Page 30 of Vampire Kings Box Set

Will walked into the kitchen, messy bed head, stubble on his chin, and that pair of bright blue eyes searing out amongst it all. Maddox paused for a breath he did not need, just to take the boy in. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. That put his beautiful body on muscular display, the hard-won ripples of his abdomen and swelling of biceps and delts and quads and glutes… he was breathtaking, even to one who had no need to draw breath.

“No need to make him breakfast,” Lorien interjected, far too proudly for Mad’s liking. “I picked up something when I was at the grocery store.”

“Since when do you go to the grocery store?”

“Look in the cupboard above the oven.”

Maddox opened the aforementioned cupboard. There was a brightly colored box lurking there, festooned with pictures and large text, a sort of idiot’s cavalcade of offensive design that was entirely out of place in Mad’s kitchen.

“Toaster strudel! Yes, please!” Will’s eyes lit up. He practically ran to the cupboard and grabbed the box. “This was like gold in prison. You could get anything for these. Tell me there’s a toaster.”

There was a toaster.

Maddox watched as Will made his own breakfast, if such a concoction could be called a meal. Processed pastry sugar and a hefty dose of coffee on the side was not what he would have considered appropriate nutrition for one of his charges, but Will's arrival seemed destined to break every mold. Usually by now he’d be trained to a chain. He’d be kenneled when he was not working, slaughtering ferals at night and sleeping during the day, until he was inevitably wounded. He was not supposed to be grinning about toaster strudel in the kitchen. Maddox wondered if he was softening in his ancient age. Or perhaps there was something special about this one. How unfair it was, that some should be used, abused, and discarded, and others should be found worthy of pastry.

“We do spoil him, don’t we?” Lorien sidled up to Maddox, speaking softly out of Will's earshot.

“Since when do you have any interest in making Will happy? He was stabbing you in the throat the other day.”

“What makes Will happy makes you happy. And you killed Bert and Ernie which made me very happy. So, you’re welcome.”

Still with the assumption that Maddox was behind the brutal, cruel execution of the ancients.

“You think a two-dollar box of toaster strudel makes us even?”

Lorien smirked and shrugged. “It’s a start, right?”

“Barely. I do have a use for you, however.”

Lorien’s brows rose in surprise. “What’s that? I’ve never been useful before. It would be a novel experience to be useful.”

“Wouldn’t it,” Maddox agreed. “I want to use you as a training target. Will froze the first time he approached a feral. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“So tell him…”

“No. There will be no telling. You can take some damage.”

“True, but he doesn’t fight like a typical human. He fights like a beast.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

Lorien cocked his head and smiled at Maddox in a way that was rather like looking in a mirror for Maddox. “I’m not going to be dragged into being your brat test dummy.”

“We will see.”

“What are you talking about?” Will asked the question after demolishing the entire box of toaster strudel. It was the best food he’d tasted in a long time. In prison, toaster strudel often had to be eaten cold. It was the toaster that really made the strudel what it was.

Maddox turned toward him with one of those smooth, elegant movements that made Will feel like a clunky hunk of flesh.

“You are injured, but that doesn't mean you can’t learn, and it doesn’t mean you can’t work.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Maddox beckoned him over. Will went, glancing briefly at Lorien. Lorien was easier to read than Maddox. He saw amusement in the younger vampire’s eyes, as if whatever was about to happen was going to entertain him immensely.

“Look at me,” Maddox intoned, capturing Will’s attention entirely. Will looked at Maddox and saw his beginning and his end in those dark eyes. There were shades and shadows, horrors and terrors lying within.

Will found himself relaxing throughout his body, losing tension he didn’t even know he had stored up in his muscles. It was an involuntary response, as so many of his responses to Maddox were. When he was around this creature, he felt like an animal himself. Something rose inside him, something powerful and dark, something that answered the call of Mad’s gaze.