Page 35 of Maker

Gideon was kind enough to provide one final piece of advice. “Run, little fledgling. Run as far and as fast as you can.”

* * *

“Iam beginning to think,” Gideon sighed, “that it would be easier to tolerate this wolf in the fold than to deal with the constant rebellion surrounding him. He is more trouble than any I have encountered before. Madis’ obsession with him has destroyed my awakening. We have not had a single celebration. It has been nothing but arguments and rebellions and now I have no idea where Madis has hidden himself, but I can only imagine it is among the stars. Trouble! They are all nothing but trouble!”

“They are of your lineage,” Ray reminded his maker, though respectfully. “Madis is growing stronger and stronger by the day. Perhaps the human woman was correct. Women are often makers in their own right. Perhaps Madis must suffer the love and the loss of this creature. Perhaps you have greater problems to worry about.”

“Oh?”

“The vampires of this city are starving. The sickness that keeps the people locked away prevents them from feeding. We are in a blood drought. Maddox’s ill-fated love affairs are nothing compared to the suffering of our own kind, not to mention the absolute spate of unprepared vampires making and abandoning fledglings, not to mention the fact that this city is one of hundreds facing similar problems. The world without you has crumbled into disarray. The human population is ridiculous, the vampires are in disarray. The wolves might be the only functioning community left. And since the moment you woke, you have thought of nothing besides Madis.Madis, Madis, Madis.”Roy threw his head from one side to the other. “He doesn’t matter this much, Gideon. I accept that he is your favorite son, but your talent for tearing throats out and persecuting those who disobey you is better served elsewhere. If you do not mind the impertinence.”

“You’re right,” Gideon said. “I believe everybody is right and has been from the beginning. I am an overprotective, overbearing creator, and I have destroyed my youngest with my obsession in making his life perfect.”

“Really?”

“No,” Gideon said. “Get Maddox back to me. Now. And pick out some nice new whips and paddles for Lorien. He needs to cry for me.”

* * *

“Okay, Maker, sir. I know you’re very angry at me,” Lorien said, after having been dragged into Gideon’s presence by Raymond and Chauvelin. “But I can explain. Please don’t rip my balls off. I’m really sorry. I had to help Maddox. I felt sorry for him.”

“You will be feeling sorry for yourself soon enough, baby vampire,” Gideon growled. “I warned you. I do not tolerate disobedience, nor do I tolerate plotting, scheming, or helping my fledgling escape. Twice.”

Lorien went to his knees and clasped his hands together. His only chance at surviving this was to grovel intensely and hope that the Maker would find his display of submission gratifying.

“Raymond tells me that you helped Maddox go into space.”

“I mean, I didn’t help him so much as mention that space exists,” Lorien said. “I’m sorry. I know you told me I had to… uhm. I had to do as I was told. And I know…”

“Bend over this couch,” Gideon said. “And stop talking.”

Lorien didn’t have to bend over the couch, because the furious Maker was pulling him up and over the furniture as if he weighed nothing.

“You’re going to ruin my pants again, aren’t you,” he said. His voice shook a little with fear. He wanted so badly to be brave, but how could anyone be brave in the face of this beast? Gideon was perfectly in control, for Gideon was the beginning and end of all things.

“Your pants are the least of what I plan to ruin,” Gideon intoned. “Telling Maddox about space is not why you are here. Your attitude when you thought I could not lay hands on you is why you are here.”

“Yes. I know. I’m sorrrreeeeee….” Lorien’s voice trailed off into a screech as a cane landed across his ass. Hard. Fucking hard. Hard enough to lay a line of pure pain into his flesh. Hard enough to rip and tear at the fabric until it came away from his skin. Or perhaps that was the Maker’s clawed hand that did that damage. It was impossible to tell in the general onslaught.

Gideon lashed him with harsh, repetitive strokes, more than three dozen of them all in a row. It was the kind of beating Lorien had never experienced, the sort of harsh discipline his human form could never have taken, but his vampire flesh could suffer through. There was no escaping the creature, or his punishment, and he was terrified that it would not end, that this would somehow be the end of him completely.

He heard himself screaming, and felt his limbs writhing and contorting. He had never taken punishment or pain very well. One was beneath him, and the other was not in keeping with his ironically delicate constitution. Maddox had punished him from time to time, something he had resented, but Mads’ punishments were always done with a certain affection completely absent from this beating designed to do nothing but force his obedience.

“I’m sorry!” He shouted those two words until he was absolutely hoarse, until they felt like the only two words in the language. Brief notions of begging for mercy flitted across his desperate mind and were quickly abandoned. There could be no mercy from this creature. Not ever.

Finally, Gideon grabbed Lorien’s long hair and pulled him up from the couch before dropping him at his feet. Lorien continued to ache and writhe, his fingers grasping desperately at the carpet as he attempted to compose himself, and failed.

“This is your last thrashing, little vampire. The next time you cross me, in any way, you will lose much more than your dignity. I will take the one thing from you that you cannot bear to lose.”

“What?” Lorien was in too much pain to think. His gasped, confused question soon drew a chilling explanation.

“Yes, little vampire. I know all about your indelicacies with wolves. I know of the whelp my own Maddox is obsessed with, and I know that you too, have given yourself to one of the canine persuasion.” Gideon spoke with a thick disgust in his voice, as if the very notion of loving a wolf was an emetic.

“I…” Lorien did not know what to say. “I will obey you,” he said.

“Yes. You will,” Gideon replied, his tone shifting, from censure, to disgust, and finally to a simple statement of fact.

* * *

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