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Maddox ascended the stairs at a remarkable pace, even for a vampire. In very swift time he discovered that the bath did contain a corpse. A corpse which fit in the bath far too well for Mad’s liking. For a brief moment he thought Will had killed a teenager, but on closer inspection it was just a short man. A man he knew. A man who worked for the federal government.
“Hey,” Will said, perching on the side of the ceramic tub.
“Oh no, my boy, what have you done? That was an FBI agent!”
“He came back. He was trying to build a case against you. I made sure he couldn’t.”
Maddox took a deep, sighing breath. "You're not supposed to kill humans, boy. That’s a crime.”
Will shrugged. “I do crimes all the time.”
“Yes. Yes, you do. But this is a crime which will be investigated.”
“Hm,” Will said, noncommittal.
“Do you have any sense of consequences at all, William?”
“I’m not a psychopath. Of course I understand consequences. I just don’t care about them.”
“I’m not so sure that’s true.”
“Well,” Will said.
Maddox waited for him to finish the sentence, but apparently that was all Will had to say.
“Will, killing people…”
“You got me out of prison. I was in prison for killing people. This guy needed to be killed. I killed him.” Will spoke in an annoyed staccato.
“I had planned to turn him into an ally.”
“That would have been stupid. He hated you. He was going to kill you. He had a stake with your name on it.”
“I don’t think…”
“Literally. Check the bath. There's a wooden stake with your name carved into it. Like a psycho. An actual psycho. Unlike me. I saved you. And I don’t want any fuckin’ attitude.”
The last part of that sentence got Will into more trouble than leaving a corpse at the backdoor like an eager cat.
“Oh, you don’t want attitude, whelp?” Maddox grabbed him by the collar and dragged him up, speaking with cool menace. “I need to go attend to the law enforcement in my parlor. When they have gone, I will deal with you. Lorien, make sure he doesn’t go anywhere or kill anyone else. Put him in his room.”
Will watched Maddox leave dispassionately. He was not afraid of what was going to happen to him. He’d served time for murder before, and Maddox wasn’t going to lock him up for three years, so what did it matter? Pain was inevitable. He knew he was in the right, no matter what any authority figure might think. If he was the sort of person to bow to social pressure in terms of who should or should not be killed, he’d never have ended up in prison in the first place.
“So,” Lorien said conversationally. “You’re in trouble.”
“I don’t care about this kind of trouble. I’ve been in this trouble all my life.”
“The killing people kind of trouble?”
“Sure. The first person I ever killed was my best friend’s father.”
Lorien looked at Maddox aghast.
“He used to beat him. So. I killed him. People thought it was an accident because I was only seven years old at the time. But it wasn’t.”
“You’re a terrifying little beast,” Lorien said with no small amount of admiration. “But you should be afraid.”
Will looked at Lorien with disinterest. “I’m never afraid.”
