Royal Pains (Vampire Kings 2)

Ivan stopped outside the pawn shop and put the vehicle in park. It was a ratty old place, not at all helped by being viewed through a dirty, dry, blood-smeared windshield. They both got out of the pickup. Ivan waved Will over, picking up a bag of clinky-clanky things and pushed them at Will.

“Go sell these.”

It took Will a second to realize that they were all the rings Ivan had collected in the footwell of the pickup truck. Selling these would make him a direct accessory to what looked and felt like hundreds of brutal murders.

“No, thank you.”

His head rang from the blow Ivan had delivered to it with a closed fist. He’d punched him. He’d fucking sucker-punched him.

“You do as I say, boy,” Ivan growled. When the word boy came out of his mouth, it was like a fucked up echo of the way Maddox referred to Will, but without any affection or care or interest. In Ivan’s mouth it was an expression of derision.

Will balled his fist and punched his father in the stomach, doubling him over. Asshole had expected a punch in the head, but Will always went with a combination. First the gut, then a swift kick to the groin, followed up with a blow to the jaw with all his strength behind it. One, two, three, and out like a goddamn light.

“Piece of shit,” Will spat on his insensate father’s chest.

12

The Homecoming

“Will could be anywhere,” Maddox sighed, running his hand through his hair. Will had been gone for twenty-four hours now. That was enough time to reach almost anywhere on the globe if a plane was involved. He did not merely miss Will. He felt his absence as though a part of his own body was missing. It was pain of a kind he had not felt in many hundreds of years, and he did not enjoy it one bit.

“We’ll find him, sir,” Mark Kennedy said. In addition to having more piercings than the average face could bear, he was also the team’s intelligence analyst. His hair was a rainbow ombre today. It didn’t matter, but it was distracting to be spoken to by the thirty-year old male equivalent of a cartoon pony. “Ivan Sharp has a pickup registered in Wyoming, and that vehicle was recorded on the New Jersey Turnpike recently. We can use traffic cameras and satellite to plot the course of the vehicle, but that can take some time, and once they’re in more rural areas we need to apply to higher echelons of…”

Maddox had stopped listening at that point. Humans always had their little tricks and toys. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they didn’t. The only thing he knew for certain was that Will was either going to come home or not. It would be the boy’s choice, and nothing he or any flying robot might do could change that now.

“Didn’t you have a tracking collar on him?” Lorien asked the question. He was fortunate to still be able to sit. Chauvelin was not so lucky. Maddox had taken Chauvelin to task and hammered him to the wall. Literally. It would take quite some time for the fledgling to work his upstart hands and feet off the nails pounded through them and into the studs. It would hurt a great deal too. That was the one small speck of brightness. Maddox had made certain to leave the curtains open, so if the fledgling didn’t get himself free by morning there would be nothing but a pile of dust below the nails.

“It was removed,” Maddox gritted.

“Probably should have put one on that couldn’t be removed,” Lorien commented, out of place and with no regard for the feelings of the people involved. Lorien was yet to be dealt with, thanks to the ample distraction Chauvelin had provided. But now that he’d made himself conspicuous again, it was time to do something about him.

Maddox looked at Lorien with a blazing gaze. “You and I have some business to attend to,” he said. “Come to my office.”

Lorien blanched even more pale than he already was but followed obediently. Maddox trusted Candy and the team to find Will; after all, she had more than skin in the game. She had blood.

“None of this would have happened if you had told me what was going on with Will,” he said, shutting the door behind Lorien. “You saw what I did to Chauvelin. What do you think I should do to you?”

“None of it would have happened if Will hadn’t been desperate to find his father and you so desperate to lie to him,” Lorien countered. His expression spoke volumes. He knew he was in the direst of trouble but that did not mean he was going to submit without an argument, if not a fight.

“I did what I thought was right.”