Page 9 of The Madness Within

He jerked in the chair, shaking his head, gag muffling his cries.

“No?” I crouched, eyes glowing faintly now, fangs pressing at the edge of my gums. “Then let’s carve their initials into your skin. Maybe that’ll help.”

I didn’t start with his arms.

I started with his chest.

The blade cut through flesh like silk. His screams were muted, strangled by the silk of his own tie, fitting since that’s what he wore the day the jury said “not guilty.”

By the time I reached the third letter, he’s sobbing. Shaking. Blood seeped down his abdomen, soaking the chair, pooling beneath him.

“Still with me, Peter?”

I opened my mouth, and this time I didn't wait.

Fangs sunk into his neck, deep and punishing. Not for sustenance. Not for pleasure. Just pain. Just the sheer fuckingdominationof it.

His blood tasted like rot, like guilt, cowardice and corrupted innocence. I drank just enough to feel him weaken.

Then I whispered into his ear again.

“She hanged herself, Peter. Did you know that? Twelve years old.”

His entire body convulsed.

Good.

I slammed my hand against his forehead and forced magic through my palm, letting my darkness seep in like a virus. I showed him the girls’ faces. I made himsee. Their eyes. Their tears. Their final screams.

I made himremember.

Then I peeled back his smile with a blade, slow, precise, watching as the flesh split like ripe fruit, his lips tore open beneath the edge of steel.

No more lies.

Only screams.

I made sure they echoed off the concrete walls. I wanted the room to remember.

By the time I slit his throat, it was a mercy. A mercy he didn’t deserve.

He gurgled once, blood bubbling through ragged vocal cords. His final heartbeat rattled in his chest like a failing engine, a stutter, a wheeze, then silence.

I sat there in it. The stillness. The stink. The satisfaction.

Covered in blood.

Bones aching with justice.

I exhaled, slow and quiet, as if to steady the rumble in my chest.

Now for the final act.

I pressed two fingers to the mark carved into the concrete floor, a sigil shaped like a crescent jawbone, slick with blood, surrounded by runes that reeked of rot and vengeance. The room groaned around me, as if something deep beneath it woke to listen.

“Ferrum et umbra. Porta vestra.” Iron and shadow. Open the door.

The kill room trembled. The walls distorted, peeling away like wet paper in firelight, until the meat hooks and rotted concrete dissolved into velvet darkness.

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