Chapter 15

Caiden was sitting, rather uncomfortably against the cold, stone wall of his cell. He was in an actual, medieval dungeon, well at least that's what it seemed like to him. There were no windows to his cell, so the only light came from a grate about ten metres away from the entrance to his cell. He had been taken there unconscious, having been knocked out almost immediately after he'd left his brother. He wasn't quite sure how long he'd actually been there, just that it had been a rather long time.

Outside the door to his cell was a kind of corridor with cells on either side all the way down to an opening. He could only just see the winding stairs in the opening that led to the world above. Every so often, one of his captors would come through there down towards his cell with a tray of food and a cup of warm, stagnant water. This was the only indication of what time it was.

His cell itself consisted of a small table which the food and drink was put on, and a bucket, in which he did what had to be done. Caiden liked to think of his new, hopefully temporary home, as small and cosy. Of course, his cell had bound his magic, not that it made much of a difference since he could barely take on one of the Bloody Murderers, let alone all five.

Food was served at different times, separated by reasonably long intervals. Each time, a different member of the gang would come in, he found that Angelo and Sickening, who were more chatty would stay in his cell with him for a while after they'd come in with the food. However Angela and Archie just left immediately. He hadn't actually seen Villainous and to be honest, he was hoping to keep it that way.

The food that he'd received wasn't gourmet, in fact, wasn't really anything, just a bland kind of slop. He wasn't surprised by this as he was their prisoner, and he hadn't actually been expecting any more food than a bowl of grain per day, not that he could tell when the days ended or began. Apart from the cell, and less than exciting food, he hadn't been treated too badly. No random beatings, at least he was fed, and not once had Archie tried to start any small talk with him.

He heard footsteps and Angelo swaggered from the winding steps towards his cell holding a tray of bland deliciousness. Angelo took the keys from his pocket and swung open the door. The first few times this had happened, Caiden had tried in vain to escape and each time he had been easily overpowered. Even if he had somehow managed to incapacitate whoever it was bringing the food, he didn't even know where he was, and he wouldn't have a chance at getting past his other four captors. So now, all Caiden did was sit there staring at the 'food' in front of him.

"Here is your meal sir; I hope it is delicious enough for your Excellency." Angelo mocked.

"Oh, I'm sure it is Angelo my old chap. Just pop it down there, that's a good chap." Caiden replied equally mockingly. "What is it today?"

"Oh, the usual slop we got from the prison." Angelo answered.

"Perfect, just what I need, a good hearty bowl of slop." Caiden said with as much gusto as he could muster.

"Maelicen said to tell you that he's coming to say hello later." Angelo informed him and Caiden shivered.

"Great, I'll be expecting him. Although you might want to tell him that I'll be so transfixed by this wonderful meal that my screaming might not be at its best." Caiden said and Angelo laughed.

"Oh, no. He just said he wanted to talk to you, didn't say anything about any torture…" Angelo said looking somewhat put out. "As fun as that might be…"

"Of course, no, you're not monsters."

"Oh no, we're not monsters, just serial killers." Angelo said happily and turned to leave. "Well I must run, it seems our friend Rysk might be about to blurt out some terrible secrets to your friends and we wouldn't want that to happen would we? I'll have to see what he ends up blurting out, but I must say, if he does end up talking, whatever dreams Rysk Industries has of becoming the biggest company in the world might slowly fade to nothingness." And with that, Angelo turned and walked out, leaving Caiden alone with his food and his thoughts.

Caiden calculated that it was perhaps only twenty minutes after he finished his meal when Villainous arrived. He strode down towards Caiden's cell and the door swung open to reveal the man from so many nightmares. The unsettling mask just stared at Caiden, completely unmoving, but the eyes, those red eyes, seemed to bore right into his soul. When he spoke his mask stayed completely still and the only indication that he was actually speaking was the sound itself.

"Hello Caiden Tate, you left me to die." He said his voice no more than a whisper yet as clear to Caiden as if he was talking normally.

The voice made Caiden's spine tingle and he noticed that he was shaking so he quickly stopped and composed himself.

"I thought you were dead." Caiden replied evenly.

"You left me to die." Villainous repeated, his voice completely devoid of all emotion, yet the hatred was as evident to Caiden as if he was trying to rip his head off.

Caiden decided not to answer, if there was one thing he didn't want to do, it was anger Villainous. Realising that he wasn't going to get a response, Villainous sat down on the table and just stared straight down at Caiden, as if he were looking at a dead thing. Caiden couldn't see his face through the mask, but there was one feeling that he could feel almost radiating from Villainous, distaste.

"What are we going to do with you?" Villainous asked.

"Let me go back to my brother?" Caiden tried hopefully and the face inside the mask laughed.

"Oh yes, Emerson Tate. I've heard he's quite the young man."

"I guess that's one way of putting it."

"Do you think he's planning a daring rescue, doing everything he can to try and get you back?" Villainous asked a trace of amusement in his voice.

"No, he isn't quite that stupid. I think saving me is the last thing on his mind."

"I think you're wrong." Villainous said; an amusing glint in his eyes. "In fact, I know you're wrong. Right now, your brother is leading your merry gang on a mission to come to your daring rescue."

"Oh?" Caiden said, appearing interested.

"But don't you worry your pretty little head, we're setting up an exciting surprise in store for them and soon you might all have a lovely reunion."

"Great, well I can't wait for that little moment of fun, but for now I'll have to make do with talking to you and your friendly gang of psychopaths." Caiden said and Villainous laughed again. "You know, for a murdering lunatic, you actually laugh quite a lot."

"Well psychopaths have feelings too you know?" Villainous said as innocently as he could muster, but with the mask, it seemed more like a threat.

"They do?" Caiden mocked disbelievingly.

"They feel many things, such as: amusement, regret, betrayal, hate." Villainous said the last word with a dangerous edge to his voice that made Caiden know that he was talking about him. As it seemed as if Villainous was not going to leave, but stay perched on the table, his eyes staring into Caiden's soul, Caiden thought it best to change the topic.

"What are you going to do with me?" he asked. "I meant this whole thing is about revenge right, well you have me here, at your mercy, what are you going to do? Kill me? Not quickly obviously, but are you going to give me a nice slow death?" Caiden said, his voice rising with emotion so that he was nearing a shout. He calmed himself. "What do you want from me?" he almost whispered but Villainous remained silent.

"I'm not going to kill you." Villainous said finally, after a long pause. "You see this deal that we have, me and my gang. We've decided that if we were going to kill you, we'd all want the honour of doing it ourselves." Caiden looked confused by this so Villainous expanded. "Each of the gang has a different reason, you know mine. Angelo feels that you've tangled with him and his sister enough times, Angela the same. Archie says that apparently you killed one of his family members or something, I'm not too sure, I can't say I was listening." Villainous seemed to be done, so Caiden asked:

"What about Sickening?"

"What about Sickening?" Villainous asked.

"What's his reason? I've only encountered him once, apart from the other day, why does he want to kill me?"

"Oh, he's just wrong in the head, he loves killing people." Villainous explained. "I mean sure, I love killing people as much as the next raving psychopath, but Sickening, he's different, killing is his purpose."

"So if you aren't going to kill me, what are you going to do?" Caiden asked curiously.

"Well after a lot of debating and pondering different ideas, we all decided that we'd make you, your friends, your brother and yourself, kill each other."

"You're expecting us to kill each other?" Caiden asked his face a picture of disbelief. "How are you expecting to achieve that?"

"Well, we have you here now, and soon, once they've stumbled aimlessly into our lovely little trap, we'll have your friends and brother. So once we have you all here, we're going to keep you in this one cell, Sickening wanted a pit, but as I said, he's wrong in the head. We're going to keep you all here in this little cell and keep feeding you, but each time, the food will be in less amounts. You will be kept in complete isolation, all you will have access to is the small amounts of food and each other. After a while, we shall stop feeding you and that's when the fun begins. Not sure about you, but I reckon it'll be your brother who'll turn savage first, ripping you all to shreds." Villainous' blood red eyes glowed almost gleefully and Caiden could tell that he was relishing the thought.

Caiden was quiet, silent, what could he say to that, to the inescapable fate of he, his friends and brother.

"I reckon your brother will start to go mad with the hunger for your own flesh even before we even stop feeding him. In fact, I think all it will take is a tiny nudge and then he'll be gone, lost forever in the clutches of insanity."

Caiden felt the anger rising up inside him, desperate to consume him, but he knew that lashing out at Villainous would achieve nothing except a broken bone. Villainous could sense his anger, his pain, of course he could he lived off it.

"You know it's true, you know your brother's crazy, you are too, we all are," Villainous said, and then moved closer to Caiden and whispered quietly in his ear: "just some more so than others."

With that, Villainous straightened up, spun on his heels and, chuckling quietly to himself left the cell leaving Caiden sitting on the bed, frozen in horror and filled with pure dread. This was when Caiden realised that the man that he thought he knew before, Julian Laire; was completely gone and in his place was this thing, this monster, and it was all Caiden's fault.

A/N: Hey, it's chapter fifteen, pretty exciting huh? I had a lot of fun writing this chapter (which probably isn't a good thing) so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I want to say a huge thank you to Anatasia for reading, reviewing and even hopefully fannarting (which is most certainly a word) it is ridiculously kind and I hope you enjoy the random, creepy disturbingness (I most certainly did not make that word up) of this chapter. I'm actually trying to do something at the moment which should speed up my writing and hopefully allow me to release more chapters, it's called: planning. I know what you're thinking, 'planning' how ridiculously pointless and boring, but I thought I might try and give it a try. Thanks so much for reading, more should be released soon(ish) hopefully; I'd love it if you could review. Favourite, follow if you want, thanks for everything.

Mangobean.