KALLUM
Gray storm clouds hang over Hollow’s Row like a dark omen, forecasting bad and violent things to come. The cumulus billows of gas are the deceptive calm gathering before the storm, the harbinger of death and doom.
A bit dramatic, I admit—but I enjoy the play on words.
I watch the swollen clouds drift low in the sky as I impatiently wait across a tweed field of tall reed grass. I sink my hands deep into my pockets and lean my shoulder against the gnarled bark of a marsh tree. Agent Hernandez lingers off to the side, texting on his phone.
A dense charge pulses in the air before the lightning strike.
I remove my hands and let them hang at my sides, detecting the energy rolling through the openness as the following rumble of thunder builds into a chorus.
The moment she appears in my line of sight, lightning flickers in the dark clouds. My blood electrifies, a current webbing my veins beneath my flesh to mimic the pulsing clouds.
In that flash, I see what I’ve been searching for my whole life.
Conrad wrote: We live in the flicker. A running blaze on a plain, a flash of lightning in the clouds.
That blink of a moment.
Our existence is that fleeting.
I hold my breath, counting the seconds between, waiting for the thunder to bring her closer. My muse of heartbreak, the sweetest epiphany. If I had an infinite number of lifetimes, it still wouldn’t be enough. She’s all that I want, all that I crave, and I’m desperate to make us last longer than an ephemeral flicker in time.
Halen reaches me before another streak of light cracks the sky. She glances up, her beautiful face highlighted by the flare, then meets my gaze with a kernel of hesitation in those silvery eyes, the hue tinting to match the storm.
“You look striking.” I wink.
I reach out to sweep the shock of white from her eyes, and Halen pulls away. She gathers her long layers of dark brown hair in a low ponytail and wraps it with an elastic band.
“So cruel,” I tease.
“Are we ready?” She directs the question to the agent.
Since locating the missing victims is the highest priority, Halen has taken it upon herself—and me—to scour Leroy Landry’s home for any clues on the main suspect responsible for ritualizing body parts in the marshland.
Hernandez pockets his phone and nods to the black SUV.
As we walk toward the vehicle, I wait for him to climb in, then say, “You won’t find the victims by searching Landry’s house.”
“You’re so sure of that.” She turns her head and looks up to assess me closely. “We could skip all this bullshit right now if you want to tell me where they are, Kallum.”
I release a slow breath, leashing the destructive urge to drag her into the marsh and remind her how much she loves my touch. “Not that I don’t enjoy your scathing retorts—” I palm her waist and bring her close “—but I’m absolutely done with the bullshit. I’m no longer holding back with you, little Halen.”
She digs an elbow into my ribs, but I hold on tighter, dropping my mouth near her ear. “If Alister touches you again, I’ll flay his skin from his tendons and carve my initials in his bones.”
Halen stills at my side, whatever snappy comeback she may have stalled on her tongue as I open the SUV door for her. She hesitates, her wary gaze hung on mine, before she hoists herself up into the seat. I shut the door and seat myself in the backseat behind her.
Here’s the truth of it: I’ll take her hatred and anger, because this is difficult for her, coming to terms with reality after all that she’s suffered. Losing her memory is just more salt rubbed into the open wound of her grief.
If she wants to use me as a punching bag, I’ll take the abuse. Hell, I’ll savor every delicious second of her sweet pain.
However much time she needs to logically sort through her confusion, for her, I can even be patient. I’ve proven as much.
But I’m not her obedient little lapdog.
I won’t let anyone come between us ever again.
Not even her.
The drone of the windshield wipers fills the interior as Hernandez takes the quickest route according to the navigation. Even though it’s been proven that Landry was not the Overman, but rather a pawn likely used by the actual perpetrator, the feds are still looking at him in connection to the victims.
We drive down a gravel road and come up on a massive mansion. The monstrosity is just as the locals described: ancient and creepy. Nearly every facet of the gothic revival home is original architecture. I appreciate the ornate windows with embellished tracery. Yet I doubt the elements have been left untouched on purpose. This home has suffered neglect.
A thick ribbon of crime-scene tape wraps the yard perimeter and extends around a huge porch. Dead potted plants line the entrance as we near the front door.
Halen drapes her bag strap over her neck, then proceeds to glove her hands. She holds out a pair of disposable latex gloves to me, and I take deviant delight in tracing my finger over the chafed rope burn on her wrist.
Too soon, she pulls away and enters the house.
I stand at the entrance, inhaling the lingering scent of her ylang-ylang and clove, whetting my appetite with a hit of her fear.
Then I step over the threshold.
Not only was Landry a recluse—the locals dubbing him the hermit—he was a hoarding recluse. Stacks of old, musty newspapers tower along one wall. Magazines against another. Miscellaneous mail and papers scatter every available section of the hardwood floor that some heap of junk isn’t taking space.
Buried beneath the mounds of garbage are antique furnishings. The sprawling entryway is paneled in deep mahogany, and gothic arches frame the hallways. Moving farther into the interior, the expansive main room opens up to two ascending staircases, where towering stained glass windows reach toward a cathedral ceiling.
I can imagine the pride that once went into this home. The old money, too. Then the unfortunate decay that took root with the newest owner.
A hit of nostalgia creeps into my bones, the structure reminiscent of the home where I was raised. Home is a stretch. It had walls and furniture and old money, too—even the decay.
I lift my foot and kick a tacky leaf of paper from my boot heel, watching a bug skitter beneath another heap.
“Oh, my god,” Halen says. “There’s no way the task force could process all this. It’s impossible.”
They likely only searched long enough to uncover the proof needed to make Landry as the prime suspect. A report which noted the wine-making apparatus in the cellar, and the esoteric tomes along with a wide collection of philosophy in the library.
“Our horned hunter makes Dr. Torres look like a tidy little neat-freak,” I say. “Which doesn’t fit your profile at all.”
The person who painstakingly measured each dissected eye to display the organs on marsh trees is obsessed with order and exactness. This is the first thing I deduced when I saw the ritual crime scene.
Halen turns incensed eyes on me. “And just what happened to Dr. Torres?” she demands. “I heard he’s been admitted to his own hospital for psychiatric care.”
I glance back at Hernandez picking through a pile of comic books. Then I take a step toward Halen, watching her slight frame tense. “I have never harmed the good doctor,” I tell her honestly.
She shakes her head, appall evident in her pretty features. “You’re lying—”
I place a finger over her mouth, stopping her words. Shock prevents her from pushing me away as she stares up at me, silence fueling the anticipation between us.
I keep my finger pressed to her mouth a beat longer, then gently drag it down, letting the pad taste the softness of her lips. “As much as you enjoy making me your devil, I didn’t have to hurt him,” I say, my tone urging her to hear the truth. “Nietzsche set the bar high for mad genius, but sadly for Torres, he’s just plain-old mad.”
She blinks, gauging me through the thick fringe of her lashes, before she takes a deliberate step backward. I observe the hard swallow that drags enticingly along her neck. My gaze settles on the hollow of her throat, where the diamond from her engagement ring used to rest.
She never put the necklace back on.
“No,” she says, nodding her reply. “You don’t lie, Kallum. You just twist the truth until it’s no longer recognizable as such.”
Slipping the glove onto my hand over the bandage, I say, “That’s your philosophy, sweetness.” I push in close to tower over her. “Fortunately, my dissertation was on settling arguments, and I love to prove myself right.”
I sidestep her, in search of the one room in this dilapidated heap that may garner any real truth.
Following the rows of unopened boxes and trash, I locate the library and roll the doors open to expose an opulent room—the only room untouched by the owner’s mental illness. There is no junk or clutter here. The mahogany bookcases are full of timeworn books and some newer editions.
An intricately carved wood desk is centrally located in the room, with a globe and mapping tools. A large herringbone bricked fireplace takes up one corner, a leather reading chair neatly positioned next to the raised hearth.
Halen enters, and I feel her shiver of excitement roll under my skin.
As I walk alongside the inlaid bookcase, I probe at the glove, outlining the ring on my thumb. I reach a row of leather-bound volumes and pause to read the spines.
“Don’t touch—”
Too late to heed her warning, I pull a book from the stack. “This world has been around longer than your laws. Why try to live by them and their rules? In time, they’ll only change again. So take what you want from this life, because it only gives you a small window to choose.” I trek to the desk and crack the musty book open. “Do we really have time to wait for the task force to tag it for processing?”
Her dainty brows knit together, and I love witnessing her moral battle. She breaks rules all the time. Her methods are questionable. Yet she’s trying so hard to walk the straight and narrow when it comes to me, wary of making a mistake. I wonder whose actions she’s more worried over: mine or hers.
Such a dilemma.
I have no ethical quandary when it comes to her.
I’ll do anything.
“I’ve only seen one other first edition at an exhibition in London,” I say as I remove my glove to flip the pages. “A rare book collection from a Rutgers professor.”
Halen rushes the table. “You can’t touch it like that,” she scolds.
“Gloves are far more damaging to the aged pages than the oils on our skin,” I say.
She huffs a derisive breath. “I’m not concerned about damaging the book. Your fingerprints are now all over it.”
A smile tugs at my mouth. “Just push it to the back of the stacks,” I say, flipping a page. “They’ll never find it.”
I can feel her weighty stare on me, scrutinizing my every word.
“Isn’t the task force required to submit fingerprints to be excluded from crime scenes?” I ask.
Her mouth twists. “Yes, but it’s a stretch to include you as part of the task force.”
I touch my chest in mock offense. “The way you wound me, little Halen.”
She lowers her gaze to look at the book. “What is that?”
Holding a page mid-flip, I say, “Come around here.”
After a tentative beat, she moves to my side of the desk, though she keeps a good two feet between us. “Anything of importance to the case?”
“I won’t bite.” I eye the distance between us. “Hard.” At her refusal, I hook my finger through the beltloop of her jeans and drag her to my side.
“Kallum—”
“Aleister Crowley’s magnum opus on magick.” I point to a verse under a unicursal hexagram, which Crowley incorporated from Bruno’s figure of love. “Every intentional act is a magickal act,” I read aloud.
“Sounds remarkably similar to Nietzsche’s Will to Power,” she says.
“Good girl.” I cast an appreciative glance at her, my viscera abuzz at her nearness. Halen likes to accuse me of deceptive methods, twisting the truth, yet she has her own little tactics she employs. She’s far more intellectual and insightful than what she allows others to see.
“Crowley more than idolized Nietzsche, he declared him a profit,” I say, “but he also proclaimed himself ‘the wickedest man in the world’ and the Great Beast six-six-six. So take his eccentric declarations with a grain of salt.”
“Stimulating,” she remarks. “Are you intentionally stalling this investigation?” She glances at the shelves higher up along the walls. “I know this library is your wet dream, Kallum, but we’re here to search out any link to the victims.”
A dark thrill courses through my blood. “Oh, sweetness. I’ll swipe these books to the floor without a fucking thought if you want to put this desk to better use.” I pat the mahogany surface in challenge.
Her gaze clashes with mine, and I love the way she can’t repress the little quake rolling through her body. A crooked smile carves my mouth. “Crowley was scandalously known for his practice of sex magick,” I say. “He classified the act of sex as the most powerful expression of our will, the most potent energy source.”
Despite my desire to explore that theory this very second, I’d have to politely disagree with the master on this one. Blood is the most potent medium.
My gaze slips to Halen’s shoulder, where my teeth imprint her flesh. During our ritual, I employed a combination of mediums and expressions—blood, sex, saliva, semen—to charge a new sigil and bring her back.
The ire I see brimming in her ethereal features states how utterly I failed. “Kallum…stop,” she warns.
A deviant thought creeps from the abyss, whispering that blood sacrifice is the most concentrated form of black magick, and may be the only way to unblock her memory.
I turn my gaze back onto the book. “As you wish.”
The storm outside releases a torrent against the windows. The roaring downpour drowns out the frantic beat of my heart as Halen starts to ease away. I link my finger through that same beltloop to prevent her escape.
She casts a pointed look at my hand, then her gaze narrows on me like a devious little sprite. “Most of your power lies in intimidation.” Bravely, she steps into me. Her thighs become flush with mine, her gloved palms seek the hard plane of my chest. “But I think some of it is an act. I think…” She peels a glove off and slips a finger up to my neck, where she gingerly traces the ink, making me spellbound by her. “I think it’s a form of misdirection. One of your tricks.”
“Is that so.” My nostrils flare, her sweet scent torturously, dangerously close to pushing me over the edge. “I’m not opposed to you testing your theory, sweetness.” I lower my mouth close to hers, tasting her uneven breaths. “Say the word, and I’ll shred these musty old books while I fuck you senseless on top of them.”
She licks her lips, a goddamn taunt, and I hungrily follow the path of her tongue with a depraved craving that nearly sends me to my knees.
The dare hangs in the splinter of air between us. I know what she’s doing, but if my little profiler thinks she can psych me out by coming on strong, she’ll be sorely mistaken.
“I don’t rattle,” I say, gripping the beltloop tighter. “Hurt me or fuck me, Halen, but don’t use lame psychology tactics. It’s beneath you.”
I’m hit with a dose of her saccharine fear. Whatever she glimpses in my expression causes her to break away. My jaw sets hard. Disappointment is a fist to my guts.
“I’m tired of games,” she says, a hint of exhaustion deflating her shoulders.
“Then don’t play them.”
“I just want to find them.”
“We will.”
She searches my features, trying to suss out the truth. With a slow nod, she looks again at the bookshelves high on the wall. “This room didn’t belong to Landry,” she says, changing the topic as if the realization suddenly comes to her.
Inhaling a deep breath, I rub the back of my neck, my blood still a deafening roar inside my ears, my cock straining painfully against the closure of my slacks. I shamelessly reach down and adjust myself, loving how a pretty pink hue tinges her face at my crass act.
“You’re right. It’s too neat and organized.” I fold my arms across my chest. “And indexed. To a frightening degree. Almost an OCD-like quality.” I watch Halen move toward one of the bookcase ladders. “Where better to meditate for years in solitude than a private library. Like your own personal cave. Just like Zarathustra.”
“You failed to mention that before,” she says, her tone admonishing.
She fails to see how clearly she comes to insights when she gives in to us, freeing herself of other constraints. “The mansion is a hoarder’s den. The library isn’t. I felt it was obvious.”
“How many years did Zarathustra meditate in his cave, ten?” she says, referring to Nietzsche’s allegory, the one the Overman suspect is using as a guide to ascend to a god-like state of consciousness.
“Yes,” I respond. “Then he descended his mountain to bring the gift of the Overman to the people.” As I say it, I think about a lecture I once gave, where I lambasted Nietzsche and Jung for their blatant lifting of the shaman Primal Man. Wellington was there, my first candid interaction with him.
“A decade is a long time,” Halen says, drawing my attention. “Landry was never seen in town. No one talked to him, or communicated with him. If someone else was living in this mansion with him, would anyone know?”
“Most people don’t have the patience and discipline to meditate and study for a decade. I think you’ll find your Overman wannabe descended the mansion library much sooner.”
She nods absently, distracted. “Still, if the perpetrator spent any length of time here, then there has to be something left behind in this room.” She climbs onto the bookcase ladder.
I seat myself on the desk and pull my knee up, much more interested in Halen’s jean-clad ass as she ascends the ladder than the books. “It’s also obvious that Landry knew the perpetrator well. Landry had money, enough resources to provide the suspect with all this. A gift to someone he values, respects. They were probably close.”
She nudges the rolling ladder to the side to search a shelf. “Close like family? The background check on him turned up an estranged brother living in another state. He has no other living relatives.”
“Blood doesn’t always make family,” I say, suppressing an unwanted memory from far too long ago.
She casts a curious glance down at me, as if I’ve said something insightful.
“Don’t read into that, Dr. St. James. You know even a recluse needs an anchor, some form of human contact.”
She arches an accusatory eyebrow before she returns to her hunt.
“Landry was a sacrifice,” I say. When the perpetrator injected him with hemlock, he set Landry up to be the prime suspect. Conveniently, a dead one who couldn’t talk. “He was maybe even a willing one.”
“I considered that,” she says. “The perpetrator could have manipulated Landry to attack us and take the fall. With all this—” she fans a hand across the books “—it’s likely Landry was devoted to the perp’s belief system. He believed in a higher purpose, one he was willing to sacrifice his life for.”
She’s so fucking close, the need burns underneath my sinew, itching my bones. So close…yet she still can’t see the most obvious connection.
“Landry could’ve also known something about the perp, something incriminating. Something this person didn’t want to get out in the event they were caught.”
“Other than their identity?” she asks.
I shrug. “Every villain has their motive, sweet little Halen. Usually a virtuous one.”
While Halen seeks hidden clues, I try to curb my growing impatience. I slam the red leather book closed and set it aside, my wandering attention drawn to other objects on the desk.
“Back in the eighteenth century, there was a British secret society called the Hellfire Club,” I say, angling a map my way. “Their motto was: Do what thou will. Another take on the Will to Power.” I trace a finger over the map of the town, following creeks through the marshland and beyond. “The society met in caves. The Hellfire Caves. Rumors sparked that it was where the members offered sacrifices to Bacchus, the Roman equivalent of Dionysus. The society practiced black magic, pagan and satanic rituals, orgies.”
She peeks down at me from the top rung. “Does this have a point, Kallum?”
I smile at the way she says my name so casually when she’s distracted. “You never know what tidbit will be useful.”
“Speaking of useless information…” she says, making me chuckle. She uses her foot to roll the ladder and reposition herself. “You said at the hunting grounds that the killer chose his victim as a scapegoat. Explain.”
I rub my palms together, giving the healing, irritated cuts much needed friction. Halen accepts the truth better when she comes to her own conclusions. “What are you looking for?”
She shakes her head. “Are you going to explain what you meant back there?”
“No. Not until you tell me something first.” I push off the desk. “Why are you here with me, alone, if you truly believe I’m capable of a heinous act like the one at the hunting grounds.”
“We’re not alone. Agent Hernandez is here.” She slides a section of books aside as she plunders the top shelf. “Are you avoiding my question because you don’t actually have a theory?”
I stalk closer to the bookcase. “Are you avoiding mine because you don’t either?”
She wants me to be the killer. Locking me away forever would be so much easier for her. No conflicting feelings to confront, no dark little cravings to provoke her. If she had any evidence at all, or even a sound theory about the Harbinger crime scene, I wouldn’t be here right now.
The atmosphere of the library charges, the rain pelting the stained-glass windows to further the tense silence.
“What are you really looking for here, Halen?”
Her gaze finds mine. “The murder weapon.”
I narrow my gaze on her. “If I was the killer, I wouldn’t plant the evidence to damn me in the one place where authorities would search.”
“Then where did you plant it?” She angles her body so she can glare down at me. “There wasn’t much time, so did you stash it somewhere close to the crime scene?”
Her accusation hangs in the current snapping between us as we lock gazes.
The carving knife. The one I used during the ritual to slash my palms. On reflex, my hands curl into fists to reopen the wounds, the fresh pain satisfying.
She thinks the knife was used to kill and sever the head of the victim. She’s not here to search for that weapon. She’s here to force a confession from me.
“You’re quite adept at manipulation tactics yourself, little Halen.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s an insulting question.”
“What’s insulting is—” Her words break off as she turns and tries to reposition her grip.
I see the moment the ladder shifts, and she loses balance.
Halen’s foot slips from the rung. She curses as she futilely grasps at the rail. I rush to reach her in time, jamming my foot on the bottom rung to stop the ladder just as I catch her, curling her lithe body into mine.
For a stunned moment, she doesn’t fight me. Her hair has fallen free of the band to slip over the side of her face. Giving in to the fierce demand, I sweep the defiant streak of white behind her ear.
Drawn into the gravity of her gaze, I trail the backs of my fingers down her neck, where she’s tried to conceal the bruises beneath a layer of makeup in an attempt to keep me from them. Then I drift farther down, across the bite mark on her shoulder, over the ink on her forearm she hides under her clothes, the bruises and rope burn on her wrist, not stopping until I reach her thigh.
She tenses in my arms as I dip my hand between her legs.
“Kallum…” She places her hand over mine.
Her rioting emotions quicken her pulse, her uncertainty creased between her eyebrows. I want to smooth the divot away. I want to claim the breaths escaping her parted mouth, to taste the burn of her shattered restraint.
Any semblance of control I maintained was crushed the moment I felt her body against mine, and I brazenly slide my hand higher and touch the sigil I carved in her inner thigh. Even through her jeans, through the blood-stained bandage muting my senses, I feel the mark sealing us together.
There’s no escape for me.
I need her to remember.
Her eyes close half-mast as I graze my thumb over her thigh. “Why did you stop wearing it?”
The pressure of her hand leaves mine as she presses her fingertips to the bare notch beneath her throat. My gaze stays locked on hers, willing the truth from her lips.
She swallows, then: “I can’t…” A chime from her phone interrupts the moment. “Put me down,” she demands.
Instead, with a groan, I shift her body in my arms, forcing her legs to wrap around my hips. Then I seat her ass on the ladder rung. Reaching around her, I fetch the device from her back pocket and bring it between us.
She reaches for the phone, but I tighten my grip on it. “First, one truthful answer.”
“This isn’t a game.”
“I was never under any delusion that it was.”
She glares at me before she glances at the phone. “When we…were together,” she says, her voice a throaty rasp. “I can’t pretend it wasn’t real. Wearing Jackson’s diamond would feel like a betrayal.”
“To him, or to me?”
Her eyes spear me as the phone continues to ring. “I gave you my answer.”
I study her delicate features, feeling the misery beneath her words. I place the phone in her hand.
She glances at the screen, then answers the call. “Devyn, what’s going on?”
Her eyes drill into mine as I push in between her thighs, unashamed as I’m gifted with the slightest hitch in her voice. A smile slants my mouth.
I catch pieces of Devyn’s call in the still silence of the library. A few distinct words: Evidence. Crime scene. Questioning.
“No, no one else,” Halen says.
My hackles raise as Halen places her hand to my chest. I’m not sure if she’s attempting to push me away or ground herself to me for comfort.
“Okay,” Halen says, nodding, her gaze darting to the doors of the library. “I’m on my way.”
As she ends the call, I anchor my hands to her waist. “What did you find at the scene?”
Anxiously, she fixes her hair, tucking the loose strands into the elastic. “Let me go, Kallum.” When I don’t, she expels a lengthy breath. “Now—”
I clasp her hips and lift her off the ladder, setting her feet to the hardwood. I release her, but only so I can angle her face up toward mine. In silent petition, I demand an answer.
Halen stares up at me with intense liquid eyes. “My DNA turned up at the Harbinger crime scene,” she says. “I’m being brought in for questioning.”
She breaks my hold and shoves past me, ripping her gloves off and tossing them to the floor.
“Questioning for what? Halen, stop—”
“You win, Kallum. Revenge is all yours.”
