Predators (Vampire Kings 1)

4

Welcome to the Hunt

They were out againin the city. It still felt very strange for Will to be allowed to roam freely, though admittedly while he was in Maddox’s presence there was not much in the way of true freedom to be had. The collar around his neck was a constant reminder of that.

“Up here,” Maddox said, leading Will out onto the roof of a building. Below there was a closed butcher shop, a travel agency, and a store that sold different kinds of pens. Up here, Brooklyn unfolded around them, brownstones holding human souls in conveniently boxed locations. Will couldn't help but think about how easy it would be to break in through a few windows and avail himself of whatever was inside. Criminal impulses to moments of opportunity were hard to shake, especially no more than a few days out of prison.

“Come,” Maddox said, beckoning him to the back of the building. There was an alleyway back there, a typical Brooklyn back passage filled with misery and dumpsters. Will was still wondering how much cash a pen store would have on hand.

“There,” Maddox took him by the back of his head and directed his gaze down to where a person in a ripped suit was hunched over the unhealthily pale, closer to gray body of a homeless man.

Will watched impassively. He had seen many terrible things happen behind bars. Not reacting was a well-honed survival instinct. That did not mean he was not horrified. Even the most graphic violence behind bars was usually limited to stabbing and biting. It was rare to see actual disembowelment. The victim’s innards were everywhere, strung about the place like a chaotic Christmas display of entrails.

It was not a person responsible for all this hideous mess, of course. It was a vampire. A filthy, dirty creature more like an animal than a person.

“That is a feral,” Maddox explained. “See the way it fails to hide its hunger? How it stalks in the open? How it kills indiscriminately without regard for the victim? How it has left a blood trail that any policeman with even half an interest in solving the crime could follow?”

“It is messy,” Will agreed.

“Very messy. I do not tolerate mess in my city.”

“So what are you, the vampire mayor of New York?”

“Something like that,” Mads smiled. “Now. Go kill.”

“What? Right now?”

“Yes, boy.”

Will looked at the feeding vampire and felt something he had not expected to feel: fear. The memory of Mads drinking from him was still fresh in his mind, along with the complete submission he had fallen into when he’d had to give in to the fangs.

A hard smack on his rump reminded him that he had a job to do. It was not normally his wont to be reluctant to be violent, but Mads overestimated Will’s desire to kill — at least, his desire to kill those who hadn’t crossed him.

“I…”

“What is it?”

I don’t think I can. That’s what Will wanted to say. But those words would not be part of his vocabulary today, not in that order at least. Showing Maddox weakness was not an option. So he went down the wall, grabbing the fire escape ladder which obligingly shuddered down in a rusty complaining sort of way, delivering him to the ground safely, if not surreptitiously.

He didn’t usually worry about making a quiet entrance, though it occurred to him now he was on the ground that the element of surprise might have been helpful. Coming banging down in the middle of this scene was not his best idea. It might even have been his worst.

These revelations came too late for him to do anything about them. He stifled the desire to call out for help. Maddox hadn’t recruited him to cry and whine. He’d gotten him out of jail to kill on command. Should be a dream job. The moment he breathed in, it turned to a nightmare.

The vampire looked up and hissed. Its eyes were bloodshot. Its chin dripped blood. It released the body and turned toward him. It did not stand upright. It was hunched over, hands clawed. It breathed like a beast. It smelled like one too. He had expected the smell of blood. He hadn’t expected the rancidity of guts and rot and other unpleasant decay no human can tolerate.

Maddox had been right. These ferals were nothing like him. They were like animals. Dangerous, filthy, wild animals. He wanted to kill. He wanted to kill more than he had ever wanted to kill before. But he could not. He was frozen. Not out of choice, but out of primal animal instinct. Right now, the memories of countless ancestors of all species were in control of him. They turned his bones to stone, his muscles to useless meat. He could not even call for help. All he could do was stare at his fate as it approached him, bloodshot eyes strangely magnetic in these super-slowed final moments of existence.

Maddox landed behind the vampire soundlessly, as if his weight did not create any impact on the world at all. He raised an inscribed spike of iron just as the feral closed the last inches on Will. There was a sickening meaty sound as Maddox bashed a stake through the feral’s head. The cracking of skull and then the squishing of brain which leaked out in a messy cauliflower of flesh.

Will threw up and collapsed, yet again giving into two impulses which were squarely the domain of prey. Mads’ shadow fell over him. Will could only imagine the disappointment and likely rage he was about to be subjected to. He had not only failed, he had shown complete and utter weakness.

“Let’s go home, pup.”

Maddox reached down to help him up, but Will’s legs refused to work. He was still frozen like an animal caught in headlights. Maddox tossed him over his shoulder and carried him back to the car.

Will had never experienced such a low point in his life. Not even when twelve guards took turns beating on him all night long when he was in prison. Then he’d been unable to fight back. Today he’d just… failed.

“I don’t know what happened,” he mumbled, his head hanging low. He wished Maddox would not look at him anymore. He could feel his master’s gaze and it made him feel so shamefully weak he could barely stand it.

Maddox bundled him into the car, and together they went home, a silent pair sliding through the streets of the greatest city in the world.

The silence was worse than anything Will had experienced in a long time. He didn’t understand why it felt so bad, he only knew that he could barely stand it.

“I failed you. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

Maddox was patient, and far more generous than Will ever imagined he would be. He ran his fingers soothingly through Will’s sweaty locks and made what might have been a soothing sound.

“The first kill is the hardest. A vampire, any vampire, is an apex predator beyond any you have encountered in your life. The human body reacts to that knowledge on an instinctual level.”

“So why did you send me down there?”

“You’ve never slain a vampire before. You need to lose your fear of my kind. You need to discover your inner predator.”

“I thought you chose me because I’d already done that.”

“Halfway. You understand who you are. But you’re not entirely sure what you are. Not yet. I thought a close encounter with something you are primed to destroy would trigger your basic instincts. It did, but not the ones I intended. Do not worry, pup. Your time is yet to come.”

Maddox’s reassurances did go some way to relieving Will’s fear of rejection, and inevitable return to prison. But they did not change how sickeningly embarrassed he felt at having been unable to carry out the violence which should have come so naturally to him. If there was one thing Will knew how to do, it was kill. But he’d fucking bottled it.

“I thought vampires were a stake through the chest?” He covered his shame with a mumbled question.

“Destroying the brain works on any creature,” Maddox clarified. “Never forget that. It may be eminently useful one day.”

Will was exhausted. Too tired to close his eyes, he laid his head in Mad’s lap and tried to contend with his continued confusing existence.

“You will sleep when we are home, and tomorrow you will feel better.”

Will doubted that. He was out of his depth in every way possible. He felt like a fucking animal compared to Maddox, whose native gentility and dominant demeanor made him seem to be perpetually in control. Back in prison he had hated the wardens who treated prisoners like beasts, but none of them had ever made him feel like as pathetic and helpless a creature as Mads did when he saved him.

The second they stepped through the front door, there was a shift in the energy of the place to which Will was immediately sensitive. It did not feel like an empty place as it had the first time they’d entered. There was a new smell. Something that drifted very faintly on the breeze created by the door opening. Something male. Something dead.

Will growled beneath his breath, feeling his entire body become suffused with tension. He did not like this new smell. He did not like, for want of a better term, the vibe which now seemed to emanate from the interior of Maddox’s sterile dwelling. It felt inhabited in a dark way, as if it had become more of a den than a home.

“Someone’s here,” Will said obviously. He knew if he was sensing something, Mad was sensing it a thousand-fold.

“Yes,” Maddox agreed as they stepped into what passed for a lounge.

Someone was sitting in Mad’s armchair. For some reason Will had not expected anybody else to ever enter Maddox’s domain, let alone take a seat in his chair. There was a familiarity and a casual ease to the pose which made Will think this person had been here before many times.

As they walked further into the big, open room, the interloper was revealed.

“Hello there,” he drawled with a languid wave of his fingers.

“Lorien,” Maddox said.

“Still, yes,” the intruder agreed. Will stared, uncomfortable at finding himself confronted by a stranger at one of the most vulnerable times of his life.

The man named Lorien was attractive in an obvious and deadly sort of way. His long raven hair cascaded wildly from the crown of his head, framing his face boldly. He had the hard, rough structure of a born beast, and now that Will had seen a vampire or two, he recognized Lorien as one immediately. Lorien would have been in his early thirties when he was turned into what he was now. He was mature, and powerful. A cocky energy emanated from him which made Will’s hackles rise. Cocky hot guys were never good news in his experience, and after a raw evening of failure and humiliation Will was not in the mood for meeting new people.

“Lorien, this is Will,” Maddox introduced him. “We’ve been out on a hunt.”

“Your latest hapless project,” Lorien said with a rakish smile, laughing green eyes playing over Will’s face. “Have you enjoyed hunting, puppy?”

Will growled under his breath. Mad might address him from time to time as pup, but this felt different. This felt incredibly condescending and slightly sneering. He felt his ire rising and considered that he might possibly consider a second attempt at killing a vampire tonight. He might be more successful this time. Even though Lorien had not been present at his first failure, Will felt suddenly observed. He did not like being observed. Especially by somebody with a gaze keen enough it felt as though his recent failure was being played out on an invisible screen between them. Lorien saw him, and Will did not like being seen.

“He has a temper,” Lorien noted. “You do like them wild, don’t you, Maddox.”

“What do you want, Lorien?” There was a note of impatience to Mad’s question.

Lorien made another one of those gestures which was all wrist and elegance. “What do I ever want? Your help, of course.”

Will saw Maddox react with curiosity and also concern. “Let me get Will settled, and we will speak.”

“Who is that?” Will asked the question as Maddox led him off to his room. It was very much like being put to bed, a dynamic which made him feel uncomfortably hot with even further embarrassment. There seemed to be no end to the multitude of tiny shames inflicted upon him in this household of which he barely considered himself a member. He had failed today. Failure always came at a price.

“Family,” Maddox explained briefly. “Shower and go to bed. I will see you in the morning.”

Maddox left Will at the door to his room, expecting him to obey, obviously. Will lingered in the doorway before shutting himself away as he had been instructed. He was not as curious about the familial stranger as he should have been. He was focused inwardly on his inability to kill, on the way fear had locked him out of control of his own musculature, and nothing in his brutal psyche had been able to break through.

He leaned back against the hard, polished surface and struggled to take a deep breath. He did not want to be weak. Could not bear being in any way small. And yet, here he was, the captive of a creature nobody really believed in, being made small and weak and useless to himself and his unholy handler.

Food.

That was all he was, really. If he could not serve Maddox then he figured he would become dinner, like a cow that failed to give milk. Will let his head fall back against the door, closed his eyes and relived the experience of being drunk from, turning from a person of thought and feeling to nothing more than a vessel containing essence for another, more powerful creature.

Fuck.