Scene: Eyes of a Monster

Broadmoor Hospital loomed against the morning sky, a Victorian gothic silhouette that seemed to absorb rather than reflect the weak autumn sunlight. Once a symbol of progressive treatment for the criminally insane, now just another fortress for society's most disturbed minds. Mist clung to the grounds, curling around the perimeter fence in tendrils that resembled grasping fingers, reluctant to relinquish their hold even as morning advanced.

From their vantage point in the visitor's car park, Mick studied the structure with a quiet dread that settled in his gut like ice water. Rain-slicked stone gleamed dully beneath a sky the colour of a week-old bruise.

"You sure about this?" Reeves asked, her voice cutting through his thoughts. "We can still walk away, find another angle."

Mick didn't answer immediately. The memory of Jamie hovered at the edges of his consciousness—not just an image, but a weight, a presence almost as tangible as the demon sharing his skin.

"Your heart rate has increased by thirty-seven percent in the last ninety seconds," Marchosias observed, his voice unfurling in Mick's mind like smoke disturbed by a passing shadow. "Your palms exude salt and cortisol. Your pupils have dilated beyond what this ambient light requires. Fear serves a purpose, Michael. It is one of the few instincts your kind possesses that rarely misleads."

"I'm fine," Mick replied silently, though the tremor in his hands betrayed him. "Just... preparing."

"One does not prepare to face a monster by denying one's terror of it," Marchosias countered. "Acknowledge the fear. Let it sharpen your senses rather than dull them. I have observed that humans who deny their fear often succumb to it more readily than those who embrace it."

Reeves was still watching him, waiting for an answer. The early morning light caught the silver threads in her dark hair, tiny markers of the stress their profession had etched into her over the years.

"No other angle gets us what we need," Mick said finally. "Weiss knows something about the sigil. About Vassago. About the missing kids."

"And he'll just tell us because...?" Reeves left the question hanging between them.

Mick's lips curved in what couldn't properly be called a smile. "Because I'm bringing something he'll want to see."

"Careful," Marchosias cautioned. "This Weiss possesses perception beyond ordinary human capacity. I sensed it in the photographs you showed me—an echo of something familiar. He may see more than you intend to reveal."

"That's counting on it," Mick thought back as they approached the entrance.

Broadmoor's reception area struck a discordant note between institutional sterility and desperate attempts at humanisation. Muted beige walls, scuffed linoleum floors, plastic plants wilting in corners—all beneath fluorescent lighting that hummed with a subtle but maddening irregularity. A receptionist looked up from behind a protective glass partition, her expression professionally blank.

Reeves flashed her warrant card. "Detective Inspector Reeves, Metropolitan Police. This is Michael Hargraves, consulting on a case. We have an appointment with Philip Weiss."

The processing took thirty minutes—forms signed, IDs checked, personal items surrendered. Security procedures designed to remind visitors they were entering a place that contained predators, not patients.

"There is something wrong with this place," Marchosias said as they were led down a sterile corridor by a guard whose eyes never quite met theirs. "Not merely the expected miasma of human suffering. Something deeper. The walls themselves have absorbed decades of fractured minds pressing against them. They... remember."

The guard paused before a featureless door, swiping his keycard with practised efficiency. "Interview room three," he announced flatly. "Subject will be brought in shortly. Emergency button under the table if you need it. Camera surveillance active at all times."

The room beyond was small and institutional—a metal table bolted to the floor, three chairs, one-way glass along one wall. The air smelled of industrial disinfectant layered over something else, something the chemicals couldn't quite mask—the sour tang of fear, decades of it, seeping into the very concrete.

"Homey," Mick commented, taking the chair facing the door.

Reeves remained standing, professional mask firmly in place, but her fingers drummed a subtle rhythm against her thigh—a tell Mick recognised from their days as partners. Nervous anticipation.

"Listen closely," Marchosias instructed, his mental voice dropping to a register that seemed to vibrate along Mick's spine rather than through his thoughts. "When he enters, attend not merely to what your eyes perceive, but to the spaces between perception. The weight of air around him. The way shadows move in his presence."

Before Mick could ask what that meant, the door opened.

Philip Weiss entered, flanked by two guards who dwarfed his slight frame. Age and confinement had whittled away the man Mick remembered. The formerly robust psychiatrist had become gaunt, his prison uniform hanging loosely on prominent collarbones. Grey hair cropped close to his skull accentuated the vulturine quality of his features. But his eyes—those remained unchanged. Pale blue, clinical, observant.

Those eyes found Mick immediately, and what happened next made his blood freeze.

Weiss smiled.

Not the forced politeness of a prisoner meeting officials. Not the mask of contrition prison psychologists expected. This was recognition. Pleasure. The smile of a man greeting an old friend.

"Detective Hargraves," he said, his voice still carrying that cultured accent that had once charmed judges and juries. "How unexpected. And Detective Inspector Reeves as well. To what do I owe this reunion?"

The guards positioned him in the chair opposite Mick, securing his handcuffs to a ring on the table. Metal clinked against metal with finality.

"We'll be right outside," one guard said before they both withdrew, leaving the three of them alone.

Weiss tilted his head, studying Mick with uncomfortable intensity. His gaze seemed to penetrate beyond skin, beyond flesh, to something deeper.

"He knows," Marchosias hissed, sudden alarm rippling through their connection. "He senses me."

Weiss's smile widened fractionally, as if he'd heard the demon's words. "You've brought a friend with you," he said quietly. "How fascinating."

Mick felt the blood drain from his face. His fingers, resting on the table, went numb with sudden cold. "What did you say?"

"I think you heard me perfectly." Weiss leaned forward, the movement causing his sleeve to ride up slightly, revealing a glimpse of a tattooed mark on his inner wrist. The sigil. "We have something in common now, don't we? Both of us sharing our skin with... others."

Reeves glanced between them, confusion evident. "What's he talking about, Mick?"

"He has a hitchhiker," Marchosias growled, his mental voice vibrating with sudden intensity. "A lesser entity, but one of my kind nonetheless. How did I not sense this before?"

"You couldn't have known," Mick thought back, struggling to maintain his composure as sweat beaded at his temples.

Weiss chuckled, a sound devoid of any real humour. "Your friend is quite important, Detective. A fugitive of significant status, I'm told. The higher realms have been searching for him."

The fluorescent lights overhead flickered briefly, though whether from faulty wiring or something else, Mick couldn't tell. Shadows in the corners of the room seemed to deepen, to acquire substance.

"Dr. Weiss," Reeves interrupted sharply, "we're here to discuss the sigil found on recent victims. If you're not interested in cooperation, we can end this now."

Weiss turned his attention to her, his expression pleasantly blank. But beneath that mask of normality, something else moved—like watching a second face press against a thin membrane from within, distorting features momentarily before retreating.

"Oh, I'm very interested, Detective Inspector. But I believe this conversation has multiple layers, doesn't it?" His fingers tapped a peculiar rhythm on the metal table, not random but patterned, like a code or a summoning.

"This is dangerous," Marchosias warned, his presence coiling tighter around Mick's consciousness. "His passenger will report back. We should ensure neither of them leaves this room alive."

"No," Mick thought fiercely. "We need information. Besides, we're being recorded."

"Such recordings can be altered," Marchosias suggested, a predatory eagerness bleeding through his mental voice. "Electricity is fickle in the presence of entities like us."

Reeves slid a photograph across the table—the sigil from the traffickers' bodies. "Do you recognise this?"

Weiss glanced at it casually. "Of course." His face remained impassive, but his eyes—they changed for just a moment. The pale blue darkened, pupils expanding until they nearly swallowed the iris, then contracting to pinpoints before returning to normal. The transition took less than a second.

"Care to elaborate?" Reeves pressed.

"I could," Weiss replied, looking back at Mick. "But I'm not sure what I would get in return. Information has value, especially to your... companion."

As he spoke the last word, Mick heard a second voice underlying Weiss's—something ancient and sibilant, speaking directly to Marchosias. The sound bypassed his ears entirely, resonating directly in his skull like metal scraped against bone.

"Great Marquis," the voice hissed. "What an unexpected honour. Baalberith will be most interested to learn of your whereabouts."

"Silence, lesser thing," Marchosias snarled back, using Mick's vocal cords on a frequency that only Weiss and Mick could perceive. "You address your better with the temerity of the truly ignorant. Know your place before I carve it into the very foundation of your being."

Across the table, something flickered behind Weiss's eyes—a momentary fear quickly suppressed. The thing inside him recognised power when confronted with it.

Reeves continued her questioning, oblivious to the supernatural exchange. "These symbols appeared on murder victims connected to a human trafficking operation. Children are disappearing. If you have information that could help us, now's the time to share it."

"Children," Weiss repeated, a gleam in his eyes that made Mick's skin crawl. The word emerged from his mouth with too many syllables, as if his tongue savoured each letter individually. "Always such precious commodities, aren't they? So many uses for the young and innocent."

Mick's fists clenched beneath the table, knuckles whitening. "That's not an answer."

"No, it's not," Weiss agreed pleasantly. "But your frustration sustains me almost as much as it once did. Almost, but not quite. Nothing will equal watching you break as Jamie died, will it? The way your face crumpled when you realised you'd failed him. That memory has kept me warm on many cold nights here."

The name hung in the air between them, sharp as a blade. Jamie. The boy Mick had failed to save. The child whose death haunted his dreams, drove him to the bottle, pushed him toward the self-destruction that had ultimately led to Marchosias.

Mick lurched forward involuntarily, halted only by Reeves's hand on his arm.

"Don't," she warned, her voice tight. "That's what he wants."

The demonic conversation continued beneath the human one, unheard by Reeves.

"Your host is easily provoked," Weiss's hitchhiker observed, its voice carrying a sickly sweetness like rotting fruit. "A weakness Baalberith will exploit when he finds you."

"And who will inform him? You?" Marchosias replied, his mental voice dropping to a register that seemed to vibrate the very molecules of air between them. "I have unmade greater entities than you for lesser presumptions. Choose your next words with care, parasite."

The fluorescent lights flickered again, more pronounced this time. For a moment, the shadows in the corners of the room detached from the walls, writhing with private life before subsiding.

Weiss smiled at Mick's obvious distress. "The symbol represents the Fourth Gate binding mark, as I believe your friend already knows. It marks those who serve a particular entity from beyond—voluntarily, unlike your arrangement."

"Who?" Reeves asked. "Who do they serve?"

"That would be telling," Weiss replied, his gaze never leaving Mick's face. His pupils had begun to pulse slightly, contracting and expanding in a rhythm that had nothing to do with the light in the room. "And I'm not inclined to be helpful after spending five years in this charming establishment thanks to your colleagues."

"It's not wise to provoke Marchosias," Weiss's demon cautioned him, its voice carrying tones of genuine fear beneath the bravado. "Let the humans have their breadcrumbs. What does it matter when the feast approaches?"

"It matters because their suffering pleases me," Weiss answered aloud, speaking to his demon but making no effort to hide the exchange. "Particularly his."

Reeves looked between them, frustration evident. "Dr. Weiss, children's lives are at stake. Whatever grudge you're holding against Detective Hargraves needs to be set aside."

"Does it?" Weiss raised an eyebrow, the gesture too smooth, too practised, like an actor playing a role he'd rehearsed for years. "I think not. In fact, I believe this interview is concluded. I've nothing more to say to the puppet when I can now see the puppeteer."

The lights in the interview room flickered once more, then cut out entirely, plunging the space into absolute darkness.

At that moment of perfect darkness, Mick felt Marchosias surge forward within their shared consciousness, taking partial control. Something flowed from their fingertips—not physical matter but concentrated shadow given purpose and terrible life.

"Now we shall see what truths hide beneath your arrogance," Marchosias whispered, his voice using Mick's vocal cords but pitched too low for human ears to detect.

The shadow-things skittered across the table like spiders made of liquid midnight, leaving momentary trails of frost in their wake. They reached Weiss in seconds, flowing up his arms and beneath the prison uniform. Though invisible in the darkness, Mick could sense them through his connection to Marchosias—tiny horrors with too many legs and microscopic teeth, burrowing beneath Weiss's skin.

When the lights returned three agonising heartbeats later, everything appeared unchanged to ordinary human perception. Reeves blinked, adjusting to the sudden return of illumination, unaware of what had transpired in those moments of darkness.

But Mick could see the truth. The shadow-entities now writhed beneath Weiss's skin like parasitic worms, creating subtle bulges and ripples that travelled along his veins. His face remained composed, but sweat had broken out along his hairline, and a muscle in his jaw twitched uncontrollably.

The temperature had dropped precipitously. Mick's breath emerged in visible clouds, and frost patterns began to form at the edges of the one-way glass.

"What the—" Reeves began, looking up at the lights, rubbing her arms against the sudden chill.

Weiss's shadow now seemed wrong—too large, too articulated, with protrusions that resembled limbs but bent at impossible angles. It moved slightly out of sync with Weiss himself, always a half-second behind, as if reluctant to follow.

"Speak truth," Marchosias commanded, his voice resonating through Mick's. "Or my servants will feast on your essence from within, hollowing you out one nerve ending at a time. They are hungry, and they find your corruption... delicious."

To Reeves, it would sound like Mick speaking with particular intensity. But to Weiss—and to the entity within him—it carried the full weight of a Great Marquis of Hell's authority.

The shadow-things beneath Weiss's skin grew more agitated, their movements visible now as rippling patterns that travelled up his neck and across his jawline. One emerged briefly from the corner of his eye, a tendril of absolute darkness that withdrew before Reeves could notice.

Weiss's body convulsed once, violently, his spine arching at an angle that threatened to snap vertebrae. His eyes rolled back, showing only whites, then returned—but changed. The pale blue had been replaced by absolute darkness, pupils expanded to consume iris and sclera alike. Not merely black, but a darkness that seemed to have depth, to extend beyond the physical confines of his skull.

"Very well, Great Marquis," the entity spoke through Weiss's mouth, the words emerging with a terrible duality—Weiss's voice intertwined with something that sounded like stone grinding against metal. "The sigil marks those in service to Baalberith, keeper of the infernal archives. The operation on Earth is overseen by Vassago, one of his lesser servants."

Reeves had gone absolutely still, her trained response to danger overridden by the unnatural temperature drop and Weiss's bizarre behaviour. Her hand had moved to her extendable baton, but she made no move to draw it. Though she couldn't see the shadow-things moving beneath Weiss's skin, some primal part of her brain registered the wrongness of what sat across from them.

The entity continued speaking, each word causing the shadow-creatures to writhe more intensely beneath Weiss's flesh, creating visible distortions that Reeves somehow failed to notice—her mind perhaps protecting her from what it couldn't comprehend.

"The human side operates through shell companies. Sunlight Cleaning Services, Brighter Path Immigration Consultancy, and New Dawn Logistics. They gather the young ones for the ritual."

"What ritual?" Mick demanded, feeling Marchosias coiled within him, directing the shadow-things with silent commands.

Weiss's body jerked again, head lolling to one side at an unnatural angle, then snapping upright with mechanical precision. A shadow-creature briefly emerged from his ear, a thin tendril that probed the air before retreating. The sight would have driven most humans to terror, but Reeves's eyes somehow slid past it, focusing solely on Weiss's face.

"Thirteen children," the entity hissed. "Thirteen vessels with specific qualities. Innocence corrupted through trauma, untainted by previous possession. The ritual requires three days of preparation—specific sequencing of fear, pain, and despair to create perfect resonance."

The parallel to Jamie's three days of captivity wasn't lost on Mick. Cold rage flooded his system, but beneath it lay a terrible clarity.

"You were practising," he said quietly, understanding dawning like ice water in his veins. "With Jamie and the others. You were preparing yourself to recognise the right kind of victims."

"I had different motivations then," the entity admitted through Weiss's distorted mouth, as a shadow-creature emerged briefly from between his lips, tasting the air before disappearing back inside. "But yes, the method proved useful to the greater work. The suffering of children creates unique energy signatures, particularly valuable to entities like us."

"When?" Reeves demanded, her voice remarkably steady given the circumstances. "When is this ritual supposed to happen?"

"Three nights from now. The dark moon. They need one more child to complete the thirteen."

The overhead lights began to flicker more violently, the electrical system struggling against the supernatural presence in the room. The camera in the corner—the one that should have been recording everything—sparked once, then went dark. The frost on the one-way glass had spread to cover the entire surface, obscuring whatever observers might have been watching from the other side.

Reeves stood, gathering her belongings with forced calm. "This better not be another game, Weiss. If you're lying—"

"I'm not," the entity interrupted, its voice harmonizing with Weiss's in a discordant chord that hurt the ears. "He has told you everything he knows. Now go."

With a silent command from Marchosias, the shadow-creatures retreated, slithering out from beneath Weiss's skin and flowing back across the table like oil across water. They disappeared into Mick's sleeves, reabsorbed into the darkness from which they had been birthed. Their departure left no mark on Weiss save for a greyish pallor and a fine sheen of sweat that could be attributed to the stress of interrogation.

As they moved toward the door, Mick paused, one last question burning within him. "How long have you had your... passenger?"

Weiss's eyes—still those terrible black pits—darted to the shadows in the corners of the room, which had begun to pulse and swell like living things. "Since university. It helped me access certain... desires I was afraid to acknowledge. Helped me overcome moral hesitation." His voice dropped to a whisper. "But it's nothing compared to what you carry. He was right to be afraid."

The guards returned to escort Weiss back to his cell, clearly disturbed by the sudden temperature drop in the room but oblivious to the supernatural exchange that had transpired. As they led him away, Mick heard the faint voice of the lesser demon one final time.

"We won't speak of this, Great Marquis. You have my oath."

"See that you don't," Marchosias replied. "I would hate to demonstrate what else I can do in darkness."

In the corridor outside, Reeves turned to Mick, her professional mask shattered beyond repair. Her face had gone pale, bloodless around the lips, eyes too wide and fixed.

"What the hell happened in there?" she whispered, her voice barely audible even in the quiet hallway. "His voice... the temperature... it was like..."

"The truth," Mick said simply, as they walked toward the sunlight.

Behind them, frost continued to spread across the walls of the interview room, creeping outward from where Weiss had sat. By evening, maintenance would be called to investigate why that particular room remained cold no matter how high they set the thermostat. They would find no mechanical explanation, nor understand why electronic equipment placed in the room invariably malfunctioned.

Some stains, once absorbed, never truly fade.