Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 37136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
“Bring me Maddox,” Gideon repeated.
The black sheep of the family would yet have his utility. There were many times when Maddox was more pleasant company than Ray. There were times a fawning, obedient son was useful. And then there were times his most rebellious child mattered most.
Ray went and fetched Maddox, which only took a matter of seconds given the speed vampires were capable of traveling at. Deliveries inside Gideon’s castle were incredibly swift.
Maddox arrived in his usual modern yet formal attire, a black suit emphasizing the long and powerful lines of his body, his red silk shirt a nod to the sanguine nature of his existence. It had been some time since Gideon and Maddox spent any real time in one another’s presence, and in the light of his recent experience, Gideon was suddenly very much aware of just how beautiful his creation was. Maddox was something special, not just because he was dark and powerful, or because he contained more fearsome impulses than anybody besides Gideon expected, but because he was unique. Special.
“You called?” Maddox asked the question with apparent deference that completely failed to impress Gideon. He saw the lingering hatred in his spawn’s eyes. He knew the resentment that lived there.
“I’m surprised you are still here,” he said, his gaze on Maddox.
“Why? This is where my fledgling is.” Maddox’s expression was still, giving away no emotion.
“Your wolf has escaped. I imagined the moment you heard that news you would have abandoned my home to find him.”
Maddox gave a very slight shrug. “He does not consider himself mine, and I have responsibilities to attend to here.”
If he was lying, he was doing so very convincingly. Gideon could probe the mind of his offspring, but he was not feeling inclined to do so. He had not asked for Maddox in order to perform vampiric psychotherapy on him. The experience of being hurt had excited him greatly. He was eager to repeat it.
“I want you to find this”—he waved his hand in the air—“this woman. You knew her once. You must be able to find her again.”
“The woman?”
Now Maddox was certainly playing dumb. The entire coven had been deep in conversation about nothing else ever since Gideon returned wounded. Tales of her existence had spread from one side of the mansion to the other. It was the most exciting and terrifying news to hit vampire-kind in centuries, if not millennia.
“Yes. The woman you used to use. The woman who bore your wolf and your fledgling. The one who seems to have cheated death in some way we do not yet recognize.”
“She's a zombie,” Maddox said. “Not the traditional shambling, brain-eating zombie humans fear, but a zombie animated by a singular purpose: revenge. That is what she feeds on. She will come for you, time and time again. Hurt you, time and time again. You have become the source of sustenance, Gideon.”
Maddox spoke with great authority, a sureness that made Gideon quite suspicious. Even he did not know what the woman had become, and yet Maddox seemed not only certain, but unsurprised.
“Maddox…” Gideon drew out his progeny’s name. “Is this creature a creation of yours?”
“I believe she would say that she is a creation of yours,” Maddox said echoing Candy uncannily.
“She would. She did.” Gideon paused for a long moment, his eyes glimmering with some unspoken emotion. Maddox stood quite still, inhumanly motionless, waiting for the inevitable question to formulate itself.
“Maddox, I made you so angry with the loss of your pet wolf that you created an abomination never seen before in all of time to destroy me?”
“Perhaps,” Maddox replied, visibly steeling himself.
Gideon spread his arms wide, and a true smile passed over his eternally handsome face. “I have never been so proud.”
“WHAT!?” Ray’s confused shout could be heard from out in the hall.
“I did say, perhaps,” Maddox replied. “I did not confess to such a thing.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Gideon beamed. “You must bring me your new creation as soon as possible.”
Maddox frowned slightly. “You think you will be able to destroy her?”
“Oh, I hope not.”
“Then I am confused.”
Ray came bursting through the door in a rage. “He wants her to hurt him! He likes the pain.”
“Oh,” Maddox said. “Understandable.”
“Really? Understandable? The origin of all evil, the greatest of our number, the purest of our kind. The one without whom we all face oblivion.” Ray was nearly crying from frustration and rage. “He wants to be hurt. Perhaps he wants to die. Do you not know this about your own father? He seeks death inexorably. His sleep is as close as he can approximate, but now you have created something that might actually end him.”
Maddox looked at Ray with the blank expression of someone who absolutely does not care even the slightest bit about the concerns of the person speaking to him.