Page 116 of The Madness Within

We knew the route. Knew the time. Knew the weak points in the schedule the court’s transport system tried to mask beneath fake protocols and outdated surveillance. Dorian bribed a route clerk. I hexed a map.

We spent four days tracking magical traces until we knew the exact stretch of road where the van would be most vulnerable, Route 66, just past the ruins of a condemned gas station.

A suppression ward went up two hours before they arrived, stitched with ash and old teeth. The radio signals would die there. GPS would loop.

Magic would crawl back into the dirt, silent and blind. We’d masked ourselves beneath a ruined billboard, the shadows thick and writhing with anticipation.

The kill zone was set. And we were ready.

The van was late.

Dorian waited beneath the rotting skeleton of that billboard, his shadows curling beneath his boots like smoke starving for flame. I crouched beside him, breath shallow, eyes glowing faintly with spellfire. I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to. We were past words.

This wasn’t a mission.

It was retribution.

When the van finally appeared, gray, unmarked, crawling over the cracked asphalt like a hearse, it brought the stench of sulfur and something fouler.

Two guards up front. A child in the back. Except it wasn’t a child. It was a goddamn abomination wearing the shape of one.

We struck before the wheels stopped spinning.

Dorian yanked the door off the hinges with magic forged in the Veil, a blade of shadow sliding through the driver’s throat like it was butter. Blood coated the windshield, thick and arterial. I raised a single hand, my fingers curling inward.

The passenger’s heart ruptured inside his chest before he could even draw breath. He twitched, once, then slumped.

The rear doors burst open under Dorian’s will.

And there he was.

Asa. Or whatever his true name had been before he crawled into this skin.

Three heads, stacked like a curse from the old tongues. One smiled. One slept. One bared jagged teeth slick with fresh gore.

His middle face flickered in and out of visibility, white-eyed, stitched mouth leaking blood from between the seams.

The scent of magic rotted on him. Thirty-seven dead witches and warlocks fed his twisted evolution, their stolen power crawling through his veins like serpents.

“Vale,” he hissed through one of his mouths. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Dorian didn’t answer. He grabbed him by the collar, yanking his brittle, too-light body from the van and dragging him into the blue wash of moonlight.

“You’ve been busy.” Dorian hissed.

“I liked their screams,” he whispered, lip curling. “I’d kill them again if I had the chance.”

Wrong answer.

Dorian smiled, slow and cold. “Then scream for me.”

We didn’t just drag him. We dragged what he really was, the writhing, screeching mass that dared to wear a child’s skin, into the broken remains of a chapel that hadn’t heard a prayer in centuries.

The air inside was thick with rot and relics, the altar splintered, the crosses inverted. A place abandoned by God, but worshipped by something far older.

I carved runes into the stone floor with a bone dagger, not etched, carved, my blood soaking into the grooves as I sliced my palm. Each drop unlocked a curse older than language.

Dorian knelt across from me, muttering in the ancient tongue, his shadows crawling along the walls like sentient vines. Magic thickened, choking the light.

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