Page 39 of Maker

“He’s out there,” Lorien said the next evening. He looked haunted and scared. Gideon had fucked with a lot of heads, not just Will’s. “He’s out there, watching us through the window.”

“Really?” Will grinned. “Awesome.”

Will opened the window. “Hey. Gideon. Isn’t it funny, being the most powerful creature in all existence, completely unkillable, and yet I can just tell you to get out of my house like a little bitch?”

Gideon smiled back through the window. “Enjoy yourself while you can, puppy. When I get my hands on you, I will make you howl in agony.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Will snapped back glibly. “What?”

The second question was directed at Maddox, who was giving him a stern glare.

“That doesn’t help.”

“It doesn’t hurt, either,” Will pointed out, always pragmatic. “Asshole wants to kill me either way, may as well give him a reason to. Besides, he’s creeping out there to get a reaction.”

“What do you want, Gideon?” Maddox addressed his maker with a casual tone that must have rankled.

“You are a disobedient boy,” Gideon intoned. “And when I have slain this furry little interloper, you and I will have a very painful reckoning.”

“Eat a dick,” Will guffawed.

“I may well do that,” Gideon replied, without humor.

“Kinky,” Will shot back.

“Will, enough,” Maddox said, his tone sharp.

“I’m not going to respect the guy who wants me dead,” Will said.

“No, but you will respect me,” Maddox reminded him.

“Don’t see why you give a fuck either.”

“He is my maker. He is wrong on this issue, but he is due some respect from the pair of us.”

“He’s got us bailed up here under pain of death! I’m not respecting him.”

“Don’t intervene with the brat on my behalf,” Gideon said, his dark gaze lit with a kind of malevolence that suggested he rather enjoyed it. “I might have felt the slightest pang of guilt in killing him before. Now I have a multitude of reasons.”

“If you kill people just because they annoy you, you’re just a… actually, whatever. I’d kill people just because they annoyed me too if I could get away with it,” Will mused.

“You have killed people because they annoyed you. Remember Chauvelin?” Maddox said.

“Oh, yeah. What a piece of shit. He had it coming.”

“Ivan and Candy are still exposed. We need to get them out of harm’s way and into this house.”

“You want Ivan here, in the same house as Henry and Lorien. And you want Candy here too? A human woman locked in a house with two hungry vampires and my dad? Candy can banish the vampires from her house herself,” Will said practically. “It’s fine. We’re all going to be fine. This time is about us now, isn’t it? Finally, about us.”

20

But it was not just about Will and Maddox. How could it be, with so many others in play? Though they were willing to insulate themselves from the world, the world did not stop turning. Outside the relative security of Maddox’s home, Henry sought his lover.

Henry had come into the city to be with Lorien now that Will was no longer in the wind. They met in the park, where over eight hundred acres of nature allowed him to feel somewhat at ease.

He had been struggling with the guilt of Lorien’s injury since it had happened, and when he saw the man he loved emerging from the shadows before him, it ignited twin flames of possession and passion.

“Lorien!”

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