Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6)

by Darling, Giana

  Loyalty was an obstacle we could hurdle. I doubted my sister would be crazy about me hooking up with Priest, but in the end, she would want me to be happy.

  And after that kiss, what I had always secretly wondered at had solidified into a real belief that Priest was the only man to help me break the constraints of my conformity and explore who I really seemed to be. It didn’t shame me to admit I was too frightened to travel those potentially menacing recesses of my soul without a fearless man at my side holding my hand.

  “Bea.”

  I jerked out my reverie to look up at Seth and Tabitha Linley. They were the best-looking couple I’d ever seen outside of the club, and also the kindest. They had been integral in keeping my mother together after everything happened with my dad.

  I surged to my feet to wrap Tabitha in a hug that smelled of her candy-scented perfume.

  My ribs ached as she squeezed me, and she pulled back as soon as I hissed. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Bea!”

  “It’s me,” I admitted sheepishly. “I keep forgetting it takes a while for ribs to heal.”

  Seth clucked his tongue, handsome brunet brow puckered. “What have we told you about taking care of yourself? You’re always putting others first.”

  “So says the doctor.” I raised an eyebrow at him, then looked at Tabby. “You two are the most generous people I know.”

  Tabby ran a hand down my hair, a gesture that always made me preen. “Like is drawn to like, I suppose.”

  “But honestly, Bea, what were you doing with such an unsavory character?” Seth asked, concern ripe in his lowered voice. “It’s not like you to get in trouble.”

  “He was wearing pressed slacks,” I said with a sheepish shrug. “I thought he was one of the good ones.”

  They both blinked at me before Tabby burst into laughter and Seth smiled, shaking his head in exasperation.

  “You have strange taste in company sometimes,” Seth admitted fondly.

  “This is true,” I admitted. “I’ve never really liked people my own age, and of course, when I tried it on for size, it backfired on me.”

  In fact, Cleo was one of my best friends and the only one within a five-year age difference. I knew from my studies that it wasn’t unusual for children raised by older parents or guardians to experience difficulties with their own cohorts, and even though I’d been fourteen when Loulou married Zeus, it was that community that took me in hand more than my parents ever had. This deviation from the norm was something therapists tried to fix, citing it as a maladjustment to society.

  Personally, I liked it just fine.

  “I was referring more to the criminal gang your sister married into,” Seth corrected, but his voice held none of the scornful judgment I so often heard in reference to The Fallen at church. “I can’t say I understand the appeal, especially not for a nice girl like you.”

  I fought my wince at being referred to for the millionth time as nice, the most lukewarm adjective to be known for, and therefore, in my mind, it was an insult. I affixed a plastic smile to my face. “They’re just a little rough around the edges, but so are diamonds before they’re polished.”

  “Cute,” Tabby teased me lightly as she stroked my hair.

  “Have they caught the criminal yet, the family of that boy?” Eric asked, stepping around Seth to give me his own hug.

  I beamed at him.

  Based solely on his appearance, Eric was the least pious-looking man in church. He wore his dark hair long and shaggy over his dark eyes, the gold bar through his left eyebrow glinting in the light. I’d yet to see him wear anything other than black, and he had a tattoo on the ridge at the base of his left thumb that said “Call Me Your Sky Daddy”. He was only a few years older than me and even though we’d known each other through the church for years, it wasn’t until he became TA in one of my criminal psych classes last year that we became close.

  Seth and Tabby immediately took a little step away from him as if he reeked, and in a way, he did. He smelled of rebellion and fresh ideas, like a cold breeze sweeping through the warm, myrrh-scented church.

  “Um…” I bit my lip as I hesitated, thinking of the body Priest had carried out of the Purgatory Motel. “I think it’s a work in process. Apparently, his parents split up and went into hiding.”

  “Fuck.” Eric shivered dramatically, then shot Seth and Tabby a sly little look as he wrapped a hand around my waist and tugged me close to his side. “Maybe I’ll have to move in and protect you until they’re found.”

  I rolled my eyes at his aplomb, but the Linleys were unimpressed.

  “That would be incredibly inappropriate,” Tabby said primly. “If anything, Bea could come to stay with us.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Eric lifted a brow. “And how would you protect her? Thump a Bible over the head of any intruder?”

  “And you?” Seth questioned coolly. “Kill them dead with your stare?”

  “Enough,” I said, laughing to defuse the tension. My three favourite people at First Light had never been able to get along, and I was used to the crackling tension. “I don’t need anyone to protect me.”

  For once, they all seemed to agree on their derision of my words.

  “Come on, Bea,” Eric said on a little laugh that stirred the long bangs over his forehead. “You probably weigh a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet.”

  I tipped my chin up haughtily, but there was no denying the truth. I was slender, small boned, and delicately built without the kick-ass curves my mother and sister possessed.

  “Honey, you really should have a man with you at home. Just in case,” Tabby fretted, smoothing my hair back like a woman with an anxious poodle.

  “I can take care of myself just fine, thank you very much,” I said primly, but the words were sour with dishonesty.

  The truth was, I occupied a strange space between being a damsel in distress and knowing enough about the evils of the world to realize my own vulnerability.

  I had the club. The Fallen would never let anything happen to me if it was at all within their control.

  But I didn’t want men to come to my rescue.

  I wanted to be a badass like Harleigh Rose, who’d sacrificed her own safety and happiness to protect her family, like King, who had faked his own death to get his father out of prison, like Lila, who went undercover in a sex trafficking ring to take down Irina Ventura.

  I wanted to be the hero, not the virginal bait or the dumb blonde who dies first in every horror film cliché.

  Uncharacteristically irritated, I flashed a tight smile at my friends and offered my abrupt goodbyes. I caught eyes with my mother across the pulpit where she was speaking with Grandpa and jerked my chin toward the door to let her know I’d meet her outside.

  As soon as I hit fresh air, I felt better. I sucked in a handful of that clean, briny ocean air and leaned heavily against the rough stone wall beside the oak double doors.

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  My eyes popped open, and instantly, I moved into a kind of defensive crouch.

  A woman stood three feet to my left. She was middle-aged with the soft creases in her face that spoke of natural aging and a full head of gleaming auburn hair that contradicted the former.

  I knew who she was instantly because, reddish hair aside, she looked exactly like her son.

  “Brenda,” I said, my voice emotionless with shock.

  She tipped her head in recognition, but otherwise continued to fiddle with the handles of her large black purse.

  The skin on the back of my neck prickled with alert tension. I forced my body to relax back casually against the wall, hoping my façade of nonchalance would portray confidence when I felt anything but.

  “How can I help you?” I inquired.

  Brenda wrung the handles of her purse so tightly, the leather split over the cane. “Well, I wanted to say I’m sorry, really, for what happened.” A little sob interrupted her thickly accented apology. “My boy…he was a good boy. Truly.”
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br />   Sympathy carved itself into my heart, and I winced at the pain of it. “I thought so enough to go out with him.”

  It was a small consolation, but she smiled tremulously at me. “We tried for more, but he was the only. Such a good boy.”

  I nodded carefully. There were charcoal smudges under her eyes from lack of sleep and probably nutrition. Red-rimmed, bloodshot, and darting across the lot erratically, her eyes themselves spoke volumes to her mental state. I wondered what stage of grief she was in, cycling through what I knew of Freud’s grief work and the evolution of grief theory since then.

  When she reached into her purse suddenly, I froze with apprehension, ready to scream out for help.

  But she only produced a crumpled packet of Marlboro cigarettes. Her hands shook so badly that her sweat-damp fingers broke the first stick of tobacco in two. A high, thin laugh punctured her second attempt to pull one from the package, but the moment she successfully placed the lit cancer stick between her lips, her fitful energy eased like a deflated balloon.

  “Sorry, uh, do you want one?” she offered with a weak smile. “Started this shit when I was eleven. Not gonna break it now.”

  “No, thank you.”

  She nodded once, then again, almost to herself. “Yeah, well I wanted to have a kind of parlay with you. About this war we’ve sparked with your club.”

  “They aren’t mine,” I countered automatically, both shocked that she would think so and warmed that she did.

  Another helium-filled laugh. “Well, tell that to the bloke who dropped my Patrick’s balls off in a glass jar last night. Seemed they were bleeding, fucking pissed that we’d not only fucked around on their precious territory but with one of their bitches.”

  “I am not one of their bitches,” I repeated the sentiment with a gesture at my string of pearls and white collared dress. “Do I look like a biker’s woman to you?”

  “No.” She sucked in a ridiculously deep drag of tobacco and then expelled it in a rush, the smoke obscuring her drawn face. “But clearly my Brett saw something in you to like beyond the prissy girl thing you got going on. And these bikers, they do bad shit for small reasons, but they made this personal.”

  “You made it personal when you unwittingly attacked the sister-in-law of The Fallen’s prez.”

  She blinked, cupping her sharp elbow under one hand to prop up her cigarette-holding hand. Though she was tired, I could see how she might have been beautiful once, even sharp and powerful. The queen of a criminal empire. It reminded me to be careful. We were outside a church, and she had a lot to lose, but wasn’t that when people act the most rashly?

  I imagined what Loulou would do if someone took Zeus or her babies from her, and a cold shudder of fear rolled through me.

  “Interesting, that,” she mused, sucking on her cig. “You’re not much to look at but that’s a lot of power for a wee girl. You can use it now to get them off my back.”

  I cocked my head to the left, unconsciously adopting Priest’s habit. “Why would I do that?”

  Brenda’s lips pursed as if I’d forced her to suck a lemon. “Because you killed my son.”

  “You’re deluded if you think I killed him. You did that when you didn’t heed The Fallen’s warning. You might be from out of town, but their reputation should have given you serious pause. Their first warning should have run you out of town. This is on you and your husband.”

  “You killed him too,” she continued, her voice almost conversational even though every inch of her tightly knotted form spoke to her tension and angst.

  So, I decided, she was straddling the line between denial and bargaining in her grief.

  I sighed tiredly, feeling the ache in my ribs and an itch too far inside my casted fingers to scratch. “Listen, if you want to attack me, do it. There are about two hundred churchgoers inside who will hear me as soon as I scream, but if you’re going to, let’s get the show on the road. I’m tired.”

  “I’m not going to attack you, silly girl.” Brenda shook her head, then flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette before moving toward me.

  I let her because that feeling was back. The glorious growth of something like a dark bloom in my chest breaking through the crust of my soul—searching for the light.

  Adrenaline sluiced through me. It tasted of iron on the back of my tongue, of blood.

  It reminded me of Priest.

  She stopped when our toes touched, my high-heeled patent leather Mary Janes to her pointed toe leather boots. Then she studied me. I felt her gaze in my hair, along the heart-shaped curve of my face, on the glossy I wore across my lips. I felt the weight of it invasively on my skin, touching me where her son only dreamt.

  Finally, she bared her teeth at me in a semblance of a smile and grabbed my hand tightly in her free one. Her skin was cold, clammy, and the edges of her nails were yellow from smoking.

  “Go to them with a détente,” she said silkily, her previous behaviour only a memory. Now, her criminal regality was in full effect. “If they come for me, tell them my people will stage a full-scale fucking gang war, okay? I have the sense you’re good at running to your big sister to tattle. Do that, and I won’t come for you and yours, mmkay?”

  There was a sharp, radiating burn on my hand held tight in hers. My gaze snapped down to watch as she extinguished her cigarette in the middle of the back of my hand.

  It took everything in me to keep from flinching, Instead, I settled a cold stare back on her manic face, and said, “This is the third warning, Brenda. I urge you to take it when you didn’t take the others. Get out of town as quickly as you can and don’t ever come back to Entrance. In fact, don’t come back to Canada. That’s all the help you’ll get from me. Even then, they still might hunt you down for what you’ve already done.”

  Before she could respond, a tidal wave of voices poured out of the opening doors of the church beside us. The shadow of the heavy oak briefly obscured us from view, but soon, the congregation had spread out on the front lawn far enough for them to see us.

  Instantly, a low murmur moved through the crowd.

  Brenda and I remained close, almost like lovers, but the pastel-clad devotees knew better than that.

  Suddenly, a half-moon of men in suits and ties surrounded us. It would have made me laugh under different circumstances. I was so used to men in leather cuts defending me—burly alphas with weapons worn all over their huge bodies that were weapons in and of themselves. It was both heartwarming and faintly ridiculous to see these pious, good Christians threaten someone now because they thought I was in danger.

  It just proved heroes came in all shapes and sizes.

  “Everything okay, Beatrice?” Seth asked politely, but there was an undertow to his tone that threatened to drown.

  A spark of interest shimmered through me at that. Seth had always seemed so perfectly dull before now.

  “Fine,” I reassured with a broad smile, taking a cheerful step away from Brenda that bounced the curls around my head. “Mrs. Walsh was just inquiring about our church.”

  “Ah.” Grandpa appeared just outside the doors of First Light, as unruffled and regal as ever in his cassock. “Well, God’s heart is always open to those who are willing to repent their sins.”

  Brenda blinked at him as if she’d never seen a pastor before, then turned to me. “Remember what I said. We wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to these good people.”

  Around me, my community shifted restlessly, the sound like ruffling feathers.

  “I learned a long time ago bad things happen to everyone,” I told her as she slowly began to walk away, still facing me. “This time, I think I’ll make certain they happen to the right one.”

  Bea

  “This is why the Barbie & Ken serial killers are two of the most interesting cases,” I said into the microphone, my voice slightly dry after speaking for almost thirty minutes straight. “They highlight our societal blind spot. They were young, gorgeous, and seemingly head over h
eels in love with each other. Why would they resort to violence?”

  I paused to let my words sink in, and Eric gave me a thumbs-up as he adjusted the sound slightly from his place behind the partition sitting at the soundboard.

  “The thing we all need to understand is that for many psychopaths, violence is not a last resort. We need to rewire our thinking so it’s more along the lines of theirs. To a serial killer or a clinical psychopath, violence isn’t something they are forced to do because of unfortunate circumstances acting against them. By their very nature, psychopaths don’t tune into society’s frequency. Their environment does not act on them the way it would you or me. For example, it’s been proven that humans can smell fear in sweat. If you entered a room full of scared people, quickly, without even knowing why, you would become affected by it too. The exception to this rule is––no surprise––psychopaths. For whatever reason, they remain unaffected as they do from so many other examples of social pressure or influence.

  “Understanding that, you know that violence is not a reaction, it’s an impulse. The need for it is always there in the hardwiring of their brain. While not all psychopaths are violent, because there is a spectrum as in most things in modern psychology, the ones who are feel possessed by it. They only need an opportunity, an opening, to let that instinct take over.”

  I sat back in my chair and rolled my head on my neck to loosen the tension from sitting for too long in one position. Long ago, I’d kicked off my Converse, shed my fuzzy white cardigan and tied my hair up in the pink ribbon I always wore tied to my wrist. My eyes snagged on the poster on the wall to the right of the door. It was a photo of me dressed in a pink A-line mini dress with the same bow holding back the top of my blond curls. I had a finger to my lips, fake blood at their edges, and a poorly concealed knife behind my back. Across it all read “Little Miss Murder”.