The Edge of Insanity | Rosalie Hale

Chapter 29: The Art of Killing

Weeks bled together. Time lost its edges when every hour felt the same: stone walls, marble floors, the faint thrum of unease whenever he entered a room. Daniel moved through Volterra like a shadow, and shadows were not greeted — only endured.

He fed often. Not for joy, not for taste, just because the body demanded it. Some kills were neat, a clean snap of the neck, blood drained as precise as a poured glass. Others... lingered. He liked to stretch them out, to see how long a body could keep moving while the mind unraveled, to see what horrors a victim's own imagination would invent once he whispered the right words.

And in that, he found peace.

When his humanity was switched on, everything hurt. Hunger gnawed at him constantly. Rage sparked over nothing. Nostalgia gutted him. Fear stalked his every thought. He had lived in agony whether he killed or resisted the urge to kill. But now? Now there was silence. No torment. No guilt. For the first time in his existence, he almost felt happy.

Jane stopped watching after the first month, her chest tight with the knowledge that their friend was gone. Alec stopped speaking to him altogether. Their silences never touched him. If anything, he welcomed it — one less thing to think about.

But Caius noticed. Caius always noticed.

The peace Daniel carried wasn't what Caius wanted. Peace was useless. Caius wanted a weapon. He wanted something sharp, brutal, obedient. A weapon left unused dulled in its sheath, and Caius had no interest in dullness.

He summoned Daniel on a night thick with rain. The throne room was lit by torches alone, shadows climbing high across the walls. The floors gleamed — spotless now, though minutes before the hall had been full of feasting and spilled blood.

"You've grown stale," Caius said without preamble. His voice cut cleanly through the quiet. "A blade left in its sheath dulls. We have a task better suited for you. Consider it a gift."

Daniel stood silent. He didn't ask what it was. He didn't care. Caius always told him eventually.

"There is a clan in England. The Malkavian," Caius went on, spitting the name like rot. "A nest of four. They are erratic. Undisciplined. We've tolerated them too long. You'll excise them. But bring Cyrus back, he seems...promising."

At the word you, his gaze flicked briefly toward Jane and Alec. "They have other tasks in Seattle — there's a newborn army. Don't mind them. Patricia will escort you to the jet."

Daniel gave the faintest nod. A female vampire he didn't know stepped forward and led him out.

He arrived in Bibury after nightfall.

The town looked like something carved out of a storybook — cottages built of pale stone, their walls veined with moss that grew lush and clean, not rotted. The streets were neat, cobbled, the hedgerows clipped with care. Smoke curled from chimneys. It looked untouched, like a page from The Hobbit, frozen in time. Picturesque. Too bright for him by day, but at night it was his to move through unseen.

When the moment felt right, he slipped beyond the heart of the village to a lone house on the outskirts. There the Malkavians awaited.

There where four of them. Cyrus. Elara. Bran. Mira.

Three were nothing special. But Cyrus was different.

He had the power of kinetic nullification — a calm man's gift, the ability to stop a moving body dead. Not time-stopping, not freezing. Just stealing momentum, swallowing energy until motion became stillness. A charge would collapse into nothing, a thrown stone would fall harmlessly short.