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At first the kind offer struck Maddox as strange. Why would he need to stay with her? Then it occurred to him. He’d lost his home. Everything he had, Gideon had claimed. He couldn’t go home. He could go back to Gideon, crawling like a beaten, half-killed dog. That was how Gideon liked his companions. Weak and broken, easily controlled. Now he was strong, Gideon wouldn’t tolerate that. He would make him weak again.
“There’s just a couple of things that you should know,” she said. “It’s…”
“He awake?”
Maddox heard Ivan’s voice. He sat up a few inches, which was about all he could do. Ivan entered his field of vision with a broad, shit-eating grin on his rough, handsome face. In that moment, Maddox missed Will so fiercely a tear nearly sprang to his eye.
Ivan had showered, tamed his beard with some clippers, brushed his hair, and was wearing what looked like Chuck’s clothes. They were too tidy to be his own. Khakis and a beige sweater made him look, well, actually, ridiculous. He looked better in denim and stains.
“Well,” Ivan grinned. “You’re a bit fucked, aren’t you?”
Maddox could not speak a word in response.
“Funny, isn’t it. You had me locked up like an animal in that shitting hole in the ground. And then this monster shows up, and suddenly you need me. First for Will, and now for yourself. You know, a bad guy might take advantage of your weakness right now, Maddox. Might want revenge for the months of suffering you inflicted.”
Maddox narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Fortunately for you, I’m a really fucking good guy,” Ivan declared. “One of the good ones. I’m not going to put you in silver and bury you underground in an undisclosed location, so long that everybody you know and love is dead, beside the monster that put you in this state. I could do that. I could make it so you never, ever see Will again.” He leaned toward Maddox and winked rakishly. “So remember, Maddox, that I didn’t do any of that.”
“Stop harassing him,” Lora Candy said, clipping Ivan around the ear. “He’s in no state to deal with your bullshit. We are all on the same side here. William’s side. We’re going to kill this evil old vampire, and…”
Maddox grunted and shook his head.
“We’re not going to kill the evil old vampire? I feel like we should do that, sir.”
“I agree,” Ivan said. “Seems like someone who needs to die.”
Maddox did not like the way Ivan and Lora were standing together. There was a certain closeness that concerned him. Ivan was dangerous, uncontrollable, wild, and feral; he was a wolf without a pack. Maddox did not trust him one bit, especially not this apparent congeniality. After months locked in darkness, there was no reason for Ivan to be in a good mood. Unless…
He looked at Candy and saw how flushed she was. And the scent. He had not paid attention to the scent at first. He was too concerned with the pain and the situation. They smelled of rut and rough sex. They had been fucking.
Maddox nailed Candy with a look that, though necessarily wordless, nevertheless made her blush. She knew he knew. She knew he did not approve. They’d have words, when he could have words.
“I’ll get you a pad and paper,” she said. “We have to make a plan, and charades isn’t going to cut it.”
A pad of paper with cute kittens playing along the top of it was presented to the ancient vampire, along with a pink gel pen.
“Sorry,” Candy said. “My daughter really likes stationary.”
Gideon can’t be killed, Maddox wrote in an elegant hand.
“What’s that? I can’t read that.” It made sense that Ivan wouldn’t be able to read cursive. It was a miracle the brute could read at all.
GIDEON CAN’T BE KILLED, Maddox printed instead.
“Everything can be killed,” Ivan snorted. “What if we put him through a woodchipper? You think he could survive that? What if we put him in a nuclear explosion?”
GIDEON CANNOT BE KILLED, Maddox tapped the pen on the paper.
“I don’t believe that,” Ivan snorted.
Having his throat ripped out was bad but being confronted with this simile of Will who continued to mock him by simply existing was worse. Maddox would have done anything to hold his boy close in this moment, to be comforted by Will’s love. Instead he had nothing.
“If Gideon cannot be killed, then what can we do about him?”
Maddox wrote one word in very large capitals, so it could not be mistaken, nor argued with:
NOTHING
