THE PREFABhut did triple duty as the air field’s office, a crash pad for the pilots, and a place to stash contraband for the staff at The Salt. Madoc dangled a Ziploc bag with a bloody, neatly clipped blonde ponytail in it and wondered who’d paid to get it here. Not that they’d get it now. He tossed it onto the small, stained desk with the rest of the morbid keepsakes and supposedly magical bones and tatters he’d found under the fold-out bed. A few of them pricked against his fingers with the cold sting that he felt sometimes on the other side of the world, but most were just rags and dead parts.
“So, is one of our Salted undead a fool with their money,” he asked as he fastidiously wiped his hands. “Or do they just want to compromise one of the guards?”
The sound of the shower in the small water closet flicked off. Madoc listened as Took dragged his clothes back on and cursed softly under his breath as he coughed out a strangled curse.
“Could be both,” Took said after a second. “Not all of them are up there with the boyars. The hair was probably for Ellis McKinley, and he was stupid enough to think that his victims couldn’t testify against him because he raised them afterward.”
The silver itched under Madoc’s fingertips, a little pain that he’d felt often enough that it was a pleasure, and then he shrugged off the leather jacket. He hung it over the back of a chair and stripped off the thin undershirt.
“Time for another purge anyhow,” Madoc said. It wasn’t unexpected. The Salt was a sour duty, physically harsh and emotionally worse. The presence of a single boyar had a weight to it, a gravity that pulled at your soul instead of your flesh. There were ten of them imprisoned here, salt-mad and bloated with plots. It was enough to turn anyone’s head far enough that they’d say something, promise something, they couldn’t take back. “It’s almost due anyhow.”
Took grunted his agreement as he shouldered the cubicle door open and stepped out in a cloud of calla-lily-scented steam. He was clean and his shirt was damp from a quick scrub in the sink, but he moved as though it hurt, and the wounds on his face and jaw were still raw.
“Tac will be torn,” Took said absently as he hitched his trousers up over his hips. “He wants out, but he takes pride in doing a good—”
He stumbled to a halt over his own tongue as he looked up and caught sight of Madoc. Whatever sting lingered on Madoc’s ego was soothed a little by the flash of hunger and appreciation that passed over Took’s face. He looked… caught.
“When did you last feed?” Madoc asked.
Took blinked in confusion and then rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I… yesterday.”
“From whom?”
Took was a good liar. He met your eyes, he kept the answers simple, he didn’t stumble or justify.
“Some man,” he said. “In a club. I didn’t get his name.”
Madoc walked over to him and reached up to tug his collar out of the way. The bruises had faded, but the scar was still pink and tender against Took’s skin. He rubbed his thumb over the raw heart of it and watched as Took shuddered in reaction.
“This would have healed,” Madoc said. “Are you starving yourself? Because in the end, you’ll just lose control and kill someone. I’d rather not have to clean that up.”
Took licked his lips but didn’t lean away from Madoc’s touch. “I feed twice a day. That’s what the doctors recommended. I’m in control.”
Of course, Madoc realized with the sour taste of guilt. Whoever had made Took hadn’t taught him how to be an Anakim, had probably not intended for him to even remember he was a person, and the one person who should have stepped in had let Took push him away. All Took had left was VINE’s doctors and their “theories,” the Senate’s best efforts to castrate the Anakim until they were just humans with bad teeth.
“What did they give you?” he asked. “Injections? Pills?”
Took looked flustered for the first time as he looked away. “They provide everything I need,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“Maybe if you were a lawyer or an accountant,” Madoc said. A vampire took more than nutrients from blood, and while he knew a few Anakim who’d tried the no-bite diet, he didn’t know anyone who’d stuck to it. “You’ll get yourself killed. Or me.”
Even with Took’s eyes still averted, Madoc could tell he hadn’t convinced him. It was in the stubborn set of his jaw and tightness of his throat.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Took said. His voice was thick with the memory of nightmares. Just because he couldn’t—wouldn’t—remember that missing year didn’t mean that it was gone. Madoc knew that. In a long life, there were a lot of old wounds you tried to forget. Some of them were just anchored too deep. “He wanted me to do it, but I wouldn’t. It was the one thing he couldn’t make me do.”
There was something in Took’s voice that was more than stubbornness. It felt brittle, dangerous, like the sort of thing you couldn’t put back together again if it broke.
Something in Madoc instinctively shied away from that resolve. Sometimes sanity lay in the line you’d drawn in the sand, even if no one else could see it. Took would have to find his compromise with that on his own, but for now, they didn’t have time to wait for Took to patch himself back together. If Waring’s silence had given Annabelle and the dhampir children some protection, it had expired, and Took was the only one who had any ideas about what lay back in Charleston. He needed to be in one piece in order to walk them through his theory.
“You can’t hurt me,” Madoc pointed out. He smirked as Took finally flicked a wary glance back at him. “I’d like to see you try.”
“I think I already did,” Took murmured quietly as he skimmed his hands up Madoc’s lean hips to his waist. The brush of callused fingertips sent a tremor of pleasure through Madoc’s skin. It faded too quickly. “That’s not what I wanted.”
Madoc shushed him with a kiss. He lipped at the soft curve of Took’s mouth until he coaxed it open and he could chase the tart sweetness of old blood over Took’s tongue. It should have tasted weaker, watered down with supplements and the vampiric equivalent of anemia, but it hit the back of Madoc’s throat like good whiskey.
“You didn’t ask me to love you,” Madoc said as he pulled back. Because, fuck it, he wanted to say it just once. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Took didn’t flinch at the admission. That was something.
