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“Why didn't you tell me?”
“You have been through a lot, and you seemed very healthy and somewhat happy. I saw no reason to tell you that you had to stop eating toaster pastries and start on the toes of your unfortunate victims. I thought you might lead a normal, healthy life without such ingestion.”
“But I’m not going to, am I?”
“I don't know. For now… how do you feel?”
“It doesn't hurt as much as it did before,” Will said with no small amount of relief.
“Good. It is likely that you will feel the hunger again, boy. If it becomes too great, or if you are unable to contain it, trust that I will contain you.”
“Thank you,” Will said, truly grateful.
While Maddox paid full attention to his famished and tortured mate, forces were shifting and consequences were unfolding. Nobody, no matter how immortal or apparently omnipresent could truly control a city as vast as New York. Mad was faintly aware of them all, but he refused to give anything besides his boy his full attention now. Having come so close to losing what was most precious to him, he was going to do everything in his power to keep Will close.
15 THE MEANWHILES
Ivan was on the street stark naked and heading for his parked pickup. He’d had to make a choice whether to travel as a wolf or a naked guy. In New York being a naked stumbling man was far less conspicuous than a spectacular wolf. He was at the truck, pulling the door open, in fact, when he heard the unmistakeable sound of a gun being cocked.
Someone had been waiting for him. Someone who knew he’d break out. Someone who knew him better than the fancy vampire who ruled the city’s undead. Someone who’d known him longer than almost anybody else.
He turned around slowly, his hands lifting though it hadn't been asked for.
“You want to play this game again? It ends the same way.”
The holder of the gun was a woman. A cop. That was all he saw first, the uniform and the threat of laughable justice. It took him a second to work out who was behind the glinting barrel in the night. It had been over twenty years, but she still looked the same. He’d know those eyes anywhere.
“Holy shit. Lora?”
“Yes.”
He waited for her to lower the gun. She didn’t. He watched as her trigger finger drifted from the straight out position to curl around the trigger.
“What, are you going to shoot me, just as our boy learns who he is? He needs me, Lora. He’ll die without me. That vampire’ll drain him dry.”
“You eat people,” she hissed.
“And so will he. You know that vampire’s fucking him? That’s how you raised him?”
“I didn’t raise him. Neither did you.”
“Neither of us is perfect. But I’ll tell you the same thing I told the vampire. Killing me will only hurt the kid. I think we've both hurt him enough. Don’t you?”
His boy might be gay, and he might basically be a vegetarian, but he certainly seemed to have everybody around him wrapped around his overly smooth little finger. Ivan did not bear Will any malice for having knocked him unconscious, tied him up, and turned him over. It was an act of strength, almost.
“Does he know you’re his mom?”
“No. We thought it would be too much for him.”
“You mean you’re too scared to tell him because he’ll hate you.”
“He hates me anyway because I’m a cop.”
“Yeah, well. Understandable. So what? You going to drag me back to the vampire’s basement at gunpoint?”
Lora cursed and lowered her weapon. “You deserve to fucking die, Ivan.”
He didn’t deny it. “I’ve missed you too, baby.”
