CHAPTER 13 - Madeline #3
Panic, sharp and cold, replaces the adrenaline. I grab my phone with trembling fingers and dial Lucy’s number. It rings. Once. Twice. Five times. It goes to voicemail.
“Fuck,” I whisper, my breath hitching.
I redial immediately. Nothing. Each unanswered call feels like a door slamming shut between me and the only shred of normalcy I have left.
Is she just angry? Or is she so terrified of me, of us, that she’s already cutting me out of her life?
Or worse... did he already start making good on his threat?
“She won’t answer, Mali. She’s processing the fact that her best friend is falling for a serial killer. Give her time. Or don’t. It won’t change the outcome.”
His voice doesn’t come from an earpiece this time. It comes from the wall speakers of my own office, distorted and omnipresent.
I flinch, spinning around, but the room is empty. Just me, the blue flowers, and the invisible eyes watching my every move.
“Shut up, I’m not falling in love,” I snap at the empty air, my voice cracking.
“Just... shut up.”
I can’t sit here. If I stay in this office, I’ll lose my mind. I need to move. I need the clinical, detached reality of my work to anchor me.
I grab my white lab coat from the hook, pulling it on like a suit of armor. I button it all the way up, hiding the girl who just confessed her sins and replacing her with the Chief Medical Examiner.
I leave my office and walk down the long, sterile corridor toward the autopsy room. The heavy double doors hiss open, and the temperature drops. On my table, there’s already a body waiting under a white sheet. A new arrival.
I snap on a pair of latex gloves, the sound sharp in the quiet room. I pick up the clipboard resting at the foot of the table. My hands are still shaking, so I grip the board firmly. I take a long, shaky breath, forcing the image of Lucy’s tear-stained face to the back of my mind.
“Focus, Madeline,” I mutter to myself.
“Just do the work.”
I reach for the edge of the sheet to begin the external examination, but my eyes keep drifting to the security camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling.
The little red light is glowing. He’s waiting for his show and I’m about to give it to him.
The morgue is a cathedral of cold steel and fluorescent humming.
I stand over the body, the scalpel heavy in my hand. I need to make the first incision, but the silence is being systematically shredded by the speakers above.
DEIMOS: “You’re shaking, Mali. Your steady hands... the ones that carve through bone without a flinch... they look so human right now. Is it the guilt? Or the thrill of finally admitting you belong to me?”
I ignore him. I press the blade to the skin, but his voice follows me, distorted and mocking, echoing off the tiled walls.
DEIMOS: “Lucy won’t save you. She’s tucked away in her apartment, locking her doors, wondering if her best friend is a victim or a villain. She sees the darkness in you now. The darkness I planted. It’s scary, isn't it?”
“Shut up,” I whisper, my voice catching.
I make the cut, but it’s jagged. Imperfect.
DEIMOS: “Careful, baby. That’s sloppy work. Is that how you’re going to treat the dead today? With the same distraction you gave Jake? You’re thinking about how it felt when he pushed you, aren't you? And how it felt to know I was there to catch you.”
He laughs, a low, mechanical sound that skips through the audio feed. It feels like he’s stroking the back of my neck with a cold wire. I drop the scalpel. It clatters onto the dissection table with a deafening ring.
The adrenaline, the fear, and the raw exhaustion from the day finally boil over into a white-hot rage. I spin around, facing the empty room, my eyes burning as I glare directly into the nearest security camera.
“Enough!”
I scream, my voice echoing through the sterile chamber, drowning out the hum of the cooling units.
“You want to talk? You want to provoke me? Then stop hiding behind a goddamn speaker system like a coward!”
I take a step toward the camera, my chest heaving, my latex-covered hands clenched into fists at my sides.
“If you want to witness my 'darkness', if you want to lecture me on my work and my life, then have the balls to stand in the same room as me. Show yourself, Deimos! Come out of the shadows and look me in the eye when you tell me I'm yours. Or are you just a psychopath who's afraid of the light?”
The speakers crackle with static, then fall dead silent.
The sudden absence of his voice is almost more terrifying than the provocation itself.
I stand there in the center of the morgue, surrounded by the suffocating silence, waiting for the world to end.
Then, the heavy hydraulic lock on the main doors of the autopsy room clicks.
Not the hiss of someone entering. The heavy, final thud of the doors locking from the outside. The lights overhead flicker once, twice, and then plunge the room into a dim, red emergency glow.
“Be careful what you wish for, little storm.”
I don’t turn around immediately. I can’t. My heart is a frantic bird. I forget how to breathe. The air behind me grows cold, a localized chill that tells me he is standing mere inches away.
“You’ve spent so much time dissecting the dead, Madeline. I wondered when you’d finally find the courage to voluntarily face the one who provides them for you.”
His voice isn't coming through a speaker this time. It is real. Rich. It hits me with a physical weight I am not prepared for. I slowly turn, my boots squeaking against the sterile linoleum.
He is standing by the table, draped in the deep darkness of the cooling units. He is taller than I remembered, a silhouette of sharp lines and dark, expensive tailoring. He is a mountain of a man, and the way he stands. Perfectly still. Perfectly balanced.
My hand snaps to the scalpel lying on the dissection table. I point it at him, my hands shaking. His smile only grows wider.
“Mhm,” he hums.
“Do you want to play, Madeline?”
He takes a few steps closer as I back away slowly.
“Let’s play then.”
He stands there, never taking his eyes off me, as he tilts his head, looking me up and down.
“I’ll stab you!”
I yell at him in a panic.
“I’ll take it,” he murmurs, his pupils dilating until the amber of his eyes is almost completely swallowed by black. I think I might as well have lit a match and thrown it into the gasoline.
With a few long steps, he’s already caging me in, pressing my body into the wall behind me. I press the sharp tip to his neck, my eyes boring into his. He doesn’t flinch, in fact, he presses closer against the scalpel.
My eyes go wide as I watch blood beginning to pour from his neck. He’s even more insane than I thought. He bites his lower lip as his gaze drops to my mouth, then he takes the surgical instrument from my hand slowly and slips it into his back pocket.
I can feel the heat radiating from his body; I can feel his muscular chest rising and falling against my body. His gaze snaps back to my eyes.
He brushes the blood dripping from his neck with his fingers. Suddenly, he grabs my chin roughly, and his blood-covered fingers smear across my lips. He’s marking me in his own twisted way.
The metallic scent of his blood fills my lungs, mixing with the sharp disinfectant of the room. I stand frozen against the cold wall, my breath coming in shallow, terrified rasps. The hand on my chin grips tighter, anchoring me to his darkness.
Deimos leans down until our noses touch. He doesn't care about his wound. He looks at my mouth, stained with his essence.
“Feel that? It’s not just adrenaline. It’s the blood of the man you’re too afraid to love, running down your lips. A proper blood pact for my little pathologist. Every breath you take in this room from now on is ours,” he says in a low rumble.
Then he chuckles, a mechanical, scraping sound that skips through the red light. I can’t move. I can’t scream. Without breaking eye contact, he reaches down.
He slides his large hands under my thighs, gripping me firmly under my backside as he hoists me up. My feet lose their grip on the floor, and my legs instinctively wrap around his waist to keep from falling.
I am completely off the ground, held against his solid frame by sheer, terrifying strength. I’m just a doll in his hands.
He carries me a few steps through the crimson haze, moving with a silent, lethal grace. The sound of his heart beating against my chest is the only rhythm left in my world.
He reaches the edge of the empty dissection table and carefully positions me over the sterile metal.
He sets me down, but he doesn't pull away immediately.
He stays between my knees, his hands lingering on my hips as the surface of the table bites into the back of my thighs with its brutal, clinical cold.
The metal of the table seeps through my scrubs, but I barely feel it. All my senses are hyper-focused on the man standing between my knees. He doesn't move to hand me a scalpel. He doesn't glance at the body waiting on the other side of the room. His focus is singular. Devouring.
“Forget the dead, Madeline. They can wait. They aren't going anywhere.”
His voice is a dark velvet caress, vibrating in the small space between us.
He reaches out, his thumb slowly wiping a fresh smear of his blood across my lower lip, dragging it downward. He is looking at the woman he saved, the woman who just tasted his violence and didn't run.
“You’ve spent your whole career trying to understand why hearts stop beating. Tonight, I want you to feel one that only beats for you.”
He leans in, his hands sliding from my waist down to my hips, his grip tightening until the fabric of my uniform bunches under his fingers.
The air in the morgue is freezing, yet I am burning up.
I can feel his breath, heavy and jagged, against my neck, right where the pulse is thrumming like a trapped drum.