Page 96 of Vampire Kings Box Set

He ran down to the kitchen and prepared his preferred food. It only took ninety seconds, and that was good because he was fucking famished. He didn’t even bother taking any time pouring the icing out into a careful pattern like he usually would. Instead, he stuck a knife into the packet and smeared it on the finished product, burning his fingers on the hot pastry in the process.

“Yes,” he murmured to himself. “This is going to be good.”

He stuffed it into his mouth like the ravenous beast he was, but to his dismay he was not met with the usual flavor profile of butter and sugar. Instead it tasted like sawdust and sugar, dry and crispy in his mouth. It wasn't that it didn’t taste good. It was that it didn’t even taste like food.

Maddox came downstairs about fifteen minutes later. He had waited for his boy patiently, but when Will didn’t come back up sticky with disgusting corn syrup products, he knew something had gone wrong.

He found Will in the kitchen, surrounded by the wreckage of about ten boxes of toaster strudel. There was packaging everywhere, a small ecological disaster. Will stood naked in the midst of it all, a terribly sad and concerned expression on his face.

“What’s going on, boy?”

“There's something wrong with the toaster pastries,” Will said, his eyes full of tears. “There has to be something wrong with them. Because if there’s not… then there’s something wrong with me.”

“Oh, William,” Maddox sighed, moving to Will to embrace him. "You have been through a lot. Do not worry about food tonight.”

“But I’m hungry!” Will wailed. “I’m so fucking hungry.”

The light in his eyes dulled as he said the words, and his voice took on an involuntary growl. He was more than hungry. It was as Ivan had said, he was starving. There was no time to take time and be careful anymore. Like a newborn fledgling, Will had to be fed.

“Don’t worry, my boy. I will feed you,” Maddox promised, stroking Will’s short hair and finding it very soft and pleasant to the touch. “I think I can make something you’ll enjoy.”

Will sat at the kitchen counter practically vibrating with hunger while Maddox pulled our various ingredients from his private pantry. For the most part he enjoyed live blood, but he did have some stored for emergencies. Every smart vampire did. He worked as fast as he could, knowing that Will had limited time before he went completely mad. Finally, about thirty minutes after Will’s meltdown, he presented him with a dish designed to satisfy any little beast.

“What is it?” Will poked at it.

“It’s blood pudding.”

“Human blood?”

“Yes.”

“Then no. I’m not eating it.”

Maddox opened his mouth to attempt to convince Will, but there was no need.

True to his word, Will did not eat the food. As soon as his inner animal scented it, he fucking ravaged it like the salivating beast he was. One moment he was refusing to touch it, and the next it was filling his mouth. He did not know what was happening. It was as though he did not have full control of himself or his senses.

Maddox watched with a sense of helplessness and wonder as Will not only demolished the entire vessel, but proceeded to take his wolf form right in the middle of the kitchen. It had been an impressive sight the first time. The second time it was even more wonderfully strange to see his boy’s body flowing and twisting in new and what had to be very painful ways, fur flowing from unseen places, muscles expanding, bones knitting and unknitting, his very face being replaced with the dark maw of a beast. It was a swift and terrible thing, and Maddox could not help but be awed and proud.

Wolf Will was larger than the room, which lead to a very awkward situation in which the wolf was essentially trapped between the kitchen island and the kitchen cabinets, a situation he found incredibly unsatisfactory.

The wolf howled and proceeded to destroy every bit of the kitchen. Maddox had never seen a wolf eat a dishwasher before. It was quite a novel experience. Bits of wiring sparked and metal was twisted, water spouted into the air like an impromptu fountain. It was a mess, a glorious, pointless, expensive mess, and like any true force of nature it was absolutely impossible to stop.

It went on until the wolf dropped about five minutes into his rampage and lay naked upon the kitchen floor, shrinking and withering and shedding fury until it was Will all over again. Maddox estimated he'd done tens of thousand dollars in damage in the brief spree. He didn’t care a jot about the money. He cared a great deal about the boy.

“Alright,” Maddox said to himself as he scooped Will up into his arms. “Going to need a bigger cage.”

Will’s brand-new collar was left laying on the kitchen floor amidst the debris, sadly destroyed after barely an hour of being worn. It bobbed along on the little stream being created by the burst dishwasher pipe, occasionally sparking on the metal buckle when it came into contact with the raw current.

It was a mess somewhat of his own making, but Maddox had not had any choice. With Ivan’s small dose of flesh, Will had become a changed creature. There was no going back. Ivan had been right, Will’s feeding on flesh was necessary and inevitable and however squeamish William might be about it when he was his normal human self, it did not change what would inevitably happen.

The hunger was in Will.

The hunger was uncontrollable.

The hunger would consume everything.

Maddox settled Will back into bed, noticing that he seemed to be much stronger this time. The first time he transformed he had been practically killed by it. Now he was just tired. It was getting easier for Will, but it would become infinitely harder for Maddox. He already knew how the next months and perhaps years would be.