Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

“We have a fucking problem.” Lippincott paced in front of me, as I leaned back in my office chair, watching the man unravel over something. He kept muttering to himself about someone having lied to him, his hair a mess atop his head from where he’d damned near rubbed his skull raw. “The girl. The girl is a problem.”

“What girl?” I asked, casually sipping my drink. Although, I had a pretty good idea who he was talking about.

He shook his head, not bothering to slow his pacing. “Don’t fuck with me. You know what girl. The girl. The one I told you to watch.”

“And I have. So, what’s the problem?” Ordinarily, I’d have found his anxiety somewhat amusing. In light of the fact that I had something much more exciting, in the form of a newly-prepped injection of the toxin, waiting on me back at my lab, I was bored.

“The problem? Have you seen her?”

Damned near every night when I closed my eyes, but I didn’t bother to say that aloud.

“She’s a spitting image of her mother!”

“A number of children are.”

“Quit fucking mocking me, Devryck!” He slammed his fist against my desk, though he failed to intimidate me with his anger. Shoulders squared, he stared at me with unflinching bravery, seeing as my patience had begun to wear thin already. “Her mother is the other missing woman. The runaway in your father’s fucked-up study.”

Fuck. I frowned at that. Was hoping he’d have remained obtuse enough not to make the connection—one I’d had my own suspicions about since having read that faulty coroner’s report. “You’re certain of this,” I said, playing dumb.

“Do you imagine I’d forget a face like that?”

Given the questions that Lilia had asked, I didn’t get the impression she was aware that her mother had participated in the study. Otherwise, I suspected she’d have been much more specific in her many inquiries.

“I told you I’d keep an eye on her, and I will.” I reached for the decanter of bourbon to fill his glass, because goddamn, with his face beet red, he looked like he was two breaths away from a stroke. “So far, she hasn’t stirred any trouble,” I added, as I filled my own glass. Since he’d confirmed my suspicions about her mother’s participation in Crixson, I couldn’t wrap my head around the odds of it. Fate must’ve hit the crack pipe again, the way it kept reminding me how much of an absolute prick my father had been in life.

“She’s here for a reason, Devryck. She’s undoubtedly trying to dig up information. And when she does, I’ll once again find myself in front of the firing squad. Your fucking father ruined my life with this.” He pushed off my desk, pacing again. “Ruined it!” He punched the air like a madman, as if my old man were standing in front of him right then. Not that I blamed him. I’d have had a few punches to throw myself.

“Relax. She’s merely curious about the organism.”

Ignoring me, he swiped up his drink from the desk, spilling drops of liquor onto the shiny surface–an observation that annoyed the hell out of me. “Gilchrist fucking assigned her Crixson Hall. Do you think that was an accident?” He tipped back his drink, nearly choking when he didn’t wait long enough to answer his own question. “No. The woman has it in for me. She’s trying to sabotage my fucking life for not having promoted her!” He shook his head, then returned to pacing and sipping his drink. Growling, he loosened his tie, furthering the lunatic look. “That lying piece of shit. Slimy motherfucker lied right to my face!” It was hard to tell if he was talking about Langmore, the girl’s mother, or someone else. “I was wrong. Granting her a semester here was a fucked idea. Fucked!”

“You’re only just now coming to this conclusion?”

“I had no idea who the hell she was. Her last name isn’t the same. Wasn’t like her transcripts arrived with a fucking family album!” It was a wonder he hadn’t rubbed all of the hair clean off his skull, the way he kept running his hands over it. “She has to go.”

“Wouldn’t it be wiser to contain the problem? She signed a nondisclosure, meaning she can’t speak a word of anything related to Noctisoma. Not without legal repercussions.”

He scratched at his jaw, obviously considering my words as he stared off. “Does she have any other family?”

I didn’t like the idea of telling him Lilia’s personal information, but not telling him might’ve only stoked his curiosity, had him watching her closer, instead of trusting me to keep an eye on her. “A half-sister and the mother’s ex-boyfriend.”

Another sip, and he flicked his fingers, asking for another refill. “And the mother passed? We know she passed away?”

I pushed the decanter in front of him, refusing to oblige the man every time he sucked down his drink, but God help the bastard if he spilled it again. “Four years ago, from what I’ve gathered.”

He poured his drink, and I watched as it splashed around the rim, but lucky for him, it remained in the glass. “She hasn’t come to you with any questions?”

That was laughable. “Yes. A fucking barrage of them. None of them concerning.” The chair creaked as I leaned back and kicked my feet up on the desk. “She’s just a girl dreaming of finding a cure for the disease that took her mother’s life.”

“She hasn’t inquired about Crixson, at all?”

“No. And what does it matter? Those files are locked away. The information on her mother and Kepling no longer exists. You’re being paranoid.” Aside from sheer fascination, I had no connection, no loyalty to the girl. The fact that I was protecting her made zero sense to me.

Exhaling a long breath, he slid into the opposite chair. “Perhaps you’re right. What the fuck can she do? Nothing.” He blew through the entire glass of liquor in one swill and slammed the glass down on my desk. “Fine. She stays. For now.”

It was then it occurred to me that I had just negotiated Lilia’s ability to remain enrolled.

Hell if I knew why.

I stared down at my phone, where Lilia’s video sat paused.

I’d dreamed about her the night before. Those long, slender fingers tracing over my arms and up the back of my neck. A torment I’d carried with me all afternoon and into the evening, when she interrupted my concentration at the library. Gilchrist was a nuisance, but Lilia, she was a distraction. An irritatingly welcomed one.

I thought back to the look in her eyes when I’d had her cornered against those bookshelves. The defiant glint that made me want to seize those pouty fucking lips of hers and end whatever the hell it was that held me hostage to the girl’s poisonous spell. That infuriating scent of hers that messed with my brain chemistry. The delicious enchantment that undoubtedly lured men to their doom.

One touch. One touch would end this agonizing curiosity, but might just send me spiraling into madness.

Damn her for being so inquisitive. The questions she’d begun to ask had dipped into dangerous waters, particularly since Lippincott had suspected who her mother was, and if the wrong person happened to overhear her, who knew what that’d mean for her.

I loathed this secret obsession I’d begun to develop with her.

It was wrong.

While she might’ve been of age, a woman essentially, she was still forbidden, and the fact that I had any sense of yearning at all served as a testament to the effectiveness of my last inoculation.

I lifted the syringe from its case, where the pale purple substance had my veins tingling for a sip. The toxin had begun to metabolize at a much slower pace for me, after all the weeks I’d taken it, but it was nowhere near stable enough for clinical trials. In the absence of the parasite, it had no true mechanism of replenishing itself, and therefore, its effects were short-lived. Subsequent generations of the parasite had proven to be more specific toward human genetics, but there remained a flaw. Sustainability.

And the matter of requiring human sacrifice to breed the parasite and teach it our pathophysiology.

The other issue was a side effect that triggered my own need to breed.

Even in the absence of the parasite itself, as the inoculation I gave myself consisted of nothing more than purified toxin, it still compelled my brain to fuck something. An urge I’d managed to control for the most part, even in the presence of the many young, fertile women on campus. A chemical mechanism carried out by the very toxin that I willingly injected into myself.

Because it was also this toxin that compelled my immune system and helped to create protective proteins that effectively repaired the damage of my medical condition. Reversed it, if only temporarily. Every new episode, where my muscles locked up and my head pounded in agony, was fresh destruction that had to be reconstructed by the toxin’s potent army of proteins.

And I still ran the risk of it reaching my heart.

I longed for the day when I could better control the toxin in a way that might allow a complete reversal of the faulty genetics that caused the disease. The same disease that’d ultimately killed my father.

It wasn’t the exaltation for what my research had the potential to achieve that I sought. I just wanted to fucking feel something again.

After cleaning the site with alcohol, I lined the needle to my vein and pushed it into my flesh. No sting. No burn of the liquid. Only a small bit of blood gathered around the wound, which I covered with cotton, then removed the syringe.

In any other lab, I’d have been disgraced for having used myself as a test subject. Lost my license and been blacklisted from academia.

Fortunately, Dracadia wasn’t any other university.

Had they been privy, I suspected they’d have turned a blind eye, so long as I continued to report progress. And didn’t die. While I maintained a sense of legitimacy in the labs upstairs, here, in my private lab, I could get away with anything–even murder.

It hadn’t been without coaxing that I’d agreed to take on my father’s research. Upon his deathbed, I’d vowed that his lifelong studies would die with him. It was Lippincott who’d encouraged me to consider it. To investigate the potential for curing my own affliction. He’d agreed to fund the research, and worked to reinvigorate interest in it, after my father had turned the entire academic community away from himself.

I needed it to be a success.

I was desperate to untangle myself from my father’s humiliating legacy.

The room tilted and shifted as the toxin pulsed through my veins. A euphoric high swept over me with the intense surge of dopamine. Grunting and moaning, I tensed and flexed as the toxin worked its way into my bloodstream. While it failed to return my sense of touch, each dose lessened the seizing episodes with which I suffered. And, of course, stoked my libido.

I reached for my phone, and Lilia’s paused video.

Stop this, my head urged. Not her.

What was it about the girl that had me breaking my own rules?

Perhaps it was knowing that Lippincott was watching her. That she unwittingly swam in a placid sea where sharks lurked beneath the surface, and the vulnerability spoke to me.

Maybe it was the way she challenged me and defied all of my prejudices against her, that unbreakable resilience that I found so utterly alluring. A shot of fire in my veins that stoked my blood.

I was drawn to her, for reasons I could neither justify nor understand. A realization that annoyed the shit out of me. She was an itch on my brain that I couldn’t scratch. The maddening shimmer in the corner of my eye during lecture that distracted my thoughts. The kind of girl who seduced with nothing more than a single glance. A bite of the lip.

And she’d captured my attention with steel hooks.

I wanted to know more about her, who she was, where she came from, how that brilliant mind of hers worked.

It wasn’t right, though.

I pushed the phone out of reach, because fuck, I’d have easily gotten off like every other pervert who’d watched that video. Instead I eased back in my chair, and sprang my cock free. In the past, I’d have called Gilchrist to ease the ache and transport me to the kind of bliss that escaped me most times during sex. I closed my eyes, imagining the last session with Gilchrist, when I’d had her on her knees, her lips wrapped around my shaft. An edge of disappointment rode every stroke of my hand. Her rhythm was always off, and for some reason, she mistakenly believed I enjoyed the feel of her teeth against my cock.

I could feel myself frowning as I pumped my hand up and down my shaft, the flesh growing soft, as the fantasy didn’t quite do it for me.

A new image flashed through my head.

Fiery auburn hair.

Arctic green eyes.

Soft, pouty lips exploring my flesh.

My body hardened as every drop of blood shot straight to my cock. Before I could stop myself, I was fucking my own hand to the visuals of Lilia—her short skirt hiked up and no panties, teasing me. While my stomach lurched and flexed with an unsettling discomfort, my cock reveled in it. Fist pounding out a beat of intoxicating depravity, I imagined it tangled in her hair, using her mouth in the most exquisitely filthy ways.

I kicked my head back on a blast of light that hit the back of my skull. Hot jets exploded onto my fist, slickening the final strokes. Body shuddering, I let out a groan, a fucking groan. I never made a sound when I came, but the agony was bittersweet. I rested my head against my arm, banging out the final spurts, and shuddered again.

Breathing hard through my nose, I tried to catch my breath, and it was when my conscience finally caught up to me that I groaned again, but that time in frustration. “Fuck.”

Just like that, Lilia Vespertine had become more than a student.

She was a serious problem.

“I can feel them. Inside my guts. You put them there! You son of a bitch!” Barletta paced inside his cell, hobbling from one end to the other. “Th-th-they crawl in and out, and in and out.”

“Relax, Mr. Barletta.” I scanned the walls, noting more wet stains–multiple spots where he’d likely relieved his sexual cravings. The urge to stifle a gag had me wishing I’d brought a dab of Vicks for my nose, or NeutrOlene to spray. I’d gotten used to the smell of dead bodies, but this was something else entirely.

“No! I will not relax!” He slammed himself against the bars of his cage. “They’re eating me from the inside out! You don’t think I can feel it!”

I let out a sigh, my head still wound around an annoying redhead with a smart mouth. “They only begin to consume at death. What you’re feeling is a surge of growth. And perhaps hallucination.”

“I want them out. Get them out of me!” He pounded against the bars with what had to have been a painful crack against his knuckles. “Please!”

“In time. I promise. Have a seat.” I gestured toward the chair he’d knocked over earlier with his little tantrum. “I’ll finish my story, and give you some water.”

Wary eyes stared back at me, brimming with distrust. “Not some small piddly ass Dixie cup of water. I want a full glass! With ice.”

“Consider it done.”

Hands trembling, he pulled the chair closer to the bars and took a seat, seemingly calmer than before. With the progression of the disease, his outbursts would eventually become increasingly violent in his desperation to escape.

“Aside from the crawling sensation, how are you feeling?” I asked.

“My muscles ache. Sometimes, I feel like something’s crawling on my skin.” He scratched at his arm, grimacing, as if he could feel it then. “And I’m seeing my fucking son. Constantly. Only, he isn’t my son. He’s some … warped version that carries a hammer and tells me he’s gonna break my skull open.”

Oh, the justice of guilt. It was almost too entertaining at times. “He isn’t real, I can assure you.”

“He feels real.” Eyes wavering with a shine, he looked away. “So fucking real.”

“It’s your guilt toying with you.”

He lowered his gaze to his fidgeting hands. “You ever see hallucinations of your brother?”

“Yes,” I answered honestly. “Frequently.”

“So … that call your old man received. The one you told me about in your last story. What was that about?”

It was sickening, the way his question sucked the joy, the rapture, right out of me. The toxin’s euphoric effects sobered into something dark and twisted that pulled at my stomach. “I actually didn’t find out until much later. Not until I learned of my brother’s fate.”

Liquor in one hand, I stare down at the deadly jagged rocks, where the ocean’s waves crash in a chaotic spray of water. The world billows around me in the same rhythmic pattern, setting me swaying back and forth. The words of my father echo inside my head in a vacuum of toxic thoughts.

“Don’t do it.” At the sound of Caedmon’s voice, I turn to see him standing beside me. Not him, though, but the intangible version of my brother who visits me nearly every night.

The sight of him fills me with shame, and I turn back toward the rocks below. “I failed. I’mma failure.”

“You’re not. This is Father’s doing.”

“It shoulda bee’me.”

“Stop it,” he chides in his usual impatient tone. “Stop being a whining cunt and get off this ledge. You’re too fucking smart to waste it on guilt.”

“I have nothing, Caed. Nothing.” Without my brother, whatever callous part of me that remains has been sliced in half with his disappearance, leaving nothing more than a husk. “I feel empty and carved out. So hollow, it’s cold.”

“Listen to me.” His voice is pleading, and even in my drunken haze, I can sense the desperation in it. “Father has something they want. Find out what it is and set me free.”

“It’s pointless. He’ll never tell me.” I throw back another swill from the bottle of liquor and sway again.

“Of course he won’t. You have to find it yourself, Devryck. Damn it, think!”

Caedmon’s voice holds a sobering anger that pierces through my drunken haze. “He keeps all his secrets in his lab.”

“Yes. Very good.”

“It’s his life’s work. They want it.”

“Yes. Precisely.” His tone, brimming with hope, anchors my focus.

“How?”

“You know how. You’ve seen it, tucked away. Locked in that closet.”

“The safe?” I can visualize it in his office. In the back corner of that closet. The small safe, where he stored mother’s picture after I broke it.

“Yes. What’s inside the safe?”

“Aside from her picture? I’ve no idea. I could never open it.” Who the hell would’ve wanted his failed experiments? The study that disgraced our family name.

“Find a way. And for fucks sake, man, get away from the edge. You’re making me nervous.”

An erratic gust of wind kicks me off balance and I stumble backward. My footing falters. I slip on the rock.

The ground slips from beneath my feet, and I slide against the slippery stones, the searing jagged surface slicing at my stomach as my fingers catch on the ledge. “Fuck!” I dare a glance below, where the ocean beckons me to let go. It taunts me to release my hold and slip into the void.

“Get back up, Devryck. Climb!”

I tighten my muscles and pull myself, arms trembling with the effort.

“Pull yourself up!” His words are a painful screech that jabs my skull.

“Ahhhh!” The agony hammers against my bones, while my muscles lock themselves into a deadly rigidity. “I can’t! I’m going to fucking die!”

“You are not going to die. Pull yourself back onto this ledge, you fucking sap!”

“No.” I loosen my muscles and hang from my treacherous grip. “No, Caedmon. I don’t want to.”

“I need you, Brother. I’m begging you. Try.”

I imagine my brother, wherever he is, holding on. Clinging to hope.

At that, I breathe through the cramping ache, fingers digging into the rock. Gripping tight and sure, I pull myself up, and before I can slip, I quickly adjust my arms so they’re anchoring me to the ledge. I kick my leg up, using my muscles in my thigh to propel me upward. In a concerted effort of all limbs, I manage to pull myself back onto the ledge and away from its precarious rim. Lying flat on my back, I breathe through my nose, desperate to catch breath in lungs that feel as if they’ve been crushed by an iron palm.

Caedmon stands staring down at me. “Set me free.”

I stumble back home, thoughts of my brother sobering me along the way. Through the front entrance, I plow past Dmitry, our butler, who calls after me, but his words are lost to the mire of thoughts racing through my head. He tries to stop me when I reach the door to the cellar, but I push him off in a rage. The air cools as I make my way down the long, winding staircase, towards my father’s laboratory. Shouts from behind grow wilder, the words a blur in my drunken state.

Down a lengthy corridor, I reach the lab, where the door stands cracked.

From inside, I hear my brother’s screams.

Caedmon!

I push through the door to find my father standing over a box on one of the examination tables. His hand is curled around a small camcorder, his face a mask of rage and tears.

“Father?” I lurch toward him, confused. “Caedmon?”

He drops the camcorder and stumbles backward, as if he almost passed out.

Before he can swipe it up again, I scramble for the machine and lift it, eyes instantly finding the small screen, on which my brother sits tied to a chair. From the cameraman’s view, I watch as flames spray out from a blowtorch, licking my brother’s raw and blistered legs.

Panic rises into my throat. I fall forward, my palms slapping the concrete. A torrent of vomit pours past my lips, splashing onto the floor. Another round hits the pooling fluids, splashing up into my face.

On shaky legs, I push to my feet and peer down into the box. My father rushes toward me, but I turn in time to give one hard shove that knocks him backward onto his ass. From inside the box, I remove a small black box with a note attached:

As requested, we’ve returned your son.

Hands trembling, I open the lid to find a pile of ashes inside.

My breaths come too fast. The room spins out of control.

I slip into the blackness.

“They killed him.” Barletta’s grim tone pulled me back into the present.

My muscles tensed at the question. “I find it amusing that you listen to this story as if it’s the first time you’ve heard it.”

His brows flickered, his reflective eyes shifting in his dark cell. “I don’t …. I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re the one who transported my brother to his killer.” There it was. The reason I’d taken a man off the streets and infected him with the deadly worms that had begun to ravage his body. Revenge. Revenge for my twin who’d been brutally slain for greed. For the very research to which I’d dedicated my life.

Barletta’s gaze shifted away and back to me. “Me?” he asked on a nervous laugh. “Nah, you got the wrong guy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t insult me. On the night of October twenty-third, you drove two associates and my brother to an abandoned building outside of the city. You were the last to see him alive.”

Silence hung on the air, as he rolled his shoulders back and fidgeted, perhaps realizing there was no way I planned to let him live. “I only did that gig for about a year.”

“Gig. Is that what you call handing over humans for slaughter?”

He shook his head, the sickening denial painted on his face making me wish I could cut it away with a sharp blade. “I didn’t know anything about him, or you, or your old man. I was told that I’d be taking some kid to a place on the east side. I didn’t know who for, or why.”

“Yet, you did it, anyway.” My voice held no inflection. No empathy. As lifeless as a corpse. “You never questioned, nor followed up to make sure said kid was still alive.” I shrugged, easing back into my chair. “Why would you, when you beat the shit out of your own son?”

Expression screwed up with fear, he rocked back and forth in his chair. “That’s why I’m here, then, huh? That’s why you brought me here. Some sick fucking revenge plot?”

“You’re too brilliant.”

“I never meant to hurt any kid. Had I known that they were gonna torture him …”

“You’d have what?” I tipped my head, watching the man spew lies as easily as if they were truth. “Saved him? Called the police? Done what any decent human being would’ve done?” I let out a mirthless chuckle. “No. I don’t think so, Mr. Barletta. You’re shit. Food for the worms.”

“What do you want? You gotta want something.”

“It so happens I do. And now is the time to request it, before your brain begins to deteriorate.”

“What?” He fell out of the chair onto his knees and gripped the bars of his cell. “Anything! I’ll do anything!”

Unimpressed with his plea, I watched with an air of disgust as the man shed his worthless tears. “The reason I brought you here is simple. I need a name. A name only you can give me.”

“Who? Who!”

“It seems I was too late getting to Victor Rossi, one of the two associates who transported my brother. He unfortunately passed of a heart attack. The other succumbed rather quickly to the worms. But not before he offered up your name. So, it’s up to you, Mr. Barletta, to tell me the name of the man you handed my brother off to.”

“You’re talkin’, what? Almost twenty years ago?” He released the cell bars, slouching in defeat. “How the fuck would I remember that?”

“I don’t know.” From the inside pocket of my coat, I pulled a capped syringe and held it up for him to see. “This is the antidote that will keep you from dying. I suggest you remember. And if you lie to me? You can kiss it goodbye.”

“Ahhh, Jesus. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what the fuck?” He rubbed a hand down his face. “Victor Rossi … yeah … I know the name. So … the guy … he was …” Frowning, he seemed to think hard on the name, desperate to remember. “From New York … It was … Angelo. Angelo! It was Angelo! Angelo DeLuca!”

“You’re certain of this?”

“Yeah. The guy was a prick. I can see his face clear as day.” His eyes lit with a sickening hope that I was all too eager to snuff. “His nose was crooked, like he’d been punched too many times. And he had a nasty scar at his eye.” Amazing what a person could remember under the right circumstances.

I made a mental note of the name–my next test subject. “So, you’re going to sit tight while I do some research on Mr. DeLuca.”

“What about these worms, man? I can’t take them moving around inside of me. It’s freaking me the fuck out!”

I shrugged with a smile. “Hopefully, I’ll find him fairly easily. But before I begin this goose chase, you’re absolutely certain this is the guy?”

“Yes. I swear on … on my own fuckin’ grave. It’s him. Please. Get these goddamn things out of me!”

I pushed up from the chair and straightened my slacks, unaffected by his desperation. I had no intentions of helping him. The syringe I lifted held nothing more than sterile saline. “I’ll let you know how the research goes.”

“Please hurry, man. I can’t take this shit anymore.” Rubbing his skull, he rocked back and forth on the floor. “I can’t. It’s fuckin’ with my head.”

“Yes. It does fuck with your head. That is the nature of it. We’ll speak soon, Mr. Barletta. Enjoy your evening.”

“Enjoy …. Enjoy my fuckin’ evening? In a prison? Where’s my water? I want my water!”

“Ah. Yes, I almost forgot.” I strode down the hallway, where a plastic cup sat beside a hose that I’d fed down into the lower levels. I twisted it on and filled the cup half full–about twice the amount I’d given him every other time.

His eyes lit up when I returned with it, his hands outstretched through the bars of his cell. “Please,” he said in a shaky voice, carefully accepting the drink, and he took a hearty sip. His brows pinched to a frown, and he opened his mouth, as if to gag. A long black worm slithered past his lips into the cup, and he slowly lowered it with trembling hands, eyes wide and panicked. “Oh, fuck,” he whispered in a shaky voice. “Oh, fuckin’ hell.”

I reached through the bars, urging him to pass it to me.

As if in a trance, he didn’t take his eyes off the cup as he handed it over. “This …” He swallowed a gulp and stifled another gag. “This is what’s inside me?”

Holding up the scant bit of water left to the naked bulb, I studied the worm coiled at the bottom of it, noting the teeth that attempted to latch at the surface. “Yes. It seems they’ve evolved.”

He slapped a hand over his mouth, breathing hard through his nose. “I don’t want to throw up. I’m afraid more of those fuckers will fly out!”

“Yes, it’s better to keep them contained, otherwise they’ll try to get away.” I lowered the cup and turned back to Barletta, who crouched in the corner of his cell, shaking.

“You’re not right in the head, are you? Ain’t no way you’re right in the head.”

The sound of my chuckle echoed down the corridor. “Says the man who beat his son with a bottle?”

“I was drunk. I would never intentionally hurt someone. But this? This is sick!”

Sighing, I stared down into the cup at the fully grown worm. One who’d spent the last few weeks feeding on the man’s liver. “I suppose you’re right. Must’ve been all those knocks to the skull.” I tapped a finger to my temple. “Have a look at what happens when you beat your children.”

“You’re not letting me go.”

Head tipped in disbelief of the man’s ignorance, I snorted a laugh. “Is that what you thought? That our time together would end with me setting you free? I’m afraid not.”

Whimpering, he rocked back and forth, his hands running across his skull. “I was in a bad place when I was working for those assholes who took your brother. I’m not there anymore.”

“That’s great. Truly. I suspect the next time we chat, you’ll be a bit preoccupied.”

He stilled and looked up at me, the desperation in his eyes almost laughable. “With what?”

“Trying not to vomit your own bowels.” I strode back down the corridor, and at the sound of Barletta’s outcry, I smirked, glancing over my shoulder. Something caught my eye.

A shadowy figure at the opposite corridor, past Barletta’s cell.

Frowning, I turned around, examining the shape, and walked back in that direction, until I was standing in front of Barletta once again.

The figure didn’t move. He only stood staring, mostly hidden by the shadows.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

“Someone’s there? You see someone?” Barletta slammed himself into the bars of the cage and reached out for my coat. “Get me out of here, doc! I want out!”

Scowling, I looked down to see his fingers curled into my coat, and I pried him loose. When I lifted my gaze again, the shadowy figure was gone. To be sure, I strode closer, the cup holding the worm still clutched in my hand.

Nothing but the empty corridor stood ahead of me, brimming with the sound of Barletta’s screams.