Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 50954 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 255(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50954 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 255(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Maddox hung up the phone and came back over to Will, loosening the bonds. “We have to go. Well, I have to go.”
“I’m going with you,” Will said.
“I really don't think that’s a good idea.” Maddox was not talking to Will so much as he was thinking out loud. “Then again, where on Earth would I leave you where you would be safe? Nowhere, I imagine. Not in your condition. Not with your appetites. Not…”
“What’s happened?” Will interrupted Maddox’s all too swift train of thought. He’d never seen Mad this way before. It was a little unnerving.
“Someone has woken up,” Maddox explained. “Actually, not someone, so much as something. Imagine a creature of pure hunger with no conscience or remorse.”
“Oh, Ivan’s awake? I didn't know he was asleep.”
“Not Ivan,” Maddox said. “His name is Gideon.”
“Sounds like a nerd.”
“He’s not a nerd. He’s one of the very few original vampires.”
“OV’s, not OG’s,” Will interrupted again. Maddox gave him a look that very strongly suggested interrupting for a third time would be a spectacularly bad idea on his part.
“He existed before humanity. He saw our kind rise and spread, and he watched us make the world in our own image. Many of his kind resented humans. Some of them bit and turned us into what you know as vampires. This is the short version, mind you, boy. There is not enough time to give a full explanation now. Gideon distinguished himself in two ways. One, most of his kind destroyed themselves in one way or another as the human world became the world, as the truly wild spaces disappeared and were forgotten. Others went to sleep, waiting for a time humanity would be gone. Gideon has been active more than most because he has an unending appetite for war. He has been at the center of every major war since the beginning of human history. His gluttony means he can only be fed and sated by hundreds of dying soldiers. If he is awake again, that means humanity is in danger. All of it.”
“Okay,” Will frowned. “Doesn’t sound great.”
“I need to go back to New York. I need to try to convince him to go back to sleep. I’m going to need to do something I told you I wouldn’t do.”
“What?”
“You need to pose as a human. He can’t know you have any wolf in you at all. Your kind and his kind are natural and mortal enemies. He is a large part of the reason your numbers are so small. If he knows what you are, if he senses you have even a drop of wolf blood, he will slaughter you. The last time Gideon rose he led the purge that is behind the reason for so few of your kind existing today.
“As if you’d let him.”
“I admire your confidence in me, my boy, I really do, but it is impossible to understate the power of this creature.”
“Well, then, he’s going to know I’m a wolf. I smell like one. I assume he’s not stupid. I assume he can smell.”
“We’ll perfume you. And we’ll keep you at a distance. Actually…” Maddox let out a sigh. “I don’t think I can take you back, William. I think we’re going to need to send you to live with Henry for a while.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Last time Gideon was only awake for fifty, perhaps sixty years.”
“So I’d be eighty before we saw each other again? I don’t have sixty years, Maddox.”
“I will try to get him to sleep as quickly as possible. It won't be long.”
“What’s not long for you is most of my life,” Will frowned. “I don’t want to live with Henry forever.”
“We may be able to start a war sooner,” Maddox said.
“Don’t start a war over it,” Will scowled. “Just tell him to fuck off.”
“One does not simply tell the ancient father of all sanguine evil to fuck off.”
“Tell him to fucketh offeth then.”
Maddox smiled, and for the first time since he took the call his facial features relaxed. “I do love you,” he said. “More than anybody. You have a way about you, an irrepressible, indomitable spirit…”
“Don't say nice things to me,” Will growled. “I know that means you’re planning on ditching me.”
“I will miss you so much.” Maddox walked to Will and took his face in both hands, searching Will’s visage with a hungry, lonely gaze. It was as if he was already gone, and Will absolutely hated that feeling.
“I’m coming with you, obviously.”
“Gideon will kill you if I allow you to come with me. I am certain of that.”
“I’m hard to kill.”
“I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”
“You let Henry fucking magically taze me with that metal ring!”
“Well, you deserved that,” Maddox said. “Gideon would undo you in ways that meant you would never go back together. If we were lucky he’d just kill you.”