Page 224 of Vampire Kings Box Set

“You’re not angry that I hate you?”

“No!” Gideon sat down with eternal elegance. “Why shouldn’t you hate me? I stole your family, your youth. I used you as a pawn in my game, not knowing you at all. I have made you eternally what you are now, not for your sake, but in the effort to control my own offspring, your maker.”

The words were faintly confessional, but the tone was not. It was apparent that Gideon did not feel guilty for any of his actions. Carter was not receiving genuine sympathy, but at least he was getting some validation.

“Why don’t you care that nobody likes you?”

“Ray thinks he loves me,” Gideon mused. “Though at times I wonder if he doesn’t hate me most of all. It is not strange or unusual for a creator to be loathed by his or her creation, for they are always the source of the created’s suffering. If not for the creator, the created would swim in the peaceful waters of non-existence.”

“Can you be killed?”

Carter asked the question without guile.

“Until my recent meeting with your mother, I would have said no. Now, I am not so sure. She was able to wound me, and she is not done with me.”

Carter’s reply was fascinatingly perceptive. “You sound like you like that.”

“It is invigorating.”

Carter looked nervous for a moment, then made a request. “I’d like to see her again. She’s my mom. I miss her.”

Gideon’s demeanor hardened, then softened almost immediately. Perhaps it was the feast that had put him in a good mood. Or perhaps it was his perception of Carter’s bravery that had impressed him. Either way, he found himself entertaining the thought beyond simply dismissing it.

“Perhaps that can be arranged,” he said.

Maddox had made himself scarce, obviously on the path of his wolf perversion. But that also meant that Carter was unprotected, and Carter made the perfect bait for a creature like Candy.

“You’d really do that?”

Gideon reached out and ruffled Carter’s blond mop of hair. “I’m going to make it happen.”

Carter grinned with happiness for the first time since he had been turned. “Really? You’d do that for me?”

Gideon smiled at the charming young fledgling. “I’d do that.”

13

“She’s out here? In a forest? Mom hated nature.”

Carter was confused, and more than a little skeptical. This did not feel right. There was something about Gideon’s smile, something anticipatory and calculated that made him suspicious. The Maker’s motives were never what they seemed, he knew that. Gideon moved his family around like pieces on a board, putting them to best use to serve his needs. For better or for worse, Carter was now trapped inside that family, the grandson of pure malevolence.

“Oh, she’s out here. Can you not sense her?”

A light wind whipped through the forest undergrowth, playing with pine needles and fallen oak leaves. Here and there, long-legged winged insects danced through moonlit paths of their own discerning. Carter did not sense his mother out here. His mother smelled of washing powder and lasagne. His mother sounded like the vacuum and the vent on the stove. She was reminders to put his towels in the hamper. She was the way his bed was always made even though he never made it. She was love. She was home.

“No,” Carter said, bitterness tainting his tone as his blond hair gleamed with moonlight. “I don’t sense her.”

“Well, she may feel a little different now,” Gideon said. “I am sure she senses you.”

Carter’s hopes had been raised very high by this promise of Gideon’s, and now he was almost certain that they were going to be terribly dashed. He glanced over at Gideon with a malevolent pale gaze, as if trying to discern a way he might bring pain to the Maker.

And then she came, suddenly and without warning, seeming to appear at the very edge of their collective vision. Candy flew through the night like a speeding wild thing, barely recognizable at first. Carter did not see his mother. He saw something like a ghost or a zombie, something with long greenish yellow hair flowing behind a bony head barely more than a skull.

Her hunger drove her, not a need for food, but a need for vengeance.

“I was becoming hungry again…”

“You look hungry,” Gideon said. “Actually, you look like you are absolutely starving. Why don’t you come feed?”