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??Death’s Bargain

Dorian

I didn’t usually take clients on a whim, but tonight, something about the calls all day long had me feeling... restless.

Every hour, another request, another case. Most I didn’t bother with, just the usual assortment of the guilty, the corrupt, the ones with money to burn and looking for a lawyer desperate enough to defend them.

But a couple of them... they piqued my interest in a way that felt a little too dangerous, even for me.

I took the cases, of course. It wasn’t like I could resist. The thrill of their arrogance, the way they thought they were untouchable, it only made my instincts sharper, more lethal. And yet, by the time their names hit my desk, their fate was already etched in stone.

It would take me weeks to finish each job, but I’d trade time for blood if it meant serving justice on a silver platter.

Anthony Treadwell — The Velvet Wolf

Anthony Treadwell had a reputation. Philanthropist. Investor. Party guest at every black-tie event from Manhattan to Marseille.

But behind the gold tie clips and crocodile skin shoes… He was something else.

A shifter. A predator.

And not the kind the public romanticizes.

His crimes?

Eight missing boys. All wards of the state. All butchered in forest preserves, organs gnawed, torsos shredded.

He needed a lawyer when the bodies surfaced. The DA was circling, and his alibi had teeth marks. He hired me to clean it up. I did. Got him off. Walked him right out the front door with a press statement and a smirk.

Of course I did because monsters recognized their own.

I tracked him for three days. He stayed at a high-rise downtown, top-floor suite, thick, glass walls and automated privacy screens. He liked to watch the city bleed light while he drank brandy and relived his hunts.

Each night, I slipped in closer.

Day one, I left claw marks on the inside of his elevator. Day two, I replaced his favorite tie with one soaked in grave soil. Day three, he began to feel it. That itch. That pulse in his spine that told him something unnatural was hunting him back.

He didn’t know my name.

But he’d heard the rumors.

So when I finally approached him at the rooftop bar of the Mercier Hotel, dressed like any other devil in silk and shadow, he smiled too wide.

He didn’t flinch when I approached. Just leaned back in his chair, swirling his drink like this was tradition. Like we’d done this before.

“Thought you might finally show,” he said, voice smooth but tight at the edges. “Been feeling you breathing down my neck for days.”

I sat across from him, slow and deliberate. “I wanted you to feel it. The fear. The inevitability.”

His lips twitched, but it wasn’t a smile. “Is this the part where I beg?”

“No,” I said, folding my hands. “It’s the part where you realize it wouldn’t matter.”

His smile didn’t falter until I said his real name. Not the one on his passport, not the one printed in glossy magazines, but the one buried under bone and blood and fur.

“Vel-Rath.”

He froze.

I leaned in. “I know what you did to those children. How you shifted while they begged. How you feasted.”

“Lies,” he choked. “You can’t prove anything.”

“I don’t need proof. Just permission.”

The shadows spilled from beneath the table like ink, slithering up his legs. He tried to run. Shift. But I’d laced the air with wolfsbane and cursed glass.

He couldn’t even scream when the shadows snapped his limbs back, pinning him to the marble floor of the balcony.

I took my time.

Pulled each tooth from his snarling mouth with pliers heated over hellfire. Snapped each finger joint by joint while he watched his body betray him.

When he passed out, I brought him back.

Pain was art. And I was a master of the medium.

I dragged him to the edge of the rooftop and whispered the names of every child he devoured. One by one. Into his ear.

Then I tore out his heart.

Held it in my hand. Let it stutter once, twice.

Then I crushed it.

Ash.

Gone.

His body fell like silk, landing on the glass table below. Splintered bone. Blood. A warning to anything ancient hiding in the skin of men.

The city needed a message.

And I’d always preferred mine written in flesh and fear.

So, I gave them one.

I left the curtains open. Bottles scattered like breadcrumbs. The balcony rail slick with staged carelessness. Anyone looking would think he finally lost control and slipped over the edge.

Before I vanished, I left my mark.

A single obsidian scale placed in the center of his mangled chest.

My signature.

Justice, delivered.

Gregory Harriman — The Butcher in a Suit

Gregory Harriman wasn’t just a high-powered defense attorney.

He was a monster with a law degree.

Polished. Respected. Dead behind the eyes.

His crimes?

Not in the alley. Not in the shadows. They happened under chandeliers and legal jargon. Twenty-seven innocent lives destroyed by the stroke of his pen. Children buried under fabricated evidence. Survivors silenced with loopholes.

He represented murderers, rapists, human traffickers, and helped them walk free. Not because he believed in justice. But because the money was too good.

The worst part?

He fed off it. Literally.

Gregory was a vampire, old, clever, with a taste for courtroom blood. And his feeding grounds were clean, documented, legal.

Until me.

Once I got him off, the hunt began.

Day One.

I followed him from court to his penthouse on Fifth. He had security, enchanted, blood-bound, well-paid. I slipped past them like smoke. Left a scale on his balcony. Watched him stare at it for two full minutes. He knew. He just didn’t know how close I already was.

Day Two.

I broke into his private chambers while he bathed in virgin blood. Literally. A girl’s necklace sat beside his tub. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. I replaced the necklace with one of my own, studded with iron and salt. He didn’t bathe the next night. Good.

Day Three.

I showed up to his office. Unannounced. He smiled when he saw me, tight, stretched, like skin over bone.

“Dorian,” he said, voice smooth with false warmth, “I didn’t think you’d be interested in this case.”

I sat down across from him. Slowly. Calmly. Like we weren’t two apex predators circling a single battlefield.

“I take what I want, Gregory,” I replied, voice quiet. “And I’ve taken an interest in you.”

He stiffened, still posturing. “You and I, we’re on the same side. We defend the dirt and the damned. It’s just business.”

I tilted my head. “You feed on innocence. I feed on guilt. That’s the difference.”

I stood and reached into my coat. Not for a weapon. Just for time. Because time slows when death is in the room.

The shadows answered before I spoke.

They poured in through vents, outlets, the cracks between the baseboards. Silent. Hungry. Loyal.

Gregory shot to his feet. “You have no idea who you’re threatening. I’m protected. Blood-bound. Connected. If anything happens to me—”

“Nothing will happen,” I said softly. “It’s already happening.”

He reached for the panic button beneath his desk.

But his fingers were gone before he could press it. Snapped clean by the shadows, one knuckle at a time.

He screamed.

Good. Screaming meant the magic worked.

I walked around him, slow, deliberate, as his limbs were pinned to the leather chair. The shadows dug into his skin, not to cut. To remember. Every scream, every lie, every child he betrayed. Etched into the marrow of his bones.

“You defended monsters,” I said. “Now you die like one.”

His heart pounded in his chest. I felt it. Like war drums under silk.

“You’re not human,” he hissed, trembling. “You’re worse than what you kill.” I leaned down, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “I am the consequence.”

Then I drove the scale into his sternum.

One obsidian fragment.

A symbol. A sentence.

He didn’t die instantly. He choked on silence first. And when the light finally left his eyes, it took every lie he ever told with it.

I left him in his chair.

Suits bloodied. Spine twisted.

And on the desk in front of him, his own business card, soaked through with his final breath.

Gregory Harriman was pronounced dead two days later. Cardiac arrest, they claimed. Stress.

The headlines said nothing about the stench of ash. Nothing about the missing security footage. Nothing about the scale embedded in his ribcage.

But I knew.

And now, so do they.

The law bent.

I didn’t.

That night, I returned to my mansion. The quiet was suffocating, like it’s holding its breath, waiting for something.

I was anxious to see Ember.

I stepped inside and immediately sensed it, the absence of her. My heart stuttered for a moment before I shook it off. I headed straight for her room, checking the usual spots, but she was gone.

The bed was empty. The window’s open just a little, like she slipped out unnoticed.

The familiar scent of her was still in the room, but it was fading. Panic set in, but I forced it down. I moved quickly, checking the house again, my mind racing.

“Ember,” I muttered under my breath, my pulse quickening. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, have left.

The silence in the house deepened. It’s wrong. And I knew she didn’t do this on her own. I could feel it in my gut, the scent of fear.

It was there, lingering.

I moved back to her room, standing in the doorway, my gaze lingering on the bed, the open window. And that was when I felt it, the burning need to find her.

“Where the fuck are you, Ember?” I hissed, the words a snarl of rage and desire.