When A Villain Falls [Yandere Villain x Hero]

Chapter 23 - Terror

The news broke like a shockwave across the city - Plague, the elusive mastermind behind a reign of terror, had turned himself in to authorities. Video footage flooded the airwaves of the sadistic criminal calmly strolling into the precinct, hands raised in eerie tranquility as he surrendered himself to stunned officers.

I watched the surreal scene unfold with a knot of dread and disbelief tightening in my gut. This was it - the twisted deal I had struck with the devil himself, agreeing to let Plague surrender in exchange for the truth about Joey's disappearance all those years ago.

As the reports came pouring in, replaying his calculated entrance from every possible angle, I felt the first pangs of doubt and self-loathing claw at my insides. What had I done? What unholy Pandora's box had I agreed to pry open, all for my own selfish obsession with finding closure?

The doubts and recriminations swirled through my mind like a maelstrom as I watched Plague play the role of the contrite criminal to perfection.

Head bowed, he allowed the officers to cuff him without resistance before being led out to the waiting transport van, surrounded by a phalanx of armed guards.

But I knew the truth. I had seen the smug arrogance burning behind those obsidian eyes, the dark promise that he was far from done tormenting me. This entire performance was just another exquisitely crafted manipulation, his final gambit to pull me deeper into his depraved obsession.

And like a fool, I had taken the bait.

As the circus of sirens and news choppers reached a fever pitch outside, my phone buzzed with an incoming message.

An image from an unknown number, no other text attached. With trembling hands, I tapped to open it...and felt the world grind to a sickening halt.

It was a mugshot, the harsh lighting doing nothing to mask Plague's distinctive features. But it was the name printed below in a sterile font that detonated like a bomb in my mind:

Joey Merrick

The breath stalled in my lungs as a kaleidoscope of memories came crashing back in waves of agony. Joey's radiant smile as we walked home from school, his warm hugs that could chase away any childhood sorrow, the way his eyes would crinkle with laughter when we shared an inside joke.

My oldest friend... was Plague?

The sadistic, obsessed monster who had tormented me for months on end? It was too perverse, too shattering to process.

How could the sweet, gentle boy I had loved with every fiber of my being have twisted into this remorseless killer?

What unspeakable horrors had he endured in the years since his disappearance to warp into the shadow of his former self?

The phone slipped from my numb fingers as the full, terrible gravity of Plague's "revelation" hit me like a kick to the gut. He hadn't just dangled the truth about Joey's disappearance as bait - he had been the answer all along, hiding in plain sight behind that accursed mask and persona.

And I, blinded by my own desperation for closure, had sold my soul to this devil without a second thought.

Flashes of memory battered me in rapid succession - Joey's terrified face the night he vanished, his frantic whispers about being watched as we walked home from school... the endless dead ends and sleepless nights that followed, slowly eroding my hope that he was still out there, alive and waiting to be rescued.

Now I knew the awful truth.

My best friend was gone, swallowed whole by the all-consuming darkness of Plague's obsession. In his place remained only a hollow, twisted shell, an unrepentant monster who would stop at nothing to torment me.

I had made my deal with the devil, sacrificing my integrity and the lives of others on the altar of my selfish need for answers. And now, as the screaming melee of sirens faded into the distance, I felt something inside me wither and die.

The fragile remnants of hope I had been clinging to for over a decade, that Joey might still be out there alive and waiting for me, had been utterly shattered. Plague had seen to that with his sickening unmasking, the vile truth he had promised as his final torture.

As the first tremors of anguished sobs wracked my body, I sank to the floor, a broken vessel in the aftermath of the devil's bargain.

Joey was gone.

And in his place remained only Plague - an obsessed, sadistic phantom who would haunt me for the rest of my days.

I had opened the door to the abyss.

And now, it threatened to consume me utterly.

__________

(A/N)

Fun Fact - My DUMBASS changed Damien to Joey in the middle of the book because it sounded better and now I'm paying for it, no matter how many times I re-read it and edit I ALWAYS MISS SOMETHNIG