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“Ray,” Gideon said. “I think it is time you and your little friend deployed for cooler climes.”
Ray understood precisely what those apparently casual words truly meant. Cooler climes referred to a place in permafrost, where not even bacteria lived. It meant starving in the cold and sleeping to avoid the monotony and the hunger.
“No. Please. I’m sorry.” Ray tried to walk everything back, but it was far too late.
“I think you and Chauvelin here should go and ensure that our Siberian outpost is properly manned.”
“There’s nobody…”
“Yes. That’s the point,” Gideon said. “Go and freeze for a while and see how curious you feel.”
“Please, pater.”
Gideon summoned the patience it took not to murder his progeny outright. “Ray, if you call me pater again, I swear to all that is unholy, I will unmake you. Go. Now. Take the sycophant with you. Believe me, after your interference tonight, this is mercy.”
Ray nodded, knowing better than to argue now that Gideon had made a decision. The darkness was showing around the edges of Gideon’s being, a shadow and a curling tentacle in the darkness, warning him of the risks of disobedience.
“You will know where to reach me if you need me.”
Ray, for all his faults, was largely obedient. Gideon watched as his oldest and most overconfident son took his leave from the mansion. He was aware that sending Ray away would cause some issues, but it would also solve several.
That left him with nobody but Carter to look after.
He was so young. So innocent. So bold.
Gideon felt his arousal stirring. It would be wrong to fuck this fledgling, but then again, as the root of all evil, right and wrong didn’t really come into his calculations.
Carter had stopped crying by this time and was embarrassed at having cried.
“What? Do I have something on my face?”
Carter shifted uncomfortably under Gideon’s intense stare. It was not that the Maker was being deliberately intimidating, more that there was just no way for Carter to parse all the unspoken information that was being transmitted in those lustful looks. He was not used to being desired in this way. He was used to the girlish stares of his generation, not the dark lust of something ancient and inherently perverse.
“A look of pure confusion and innocence is all you have on your face,” Gideon replied. “For now, I will leave you in both states.”
* * *
And so it was that Gideon’s two primary progeny left the mansion, leaving the fledgling Carter to Gideon’s not so tender care. Gideon found himself rather enjoying the challenge. Carter was a different kind of vampire than any who had come before him. Perhaps it was his age. Perhaps it was his parentage. Or perhaps it was Gideon’s age, and the experiences he had endured recently with the chaos in his family home.
One afternoon, Gideon noticed that Carter was making an odd mewling sound, and for once it did not seem to be coming from his phone.
“What is that?”
“What is what?” Carter tried to distract Gideon with a stupid question, given the backpack he was carrying seemed to be moving. If anybody else had tried such a bold deception, it would have been very painful for them, but Gideon let it slide.
“It is a kitten,” Carter finally said under his grandmaker’s cold stare, pulling the little creature out of his pack. “Look how cute it is.”
The lord of all evil, origin of suffering, and god of war, looked at the fluffy orange creature. He was, of course, familiar with cats. They had been giving him dirty looks since the dawn of time. He had been largely indifferent to the creatures, and in truth his reaction to this beast was one of disgust.
“Can I keep him?” Carter looked at Gideon with big blue pleading eyes.
The answer, had Carter been one of his own fledglings, would have been a stern no. But Carter was the fledgling of his fledgling, the closest thing to a grandson Gideon would ever acknowledge. He found himself experiencing a very odd sensation, the urge to see Carter… happy.
“Very well,” he said. “You may keep him.”
“Yes!” Carter grinned. “We never had a pet before. Something about not enough money or time.”
“You now have endless amounts of both,” Gideon replied. “Enjoy the beast while it lasts.”
