Chapter 29: A Cage for Monsters
{IRIS}
The silence that followed Sebastian’s departure was not silence at all.
It was alive.
It pulsed.
It crawled.
It breathed against my skin like something with teeth.
I grasped the iron bars, fully expecting them to rattle beneath my strength—but they did not yield. Not even an inch.
The metal was cold as grave-soil, heavy with age, forged to restrain beings far stronger than me.
A sickening truth coiled in my gut.
If I still had my wolf—if that part of me weren’t sealed beneath layers of shackles and secrets—I might have torn these bars apart.
But as I was now?
I was strong enough only to understand how powerless I had become.
A low growl rippled from the deeper shadows.
My breath stilled. I turned slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the consuming darkness that clung to the walls like a second skin.
And then... I saw them.
Eyes.
Dozens of them.
Red, feral, gleaming from the neighboring cells like embers burned into the night.
I stumbled back, the cold stone wall biting into my spine.
The creatures stepped forward.
Not vampires.
Not wolves.
Not anything I recognized.
Misshapen silhouettes lurched into view. Their bodies were small yet twisted, warped as though shaped by nightmares rather than flesh. Patches of thick, coarse hair bristled over their hunched forms. Their limbs were thin but unnervingly long, knotted with unnatural joints. Claws curled over their iron bars, scraping metal with a slow, grating sound that vibrated in my skull.
And then—they smiled.
Their jagged teeth jutted in every direction, stained and splintered. Their lips pulled too far back, stretching skin meant to move nowhere near that way.
The sound they made was neither hiss nor growl—something between, like rot whispering.
I pressed myself back against the wall, pulse hammering like a trapped bird.
These cages were not built for humans. They were built to restrain creatures like them.
Creatures like me.
"You there."
A voice rasped through the dim.
My head snapped toward it.
"You are not human," the voice continued. "Humans reek. You... you smell like nothing at all."
A cold shiver prickled across my skin. I squinted into the shadows.
Lightning flashed through the cracks in the dungeon walls—and a figure materialized.
A woman.
She stood in the center of her cell, naked, pale, her skin marred with long cuts and bruises that wrapped around her limbs.
Blood—both fresh and dried—clung to her body in streaks. Her hair was tangled, long, and blonde, clinging to her like wet vines.
But her eyes—
They were pure black.
No pupils.
No whites.
Just endless, hollow darkness.
A void.
I swallowed, forcing words through my tightening throat. "You... are you a werewolf?"
Her head snapped to the side in a sharp, unnatural tilt.
"You know of our kind?" Suspicion curled her lips. "What are you then? Another pet? A scentless little thing for them to play with?"
"What?" My voice trembled.
She blinked slowly, eerily. "You look confused. That means you must be newly abducted."
"Newly... what?" My heart plummeted at her choice of words.
The woman stepped back, fading into shadows so completely that only her voice remained.
"Why do I bother?" she murmured, hollow and distant. "You’ll die soon. We all will."
A cold dread crept into my bones. My grip tightened around the bars.
"What... is this place?" I whispered.
Another voice spoke from the darkness, smooth and velveted with grim amusement.
"Welcome, little one," it purred. "To the underground cells."
I spun toward the sound—and choked on a breath.
A man—if I could even call him that—leaned against the bars of the cell opposite mine.
His skin was purplish and sunken, stretched taut across bones too sharp to be human. His ears tapered to long, razor-thin points. Fangs glimmered beneath his cracked lips. His eyes burned with a sickly crimson glow that stared into me like a predator relishing the scent of fear.
Not a vampire.
Not fully human.
Something caught between evolutions—between horrors.
"What is this place?" I repeated, weaker.
His lips curled into a grotesque smile. "This is where they keep the rare ones."
He gestured lazily to the cells beyond mine—where creatures shifted, slithered, and blinked with glowing eyes of red, yellow, and moon-white.
"Creatures too valuable to kill," he said. "But too dangerous to roam free."
My stomach twisted violently.
"They experiment on us," the creature continued, his tone laced with gruesome delight. "Drew our blood. Break us. And once we can no longer entertain them..." His grin widened, jagged fangs gleaming. "They amuse themselves with whatever remains."
A cold sweat trickled down my spine.
"I... I don’t..." My throat tightened. "I don’t understand."
But I did.
The truth crashed over me like icy water.
Lord Val.
Sebastian.
The other Vampires.
I had lived among them for a month. Trained with them. Ate beside them. Slept under their roof.
They had shown me safety—kindness, even—but that didn’t erase what they were.
Monsters.
Predators of the night.
And now, caged in the bowels of this manor, surrounded by mangled bodies and hollow souls, I remembered the truth:
Vampires were beautiful nightmares wrapped in human skin.
And I... was here among them.
"And yet," whispered a bitter part of me, "you still chose them."
Because here—
I was not starved.
I was not beaten for sport.
I was not mocked for what I lacked.
I was not unwanted.
Here, I was treated... decently.
If anything, I was the selfish one. I had no right to criticize these vampires for what they were doing.
The truth tightened in my chest, uncomfortable and ugly.
I did care.
It did bother me.
More than I wished it did.
The half-vampire creature tilted his head, gnashing his uneven fangs. "Humans are short-lived here," he said. "Fragile. Weak. They serve one purpose."
I knew what he was going to say. Every fiber in me tightened in dread.
"A blood bank," I whispered.
He laughed softly, a sound like bones breaking. "That is the polite version."
From the woman’s cell, her voice drifted again—thin, drained, resigned.
"Pray you die quickly, little one." Her words sliced deeper than claws.
I inhaled shakily, forcing the fear back down my throat like bitter poison.
"I won’t die here," I muttered, more to myself than anyone else.
My hands tightened on the bars. "I won’t."
But the dungeon seemed to laugh at me.
The darkness pressed in closer—hungry, listening. And somewhere in the endless shadows...
Something stirred.
