King Among the Dead (Hell Theory Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  He wore a faint blush high on his cheeks, and he chewed at his lip a moment before he offered it to her, oddly hesitant. “Merry Christmas, darling.”

  She took it with the same reverence with which he’d offered it. It was a jewelry box, with a hinged lid. When she opened it, she couldn’t withhold a little gasp. A dazzle of color met her gaze. Red, and blue, and green – rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. And diamonds. Glinting, smooth gold. She held a box of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings, from delicate gold chains strung with tiny diamonds like stars, to an elaborate set of dangling earrings in fanning sapphires and emeralds that looked like peacock feathers.

  “Oh,” she breathed. She had no words.

  “They were my mother’s,” he said, his voice soft, painfully self-conscious. “My father used to give her jewelry for their anniversaries and Christmases. She always said it was gaudy and overdone – all the jewels – but then she’d turn around and have him fasten the clasp right there. And then go admire them in the mirror.”

  Rose admired them now, in their box, not daring to touch them. Her hands were clean, but these felt too fine to soil with her fingers – the fingers of an orphan plucked from obscurity.

  She lifted her head, finally, a protest forming on her lips, and caught sight of Beck’s expression. He stared at her with his heart shining in his eyes, a concerned groove pressed between his brows. He was worried how she’d take the gift. Worried she wouldn’t like it. He’d offered her all of his mother’s jewels, and he was hopeful, but he was braced for rejection, too.

  I adore you, he’d told her their first night together. He’d meant it.

  And she adored him in return.

  I can’t, she’d meant to say, at first. This is too much. It’s too nice for me.

  Instead, she said, “Which is your favorite?”

  His brow smoothed, and his smile tugged upward in the softest of smiles. “Well.” He reached carefully into the box and nudged the chains and jewels to the side, searching for something. Finally, he withdrew a ring. “When I think of you, this seems like a good fit. If you like it,” he hurried to add. “All of it’s yours, now – all of it. You can wear whatever you like, whenever.”

  Not whenever. Not on a hunt, she thought, but didn’t say, her own smile irrepressible in the face of his sweetness and uncertainty.

  She studied the ring he’d picked. It was one of the more delicate ones, a narrow white-gold band set with a small, low-profile cluster of rubies and diamonds that looked like a bundle of flowers – of roses. There were even tiny thorns and leaves set with bits of emerald. By all rights, it should have been gaudy and ridiculous, but had been crafted with expert care and subtlety, so that it was impossible and lovely.

  “It’s beautiful,” she told him, and saw his shoulders drop with relief. “You like roses, don’t you?”

  “I love them.” He lifted her hand off the box – carefully, so she had time to balance it on her other palm – and slid the ring onto her finger. “A rose for a rose.”

  She held her hand out to admire it. Her nails were unpainted, and there was a scrape on her knuckles, and she didn’t possess the elegant, manicured hands that his mother had no doubt possessed. But she didn’t drag the ring down; rather, it seemed to lift her up. It looked right on her, somehow. Because Beck had picked it for her.

  “There’s a necklace, too.”

  She handed him the box, and when he found it, he glanced, once, toward the mirror above his dressing table. He didn’t ask her, didn’t even suggest – but Rose walked that way, and heard him take in a quick breath behind her as he followed.

  They weren’t dressed for the opera. No sequins, or sleek dinner jackets. She stood in her tank top, and his robe, the sleeves trying to slip over her hands, her hair tangled from the pillow. Behind her, Beck was bare-chested, and rumpled, still lovely, always though, but vulnerable, too. She watched in the mirror as he reached in front of her and laid a ruby-crusted rose against the V of exposed chin on her chest. Shivered when she felt the calluses on his fingertips as he fastened the clasp at the back of her neck, her hair brushed to the side. He slipped his arms around her waist, afterward, rested his face beside hers, their cheeks touching, his rough with morning stubble.

  Rose wondered how other people would perceive them: how they would appear together. Unevenly matched? An unlikely pairing?

  From the inside looking out, she saw the softness in his harsh features, and the steel hidden beneath her own.

  He turned his head to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Perfect.”

  Yes. Exactly.

  ~*~

  For breakfast there were hash browns, and sausage, and sliced melon. Kay came down wearing a Santa hat that sent Rose into a rare fit of giggles that she couldn’t get under control. Beck spiked all their tea with brandy, and by the time the dishes were finally put away, he was sliding the marinated roast for dinner into the oven, and they trooped to the parlor to open presents.

  Rose had her own credit card now, though she hadn’t dared to charge anything to it before Christmas. She watched now, nervous and excited, as Kay unwrapped her new bathrobe and slippers, silk and floral, and laced-edged. Kay exclaimed over them, and she felt her face heat.

  Beck had been much harder to shop for. He could afford to buy anything he needed for himself, and was already fully-equipped with enough weaponry and training gear for three people. What did one buy their lover who was also their rescuer and their provider? With whom they killed on a regular basis?

  She’d been gearing up to an actual anxiety attack about it before she’d stumbled across a website for a small, boutique secondhand bookshop. International shipping had been offered, but there wasn’t anything so convenient as an online catalogue available. She’d had to make a phone call, jangled nerves soothed by the smooth, accented tones of the London shopkeeper, and he’d been able to steer her toward three very old hardback books about King Arthur, complete with illustrations, which Beck unwrapped now.

  The leather covers were embossed and gold-lettered; when she’d wrapped them, Rose had marveled at the wonderful way they smelled; at the yellowed edges of the pages, and, best of all, a handwritten inscription inside the covers. These books had been a gift before, more than a hundred years ago, to someone named Tom, Love, Elizabeth.

  She bit her lip, tingling with fresh nerves, as Beck opened the cover and passed a hand across that inscription now, fingertip pressed to the little heart. Rose had added her own above it. For Arthur, Love, Rose.

  He lifted his head, and caught her gaze, and his smile was the very best thing that had ever happened at Christmastime.

  ~*~

  When she let slip that she’d never been party to a snowball fight, Beck insisted they rectify that immediately. Kay begged off. “I’m too old to be falling down in the snow.”

  It turned out that getting hit in the face with snow burned, and Beck fought dirty.

  Wet, shivering, laughing so hard her ribs ached, they finally sought the warmth of the fire when it began to grow dim, and by then the roast was ready to come out of the oven.

  After, Kay put her foot down, and they all watched It’s a Wonderful Life on the big TV in the parlor, dark save the screen and the twinkling colored lights of the tree.

  “Thank you,” Rose said, when they were getting ready for bed.

  Beck was folding back the sheets and glanced up. “For what?” Light, casual, as if he didn’t know.

  “This is the best Christmas I’ve ever had.”

  His head tilted, expression sad for a brief flicker – a deeply sympathetic sort of sadness – before a slow smile warmed his face. He seemed to glow. “Me, too.”

  They met on their knees in the center of the mattress, slow, sure touches, and warm, lingering kisses.

  Later – days, weeks, years – she would look back on this moment; treasure it; carry it in her pocket and rub it like a talisman, until it was smooth and vague. One of the best moments, and one of the la
st, before everything went to hell.

  Literally.

  TWENTY

  After New Year’s, hunting began again in earnest. Castor seemed to have dealers everywhere – and enforcers, too. The nightly news fixated on the violence in the streets, the bodies, the drug crisis. One ugly story after the next, and it was clear the crime families were running the city, rather than any sort of government official.

  The rain slackened to a thin mist, and the security lights from the warehouse behind them glimmered on the surface of the river in front of them. Rose leaned her forearms on the metal rail at the water’s edge and fished a bit of clean cloth from inside her jacket. She wiped her knife clean with long, careful strokes, using her thumb nail to press the cloth right along the hilt where the blood had gone dry and gummy.

  Beside her, Beck lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke in thick, gray plumes. “He knows his people are being killed,” he grumbled. “Why isn’t he changing the way he operates?”

  It had been seeming too easy. Anyone who left their men out to dry like that was either stupidly uncaring…or he meant for this to happen.

  The latter idea left her deeply unsettled, but she didn’t say anything. She slipped her knife back into its sheath, and bit back what she wanted to tell him.

  Bit it back the next night, and the next. When her knife sank deep. When blood splattered up a wall. Rose kept holding, and holding, and holding her tongue, for three weeks. Until she couldn’t anymore.

  They were in the basement, sparring on the mats in the center of the floor. He never truly sparred with her – didn’t grapple with her or throw punches beyond the sorts of slow, telegraphed blows he had to in order to show her an evasion or a block.

  “Like this.” He pinched her wrist between his fingers, and with his other hand turned it, and showed her how to duck out of his grip. His hand felt like a steel band, but she managed to wrench free. Because it was really that simple? Or because he’d let her?

  “Good.” He stepped off the mat and went for his water bottle, scraping sweat-damp hair off his face.

  Rose took her own drink, and studied him: the tension across his shoulders, the harsh set of his jaw. He swished water around in his mouth and stared off unseeing into the middle distance.

  He swallowed and said, “Tonight’s target used to box. A bare-knuckle underground ring. He’s handsy. Prefers pummeling people to death rather than using weapons – blunt, edged, or otherwise. He–”

  “Beck.”

  His head whipped around, as if startled. His brows went up.

  She’d bitten it all back, but she realized she couldn’t anymore, and she wasn’t sorry about it. It needed saying. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “that maybe we should keep a little lower profile.”

  He frowned. “What?” It wasn’t a question he usually asked.

  “We’ve been…visible…lately. And busy. Castor hasn’t reacted yet, but I have a bad feeling that he will. Maybe we should back off a little.”

  “Back off?” He sounded dumbfounded.

  “For a while, anyway.”

  He stared at her, expressionless – save the tic of a muscle in his cheek. “Are you frightened?” he asked, finally, his voice flat.

  No, she thought. But that wasn’t true. She didn’t want to lie to him, even if the truth wasn’t anything he wanted to hear. “I’m afraid that this is too easy. All these targets. I think they’re low-hanging fruit. I think Castor is setting a trap for you, and I’m afraid you’re going to walk right into it.”

  The way his expression shifted, she thought slapping him would have been kinder. He put his back to her, and braced his hands on his hips, head bowed.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m worried,” she said. Now that it was out there, she saw no sense in walking it back.

  He turned his head a fraction, just far enough to reveal the flash of one eye. “You think we should stop.” Said like an accusation.

  “I think we should be careful.”

  He held still a long moment. Then he turned to face her, his chin tucked, head tilted, so he was looking up at her through his lashes, in that way that hollowed his already-thin face and gave him the sharpened look of a predator.

  A look she could usually read well: either he was driven by the thrill of the hunt, or he was in his intense, post-hunt phase, when he wanted to smoke, and drink, and fuck until he came back to himself. But neither of those things was true now, and she had the sense his crackling, barely-contained energy was directed at her, now.

  She wasn’t afraid, though. Never that.

  She met his stare, was braced and ready, his hands tightened to fists when he said, “You doubt me.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  He stalked toward her, slowly, his hips shifting side to side, all his speed and strength tangible in the lazy way he moved. “If you don’t want to come with me,” he said, voice silken, and awful as he drew up in front of her. “You can stay behind.” It sounded like an accusation. It sounded like it pained him.

  “Beck.” She reached toward his face, wanting to soften him, to bring him back; he was racing toward the brink, and if he was doing that now, during a random afternoon’s training, how much worse would the fall be after the next hunt?

  But he tipped his head, just far enough to avoid her touch.

  She froze, hand hovering in the air. And then her fingers closed. And she pulled her hand back. And then she did something she hadn’t ever done with him: she got angry.

  It boiled up in her gut, a hot flush that left her cheeks burning, and her lungs working. “I’m not afraid,” she said – snapped. His face smoothed, and his head kicked back, nostrils flaring, eyes widening. It was too late to dial it back, though, and she wasn’t sure she would have even if she could. “I’m not scared of the work, Beck, and you know it. You know I’m not.

  “But you’re obsessive – even more so than usual. I will help you kill every last person who ever even met Tony Castor if that’s what you need to do. But you’re getting reckless. He’s going to notice what you’re doing, if he hasn’t already. And you’re strong, and fast, and smart – you are amazing. But you can’t fight an army. And that’s what he has: an army.

  “You want to kill him. I get that. But what happens if you get yourself killed? What will I do? What will I do without you…” Her chest squeezed on the last – it was hard to breathe – and she realized that she was starting to hyperventilate…and that she was crying. Hot tears slipped down her cheeks, and she brushed them angrily away, but it was too late; he had to have seen them. Seen her weakness.

  She started to turn away, trying desperately to get her emotions under control. How could a lecture be effective if you started blubbering at the end?

  But he caught her arm – tight, but not painful. When she started to twist free, like he’d just taught her, she froze, watching his face – watching the hurt flash through his eyes.

  They stared at one another.

  Rose wet her lips, and sniffed, swallowed. Tried to compose herself. Her voice came out full of cracks, though. “I am afraid. I’m afraid I’m going to lose you, and I can’t – Beck, I can’t…”

  She closed her eyes to stem the flow of tears, and his arms went around her. They were both sweaty, their clothes clinging to sticky skin, overheated, a little disgusting, but it didn’t matter. When he pulled her in close, she pressed her face into his chest. He stroked the crown of her head, slipped his fingers through her ponytail, and cupped the back of her neck. “It’s alright.” His voice sounded unsteady, too. As did the breath that he heaved out, the heat of it rushing past her ear. “Oh, Rosie. I’m sorry. I don’t…”

  She let herself choke on the tears a minute. Let them come, hot, and cleansing down her face. Breathed in the smell of clean sweat, and of him, and reminded herself that nothing had happened yet. He was still here, still strong, still sheltering.

  It was only that, the more familiar she became with violence, the more readily she de
alt it, the more aware she became of how very human he was. He was flesh and blood, and it would be so easy for him to get hurt; for it to be his eyes the light drained from, in the dark rooms where they crept. The predator could become the prey, and she didn’t want to contemplate a world without him.

  ~*~

  Anthony Castor might have prized loyalty, but he didn’t expect it – especially not from low-level dealers and knee-breakers. Beck pressed all of them for information which they weren’t able to give; they began defiant, and ended up begging.

  But one night, a dealer offered something up. A location. An address. A date. Something big was happening: a new batch of dealers was being promoted, and they were meeting at a warehouse – the warehouse, if the way Beck’s eyes flashed was anything to do by.

  “He can’t help it,” he said, later, when he was wiping his knife clean in the deep shadow of a building. His eyes and the flash of the blade were all that was visible. “He has to show off. It intimidates everyone properly, and makes him feel like a God.” He snorted humorlessly. “A God with angels to command.”

  Back at the house, Beck had his usual whiskey and cigarette in front of the computer in the study. Punched in the address and pulled up satellite images of the warehouse. “I can’t believe he’s using the same warehouse,” he murmured, absently.

  Rose had dozed off, and woke with a start when Kay came in. It was daylight, she realized – or close to, a rain-streaked silver morning. Kay was already mostly done with a cigarette and a glance at Beck revealed a full ashtray of butts at his elbow.

  “You idiots didn’t even go to bed,” Kay groused, but her gaze was fixed on the screen. “What are you working on?”

  “A chance to bring down the white whale at last,” Beck said. He sounded faintly manic.

  Rose hitched upright in her chair, wincing at the crick in her neck. “I’ll go make tea.”

  “Better make it coffee,” Kay advised.

  “Right.”