Malevolence (Dahlia Saga Book 4) Read online

  Copyright

  Malevolence by Natalie Bennett/BB Books

  © 2019 by Natalie Bennett. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. KU98

  Editing By: Pinpoint Editing

  Cover Design: Opulent Swag and Designs

  Dahlia Saga

  The Dahlia Saga contains extremely dark themes and is not intended for the faint of heart.

  Please note this is a work of fiction meant only for entertainment purposes. It does not mean that I condone the activities portrayed within. These books contain multiple triggers.

  *Recommended reading order. *

  Malice

  Obscene

  Depravity

  Malevolence

  Iniquity

  Debauchery

  Malicious

  Synopsis

  She was a mother.

  She was a bride.

  Now she’s merely a woman trapped within a shattered mind.

  With a body full of scars and a past forever gone, at Château Dahlia carnage continues to unravel, and ghosts rise from the dead.

  Sadist to masochist.

  Monster to monster.

  Malice and Malevolence collide.

  “Je t’aime.”

  “Moi, non plus.”

  Malevolence

  Malevolence is a follow up to Malice, book one in the Dahlia Saga. If you were a fan of how that book ended, you may not like this one. This book was written to bridge the gap in the saga leading to Iniquity, the follow up to Depravity, book three. There are small hints of what’s to come in future books dropped throughout this one.

  This is Julian’s HEA and the ending of his story, something I thought this character deserved. (he will still make appearances in the future.)

  I hope you enjoy. ??

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dahlia Saga

  Synopsis

  Malevolence

  Playlist

  EPIGRAPH

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Iniquity

  Excerpt

  Other books

  Stay In Touch!

  Playlist

  (Spotify)

  5FDP—Gone Away

  Daughter‑‑Medicine

  Jacob Lee—Demons

  Fuel—In My Hands

  Shinedown‑‑‑Devil

  Creed—Thousand Faces

  5FDP—Digging My Own Grave

  Flora Cash—You’re Somebody Else

  10 Years‑‑Wasteland

  5FDP—I Refuse

  Breaking Benjamin—What Lies Beneath

  One Republic‑‑Apologize

  Breaking Benjamin—Dear Agony

  Billie Ellish—Six Feet Under

  Crossfade‑‑Cold

  Adele—When We Were Young

  BANKS—Bedroom Wall

  Seether‑‑Broken

  BANKS—Contaminated

  Sam Smith—Dancing With A Stranger

  Sasha Sloan—Version Of Me

  Godsmack—Under Your Scars

  EPIGRAPH

  "You hold the answers deep within your own mind.

  Consciously, you've forgotten it.

  That's the way the human mind works. Whenever something is too unpleasant, to shameful for us to entertain, we reject it.

  We erase it from our memories.

  But the imprint is always there."‑‑Evanescence

  Chapter One

  Blood.

  Garish red in color.

  Metallic in taste.

  Crucial for survival.

  There was something absolutely fascinating about the substance that flowed through our veins.

  I watched it pool onto the concrete floor, the pitter-patter drowned out by the man gasping for air. He dangled helplessly from the ceiling, his bare and broken feet slowly splitting apart from the hooks I’d pushed through them some time ago.

  With the flesh splitting like the end of a fraying rope, they wouldn’t hold him much longer, eventually tearing clean through. With the other lacerations on his body, he’d be dead by then. Well, for his sake he had better be or we’d have to start all over with another body part.

  A quick glance at the wall clock showed it was ten to eleven. That was good enough for me, I’d done more than enough for one showing. I took a silent count to three and then rose to my feet.

  There was a click in my right knee, not loud enough for the viewers to hear, or anyone else for that matter, but I knew it was there.

  It was hard to ignore changes within your own body, welcome or not, and this was of the latter variety.

  It hadn’t flared up in a while. So, I suppose it could be worse. Some may say I was lucky that was all that afflicted me, that I should count my blessings, be grateful I only occasionally needed to use a cane. But that was precisely the problem. The reason why I needed it in the first place.

  Going to the far side of the room, I flipped a switch to cut the live feed and change the lighting from red to normal. Now fully able to see the man in all his agonized glory, skin the fine color of pallor and wavering in and out of consciousness. I estimated he had maybe thirty minutes tops. There was nothing to do until then. Sure, I could end him now. But why should I?

  I didn’t know a damn thing about this unfortunate fuck other than he’d been sent to my Dahlia for this purpose.

  Therefore, I felt no need to grant him mercy. I washed my hands, cleaning them with a special solution to rid all traces of what I’d been doing the past two hours.

  Once I was finished, I stepped out into the corridor, closing the door to my playroom behind me. The hall was empty. Every indicator light above the remaining solid black doors was green, making me the last one to leave tonight. I left mine on red so anyone who ventured down here would know I wasn’t done yet.

  I headed back towards the main portion of the Chateau, already pondering my next show. The transitional chandeliers hanging above me were on low. Their gentle glow illuminated the dark damask wallpaper lining both sides of the hall.

  All was still this evening, no hungry cries from either of the twins since they were at home tonight.

  It was always Julias. Morgaine was such a quiet little thing compared to him. I wondered if that would have any impact on their personalities. At four months old it was too early to tell.

  As routine dictated, I found myself down in the study, settled on the settee with a fire going and glass of bourbon in my hand. Warmth and pure silence caressed my skin, seeping into my every pore with a meditative quality. Not a soul lingered on the first floor other than myself, but I wasn’t alone.

  Above the mantle hung a portrait of the most beautiful
thing I’d ever seen and being near it made me feel as if I was near her. Of course, I knew it was nothing more than a goddamn painting, but it’s all I had left. Fresh flowers were on the mantle just beneath it. I never bothered with visiting the cemetery anymore.

  Our graves were in the same plot, but only one would hold the remains of a rotting body. The other would always be more for show, a monument.

  It was always during these times of quiet that I had a soulful reflection. Memories of the past would seep to the forefront of my mind and beg for reexamination. It’d been so long since then, the day everything came crashing down. Quite literally.

  The memory never faded. If anything, it had grown stronger, more vivid with every passing day, but that didn’t stop the world from spinning circles around my grief and regret. It mattered little that I lost my wife and my son lost his mother, too young to even remember her. Life simply went on.

  My bereavement was ironic really, don’t you think? When considering who I was and the legacy I had spent so much time ensuring would go on for years to come.

  Then there were lives I took and would continue to take without remorse. Did I really have a right to be upset? Was the anguish I carried not fucking absurd?

  I nursed the rest of my drink slowly, forever wondering what things would be like if she were here with me. If life had gone on the way it had back then, I wasn’t entirely sure she’d have made it this long anyway.

  Yet, when Porter let me know he’d heard a rumor that she made it out, I chased every lead imaginable like a dog after a bone, foolishly believing she was somehow alive.

  In the end I had to come to terms with the fact that the woman I loved was gone forever and the feeling was akin to losing her all over again. I’d been doing well with moving on before then. Not in the sense I was trying to forget her, but I was no longer spending my every waking moment obsessing over what went wrong. This pointless quest dug everything back up.

  I may not have had a right to grieve, but I fucking missed her. I still adored that mess of a woman after all these years.

  I wasn’t close to being over it. I’d simply gotten to the point where I could live with it. I had no other option. It wasn’t healthy to dwell. And if there was some other place waiting when we departed from this one, I only hoped that she’d somehow found peace there. That’s all I could do. No amount of analyzing or reminiscing would turn back the hands of time and return her to me.

  So, no matter how long the day was, whether I took a life or not, I always made time for this. These late evenings by the fire were a remedy of sorts. And while it wasn’t enough, this was better than nothing.

  Chapter Two

  I once tried to kill myself.

  You can surmise things didn’t quite work out. Whatever I did failed. By the looks of things, it went tragically wrong. The doctor saved me, put back together my head and righted broken limbs. I had no recollection of this. He relayed the events when I was coherent enough to understand.

  I was inclined to believe him. It’s not like there was anyone else around to tell me any differently. And I was here. My heart still beating, lungs expanding with every breath that passed through my lips. The doctor had saved my life when all I’d wanted to do was die. After all this time I still didn’t have the faintest idea why.

  I rolled onto my side and dragged the duvet up to my chin. In a few minutes I would leave the bed and go into the bathroom, just as I did every night before this, and would continue for many more after. I wallowed in this tiring monotony. No matter what I did sleep chose to be evasive.

  The world around me was dark and silent, candles lit hours ago now burnt to snubs, time measured only by the numbers displayed on my digital clock. Finally shoving the blanket down, I got up and slid my feet into the fuzzy slippers I kept by my bedside.

  Once I turned on a lamp I went to the sole window in the room and peered out. The long drive was empty, Doctor Nester’s car nowhere in sight. He must have been in town still, slaving away at his clinic. Nothing new or unusual about that.

  With a small sigh, I let the thick panel fall back into place, and then headed for the small bath attached to my room, flicking on the switch before I stepped inside. I shut the door behind me, so nothing was reflected in the mirror other than myself. This too was another part of my nightly repetition.

  In the glow of the florescent light, I was able to see every inch of my face. All my scars glared at me, ugly and red. Nester claimed they appeared differently to him, faded to nearly the same color of my skin. Dragging a finger over the one above my left brow, I found that hard to believe.

  There was one on the column of my throat. Another on my chest, hidden beneath my maroon sleeping gown.

  The joint of my arm.

  A few on my legs.

  And if I lifted my hair all the way up, there was a jagged line near the base of my scalp where it’d been stapled back together. I hated that one the most. It represented the day I’d irreparably damaged myself. Memories spilled out and remained scattered when everything else got put back in. All these scars were reminders of what I had done. They were marks of shame as brazen as a scarlet A.

  The only ones that had never bothered me weren’t really scars at all. They were more of a faded imprint on my thighs. Pulling open the medicine cabinet, I grabbed my lip balm, ignoring the top shelf entirely. There were different pills on that one.

  Some for sleeping, another for pain, and some to stabilize my mental state. Those last ones I did my best to stay far away from, followed by the first. I had a fear of falling asleep and never waking up, and I didn’t care for using a drug to regulate my behavior. As for pain, that served as a reminder that I was here, and no matter how long It’d been, there were days I really needed that reminder.

  I applied my balm, brushed my hair back into a ponytail, and then retreated into the bedroom. The bed beckoned but I knew there was no point. I grabbed my throw from the recliner in the corner, and then went outside. Air sharp and crisp filtered into my lungs, a reprieve from the suffocating confines of my room.

  I passed by neatly trimmed hedges, listening to the chirping of crickets. When I got to the rear of the house, I went directly to the patio furniture.

  I sat on the wicker sofa and wrapped my blanket around my shoulders.

  The lone outside light was all I needed to make out surroundings. There wasn’t much around the tiny Tudor. It sat smack-dab in the middle of the surrounding towns, like the center of a compass. Riverview on the left, where Doctor Nester’s clinic was. A few smaller ones surrounded us, but I never went to those either. I only got away once or twice a month and it was always to Navarre.

  The nearest neighbor was a mile or two away, making this place practically secluded. I was in a bubble of desolation. It was always silent, and I was mostly always alone. When landscapers came to cut the field across the street, I was reminded that there was an entire world beyond these paneled walls, but something in the very pit of my soul became unsettled when I thought of going to explore it.

  Housework, books, and mindless television were my sole source of entertainment and daily repetition. Life could have been simple if my mind didn’t continue to present me with distorted memories. They were a constant reminder that there was more to my story than an accident, and as of late I was growing increasingly restless with not knowing what it was.

  Things came to me in fragments, like sharpened needles skimming over my flesh but never piercing it. The cherub face of a baby. Eyes a brilliant shade of green. A barn. Blood. The color red. Occasionally a name that I couldn’t place or connect to.

  I’d asked Doctor Nester again and again to tell me about who I was once, but his answer had always been the same. “When the timing is right.”

  After a while of repeating myself and getting the same response I let it go. I let it go and now that decision was haunting me.

  I wanted to know what had led me to the choice I made, that flawed me in this way. Why there was a heav
y sadness I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried. What the meaning behind the fragments were.

  My past was a book of pages I couldn’t read and struggled to decipher. I’d let it sit on a shelf gathering dust for what felt like ages. I was afraid of what it might reveal, what horrors and heartbreak may linger within, but not as scared as I was when I considered never finding out who I really was.

  Chapter Three

  The silence from the previous evening seemed almost like a distant memory. Replenishing my assets always set the Dahlia abuzz. As did relinquishing them. It was out with the old and in with the new, so to speak.

  “Mr. Andreou,” one of the regular stockers greeted with a nod of his head.

  Knowing every individual who came to and from my home, it took a mere second for me to place his face with a name.

  “Corbin,” I acknowledged.

  The older man he was pushing in a wheelchair released a soft groan as they disappeared into the holding room. The sobs and pleas full of despairing confusion had already started up, future Dahlia starlets coming to their senses. It was always the same routine with these people, begging to know what was going on and where they were. Year after year, it was the same routine and I’d grown so bored of the sound of screams.

  I leaned against the wall and watched as a few cleaners went from room to room making sure everything was pristine and ready for the next evening, my playroom included. When I felt the vibrating of my phone, I moved away from the noise, exiting back into the main hall.

  “Hello,” I answered after checking the caller I.D

  “Julian, how goes it?”

  “The same.”

  “Good. Good. Listen, I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “Do you?” I questioned, slightly intrigued. Thomas had never asked for anything as far as I knew. He came to the Dahlia to sate his own desires and was a close friend of my fathers’, but for the most part the man kept to himself and the people in town were fond of him.

  “Yes…It’s about a woman.”