KALLUM
A rapid knock jars me from sleep.
My first thoughts are groggy and laced with violent tendencies toward nurses, until my eyes adjust to the dim light bathing a foreign room.
The frantic knock sounds again. I drag my body out of the hotel-room bed and pull on a T-shirt. As I swing the door open, I find little Halen on the other side.
She’s wearing tight black leggings and a long-sleeved, fitted nightshirt—one that makes it painfully evident there’s no bra beneath. My gaze lingers on the enticing oval outline of her nipples a moment too long before I find her face.
She’s all soft features and heightened vulnerability at this hour, and I feel her all the way down to my fucking marrow.
Thrusting a to-go cup of coffee toward me, she says, “Get dressed and wake Dr. Verlice.” Her gaze tracks over my chest, searing my skin where her eyes touch the exposed ink of my neck and arms.
She averts her eyes as I accept the paper cup. The warmth against my palm induces a fierce hunger. “Why?”
“We’re going to the crime scene.”
I take a sip of black coffee, savoring the hit of caffeine as it rushes my system. “Why?” I ask again.
Impatience creases her sultry mouth into her pouty expression that drops right to my dick. It’s too damn late—or early—to guard my bodily, carnal reactions from her.
“Nietzsche,” she says, leaning against the doorpost. “You brought up a good point before. You’re a professor. So you’re going to teach me, Professor Locke.”
Goddamn. I don’t even try to curb the wicked smile that tugs at my lips.
“Don’t say anything,” she warns. “Just get your shit.”
It’s three a.m., the iconic witching hour, in the middle of the killing fields. The marsh is wet and stagnant, making my clothes cling to my skin like the air of a damp cellar. The sounds of restless insects vibrate against the reeds as the two tagalong agents set up a spotlight.
As the light flicks on to illuminate the eerie trees of the first crime scene, Halen turns off her flashlight. She’s staring at the ring of burnt reeds, lost in her thoughts.
“Take your podium, professor,” she says, turning her gaze on me expectantly.
A devious thrill surges my blood. The way she says professor does something dangerous to my ego. Makes me want to teach her all about the bad things that go bump in the night and make her scream.
Her hazel eyes reflect the spotlight like a deer caught in a headlight. The cliché analogy suits her well right now, as I imagine her poring over research into the late hours, adrift and consumed with panicked frustration, trying to puzzle together the association to Nietzsche.
The dark circles beneath her flashing silver eyes look like bruises, and the sight tugs at some foreign feeling inside, and my desire to help her grasp more than just this concept grips me fiercely.
I place my coffee on the supply table left behind by the techs. “Where do you want me to begin?” I don’t try to mask the exasperated edge in my tone.
“From the top,” she demands.
I gift her a strained smile. “Three thousand B.C. it is, then.”
Dr. Verlice groans into his cup, and I bask in his torment. I need to get rid of him soon.
I spin my thumb ring around three times before I dive in. “Good girls in my class take their seats.”
Halen doesn’t appear amused by my sarcasm as she clears off a space on a cooler to use as a bench. “Walk me through every thought you had when you first saw this scene.” She sets her phone to record, but also breaks out a pen and her notebook.
I lean back against the table, palms braced on the edge. I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to impress with my mind—but I’m far more tempted to lure Halen out into the marsh and sinfully feast on her until my bones ache from gluttony.
I rub the back of my neck and breathe out the tension from my muscles. “First, a history lesson,” I say, my gruff voice raking the air. “Everything connects. When you delve down one rabbit hole just to end up in another identical hole, and experience that unsettling sense of déjà vu, it’s simply the history of the world repeating itself. We humans like to think these correlations are mysterious insight, some divine wisdom. When really, everything connects, because it’s all been done before. Only one mind, one consciousness, is observing those histories for the first time.”
“In psychology,” Halen says, “we call that Beiner Meinhof Phenomenon.”
“In philosophy, we call it synchronicity,” I fire back.
She jots down a note, and I’m agonizingly aware that the only thing in nature separating her skin from mine is her flimsy shirt. I fist my hand and shift my attention to the barren marsh trees.
“The number three,” I state, “is a spiritual number, as we established. Nearly every society in history references a devotion to this number in order to ascend. Be it to heaven, or to an enlightened plane of the mind. And, Halen, you’ll appreciate that it’s even referenced in modern psychology. The law of three stages suggests that your sociology is the most advanced science humankind has left to discover before we are to become a fully enlightened species.”
She listens with rapt attention, revealing the side of herself made of raw, naked vulnerability. This is an area out of her comfort zone. I can mold and shape her with a selective delivery of information, and I’m so fucking tempted…
“There are two histories,” I say to her, leashing the terrible compulsion. “Public knowledge passed down through the generations, and secret knowledge passed down to the elite few.”
Her eyes alight on me as the connection dawns. “Secret societies.”
The way she says it, so cavalier, so accepted and logical, lets me know she’s done her research thus far and has no personal reservations. Not the way the feds will have when she tries to feed this theory to them.
“Yes, a hidden wisdom. Otherwise referred to as mystery schools. Let’s follow the evidence.” I walk toward her. “You’ve already established your link to Socrates.” I sweep my hand out to encompass the scene. “The removal of the eyes denotes searching for an enlightened wisdom unable to be seen by the physical realm, an unseen knowledge.”
After she writes a note, she promptly curls her fingers toward her palm in a gesture to urge me on. I can’t help but smile at my eager student.
“Socrates’ student, Plato, initiated”—and that word is crucial for later—’the Platonist school of thought, which was the very first academy. We’ll skip the boring topics of this institution and jump right into the celestial. Theory of Forms, metaphysics, body of light—”
“Which is…what?”
“Astral projection.” I nod toward her cooler bench, and she only hesitates a moment before she clears her satchel to allow me to sit.
Progress. I seat myself next to her, and even though I keep a good six inches between us, our bodies hum at a high frequency, a charged current snapping like a magnetic force to draw us together.
“Plato and his student…” I trail off, waiting for her to fill the blank.
Her weary sigh fans my cheek, eliciting a violent craving. “Aristotle,” she answers.
“They taught us that the stars are composed of an unearthly matter. According to the masters, the spiritual element of the mind, the psyche, was made of this mystical material. Hence, the reason why the stars govern our lives.”
“Astrology,” she surmises with an air of logic, but it’s the dewy glow of her eyes that conveys I’m touching on something divine within her own soul.
I smile. “Which is why they believed the psyche could be projected out into the universe.”
“Okay, Kallum. I understand the basis of the theology.” She angles her body toward mine. “But how does any of this parallel to Nietzsche?”
“I offered you the cliff notes. You’re the one who wanted to take the scenic route through philosophy.”
She presses the end of the pen to her lips, and I’ve never been more envious of an inanimate object. “Proceed,” she allows.
“All of the above is to preface what is not recorded in history,” I say. “We only know of the unwritten doctrines because Aristotle cited them once in a dialogue. These doctrines were highly secretive, passed down orally to only the most trusted philosophers. Such teachings centered around the primeval wisdom of ancient sages, such as Hermes Trismegistus.”
Halen regards me seriously. “An example of such teachings?”
And here is where the tide turns. “The divine ability to deify man through knowledge.”
The night clings to the silence as it wraps us, a cool embrace to suppress all other sounds, an absence of the senses. Now it’s just the two of us in the darkness.
Dr. Verlice has drifted off to my lecture. The stalker agents have lost interest in monitoring me and have inserted earphones to watch their devices.
Halen and I exist in this moment on a plane of our own, where—if I reach her, touch her—she might let me break through.
“So to recap,” I say, resting my palms on my thighs. “Aristotle was the father of Western esoteric religions. The poet Dante even claimed he was ‘the master of those who know’, giving credence to the existence of mystery schools and their hidden wisdom. And the god Hermes gifted this divine, hidden wisdom to man to be passed down from sages to philosophers, and so on and so on. To those deemed worthy.”
“So all the—” she makes air quotes “—divine wisdom was just handed down to select sects. And for thousands of years, no one ever accidentally let the secrets to the universe slip to a wider audience.”
It’s a difficult concept for a student of psychology and logic to grasp. “Here’s a rational construct. Ivy League colleges and their elite alma matters. Their code of initiation and inside secrets, all passed down from generation to generation, all stemming back as far as Aristotle’s first institution of higher learning. The academy wasn’t established for the public, though over the years it did evolve. But the architecture is still in place in every elite school. Only the select few are initiated, and those few go on to become presidents, leaders, CEOs of fortune 500 companies—”
She nods and holds up her hand. Then jots a sloppy note. “Got it. Conspiracy theories…”
I chuckle. “Call it what you want, it doesn’t offend me, Halen. But the people who believe, believe wholly. They believe in this hidden wisdom and its power so fiercely that entire religions have been founded upon its teachings.”
A serious expression traps her features, and I swear she’s made of ethereal matter herself. “And one such person who believed was Nietzsche,” she reasons.
“Thus concludes our intro into philosophy,” I say, stretching my neck.
“Kallum…” She taps her phone to display the hour. “I don’t have any more time for the scenic route. I have to give a detailed update to the FBI in less than three hours.”
Pivoting my body toward her, I move in a little too close. Her breathing shallows, her gaze wide and anxious as I reach down between us. My fingers graze her thigh as I touch her phone to kill the recording app.
A wary edge frames her delicate features as she studies me, waiting for what happens next. The demanding impulse to sweep the stray lock of white behind her ear thunders through me.
“Before we make our final descent into the abyss of philosophy…” I stand and motion for her to join me. “We need to take a walk in your perpetrator’s footsteps.”
A moment of hesitation, then she sets her notebook aside. As she gets to her feet, she crosses her arms and casts a look at the sleeping agents in the SUV.
“You can ask them to join us,” I offer. “If that will make you feel safe.”
She wraps her arms tighter around her midsection, shielding herself from the early morning chill. I remove my jacket and hold it open for her in offer.
Dark eyebrows draw together over cautious eyes, her walls erecting to shut me out. I grasp the collar and dangle the garment out to her instead. “Don’t make me watch you freeze, Halen.”
Resigned, she accepts the jacket and slips her arms inside the sleeves, forgetting about her fear of being alone with me. I suppress a smile at how my jacket dwarfs her, but some other intense feeling licks my insides at seeing her petite body in my clothes.
Halen pushes her hands into the pockets and looks over the jacket. “It’s comfortable, warm,” she says. But her drawn features reveal the distress trying to crack her surface, and how hard she’s pushing back against that emotion.
The yearning to scratch her surface burns through my veins, a threat to consume—but I tamp down the urge. Patience may not be one of my virtues, but delayed gratification is far more appealing than any virtue.
Leaving behind the safety of the lighted crime scene, we start out into the marsh, where the dark is absolute and presses against us like an entity.
“The new moon denotes new beginnings,” I say, tilting my head up toward the moonless sky. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”
Halen treks deliberately beside me, careful of her steps. “I’m not sure what I believe anymore.” Her confession is as vulnerable and transparent as the sky in the open field. “But what I do care about is snake bites.”
She goes to light her phone, and I say, “Leave it off.” She can’t confront her snake, her underworld, if she’s never bitten. “The cosmos are viewed more clearly in the dark.”
“Snake bites,” she stresses, even though she’s wearing mud boots.
Our fear of the unknown, of what we can’t discern in the dark, is an inherent fear. It teases out our universal fear of death.
“The light won’t protect you from snakes.” I glance over at her. “Or any other devils of the night.”
Halen stops walking, forcing me to halt and turn around to face her.
Suddenly, she says, “Before, when I said you frightened me…” She trails off, gathering her nerve. “You don’t scare me the way you want to, Kallum.”
The illuminated crime scene frames her silhouette, transforming her into a celestial creature of myth, the moon goddess Selene incarnate. I have to stalk closer to make out her eclipsed features, and I don’t stop walking until I’m towering over her, so close I can hear her uneven breaths.
She looks up into my face and, this time, I don’t deny myself what I want.
I raise my hand and trap the defiant lock covering her eye. Sweeping my fingertips across her soft cheek, I guide her hair behind her ear, letting the pads of my fingers linger on the delicate curve of her neck.
A violent tremble racks her body. Her lips part, her breath a tease against my mouth, her sweet scent a fiery lash across my senses, as those silvery eyes glisten with starlight and fear and so much want it spears my rib cage.
As I drop my hand, I lower my mouth to her ear. “I think I scare you exactly how I want to, sweetness.”
She takes a reflexive step back, putting distance between us. “You said you wouldn’t touch me.”
“I said I’d try…and I also said I’d try not to call you endearments.” I eat the steps necessary to bring us together. “But we can’t always resist our most coveted desire.”
Her eyes burn as hot as the stars. “Carve it in a sigil on your skin and never think of it again.”
She takes off then, marching past me and heading deeper into the marshland. I follow, because I have no choice, and I’m also not sure if she realizes where she’s going.
I’m not far behind when I see what Halen doesn’t. I capture her around the waist and draw her back against my chest before she can take another step.
The burn of her fear tunnels down my throat, practically setting my insides on fire, as she tries to fight free of my arms. “Let me go—”
“If I do that—” I band my arms around hers, trapping them against her sides and her body against mine “—then you’ll never get the stench of death off you.”
Confusion stills her fight until she looks down, then she instinctively pushes back against me to escape the mutilated remains of the deer.
“Why didn’t they mark this area off?” Her tone has gone from panicked to incredulous as she relaxes into the arms of her perceived killer.
And I’m not above feeling—greedily, wickedly—every inch of her warm body pressed against me.
Awareness settles over her as the silence thickens. The air turns electric, enfolding a heated current around us. As she begins to turn, I loosen my hold and allow her to face me. She doesn’t look up as she presses her hand to my chest. I let her touch sink through me before she pushes out of my arms.
“How am I supposed to trust your intent here, Kallum,” she says, “leading me into the deserted marsh on a new moon…?” Her questioning voice quivers, either from the chill or our proximity, I’m not sure. But my jacket is of no more use, and I have the sudden, fierce desire to strip it away.
She inhales a steadying breath and finally drags her gaze upward to meet mine. “I think your intent is to maliciously toy with me,” she accuses.
I remain silent. I won’t justify any of my actions.
“Say something now, Kallum…something that will change my mind, or I swear I’ll file the paperwork to send you back.”
“Do you want a clever lie? Or the truth?”
“The truth,” she says with no hesitation.
A deep chuckle booms from my chest. Her eyebrows knit together. I’d think the crease between her brows was cute if her statement wasn’t so untruthful itself.
“We are base creatures, little Halen,” I say. “We can pretend to be more evolved than our heathen ancestors, but we’re just flesh and bone. Carnal desires and the need to be sated. Even the enlightened masters of antiquity caved to their fleshly desires.”
She shakes her head. “That didn’t answer my question at all. Are you fucking with me, Kallum?”
I drag in a lungful of sodden air, detesting that we’re doing this here in a swamp. “Nothing has changed for me since that day I approached you at the university,” I say, setting the truth free.
“You approached me to glean information on the case,” she says, all logical accusation.
“I approached you because I was curious about you. Because your hypnotic eyes and your goddamn perfect, alluring body punched me in the gut, and I’ve never felt such sweet pain.”
She looks down at the reeds, then her flashing eyes pin me. “None of this… Nothing you say makes sense.”
A defeated smile pulls at my mouth. “That’s because you’re so lost.”
Even now, her pain clouds her reason. She’s fighting for a rational grasp on the moment, on her life, and her bottom has all but fallen out, leaving her suspended in an abyss.
I want to be the one to find her. I want to be the one to descend with her to the depths.
I want to be the one to devour her pain.
She swallows hard, tugging my jacket around her tighter. “Did you kill Wellington?” she demands. “Did you commit the Harbinger killings? Did you mutilate those victims, Kallum?”
I appreciate her finally dropping the pretense and asking me outright.
This time, when I move in close to her, I don’t plan to let her escape. “You want the answers so badly it’s driving you fucking mad.”
She raises her chin in answer, a manic hunger waging war behind her eyes. “Yes.”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” I say. “I’ll give you every answer you seek.”
Something in my expression must convince her, because she doesn’t deride me for being delusional or lying. Her features open, urgently willing me to say more. “Okay then. Tell me.”
I lick my lips. “Are you ready to honor your end of the deal?”
She’s indebted to me for more than a desperate deal struck at a visitation table, but let’s start there.
Her silent acceptance of our bargain infuses the stagnant marsh air. As she relinquishes her control, a thrill courses my blood, and the glass lifts to free the venomous spider.
“This is what I want, little Halen.” I trail a finger over her forearm. “Trust my process, my methods. Don’t question the course. Let your reservations go, and when the case is closed, I promise you, I’ll hold nothing back.”
Her eyes search my features, trying to discern the truth or uncover a loophole, but there is only us and the darkness that surrounds us.
“If you give me this,” I say, dropping my hand, “then I’ll reveal every dark truth to you.”
Washed in the pale light of the marsh, she holds my gaze with a measure of uncertainty.
She wants the answers so desperately—how much is she willing to surrender?
After a weighty stretch of contemplation, she extends her hand, as if striking a deal.
With a wicked grin, I accept her hand and pull her to me. I bring her hand to my mouth and place a lingering kiss to the back, my gaze trapping hers.
“You’re going to tell me everything,” she demands.
“I’ll be an open book to you.” A threat, not a promise. “Now, ask me anything you want about Nietzsche.”
Once I release her, she hesitates before making her decision and turning toward the deer carcass. “I have an FBI briefing soon,” she says. “If I can’t give them a profile to narrow down a suspect, then I have to give them a useful lead.”
I rummage around the reeds until I find a decent stick. Then I lower to my haunches and probe the mutilated deer. “Did the local department or FBI process the stag?”
She glances back at the crime scene briefly. “I didn’t see any reports, but I can check. I’ll go grab my tablet.”
“No need,” I say, lifting a section of the shredded shoulder. “Light your phone.”
She does, aiming the flashlight on the decaying flesh as she covers her nose with my jacket from the stench. The remains have been picked over by the crows, making it difficult to discern, but amid the torn flesh is the distinct imprint of a bite mark.
Made by human teeth.
Halen says nothing as she takes pictures of the mark. As she inspects the rest of the mutilated carcass, it becomes evident there are also claw marks from human fingernails. What we don’t uncover is a kill shot. Not from a bullet or a bow.
“What am I looking at, Kallum?” Her low voice echos the brutality of this scene.
“The stag was torn apart by hands and teeth,” I say. “Then consumed.” A primal act that, admittedly, excites me as a scholar as much as it horrifies Halen as a criminologist hunting an offender.
“Sparagmos was part of a secret rite,” I explain. “The Greek translation is to tear or rend a living animal to pieces. Sometimes, even a human being. The primal act itself, of being dismembered, is a sacred sacrifice.”
She takes a moment to accept this knowledge, then: “You said you agreed with me that leaving the deer here was a forensic countermeasure to protect his exhibit.”
“That was before I saw the engravings.” I glance up to lock gazes with her. “And now that I have confirmation here”— I nod to the stag—“I can confidently conclude this scene is not an exhibit.” I stand and look at the trees.
I hear the music, the pipes, the drums.
I smell the earthy notes of wine and taste the copper in the blood.
I sense the energy as the thyrsus impels the earth to mark the damp soil.
I feel the frenzy, the madness.
“This is his ritual ground.”
Halen moves to stand before me. Her expression conveys her surging annoyance. “What engravings?”
It takes longer to reach the hemlock crime scene in the near pitch-black. The darkest hour is just before the dawn, or so Thomas Fuller once said, making the trek difficult until we spot the caution tape.
“You said at the diner your guy wasn’t concerned with getting caught, that he didn’t want to be caught before he was done. Add that to your profile today. Even though he tried to methodically remove all evidence, he left evidence of the ritual at the scene with the stag during the height of frenzy.”
“Suddenly you’re all terminology and level-headed deduction skills,” she says, and I hear the tangle of exhaustion and impatience creep into her voice. “And I don’t follow any of it.”
As we duck under the yellow tape, Halen pans the area with her phone light, careful of the clusters of white, poisonous flowers . “Where?” she demands.
She follows me farther past the marked-off scene to a giant black willow tree. I sweep aside the low-hanging sprays. Along the thick girth of the trunk is an engraving. “The symbol for Socrates.”
She uses her phone camera to capture pictures as I circle the trunk. On the backside is another engraved symbol. “The herd,” I tell her. “Which is the symbolism most associated with Nietzsche.”
Once I saw this, I made the connection. But there is a scholarly glut of conflicting interpretations when it comes to Nietzsche’s doctrine.
Halen snaps a picture of the carved symbol, then pins me with an accusatory gaze.
“The engravings have been seared into the bark, branded,” I say. “I’m sure the lab geeks can discern what was used.”
“That’s not important right now,” she says, tone accusatory. “You’ve known about this since before the diner, and you didn’t say anything. You’ve known the whole time we’ve been talking—”
“I didn’t know anything confidently.” Making the association to Nietzsche means nothing. Nietzsche lambasted the master philosophers of antiquity, and he’s often associated with Socrates for this reason. There are several of Nietzsche’s works that parallel to the ancient gods and philosophies.
It’s like trying to pick a needle out of a haystack, only the picker sees a stack of needles instead of hay. Philosophy is interpretation. I need to see the needle and the hay through the suspect’s eyes.
Releasing a heavy breath, she returns her attention to the symbols. “Then what do you now know confidently?”
I lower myself next to her. “A serial killer covers his tracks. He hides his kills. Performs forensic countermeasures. All because he doesn’t want to be caught, because he has a compulsion he needs to continue to feed.”
She turns wary eyes on me, and I can hear her speculative thoughts, questioning if I’m speaking from personal experience.
“Your perpetrator has no worries of being caught in the long run,” I continue. “You realized this. Matter of fact, he wants the world to know. He is bringing people a gift. He is coming. If he doesn’t believe he’s already arrived…” Then I consider the lemon he used. “No, he still has more to achieve. That’s why he backtracked to mask his practice site.”
“Kallum,” she interrupts, “what the hell are you talking about?”
I glance around, trying to locate the third symbol. There has to be a third—there are always three.
“The stag,” I say, pushing aside willow sprays as my search becomes frantic. “It was hunted and torn apart during a ritual by a man who practices very specific alchemy.” My voice falters as I uncover the third engraving.
“The symbol for Dionysus.”
A dark thrill sets my blood aflame as I run my fingertips over the Greek symbol for the god of madness and frenzy.
I found the needle.
And the haystack just went up in flames.
“Socrates. The herd. Dionysus.” I tick off the symbols on my fingers as I turn toward Halen. “The order of his ascension.”
She’s lowered her camera, no longer concerned with cataloging the scene. Her eyes are wide and flashing like a scared and wounded animal caught in a trap.
My blood is fury and blisters my veins as it rushes every artery. She has no comprehension of what we’ve uncovered, of what this entails.
“Pleasure. Madness. Frenzy.” I climb to my feet and brace my hand on the tree for support.
Halen mutters a curse and latches onto my wrist, forcing my palm to scrape down the bark as she scolds me about evidence. But I’m tunneling too far down, my mind delving to the depths, to where Dionysus dwells in the underworld.
Only Halen’s fragile, distressed voice pulls me from the brink. “Kallum, please…”
I drive my hand into my hair as I draw close to her, tearing down superficial boundaries to be near her, to feel her energy and feed off her pain. Her sweet scent of honeysuckle, the searing echo of clove that clings to her fear and scorches my throat. She could drug me with one touch.
Sheltered under the weeping limbs of a swamp tree, where Nietzsche himself would feel at peace, I find Halen’s beautiful and alarmed gaze, and I breathe in her maddening scent.
I push in so close, her back hits the tree, and I can’t stop. I clasp her face, ravenous for a taste of her.
My peripheral catches movement as she reaches out to grab hold of a stick.
I smile down at her. “We already talked about the weapons you possess, sweetness. I won’t be stopped with a twig.”
Her strained swallow presses against my palm, and she releases the branch. But something else—something dark and frightened and aware—sparks in her gaze, and I wonder what mental images are flicking through her mind.
She licks her lips, drawing my deviating thoughts to her alluring mouth. “I want you to release me.”
“Is that what you want?”
Nodding against my hands, she forces out, “Yes.”
With severe difficulty, I break away. I set her free, but only for this moment. She took hold of me from the very first instance and has cruelly kept me bound with no intention of releasing me.
Every step I take away from her, the turmoil attacking my mind lessens, until I finally inhale a breath not laced with her scent to cleanse my lungs.
“The divine madness,” I say to her, pointing toward the symbol.
“What does that mean?”
“The power to become deified through wisdom.” I widen my arms. “To become a fucking god.”
Real fear crests in her pale eyes. And I know that fear is directed toward me, not her suspect—but she has no idea how close she is to the abyss.
“Your suspect is the Übermensch.”
