Page 232 of Vampire Kings Box Set

16

Gideon wiped Carter’s tears away for the umpteenth time. The journey back to his mansion had been a fraught one, with Ray and Chauvelin very much aware of how badly they had, as Carter put it, fucked up.

This was not a mistake that would go without consequence. Gideon had come to that decision the instant the net had deployed and destroyed any chance of further interaction with the wraith.

With Carter curled up on his lap, Gideon was left feeling another set of emotions he had not experienced for a long time. Tenderness, of a kind. He was not truly capable of caring in the usual mammalian way. But he was capable of being interested, and curious, and he was capable of becoming protective.

He was feeling quite protective of Carter now, the youngest of his bloodline and clearly a focal point of some fraternal jealousy. Ray was acting well shy of his many thousands of years of age, and Maddox had abdicated the responsibility meant to teach him a lesson entirely.

It did not escape Gideon that he was all Carter really had. He had destroyed his family of origin and replaced it with one of cruelty and dysfunction.

As Carter struggled with himself, trying very hard to stop crying those bloody tears, Gideon felt pity and perhaps even something like compassion.

“Would you like me to take Carter to his room?” Ray asked the question as he parked the car out the back of the mansion.

“No,” Gideon said. “I will be taking Carter to my room tonight.”

“You will?” Carter looked up with red-rimmed eyes, sanguine smears on his cheeks. “Why?”

“Yes,” Ray agreed, attempting to be disrespectful without being disrespectful. “Why?”

“Ray,” Gideon said. “I think it is time you and your little friend deployed for cooler climes.”

Ray understood precisely what those apparently casual words truly meant. Cooler climes referred to a place in permafrost, where not even bacteria lived. It meant starving in the cold and sleeping to avoid the monotony and the hunger.

“No. Please. I’m sorry.” Ray tried to walk everything back, but it was far too late.

“I think you and Chauvelin here should go and ensure that our Siberian outpost is properly manned.”

“There’s nobody…”

“Yes. That’s the point,” Gideon said. “Go and freeze for a while and see how curious you feel.”

“Please, pater.”

Gideon summoned the patience it took not to murder his progeny outright. “Ray, if you call me pater again, I swear to all that is unholy, I will unmake you. Go. Now. Take the sycophant with you. Believe me, after your interference tonight, this is mercy.”

Ray nodded, knowing better than to argue now that Gideon had made a decision. The darkness was showing around the edges of Gideon’s being, a shadow and a curling tentacle in the darkness, warning him of the risks of disobedience.

“You will know where to reach me if you need me.”

Ray, for all his faults, was largely obedient. Gideon watched as his oldest and most overconfident son took his leave from the mansion. He was aware that sending Ray away would cause some issues, but it would also solve several.

That left him with nobody but Carter to look after.

He was so young. So innocent. So bold.

Gideon felt his arousal stirring. It would be wrong to fuck this fledgling, but then again, as the root of all evil, right and wrong didn’t really come into his calculations.

Carter had stopped crying by this time and was embarrassed at having cried.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

Carter shifted uncomfortably under Gideon’s intense stare. It was not that the Maker was being deliberately intimidating, more that there was just no way for Carter to parse all the unspoken information that was being transmitted in those lustful looks. He was not used to being desired in this way. He was used to the girlish stares of his generation, not the dark lust of something ancient and inherently perverse.

“A look of pure confusion and innocence is all you have on your face,” Gideon replied. “For now, I will leave you in both states.”

And so it was that Gideon’s two primary progeny left the mansion, leaving the fledgling Carter to Gideon’s not so tender care. Gideon found himself rather enjoying the challenge. Carter was a different kind of vampire than any who had come before him. Perhaps it was his age. Perhaps it was his parentage. Or perhaps it was Gideon’s age, and the experiences he had endured recently with the chaos in his family home.