“I think you just sucked my soul out,” Lorien said, resting his head on Henry’s shoulder as Henry wrapped his arms around him and held him tightly. “What about you… what do…”
“Rest a minute,” Henry said. “You don’t have to worry about me this instant. I’ll keep.”
“Are you the nicest person on the actual planet?” Lorien dipped back into confusion as he attempted to fathom how someone could be as generous, kind, and altogether nice as Henry.
“No, you just have a very low bar for how you’re treated,” Henry replied.
“I want to make you feel good too.”
“Not yet,” Henry said. “Not until you relax and enjoy. You don’t need to rush to return the favor. I’m not keeping score. That was for you, and for us.”
Chapter Fourteen
“This is nice.”
It was more than nice. It was like being on another planet. Will wasn’t actually sure what country they were in. Somewhere in Europe. Maddox had told him, but he hadn’t paid enough attention and now he didn't care enough to ask.
“It is nice,” Maddox agreed. They stood on a balcony looking out over a moonlit city trammeled with canals. Will couldn’t stop staring at the strangeness of it all. The people here spoke a different language, Italian, probably. It sounded like word-song to him. He liked it. He liked not understanding it too. Many people were obsessed with learning other languages. Will was starting to regret he'd ever bothered to learn English. It was nice to float in the middle of sound and not worry what was happening.
“It’s very nice to not have to give a fuck about the dealings of a city,” Will added. “Can we not go back? Can we just stay here?”
“We could try, but our problems would inevitably follow us, I’m afraid. This is a smaller world than you might imagine.”
“Have you been here before?”
“I was here before the city began to sink,” Maddox said. “I believe the first time I came here, it was when this was still a marshy lagoon, where people fled from water-shy barbarians.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. My sense of time has never been particularly acute. A couple of thousand years ago at least.”
“You are very old. Did you know Jesus?”
“Oh yes, everybody knew Jesus,” Maddox said. “Good caterer.” He flickered a wink at Will, and Will really didn't know if he was serious or not. Maddox did not like to talk about himself, or the past that was longer than hundreds of people’s lifetimes stretched end to end.
Will leaned against Maddox. “We haven’t had a single fight since we left America. I think this is good for us. Good for me, maybe.”
"Broadening your horizons is certainly a good thing,” Maddox agreed.
“Are there vampires here? Locals? Will we meet them?”
“Yes, and not if I can help it. The last thing either one of us needs right now is to be exposed to a new set of vampire politics.” Maddox picked Will up as if he weighed nothing at all and carried him back to bed. Will had no objections to that.
“The vampires here are, on average, older than the ones in New York; this city was established a long time before that one. And, generally speaking, the older a vampire is, the worse tempered and the crueler they become.”
“You’re not cruel.”
“To you,” Maddox said.
Will laid on Maddox’s chest and looked into his eyes. Those two dark orbs hid so much. Centuries of secrets, many of which he was sure he did not want to know. Will had long ago learned not to ask questions of people who had that look. Prison taught that there were some darknesses that could infect you just by hearing them. Will was not typically wise, but he was smart enough to leave the dark vault that was Maddox’s past well the fuck alone.
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
Somewhere deep beneath New York City, a wolf had been howling for weeks. The howling had done nothing . Nobody was coming to save him. Nobody cared for his plight at all. His cries and calls were damped by hundreds of feet of earth that separated him from the world above.
Ivan’s wolf wounds had healed, the ones inflicted on him by the pack master and his betas. But the pain he was in made him wish that they hadn't. He’d made a terrible mistake by going to Lora Candy’s house. The woman had Maddox deeply in her debt, and the vampire had taken that debt very seriously.
Ivan wore cuffs and chains around his ankles and his wrists. He had to continuously push bits of clothing fabric and other scraps of whatever he could find in the darkness to lever them off his bare skin. They burned like hell where they touched.
This was worse than a prison. This was a dungeon designed to torture those who dwelled in it, to sap hope rather than life.