“You are a real fucking piece of work, you know that?” Will was angry. Angrier than he had been in a long time. The kind of angry that clouds the senses and makes good judgement quite impossible. The betrayal and the loss he felt were too much for him to process rationally, so he became precisely what Maddox had feared all along — impulsive, aggressive, and reckless.
“Hey. Gideon!” He shouted out the window. “Come on in!”
“What are you doing!?” Maddox’s horrified question was given no answer.
It was too late. Gideon was already inside. Seconds later, Will felt the arms of the maker around him, the ending Maddox had feared, coming inexorably to pass. Will no longer cared. It didn’t matter. If Maddox lied to him, then their connection meant nothing. If he could hide the truth of Will’s origin from him, then he could hide anything.
* * *
Gideon was inside instantly. Maddox tried to block him from touching Will, but he was thrown across the room and Will was instantly caught, wrapped in Gideon’s dark embrace. Maddox could only look on in horror as the Maker’s dark hair fell over Will’s shoulders, his muscular arms entrapping Will’s body.
“You have been very naughty,” Gideon purred in Will’s ear. “I’m taking you with me.” Maddox felt himself go cold at the sight of those double fangs so close to Will’s pulse. He had felt the effect of those teeth himself and he knew all too well that Gideon could kill Will in seconds if he so chose. This was truly a matter of life and death, and the latter seemed like an absolute inevitability.
Will did not react at all. He looked at Maddox with what seemed to Mad to be an infinite sadness. Will’s eyes were the first feature Mad had noticed about him. They held so much life, so much energy. They were so dangerously blue, electric and wild. Now they were dulled, as if something had gone out inside his tender flesh.
“Please, Gideon…” Maddox was desperate. The look of betrayal in Will’s eyes was destroying him. The idea that Will might die hating him was quite literally more than Maddox could bear. He would have promised anything in that moment to have one more chance to explain, to soothe the pain, to…
“Do not talk to me, Maddox,” Gideon hissed. “You have disobeyed me for long years. You have encouraged and allowed this pup to do the same. You have no sway with me anymore. I am taking what I have been owed from the outset.” Gideon dragged a claw across Will’s neck, the very tip of it drawing blood.
Maddox looked on in horror, cursing the series of decisions, actions, and inactions that had led him inexorably to this place. He had all but forgotten about Candy’s connection to Will. It had seemed like an irrelevance. Will was his, and that was all that mattered.
“I will do anything,” Maddox said. “Anything for his life.”
“Candy’s son is bleeding out in the alley,” Gideon mentioned casually. “You can start by resurrecting him. What you need, Maddox, is responsibility. You need to become a maker yourself, and understand what it is to have a fledgling, blood of your blood. Do that, and I will not kill the pup outright immediately.”
Gideon was gone in a flash, taking Will with him. Maddox could not give chase. The terms of the deal had been struck, and Mad knew very well Gideon would ruthlessly abide by them. He had one chance to save Will, and that was to save the boy.
Maddox rushed out of the house via the window and down to the boy’s side. It was as Gideon had promised. The clocks were striking midnight, and the boy was slipping away. A large wound had nearly put him on the other side of death. There were only seconds left to save him. And Will.
Maddox had refused to make others of his kind for thousands of years. He had not wanted the burden nor the guilt. But Will’s life hung in the balance, and he would truly have done anything to save this boy. He had grown a great deal in the intervening years. He was a muscular young man, with blond hair that hung in his eyes even now, and the side of his head shaved in a fashionable style. He was shivering and contorting, the way bodies do when they are passing. He hoped it was not too late. If it was too late for Carter, it was too late for Will.
Maddox did not have time to fully consider his actions. He cut his wrist with his teeth and put the bleeding edge to Carter’s frozen lips. Eighteen years and one minute old and coming to an end. There was still a slight suckle reflex left, a little lap that sent unexpected electricity to Maddox’s core. He felt dark life flowing from his person into the innocent beneath him, the golden orphan. This was wrong. But this was all he could do, and it was all he had to give.
He felt great grief at the passing of Lora Candy. She had been a brave woman, one who tried to put a sordid and sad past behind her, only to have it come down on her and destroy her so many years later. He would mourn her, as would this young man.
“I am sorry,” he said as Carter’s blue eyes opened and looked up into his in complete confusion, pain, and fear. “I am so very sorry.”
Carter spoke his first plaintive words as a vampire.
“I want my mom.”
22
“Ithought you were going to kill me.”
Will was surprised, and a little annoyed, to find himself still alive. With Maddox’s realization came a yearning for an end to things. He was tired of struggling for no reason, finding nothing true in the world. If Maddox could lie to him, if he could be betrayed by him, then there was nothing left of life to him.
But Gideon had not killed him. Gideon had put him in the back of a car and driven him to a fortified location upstate. It was an entirely new building built to look like a very old building, a gothic monstrosity with turrets and buttresses, and other architectural features Will did not know the name of, but all of which added up to a very imposing sight. It was a place that looked precisely as though it housed a coven of vampires, all the way to the black rock and marble edging that looked out over a garden of flowerless roses hedged by wrought iron gates. A foreboding air hung over the place, a sort of absence of life, a void of being. It felt like a cemetery, if the cemetery were interred solely with the flesh of those who had never lived at all.
“After you banished me from Maddox’s hovel, I decided to begin construction on something a little more permanent,” Gideon explained. “Though this is far from the grandest of my designs, it will do for now. Some of it is still under construction, as I create wings for those who please me and crypts and dungeons for those who do not.”
“Yeah. I thought you were going to kill me, not tell me about your building plans, HGTV.”
Gideon shot him a sharp look. “I was, but you’re worth much more to me as a token than you are as a corpse. If that changes, so will your status.”
“Fine. I don’t care. Kill me if you like. It doesn’t make a difference one way or another.”
“Aw, the poor little puppy doesn’t want to live because he was mortally betrayed by his vampire lover,” Gideon pouted mockingly. “It is much less fun to kill you if you don’t want to live. We will have to do something about that. Cheer you up, so you have something to fight for.”