Page 212 of Vampire Kings Box Set

Maddox turned his head and looked out the window. His noble profile belied a deep sorrow.

“You are correct,” he said. “I am responsible for William, but I am also the cause of much of his pain, and the amends I must make are so deep, I find myself bereft of ideas.”

“You can start by going and getting him before he gets himself killed. He’s worse than Ivan ever was. He’s committing legitimate atrocities. I don’t know how to explain it any clearer. If you don’t get Will, I will go to Gideon, and I will turn him in. He has to be stopped, for all our sakes.”

“I don’t think you understand, Lorien. He has rejected me. He does not want me. He does not like me.”

Lorien threw up his hands in absolute confusion.

“Since when do you care about being liked, Maddox? You never cared if I liked you. Will is nothing more than a beast you tamed. You used to understand what you were to him, but then you started getting soft. Started to believe in a human kind of love. Started needing him to love you.” Lorien’s upper lip curled with vampiric disdain. “Will has never needed you to need him to love you. Will has always needed you to rein in the beast you both see inside him. Stop moping about like some lovesick fledgling and go break that beast.”

There was a heavy silence in the aftermath of Lorien’s lecture, a very long moment in which his passion gave way to a distinct uncertainty. Maddox’s expression remained impassive.

“Ordinarily, I would tear your throat out for such an impudent speech,” Maddox eventually mused. “But on this occasion, I have an inkling you might be entirely correct.”

“Of course I am,” Lorien said. “I am the rightful vampire king of New York.” He grinned with that reckless rakishness and innate mischief that had always been so charming to Maddox.

“Yes. I keep forgetting that. I suppose it’s the air of…”

“Debonaire charm?”

“A complete lack of authority,” Maddox finished his own sentence.

“We can’t all be brooding monsters,” Lorien said, flashing a broad smile. He was clearly very glad that Maddox seemed to be responding to his plea for help, vague as that plea seemed to be. Maddox was not surprised to hear that Will was acting out, but since Lorien was given to a certain level of drama, how bad could it really be?

7

It was not hard to find Will, though it was also not a goal immediately achieved. Maddox found himself on the trail of his wild wolf pup, a trail that stank of blood that began just outside the New York City limits and seemed to go all the way to the Pennsylvania border.

It was still his job to manage vampiric activity in the city on behalf of government black sites. He still had access to Candy’s team, though they were no longer Candy’s team. A lot of the people who had previously been part of that team had retired upon the news of Candy and her family’s passing. The danger of their roles had become far too real, and though many of them would have been content to have their own lives on the line, they were not as cavalier with the lives of their family.

To call the six officers who now made up his team a ragtag bunch of outcasts was generous. These were officers in name only, six men with the kind of personality defects that made them almost entirely unsuitable for police work. Maddox was barely interested in them as people, but he had to assess them far enough to trust them with the tasks they needed to undertake.

Henry and Lorien had offered their help on the hunt as well, but Henry was also worried about the repercussions for his pack. Gideon had everybody terrified and had eroded Maddox’s resources to quite a serious degree.

Henk, a heavyset man in his thirties with a buzzcut and the kind of beady little eyes that either indicate great cunning or a complete lack of intellect. Maddox hoped it was the former, though the words out of the man’s mouth did not encourage that impression.

“So what are we doing? Hunting some kinda freak?”

It was going to be difficult for Maddox not to straight up murder his team.

“I have assembled this team because each of you has a special and rare set of circumstances which makes you perfect for this position.” Everybody looked rather pleased about that, at least until Maddox continued. “Each of you has been chosen by a local precinct as someone who is, in my words, disposable. You have no family, no friends, and no reason to live.”

“Hell of a motivational speech,” a skinny guy in the back said. He had a bright blue plume of hair at the top of his head, but no other hair. He looked very punk rock. Very anti-authoritarian. His name was Wesley, and he had joined the police to take them down from the inside, only to discover they’d seen him coming a mile away.

Maddox mentally ran through the rest of them. They were all quite distinct characters, which would help him keep them distinct in his mind. Cooper had been caught stealing dope from the evidence room, Tess was a cute twenty-something who had blackmailed her superiors, Sherlock was middle aged, a very intelligent man who only had one significant drawback, and that was that he seemed to believe he was literally Sherlock Holmes. Lastly, Annabelle was a forty-seven year old woman in a hand-knitted cardigan who had an air of such incredible menace about her Maddox had actually considered being intimidated upon meeting her.

“I get the hot flashes,” she said when his dark vampiric gaze landed upon the bright pink and yellow threads. “That’s why I wear the cardigan. I can take it off if I get too hawt, you know?”

“Indeed,” Maddox said.

“I just need AC and my computers,” she says. “I don’t ask for much. Just some chawclate when I get my cramps.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t eat sugar,” Tess chimed in, tossing her lovely red hair with a smug air and glancing around at everybody to see if they were suitably impressed with her dietary restrictions.

“I’m bored,” Henk declared.