King Among the Dead (Hell Theory Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  The overhead lights cut on.

  Rose squinted against the brightness, and lifted her head to see Beck stalking across the room toward her, seemingly unharmed. His bare feet left crimson tracks across the tile; his hands were dark and tacky with blood, his grip sure on his dirty knife.

  As recently as a few weeks before, she would have wanted to shrink back from the intensity of his gaze. Part censure, but mostly that feral spark he’d brought with him into the library so many nights ago. His hair hung in his face, a screen through which he glanced down at her, unable to hide the honey-gold irises being swallowed up by pupils. He looked high; looked sharp and dangerous.

  He drew up beside her, muscles standing stark in his bare arms, chest heaving, sheened with sweat in the deep V of his shirt collar. “I told you to stay.” It didn’t strike her as a reprimand, not exactly. “Rose.”

  She offered her knife to him, handle-first, surprised to see that her hands weren’t shaking. No part of her was, save her lungs, trembling and quaking as she fought for breath, as she stared at him.

  He reached out, cupped her hand with his own – and put it back on the knife handle; tightened her fingers around it. Held her gaze; touched the tip of his tongue to his top lip, considering. Measuring her. Took a slow breath and said, “A true hunter finishes what she started.” Then he glanced down at the man she’d stabbed, inviting her to look, too, with a tilt of his head.

  The man was fading, losing strength and coherency, but he would linger a while longer with a gut wound like that. Beck had made it all the way home with one, after all.

  This man had none of Beck’s steel resolve, though. His white-rimmed gaze flickered back and forth between them, lips quivering as he breathed in short bursts through his mouth.

  “Who sent you?” Beck asked.

  The man shrank down into the collar of his jacket, shaking all over. Blood puddled on the floor between his legs.

  “Who,” Beck’s voice went silky-soft, low like the rasp of a knife across leather, “sent you?”

  The man gulped a few times. “T-t-tony.”

  “As I suspected.”

  “He said – he said you were hurt. He said you were half-dead.”

  “He was wrong. He usually is.” He squeezed Rose’s hand, made sure she had a solid grip on the knife, then released her so he could crouch down beside the man. He rested his forearms on his thighs, head tilted like a curious bird. “Tell me about his conduit.”

  The word sent a spike of mixed emotions through Rose: warring dread and curiosity.

  Somehow, the man’s face went whiter. His breath hitched. “I don’t–”

  With an almost casual movement, a flex of his wrist, Beck twirled his knife and drove it into the meat of the man’s thigh.

  He screamed. Kicked his head back against the cabinet face and fumbled for his own knife.

  “Rosie,” Beck said, and he didn’t have to instruct her.

  She stepped forward and kicked the man’s knife away. It skittered across the tile and got lost beneath a cabinet.

  Beck kept his hand lightly on the handle of his knife. “Now,” he said pleasantly. “Tell me about Tony’s conduit.”

  No hesitation this time, save the quavering breath, the unsteady voice, the shocky twitches of the man’s lips as he struggled to form coherent sentences. “I don’t…he’s new. I never…never met him…before. Some guy named…Dan…Daniel.”

  “What miracles has he performed?”

  “He cut – cut a guy in half – just looking at him.”

  “Hmm.” Beck drummed his fingers on the knife handle. “You’re sure you don’t know where he came from?”

  “No. I swear!”

  Beck nodded. Then he looked up at Rose. Crooked his finger. “Come here, sweetheart.”

  She crouched down beside him; had to straddle one of the man’s legs to do it, but she wanted to be close to Beck. Close enough for their arms to brush. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body, the way sweat had sharpened the usual cedar scent of him.

  “Here.” He reached to trace a line across the man’s throat with one fingertip. The man quailed beneath the touch, but didn’t retreat – couldn’t retreat, caught between the two of them and the cabinets.

  The two of them. The concept bloomed like a flower in her mind; a burst of loveliness and color that left her belly warm.

  “Draw the knife here.” He pulled his hand back, and turned to her. “Hard pressure. It’s more difficult than it looks.” His gaze searched her face, sparking, wild, barely-leashed. “Don’t be afraid. I’m right here.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  He smiled – wide, wider than ever, his teeth flashing. “No, you’re not, are you? Go on, then. Finish your kill.”

  The skin was tough, and the angle meant she had to apply more force than if she’d been behind her prey, but the knife was sharp, and it was easier than she’d thought – easier than he’d made it out to be. As easy as putting the blade into the man’s belly, she drew it across his throat, and opened him up.

  She wasn’t counting on the arterial spray. The man had already lost so much that it wasn’t as forceful as it could have been, but still it shot out, striping across her face, hot and salty when it dripped down her lips. She blinked it from her eyes, and kept going at Beck’s gentle encouragement, until the man’s throat was a gaping second mouth, and the blood was pouring down his chest, and he was dead, dead, dead.

  She licked her lips on reflex, but she didn’t hate the taste. Her pulse throbbed in her wrists, her throat, her temples. Fluttered at the back of her skull, where she’d cracked it against the now-dead man’s nose. Her wrists smarted where he’d gripped them, and her breath shivered in her lungs: a dozen little symptoms of being alive. Of being on the other side of the veil that the unmoving thing before her had crossed beyond.

  Beck took the knife from her, and set it aside. Then his arms went around her, and he pulled her shoulder into his chest. Gripped her tight with sticky, bloody fingers. Pressed his face into the side of her head, his breath harsh rasps through her hair, hot against her scalp. “Rosie,” he murmured. He was shaking. “Oh, God, Rosie, you sweetheart. You’re perfect.”

  She closed her eyes, and found that her breathing had shifted to match his: little gasps. Dizziness drove her harder against him. She was warm, and shaking, too, now, and he clutched her tight, so tight, but it didn’t hurt, nothing did.

  He nuzzled through her hair, and found the top of her ear with his mouth. Nipped at it gently. Panted. “Rosie.” Just a low, rough whisper. His hand found her throat, holding not squeezing. Fingertips splayed over her pulse.

  “God,” he breathed. “Fuck.” Then he released her, and stood, and she burned with cold where he’d been pressed only seconds ago.

  She watched him, incapable of – anything. Watched him rifle through kitchen drawers, heedless of the blood smudges he left on the cabinets, until he found a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and lit one. He groaned on the first exhale, smoke pluming out across the island.

  Rose’s legs gave out, and she sat back hard on her backside, just beyond the puddle of blood.

  That was how Kay found them. “Oh, Jesus.” She held her robe up like a fine lady would a skirt, the edge dark with blood; she’d walked through the puddle in the foyer, then, before realizing what the dark glisten on the hardwood was. “Oh, shit. What did you – Rose?” She looked frazzled in a way Rose had never seen her before. She turned on Beck with a hiss, eyes flashing. “You brought her down here?”

  “She came down here on her own,” Beck said, tone soft, voice crackling with warning. Even Kay drew back from it, clutching her robe closed at her throat. “After I told her not to.”

  He almost sounded…proud.

  “But she – why is she – did you let her–” Kay’s face reddened. “Why is she holding a knife?”

  Beck took a drag and tapped ash onto the countertop. “Because she used it.”


  Kay sucked in a breath to respond–

  “Go back to bed,” Beck said. Ordered. “We’ll handle this.”

  Kay stared at him a moment, jaw set, mouth pressed to a trembling line. Rose was startled to see the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes – though maybe that was a trick of the light against her glasses.

  “Go back to bed, Kay,” Beck said, softly, and somehow that was even colder.

  Kay’s gaze cut toward Rose, a dark and unreadable look, then she whirled and stormed out.

  Beck finished his cigarette and turned to flick the butt into the sink. “Well,” he said on a last exhale of smoke. “I suppose we’ll need some plastic.”

  TWELVE

  He washed his hands in a quick, cursory way, and urged her to do the same. She had to set her knife in the sink first.

  In the garage, he showed her where he kept rolls of thick, clear plastic, and lots of sturdy rope. There were three bodies, all of them made heavier by death, and she helped Beck roll them up in the plastic and bind them tightly. They cleaned the blood from the floors with harsh, chemical-scented cleansers that burned her nose, jarring after all the ink-dust-wood scents she’d grown so used to in the house. There would be stains, but Beck said they could throw some rugs down.

  They spoke little, only directions and acknowledgements. Rose kept waiting for horror to settle over her; for disgust to punch her in the gut. But it didn’t happen. Under cover of dark, they toted the bodies out to the garage and loaded them into the trunk of the Jag. Beck added shovels, pulled hats and gloves down off the wall, and they set off together, the soft strains of a violin sonata filtering through the speakers.

  He headed not into town, but out of it. Beyond the last houses, into moon-silvered fields, through tunnels of knotted tree branches that threw dappled shadows onto the pavement.

  Down a long, patchy driveway that ended in a clearing circled by dense forest. He left the headlights on, and they dug.

  They dug, and dug, and dug. Until all her muscles burned, and her chest ached from breathing deeply, and their shoes and pants were caked with mud. The ground was soft, and she knew that eased the way, but it was still more work than she’d ever done all at once. She could barely lift her arms when, finally, Beck boosted her up out of the hole they’d created and then crawled out himself, hissing and wincing. He rolled over and lay on his back in the grass a moment, staring up at the sky; the breeze had scudded the clouds, but the stars were still visible, a wedge of white-cheese moon.

  He studied the sky and she studied him, the smear of mud on his forehead, his parted lips, the dark of the inside of his mouth.

  His gaze flicked to her, and he smiled, another of those wide, fanged smiles from before, unrestrained, and wicked, and beautiful. “This was easier when I was twenty,” he said, like a confession, and then hauled himself to his feet.

  They unwrapped the bodies before they buried them. Folded up the plastic and put it back in the trunk. “You can leave prints on plastic,” he advised, slamming the trunk shut. “And sometimes rope, if the CSIs are any good at their jobs.”

  She fell asleep on the ride back, completely worn out, lulled by the violins and the gentle rumble of the car. Next she knew, Beck was shaking her gently. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s go. We’re home.”

  Home. Yes, it was home. A home that she had fought to protect tonight. A home where she lived warm and safe with books, and Beck. A home whose bannister Beck would vault so he could slit the throat of anyone who dared trespass.

  She felt warm, and thick-headed, and not at all self-conscious about leaning into him when he wrapped an arm around her and steered her into the house. He could have let go of her, once they were inside, but he didn’t, arm snug at her waist as he locked the door. As he towed her to the stairs and up them, both of them treading over the new bloodstain in the foyer.

  A bit of clarity returned when he led her not to her own room, but to his, quietly but firmly closing the door behind them. Then her pulse gave a little uptick, and some of the sleepy fog cleared from her mind.

  Alone with Beck in his bedroom, while the night lay dark and velvet against the window glass, the house snuffling like a sleeping pet all around them.

  He turned to her, his expression caught between impossibly soft and frighteningly alert. When he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, she saw the blood crusted under his nails.

  She thought he might say something – he gathered a breath and wet his lips. But in the end he only stared at her a long moment, and then towed her into the marble splendor of his bathroom.

  “I’m okay,” she protested, when he installed her on the low, tufted bench beside the tub.

  He didn’t grace that with a response; instead plugged the drain and started the water. “I’ll be right back.” He left; she heard the bedroom door open.

  As the tub filled, the room filled with steam; the mirrors slowly fogged. Her reflection blurred to an indistinct smudge of color, and she finally dropped her gaze, tired of searching for something in her own face that wasn’t there: regret.

  Her hands lay in her lap, palms facing upward. Crusty with the dried blood she hadn’t washed away earlier, and the caked mud from the field; black under the nails, and stinging, she felt, in the lacerations on her palm. She flexed her fingers to feel the tiny wounds pull and grab. She’d nicked herself on the knife, then, and hadn’t noticed in the heat of the moment, when she’d been flooded with adrenaline.

  The bedroom door clicked shut, and Beck padded back into the bathroom with a lit cigarette dangling off his lip, carrying a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. “Did you cut yourself?” he asked, glancing over as he poured.

  “Just a little bit. It’s fine.”

  “We’ll clean it.” He extended a glass toward her, more than half full of sharp-smelling whiskey.

  At another time, she would have found the gesture odd. Even inappropriate. But now it seemed like the natural course of things. She took it with a murmured thanks, and took a sip that tasted awful, and burned – but which pleased her. Seemed to relax her almost immediately.

  He drank his own down in two long swallows, refilled the glass, and worked on his cigarette, leaning back against the edge of the counter as the tub continued to fill.

  Rose watched him openly; the sweep of his lashes as he blinked; the twitch of his fingers on the filter paper as he brought the cigarette to his lips again and again; the flare of his nostrils when he exhaled the smoke. If asked, she would have said she was too tired for coy subtleties and furtive glances. In truth, she felt allowed to look her fill in a way she hadn’t before. A barrier had crumbled between them tonight, an invisible wall of tension held in place by politeness and carefulness.

  She had the sense Beck wasn’t being at all careful, now. He brought his whiskey to his lips, and met her gaze. Held it. “Ask me.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a question sitting on your tongue. Ask me, and I’ll answer.”

  She took another sip of whiskey. There were so many things she could ask him. She had a dozen questions about his past: when had he killed his first man? Why did he keep doing it?

  Though, the why of it wasn’t too great a mystery, now, not while she sat with blood caked into the creases of her hand.

  She surprised herself by asking, “Why me?”

  His brows lifted in a show of casual inquiry – but tension stole through his body; drew his shoulders up tight; stilled his breathing a moment.

  “Have you ever done this before?” she asked. “Brought someone home. Bought them clothes. Let them live with you. Shown them your library.”

  He took a measured drag, and swallowed, throat clicking audibly. “No. Never.”

  “What about Kay?”

  “Kay is a different story entirely.”

  “So why me? Why not – cut my throat and leave me in the pie safe?” Her voice trembled, not from fear, but from sadness. What if he had done that? What if she’d never had the chance to know
him?

  He set his glass down slowly. Crushed the last of his cigarette out in a crystal soap dish, and pushed off the counter. Crossed the few steps to get to her. Reached to cup the side of her head, fingers sliding through her hair. “Because I wanted to,” he said, simply, and slipped away to turn off the water.

  The tub was full. A few last droplets plinked down from the faucet, sending ripples across the steaming surface.

  Beck stripped off his shirt and let it fall. Held his hand out to her; hair ruffled, gaze bright, jaw still tight with fierce emotion. “Do you trust me?”

  Completely. And that was all that mattered, really.

  She placed her hand in his, and let him pull her to her feet. Met his gaze another long, fraught moment that left her skin buzzing. Tonight had changed – everything. No going back now, she knew. There was only forward.

  He released her and turned away so they could undress. Quick, perfunctory. She knew without being told that this wasn’t a moment heated like that. He wasn’t going to pounce on her. Restraint still lingered in the way he carefully didn’t glance below her chin; in the chaste hand he offered to help her step over the tall rim of the tub. It should have felt strange and mortifying to be naked together, but like every other part of the night, it felt right. Fated, almost.

  The water was hot as blood, she reflected, as she sank down into it. Hot as the blood she’d spilled tonight: across her toes, up the side of her face. Welcoming, soothing. Beck settled back against the rim and pulled her in between his legs; urged her back to lie with her head on his shoulder.

  She stared up at the ceiling, the steady beat of his heart thumping against her shoulder blade, and the heat of the water slowly soothed her tense muscles; drained the chill from her fingers.

  He rested his cheek against the top of her head, and she got to listen to his breathing slow by degrees; the way it went from harsh and open-mouthed to soft, then silent. She could feel his chest expanding, still, though, the press of his ribs against her spine. His hands moved across the surface of the water, displacing it with a quiet shush, and he gripped her shoulders lightly, his arms crossed over her body. Holding her.