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“Who is your maker?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is going on?!” Gideon thundered, suddenly incensed. “Irresponsible vampires spawning lost babes!”
“Maddox has a team of humans who kill us,” Chauvelin added. “He calls us feral, and he has us slaughtered.”
“Does he. I will have to speak with him about that when he is able to speak again.”
“He is unable to speak?”
“I had to remove his throat as a matter of discipline.”
A smile of pure joy passed over Chauvelin’s features, making him look suddenly handsome, and even more adorable to Ray’s gaze. He had an immediate affinity for a vicious, lost little thing who seemed to hate Maddox. Gideon’s usual preference for his youngest did create more than a little resentment in Ray, who, as the elder, was given most of the responsibility and less of the attention.
“I wish I could have seen that,” he murmured, almost to himself.
“And Will killed you as a man? And Maddox imprisoned you?” Gideon’s questions continued.
“Yes, on both counts, sire.”
“So you are caught up in the middle of this, the proverbial fly in the web,” Gideon mused. “Raymond, find a room for this one, and provide him some guidance. Fledglings need to be raised, not abandoned.”
“Yes, Father.”
Raymond extended his hand to Chauvelin to help him up from his knees.
“Come along,” he said. “You’ve done very well.”
Chauvelin’s smile was sweet. He did not seem to have been given much in the way of personal attention. He was starving, both for blood, and for anything in the way of guidance and care.
“Thank you,” he said, his dark eyes glistening with what might have been tears. “I have been trying. For a long time. By myself.”
Ray snugged him close. “You’re not alone anymore, Skip.”
There was a brief sob against his chest.
“Nobody has called me Skip in years. I introduce myself that way, but nobody ever uses it.”
Ray sighed inwardly. All these talented vampires in Maddox’s orbit, and of course his brother was unnaturally obsessed with a wolf. Sometimes it seemed as though Maddox was deliberately being as destructive as possible to everything that mattered.
“Who was it I just met?” Skip asked the question with more than a little reverence.
“Gideon is my maker. I call him father as a mark of respect. He could correctly be called the father of all vampires. Or most of them. There are others of his kind, but they have slept for a long time now. Gideon rises when humanity needs him most, in times of suffering and war.”
“We could do with someone responsible in charge,” Chauvelin said. “Maddox is obsessed with the wolf. He left the city in Lorien’s care, and…”
“Yes, I know,” Raymond said. “Don’t worry about it now. The adults are here.”
Chauvelin let out an audible sigh of relief. “You have no idea the chaos they have caused, the death, the…”
“I know,” Raymond soothed, pulling the young vampire into a platonic embrace and stroking his head gently. “I know. Don’t worry. We won’t let Maddox’s reign of terror continue. He’s been put in his place.”
Chauvelin cried actual tears of joy. “You have made me more happy than anybody has since I took this cursed cold form.”
“You are not cursed, little vampire. You are blessed. I am sorry nobody has taken the time to show you the beauty of your true nature. Do not worry. Things will be different now. Nothing will be as it was.”
“I put the fledgling to bed,” Raymond said, returning to Gideon.
