Page 32 of Devil May Lie

It was like watching a switch being flipped, almost as if Berga was actually a robot after all.

“Where are you going?” Madden followed him out the door, pushing past Zane on the way. At the last second, he paused and turned back, motioning to his friend quickly. “Tell the nurse.”

Zane didn’t reply, but Madden didn’t stick around to determine what he thought of all of this.

“I’ll drive you,” he offered, catching up with Berga on the stairs—a different set from the ones the girl had been discovered on recently. He vaguely wondered how Berga knew his way around the building so well but didn’t ask. Since he hadn’t cared before, he’d never paid attention to how frequently or infrequently med students from Vail visited the Academy. Perhaps that was how he knew.

“No.”

“Come on,” Madden insisted, catching the door when Berga would have let it slam shut in his face. Outside, the air was breezy, the smell of smoke from the nearby open firing range and freshly cut grass tickling at his nose. “It looks like it’s going to rain, and you came on a group bus, right?”

Berga started crossing the parking lot, not bothering to give him the time of day now that his panic attack—or whatever that had been—had abated, and Madden found that familiar trickle of anger lick at his insides all over again.

“Hey.” He latched onto the Butcher’s elbow, jerking him to a stop. “I don’t give a shit what you’re running from, so long as it isn’t me. It’s a ride in my hover car, Berga. Not an offer to sit on my dick. Stop being so stubborn.”

“We aren’t friends,” he stated. “We’ve fucked a couple of times, that’s all. Quit acting like we’ve suddenly become besties overnight. I’ve got one of those already and I’m not in the market for another.”

“Yeah?” Madden threw out his arms. “And where is he?”

Berga didn’t reply.

“Flix went on vacation without you,” he continued, admittedly rubbing salt in the wound. Was there a chance… “Are you two more than friends?” Had he slept with Madden because the person he’d really wanted to bed had been absent?

That seriously pissed him off.

Before he could consider the consequences of his actions, Madden grabbed Berga’s wrist and dragged him toward where he’d parked his car. He was so frustrated that he hardly noticed the Butcher barely resisting, even when Madden let him go and clicked the button on his multi-slate that would unlock the doors.

“Get in,” he ordered sternly, rounding the vehicle to the driver's side without waiting to see if Berga did as he was told. He was only partially surprised when he slipped onto the seat and found the Butcher buckling up next to him. “If you were going to be so amicable in the end anyway, why bother being a prick about everything?”

He started the car and shot out of the parking space, not bothering to keep his speed in check.

“You’re angry,” Berga noted, staring unabashedly when Madden snorted.

“No shit.”

There was a moment of silence and then, “Is it because of the blood?”

Madden frowned. “The—” The stained shoes. Right. “No, I don’t care about that at all. Why would I?” He wasn’t the one with the weird aversion to bodily fluids on his person. “I’ve been covered in blood before and ruined more clothes than I can count. What’s a single droplet on the tip of a sneaker to me?”

Berga grew quiet.

“Where are you going?” Madden had half a mind to take them to the Docks and lock the man up for the rest of the day where he could monitor him, but he understood how crazy that was.

Madden wasn’t the possessive sort. Why would he be? All his life, he’d had enough coin to buy whatever he wanted. And if what he had broke? He replaced it. He wasn’t like Kelevra, careful with his stuff. No, if he had it he used it until he couldn’t use it anymore. People were no different.

Had been no different.

But, after viewing how the Butcher looked when he was broken…Whatever had happened to him at the Academy, that hadn’t been normal. Something was wrong, and he wanted to know that it was.

“I was going to the Bunker,” Berga sighed, settling deeper into the seat. “But since you insisted on tagging along, I guess you can just take me home.”

The Bunker was a secret building owned and operated by the Brumal. No one outside of those carefully selected knew where it was located, not even the Imperial family. It wasn’t a place Madden would be welcomed, and if he was ever brought there, it wouldn’t be with peaceful intentions, of that he was sure.

“Home it is then,” Madden didn’t bother hiding the teasing lilt to his voice, chuckling when Berga’s eyes narrowed.

“My home,” he reiterated. “Take me to my home, Madden.”

“Come on, you don’t want to go home with me?”

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