Page 80 of Vampire Kings Box Set

Will sat by the fire as his father set about butchering his kill before bundling the remains up in the man’s clothing. It was a grotesque, grizzly process and Will found it impossible to take his eyes off it, though he knew it would haunt him forever. This was not the act of passion he had come to associate with taking life. This was the action of someone providing for themselves. There was little emotion, though from time to time a particularly nice cut would reveal itself and then Ivan would make a satisfied sound and put it off to the side where it would be rolled in a sheet of wax paper and tied with a little string bow.

At first, Will had been deeply disgusted. By the end, he was even more deeply disgusted. Seeing a person turned into parts and cuts was so much more brutal than anything he had been forced to gaze upon before.

“Good. You’re watching. You need to learn to do this for yourself,” Ivan said. “A good carcass like this can supply us for a month or more.”

“I won’t be eating that.”

Ivan laughed. “One day you’ll beg for a cut like this. He was in good shape, but a little hefty. That’s the best kind… Flavorful and plenty of…”

Will actively stopped listening and looking until Ivan had just the bones and offal left. He carried them off into the woods and presumably buried them. Will didn’t look. Will didn’t want to know.

He thought the worst of it was over. And then Ivan started to cook.

It looked like leg chops. It was leg chops. It’s just, the leg it came from had recently belonged to someone who had to pay rent and had a preference in music. Will wanted his stomach to turn more than it did. He did not like the way his mouth began to water. That was wrong, even if it was nothing more than an automatic response to the smell of cooking food.

He wasn’t going to eat, obviously. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a fucking cannibal.

It wasn’t long before temptation, such as it was, was presented to him.

“Here. I cooked you something.”

Ivan pushed something like a pork steak on a paper plate toward Will. Will’s stomach had been growling for hours now, and he was very much ready to eat almost anything. Almost, being the operative clause. He would do anything for food, but he would not do… that.

“I’m not eating a guy.”

The strangest thing about this was the programming that it was rude not to try food someone else had prepared for you. He’d seen this meat all the way from the kill to the table. He was certain many would have considered it a delicacy. And yet there was some part of him that steadfastly refused.

“You're not eating anything unless it’s proper meat,” Ivan said. “You’ve been fed garbage all your life. It’s made you weak.”

“I’m not weak.”

His father snorted derisively.

Will had imagined meeting his father for years. It had never occurred to him that he wouldn’t actually like him when he did. He’d assumed they’d have so much in common that they would immediately get along. Instead, he was seeing all the darkest parts of him, the things he most tried to resist and deny, be displayed before him in their worst possible incarnation. He was ironically starting to feel quite good about himself simply by merit of not being a fucking cannibal.

“You’ll eat when you’re hungry,” Ivan said, as if WIll’s refusal to eat his kill was just some petulant behavior of an ill-behaved child. “Get some sleep.”

Will couldn’t sleep. He was hungry and he was tormented. He found himself awake long into the night, as bright stars tracked a slow passage across the sky above. It was beautiful and it might have been peaceful, but Will couldn’t feel peace.

Ivan was flat on his back, snoring next to the fire. Will thought about getting into the pickup and just leaving, but there was something keeping him there, a hope maybe that somehow his father might turn out to have some redeeming quality somewhere. He couldn’t give up on the dream of family this quickly. Obviously, something had happened to Ivan at some point that had made eating people seem reasonable. Maybe he should try to be more understanding and less judgmental. One of his prison classes had focused on that. They'd called it impulse control but really, it was all touchy-feely stuff about seeing other people as people even if they’d done really bad things. Most of the inmates looked in the mirror every day and did that, but that was beside the point now.

Now he was free and beset by choices on all sides, choices that all felt equally wrong. He felt guilty for having just left without saying goodbye to Maddox, but to be fair he hadn’t known he was going very far when he left. He’d been kidnapped, he supposed, but only in the loosest sense of the word. Maddox would probably be furious with him. He couldn't even imagine what he’d do when he got hold of him.

Was he coming for him? Was he using his police connections to track him? Did he even know he was gone? With questions swirling through his brain, Will got up and went for a walk in the woods. He was not familiar with wilderness; he’d been a city boy all his life. It felt nice to be surrounded by trees rather than people and buildings.

There were parts of himself he didn’t know yet. Parts that liked trees, apparently. And he had a father who’d actually come for him. He wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but he was at least finally here.

A slight smile spread over Will’s face. Once things became less awkward between him and his father, he was sure they would have a lot in common. Not the murdering for no reason, but there were probably other things that they could bond over. Maybe music. Or sports. Or something. Maybe both of them had read the same book at some point. Will figured he should probably read a book sometime.

He was walking and thinking for such a long time he lost his way. He didn’t think he’d lost his way but that didn't change the fact that he didn't know where anything was besides himself. It should have worried him, but it didn’t. For the first time in his life, he was feeling free. Really free. The way wild animals are. It felt as though the whole world was open for him to roam, as if anything might actually be possible. He was a little lightheaded from hunger which served to make him feel just that little bit high as the magic of the forest wrapped itself around him with rich scents and even more beautiful nocturnal vistas.

The night turned to day very slowly. Will curled up in the base of a tree and watched light filtering through the canopy above. Footsteps came through the undergrowth directly toward him. He’d been found. He didn’t mind.

His father appeared through the undergrowth still shirtless and without shoes. His jeans were the only things keeping him decent.

“Hey,” Will said.

Ivan tossed a bottle of water at him. “Shouldn’t wander when your senses are dull from starvation.”