Page 213 of Vampire Kings Box Set

“We are on the hunt for a fugitive of supernatural…”

“Are you really a vampire? Can I touch you?” Tess cut in with the question. Maddox did not deign to acknowledge the interruption, much less answer the question.

“You are a team,” he said. “I expect you to act as a team, understand? That means you stay silvered up, you keep holy water on your persons at all times, and there are never, and I do mean never, less than three of you together when you are on the hunt. You will no longer live in your homes. Instead, you will occupy mine.”

“I need a room with a bawthroom,” Annabelle said.

“Yes, Annabelle, of course, Annabelle.”

Annabelle could have whatever the hell she wanted as long as she did her job. Her references indicated she was an excellent digital sleuth, able to turn a Facebook post into a family history. Maddox doubted Will was using social media, but others in the greater circle of Gideon’s coven were, and keeping tabs on them was almost as important as finding William.

It was good to have the house inhabited again, even if the inhabitants were a group of variously unhinged misfits. Tess and Cooper had already become an item, and then broken up, and then become an item again. Maddox assigned Wesley, Tess, Henk, and Cooper to follow some of the leads associated with Will. Sherlock and Annabelle stayed home, Annabelle collecting information, Sherlock deducting with an impressive talent.

Things were starting to feel not exactly normal, but at least more under control. Gideon seemed to be satisfied with the explanation that Maddox’s efforts were to find Candy, who had made no further appearances, apparently quite sated by Gideon’s pain thus far. She would rise again, of that Maddox was certain, but she was not his concern, even if she was Gideon’s.

It did not take Annabelle long to hunt Will down.

“Awright. So. We’ve got some reels and posts indicating that there’s a really big wolf being sighted near remote rural human populations near the Pennsylvania bawder,” Annabelle said, intermittently pronouncing her r’s in a devil-may-care way. “Social media is satuwated, and this account only has fifty followers, so nobody has seen it yet. EastCoastRedneck696969.”

Shaky video revealed a flash of a very large wolf, jet black with bright blue eyes. Maddox recognized Will instantly. There was a lot of blood around his mouth, and other pieces of what had probably recently been people.

“Gettem, gettem!” That phrase was being repeated again and again, in increasingly panicked tones. Gunshots were being fired intermittently and with nothing resembling accuracy, or perhaps they were warning shots. The video ended abruptly without resolution one way or another.

“I dispatched the team to this location. No surwiwors.” Annabelle provided much needed context. “No wolf either. Just a bunch of dead, bitten up people.”

“Bitten up being a technical term, I imagine.”

“Bited real good,” Annabelle added. It was at this point Maddox realized she was drunk. The empty bottle of wine next to her probably should have given that away. Middle-aged women had a certain way of making alcoholism seem cozy and borderline respectable.

“Was there a trail?”

Annabelle’s eyes widened as if the question was so silly she wasn’t sure if she should answer it, but even a buzzed lady in a crocheted cardigan knew well enough not to deny Master Vampire Maddox his request. “Sure there was a trail. Look at the size of him. Wampaging around like the devil himself. He’s not making any effort to hide his tracks. He doesn’t care who comes after him.”

Or maybe he did. Maddox pondered Will’s recklessness and knew that though his boy was the proverbial werewolf in a ceramics store, there may very well be unconscious motivations at play.

Perhaps there was some part of Will that did want to stopped, and caught, and brought to justice. It was possible the only resolution to their estrangement would be through hunt and capture. Maddox knew he would have to tame William all over again, both emotionally and physically. There was a part of Mad that thrilled to the challenge. He had ensured everybody thought he had abandoned Will, but that was necessary to fool Gideon. In the deepest parts of Maddox’s being, the dark little core that occupied the space a soul should be, there was one truth. He would never abandon William again.

8

On the night Maddox found William, disaster had struck. Annabelle’s tracking had been most efficient. This allowed Maddox to more or less track the trail of carnage to the scene of a wreck on the side of a country road where an ambulance had been somehow driven off the road and into a thicket of trees. There were no survivors. Will had ensured that.

Maddox stepped out of his vehicle and steeled himself for a challenging reunion. The sounds coming from the interior of the ambulance were animal. Ripping, growling, rending of flesh. The smell of intestinal punctures and worse. Maddox was glad to not have a functioning digestive system, for he was certain it would have been forced to regurgitate everything.

He approached the steaming rear of the ambulance, the doors wide open. The beast inside was not a wolf, though it clearly had been in wolf form when it dispatched the paramedics and their patient. Maddox could not imagine what would have drawn Will to this vehicle; perhaps he sensed weakness. Perhaps the lights and sirens drew his attention. He was feeding in human form, though the term human could only be applied loosely to someone eating other people raw.

Maddox felt a surge of guilt and affection and sorrow all at once. He knew the events that had inexorably led to this point had been under his control, and that it was his failure to be honest with Will and to love him as he needed that had created this diorama of depraved cruelty.

“Boy.”

He uttered the word softly, so as not to startle Will. In this state he would react unpredictably. He was more animal than man, and more feral than sane.

Will dropped a limb and turned to face Maddox, another leg still in his bloody hand. His eyes blazed with blue fury, his skin marked with blood and viscera. There was nothing to be seen of his face besides blood, all the way up into his dark, curling hair. He looked like a hellish version of his old self, all the weakness and vulnerability that used to lurk beneath his stoic exterior gone, transformed to brutality and cruelty.

Maddox let out a soft ancient curse under his breath. He had been warned, and yet he still could not have anticipated this scene.

For the first time, he wondered if he had done the right thing in freeing Will from prison in the first place, if he was blaming himself when in truth this was always the form Will had been destined to take. The sight of the massacre was truly stomach churning, even for a creature as cruel and old as Maddox.

“Fuck you.”