The last part of that sentence got Will into more trouble than leaving a corpse at the backdoor like an eager cat.
“Oh, you don’t want attitude, whelp?” Maddox grabbed him by the collar and dragged him up, speaking with cool menace. “I need to go attend to the law enforcement in my parlor. When they have gone, I will deal with you. Lorien, make sure he doesn’t go anywhere or kill anyone else. Put him in his room.”
Will watched Maddox leave dispassionately. He was not afraid of what was going to happen to him. He’d served time for murder before, and Maddox wasn’t going to lock him up for three years, so what did it matter? Pain was inevitable. He knew he was in the right, no matter what any authority figure might think. If he was the sort of person to bow to social pressure in terms of who should or should not be killed, he’d never have ended up in prison in the first place.
“So,” Lorien said conversationally. “You’re in trouble.”
“I don’t care about this kind of trouble. I’ve been in this trouble all my life.”
“The killing people kind of trouble?”
“Sure. The first person I ever killed was my best friend’s father.”
Lorien looked at Maddox aghast.
“He used to beat him. So. I killed him. People thought it was an accident because I was only seven years old at the time. But it wasn’t.”
“You’re a terrifying little beast,” Lorien said with no small amount of admiration. “But you should be afraid.”
Will looked at Lorien with disinterest. “I’m never afraid.”
“Is that right?”
“Far as you know.”
Lorien smirked. “The gap between what you know about you, and what I know about you is vaster than you realize, puppy.”
Again, Will had the feeling Lorien was hinting at something, but so indirectly Will couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was about.
Maddox could not stop smiling to himself. He would have to get the smile off his face before he returned to Will. Obviously, murder was bad, and murdering FBI agents could not be encouraged. Will had been very bad. Absolutely terrible. But he seemed to have done it out of good intentions and that was rather sweet. The first corpse to be presented was a milestone to be marked — and marked it would be.
“If I could cut this meeting short, I have some household matters to attend to,” he said upon his return.
“Certainly, sir,” Candy said obligingly.
“It’s safe to assume chaos is going to continue to reign in the city. There’s something to be said for letting them battle it out. Natural order is the preferred order. Let’s focus on looking for anomalies, frontrunners, and anybody from out of the country. If Europeans show up, I’m going to want to know. Doubly so if they’re British.”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
“You know where to find me if you need me, Candy.”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“You,” Maddox growled, striding through the door of Will’s bedroom tall and stern, and not nearly as angry as he was pretending to be.
Will had never felt bad about killing before. He didn't feel bad now either. But he did feel something when Maddox looked at him, and that was new. It was something like guilt, but more exciting.
“You strangled the man with your bare hands. That’s a brutal way to kill someone.”
“I didn’t have any other weapons,” Will said simply.
“And you liked it.”
“It was okay. Not my favorite kill. Not my least favorite. Somewhere in the middle,” Will made a back-and-forth motion with his hand. “That’s what he was, right? Just sort of meh. Kind of like the man himself.”
“As savage with your words as you are with your hands,” Maddox observed.
“Did you look for the stake he had? With your name on it?”
“Oh, I’ve saved it in my collection of weapons hopeful humans have attempted to kill me with. There’s a very nice morning star flail you’d like.”
“So you know he was going to kill you. And you know I stopped that from happening.”
“He would have been attempting to slay me in front of law enforcement.”
“I don’t think he cared. He had the eyes of a man who just wanted to kill, no matter the cost. I know those eyes. I see them in the mirror all the time.”
“I imagine you do, boy.”
Will cocked his head to the side. “You’re not really angry, are you. You wouldn’t be talking if you were.”
Will was starting to know him better than Maddox expected.
“I’m not angry. Angry is something I am very rarely. It's one of the benefits of no longer being alive and having very little in the way of investment in the present, let alone the future.”
“Oh, so now you don’t care? Because you're dead?”
“I care. I’m just not angry in the way you perceive anger. What I am is determined to ensure that you will not act with lethal force without my permission again.”