Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 37136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
He had made a social media account for the kitten, an account that already had several million followers. Gideon was deeply impressed by Carter’s alacrity with the magic of modernity.
“Would you like to see your mother again?”
Carter humped his shoulders in a little shrug. “Last time I saw her, it made me feel bad,” Carter said. “She’s not… she’s different. I know I’m different too, but she’s a more kind of different. I wanted… She made me…” He struggled for words.
“I know what you mean,” Gideon said.
“I don’t want to be sad again,” Carter continued.
“Then I will send her away.”
“No!” Carter’s head shot up at that. Deep down, he was still a wounded boy who missed his mother. He could not help wanting to see her. They were bonded deeply, much more than biology.
“Then let us go and see her. Ray and his bitch are not here to interfere this time.”
Carter smirked at the Maker’s description of Chauvelin.
Gideon took Carter by the hand, and together they went out into the misty grounds to visit with his mother. The moon was not full. It was waning from a recent fullness, casting a pleasing glow over the scene.
Candy was there, shimmering in a fetid manner in that light. She seemed restless, and the moment they appeared, she turned toward Gideon with a malicious swiftness, uttering a cry of rage.
Gideon smiled broadly. Oh yes. This was perfect. The beast was here to exact painful revenge, and he
was ready for it. She slid through the air without friction, moving impossibly fast. At close to the last moment, Gideon saw the little girl in the background. The one he had slain. She gave a small smile and a little wave, both of which struck horror into his eternal heart. Something wasn’t right. Something was different.
For the first time, Gideon felt the full consequences of some of his actions bearing down on him. He braced himself not merely for pain, but perhaps something closer to annihilation. He felt it coming; Candy was not merely a mother. She had been the beginning of Carter, and now she seemed to represent Gideon’s end.
He resolved to meet her head-on, already thrilling to the fear he was unfamiliar with, but feeling deeply. Moment by moment, time seemed to slow down. He would remember these moments forever, for they were the moments in which he realized that the horrendous creature was not there to hurt him.
Candy had a more desperate agenda, to be reunited with her favored son. Her attack was aimed at Carter, sharp claws rending the undead flesh of her stunned son, caught entirely off guard and unable to defend himself. He had once asked her for death, and now she took it upon herself to grant that wish.
“NO!’ Gideon roared, but in less than three seconds it was too late. Carter lay on the ground, truly mortally wounded in the most grievous and heinous of ways, his injuries barely conceivable, let alone describable.
“It hurts. Why did she hurt me?”
“Because she wants you to be hers forever,” Gideon said, cradling the parts of Carter he could hold in his lap. “But you are mine, and I will save you. Drink of me.”
The wraith of Candy circled them, screeching and lashing at Gideon with her claws, cutting deep into the flesh of his back, bringing absolute agony as she tried to finish her dark mission.
Gideon opened a vein and poured his unfettered essence between Carter’s lips. Carter still had the remnants of a suckle reflex, but he did not have the organs needed to process it. They were ribbons of dead flesh, and so Gideon’s blood flowed freely from his wrist, through Carter’s cold lips, and then in visible rivulets through his broken body.
“No,” Gideon groaned. If he could not swallow the blood, then…
The very last of Carter's consciousness was exhausted and he fell insensate.
Gideon’s roar was tectonic. He threw himself at Candy, no longer in the form of a beautiful male, but in his true form, something formless and yet horrific, eldritch in nature, tentacle, claw and fang roiling from a dark mass of vicious vengeance.
Candy’s final shriek was closer to that of a whimper lost in the whirling wind of Gideon’s destruction.
Gideon reformed in his human state, looking fresher and revived for having been temporarily dematerialized into a creature of nightmare. He knelt down by Carter, feeling a most overwhelming sense of regret and loss.
The feeding had not taken. He knew Carter would be unable to heal. It would fall to Gideon to destroy the very thing he now realized he had come to love.
For the first time in thousands of years, Gideon felt hot tears form in his eyes and roll down his cheeks. This seemed so deeply, personally unfair. It felt wrong, though it was not nearly as wrong as many things he had done in his life. He knew he had no right to become attached to anybody, not a fledgling or a lover, not a child, or a friend. His life was loss.