“Let’s go,” he said, getting into the pickup. The woods didn’t feel freeing anymore. They felt like a place of hidden horrors. How many sets of bones lay dormant beneath gnarled roots? How many souls cried out for justice they’d never receive? He felt a shudder run through him.
They were about an hour into the drive west when he spoke again.
“I need to call Maddox. He’ll freak out when he realizes I’m missing.”
“Who is Maddox?”
“The vampire king of New York?”
“Vampires love royalty,” Ivan said.
“Yeah,” Will agreed, even though it wasn’t actually true as far as he was aware. Maddox barely cared about being king. He’d only done it to stop everyone killing each other. He didn’t think Ivan and Maddox would like each other.
“Do you know him?”
Ivan shook his head. “Nah.”
Will decided to definitely call Maddox at the next stop. They’d have to get more fuel eventually, and hopefully this time not murder anyone.
“So. Do you have, uhm, any hobbies?”
Ivan looked over at him with an icy stare, as if the very concept of hobbies was an insult. “No,” he said. “I spend most of my time trying to survive.”
It was about then that a series of three police cars went past, lights and sirens blaring on the other side of the road. Will noticed how Ivan’s knuckles whitened as they tightened on the steering wheel. If Will had to guess, Ivan had warrants out for his arrest. Probably a lot of them. Probably in states where they fucking fried you for killing people too.
He’d assumed his father would be older and wiser, know more about being a wolf. He supposed Ivan did, but his life seemed to be a complete fucking mess. Worse than Will’s, because Will’s life with Maddox was about as charmed an existence as you could get. He was suddenly remembering how ungrateful he’d been when he told Maddox he was only keeping him captive.
He'd had so many expectations of what his father would be like, and Ivan was not living up to any of them, except for maybe the part where he had really good hair and never wore a shirt, but that was a low bar when it came to judging fathers.
“What are we going to do when we get to where we are going?”
Ivan grunted.
“Sorry, what?”
“We’re going to survive.”
“I was surviving where I was,” Will pointed out. “Why don’t you just come back to New York? You can meet Maddox and I bet he’d help with the whole surviving thing.”
“I don’t need no vampire’s help, and neither do you.”
“You know I’m going to go back to New York eventually, right? I’ve got commitments.”
“Not anymore, you don’t. Once you get the right food inside you, you’ll know what you really are. We need to find some pussy.”
Will tried not to outwardly show how much that statement repelled him. He didn’t consider himself a good guy, definitely not a nice guy, but he also didn't refer to people by their genitals. Even if he was interested in pussy, as Ivan put it, he wouldn’t talk about women that way.
“Fuck some little alphas into the world, eh?” Ivan grinned as if he expected Will to agree.
“I don’t think I want kids,” Will said.
“You don't have to have them. Women have them. All you have to do is make them.”
Will probably did have an almost endless number of siblings, he realized. There was an even chance he had some who were still in utero if Ivan had been nonstop fucking and murdering his way back and forth across America.
It was getting harder and harder to find anything likable about the man. “Is that why I got left in a dumpster? Because you left some woman to have me?”
“Hey. That’s on her. Fucked up.” Ivan shook his head. “I mean, take some responsibility, right?”
Ivan took no responsibility, apparently. According to Ivan, it wasn't his fault Will existed, or that he’d lived his entire life in and out of state care, ending up in prison. Ivan’s responsibility began and evidently ended with an ejaculation. Will was starting to get upset. And not the usual kind of upset he was accustomed to being, but a deeper, more trauma-based upset. The kind of upset that led to unpredictable outcomes.
It didn't help that Will was starting to fucking starve, but at least Ivan was allowing him water. William wouldn’t have let any other creature alive put him through this. Maybe Maddox, but Maddox was dead, and from the moment he met Mad, the vampire had done his best to attend to all of the needs of his flesh.
Finally, they drove into a small town. Thankfully, it had four stores and a handful of people generally around, which meant Ivan couldn’t outright murder in broad daylight. There was a gas station, a general store, a laundromat, and a pawn shop.