Page 11 of Vampire Kings Box Set

Maddox had been right. These ferals were nothing like him. They were like animals. Dangerous, filthy, wild animals. He wanted to kill. He wanted to kill more than he had ever wanted to kill before. But he could not. He was frozen. Not out of choice, but out of primal animal instinct. Right now, the memories of countless ancestors of all species were in control of him. They turned his bones to stone, his muscles to useless meat. He could not even call for help. All he could do was stare at his fate as it approached him, bloodshot eyes strangely magnetic in these super-slowed final moments of existence.

Maddox landed behind the vampire soundlessly, as if his weight did not create any impact on the world at all. He raised an inscribed spike of iron just as the feral closed the last inches on Will. There was a sickening meaty sound as Maddox bashed a stake through the feral’s head. The cracking of skull and then the squishing of brain which leaked out in a messy cauliflower of flesh.

Will threw up and collapsed, yet again giving into two impulses which were squarely the domain of prey. Mads’ shadow fell over him. Will could only imagine the disappointment and likely rage he was about to be subjected to. He had not only failed, he had shown complete and utter weakness.

“Let’s go home, pup.”

Maddox reached down to help him up, but Will’s legs refused to work. He was still frozen like an animal caught in headlights. Maddox tossed him over his shoulder and carried him back to the car.

Will had never experienced such a low point in his life. Not even when twelve guards took turns beating on him all night long when he was in prison. Then he’d been unable to fight back. Today he’d just… failed.

“I don’t know what happened,” he mumbled, his head hanging low. He wished Maddox would not look at him anymore. He could feel his master’s gaze and it made him feel so shamefully weak he could barely stand it.

Maddox bundled him into the car, and together they went home, a silent pair sliding through the streets of the greatest city in the world.

The silence was worse than anything Will had experienced in a long time. He didn’t understand why it felt so bad, he only knew that he could barely stand it.

“I failed you. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

Maddox was patient, and far more generous than Will ever imagined he would be. He ran his fingers soothingly through Will’s sweaty locks and made what might have been a soothing sound.

“The first kill is the hardest. A vampire, any vampire, is an apex predator beyond any you have encountered in your life. The human body reacts to that knowledge on an instinctual level.”

“So why did you send me down there?”

“You’ve never slain a vampire before. You need to lose your fear of my kind. You need to discover your inner predator.”

“I thought you chose me because I’d already done that.”

“Halfway. You understand who you are. But you’re not entirely sure what you are. Not yet. I thought a close encounter with something you are primed to destroy would trigger your basic instincts. It did, but not the ones I intended. Do not worry, pup. Your time is yet to come.”

Maddox’s reassurances did go some way to relieving Will’s fear of rejection, and inevitable return to prison. But they did not change how sickeningly embarrassed he felt at having been unable to carry out the violence which should have come so naturally to him. If there was one thing Will knew how to do, it was kill. But he’d fucking bottled it.

“I thought vampires were a stake through the chest?” He covered his shame with a mumbled question.

“Destroying the brain works on any creature,” Maddox clarified. “Never forget that. It may be eminently useful one day.”

Will was exhausted. Too tired to close his eyes, he laid his head in Mad’s lap and tried to contend with his continued confusing existence.

“You will sleep when we are home, and tomorrow you will feel better.”

Will doubted that. He was out of his depth in every way possible. He felt like a fucking animal compared to Maddox, whose native gentility and dominant demeanor made him seem to be perpetually in control. Back in prison he had hated the wardens who treated prisoners like beasts, but none of them had ever made him feel like as pathetic and helpless a creature as Mads did when he saved him.

The second they stepped through the front door, there was a shift in the energy of the place to which Will was immediately sensitive. It did not feel like an empty place as it had the first time they’d entered. There was a new smell. Something that drifted very faintly on the breeze created by the door opening. Something male. Something dead.

Will growled beneath his breath, feeling his entire body become suffused with tension. He did not like this new smell. He did not like, for want of a better term, the vibe which now seemed to emanate from the interior of Maddox’s sterile dwelling. It felt inhabited in a dark way, as if it had become more of a den than a home.

“Someone’s here,” Will said obviously. He knew if he was sensing something, Mad was sensing it a thousand-fold.

“Yes,” Maddox agreed as they stepped into what passed for a lounge.

Someone was sitting in Mad’s armchair. For some reason Will had not expected anybody else to ever enter Maddox’s domain, let alone take a seat in his chair. There was a familiarity and a casual ease to the pose which made Will think this person had been here before many times.

As they walked further into the big, open room, the interloper was revealed.

“Hello there,” he drawled with a languid wave of his fingers.

“Lorien,” Maddox said.