fast.
He dodged yet again, a knife missing his face by inches, and slammed into one of the vampires, forcing him to the opposite wall. Before he could react, Arkemoz was already stabbing the wooden stake into his heart, turning him into a pile of ash a second later.
Breathing hard, Arkemoz whirled around, raising his stake again. Why did they have knives? Aegis were the ones who could cause them the most trouble, so surely also using wooden weapons would make more sense, wouldn’t it?
Though looking more closely, he now noticed that only one of the remaining vampires had a knife. The other had a stake. Maybe they just didn’t know what to use against a demon, let alone how to bless metal to actually create a weapon capable of killing him. But even a normal knife wouldn’t be pleasant to be stabbed with.
Arkemoz gritted his teeth as the vampires began advancing on him again. They were grinning at him with their fangs at full length. He really didn’t like the looks of that. But if they wanted to drink his blood, he wouldn’t make it easy for them.
As soon as one of them was in range, he made an attempt at stabbing him right there and then, but the vampire had clearly seen that coming and moved out of the way just in time. And before Arkemoz could react, the other vampire punched him in the face, which forced his hood off his head and sent his hat flying. The demon stumbled back, his back colliding with the wall. He could feel warm blood running from a cut on his lip.
He only had a fraction of a second to notice the feral look in the vampires’ eyes before they were on him, slamming him into the wall. He cried out as one of them sunk his fangs into his neck. He almost dropped the stake then, but gritting his teeth even harder, he clenched his fist around the wood and threw the vampire off, stabbing the stake in his chest right after.
But before he could take a breath, he was screaming in pain as the remaining vampire stabbed the knife into his back. He fell to his knees with a gasp as the vampire yanked the knife out, no doubt about to stab him again. But the strike never came.
Before Arkemoz could collect his bearings, he was being pulled to his feet.
“Are you okay?”
Oh. Adley killed the remaining vampires. Good. Arkemoz nodded, panting. There was just pain stabbing through his whole body. It made it hard to think. “I think one of them ran off, but the rest are dead.”
Arkemoz nodded again. That wasn�
��t a bad result considering how outnumbered they’d been. Adley was clearly a very good fighter.
“Come on, Arkie, my place isn’t that far away from here. We’ll take care of your wounds, huh? Everything will be okay.”
He sounded really worried. Despite the pain, that made Arkemoz feel good for some reason.
“Okay,” Arkemoz mumbled, letting Adley put an arm around his shoulders and slowly lead him to wherever Adley lived.
Thankfully, it really wasn’t far far because Arkemoz wasn’t sure he could keep this up. He was limping as it was. Adley kept a hand on Arkemoz’s back as he led him inside a door and then another one right after. They entered what Arkemoz assumed was the vampire’s apartment, but he was in too much pain to really care. He was just happy that he was sitting now, on a bed no less. He really just wanted to lie down and sleep.
“Okay. Now about those wounds…” Adley said, bringing Arkemoz back into reality. He looked up at the vampire, blinking slowly. He’d never lost this much blood. He hadn’t thought he’d be this affected. He’d never been stabbed before either, though—maybe this was normal.
“Bastards,” Adley muttered under his breath as he helped Arkemoz take off his coat. It might have been the blood loss, but Arkemoz was sure Adley’s canines were looking sharper than usual. The vampire cleared his throat. “Jesus, I had no idea demon blood was so….”
Arkemoz frowned at him. He didn’t want to think about it, but he was starting to get concerned Adley would try to drink his blood, too. And he doubted he could fight him off right now.
The thought of Adley doing that hurt almost as much as the wound in his back.
Adley shook his head. “Sorry, sorry. I, um, have some bandages...somewhere.”
The vampire went to the other side of the room to rummage through his drawers. Arkemoz sighed. “If this is making you uncomfortable—”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Adley interrupted, sounding anything but fine. He didn’t stop his search for bandages either. “Besides, you can’t do this yourself. Especially that stab wound.”
Arkemoz sighed, his shoulders sagging. He had no counter arguments for that, especially since he had no idea how to do any of this in the first place. So he just sat there, staring at his hands in his lap while moving his tail back and forth on the bed covers, just to busy himself with something during this very tense moment.
“All right,” Adley said, turning around with a plastic box in his hands. “I assume you heal quicker than a human?”
Arkemoz nodded, not looking up. This wasn’t going to be pleasant, was it?
“Okay, this will sting.”
Arkemoz tensed up, flinching as Adley put something wet on the wound on his neck. Oh, a wet rag. To wipe off the blood. That made sense, probably. Arkemoz had assumed Adley would just put the bandage on and be done with it.
Adley took a step back, covering his mouth as he put the rag away. “Jesus. Okay. Is it, um, still bleeding?”
Arkemoz touched his neck, wincing and then looking at the fingers. There was some blood there, but the wound seemed to have mostly stopped leaking now. “I think…. I think it’s fine.”
“Okay, th-that’s good.” Arkemoz looked up at Adley again, worried. His eyes seemed to be glazed over a little, and his teeth were definitely turning into fangs. “Could you, uh, maybe do this part on your own?”
Arkemoz took the bandage pad off him, not sure he knew what to do with it, but Adley didn’t seem to be quite up to it, so he would have to try. There were apparently adhesive strips on the edges of the bandage, so he hoped that meant he’d just have to put it on the wound. So he did just that, swallowing down a whimper as the soft material touched the open wound.
“Yeah, great, just, uh, press on it a bit,” Adley said, looking anywhere but at the demon. Arkemoz did as he’d been told. It did feel a bit better now, though there was still a wound in his back. “Is your blood supposed to be so...dark?”
Arkemoz nodded. He had no idea what to say to that, and he wasn’t exactly comfortable with how much Adley was focusing on his blood. Though he understood why this was a problem for him, so Arkemoz didn’t blame him for it.
“Okay, the stab wound now. If you could, um….” Adley made a gesture with his hand that Arkemoz assumed meant he wanted him to turn around, so he did, raising up his shirt. A similar process followed, aside from Adley taking a moment to push on the wound to stop the bleeding and bandaging the wound himself this time.
Adley breathed out when he was done, which Arkemoz took as a sign to put the shirt back down again. Pain shot through his wounds as he did, and he grimaced. Getting stabbed was definitely one of his least favorite things. Hopefully he’d manage to heal in a few hours, though.
He was about to turn back around again when Adley gasped. “Holy shit, you have a tail?”
Before Arkemoz could say anything, Adley touched it, and to the demon’s absolute shock, the tail wrapped itself around Adley’s hand automatically. Feeling his face flushing, he quickly yanked the tail away from the vampire’s hand and out of his reach and turned around. The vampire looked embarrassed now, though he had no real reason to. It was Arkemoz who should be embarrassed. And he was. Absolutely mortified, in fact.
There was just one explanation for his tail doing that without him wanting to—he liked Adley. In the sense that he wanted him to be his mate. And now Arkemoz felt very stupid for not putting that together earlier. It was very obvious in hindsight, but this whole thing was so foreign to him. In Hell, it was all more obvious and simple. Human-style relationships were incredibly complicated in comparison.
“Sorry,” Adley apologized, scratching the back of his neck and chuckling awkwardly. “That’s just really cute.”
Arkemoz raised up his tail and gave it a dubious look. “You...like it?”
“Yeah!” Adley’s eyes were practically sparkling, as was his grin. His canines were still a bit sharper than they should be, but he seemed to have calmed down now that Arkemoz’s blood wasn’t out in the open. “I mean, look at it! It’s adorable.”
Adley reached out to the tail, which of course wrapped itself around his hand again. Arkemoz blushed deep red again, but he didn’t put the tail away. As annoying as this reaction was, it felt sort of nice.
“Are you doing that?”
Arkemoz cleared his throat. Adley had said he found him attractive, right? So there was no harm in telling him.
“Not...exactly. It happens when….” He briefly closed his eyes as Adley started rubbing the tail. “It happens when a demon...is interested in someone.”
Adley visibly tensed up. Arkemoz didn’t like the silence that followed.
“Um, a-as a mate,” Arkemoz added, though he wasn’t even sure why. He just felt very nervous all of a sudden. He couldn’t even look up at Adley. At least not until the vampire let go of his tail.
“No.”
Arkemoz stared at him in confusion as the vampire took a few steps back, shaking his head. “What?”
“No, no, you’re just confused.”
Adley was definitely right about that because Arkemoz wasn’t getting any of this at all. What was he talking about?
“Whatever you think you feel, it’s just some infatuation.”
Why was Adley saying that? Hadn’t he been interested in him before? Why couldn’t this man make sense for once? Though Arkemoz couldn’t even bring himself to feel annoyed. What Adley was saying somehow hurt more than the stab wound in his back.
“You can’t know that,” Arkemoz argued, springing up from the bed and drawing himself to his full height. Not that that was saying much with how tall Adley was. And it had also caused him quite a lot of pain to do it. He had to use all his strength to mask his pained grimace.
Adley let out a huff. “Yeah, I can, actually. I’m the first person you’ve spent any kind of time with. I don’t think that's the basis for a healthy relationship, Arkie.”
After hearing that, all Arkemoz could do was stare up at Adl
ey, unable to say anything as the pain in his heart got worse.
“Seriously, once you get out there a bit, you’ll find someone way better, and you’ll forget about this crush of yours in no time. Trust me.”
Arkemoz had so many questions right now, but only one ended up making its way out of his mouth. “But...you said you were interested in me.”
“Only interested in sleeping with you. There’s a difference.”
Arkemoz couldn’t look into Adley’s eyes anymore, preferring to stare at the fading, blue carpet instead. The corners of his eyes were stinging, and they didn’t want to stop, no matter how much he blinked.
“Just stay here and rest for a bit, all right?” Adley said after he coughed into his hand. “I’ll be right back. Just need some fresh air.”
He was gone before Arkemoz could say anything, the door clicking shut behind him. The demon practically collapsed on the bed, wincing as the quick movement upset his wounds again. He wished he’d never said anything now. He just felt numb and empty, and he hated every bit of it.
And he probably could have predicted this reaction too, now that he thought about it. Adley had only ever complimented his appearance. Maybe the vampire simply liked how Arkemoz looked and possibly saw him as a novelty, but he wanted something more for a mate. In his dimension, that would have been enough, but Arkemoz supposed relationships on Earth just worked differently.
He sighed heavily. He wanted nothing more than to just lie down and sulk, but he didn’t think he could face Adley once he returned. Maybe it would be best to just go back to his place. Though that idea didn’t sound all that appealing either. He wasn’t sure how far away the apartment building was from here, but it would definitely take a while to get there.
But Arkemoz supposed that was the better option, so biting back a groan of pain, he got up again, grabbing his coat. He wasn’t sure if he’d even manage to put it on, but he’d freeze out there without it, especially given that he wasn’t entirely sure he knew where he was right now.
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