Will fancied he heard some faint screaming in the distance, but it was somewhat usual for his mind to be flooded with the cries of his victims. There had been a lot of violence in his life, and echoes of it often played about his frontal lobe when it was at rest.
Then an arc of blood splattered over the windshield, heavy, wet, arterial.
“Fuck!” Will cursed in surprise as the now lifeless body of a man who had presumably just been doing his job was hauled over the pickup and into the bed. The whole vehicle shook and shuddered with the motions of predator and corpse.
After what felt like a very long time, considering the situation, Will’s father got back in the truck, covered in blood. He offered Will a hand, same way any father might offer his son a road snack. This was no beef jerky. This was a human body part with veins and squidgy bits hanging out. Will had seen a lot of violence in his time, but the context and the disgusting expectation in his father’s eyes was entirely overwhelming.
Will lurched around, stuck his head out the window, and promptly threw up.
When he turned his head back, his father was looking at him with an expression of pity.
“You haven’t been eating right,” his father said. “See, what brings out the wolf in us? What makes us what we are? It’s man meat. Human flesh. You get it? I bet you’ve been killing for years. It’s your instincts that tell you do to that. You’re telling me you never tried any of the meat?”
“No.” Will shook his head.
“You have to start eating people.” Ivan put the middle and ring finger of the hand into his mouth and crunched down on the bones, spitting the wedding band out into the footwell where it tinkled against what Will now realized was a small reservoir of other matrimonial jewelry.
Maddox went to Will’s bedroom. He wanted to assure himself that the boy had not heard what was being said downstairs. The last thing he needed was for Will to have another reason to feel embittered.
But the bedroom was empty, and Will’s bed was both empty and cold to the touch. It had not been slept in recently. Will must have gotten up right after Maddox checked on him. Maddox called Lorien, first by name, and then by phone because Lorien was apparently not in the house.
“Y’ello, Jello!” Lorien answered the call cheerfully. There was an insistent thudding noise in the background, as if he were in a club or similar venue.
“Lorien, is Will with you?”
“No. Should he be?”
“He should be at home in bed.”
“And he's not?”
“No.”
“Ah.”
“Lorien, if you know something… if Will ends up being arrested, he will spend the rest of his life in prison, and if that happens, and you knew something…”
Lorien sighed on the other end of the line. “Listen. This is a long shot, but it is all I know. Chauvelin and Will have been talking. Chauvelin claimed to know Will’s father.”
Maddox felt rage so intense it was as though he was mainlining pure fury.
“Why did you not tell me Chauvelin was alive, let alone speaking to Will?”
There was a brief hesitation.
“… I thought you might be angry.”
“I am angry. I am very angry.”
“Yes. See?” Lorien said those two infuriating words as if they absolved him.
“I want you at my home in half an hour or less.”
There was another pause. “That does’t sound like the smartest choice for me right now.”
“LORIEN!” Maddox thundered Lorien’s name. He almost never yelled, but right now it felt as though he did not have any other vocal setting.
“Alright. I am coming. Just promise me you won’t actually kill me. I’ve just barely started to understand my immortality…”
Maddox disconnected the call.
Lorien walked in the door twenty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds later. Maddox was waiting for him and grabbed him by the lapel, slamming him up against the wall hard enough to produce cracks in the concrete.
But before he could really lay into Lorien, Lorien had something to say. “How is this fair! I get blamed and punished for not telling you what Will is doing, but Will does whatever he feels like and it’s okay. Ridiculous. I am….”
The end of his sentence was lost in Maddox hauling him physically away to his office.
“Now you’re going to beat me simply for pointing out your hypocrisy, is that it?”
Maddox did not whip Lorien, even though his attitude was in grave need of adjusting. He had also had time to think, and Lorien was not wrong. He was not right, either.
“Has it occurred to you that I might hold you to a higher standard? That I might consider you my heir?”
“Me?” Lorien’s eyes widened and he pointed a finger at himself.
“Yes. Lorien. You.”
“But Will…”
“Will is my lover. My boy. My pet. My whelp. You are of my kind. My son. You are different.”