Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 50954 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 255(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50954 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 255(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
“Let me take away your pain, sweet thing. Let me make you beautiful again.”
The voice was deep, resonant, and soothing. The words promised escape. Madis would have pledged anything to be free of his bindings and his disfigurement. He had been praying to any god that would hear him since his ordeal began for release. But this was no god that had heard his prayer. He knew he was in the presence of a more primal power, one of the creatures of origin.
“Please,” he whispered, barely able to form that single word.
It was all he needed to say.
The creature leaned down, and bit him ever so tenderly, loving lips touching his flesh moments before two sets of impossibly sharp teeth sank into his ravaged flesh and began to drain him of his essence. Madis knew pain intimately, but this was new agony, deeper pain than any of his tormentors had inflicted. The kind of pain that went through his marrow and found the parts of him that were supposed to be untouchable, the separate observer that felt nothing suddenly screaming in pain. He was being obliterated. To his very core. His soul was being destroyed, and something dark was taking its place.
Present day…
“Come in,” Gideon’s voice spoke to him again. “Show me your sins, my offspring.”
Maddox took a breath he did not strictly need and opened the door. Gideon was waiting, standing before the window so his form was silhouetted dramatically. His hair was long, his shoulders broad, his figure imposing. Maddox felt himself lighter and younger for being in his presence. Gideon’s particular quality of eternity always made Maddox feel ephemeral by comparison.
One never knew how Gideon would manifest. He was always strikingly handsome, and his features never truly changed, but the times themselves seemed to change him in tangible ways. Or perhaps he simply did not have as good a memory as he imagined. Maybe it was not Gideon who changed with time, but Maddox’s perceptions which became warped by the shifting sands.
Gideon turned to face him, and Maddox felt some internal hardness soften immediately. Gideon’s beauty was impossible to overstate. He was a creature of perfection and symmetry. The moderns would have made him a movie star, but his high cheekbones, olive skin, and noble features were suited to so much more than mere fame. They demanded worship and sacrifice.
“Look at you.” Gideon extended his arms as he spoke with true warmth and affection. Maddox was lured forward, commanded by the charisma of his maker. He found himself wrapped in arms of unimaginable strength and eternal power. Maddox had promised himself that he would fight Gideon on every level. He would hold himself apart, keep himself separate.
But there was no true separation to be had between progeny and maker. No matter how old Maddox got, Gideon still held a deeply intimate sway. If one were to peel Mad back to his core, it would be Gideon one found there.
He rested his head on Gideon’s shoulder and let his maker hold him for a moment. Maddox had not anticipated any soft feelings on seeing Gideon. The anticipation of seeing him had been all about fear. But when the creature embraced him and he felt their mutually held darkness flowing together, energies transmitted across vast amounts of time, he could not help but give into the feeling of coming home.
“Maddox. My youngest.” Gideon leaned back and properly greeted him with a broad, toothy smile that showed off both upper and lower sets of fangs. “How is my baby boy?”
“Gideon,” he said, trying to make himself sound like something other than a trembling fledgling. “It has been a long time.”
“It has not been that long. Why are the humans all talking to rocks now?”
“Since your last awakening, humans have become adept at making rocks think. The world has changed greatly.”
“There seem to be a lot more of them.”
“There were about two and a half billion people when you went to sleep. Now there are almost eight billion.”
Gideon’s eyes lit up. “Eight billion! Well. We will have to do something about that, won’t we. Thin the herd. Cull the meat.”
Maddox refrained from commenting on such a course of action. It was true that their food sources had become ubiquitous, but was that such a bad thing? A meal on every corner, or a couple hundred meals on every corner was not something to be dismissed lightly when one had known the pain of true hunger.
“I have missed you,” Gideon declared, clutching Maddox’s chin and using his grip to inspect Mads’ face with an intense stare that missed nothing.
“You were also missed,” Maddox said. It was not a good representation of his feelings, which were confused. He had not anticipated feeling anything positive upon reuniting with Gideon. His thoughts had been entirely on Will. Now they were split between Will and old needs he thought he had long ago outgrown.