Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6)

by Darling, Giana

  “Okay, first question for Little Miss Murder,” Eric geared up. “Which serial killer would you be most afraid to encounter?”

  I smiled because the theme of this question reoccurred every month. “Well, I think I’ve answered similar questions before, but I have to say again––because it bears repeating––Ted Bundy.” I twirled a lock of my hair as I thought about the world’s most famous serial killer. “He was prolific and even in the end, incredibly hard to pin down. He once said he would choose his victims just by watching them walk home from university. He was as charming and handsome as he was utterly ruthless and lacking in remorse. All those staple characteristics of a psychopath are clear in him, but what makes him the most terrifying in my eyes is that he was so able to adapt to normal social culture. He had a girlfriend, helped raise a child, had friends who respected him.”

  I paused, gazing off as I thought about the difference between someone like him and someone like Priest.

  There was an honesty to Priest. To look at him was to know you were looking at a man closer to the dead than the living. Every inch of him screamed other––monster, villain, abnormal man. There was no remorse in those cold green eyes, no animation in the full, firm mouth and sharp-edged jaw. He was vacant and deadly as a living weapon.

  But killers like Bundy were wolves in sheep’s clothing. They hid in plain sight, they enjoyed playing games and proving they were cleverer than anyone else.

  Like the serial killer who seemed to be playing games with me.

  “Bundy scares me because he proves that monsters don’t just live in the dark,” I finished softly, my words chased by spooky music Eric played over the speakers.

  “Um, Bea?” Eric said after a brief pause where he stared at the list of questions submitted by our listeners. “There’s something here.”

  I frowned, but the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, this question is weird,” he said slowly.

  “Read it to me.”

  “Do you ever look under your bed before you sleep in it?” Eric read reluctantly. “Do you ever look under your desk before you sit down in your pink velvet chair and speak about murder like a perverted little princess?”

  A thousand needles tattooed fear into my skin simultaneously.

  Eric looked up from his screen into my eyes, mirroring my horrified expression.

  I didn’t breathe, the air congealed in my lungs.

  I didn’t blink, my eyes dried by the whirlwind of anxiety that seemed to sweep me up in its gale.

  I only moved, slowly as if against a gravitational pull.

  My Converse-clad feet pushed against the thin carpet, dragging my chair away from the counter that was my desk, and then I bent.

  Down.

  Down.

  Down.

  Head peering into the shadows beneath the table.

  And there it was.

  The twelfth piece of Brenda Walsh presented like a gift on the twelfth day of Christmas.

  Her severed head in a sealed bag strung up to a cable.

  A scream ripped from my lungs like torn Velcro, the sound thrown across the room violently so that it crashed into the walls.

  A second later, the door to the studio hurtled open and rebounded so hard against the wall, it swung back. Priest stopped its progress with the side of his raised gun, shattering the glass as he moved into the room on long strides.

  I was still screaming, doubled over in my chair, hair half-obscuring my gaze as I watched Priest come for me.

  Eric tried to move into my closed portion of the room at the same time as my psycho, but Priest shoved him aside casually yet so powerfully, Eric went reeling back into his chair then toppled onto the ground.

  Then Priest was there, hauling me up from my chair into his arms, perching me on one hip as he crouched to view the horror beneath my desk.

  I clung to him like vines, so tight I probably made it hard for him to breathe.

  But I didn’t care, and he didn’t complain.

  If I could have, I would have crawled beneath his very skin and lived there.

  He was the only place I felt safe. I wanted to make his body my address and his soul my home.

  Priest growled so loudly it was almost a roar, rumbling through him into me. I watched as he lowered his gun back, tucked it into his waistband, and flipped open his ancient phone.

  “Lion, they sent another motherfuckin’ piece’a that bitch to the studio,” Priest said so coldly, I shivered. “Get a unit down here right fuckin’ now, ’fore I kill whoever gave that motherfucker access to this studio.”

  His head snapped to the side, pinning Eric in place where he had been making his way toward us. He blanched so white, I worried he was having a heart attack.

  Priest closed the phone with his chin, then slid it into his back packet while also lowering me to the floor, pushing me behind him as he started toward Eric.

  “Priest, no,” I protested just before he slammed Eric into the wall with an arm banded across his chest and a knife pointed at his throat.

  “Who the fuck has access to this place?” he demanded.

  “Just Bea, me, Mrs. Appleton because she owns the building, and maybe…” He gasped as Priest pressed the knife tighter to his Adam’s apple. “Maybe Catherine! She runs Honey Bear Café.”

  “You let someone in here you shouldn’ta?” Priest asked as he ran the blade up his neck, so close he collected the ends of Eric’s stubble on the steel. “Or maybe it’s you. Fixated on pretty Bea, not a chance in the world of gettin’ in there with her so you resort to perverted ass shit like this to get her attention? Huh?” Another flick of the knife opened a thin slice along Eric’s jaw from below his ear to his chin. Priest shifted to run his thumb firmly over the wound just to hear Eric’s pained curse. “Which is it and I might kill you quickly. Don’t believe much in mercy, but we could make a trade.”

  “Fuck!” Eric cursed.

  “Priest.” My voice was heavy, so heavy it stayed his questing, blade-wielding hand. “Stop this. Eric did not have anything to do with this. He’s my friend. A good man and a good Christian. Please, put him down.”

  “You think just ’cause he prays to God, he’s a good man?” Priest questioned icily. “Religion teaches you to sin and worry ’bout the consequences later. Teaches you to ask for a forgiveness that will always be givin’ by the grace of His goodness no matter the crime. Repent, repent. Sin, sin.”

  Priest snapped his teeth so close to Eric’s face, it looked like he might chomp off a piece of him. Eric trembled so hard, his shoulders and head knocked loudly against the wall.

  Downstairs, there was a loud commotion, and I figured they’d heard my scream, called the police, and they were on their way up. That or, hopefully, Lion was coming.

  “You’re right,” Priest concluded on a low, menacing purr. “Asshole doesn’t have the balls for somethin’ like this. But he coulda helped whoever did this. And I’m gonna find out.”

  “Priest.” I tried again, stepping forward to place a hand on his back.

  He stared at me over his shoulder, eyes a swirling mass of green-tinged violence. He was gone to the darkness inside him, so ready to kill Eric, it was almost a foregone conclusion. I shivered lightly as I moved my hand over the leather of his cut, feeling the quilted, iron-hard muscles tensed in his back.

  “Priest,” I whispered softly as boots thundered up the stairs down the hall. “Violence isn’t justice unless you can prove it’s founded.”

  He cocked his head sharply to the side, that gesture that made him seem so inhuman. “What do I care about justice? He scared you, touched you. Even if he didn’t do this, which is a fuckin’ long shot, I still want him to suffer.”

  “I don’t,” I asserted, stroking up his back into the ends of his hair so I could give it a tug, hoping to ground him with my affection. “Let him go, please. I just want to go home. With you.”

  Priest hesitated, his entire big
body thrumming with indecision as he battled his impulses. Eric barely breathed, eyes wide and gone to black with fear.

  Finally, after an indefinite moment, Priest turned back to Eric, studied his face, and then reared back to headbutt him in the face.

  I gasped as he stepped away, Eric collapsing against the wall, holding his broken nose as blood gushed down his front. He was swearing, the words distorted by the blood in his mouth.

  I looked up at Priest who was watching me for a reaction, his breathing calm and even, his face in repose, but his eyes gleaming like the edge of a blade in firelight.

  Being with Priest was like adopting a wild animal. I could try to domesticate him, train him, even love him, but at the end of the day, he was still a wild animal with vicious teeth and claws. It was in his nature to use them.

  And it was in mine, I found, to let him.

  I held out my hand for him in answer to his unspoken question. He stared at it, then brushed it aside as he lifted his own to wrap around my throat and bring me close. His forehead pressed to mine, his breath soft and clove scented against my face.

  I relaxed.

  Against all odds, with a severed head secured under my desk by a crazy person and my friend bleeding beside me, I relaxed against Priest and let myself feel soothed by the presence of someone who was a monster to everyone, but a man for me.

  When Lion, Bat, Dane, Boner, and Wrath appeared in the doorway, we didn’t move.

  They gaped for a moment, struck dumb by the tenderness of Priest against me.

  I saw Boner look from us to Eric. “At least there’s blood,” he said in a stage whisper to Bat. “Otherwise, I’d think somethin’ possessed the bastard.”

  “I’m thinkin’ somethin’ has,” Bat murmured back, his black eyes thoughtful under furrowed brows.

  “Enough with the PDA,” Wrath grunted as he finally shoved farther into the room. “The fuckin’ cavalry’s here. Let’s get to work.”

  Priest pulled away, pushing me behind him as he seemed wont to do. “Take that one.” He jerked his head at Eric. “I’m thinkin’ he needs a little talkin’-to. Someone get to Mrs. Appleton and Catherine Prescott. We’re gettin’ answers about this fuck fest today.”

  Priest

  November was always a bitch. Howling winds raced over the ocean, collecting frigid water and speed before they dumped it all on the coastline, dousing us in fog, rain, and sometimes, pelting hail.

  It was one of those nights. The sky was close-stitched with quilted iron-grey clouds, the air filled with needlepoint drops of icy rain. It was too cold, too wet for a man to spend the night outside essentially sleeping on the beach.

  But I wasn’t just a man.

  I sat under a huge umbrella I’d thrust into the thick carpet of wet sand, my back braced against a soggy log, the collar of my cut flipped up against my throat and my chin tucked into the throat of my hoodie. I was cold but mostly dry.

  And I liked the sound of the rain pounding with fury against the thin nylon umbrella, and the glass-like shatter of the waves hurling themselves at the rocky shore. It was all violence and temper, all passion. It made me feel human to sit there in the middle of it all and let nature batter me into feeling something.

  Before, a night like this would have made me remember how it felt to live inside my own body, which always led to more. It was the key in the lock of the door securing my humanity in its vault inside my chest. Feeling of any sort only led to more feeling. The cold of my hands linked to the cold of the blood in my veins, the wrinkling of my skin to the atrophied set of my heart. I remembered why I was like this, not just broken in the way I’d been bred and born, but in the way I’d grown.

  I wore the names of the dead on each knuckle like rings I would never remove. They were the heirlooms of the worthy dead. Some I had killed myself and some at other hands. They said serial killers often had keepsakes, mementos of their kills.

  A perversion, they called it.

  I called it memory.

  It was my refusal to forget those whose death touched me in ways both good and evil.

  It was my way of adding worthy scars to the others that riddled my skin like nightmares of the flesh.

  There was my mother and my father, so poor that when they died there was no money for a proper burial. I dug out the earth myself, dragged their bodies through dirt turned to mud with rain, happy that the wet made their transport slicker, and then tossed them into their ditches. I jumped down after them, landing in ankle deep mud that sucked at my boots like the hands of demons trying to persuade me after my parents. I jumped in so I might arrange them the way I’d seen at funerals before, their hands across their chests, lids forced closed. It seemed like the logical thing to do.

  I said a few words in prayer that felt wrong in my mouth, but by the time I trekked home, thighs quivering from the fatigue of fighting the mud with each step, I'd forgotten tidily about their death and moved forward with my life.

  It didn’t do to dwell on the dead.

  I don’t know where I learned this or if it was a refrain born into my brain like salt in the sea.

  It was good however I came to claim the philosophy because my two sisters, Danae and Keelan, five and three years old respectively, died two days after my parents.

  I buried them too.

  They died because my parents were sinners.

  This I was told by Father O’Neal, the local priest in our parish and the man who ultimately took me into the church for sanctuary when I was orphaned.

  I wore his name on my middle finger bracketed by the names of my dead kin on either side, penned in Gaelic, the ink bleeding now, so old and poorly done that my brother, Nova, who ran The Fallen’s tattoo parlour, had begged to redo it for me.

  I would not let him.

  The tattoos I wore burned into my skin were not art.

  They were not even scars.

  They were living pain, hurts I chose to see every day because I lived them every day.

  This was my self-inflicted torture.

  I was equal opportunity about pain. I liked to give it only slightly more than I liked to receive it.

  It reminded me, after all the horrors of my life, that I was alive, if only to feel it.

  All I ever knew was angst so it became my only joy.

  I felt it then, sitting on that night dark beach with cold in my bones and pain the only feeling in my chest. Usually, it didn’t hurt to open a vein like this, alone in the shadows. To be isolated was to be safe. In control of my own environment, separated from the scrutiny and emotional outflow of others. It was in company that I suffered.

  So, why did I feel acid in my gums, coursing through my muscles as I sat in the wind and rain and paid my own kind of penance.

  Why did I feel so alone in a way I never had before?

  Alone in a way that felt unholy and wrong.

  Without thinking, I looked up through the sleet at the window to the second-story guest bedroom in Z’s house.

  The room was dark, the night darker between us, but I had the eyes of a predator, and I saw what stood in the window between the curtains.

  Bea.

  Watching me.

  Always.

  Much the way I watched her.

  It should have shocked me, the little ways we mirrored each other, the slight similarities between two such vastly different personalities.

  Yet it didn’t.

  It underscored why I didn’t believe in religion. In the archaic notion of good versus evil, heaven versus hell. Because I was death and the devil, ruler of life’s underworld, and Bea? Not even an angel fallen from God’s own palace could be so bright and exquisite as her.

  How was it possible that we could even co-exist on the same planet, let alone fall into something that was more than that?

  That was more than anything.

  Before her, I had lived only to feel the pain I felt was my atonement and then, after Zeus, to serve the only family I’d ever really known.

/>   Now, I lived for them still.

  But if I had a metaphorical heart in my chest, it only beat for her.

  Mo cuishle. My heartbeat.

  I watched her through the rain, unable to see her expression but knowing somehow that she was calling for me, a siren luring me deeper into our shared fantasy.

  I blinked hard and looked away.

  She was mine, mine, mine in a way that echoed with every beat of my heart, but she could be owned wholly by me without sex, without greater intimacy.

  I could protect her until my dying breath, stalk her through her life the way she liked to shadow me when she could. I could just exist as she existed, and the pleasure of that, of not being utterly alone, would be enough for me.

  So much more than enough.

  To have more was to sin in a way even I as a seasoned sinner was hesitant to do.

  Because I would ruin her.

  I would eviscerate her morals to ash until she giggled when I brought her a dead man’s head just because he had wronged her. I would burn away her inhibitions until she begged me to desecrate all the holy places of her body with my tongue, my cock, and the cold edge of my steel.

  I would, I knew, steal all her goodness, gluttonous as I was for her, greedy and depraved as I’d been born and made. I would devour her entire soul until she was just a husk.

  Alive, but dead.

  Like me.

  And there was no fate worse than death than that for my sunny Shadow.

  So I evaded my nature, ducked around the pitfalls of temptation, and exacted all of my iron will every single day I protected her to not give in to the monster inside me that yearned for just one taste of her flesh.

  One taste would never be enough.

  My cock hardened in my jeans at just the thought.

  Even seeing that motherfucker Eric touching her knee like he had the right to know the texture of her bare skin had nearly sent me into a cold rage I couldn’t recover from. I wanted to slit his throat for wanting her and, while he bled out, fuck Bea on the desk beside his body so she could watch him die and know that I’d always keep her safe from others even though the true threat to her safety was between her legs.