Page 53 of Cole: Bloodlines
He curled into a fetal position, both hands clamped around his shattered genitals, each breath a drowning gurgle through the blood-choked cavern of his throat.
Through the high-pitched shriek filling his skull, he registered the franticslap-slap-slapof bare feet, then thethunderous boom of the metal door slamming shut—the sound of his prey escaping.
CHAPTER 22: MAKING OF A MONSTER
The Mangler withdrewhis polished Glock and studied it with casual indifference, turning it so the pale light caught the oiled black metal. “I don't care for guns,” he said, his voice soft as velvet over gravel. “Sure, they're necessary in some situations and emergencies, but they're too... impersonal.” He raised the weapon with spider-like fingers and pressed the cold steel barrel against Gabe's sweat-slicked temple, leaving a perfect circular indentation in the flesh. Cole went deathly still, his knuckles bleaching white as he clutched the hunting knife. “Just onepop—” Cole flinched hard, a muscle jumping beneath his left eye. “—and it's over.” The Mangler sighed and lowered the gun. Cole's shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. “There's no intimacy the way there is with a blade. Don't you agree, son?”
“Intimacy?” Cole whispered, his voice cracking like ice. “Youbutcherpeople. What's fuckingintimateabout that?”
Unfazed, Daniel's lips curled upward, revealing his teeth. “You, of all people, should understand. That first cut—the way the blade parts flesh like butter—the look in their eyes when they realize it's just you and them until the bitter end. Their warm blood coating your fingers like silk gloves... their cries and screams echoing in your ears like a symphony... the way they beg with such raw desperation, voices cracking as they offer you anything, everything. Then watching the light slowly drain from their eyes, pupils dilating until there's nothing but emptiness.” He inhaled deeply through flared nostrils, eyelids fluttering closed in perverse ecstasy. “You can't achieve that level of intimacy with...” He examined the gun in his hand. “...this cold piece of machinery.”
Cole's stomach clenched as he stared at Daniel, at the way the man's tongue flicked out to wet his lower lip and the flush spreading up his neck—like he was aroused by his own words.
“I know you understand intimacy, son,” Daniel said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as he leaned forward. “I see the way you two look at each other—that raw hunger in your eyes. Just imagine the levels of intimacy you'll achieve as you cut into his flesh, and he bleeds for you alone.”
“You're fuckingcrazy,” Gabe hissed through clenched teeth, a vein pulsing at his temple beneath sweat-slicked skin.
“Of course, I am,” Daniel murmured, his glacial eyes fixed on Cole, pupils dilated with a predator's focus. “The samecrazythat flows through your husband's veins like mercury—beautiful, poisonous, and impossible to extract once it's in the bloodstream.”
“He isnothinglike you,” Gabe growled, straining against his restraints until the cuffs bit into his raw wrists, drawing fresh beads of blood. “He is not amonster, and you can't turn him into one.”
“That remains to be seen,” Daniel spoke with a quiet confidence that slithered down Cole's spine like ice water. His fingers tapped rhythmically against the gun barrel. “When it's there inside you, sometimes all it takes is a littlenudgeto get you the rest of the way.” A sinister smile cracked his face. “As your father, it's my place to apply that nudge.”
“I won't kill myhusband,” Cole whispered with a slight tremor, the hunting knife suddenly heavy in his sweat-slick palm, its edge catching the dim light like a sliver of frozen moonlight.
“I think you will...” The Mangler's voice dropped to a serpentine whisper. “Once I bring the girl in.” His tongue darted across chapped lips, leaving a glistening trail.
“Cole...” Gabe's voice cracked. “You have to save her... at any cost.”
“What…” Cole's startled eyes, bloodshot and wild with terror, darted to Gabe's battered face.
The Mangler's lips peeled back, his smile spreading like an oil slick. “Listen to your man. He gets it.”
Cole stared into his husband's eyes—once vibrant blue, now dulled with pain but burning with desperate purpose. Gabe held his gaze with an intensity that transcended their physical surroundings, the silent message hammering between them:You have to save her… at any cost.
“Cut him,” the monster ordered, his voice a silken caress that belied the madness dancing in his ice-cold eyes.
Cole's gaze dropped to the hunting knife in his white-knuckled grip, the blade catching the light as his hand trembled violently. “I can't.” The words escaped as a broken whisper, each syllable fracturing under the weight of his despair.
Daniel raised the gun and pressed the cold steel barrel to Gabe's temple again, the circular indentation whitening the skin beneath it. “I'm not above painting these walls with his gray matter, if that's what you prefer. Then I bring in the girl—sweet little thing—and let you watch what happens next.”
“Just do it,” Gabe whispered, his cracked lips barely moving as he captured Cole's terror-stricken gaze. “This isn't your fault, baby... none of it... you're nothim... no matter what he makes you do.” His cobalt eyes, bright with unshed tears, pulled Cole closer like a lifeline across drowning waters. “You do... what you have to do... to save the kids.”
The gun cocked—a metallicclick-clackthat sliced through the dank air and resonated through Cole's bones like a death knell.
Gabe nodded once, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
His breath stuttering in his constricted throat, Cole raised the hunting knife to Gabe's chest, his hand trembling so violently the blade caught the dim light in hypnotic flashes. Daniel watched with a lunatic's glee—pupils dilated to black pools, nostrils flared—as Cole pressed the razor-sharp edge to his husband's left pectoral muscle, just above his heart.
“Doit,” the monster urged, his voice thick with the same greedy anticipation of a child watching a present being unwrapped.
Cole looked at Gabe, hot tears carving salty tracks down his dirt-smudged cheeks—and pressed the edge of the blade into his husband's flesh. The skin resisted for one terrible heartbeat before yielding with a soft, sickeningpop. Gabe's abdomen tensed like concrete, a strangled hiss escaping through his clenched teeth as a perfect ruby bead swelled along the knife's edge, then broke free. The droplet crawled down his stomach in a meandering crimson trail, splitting into twin rivulets around his navel. Cole stared transfixed at the blood—his husband's blood—on steel and skin, while something primal and horrifying unfurled in his chest like a venomous flower.
At what point… did a man become a monster? Was there a specific moment when it happened, like crossing an invisible threshold—like the softpopof skin giving way to steel? Or did the monster evolve cell by cell, heartbeat by heartbeat, choice by terrible choice, so gradually that a man didn't understand what he'd become... until it was too late?
Daniel didn't watch the knife, but rather his son's face—the way his pupils dilated to black pools as crimson welled around the steel blade. The way Henry's breath hitched and caught in his throat—the slight tremor in his lower lip that betrayed aforbidden thrill. For a split second, he'd wondered if Byrne was right, that Henry would never be the son he wanted him to be. But Henry proved his brother wrong; he had drawn blood—his lover's blood—and begun the transformation, the metallic scent hanging in the air between them like a covenant.
It would take time, but Henry would evolve. Daniel saw it in the flush creeping up his neck, in the glassy sheen coating his eyes, in the way his nostrils flared with each ragged breath as he forged a bloody path down his husband's chest. A jolt of electricity surged through Daniel's spine when Henry glanced at him, eyes feverish and wild—seeking approval like a child showing off a finger painting, but with his canvas made of flesh and his medium made of blood.
