Page 33 of Forever Midnight

“Well then, should we crash the party?”

Raphael grins. “I like how you think, my man.”

The two of us swoop down, landing silently next to the building. Raphael opens the beat-up metal door that should have a code to enter, but that’s been long destroyed. Inside the dim space, it’s clear that no one lives here anymore. The doors to each unit are open, the sole light in the hallway flickering. It smells like moldy carpet and old blood, making my sensitive nose twitch.

“Fucking shithole,” Raphael mumbles as we approach the only closed door at the end of the hall.

“It won’t be the first time someone died in this building.”

“No it won’t,” he says.

We listen at the door for a moment, but all I can hear are muffled voices. Stepping back, I lift my leg and kick the door off its hinges.

Two of the men inside immediately pull guns and start shooting, hitting both me and Raphael, but bullets won’t do shit to us. Only piss us off.

Raph goes straight for the target, a middle-aged white man with an obvious hairpiece, fake tan, and cold eyes, while I focus my pent-up energy on the two dipshits with guns. My beast pushes forward, my eyes glazing over, fangs dropping, and nails lengthening.

“What the fuck?” one of the men shouts as he backs away from me.

The other one makes a run for the door, but I grab the back of his shirt, slamming him into the wall next to his colleague.

“Who are you?” I demand. “What’s your business with the preacher?”

The two men exchange looks until one of them just blurts it out. “He wanted to hire us to kill his wife.”

“Dammit, Nick,” the other one says, then groans, realizing he’s given me a name.

“Tell me your sins,” I whisper. “Tell me the bad things you’ve done.”

“Fuck you, man,” the one named Nick spits at me. “We don’t gotta tell you shit.”

“Then tell me something good you’ve done and maybe I’ll spare your life.”

Neither man has a response for me.

“I’m going to ask again. Tell me your sins.”

The preacher screams behind us as Raph grips the man’s neck, holding him in the air like he weighs nothing. Raphael’s face is a mask of violent rage as his eyes glow and his fangs glisten.

“Wh-what the fuck!”

I turn to face my prey. “Last chance,” I growl. “Tell me your sins. Tell me now.”

The sour smell of urine reaches me as the one called Nick literally pees himself, trembling against the wall.

“F-fuck,” he stutters. “I’ve done lots of stuff. Stealing, drug deals, shit like that.”

“Murder?”

He nods, his face pale now. “Twice.”

The other man stares at me in terror. Twitching to control my beast, I narrow my eyes.

“Your turn.”

His heart rate kicks up as the scent of fear and panic wafts off of him.

“Oh, you’ve done very bad things, haven’t you?” I ask. “Confess.”

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