Page 69 of The Madness Within

“You’re not the first person to try to bribe me,” I said smoothly. “But you don’t understand. I don’t need your money. What I want is to know what you really are.”

His smile faltered just for a moment. Just long enough for me to see the true darkness in his eyes. And in that moment, Iknew. He wasn’t human. Not by a long shot.

I took the case, and a few, short weeks later, I did what I did best, I got him off the hook. He walked free. No one knew the horrors he’d committed. The innocent lives he had destroyed. No one except me.

I hunted Lyle for six days.

Not to learn his patterns, those were already predictable. But to savor the wait.

He moved like every man who thinks his name protects him. Expensive cars. Dinner reservations under aliases. Women who never asked too many questions.

I watched from the rooftops, from alleyways, from shadows he never noticed. Left marks he couldn’t explain. A whisper in hissecurity feed. A dead raven on his windshield. The elevator in his building stopped two floors short every night. No explanation. No power surge. Just me.

Just a warning. I wanted him afraid, twitching, paranoid, half sure his sins were finally catching up. And when the fear started bleeding through the cracks of his confidence, I knew it was time.

She didn’t ask why. Not anymore.

She’d been quiet, watchful, wary, her eyes full of questions she wasn’t yet ready to ask. The space between us wasn’t silence, it was tension. Stretching. Waiting.

But tonight wasn’t about space. It was about truth. And she needed to see mine.

Not the man who knew how she took her coffee. Not the one who fed her pastries in a house she called a cage. Not the one who fucked her like he’s starving and she was the last breath he’d ever take.

She needed to see the other me.

The one who kept her alive.

We drove through the city in silence. Rain streaked down the windshield in thin, silvery veins. Beside me, Ember sat still, hands in her lap, fingers twitching like she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to hold on… or run.

“I’m not showing you this to scare you,” I said quietly as we turned down the final road. “I’m showing you because you need to understand what we’re up against.”

She said nothing. But I felt her looking at me. Not with fear. Not yet. With trust she didn’t want to admit was growing.

The warehouse loomed like a corpse on the edge of the city. Abandoned. Quiet. But alive in all the worst ways.

She stepped out slowly, arms wrapped around herself, eyes wide. “Where are we?”

“Where truth lives,” I murmured. “And where monsters die.”

Inside, the air shifted as the ward sealed behind us. The shadows curled along the rafters. They knew me.

And they knew why we were here.

Lyle waited in the center. Polished shoes. Gold cufflinks. Murderer’s hands.

He smiled like a man who still thought he had power. “Dorian,” he said with a nod, his voice oily. “And this must be your little whore.”

Before Ember could react, I stepped in front of her. Calm. Controlled. But already breaking apart inside.

“You’ll speak her name with respect,” I said, my voice like ice cracking under pressure.

He laughed, and that was all it took. I lunged, inhuman speed, inhuman strength. My hand closed around his throat and lifted him off the floor like he was weightless.

Ember gasped behind me. I didn’t turn.

Not yet.

Lyle’s eyes bulged. He clawed at my wrist. My fangs slipped free, just a taste of what I was beneath the human skin.

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