The next jolt was the strongest yet, a searing wave of agony that wracked my entire body. My screams tore through the air, raw and primal, echoing off the walls like a twisted symphony. The room spun around me, the edges of reality slipping away as the darkness crept closer.
Bentley’s voice was the last thing I heard, low and triumphant. “You’re almost there, Dove. Just a little more, and you’ll be mine.”
And then there was nothing. Just the void, cold and merciful, pulling me under.
35
ASHTON
My heart raced in my chest, each beat thundering in my ears, drowning out everything else. My breath came in ragged gasps, each one fueled by the manic panic coursing through my veins.
Every corner of the abandoned building we were in felt like a dead end, a brick wall that taunted me with its emptiness. The shadows were alive, stretching and twisting in the dim light, refusing to reveal anything, refusing to give me the answers I so desperately needed.
My hands shook as we combed through the broken-down rooms, pushing aside broken furniture, shards of glass, and rubble. Every inch of the place seemed to mock me, each step feeling heavier than the last, the walls closing in on me with suffocating pressure. I could feel Lilith behind me, watching me, and her silence was a weight, a constant reminder of the twisted pleasure she took from my misery. I could almost hear her smile, her amusement echoing in the dark, feeding my frustration. I had no time for her games.
“Dove,” I whispered, voice barely audible, like saying hername might summon her from the depths of the void. “Where are you?” My mind was on fire, torn between the need to find her and the dread that I might never see her again. My mind spun with twisted thoughts, with images of her broken, her eyes wide with fear, her spirit crushed by the monster that had taken her.
The walls of the building seemed to grow taller, the silence suffocating, mocking me. Lilith was still there, still trailing me with the same eerie quiet, her footsteps light and almost inaudible as she walked behind me. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about Dove, not in the way I did. She cared about watching me suffer. She thrived on it. And that made everything worse.
My frustration boiled over. My chest tightened as my hands flew to the wall, pounding against the crumbling plaster with all my force. My fist hit the wall with a sickening crack, sending a shockwave of pain shooting up my arm. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the pain. I needed to do something—anything to release the rage, the helplessness, the fear.
“Where the fuck is she?!” I screamed, my voice raw and desperate. My mind was a whirlwind of questions that slammed against my skull. Where would he take her? What twisted place would he hide her in? What did Bentley want with her? Why hadn’t I found her yet? There were so many questions, so many unknowns, and each one gnawed at my sanity. Each unanswered question felt like a knife turning deeper inside me.
Lilith’s laughter broke through my madness, sharp and cruel. She stood there in the shadows, her eyes glinting with amusement, her lips curled in that sickening smile that had haunted me for so long. She wasn’t bothered by the situation. She didn’t feel the desperation. She was just enjoying the show. Watching me fall apart.
“You really are pathetic, aren’t you?” she said, her voice dripping with mockery. “You scream and shout, but it doesn’t change anything. It won’t bring her back, Ash.”
My vision blurred with fury, and I turned on her, my fists clenched at my sides. I was no longer in control of my emotions, no longer rational. “Where would he take her?!” I screamed at her, my voice shaking with desperation. “Where, Lilith?!”
Lilith cocked her head to the side, studying me with that detached, almost curious expression. “Well,” she said slowly, drawing out the words, her smile widening as if she was savoring this moment, “if I were him, I’d take her to that abandoned building. You know the one.”
I froze. My entire body went still, the blood draining from my face. The words hit me like a slap in the face, and my pulse quickened in a way that felt like a warning. The abandoned building. My mind locked onto the phrase like a vice. I knew exactly where she was talking about, knew the place all too well. The building at the edge of town. The one that had been forgotten, left to rot, it’s decaying walls a silent testament to its dark past.
My chest tightened, my breathing shallow, as if the air itself had been sucked out of the room. “What building?” I asked, my voice shaking, the dread filling every inch of me. My thoughts were scattered, no longer making sense as they collided with the realization that Lilith might know something I didn’t, something I needed to know.
Lilith’s smile only deepened. “That one,” she repeated, her voice low, almost too sweet, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “The one where people go when they don’t want to be found. You know it. I’m sure you do.”
My heart was pounding in my chest as my mind reeled. No. No, I couldn’t let it be true. I couldn’t let it be there. But I knewshe wasn’t lying. I could see it in her eyes, that dark glint, that knowledge she held over me. She was enjoying this. She knew. And now I did too.
I stood there, breathing heavily, the weight of my thoughts crashing down on me. I felt the walls of the building close in on me, the air thick with the scent of rot and dust. My mind screamed with the urgency of what I needed to do, of where I needed to go. But the fear, the terror of what I would find, gnawed at me with every step he took.
The sound of my own breathing filled my ears as my gaze darted around the room, looking for any sign of Dove, any clue, anything that could lead me to her. My heart was racing, each beat driving me forward, but all I could think of was the last time I had seen her—broken, vulnerable, alone.
I wasn’t going to lose her. Not this time. Not again.
The building Lilithwas talking about had long been abandoned, forgotten by most of the town’s residents. It sat on the edge of Hollow Hills, hidden just beyond the thick trees, where the fog never seemed to lift, even in the light of day. It was a place where the sun rarely reached, shrouded in darkness, as if it knew it had no business shining there.
It had once been a hospital—for the mentally ill, a place where the town’s most troubled souls had been sent. The doctors and staff had tried to care for them, but most of the patients had been beyond saving. They’d been forgotten by family, by society. It was said that the building had a history of torment—of cruel treatments, of patients left to rot in their cells, and of whispers that could be heard late at night, even after the place had closed its doors decades ago.
In its prime, the hospital had been a sprawling Gothic structure, its high, crumbling towers rising against the sky like jagged teeth. The architecture was unsettling—a blend of old-world charm and dark decay. Its faded stone walls, once grand, had long since cracked and crumbled, the ivy and vines climbing up their sides like a living thing, consuming the building from all sides. The windows were coated in layers of grime; the glass cracked and broken, their jagged edges sharp like the memories it held inside.
There was a certain malevolence in the air around the building, as though the very earth had rejected it. The wind would blow through the rotting halls, whistling through the cracks and sending shivers down the spine of anyone brave enough—or foolish enough—to venture too close. The building was a mausoleum to the forgotten, and it had long become the stuff of local legend.
The surrounding grounds were no better. The trees that had once framed the hospital with their towering beauty now looked gnarled and twisted, like twisted fingers clawing at the sky. The grass was overgrown and untamed, creeping up like a suffocating blanket, hiding the remnants of old playgrounds and abandoned gardens. The entire place exuded an aura of dread, as if it was trapped in some eternal limbo, neither fully alive nor completely dead.
But what had happened in the building in its final days was what truly set it apart. There had been rumors—dark rumours—that the hospital’s final staff had gone mad. They’d begun experimenting on the patients, desperate to find a cure, to create something that could change the fate of the tormented souls who lived there. But those experiments had failed, of course. The doctors had become obsessed, driven by their ownmadness. The stories said they had been looking for something far darker than any cure—a way to prolong life, to create a new kind of human being, one that could endure anything. But their efforts only brought more suffering, more death.
In the final days before the hospital had been shut down, the building had been left in a state of complete ruin. The halls were stained with blood and madness; the walls scratched with desperate, erratic markings from those who had been kept inside. People spoke of ghosts that haunted the place, of strange noises and inexplicable events. Some even said that the hospital’s final patients—those that had been left behind—had never really left at all. They had become part of the building, their spirits trapped within its walls.
