The thought of Madoc made Took falter halfway up the shirtfront as he glanced at his reflection. His collar would cover the bite on his throat, the pierced skin and bruise still dark after two days, but he’d know it was there.
What the fuck, he thought bleakly as he finished up his shirt, had he thought he was doing? He’d spent two years twisted like an overtightened spring with the morbid suspicion that Madoc was the one who had taken him. Who’dbrokenhim. How many sleepless nights had he spent on a hundred fruitless polished theories about why Madoc did it?
Even when West picked holes in his theories, he’d never been able to let the notion go. It stuck to his heels like a bad smell, because who else could it have been? All that, and yet, first opportunity he got, he still fucked Madoc.
Took absently touched the raw bite with his fingertips, Hell, he’d let Madoc do whatever he wanted. The punctures felt raw still, the itchy pang of a fresh injury, but when he pressed down, his nerves rerouted the ache into a slow wash of pleasure. He swallowed, throat dry, and pulled his hand away. How he wanted was apparently not the only thing that had changed—he didn’t knowwhathe wanted anymore either.
Something blunt and harsh in the back of his mind called him a liar. He ignored the brief stab at honesty as he fastened the collar and put last night away with all the other scars. Dressed down to his socks, Took padded downstairs and looked for his pills.
It took a while. They were gone from the drawer where he usually kept them and not on the table or the counters. In the end he found them on the floor. Snack had batted the little round bottle under the fridge with the detritus left by the last person who lived there and did anything with their stomach.
Took fished them out and scrambled back to his feet with a muttered curse for his cat to dodge. He popped the pack open and shook them into his hand. The last prescription had nearly run its course. There were only six left.
Dehydrated. Powdered. Packed into gelatin caps.
Took stared at the oblong pill in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t even red. The capsule was colored a crisp blue and white that made it look medical. The whole effect was innocuous enough that it could have been a vitamin or a painkiller. They sold it as a “diet supplement,” the vegetarian alternative to vampirism.
For two years Took had taken one of them every morning and two in the evening. They tasted of chalk, he washed them down with tepid water, and he never really thought about it… until today, when he ached from sex and the headiness of the Kiss and wondered if it would be so bad to just accept it.
Took had to come to terms with the sun-raw skin, the fangs, and the creepy silence that used to be filled with the soft rush of blood in his ears. He’d even adopted the name that online assholes had laid at his door, because he could call himself Luke all he wanted, but he’d never really be him again. Why not just let the rest of it go too? He was Anakim now—bloodsucker, vampire, monster, no matter how politely someone mouthed the right words—so did it really matter how it happened?
The idea tempted him. No more questions about who betrayed him, about what had been done to him when he was gone. No more hours spent in church as he bargained with the silent Divine, with drymouthed immortality on his side of the table and redemption on theirs. Maybe. Theoretically. In some denominations.
And he could have Madoc, cold and deadly and oddly sweet, without any guilt or suspicion. If it turned out it had been Madoc who did this to Took, maybe Took would even think it was a favor. People had fed him that line before, that at least he’d come out of that missed year with fangs. As though that was a fair enough trade for his scars and his mind held together with platitudes and staples of blank time.
Took wanted to agree with them. If he could grab that version of himself, the one who could cope with this new life, he would. Like a nettle.
Except he couldn’t even suck blood from a bag without a popped staple and a spill of pus-sour half-memories that were just fear and no useful details, never mind from someone’s throat. And he’d never been able to let a lie go. Even as a kid, he gnawed on them until he worked out the truth.
He closed his eyes for a second and let himself remember Madoc’s body under his, the fingers that tangled in his hair, and the rough scrape of Madoc’s voice as he promised things in a language Took didn’t know. His tongue curled around the memory of a drop of Madoc’s blood, heady as coffee and honey, and then he banished it with the hard, dry caplets that rolled down his throat like stones.
It didn’t matter if he wanted it. That wasn’t someone he could be. Whenever Madoc was around, Took could forget every creeping, dark thought that had ever scabbed over his brain. He could even sleep easy in his own bed, but he couldn’t stay at Madoc’s side all the time. Lawrence was his second-in-command, the one who had his back these days. Once Madoc was gone, the doubts came back, whispered in his ear in the dark. Took couldn’t live with that.
But right now wasn’t the time to come to terms. Took needed to talk to Liam Waring. Took needed to speak to Liam’s son before the boyars reopened Dom Waring’s case.
Once the Anakim got the idea that their lost children might still be alive, Dom’s situation would get a lot more precarious. There was no way the Senate let anyone they didn’t trust approach the man. Took might have fangs now, but he had always been too good at killing the undead for any of them to call him trustworthy.
He fed Snack and scratched her ears before he headed to the door and yanked his boots on. Right now his job was the one thing he could do well, and he was going to.
If he lost out on… something… because of it, so be it.
IT WASobvious from Liam Waring’s fogged eyes that the man didn’t stay up this late very often. For a man with his political affiliations, being an early bird was an ideological stance that his weathered tan and his heavy coffee use for forced midnight meetings testified to.
“So this girl,” Liam said. “This Worm—”
“Annabelle,” Took corrected him, because he thought that Madoc would have. He replaced the book he’d plucked from the shelf. It was new. Lawrence was, Took had to reluctantly admit, good enough that she wouldn’t have missed a copy of Stoker’sSecret History of the Dragon, otherwise known as the Hunters Bible. It could indicate that the Warings were more involved with the Hunter cause—either all along or since their son’s arrest—than Took had believed. He still thought it was just set-dressing for the role that Liam was ready to play. If the man had real faith, the book wouldn’t be dusty. Took brushed his fingers against his leg. “Annabelle Franklin.”
Liam ignored the interruption as he topped up his coffee from the carafe. He took it black, unadulterated by coffee or sugar, with a shot of garlic syrup from a small bottle. The smell hung in the air. Took was allergic to it now, but he didn’t think he’d ever have enjoyed the stench of it mixed with burned coffee.
“Whatever. She murdered all these people, and my poor son had nothing to do with it? Maybe she even framed him, or the Biters did?” Liam tested the theories out loud as he weighed which one would serve him best. He sat down behind his modest but nicely made desk and pointed at the papers stacked on it. “I speak for a lot of people who demand to be heard, people who don’t usually have a voice. The boyars want to silence us all so their words are the only ones that matter in the halls of power, even if they have to have to attack me through my son.”
He waved a hand at the narrow chair on the rug opposite his desk. “Sit,” he instructed.
Took dubiously eyed the neatly positioned chair. The complicated death traps and psychological games that Hunters played with the Anakim were—mostly—the preserve of movie makers. In Took’s experience, most Hunters depended on sneak attacks and overwhelming violence. Still, the chair made the back of his neck itch like heknew, unlikely or not, that there was a trapdoor and a pit of gators under it.
He kept his post. “I’d rather stand.”
Liam scowled briefly and then composed himself as he got back to the new narrative he’d crafted. It had already gone from theory to fact inside his head.
