Cold Dark Souls : A Dark Reverse Harem Romance (Cruel Black Hearts Book 2)

by Candace Wondrak

  The Tribune’s employees filed in. Some of them were more morning persons than others were. Some of them came with their own coffee mugs while others meandered to the coffee in the back I’d made earlier. Stella came in early, still having to make up a few hours that she missed on Tuesday. She didn’t even look back at me, at my office.

  I hated that she thought she knew me, and she didn’t like me. But then again, it only meant the mask I donned for everyone else’s benefit was a good one if she couldn’t see through it. Her eyes, those blasted, pretty orbs, saw right through bullshit, usually. Mine must have been particularly thick.

  The desks were full of gossip. Since the police had officially released Sandy’s identity, everyone by now knew, and those who didn’t knew immediately after coming into work today. I’d have to clear off Sandy’s desk and hire a new person, but for now I dallied her work up between a few others. They’d handle it just fine. I told them I’d make sure to keep it in mind when I did their next reviews, which they were all too happy to hear. Everyone wanted more money. A fact of life.

  The hours crawled by, and by the time Stella was packing up, I was still no closer to figuring out a smooth way to get her to come with me. I left my office as I watched her throw her bag over her shoulder and start to head for the door. There were only two other employees still here, and they were too focused on whatever it was they were writing to pay attention.

  I caught Stella on the sidewalk. “Stella, hold up.”

  She stopped, turning to face me. It was a nice, breezy day, the temperature not too stifling but not cold, either. She wore a short-sleeved shirt and jeans. Actual jeans. Her brown hair was down, a mess, like she hadn’t brushed it this morning, but she made my heart skip a beat all the same.

  Her eyes studied me, unimpressed with whatever it was they saw. Stella said nothing, biting the inside of her cheek as she gripped the strap to her bag.

  “You have plans tonight?” I asked, hating how lame I sounded. Like a teenager asking his first girl out. Lame, stupid, and downright embarrassed. The truth was I was nervous, mostly because I’d never done this before. Showing someone who I was…it was an intimate experience.

  “Killian, I…”

  “There’s something I want to show you,” I said. “Not another date.” When she only looked at me, refusing to say more, I added, “It’s about the Angel Maker.” Once I spoke the nickname, life sprung forth on her face. I could tell I had her now; all I had to do was reel her in.

  Would I have such power over her once she realized who I was?

  She practically fell over herself when she asked, “What about him?” Stella leaned in closer, oblivious to the way she was closing the distance between us. “Was there another body found? I didn’t get any notifications…” She was about to reach for her phone in her back pocket when I shook my head.

  “I think he…I think he left me something. I found it this morning. I didn’t know what to do, so I just left it.” Could I have been vaguer and less helpful? Probably not, but I was pulling at strings here, trying to reel in a fish with no net and no boat. Hands only.

  “Why would he leave you something?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Maybe he saw us together at the press conference.”

  “And you didn’t call the cops?”

  “No, I thought you might want to see it, first.” I waited a moment before saying, “Was I wrong?”

  Stella straightened her back, thinking it over. She didn’t have to think long. “No, let’s go. I’ve been waiting for him to send me something back. Maybe this will clue me in to something he doesn’t want me to know.”

  Or something he did want her to know. Something I needed her to know.

  “Are you ready to go now?”

  “Let me lock my office and we can go,” I said, hurrying to do just that. Once it was done, I walked her to my car, mentally crossing my fingers that this would go at least semi-according to plan. I didn’t have much of a plan to begin with, so there was that.

  As I drove, I felt antsy. Made sense, considering what I was about to do. Tell her the truth, after all this time. After all that posturing, reveal myself to her in a way I’d never revealed myself to anyone before. I was not the kind of monster who liked the limelight, regardless of what Stella thought. The only limelight, the only publicity I wanted, was from her.

  We would make a great team, her and I, if only she would see it.

  Tonight, I would make her see.

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Stella

  The Angel Maker must’ve seen Killian and I together. It was the only thing that made sense. He saw us together at the press conference and got…jealous? So strange, because I didn’t think enough of myself to merit any sort of jealousy, but here we were. Killian and I, driving to his house.

  Hmm…wonder what kind of house he lived in? Surely it was a house. He was in his thirties, a bit older than me, and he was the manager at the Tribune, so he had to make enough money to live on his own. Whatever it was, the Angel Maker didn’t want to kill him, because surely if he did, he would’ve done it. A man who lived alone, caught unaware, was easy prey.

  Once he pulled in the driveway, I saw that he lived in a nice area of town. The houses were far apart, their yards decently big. Tons of privacy in a neighborhood like this. I got out of his car, leaving my bag on the seat, following him into the garage and through to the house. The interior was as nice as the exterior, but I wasn’t here to judge Killian’s decorating and painting skills.

  “Where is it?” I asked, looking around. “What is it?”

  Killian’s eyes fell to the floor. “It’s in the basement, actually.”

  The basement. Right. Because everything that’s weird and murderous always happened in a basement. I didn’t question him; why would I? Killian was the one who’d taken me to the first crime scene. He was the one who first told me to write about what I wanted to write about for the Tribune. Even if he was an ass every now and then, I owed a lot to him.

  Killian was the first to go down, flicking on the light before I trailed after him. I supposed he could’ve been taking me down into his basement to do awful things to me, but I wasn’t frightened. I couldn’t be scared. I was just me, and right now I was so curious my head hurt; must have been from all of the unanswered questions.

  Once we made it to the bottom of the stairs, he let me step around him. The basement was a thick block of concrete, holding nothing but shelves, a giant freezer, a few tables, one with a big bag over it, and…everything in it was covered with a sheet of plastic.

  Probably because of the body sitting on a chair in the middle of the room.

  Naked, the body’s head was bent back, his neck at an ungodly, awful angle. He was dead, and he smelled rancid. Still, I didn’t let the smell bother me as I took a few steps closer. Arms hanging down, eyes closed. It was almost like his body didn’t want to sit in the chair. Rigor Mortis? How long had this man been dead?

  Killian had said the Angel Maker had left him something, but he neglected to mention it was a fucking corpse.

  “How…” My voice trailed off. Killian wouldn’t understand the awe I felt. He’d hear me speak and know instantly I was as screwed up inside as the Angel Maker himself. Who else could look at a body so broken and not feel any pangs of pity or sympathy? All I saw was his white skin, the bruise on the side of his head. No cuts anywhere on the body.

  No wonder Killian didn’t call the cops. The Angel Maker had left him the biggest present of all. Was it a warning? Was he trying to warn Killian to stay away from me? The Angel Maker had nothing to worry about, because I didn’t feel those things for Killian. He was…just my boss. Nothing else. Nothing more, no matter how badly the man himself wished things weren’t.

  Whatever else I wanted to say or ask died in my throat as I neared his head, studying his face, as bent and pale and bruised as it was. His brown hair…the angle of his jaw…he was familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where.

  I stared
at him for a good minute before I remembered it suddenly: the coffee shop. I’d seen this man’s face half a dozen times before. He always sat in the corner, and he always pretended like he wasn’t watching me when I knew for a fact he was.

  How the hell did the poor fool wind up here? In fact, how the hell did he wind up in the Angel Maker’s clutches?

  I turned to look at Killian, my mouth open. I wanted to ask him about it, how he could’ve been passed out so hard during the night that he hadn’t seen or heard any of this happening, but the look on his face stopped me. He wasn’t looking at the body. He didn’t look disgusted at all.

  He was looking at me, waiting for a reaction.

  What the hell was going on here?

  “Do you recognize him?” Killian asked, a question I never expected him to say.

  “I do. I’ve seen him at the coffee shop before.” My breath came out short. Inside my chest, my heart was out of control. It beat rapidly, almost as if I knew what kind of shit I’d just stepped into.

  Killian took another step towards me. “That’s all?” The way he looked at me, like I was the only other thing in the room, made my breath catch in the back of my throat. I didn’t like how he watched me…but I also kind of did. If he could act as if there wasn’t a corpse in the room, maybe he was more my kind of man than I’d given him credit for.

  Still, it wouldn’t change my mind about him.

  “I don’t…”

  “You don’t get it,” Killian finished for me. “Look at him again, and tell me what you see.”

  Eyebrows creasing, I had no idea why he wanted me to look at the body more, but I found myself turning to gaze at the corpse once again. Was there a clue I wasn’t seeing? Something he noticed that I missed? “I see…a dead man. Early twenties. White. The guy I saw in the coffee shop.”

  Killian’s hands grabbed my upper arms, squeezing me tightly. Hard enough to elicit a natural wince from my body, but not hard enough to hurt in the way I liked when Lincoln and Edward had me. “You’ve never seen him before the coffee shop? Does his name ring a bell? John?” His lips neared my ear as he whispered, “John Woods?”

  John…John Woods? Wasn’t Callie dating someone named John? But—no, that wasn’t right, because her last name was Woods, too. Did she have a brother? My brain hurt. Why the hell couldn’t I remember? It felt like something I should definitely know, given how close I was to Callie, current fight notwithstanding.

  As my mind was lost, I realized something. “How do you know his name?” I asked, drawing out every word as I took in the fact that Killian wasn’t letting me go. His hands were strong, stronger than they looked, and his height…I remembered the feeling of being pressed against the Angel Maker’s body when his arm was around my neck.

  Killian and the Angel Maker were the same size. Surely they couldn’t be…

  “It wasn’t hard to get out his wallet and look at his ID,” Killian said, his fingers loosening their hold on me but not letting go.

  If Killian had his wallet, that meant he’d seen the body when his clothes were still on, which meant…

  My mind was not liking the answer it came to. “I don’t…” God, I couldn’t even talk. No words could form in my throat. I felt bewildered, bamboozled and so very fucking confused. This wasn’t happening, was it?

  Finally, after what felt like ages, Killian’s fingers released me, his lips no longer against my ear. I kept my back to him, refusing to look at him. I heard him reach into his pocket and pull out something leathery.

  “You don’t understand,” Killian said, finishing my sentence, walking around the body as he slid on two thick, black leather gloves. “I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault—it’s mine. I haven’t been on my A-game lately.”

  His A-game? What in the world was he…

  All my thoughts vanished as I watched him trace a straight line over the corpse’s exposed neck, his motion a smooth one, as if he’d done it before. As if he’d stared down a cold, rotting corpse before.

  “I wanted you to see me,” Killian spoke, green eyes meeting mine. I saw something within their emerald depths I’d never seen before—pure lust. Aching hunger. A bloody darkness that I could not turn from. “I wanted you to see me for who I really am. I realized too late you needed to see every part of me.” The finger that had traced along the body’s neck now gripped the nearest shoulder. “This one was a mistake, you know.”

  A mistake? No, no I most certainly did not know, but I was starting to.

  “He wasn’t supposed to be mine. I found him in your house, while you were in police custody. He was looking for Callie. I couldn’t let him ruin everything, so I had no choice.”

  “You…killed him?”

  “I can tell, you’re still not getting it.” Killian pushed off of the corpse, moving before me. He did not touch me, did not grab me, but the fire in his eyes held me in place all the same. “They were all for you, Stella. Everything you thought, you were right. Your articles, your blog. I made them for you.”

  He made them…for me? But that would mean…

  “Don’t you see, Stella? Everything I’ve done is for you.”

  “But you…you yelled at me. You told me to stop writing about them. You got mad at the bar and said—”

  “I asked you to stop because the owners of the Tribune are old and they don’t like reading about serial killers with every edition of the paper. And what I said at the bar…you know I get a little out of it when I drink. But that’s no excuse, I know.” Killian took a step towards me, and I involuntarily took a step back.

  My mind still hadn’t processed everything he was telling me. And the body, John—Callie’s brother?

  Killian wasn’t done yet. “Sandy was supposed to be ours. She was my apology. I had everything planned, but you ran away from me Friday night. I was supposed to drive you to that crime scene, see the look on your face when you saw the body through the windows. And then I was supposed to bring you back here.” His gloved hand pointed to the left of John. “I had her tied up right there, ready and waiting for you. For us.”

  It was so wrong how I could imagine Sandy tied to a similar chair, tears streaming down her face, her makeup all smeared, just as easily as I could breathe. But, even the breathing part grew tough for me, because if everything he said was true…it meant Killian was the Angel Maker.

  My Angel Maker.

  I shook my head. “No,” I whispered, feeling like I wanted to be sick. This…it went against everything I’d thought. Everything I thought I knew about the Angel Maker, about Killian. All along, I’d stared the Angel Maker in his eyes and never knew? How? How was anyone that good?

  Was I just blind?

  I took another step back as Killian spoke my name, sounding tender, in spite of the corpse beside him, “Stella, don’t. I—”

  I shook my head, saying again, “No.” Firmer this time. Like I meant it—only, deep down, I wasn’t so certain that I did. I didn’t know what I knew. What I felt. The only thing I was aware of was my denial, because this couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real. This was all in my head, some kind of ridiculous lifelike hallucination.

  Taking another step back, I had the sudden urge to run, just like I’d run from him on our date. So I did. I spun, darted up the stairs before he could say a word. He must’ve been letting me go, for I didn’t hear him following me. I was out of the house before I knew it, running from everything.

  From the truth. From Killian. From my Angel Maker.

  I ran as fast as my legs would take me. It was the first time in years since I ran at full-speed. My legs felt stiff, like they didn’t want to work, and my arms felt weird pumping at my sides. I wasn’t even sure where the hell I was. This neighborhood wasn’t mine. I didn’t know how to get home from here.

  I…I didn’t want to go home. I needed to think. I needed to talk about this.

  Edward and Lincoln. I needed Edward and Lincoln.

  My phone was in my back pocket, and I stumbled
to a halt on a street corner, already out of breath even though I hadn’t been running for too long. Within seconds I was dialing Edward. It was late afternoon; he might be at work. I left him a message, told him what street corner I was at, and then I started to pace back and forth, waiting for Killian to come. To drag me back down into that basement.

  But, no. He wouldn’t, because he was my Angel Maker. He wouldn’t hurt me. He had a chance to hurt me before and he didn’t. He only took me, wanted me to see him as he was, not the man he pretended to be in public.

  Killian was my Angel Maker.

  The thought felt wrong in my brain, but the glimmer in his eyes, the way he’d touched the body—how could I deny the truth of what I saw? And then, of course, I started to wonder how I could’ve been so blind. Was he that good of an actor? I felt like an idiot, and I rarely felt stupid. It was the first time in a long time I felt embarrassed.

  How many laughs had he had to himself while watching me? While toying with me? There I was, going on and on about the Angel Maker like I knew him, like I could predict him. Turned out, I wasn’t as good as predicting serial killers as I thought. I might’ve believed the Angel Maker was obsessed with me, but I never once thought he was someone I knew. Not once. Everyone in my life, I’d thought, was simply what they were.

  I thought the only one putting on a show for the world was me.

  All of my feelings, the confusion, the disbelief, the panic, were strange and new to me. I couldn’t remember ever feeling like this, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. These feelings…were they what normal people would feel?

  That aside, how the hell could I go and act normal around Callie now that I knew her brother was dead? How could I tell her I’d seen her brother on numerous occasions in the coffee shop I went to nearly every day, met his eyes, and didn’t recognize him? I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell her what I knew, which only meant I had to lie to her.