Chapter 33 Malachi
Malachi
“Get your hands off her!” I roar, straining against the pressure on my shoulders and the cuffs on my wrists. “You’re being too rough, you ham-fisted troglodytes!”
The Wardens ignore me, of course. They handle Eden like she’s nothing more than livestock, forcing her down onto the slab.
The sound of her skin slapping against the freezing rock makes my stomach roll over.
She’s hyperventilating in shallow, desperate gasps that echo too loudly in this damp tomb of brick walls and CRT monitors spitting nothing but white static.
Iron locks her down—a sacrifice on a grey stone altar. And there, on a velvet cushion, sits her imminent pain: a crown of needles and cold steel.
It’s a monstrosity of engineering. A rigid metal cage designed to bolt directly into the skull, fitted with thick, hollow needles positioned perfectly to drill into the temples.
I’ve seen these before. Hell, I’ve worked with them thousands upon thousands of times during my life. Recollection Extractors. Nasty things.
The sharp clack of stilettos on granite cuts through the static as Veraxia glides into the room, clipboard tucked against her chest.
“Oh, do be quiet, Malachi,” she sighs, not even looking up from her paperwork. “Your theatrics are exhausting, and the acoustics in here are terrible enough without your bellowing.”
I stop fighting the Wardens. It’s pointless physically, so I switch tactics. I plant my feet, squaring my shoulders, drawing myself up to my full height.
“I am staying right here, in the room” I snarl. I look at Eden—her eyes wide, terrified, staring at the ceiling—and rage, hot and molten, floods my veins. “She is terrified. And I am not leaving her side.”
Veraxia finally stops walking and looks at me, a flicker of dark amusement dancing in her golden eyes. “I know you aren’t leaving, Malachi. It would be rather difficult to conduct the procedure from the hallway.”
I blink., the air in the room dropping ten degrees. “What?”
She gestures lazily to the table, to the tray, to that horrific, needle-lined cage waiting to be bolted onto Eden’s head.
“You’re the one performing the extraction,” she says.
The world tilts. The white noise from the screens surges, buzzing hard against the backs of my eyes like a swarm of angry wasps in my skull.
“No,” I spit out. “Absolutely not. I will not put her through that.”
Veraxia circles the slab slowly.
“Oh, spare me the clutching of pearls, Malachi,” she drawls, running a manicured fingernail along the edge of the metal helmet.
“You’ve served as a Torture Administrator for long enough.
You’ve performed thousands of memory extractions.
You’ve peeled secrets out of the damned like zest from a lemon. ”
“Yes, for torture!” I snap, straining against the guards again, desperate to make her understand the difference. “I did that to murderers! To molesters! To the scum of the mortal realm who deserved to have their minds flayed open! She is innocent!”
“Semantics,” she dismisses. She stops at the foot of the table, leaning in, her face bored and cruel.
“I really don’t give a singular fuck about your newfound conscience.
This is your punishment, brother. Not hers.
And I have a lengthy, creative list of miseries planned for you, but this?
This is just me starting at the lower tier. Consider it the amuse-bouche.”
“I refuse,” I grit out. “I won’t do it.”
Veraxia straightens up, checking her nails. “Fine. Have it your way.” She turns toward the door. “Warden? Bring in... who’s on rotation today? Ah. Michas.”
The blood drains out of my face so fast I nearly faint.
Michas.
No. Not him. That idiot doesn’t have hands; he has fucking shovels. He’s a blunt instrument in a surgery that requires a scalpel.
“No!” The shout rips out of my throat. “He’ll scramble her mind! He doesn't know how to navigate the cortex—he’ll turn her brain to slush!”
Veraxia turns back, a slow, predatory, fang-filled grin splitting her face. “Better get to it then, haven’t you?”
Eden’s broken sobs fill the air, fracturing the last tiny thread of my composure.
It’s the cruelest trap imaginable. Either I hurt her, or I let a monster destroy her completely.
Checkmate.
My shoulders slump, the fight draining out of me into the cold floor, and I nod stiffly.“Unlock my hands.”
Veraxia signals the Wardens with a flick of her wrist, and the second the pressure on my arms vanishes, I’m across the room in, my entire world narrowing down to the terrified girl shivering on the stone.
I lean over the slab, expanding my frame until my shoulders block out the lights, the instruments, and the grinning bitch in the corner.
My silver hands frame her face, thumbs sweeping away the salt streaking her cheeks.
“Eden,” I murmur, forcing her gaze to mine. “Look at me. Eyes on me, nowhere else.”
“Malachi, please don't,” she chokes out, her chest heaving against the straps. “Please. It’s going to kill me.”
“I have to, baby girl.” My voice fractures, cracking down the middle, but I weld it back together. I have to be the rock, even if I’m crumbling inside. “If I don’t, they will break you. And neither of us wants that. I’m going to do it, and I’m going to be so, so careful. I promise.”
With tremor-ridden fingers, I reach for the helmet, but I lock my jaw and force them to turn to stone. I cannot shake. Not for this. One slip and I actually lobotomize her.
“I need you to be brave for me,” I whisper, brushing a damp lock of hair off her forehead. “Can you do that? Be a good girl and hold still. The more you move, the more it hurts. So you freeze for me, okay?”
I press a kiss to her forehead, lingering right there, right over the point where the cold steel’s about to go.
“I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
I lift the heavy metal cage, positioning it over her face, my voice dropping into a soft, hypnotic rhythm, trying to drug her with words.
“Now, listen to me,” I say, as gently as if I were reading a bedtime story.
“These needles... they look scary, but they’re just going to rest right against the edges of your brain.
Just a little pressure. Like a headache.
I’m going to slip in, find what they want, and slip out.
I’ll be so fast you won’t even know I was there. ”
I pause, the shadow of the helmet falling over her face like an eclipse.
“Eden,” I say, my voice laced with regret. “To do this... to do this right, without hurting you... I have to turn off. I have to go into work mode. So the man you see in a second? It won’t look like me. It won’t sound like me. But I promise, I am right here. Under the surface. I’ve got you.”
I close my eyes and shove my own panic into a lead box, nailing it shut with a mental hammer, smothering the Malachi who jumps realms and runs around with a mortal woman without a care in the world, emerging as the Torture Administrator—the cold, efficient machine that makes grown men beg for the silence of the grave.
The heavy iron is seated against her temples with a final, hollow clunk.
Metal gears grind together as I turn the primary dial, and the mechanism engages. The needles descend slowly. And as the first row pierces the skin, a raw, agonising screams rips out of my little summoners throat, flaying through the air.
My shoulders jerk as if I’m the one being stabbed, my own heart stuttering, trying to reject the reality of what I’m doing. But my hands keep turning. They have to. If I stop now, the calibration slips and I scramble her into someone unrecognizable.
“I know,” I grind out, the words vibrating through my clenched teeth, sounding like gravel in a blender. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Stay with me, Eden.”
As the needles punch through the periosteum—that thin membrane between the bone and the truth—the wall of monitors flares to life.
The insectile buzzing of the static dies, replaced by a high-pitched whine as the connection bridges. Flickering images from her memory vomit onto the screens—confused colors, flashes of her apartment, the sensation of pain visualized in harsh red spikes.
“Veraxia!” I roar, not breaking my rhythm on the crank, staring only at Eden’s dilated, panicked pupils. “Turn the screens! Turn them away from her so she can breathe!”
My cunt of a sister doesn’t even look up from where she’s leaning against a torture rack, idly making a tick on her clipboard with her quill.
“Standard procedure requires visual confirmation from the subject, Malachi,” she hums. “You know the protocol.”
A low, guttural growl rips out of my chest, vibrating through the stone floor. I swallow the bile rising in my throat. Fine. If the only way out is through, then I have to drive the spike deep. I have to be the demon she needs me to be.
“Focus,” I snap at Eden cruelly. “Go back to the night I came through the Veil.”
She’s sobbing desperately. “It hurts, please, I can’t—”
“Stop acting like an infant and do as you’re fucking told,” I sneer, leaning down until my face is an inch from hers.
I twist the crank, and the sickening pop of steel breaching the outer table of the skull vibrates up my arm so hard that I nearly retch.
“Malachi!” she screams, her voice shredding, body trying to thrash against the restraints.
“Stop fighting the recall!” I bark through clenched teeth, leaning my weight over her as hot, angry tears spill over my lashes, tracking silently down my face, burning lines of guilt into my silver skin.
They splash onto her forehead, mingling with the blood beading around the needles—a silent, weeping apology for every cruel command leaving my mouth.
“You are making it harder! Yield to the image! Give it to me, now! Stop being weak!”
The wall of monitors flickers. The white static screams, distorts, and then—the image coalesces. High definition. Her living room. The shitty mortal apartment. Her ridiculous little ritual setup. A thunderstorm roiling through the windows. Right in first person view.
A surge of twisted, fierce pride rushes through my chest.
Good girl.
She fucking did it.
My hand leaves the crank and crushes hers, gripping her delicate fingers tight enough to bruise—anchoring her to me, to the present, to the physical reality of my skin against hers as the machine drags her mind down into the dark.
Veraxia snaps to attention. Her boredom vanishes instantly, replaced by the sharp, predatory focus, her eyes darting across the monitors.
I lean down, my mouth brushing the shell of Eden’s ear.
“You did so well,” I breathe, my thumb rubbing furiously over her knuckles. “I’m so fucking proud of you, baby girl. Now just breathe through the memory. Don’t fight the current. Let us see what we need to see so we can get this done.”
On the screens, the memory stabilizes. The living room. The candles. The salt. It’s perfect high-definition recall. Veraxia hums, tapping her quill against the emotional readout pulsing in multicolored lines at the bottom of the screen.
Eden whimpers, her body seizing on the slab as the image of her living room on the monitor shudders. The memory is destabilizing, pixels tearing apart and bleeding into one another, morphing into something dark.
“Sadness... and loneliness? You ‘just wanted to see him?’” Veraxia steps closer to the monitors, the static reflecting in her golden irises.
She taps a manicured fingernail against a spike on the graph—a line that is shooting up so fast it’s nearly off the chart.
“That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Meat-Sack? ”
“Yes,” Eden chokes out through her pain and fear as the slamming sound of rain hammers against the monitors, the image distorting into something completely different.
“Grief is passive. Grief is blue,” Veraxia says softly, tracing the line. “This isn’t sadness…”