Page 1 of The Madness Within

Prologue

There was a madness in me.

Not the kind you medicated. Not the kind you caged.

It’s the kind that slipped into a room before I did. That lived in my bones like it’s always been there, waiting.

It didn’t growl or claw. It whispered.

It wore the face of a man. My face. Smiling. Polished. Lethal.

They saw Dorian Vale, the man in the tailored suit. The attorney who made miracles out of monsters. The savior of the damned.

They didn’t see what came after the verdict.

I was born a vampire, but cursed with a human trait, conscience.

A fucked-up balance between logic and bloodlust, wrapped in the skin of someone society trusted.

But the truth?

I didn’t believe in justice.

I believed in vengeance dressed in black robes.

The system protected the wrong people. I used it to find them. To defend them in court.

And then I hunted them in the dark.

Every client I had ever saved is a name I carved into my own ledger.

Anthony Treadwell. Gregory Harriman. Malcolm Deen. I’d stood beside them in courtrooms, lied for them, and shook their hands.

Then I bled them dry.

I killed because the world was cleaner without them. Because guilt deserved consequence.

Because madness needed a ritual.

But I never thought it would lead me to her.

Ember Carr.

My spark in a city soaked with rot.

I saw her for the first time while trailing Kreed.

He played with her the way a serpent coils, patient, slow, knowing exactly how and when to strike for the deepest pain.

She wasn’t part of the plan… until she screamed, and something in me answered.

Instead, it became a hymn. Her words sliced like scalpels. Her fury was measured.

Beautiful.

Dangerous.

She was looking for something she didn’t understand, tracing threads tied to creatures who weren’t supposed to exist. Paranormal beings cloaked in law and human skin.

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