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His invitation sparked a rush from the undead thing. She flew at Gideon with an unearthly screech…
“Mom?”
Carter’s soft word stopped her in her tracks.
“Baby?” There was a strange tone to her voice, but it was her voice. He would know it anywhere, even beyond the grave.
“Mom?” Carter’s voice cracked.
She went to him and wrapped him in an embrace, but it was not the warm, tender mom hug he remembered. She did not smell like washing powder and hamburger grease. She was gaunt and angular, and she smelled of decay. He didn’t care. He buried his face in what remained of her neck, her green skin pressed against his all-too-pale visage. Neither one of them were as they had been, but their love remained. The bond between them had existed before his birth, and it continued after.
He could feel Gideon’s eyes on them, not knowing what the Maker was making of all of this, and not caring to know. He wanted it to be over.
“Kill me,” he sobbed in her cold, rotting arms. “I want to be with you. I want this to be over. I need it to end.”
“My baby bear,” she crooned, her voice rattling with the wind through the trees. “I could never hurt you. I could never take your precious life, not the one I gave you, and not the one evil gave you. You must find new happiness. New family.”
Carter’s face ran bloody with tears, wiped across the tattered remnants of his mother’s rancid clothing.
“I will always love you,” his mom promised him. “Never forget that.”
“BOOM!”
Carter thought it was a gunshot at first, but it was a different kind of missile heading their way. A net gun had been fired from somewhere deep in the trees, a spinning spiral of spiderweb silver hurtling toward him and his mother faster than either one of them could escape.
He screamed as it made contact with his skin, some curse, enchantment, or mundane chemistry making it burn like the sun itself. No sooner had he uttered the cry than Candy lashed out with her powers, slashing through the chains and freeing herself and her son.
Ray and Chauvelin emerged from the bushes, looking briefly triumphant and then almost immediately crestfallen as they saw Candy take the chains and dash back into the darkness, completely gone, leaving Carter sobbing on the forest floor, a completely broken boy.
“Idiots!” Gideon raged. “She didn’t even touch me!”
“Yes, pater. I know. I am trying to protect you,” Ray said, cowering before his maker’s rage.
Gideon looked at the crying child before him whose grief was unrelatable to him but at least understandable, and over at Ray, who after tens of thousands of years should have known better.
“You are not trying to protect me. You are trying to protect yourself, because you are a sniveling babe who cannot imagine life without his daddy,” Gideon snarled, furious he had been denied a chance at experiencing pain yet again. He had been so very close, and now Candy was gone and clearly did not intend to return for the sorrows of her child.
He briefly considered forcing her to return by torturing Carter, but he truthfully was not interested in hurting the boy. He had been hurt many times already for reasons that had nothing to do with him whatsoever. So it was not Ray that Gideon went to. It was Carter who he scooped up from the ground, cradling the full-grown young man like a baby, and carrying him back home.
Candy fled through the night, knowing she could not return to Carter, knowing he was being used by Gideon, and knowing that in all likelihood she had just said her last words to her son. Her maternal rage and sorrow were the only things animating her now. She could feel herself being drawn down by a heavy, unseen weight. The grave was calling.
But there was one final task she yet had to do. One more son to find before she could rest with her daughter.
The sun rose, and Candy could be seen no more.
14
“What’s your plan?” Will’s smirk was arrogant and mocking, far too cocky for Maddox’s liking. “Keep me chained up here?” He was wearing the same jeans he’d put on when he was first brought in and nothing else. He refused to put any other piece of human attire on, and his attitude was starting to grate on every occupant of the place.
“Stop being such an intolerable little shit,” Henry growled. “You’ve sulked long enough. We’re not impressed that you murdered a series of innocent people just to make a point.”
“I didn’t realize you were in charge of how long someone got to be angry at a liar,” Will replied. “Just because you’re over Maddox getting us picked up and thrown in vampire jail for a year…”
“Maddox didn’t do that. Gideon did.”
Maddox was tired of the bickering. Will was comfortable being resistant and distant, now more than ever. He was not afraid anymore. He was not respectful anymore.
He turned to William, his posture erect, his expression grim and stern. The last vestiges of his patience had faded, and though Will no longer recognized the danger he was in, it made no difference to the fact that he was very close to the kind of trouble he did not want to be in.
