Darker Than Desire

by Shiloh Walker

  It’s your turn now, boy. In time, you’ll be a man and it will be your turn to join the brotherhood. Be ready to receive the honor we give you. In time, you’ll pass it on to others. Just as we pass it on to you now.

  Every secret would come out.

  People were already looking at him, but soon, they’d really start to look. At him, at everything he did. Everything he touched.

  If it was only him affected, he wouldn’t care.

  But it would spill over and touch anybody he allowed around him and that just wasn’t acceptable. The dead surface of his soul might not be concerned with how others viewed him, but even he wasn’t going to let their thoughts slide down that path as they looked from him to those around him.

  And he didn’t want her sympathy. Didn’t want that hard, desperate hunger of hers to ever turn to anything else. A pity fuck was about as pathetic as they came.

  He stared at nothing, gazing through the open window into the coming dawn without seeing. Curtains fluttered gently in the window. He’d spent too many years without air-conditioning, and the unnatural feeling of cool air circulating against his skin annoyed him. The first thing he’d done when he opened up the house was open up half the windows. It had chased out most of the stink of death and stale air. Now he could smell the river, the scent of morning, and the chill of a mid-fall morning felt good on his naked chest.

  Rising, he moved to a window and stared out. The outline of the house—that house—loomed in front of him, larger than life, larger than he knew it truly was.

  I hate you. The words were like a child’s foolish taunt in the back of his head. It caught him off-guard, the venom building inside his chest. That absolute loathing he felt for a pile of rubble and rock. One hand curled into a fist and he had a hot, vivid image of him finding a sledgehammer, taking it to the walls, tearing the rest of that place down until nothing lingered.

  It was such a potent image that he had to turn away before he gave in to the urge.

  It wasn’t like anybody would really miss the place. He’d be doing the world a favor.

  But he had something else to do today.

  Find that journal.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She wasn’t surprised when she woke alone.

  Sad, yes.

  Surprised, no.

  He’d stayed, though, through the whole movie. That he’d even come inside had surprised her, and if she’d let herself think past the next hour, or even the first cup of coffee, it might have given her hope.

  Sybil didn’t like to think about things like hope. Hope could be such a disappointing bitch, though. Her mother had died of cancer and she’d told Sybil through the whole thing, We have to hope for the best. As Layla spiraled more and more out of control, Mom had always said, We have to pray for her, be there. If she ever hits rock bottom, we’ll be there for her. Until then, we hope for the best. Then Layla had a kid and Sybil and her mother both hoped that Layla would get her act together.

  Hope was a fickle, useless bitch.

  Sybil dealt in reality.

  But it had done something to her heart, made something burn hard and bright to see him sitting there on her couch as they watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He’d even cracked a smile or two, and for David that was borderline miraculous. She’d planned on staying awake until the end of the movie, getting Drew to his room.

  The past few weeks had been rough, though, and the exhaustion had dropped down on her like a sledgehammer.

  She’d see David in town, though. Maybe she could even hunt him down. Drew was going to the Louisville Zoo with a friend of his, then having a sleepover—something they’d been planning on for over a month, so it wasn’t like she didn’t have the day pretty open.

  All she had to do was find David.

  Well, get Drew up and moving. Get coffee. Shower. A few other things, including the hygiene things. She probably resembled a brown-haired medusa at this point. But later on, she could definitely hunt him down.

  * * *

  Her good mood evaporated in Louisa’s coffee shop.

  Sibyl had made plans to meet with Taneisha and her son, Darnell, at ten. It was 9:51 and if she had just waited, she could have avoided this. But no, she had to have her damn latte, didn’t she?

  “I just don’t know what to think,” Louisa nattered on as she put a lid on Sybil’s coffee, completely unaware that Sybil wanted to commit bloody, brutal mayhem. “I mean, it’s awful what was done to those boys. And…”

  She paused and looked around.

  Then, leaning in closer, she said, “Rumors are flying, saying the Sutter family was involved—that David was involved. He got caught up in that ugly, vile mess.”

  She paused again, a dramatic sigh escaping her. “If that’s true, then his daddy abused him and his daddy was abused by his dad … it just keeps going! It would be best, really, if David just left and never came back. We can’t break a cycle if any of them are here.”

  Louisa finally came to the end of her ugly little monologue and smiled at Sybil. “That will be three eighty.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Sybil said. She looked at the caffeine, pursed her lips. “I get these awful headaches when I don’t have caffeine. Then I have caffeine and it goes away for a while. But the headache just comes back and I’m better if I have another … I think if I just stop the coffee altogether, I’ll do better.”

  “But caffeine is fuel,” Louisa said, smiling proudly.

  “And abuse is abuse,” Sybil snapped. “Whatever was done to those boys was abuse. They didn’t ask for it and just because they were abused doesn’t mean they’ll turn around and abuse somebody else. Does a rape victim turn around and abuse everybody she comes across?”

  Louisa opened her mouth, shut it, looking oddly like a fish as she did just that several times over. Finally, she pressed a hand to her chest. “Why, Sybil. Surely you understand that I have nothing but sympathy for those who were injured by this. It’s just that I—”

  “It’s just that it’s easier for you to spout shit out and talk about horrors you can’t comprehend. You don’t have sympathy. You want to gossip and add to the misery.” She leaned in, held Louisa’s eyes. “You want to tell those young boys who had the courage to come forward that they will grow up and be monsters? They stood up; they fought. What do you have to stay about them?”

  The coffee shop had gone silent.

  “Nothing to say, Louisa?”

  “You’re making a scene in my place, Sybil.” Louisa looked around furiously, her face going from white to red. “I don’t appreciate it.”

  “You made the scene. It’s okay to gossip like an old hen, but if people call you out on it, there’s a problem?”

  “Of course there’s a problem when people call a rude person out. Nobody likes to have the truth thrown at them—it’s too ugly, too blunt … too honest. That’s the way it is.” Doug Bell, his voice low and tired, stood, his chair scraping across the floor. “Personally, I’m tired of all of the backstabbing and then the smiles and cooing to your face. I had to listen to it fifteen years ago, and again at my wife’s funeral. I think I’m done now. As to those boys…? Louisa, if you lack the words, I can give you a word for them. I call them brave. You probably aren’t familiar with the concept.”

  Doug smiled at Sybil and nodded on his way out.

  In an oddly silent fashion, a family in the corner rose and followed. Followed by Jensen Bell, who’d been leaning against the counter, waiting to place an order. Vernon Driscoll vacated the table where he’d been, as did three more people.

  Sybil looked at Louisa through her lashes.

  The bell over the door rang and Drew came in, looking for her. He came up to her side and said, “Darnell is here. Did you get your drink yet, Aunt Sybil?”

  “Oddly enough, I don’t need it anymore, honey.”

  Without another word, she headed out.

  * * *

  “If this is your idea of cleaning, we need to talk.
”

  David tensed instinctively, whirling around and already on the verge of attack even before recognition hit him. The adrenaline drained out of him as he saw Lana leaning against the open door of the little woodshop tucked in the backyard of Judge Max’s yard.

  Breath sawed in and out of David’s lungs. It took a concentrated effort to calm down.

  Lana lifted a brow and he had the disconcerting feeling she knew exactly what he was thinking, what he was feeling and how close he’d been to coming after her.

  She probably did.

  She’d kept a good twenty feet between them, and although she kept her stance easily enough, he couldn’t help but notice the odd … tension about her. Like he wasn’t the only one braced for attack. The idea pissed him off, made him mad enough to tear something apart.

  There were shadows on her soul now, too, and that was his fault.

  “That…” He blew out a breath, waited another beat because his voice was hoarse. “That was damn fucking stupid coming up behind me like that.”

  “Thus the reason I’m a good twenty feet away, darlin’.” She winked at him. “Besides, I haven’t spent the past twenty years getting pampered and babied. I can handle myself.”

  He had no doubt of that, but he didn’t want to think about himself losing it like that, going after one of the few he could actually call friend.

  Lana lifted a brow at him as she shoved off the wall. She had a faint smile on her face as she wandered around. “Man, I don’t miss this place.”

  “What?”

  She shrugged.

  “This is where Max had me hide.”

  He blinked and then abruptly spun around. “Lana, I’m already walking a hair trigger. Don’t add to it.”

  “Or what? Are you going to turn into the Hulk or something?”

  He turned his head, stared at her. “You act like this is a joke. You should be more careful.” He left the words around me unsaid.

  “Nah.” She lifted a shoulder. “If you honestly think I need to be careful around you, then you need a swift kick in the ass. Probably a dozen of them.”

  He swiped a hand across his face and swore under his breath. He kept waiting for that red crawl to roll across his vision, the shakes to grab him—a sure sign that his temper was going to slip away and he’d find himself on the verge of violence. When that had happened, he’d always just lost himself up on the hills, wandered for hours until he thought he was steady again.

  Somehow, he didn’t see Lana letting him just disappear.

  But red didn’t slip in to obscure his vision and his hands stayed steady.

  For a minute, he stared, took a moment to just wonder at that.

  Then he looked back at her.

  She had a glint in her eyes, something that spoke of challenge and temper like she was just dying to push at him, poke at him. “What are you doing?” he asked softly.

  “Waiting to see you.” A strange little smile lit her face, one that didn’t make sense, not at all.

  “What?”

  She shrugged and turned away, started to roam around the four walls of the barn. “You heard me. You spent twenty years trapping yourself behind a mask. I trapped myself in a box miles away from here. I’m done with it. I’d think you’d be about the same.” One shoulder rose, fell, as she stopped in front of a dusty set of shelves.

  There were books, a lot of them. Notebooks, some DIY type of books. David had already looked through them with little interest, but Lana seemed to be intent. She reached up and touched one. “This one,” she murmured. “Huh. Kingsolver. I don’t see Max reading her. Prodigal Summer.”

  She slid David a narrow look over her shoulder. “Just what are you doing out here anyway?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Call me curious. That’s one thing that never did change.” She eyed the tools he’d moved around, shelves he hadn’t put back into place. “It almost seems like you’re looking for something. Me, I can’t help but think maybe you should look at this.”

  She reached up and pulled down that large-print edition of Prodigal Summer. Unlike every other book on the shelf, this one only had a fine layer of dust. She flipped it open and then pursed her lips. “Well, I’m pretty sure this wasn’t in the copy I read,” she murmured. She eyed the hollowed-out pages for a moment and then reached in, pulled out two slim leather journals. “You wouldn’t be looking for these, would you?”

  * * *

  He started with the older one first. Written by Harlan Troyer in an elegant, neat hand, the journals detailed meetings—and to David’s unending disgust and fury, more names. His, Hank’s, Jeb’s.

  This was his nightmare. That it had involved others. According to the journal, there had been three going through it along with him and he had never known their names. Initiates, they were called.

  Three of them going through the same hell he’d gone through while another was formally accepted into the club. Jeb. Garth’s son. “Son of a bitch,” David said softly. Now that red crawl that he had expected all day rolled across his vision and his gut twisted in fury.

  Sitting on the porch as the sun made a slow trek through the sky, David read through the first journal, flipping through the pages until he reached the halfway point. There it detailed what Harlan knew about those final days and the months that came after.

  Things had changed after the disappearance of Peter Sutter—David’s father. Some of the older members had talked about trying to keep it going, but others thought it was too risky. Those higher up in the food chain, the Sims brothers, Andrews, Troyer, had ended up making the call and Cronus, as it had been, ended.

  Without knowing what had happened, where David had gone, they didn’t want to take the risk.

  The last journal entry was six weeks after David and Lana had disappeared from Madison. No other notes. Nothing.

  He reached for the next journal and flipped it open. A note fell out. He recognized the scrawl on it immediately:

  Hopefully the right person is reading this—the prodigal son.

  Of course, if you are, that means I never had the chance to turn these over to you. A part of me wonders what might have happened. We talked about the lines you cross—I crossed those lines so long ago, I can’t even remember who I was before I crossed them, and once it was done I had to draw new lines. I lived by them, for a good long time.

  I crossed them again, after what happened to you, and I don’t regret it, but it changed me, each time. Changed me from the man I wanted to be.

  I don’t want to see that happen with you, boy.

  You carry too much darkness in you. If I could keep any of this from you, I would. But secrets won’t help you heal. Secrets put you on this path to begin with.

  I’m not showing them to you so you can burn the town with them. Town is already burning. I haven’t helped any, but then again, I made a promise and didn’t keep it. I wanted to fix things, and those sons of bitches wouldn’t have paid.

  But you have more right to know than anybody who they were. That it did stop for a while. It’s not good enough and I’m sorry I didn’t keep my word to you, boy.

  It should stop now. Pete was always the leader of the pack and the ones who tried to pull it back together had no idea what they were doing. He had his own personal hell where he reigned as king. The rest of them didn’t even have a third of his brains. It’s a good thing, that. It made it easier to bring it down this time.

  Easier.

  If anything about this can be called easy.

  Max’s name was scrawled at the bottom.

  Down below that, in tight print, like he had decided to squeeze it in, were a few final lines:

  I loved you the minute I saw you. Tried to talk her into letting me spend time with you, but she wouldn’t have it. I never hated anything in my life as much as that.

  Not until I saw you that night. I should have done better by you. It’s a regret I’ll carry the rest of my life. Forgive me.

  Careful
ly, David folded the paper. Then he tucked it inside the journal, keeping it closed.

  He couldn’t look at the second journal, not just yet.

  It was strange.

  For so many years he’d felt little. Except the rage. Rage could always cut through. The past few weeks more and more managed to cut through, but as he sat there, it was like something inside him started to crack.

  I don’t want this, he thought, heart and soul aching even as he tried to push it all away.

  The fucking letter. Should have shoved it back inside. Shouldn’t have read it. Shouldn’t have looked for the journals.

  Max had warned him, hadn’t he?

  Sucking in a breath, David tensed his muscles, torn between locking the journals up, out of sight, and taking them to the river and hurling them into the slow-moving waters.

  Before he could decide, the world shifted and moved sideways on him. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood up.

  His blood started to pump.

  Slowly, he shifted his gaze and found himself staring across the neat, tidy little lawn.

  There. That was the other thing he felt, a bizarre mix of need, longing and a twist in his heart that he couldn’t fully understand. It only happened around one person.

  It wasn’t a surprise that she’d found him here.

  Nor was it a surprise when his heart did that odd little twist.

  These feelings he was familiar with, and because he’d rather deal with this torrent than the confusion that had been raging inside, he focused on what thrummed inside him when he was with Sybil.

  She made him want.

  She made him need.

  And, he realized, she made him feel regret. He could feel it.

  That pang, that tug in his heart, because he knew he needed to push her away, because he couldn’t reach for her the way he wanted.

  Regret that he wasn’t as strong as he should be, because even as he told himself to push her away she started up the walk, the short skirt she wore barely clinging to her thighs, and all he could think about was pulling her into his lap so that the skirt rode higher and he could cup her hips, pull her down to straddle him.