Author's Note: I just wanted to thank everyone for reading these stories and commenting on them so far. The feedback means a lot to me and to Kazeninoru! I don't usually leave comments like this in the middle of chapters, but I thought it to be necessary this time around and so I did LoL! This is also a note to let you know that the story, for those of you who don't like 'lemons', picks up again at this point in time, so fear not! Let the show go on! XD
Turnabout
"It's uncommonly snowy for this time of year, ya know?"
"I'd had that thought actually." Marvin turned in his seat, Doc next to him, riding down the snow covered roads in the older mans truck. The wind was howling outside, making the snow whip about, blowing up flakes the storm had already shed from the sky, making the snow seem worse than it really was. Marvin looked back at Evelyn, seeing she was sound asleep in her seat, stopping him from asking her how she'd been doing. Smiling at her, reaching back and pulling her blanket up and over her more tightly, he looked ahead again where he sat in the passenger's seat and shook his head slowly as the dusting whiteness outside surrounding them, "How much longer?"
"Well," Doc started, "we woulda been there an hour ago, but going 25 miles an hour doesn't speed things up any."
Marvin chuckled softly and tilted his head down so that he was looking at the floorboard where his duffle bag lay. Treacherous weather, that was for sure, but honestly it wasn't as bad as it could have been. In fact, most northerners probably would've looked at it like it were a flurry. Marvin wasn't gonna complain. Not about the weather anyway. They'd been driving for a good two hours now, heading to the mountain home Doc owned, chatting here and there about the things going on, listening to a little radio, and just thinking to themselves. There was nothing much to complain about besides perhaps the slow ride.
Though Marvin also might've complained about the fact that as Doc slowed down to make a right turn, his truck stalled.
"Damn it," Doc muttered, turning the keys again. The sound of the engine trying to start could be heard in slight sputtering, and Doc turned his hand once more against the key. Glancing up and over at Marvin, he asked, "Damn thing won't turn over, you know anything about cars?"
Marvin snorted, "I didn't grow up in a car garage with my dad and come away with nothing. Don't worry, I'll go have a look at her." Good thing too, he thought as he opened the door, no way in hell he wanted to be completely stuck out in this shit until morning.
Doc smiled and nodded, letting Marvin get out of the truck to go have a look see, popping the hood whenever Marvin called back to crack her open. Marvin grabbed his hood and pulled it over his head as he made his way around the truck in order to have a look at her, trying to block out as much snow as possible from gusting into his face. He began checking all of the lines, the engine, and his brows narrowed as he did so. With a groaned sigh, he called back to Doc loudly, "I don't see anything wrong with her, try to turn her over again."
Marvin waited, but no response, the car didn't make a sound or do anything to signify it was trying to be started. "Hey Doc!," he called more loudly over the wind, knowing Doc's window was down a bit when he'd left the car, "Turn her over again!"
Still, nothing. "What the fuck?" Marvin reached up to grab the hood so he could shut it to signal to Doc when he heard something behind him, which caused him to turn about. It'd sounded like a growl, but he couldn't be sure with the wind whipping around as it was. Sighing, shaking his head and thinking he'd had too much interaction with demonic situations lately, Marvin just muttered, "Must be the wind blowing, guess I should broken out the loud horn."
As he spoke this, he heard the same sound again, a growling, and he decided not to look back, but instead, just head to the door of the truck where his gun was in the floorboard of the seat. After all, maybe it he put it in his pocket, he'd feel better, rather than as if he was about to be victimized the way he was back in town. Reaching up and shutting the hood, he might've been a bit too late, gasping as he felt something wrapping around his foot. Marvin then fell as he was tugged on with a hard jerk, his head barely missing the front bumper of the car, being pulled back through the snow. Looking up, he saw beings, a good number of them, lumbering through the recently created tundra toward him, the Quietuses of which Marvin didn't know the name, faceless, lifeless beings that were still somehow animated and under the control of a malevolent being.
"Shit, Doc!," he yelled, "toss me my gun!" He could feel his body being drug even as they moved toward him, making him have even less time than he would have normally.
Doc sat in the drivers seat quietly, the hood of the truck still up, and he looked down, seeing the duffle bag laying in the floorboard where Marvin had been sitting. Reaching down, he opened it, pulling the weapon out and into his hands. Lifting it up, looking back outside, he could see the creatures from the area between the opened hood and the top of the truck and its engine ahead of them in the whipping snow. He could hear Marvin yelling for his gun again amongst the howling wind, and Doc simply reached for the window knob and began rolling it up, looking back to make sure Marvin's yells hadn't alerted Evelyn.
The demonic tongue of the Quietus whom had Marvin in its clutches began to snake out of its mouth as it came closer to Marvin, more tentacles wrapping around the man who struggled to get to his knife inside of his thick jacket, wondering if Doc really was that hard of hearing or if he was just petrified where he was. He just hoped in that moment that Evelyn was alright, still asleep, and grabbing the handle of his knife finally, Marvin managed to cut through one of the tentacles around his chest, then another one, gasping amidst their startled shrieks as he saw the them coming closer.
Their sharp tongues whipped about, one of them raising up threateningly to stab downwards into the man, and Marvin yelled again for Doc to do 'any fucking thing' as his last resort, knowing he wouldn't be able to get to the tentacles around his legs in time to stop them. He knew he hadn't survived all that he had just for it to end like this though, so he never stopped, slashed away as much as he could before the tongue stabbed down at him quickly in order to end him.
That's when he heard a gunshot and saw the threatening tongue flying off of the creature, the same that was about to do him in. Marvin looked into the opposite direction the appendage had flown, in the direction the bullet had come from.
The sounds of a motorcycle were heard in that moment from just ahead over the hill, and the lights shined down as the vehicle suddenly came into view, crashing down behind the creatures and revving up as it ran over two of them and knocked the third, who had its clutches on Marvin, off its balance. Snow and dirt was sling about in the bikes wake, and Marvin somehow felt he'd never seen a sweeter sight.
He took the time however, instead of gawking, to start slashing and hacking away at the rest of the demons appendages who still stood near him, hearing it's screams of agony as he did so, another scream given when the rider on the bike shot at it. Marvin looked up to see the figure, clad in a warm white coat and pants with black boots on, a huge rocket launcher with a blade at the end strapped to her back, and bi-colored eyes staring at him from behind shaded goggles.
"Lady!," Marvin yelled, then pointed behind her at the demons there, lumbering towards her. But she seemed to already know they were around.
Lady emptied one of her guns and tossed it into the air, then pulled out another one and swung her legs around vertically with her ass on the seat of her bike from one side to knock a tongue away from her, aiming with the new gun and firing a bullet into the Quietus who'd tried to grab her, followed by leaning back when another tongue flew over her, missing because of her evasion, and reaching out, she caught her emptied gun with a new cartridge as it fell into her hand, slamming the new clip into itself, and then she turned it on the second demon. Knocking it off of its feet and cold dead, she looked back and saw that Marvin was working his way to his feet. Realizing he was okay, she knew she could focus on other things.
"You alright?" He asked her just as she'd been curious about.
"Perfect," she replied completely honestly, and then they both squinted when the lights from the truck parked near them came on.
Marvin held up his hands in order to shield his eyes and asked, "Doc?" The truck was working again? Hopefully that'd be good news. But Marvin wasn't sure when the engine suddenly revved up and the truck began moving toward him. His last thought before he was pushed over was to ask what the hell?
Lady ran forward and knocked Marvin out of the way just as the truck tore through the area, spewing up snow and dirt everywhere, crushing the corpses of the dissolving demons, and the two glanced back as the truck stopped and then started shifting gears. This time, once the truck began to back up, Marvin heard a gunshot, and he cussed and pushed Lady out of the way as the back windows in the vehicle were busted out from the gunfire. They both landed beside of each other in the snow near her motorcycle.
Marvin glared back at the car and asked, "What the hell is he doing!?" It was obvious he was trying to kill them, but why? "He can't be a cultist too!"
"He is," Lady told Marvin, taking aim with her own weapon and shooting one, then another tire out from under Doc's truck, "he probably killed his own son too."
Marvin had only thought of that the moment he'd asked what the hell Doc had been doing, and in his shock, he almost felt like he could throw up. Who would kill their own kid in order to, come to think of it, what the hell was Doc trying to do? Marvin glanced at Lady with the disgust all over his face. But there was another problem, and he told her, "He's got Evelyn."
Lady shook her head, knowing that she wasn't in immediate danger. "He doesn't want to hurt Evelyn, he needs her for the ritual. That's why her father was killed, because he didn't want to sacrifice his own daughter."
"Yeah well he has a gun and he has no problems with killing us. You've taken out his means of escape, but that doesn't mean he won't come out shooting." Marvin watched the car now silently, and finally asked, "What is he waiting for though?"
"Us to freeze out here," Lady pointed out, "or maybe for more demons to come along, but he knows he's a terrible shot, and it's hard to see in this snow. Not to mention he's probably got a scared little girl in the car, lying to her, trying to convince her to be still and that he's shooting at demons."
Lady knew the game. She'd dealt with humans who were just as evil as demons before, her father having been one of them. She was no stranger to the game by far, and after she said that, she reloaded her weapons while she had the time to. Watching her, Marvin asked, "So what do we do? Are you gonna kill him?"
"No," Lady shook her head, "I want information from the bastard." She looked at Marvin, holding out one of her guns to him, "We need a distraction."
Marvin nodded his head in reply, smirking a slight bit at the words. "I'm all ears, Lady."
"Where's Marvin!?" Evelyn cried from the backseat of the truck, scared to death as she'd been woken up by gunshots whizzing over her head.
"I don't know, he went out to fix the truck. Come on sweety," Doc said, reaching back in order to pull the seat belt from the little girl and he told her, "Just hide in the floorboards, okay? Don't come back up until I tell you to. Something happened and I'm not sure what yet. You'll be safe down there."
Evelyn nodded her head, whimpering in fear and shaking, and Doc looked back out of the front window again once she was down. He narrowed his brows. He could still see the stationary motorcycle, but no sign of his targets, though he rolled down his window so he could aim anyway. The hood was still in his way, but it offered him a good bit of cover, and he continued looking under the area between it and the engine in order to be able to see. That's when he spied one of them that had moved from behind a tree, the one in white who had to be that woman from back at the Ranch with the multicolored eyes. Lifting his arm a bit slowly, he fired off a round, just to let her know he was still waiting for her to poke her bitch face out in order for him to blow it off.
Evelyn started crying, covering her ears with her hands. Trying to keep her calm, Doc told her, "Just be still, I'll get us out of here, I promise."
"What if it's Marvin out there? You might shoot him," Evelyn told Doc between her sniffles.
Doc breathed in a breath in order to reply, but he stopped when he felt the cold barrel of a gun pressing against the back of his head followed by the sound of a hammer being pulled down. "I think that's what he wanted," he heard next, "drop the gun, Doc."
Marvin had snuck around the back of the truck as Lady moved in front to make sure that Doc was watching her moving about and trying to take her down first. Once he heard the gunshots, and knew that Doc was completely occupied, he came up behind the vehicle to the drivers side door, staying low so he wouldn't be seen by anyone in the car at all, and aimed at the back of Doc's head.
"Killed your own son too, did you?" Marvin sneered out, ready to just shoot the bastard right there. "Evelyn," he said on a very fatherly tone of voice, "get out of the car, hold onto my leg. Lady!"
Hearing her name, Lady knew he'd gotten to the asshole, and Evelyn did as she was told, climbing out of the car and shutting the door, grabbing Marvin's leg. Doc watched Lady coming up toward the vehicle whenever she got around to the side of it, her own gun aimed at Doc, and the old man scowled.
"What are you going to do, Marvin, kill me?"
"I'd like to," Marvin told him without an ounce of dishonesty in his voice. "Why'd you do it!? Why'd you kill your own son!?"
"Because they're stronger than us, and they can do things we can't, things that can benefit us!"
"Not without a price!," Marvin yelled, trying to get through to the man as Lady wound up at his side. She knew the kind of passion he was feeling, the fire inside of him to try and stop this kind of thing, so when she spoke to him next, she made sure her words were as logical and clear as they could be.
"Marvin, get Evelyn into the truck where it's warm." She gave him a look that told him she wanted to be alone with this asshole for a while, and Marvin nodded and took a deep breath in order to calm his ire, handing her gun back to her. Once he had, Marvin reached down and lifted Evelyn up into his arms, opening the drivers side door for Lady before he went to the back seat. As soon as Lady had the chance to, she pulled the old man out of the truck and into the snow. Marvin didn't let Evelyn see anything though, climbing into the backseat with her and shutting the door, letting her hold onto him tightly and cry as much as she wanted to, all the while trying to soothe her and tell her what was going on in a way she could understand.
Lady, on the other hand, drug Doc up to the area where her motorcycle sat. She was none too gentle with the man either as she shoved him up against a tree, making sure he could see the gun right in his face, her burning, angry eyes settled just behind it, boring a hole through him. "Where is this ritual taking place?"
"I don't know," Doc told her, "and you can't make me tell you anything. Even if you shoot me now, I won't die. I killed my own son to prove myself to them, and he'll bring me back."
"Who?" Lady sneered, "Democrities? A demon?" She asked the word as if she thought he was completely dumb for even having such a notion. "You really trust a demon to follow up on his word? Or maybe, if I shoot you, you'll become one of those things I just killed. Seems to me that's what they are, the damned souls of those who were foolish enough to trust Democrities." Lady slowly shook her head at him, "You really are pathetic."
"Astute of you girl, however did you manage to come up with that ploy?"
The voice had rang out from behind Doc and Lady. Lady kept her tight hold on Doc but she pulled her other gun and aimed it back, seeing a black clad figure standing in the snow solemnly just beyond her barrel, his robes wafting out into smoke around his feet as they always did. Arias. Lady scoffed slightly, replying to his question smoothly, "When you've dealt with demons for as long as I have, you pick up a thing or two."
Arias graced her with a little smile, seeming to appreciate her intelligence. "My dear old Dad doesn't have anything more clever up his sleeves apparently, saying he wore them. And you can put that tool down, my dear, I honestly have no plans of attacking you."
"Maybe you just missed the note, Dracula, but I just said I don't trust demons," Lady enunciated, continuing to make sure the barrel of her other gun was shoved right up beneath Doc's nose as they stood on the slight incline of the snowy hill.
"Clearly you don't," Arias told her in response, "but honestly, if I were here to have killed you," he pointed out logically to her, and then disappeared before quickly reappearing behind her, his hands on both of her weapons when he reformed. His head commenced to slam down into the back of hers, resulting in her stumble forward at the blow, disoriented for the moment enough so that Arias could plant his foot into her lower back and kick her forward, sending her bundled up body through the snow and finally to a stop, both of her guns in his hands.
"Then I would have done so already," he finished his statement, and then looked over at Doc.
"Thank you," Doc told him, completely gratefully, "I tried to tell her you don't kill those who've proven themselves to you, nor trick them."
Arias offered Doc a kind smile. Lady looked up at the two of them as she heard Arias's carefully placed chuckle, watched him settling his hand onto Doc's shoulder. Doc started chuckling also, and Arias just grinned, "Oh, my kind little doctor, how completely erroneous," Arias started, his words sobering Doc up a bit, "because we do," he finished off, just as mirthful as he'd started.
Doc took a deep breath in a gasp and shook his head no. Arias didn't hold onto him either, simply stared at the man as he backed away in fear. "You're not–"
"See now the pain you've caused for others, Doctor Jack Winston. After all, turnabout is fair play."
Doc could hear his heartbeat as Arias stared at him with his cold, lifeless black eyes, could see his son in the bed in which he'd killed him, having injected air into his IV tube, felt the fear Jack had when he'd awoken to see the bubbles just as they passed into the needle in his arm, the pain his body had gone through before he'd died. Doc heard the terrible agonized screams and pain of the fear of the unknown that Jack had suffered, the hard pressed longing for a way out of it, not yet ready to face death, completely terrified.
Lady watched as Doc fell into the snow, screaming and choking, claiming things that sounded insane, begging not to be hurt anymore. He thrashed about, fighting with what wasn't there, and Lady reached for the gun in her boot in order to stop Arias, pulling it up just as Doc threw himself on her suddenly.
"Make it stop!" The old man yelled at her, having grabbed her shoulders hard and tightly, shaking her, and preventing her from getting her gun in Arias's direction.
Lady tried to struggle with him, tried to push him back, but he'd apparently already gone insane, and he wouldn't stop. Arias just watched without a trace of any type of emotion of any kind on his face, his long black hair blowing up into the breeze as lifelessly as he stood there. Doc had gone completely mad, and in fact, he grabbed Lady's hand holding the gun and put the barrel to his own head suddenly, his thumb having wrapped around hers on the trigger.
"No!," Lady yelled, feeling the trigger being pulled, closing her eyes just as the gun went off, and she turned her face to the side, away from the scene when the dead weight of the corpse fell onto her. Breathing heavily, Lady grunted and pushed Doc off of her. Watching his body land in the snow next to hers, the steam her warm breaths drew out into the cold night air fading away nearly as quickly as they were exhaled, she heard something landing in the snow on the other side of her. Looking back, she saw both of her guns which Arias had pried from her hands when he'd assaulted her. She turned her face back up to the demon and stared at him, his black eyes and unreadable face, only able to growl out the words, "You bastard!"
As if nothing bad had actually just happened, he smirked a slight bit and told her, "I'd much prefer to be one," enthusiastically, "but sadly that won't be for a while now. But I have a message for you to relay to Dante for me if you would madame. Tell him that I'm not interested in him, I'm not interested in you, nor Evelyn or Regan. In fact, I'm simply interested, as you know most Demons are, in my own goals, which is why I let you live now. We are enemies, have no doubt, but we're enemies with a common foe."
Lady listened to every word, but she still didn't trust him of course, and she never would. But she did have a question to ask him, which she spit out vehemently, "Then why kill Doc!?"
"Because he'd served his usefulness as a caretaker, and lost his chance when he failed tonight" Arias told her, "so Democrities ordered it. I can't very well serve to be any help to anyone if I don't at least pretend to try and obey daddy, now can I?"
With those words, Arias turned around and began to walk away, not in the direction of the truck where Evelyn resided however, but instead, into the woods, leaving Lady, Marvin, and Evelyn behind. Lady pushed herself up, staring off after the demon as he disappeared into the snow, and then she breathed heavily and looked down. Help anyone? He should have just said himself, she thought with a slight groan, grabbing her guns and putting them back in their harnesses. She then turned and ran to the truck to check on Marvin and Evelyn.
When she found them, they were both unconscious, and she reached for Evelyn first, shaking her and Marvin awake, "Hey, are you guys alright? What happened?"
Marvin blinked and sat up quickly with a deep breath. "Huh?" He looked over at Lady and then at Evelyn, suddenly groaning and clutching his head, "Oh damn, that guy came back, what's his name."
"Dracula?" Lady asked blandly.
"That's the one," Marvin groaned with a lifted finger as if to say bingo, "he said something about he couldn't have us getting in his way at the moment and the next thing I know I'm unconscious." He looked over at Evelyn as Lady shut the door and asked, "Is everything okay?"
Evelyn nodded her head, reaching for him and climbing into his lap, whispering, "I wanna go back to Regan." As soon as she'd said it, she popped her thumb back into her mouth and leaned against him.
"That's where you're going," Lady told her, looking at Marvin, seeing him mouth the word 'Doc', and she shook her head slowly to let him know that Doc wasn't going to be coming back around anymore, mouthing the word back to him 'later'. Then she looked back down at Evelyn, watching as the little girl continued to hug Marvin, her back facing the female devil hunter. So much bullshit had happened, and Lady was damned if she was going to see it happening to someone so young ever again if she could help it.
"Well camp out in here for the night," Lady told them, reaching into the front seat and turning the car on so that the heater was blowing. "In the morning, when there's more light, we'll head back, my motorcycle will be able to carry all of us."
"Alright," Marvin told her, pulling Evelyn up so that she'd be more comfortable. "In the morning, we'll get some eggs and toast, how does that sound?"
Lady smiled as Marvin tried to cheer the little girl up, letting it make her forget what she'd just witnessed out in the snow. With a soft sigh, she watched how good Marvin seemed to be with children, thought about her mother for a minute, and knew that if they came out of this together, Marvin would make a wonderful surrogate father for Evelyn. After all, he'd lost his wife and child, and Evelyn had lost her father and didn't have a mother. In the end of it all, Lady, though she hated to admit it, guessed that Arias was right.
Turnabout was fair play.