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Henry glanced over at him. “You shouldn’t be so flippant about this. What we just saw and experienced was nothing short of a miracle. A dark, concerning miracle.”
“Yeah. Right. Miraculous. I guess you’d know how to pick between horrors as to what parts are miracles. How is Gideon any less of a miracle than mombie?”
Henry gave him another sharp look. “You’re going to call her that from now on, aren’t you.”
“Hell yeah, I am.”
“You should take this seriously.”
“I discovered the woman who birthed me and dropped me in a dumpster has been in my life for months, and nobody fucking told me until after she was dead. The brother I didn’t know I had was murdered and turned into a vampire by the guy I thought I loved. How fucking seriously do you want me to take this, exactly?”
Henry nodded. “We’ve had a hard time. You’ve had a very hard time, specifically. Take it however you want. I used to think I had all the answers when it came to you. I don’t think that anymore. You are more than I ever imagined. I thought you merely belonged to Ivan’s bloodline, but now I am certain that there is a deeper magic in your genes.”
Anybody else might have taken that as a compliment, but all Will heard was that he was too much even for a pack master. He was betrayed by Maddox, abandoned by Henry, and haunted by the remnants of what had been his mother. The urge to flee was growing stronger by the moment. He did not merely want to escape. He wanted to forget.
“We’re almost there,” Henry announced as they turned off the main road and into a forest. They drove along a poorly maintained forestry trail for a good thirty minutes before the light from a fire drew them to the second rendezvous.
Henry put the car in park, and together they got out. In human form they both suffered the temporary blindness of the night. Something was moving out there. Something large and impatient, something…
“HENRY!” Lorien came flying out of the darkness of the forest, his hair streaming behind him, his usually somewhat sneering and composed expression a mask of absolute relief and joy.
Will watched impassively as the two embraced with intense passion, having been kept separate for months on end with no prospect of release. He felt a pang of misery and perhaps even jealousy that risked verging on something truly dark.
“Hey.” A gruff voice came through the night.
No romantic display awaited Will, but he was not left entirely to his own devices, and that was a relief.
“Good to see you again, son.”
Ivan greeted Will wearing flip-flops, short shorts, and nothing else. He was cooking a pair of mismatched hands over an open barrel fire. The scent of fresh human meat being seared made Will salivate. He had once recoiled from the prospect of eating men, but now it seemed to be the least of his concerns. Survival demanded he be as fully monstrous as he could.
Ivan glanced over at the pair of them. “Are you going to be a pussy about eating people again? Because I got no fuckin’ time for that.”
Will wasn’t sure if Ivan was talking to him or to Henry. The question would have been nearly as appropriate to both. Henry had once led his pack to slaughter Ivan, whose bloodthirsty tastes and disdain for the laws of men made him a danger in a variety of ways. Henry’s rules did not allow for the killing of people for food. Ivan’s rules did.
Ivan was a survivor, through and through, and for that Will was grateful. This was how he needed to be now. Ruthless, and entirely focused on himself. Fuck everybody else. There was nobody in this world who was going to take care of him better than he did himself.
He picked up a charred hand and snapped a finger off between his teeth, chewing aggressively, breaking the brittle bone and tasting the marrow within.
Ivan’s blue stare softened slightly. “Good,” he said. “You’re learning.”
“Have you seen my mom lately?” He asked the question between bites of flesh.
“Your mom?”
Ivan playing dumb was stupid. He was part of the maternal conspiracy, and Will would have been bitter about that if he wasn’t directing all his rage about the situation toward Maddox alone.
“Yeah. Where’s Candy?”
Ivan looked at him. “You got some reason for asking that?”
“I know she’s my mother, or was, before she became whatever she is now. I want to see her.”
“Well shit, you finally know. About fucking time.”
Will agreed but did not have the time to devote to bitterness about all the secrets that had been kept from him. He had spent long weeks and months locked in Gideon’s hound dungeons, serving a monster he felt nothing for, and clinging to the small slivers of hope pack master Henry offered from time to time. Now he was free and he wanted nothing besides the truth.
“I don’t know where your mother is,” Ivan said. “And that’s the truth. She comes and she goes, she’s there and then she isn’t, and I have to say I’ve never been one of her favorite people.”
