“He’s chosen not to be like you.”
Ivan laughed. “There’s no choice, vampire. Not for me, not for you, not for Will. What are you going to do? Kill me? He’ll hate you for it. He won’t forgive you. I’m his dad. You can’t change that.”
“You have to be dealt with,” Maddox said. Ivan had a rich scent. As a consumer of humans, his smell was much more intense and pronounced than most, and there was the wolf side too. It would be a delicious indulgence to drain him to the very last drop.
“I haven’t ever met anybody who could deal with me,” Ivan smirked. He was truly very handsome when he smiled, rakish and quite appealing in a twisted, violent way. Maddox felt himself responding to the Willness of the man.
Ivan laughed as he realized Maddox was hesitating. “You're not going to kill me. You know we’re the same. I kill, you kill.”
“I drink. I don’t murder.”
“Sure. Your body count exceeds mine by thousands I’d bet.”
He was not strictly wrong, but Ivan’s crimes were more recent and by all human senses of judgement, that made them worse. Context was for kings, and Maddox knew that better than anybody.
“Ivan, you don't belong here. I don’t want you here. Will doesn’t want you here. What are the odds if I let you go, you don't come back. Ever?”
Ivan shrugged as much as any man who was thoroughly tied up could shrug. “I’m not making promises, vampire. You been drinking from my son? Is that it? He your blood bag?”
“Oh, he is much, much more than my blood bag.” Maddox’s tone was extremely suggestive.
Ivan’s face changed colors.
“You're telling me my son is…”
Maddox waited patiently for him to finish the sentence, but it really didn't seem he was able to. The concept or possibility had not occurred to him, evidently, and now it was revealed it did not please him at all.
“Fucking prison turns guys gay,” Ivan said. “Seen it time and time again. And then you take him from there and start taking advantage, knowing what he needs and not giving it to him, keeping him weak. This isn’t a choice. For him or me. We need to eat people. Fancy vampire men and gay sex won’t change what he is.”
“Gay sex can cure more than you might imagine, sir.”
Ivan didn’t laugh. He didn't have room for a sense of humor.
“And actually, I gave him a human-infused beverage on one occasion.”
Ivan wasn’t listening.
“Boy needs a full corpse. Needs guts. Needs flesh. Needs brains. Needs skin. Needs every bit of the animal. It’s what he is. You can’t change it by feeding him on…”
“Toaster pastry,” Maddox murmured. “It is all he likes to eat.”
“He’ll get sick. It doesn't matter so much before the first turn. But he’s been himself now. Hasn’t he. He’s been the wolf. And I’ll bet it almost killed him.”
“Yes. It did,” Maddox admitted.
“If you’d have given him human flesh before and after, it wouldn’t have hurt him at all. It would have been like nothing to him. He’s gotta eat right.”
Maddox had the very uncomfortable feeling that Ivan not only made sense but was actually being a good father in the most twisted way possible.
“I don’t care if you fuck him,” Ivan said. “I don’t give a shit what he does with his ass. But he’s rare. And he won't make it to thirty if he doesn’t eat. He’ll get sick and they’ll call it something else. They’ll give it a name. Call it a syndrome. But it won't be nothing but not eating right.”
Maddox had entered the room fully intending on killing the man. It was the simplest situation to his problem and fine justice to boot. But he found himself unable to do it, not merely because Ivan looked so much like Will, but because Ivan, as twisted and broken and terrible as he was, appeared to care for him too.
He turned on his heel without a word and left the basement. He needed to think.
“Did you kill him?” Will’s question almost seemed hopeful but terrified at the same time. He’d been waiting upstairs to see what happened, lurking nervously with a hunted look in his big blue eyes.
“No. Not yet.”
Will nodded solemnly. “I think he deserves to die.”
“Death isn’t a matter of deserving or not,” Maddox replied. “It is an inevitability for all of us, even immortals. Humans use it as a punishment, but that is perverse. Death is not a punishment. Living can be.”
Will frowned. The bruise on his face was still flowering black and blue, tinged yellow at the outsides. His left eye was partially closed from the swelling. It was enough to make Maddox want to beat the Hades out of Ivan at the very least.
“What are we going to do with him then?”
“I don't know, boy.”