9
Welcome Home
“Long night?”
Lorien met Maddox at the door with the kind of charming smile that could absolutely in no way be trusted. Maddox did not dignify the question with a verbal reply. Instead, he answered it with a raised brow. Lorien was not usually first to meet him. Lorien usually swanned about doing whatever it was he was doing and ignoring the rest of creation. The only reason he’d be at the door now is if he were attempting some form of damage control.
“Now I don’t want you to be angry, but…”
“What have you done, Lorien?”
“It’s not… I haven’t done anything.”
“Where is Will?”
“Good news is he’s still here, and he’s fine. I mean he’s as healthy now as he was when you left.”
Maddox’s brow went higher still.
“He’s in the kitchen,” Lorien trailed off, somewhat guilty. He was very fortunate Maddox was in a spectacularly good mood.
Will was in the kitchen, Mads discovered. He was gagged and tangled in a ball of chains on the kitchen floor, to be precise. To Mad’s surprise there weren’t really many signs of a struggle. Will was tangled up in the chains on the kitchen floor. He had also been gagged. He was fast asleep with his head against the oven, apparently unconcerned about his unorthodox incarceration — or, more likely, having given up at finding himself in the predicament for an extended period of time.
“I didn’t want to let him go, as he was making threats,” Lorien explained from what he might have imagined was a safe distance. No distance would have been safe if Maddox had decided to discipline him for this act of rank bullying.
“I can imagine he was.” Maddox shot Lorien a dire look that promised a future reckoning as he stooped down, picked Will’s sleeping form up and carried him back upstairs. The chains were as easy to snap as cotton to him. He opted to do that rather than attempt to undo the tangle of links which held his pup captive.
Will stirred as he was settled into bed. “Lorien tied me up,” he said through half-closed eyes.
“I know.”
“Gonna kill him,” he added, grabbing the pillow and pressing his face against it.
Adorable.
Maddox left Will to sleep after what had clearly been a very hard night and and went back downstairs, wondering if it was worth it to attempt to censure Lorien, or if it would simply be giving him the attention he so clearly craved.
A little light hazing would not hurt Will at all. If anything, it would make his reflexes more keen and his aggression more keenly turned toward vampires. Familiarity breeding contempt was still a viable strategy as far as Mads was concerned.
“You cannot attack Will. He's delicate. He’s human.”
“Well. Human adjacent. I had to chain him up.”
“Why?”
Lorien looked about, as if an answer might appear written on the walls. He was a ninety-year-old vampire and sometimes he still had the mannerisms of a human a fraction of his age.
“Okay. I wanted to chain him up. I was home alone. It was boring. I can’t go out until Bertram and Ernest forget I exist. So…”
“Well. On that note, I may have some good news.”
“You got them to forgive me?”
Lorien really didn’t deserve the good news, so Maddox did not tell him. Besides, there was a knocking at the door, an inappropriately timed, excessively late, overly entitled knocking. He knew who it was even before he opened the door.
“Agent Chauvelin,” he greeted the federal agent.
“Could I ask you some questions?” Chauvelin didn’t bother apologizing for bothering him at home so late.
“Of course. Please, come in.”
The short man stepped over his threshold without anything obvious in the way of fear or hesitation. Mads was reminded of the saying about fools rushing in where angels feared to tread. Ironic that they had met in a place of worship.
Chauvelin looked around the place, inspecting everything with a keen and discerning eye. He would not find anything of interest. That was half the reason Maddox chose the absence of decor he did. Intruders had little to destroy or deface, and investigators had nothing to investigate.
“Is this your primary residence?”
“It is.”
Chauvelin cast another doubtful eye around the place. “You don’t have personal items?”
“Have you come here to get personal?” Maddox asked the question with casual softness. Chauvelin had come in with all the stuffed importance of a person with a federal badge, but this was Mad’s territory, and here he reigned supreme.
The agent coughed, blushed, and composed himself in a matter of seconds. It was a very impressive transformation.
“As I understand it, a fledgling of yours was attacked on the orders of B and E.”
They’d already been reduced to letters, mere notations of their former selves. Most gratifying. Maddox took a seat and gestured for Chauvelin to do the same. The agent did not take the offer; he stood there being spectacularly awkward.
“I do not have any fledglings, or progeny of any kind.”
“Really? That’s atypical for a vampire of your age and origin.”
Maddox smiled gently. “I am atypical in many respects,” he agreed.
“Still, a young vampire who was worth your while coming to see the twins about, if not a fledgling of your own…”
“You’ve done your homework, Mr Chauvelin.”
“Agent Chauvelin.”
“Of course, my apologies.”
Maddox knew better than to volunteer additional information to a law enforcement officer clearly fishing for something.
“So an acquaintance of yours suffered injuries recently?” Chauvelin tried again.
“Vampires suffer injuries all the time. Many of them enjoy it. Pain is one of the few human pleasures left to us.”
“So you’re saying this individual enjoyed having his throat ripped out.”
“You speak as though you were there.”
“I may have been.”
The little shit was attempting to set a trap of some kind. To what end, Mads could not imagine. If Chauvelin had been there when Lorien was attacked, then Chauvelin knew a lot more than he was letting on.
“You do realize I am also a federal law enforcement agent,” he reminded the agent.
“You’re a liaison to a unit which does not formally exist.”
So that’s the game they were playing. My unit is bigger and more formally recognized than yours. Everything came down to a unit measuring contest with humans.
Maddox leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together over his stomach, smiling, waiting for the agenda to become clear.
“B and E were essential to many of our New York operations. Their passing will not simply be written off.”
“And yet even if you were to discover the entity behind it all, you would have no legal recourse to challenge them, given that killing vampires is not illegal.”
“It’s not, is it?” Chauvelin said, his beady little eyes locked on Maddox with a sudden flare of intention.
There was threat in that gaze, a true nastiness. This was not professional. This was personal. He wasn’t here on an investigation. He was here because he was upset, and because he clearly thought Mads was behind it all.
“You must have enjoyed being their blood pet very much,” Maddox said, immediately hitting the very nerve he intended to find. Chauvelin blanched. His head jerked back as if he had been punched by an unseen fist. He tried to recover, but his fine fingers betrayed him, skittering around the lower hem of his coat like a nervous schoolboy.
“It is forbidden for federal agents to submit to vampiric control or…”
“Yes, but when confronted with two powerful immortal beasts, does the pulse not quicken and the blood run hotter? Does desire not rise against sense and regulation, Agent Chauvelin?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A faint hint of color was rising to the man’s pale face. He was anemic, like many humans who gave themselves to their vampire masters and were fed from too often.
“I think you do.”
He was a filthy little fuck pet, furious at the passing of his masters. And he was dangerous, though not in the way he was attempting to present himself.
“I have enough.” Chauvelin leaped out of the seat as if it were suddenly on fire. “I will be in touch if I think you can assist us further in our enquiries.”
“Of course,” Maddox said, rising graciously. “Allow me to show you the door.”