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“Hell of a motivational speech,” a skinny guy in the back said. He had a bright blue plume of hair at the top of his head, but no other hair. He looked very punk rock. Very anti-authoritarian. His name was Wesley, and he had joined the police to take them down from the inside, only to discover they’d seen him coming a mile away.
Maddox mentally ran through the rest of them. They were all quite distinct characters, which would help him keep them distinct in his mind. Cooper had been caught stealing dope from the evidence room, Tess was a cute twenty-something who had blackmailed her superiors, Sherlock was middle aged, a very intelligent man who only had one significant drawback, and that was that he seemed to believe he was literally Sherlock Holmes. Lastly, Annabelle was a forty-seven year old woman in a hand-knitted cardigan who had an air of such incredible menace about her Maddox had actually considered being intimidated upon meeting her.
“I get the hot flashes,” she said when his dark vampiric gaze landed upon the bright pink and yellow threads. “That’s why I wear the cardigan. I can take it off if I get too hawt, you know?”
“Indeed,” Maddox said.
“I just need AC and my computers,” she says. “I don’t ask for much. Just some chawclate when I get my cramps.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t eat sugar,” Tess chimed in, tossing her lovely red hair with a smug air and glancing around at everybody to see if they were suitably impressed with her dietary restrictions.
“I’m bored,” Henk declared.
“We are on the hunt for a fugitive of supernatural…”
“Are you really a vampire? Can I touch you?” Tess cut in with the question. Maddox did not deign to acknowledge the interruption, much less answer the question.
“You are a team,” he said. “I expect you to act as a team, understand? That means you stay silvered up, you keep holy water on your persons at all times, and there are never, and I do meannever,less than three of you together when you are on the hunt. You will no longer live in your homes. Instead, you will occupy mine.”
“I need a room with a bawthroom,” Annabelle said.
“Yes, Annabelle, of course, Annabelle.”
Annabelle could have whatever the hell she wanted as long as she did her job. Her references indicated she was an excellent digital sleuth, able to turn a Facebook post into a family history. Maddox doubted Will was using social media, but others in the greater circle of Gideon’s coven were, and keeping tabs on them was almost as important as finding William.
* * *
It was good to have the house inhabited again, even if the inhabitants were a group of variously unhinged misfits. Tess and Cooper had already become an item, and then broken up, and then become an item again. Maddox assigned Wesley, Tess, Henk, and Cooper to follow some of the leads associated with Will. Sherlock and Annabelle stayed home, Annabelle collecting information, Sherlock deducting with an impressive talent.
Things were starting to feel not exactly normal, but at least more under control. Gideon seemed to be satisfied with the explanation that Maddox’s efforts were to find Candy, who had made no further appearances, apparently quite sated by Gideon’s pain thus far. She would rise again, of that Maddox was certain, but she was not his concern, even if she was Gideon’s.
It did not take Annabelle long to hunt Will down.
“Awright. So. We’ve got some reels and posts indicating that there’s a really big wolf being sighted near remote rural human populations near the Pennsylvania bawder,” Annabelle said, intermittently pronouncing her r’s in a devil-may-care way. “Social media is satuwated, and this account only has fifty followers, so nobody has seen it yet.EastCoastRedneck696969.”
Shaky video revealed a flash of a very large wolf, jet black with bright blue eyes. Maddox recognized Will instantly. There was a lot of blood around his mouth, and other pieces of what had probably recently been people.
“Gettem, gettem!” That phrase was being repeated again and again, in increasingly panicked tones. Gunshots were being fired intermittently and with nothing resembling accuracy, or perhaps they were warning shots. The video ended abruptly without resolution one way or another.
“I dispatched the team to this location. No surwiwors.” Annabelle provided much needed context. “No wolf either. Just a bunch of dead, bitten up people.”
“Bitten up being a technical term, I imagine.”
“Bited real good,” Annabelle added. It was at this point Maddox realized she was drunk. The empty bottle of wine next to her probably should have given that away. Middle-aged women had a certain way of making alcoholism seem cozy and borderline respectable.
“Was there a trail?”
Annabelle’s eyes widened as if the question was so silly she wasn’t sure if she should answer it, but even a buzzed lady in a crocheted cardigan knew well enough not to deny Master Vampire Maddox his request. “Sure there was a trail. Look at the size of him. Wampaging around like the devil himself. He’s not making any effort to hide his tracks. He doesn’t care who comes after him.”
Or maybe he did. Maddox pondered Will’s recklessness and knew that though his boy was the proverbial werewolf in a ceramics store, there may very well be unconscious motivations at play.
Perhaps there was some part of Will that did want to stopped, and caught, and brought to justice. It was possible the only resolution to their estrangement would be through hunt and capture. Maddox knew he would have to tame William all over again, both emotionally and physically. There was a part of Mad that thrilled to the challenge. He had ensured everybody thought he had abandoned Will, but that was necessary to fool Gideon. In the deepest parts of Maddox’s being, the dark little core that occupied the space a soul should be, there was one truth. He would never abandon William again.
8
On the night Maddox found William, disaster had struck. Annabelle’s tracking had been most efficient. This allowed Maddox to more or less track the trail of carnage to the scene of a wreck on the side of a country road where an ambulance had been somehow driven off the road and into a thicket of trees. There were no survivors. Will had ensured that.
