13
Healing
“There we go. Perfect leg.”
It had been whatever amount of time it was supposed to have been since the cast went on, and the cast was coming off. Will was very pleased to have it gone. He had not enjoyed being at the hobbling mercy of whatever vampires were.
“It looks gross.”
“It’ll be better once you shower, which I would advise you do pretty much right away.”
“Thank you, doctor," Maddox said. “Hopefully, we will not need your assistance again for a very long time.”
“Good luck,” the doctor said, taking his cue to leave.
Maddox slapped Will on the shoulder. “Get cleaned up. It’s time you went to work.”
Will had a shower. He had no idea what ‘work’ was going to entail, but he was glad to have the full use of his limbs again. He'd been trapped in the cast for weeks. Finally he was free. He’d be able to run. Able to attack, well, better than he could before. He could finally be everything he was.
He dressed after the shower, jeans and a button-up shirt. He didn't like the way the shirt felt on him, but he guessed he was lucky Maddox had provided jeans. Lorien and Maddox both dressed like they were perpetually about to walk a runway. They were always stylish, always looking like fucking models. Will was lucky just to look like a free man.
“Will?" Maddox called from downstairs. “We’re waiting for you.”
Will looked at himself in the mirror. He needed a haircut. It was starting to grow out and curl around his eyes. It made him look soft. Guys inside would have said it made him look feminine. That was the last fucking thing he wanted to be. He spent more time taking cock than most women though, that was for sure.
“WILL!” Maddox summoned him again.
“Coming!” Will shouted back.
He went down the stairs two at a time to make up for his lateness, almost risking breaking his leg again, or maybe his neck. Maddox was waiting. He was wearing slacks, which emphasized the length of his legs and a wine-red turtleneck made of the finest wool. He looked handsome, elegant, and impatient.
“Everybody's waiting,” Maddox said.
“Everybody who?”
“The team. You can’t have missed them.”
“I don't pay attention to the people you have coming and going. Should I?”
Maddox lifted a brow at him. “Yes. You should.”
“So, what team?” Will narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “I don’t work in teams. Or units. Or state-ordered group therapy.”
“Actually, Will, you are part of this unit. You have been since you arrived here, whether you knew it or not.”
“I am? Okay.”
Will walked into the room, spun on his heel, and walked right back out again.
“What are you doing?”
Maddox would have dragged him back in, except for how bad it would have been for unit morale to see an out-of-control felon causing chaos in their midst.
“They’re fucking cops.” Will looked at him with cold blue eyes.
“Yes.”
Will took several more steps away, as if he couldn’t physically put enough distance between himself and the inhabitants of the room. “I’m not working with fucking cops.”
“You’ll do whatever I tell you to do. Including working with fucking cops if I see fit.”
“No,” Will said. “I won’t.”
He had always been defiant, but this was a new level and intensity of defiance. This was an outright refusal.
“If you try to make me work with them, the Fed won’t be the only corpse in the bath.”
It was all unacceptable, the refusal, the attitude, the disrespect, the undisciplined responses. And it was at that moment that Maddox realized he had truly spoiled William. Whatever lashings and spankings, punishments and censures he had handed out, they had not made a dent in Will’s natural impudence.
“You are mine, boy. And you will do as I tell you.”
“Yeah? Make me. Because I’m telling you right now, there’s nothing you can fucking do that will make me work with a cop.”
“You don’t want to work with the police? Very well. I will put you where you belong.”
There were a lot of rooms in the house Will had never been into. Maddox took him into one of them, and Will discovered that it contained a cage. Actually, it contained a lot of cages of all sizes and shapes and styles, but clearly all designed for caging one animal and one animal alone: human.
“I never wanted you behind bars, boy, remember that," Maddox growled as he pushed Will into a cage not tall enough for Will to stand up in. He was forced down to his knees, made to bow as the door slammed shut behind him.
“Let me the fuck out!”
Maddox walked out of the room and shut the door behind him. He needed to calm down, lest he do something he might regret. Will had no idea how fortunate he was, how much patience Maddox had to expend in order to deal with him.
“I’m sorry, sir, but…”
“Don't apologize, Candy. Tell me what you need.”
He already knew that the horde was moving through the city as a mob. It was going to be almost impossible to keep this quiet. Humans were beginning to notice the shifts in underworld tension.
“There have been hundreds of people being turned every night. We’re fortunate NYC has over eight million people living here, or people might start noticing.”
“Most of the new turns will become feral. There are few vampires mature enough to create a functional fledgling,” Maddox observed. “William might have been useful, but he prefers to act the brat rather than behave in anything resembling a sensible or useful way.”
“There are too many for one hunter to handle. Our unit is not enough. It’s been suggested a military unit might be more appropriate…”
“Or a federal one, no doubt. Given they have recently lost a member, they would be most ferocious. Perhaps not only with the unfortunate ferals.”
“You don’t trust them.”
“I have been around long enough to trust very few.”
Someone handed Candy a note. She opened it and lifted her eyes to Maddox. “According to this, a meeting has been called to discuss the matter, sir. Your presence is requested at the Pentagon.”
“To think this is all because I got beaten up,” Lorien said with a self-satisfied grin. Unlike Will, who was supposed to attend meetings and refused to, Lorien was not supposed to be there, and could not be kept away.
“Lorien, this is much bigger than you, and always has been.”
Lorien put on an affronted expression. “Excuse me? I am uncomfortable with the notion anything could be bigger or more important than I am.”
“Of course you are. Now. Come with me. I need someone to watch Will while we are in Washington.”
“Since when am I babysitter?”
“Since you chained my baby to a bench and tortured him mentally all evening when I left him in your care.”
“Would have thought that would have made you want to keep me as far away from him as possible.”
“On the contrary,” Maddox smiled darkly. “Make sure to exercise him when he comes out of the crate but keep him on a short leash. We cannot afford to lose him out there, and we’re certainly not leaving him here.”