“He wouldn’t believe me even if I did. Will wants to hear what he wants to hear, and what he doesn’t want to hear could very well destroy him.”
“It’s his news to be destroyed by.”
“No.”
“Alright, then. Don’t come crying to me when this all goes horribly wrong.”
“I have never come to you, Lorien. Crying or otherwise.”
“Ouch. Ego much?” Lorien tipped the glowing end of the stick toward him. “You should be careful, Maddox. Pride comes before a fall.”
5
The Fight
A yellow envelope with his name on it had come in the mail. Will never got mail, but this was one thing he had sent for after learning how to do it. Maddox had not helped. He'd done it all by himself on a computer at the local library. An actual library, not the building where Maddox was forced to pretend he liked being king.
Will tore open the envelope and looked eagerly at the folded piece of paper. For a brief second, he held on to the hope that every mystery of his life would be resolved when he unfolded it. He felt young again. Innocent again. He felt as though he was on the verge of something…
JOHN DOE, the certificate read.
MOTHER: Unknown.
FATHER: Unknown.
And that was it besides the dates he already knew and the county information and the stupid seal and… his eyes fogged as he crumpled the paper and threw it away. That piece of paper knew less about him than the reflective surface of the mirrored cabinetry Will saw himself staring angrily into.
He’d been given his name by his first adoptive family, but was it even legal? Was he Will? Or was he nothing more than little John Doe, the unwanted freak child of a monster and a victim? He felt such a strong pulse of self loathing it took all his self-control not to hit something and hurt himself again.
Will slammed out the front door and stepped into the night. The city felt like an escape, busy and dangerous and strange enough to distract him from his internal turmoil. It was still early enough that the streets were busy.
He was a predator, roaming those streets. In a city this size, he knew he would not be the only one. The later the night became, the greater the percentage of dangerous beings there were. And single women. Always single women roaming about. They had every right to be about, of course, but there could be no denying the danger they were in.
One girl was hurrying down the street. Her eyes were cast to the pavement and the phone in her hand. She was texting, her face lit by the screen’s glow. She was bundled up against the cold, a scarf around her neck, a hat pulled down on her head, but there was no mistaking the general feminine outline of her body. She was slight in built and there was a delicacy to her movements she could not help. She was what she was, and what she was under these flickering street lights and graffitied walls, was prey.
By Will’s reckoning there were no fewer than six men watching her, and three vampires. Nine beasts had their gazes locked on her, some from ahead, some from behind, others from cars. A taxi driver’s pupils tracked her down the street like a lion tracking a gazelle across the Serengeti.
Then she stopped suddenly and went into one of the buildings, presumably to an apartment above the television repair store below. Safe and sound at home. Perhaps. Or perhaps some of the lurking watchers had taken additional interest. Perhaps they now had a location and a target.
Will had never worried about the fate of others before. It was a strange and uncomfortable consideration. It suddenly seemed to him that almost everybody was uniquely vulnerable, and that anything could happen to anyone at any time. He’d always known that, he supposed. He’d just never cared. Something was changing inside him. A transformation even more strange than the one that turned him into a massive fucking wolf.
He was so focused on the fate of the girl he did not notice that he was also being hunted. The awareness came over him slowly in a faint tingle that started at the back of his neck and moved down his spine all the way to his cock.
She had stepped inside a building. Was she safe? Perhaps. Or did several late-night lurkers now know the flimsy doors and windows through which to burst.
“You can’t save them all,” he muttered to himself. “Can’t save any of them, really.”
“Talking to yourself?”
He heard a voice coming from behind him.
Will turned around slowly to see that his little corner of the dark park was being filled by vampires melting out of the crowds and shadows to almost completely encircle him. Their leader was a greasy looking ratfink with half his head shaved and the rest of his hair unwashed. He looked like a punk. Must have been turned in the 80’s. Young. Inexperienced. Fucking stupid.