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“I’m not little,” Chauvelin/Skip insisted. “And I’m not adorable. I was an FBI agent. I was a serious officer of the law.”
“You’re fairly compact,” Lorien said. “How tall are you?”
“5’7. That’s average height!”
Lorien and Ivan both laughed a great deal at that. They were both significantly over six feet, and while Lorien was the tallest, being the middlest was not as bad as being the smallest.
“There's no such thing as average height. There’s tall and then there’s, what are those orange things?”
“The little pill-shaped candies?”
“No. The imported slaves by the cartwheeling candy baron. You know.”
Nobody knew what anybody was talking about, but they were all having a surprisingly good time. Lorien was pleased to discover such a thing was still possible.
Some faint knowledge rang in the back of his mind, something about how times this good always came to a rather nasty end, but he ignored his conscience, or common sense, whatever it was. It would all be fine. Probably.
2
“I don’t want to go back in the cage tonight. I’ll be saner tomorrow. I promise.”
Will was free again, after the difficult morning routine was over. He had shifted and become himself again, dressed and all. He’d be sane for the rest of the day. He almost felt normal, though he knew he was anything but. He knew the cage was the only sane choice, but being locked away every evening like an animal was still galling. Every night he felt normal, or at least as normal as he had ever felt before he started eating people meat and turning into a fucking monster every day.
Maddox gave him a pitying look. That was far worse than an outright rejection of the idea would have been. He hated the way Maddox looked at him. There was sadness in his eyes, a kind of deep regret. Will wondered if Mad regretted everything that had happened between them. Life must have been a great deal more simple before he arrived.
“I have been looking for solutions,” Maddox said. “We cannot go on like this forever. You need to come to an acceptance of your wolfness. You’re fighting your nature, and it’s making you sick.”
“My father forced me to eat his flesh.”
“Yes. It was wrong. It was vile. It forced you to confront an internal intensity you were not prepared for. And it hardly gave you a positive experience with your kind.”
They were sitting in the lounge, an area near the kitchen with deep leather couches. The day had dragged for Will, mostly because he’d spent most of it dreading the inevitable madness of the night. It was getting to be the time when he put himself away. He never really felt like it, though he always did it. He wasn’t even really arguing with Maddox. He was arguing with himself.
“There’s no need to head for the cage yet. I have a surprise for you.”
“Oh?” Will was intrigued.
“I don’t want you to take this as any kind of rejection…”
“You're sending me away.” Will folded his arms over his chest. “Do they have camps for wayward werewolves?”
“No. I’m not sending you anywhere.”
“Then where’s the rejection?”
“You're a werewolf, William.”
“Yeah. I noticed. Ruined my fucking appetite.”
“I am a vampire. An ancient vampire, but still a vampire. I can’t give you what you need entirely. You need contact with your own kind. Someone who can guide you.”
“So far I’m not impressed with other wolves.”
“Ivan is not the last of his kind. I have had the unit searching for others. Others who are able to maintain a healthier existence.”
“And?”
“Captain Candy found one. Some, actually, but one for now.”
