Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3)

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  “I’ve heard of people doing that while they’re on vacation,” I said. “Not necessarily when they’re on leave.”

  “Never took vacation.” He swiped a hand over his jaw, the sound of stubble against his callused palm was oddly loud in the abandoned hallway. “In twelve years with the department. Never once. And now? Now I figure, what the fuck. I can’t work. I might as well drink.”

  As if to punctuate this statement, he reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and withdrew a battered silver flask.

  “Cheers,” he said, tipping it back for a swallow.

  “A flask?” I said. “Really?”

  “That sounds like judgment,” he said, having considerable trouble with the ‘s’.

  “Not judgment,” I said, leaning back against the closet door for extra insurance. “Concern.”

  “Now that’s touching.” Morrison slid the flask back into his jacket and took a couple faltering steps toward me. “Hanna Harvey, assistant to a murdering fucktard is concerned about me.”

  “She’s also concerned about your dating life.”

  A savagely smug expression twisted his features. “Don’t like her?”

  “That would be putting it mildly.” I moved to escape down the hall, but Morrison was fast, even when dulled by alcohol. He had my shoulders pinned against the supply closet door before I could exhale. Knowledge of the closet’s secret occupant pushed against my back through the wood like the fuzzy sensation of a sleeping limb.

  “Stay,” he said. The stubble of his chin pushed against my throat as he dragged his mouth to my ear.

  Until he was ripped away and thrown against the opposite wall like a sock monkey.

  “You will not touch her.” Mark’s voice filled the hallway with a potent, vibrating rage.

  Morrison chuckled weakly from where he’d slid to the floor. “She’s never seemed to mind before.”

  “Mark,” I said. “Don’t—”

  He turned to me then, and I saw how thin the thread holding him to his humanity had grown. His amber eyes had gone molten copper, his nostrils flared, his muscles jerked. Every cell of his massive body warred against his mind, wanting to transform into the iteration that would better serve his revenge. My interference would only make it worse.

  I slid back against the door and was silent.

  Morrison struggled to his feet and took a couple steps toward Mark, squaring his jaw, straightening his spine. “So you’re letting this cocksucker make your decisions for you now?” he accused, circling Mark but looking at me.

  “Get out of my gallery,” Mark said, a predator’s stillness pushing unnatural calm into his voice.

  “Or what?” Morrison challenged.

  “Or I’ll break you.” The knuckles of Mark’s hands were bone white as they flexed at this sides. “Don’t mistake patience for weakness, James. Just because I haven’t yet ripped your intestines from your ass and made you wear them like a necktie doesn’t mean I can’t. In fact, it would give me great pleasure.” A small, angry smile curved Abernathy’s lips as he mentally pondered this image.

  I cleared my throat and tried to speak as calmly and serenely as possible. “I would really prefer that we leave everyone’s internal organs where they are for the remainder of the gallery show, is all I’m saying. The guests are hard enough to clean up after as it is.”

  If either Abernathy or Morrison had heard me, they gave no outward indication.

  “Remember that time in your apartment,” Morrison said, completely ignoring Abernathy to turn to me. “When I bent you over the couch—”

  Morrison’s question ended abruptly with Mark’s hand closed around his throat. Which was deeply problematic, as milliseconds earlier, he’d been across the room next to me. I’d never seen Abernathy so much as hint at any of his powers with a human present as it was a whole-ass no-no within the paranormal world.

  Against my better judgment—if I could be accused of having any—I crossed the room to them and put a gentling hand on Abernathy’s back.

  “Mark,” I said, hoping to bring him back to his wits. “Morrison is shit-faced drunk. Maybe we should wait to have any serious discussions until he’ll actually remember them?”

  “I remember how you taste,” Morrison said, completely eradicating my attempt at brokering peace.

  Abernathy’s hand tightened on Morrison’s stubble shadowed throat. “Say another fucking word and so help me I’ll—”

  “Kill me?” Morrison croaked out.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Mark asked. “Maybe then you’d actually be right about me for once.”

  “I was sure right about your assistant.” Morrison attempted a grin, which quickly vanished with the blur of Abernathy’s fist and the sickening sound of teeth clacking against teeth. A thin line of blood worked its way down Morrison’s chin as he looked around, wild-eyed and disbelieving.

  “What the fuck are you?” asked through bloodied teeth.

  “You’d better hope you never have cause to find out.” Abernathy’s lips pulled back, revealing his own sharp snarl. He released Morrison as quickly as he’d grabbed him and stepped back, clearing a path for flight.

  Morrison refused to give him the pleasure. Instead, he met Mark’s eyes with a clarity he hadn’t managed all evening. “Whatever you’re hiding, I’ll find out. And when I do, I’m going to burn your entire fucking world to the ground.”

  With this, he turned and shuffled back toward the gallery, presumably to collect his tipsy, tottering Tinkerbell twat of a date.

  “That went well,” I said, hoping to ease the tension billowing in the air like smoke. When his shoulders lowered a fraction, I breathed a little deeper.

  “You couldn’t have listened to me when I told you not to get involved with him.”

  “Excuse me?” I turned to face him, my hand fixed in its usual position on my hip. “When did you ever say that?”

  “Well, maybe I didn’t say those precise words,” he admitted.

  “Damn right you didn’t. I mean, when you think about it, you’re the one who practically shoved me into his arms in the first place.”

  “The hell I—”

  I held up the Shushing Finger. “Who was the one being all obscure and creepy when there was a murderer tear-assing around town ripping out women’s throats? Who was the one who was all Hanna, you don’t know what you’re talking about but I can’t tell you anything. Hanna, I’ve got this book full of dead women’s pictures but I’m totally not a murderer.” My neck cramped from bunching my shoulders up by my ears, trying to look bulky and sound monotone and morose.

  “I do not sound like that,” he protested, perhaps a little too quickly.

  “Whatever you say, boss,” I teased.

  “Really?” The same voice I had been mocking moments earlier dipped into its huskier registers, dropping the room’s barometer by several points. Abernathy stepped closer to me, body heat and the delicious scent that was his and his alone permeating my senses. “Whatever I say?”

  Stepping backward to preserve my sanity, I was alarmed when he followed suit, stalking me like a great, dark, cat.

  Or wolf.

  My back made contact with the closet door and Abernathy planted his hands on either side of my head as he leaned closer. Slowly and with great precision, he breathed the air next to my neck, my hair.

  My lips.

  “And what are we doing, exactly?” I asked. Leave it to me to really sex up a moment.

  “Testing,” he said, his lips near enough that I felt his warm breath on the skin below my ear.

  “For carbon monoxide?” I asked.

  “For pheromones. If you wanted him, I would know.”

  Suddenly, my stomach felt heavy. My skin feverish. “You would know that?”

  “Mm-hmm.” His lips skimmed my neck, releasing a swarm of gooseflesh.

  “Just from scent?”

  He paused with his mouth just below my jaw. “Just from scent.”

 
; To my utter surprise and considerable delight, his hot, wet tongue, slid along the skin of my earlobe, conjuring an unexpected rush of moisture south of the equator. “Of course,” he breathed across the skin he’d moistened with is tongue. “Taste and scent are closely linked.”

  “Is that so?” I held my breath as Mark’s mouth moved from my ear to hover over mine.

  He brushed my lips once. Twice.

  On the third time, his hand moved from the door into my hair, his fingers digging deep into the unruly waves as he gently tugged.

  In that moment. I would have joyfully given birth to an entire litter of puppies if he only kept doing what he was doing.

  It was that image in particular, the puppies, that slapped me firmly back into reality.

  “This would be significantly more arousing if there weren’t a dead body in the closet,” I said.

  “Or maybe if I—what?” The meaning of my words caught up with him all at once and he snapped back as if I’d thrown a drink in his face.

  “Dead body.” I jerked my head backward toward the closet door. “Right in there.”

  He nudged me aside and nearly pulled the door off its hinges. The head rolled out of the closet and came to rest against my shoe. With the pointy patent leather toe, I inched the purple lip up to reveal the pearly point of a fang.

  “You know,” I said, “if there’s one complaint I have, it’s that there’s just too much damned romance in my life.”

  “Poor bastard,” Mark said. “Wasn’t enough to get decapitated. Someone had damn near stab him through the ear.”

  I glanced down at the head and noted the dark blood oozing over one temple.

  “Oops,” I said, glancing down at the exposed metal spike of my stiletto heel. I’d meant to get that fixed at some point.

  “Oops?” Mark’s face took on the cold and stony demeanor it so often did when one of my many mishaps threw his planets out of alignment. “What oops?”

  “I…um.” Damned if there was any good way to say this. “I sort of kicked it.”

  “Jesus Christ, Hanna!” Mark hit the open closet door with the flat of his palm. “What the hell is wrong with you? We have vampires sniffing around here and you’re playing soccer with undead body parts?”

  “You would have preferred bowling?” I folded my arms across my chest and raised an eyebrow at him.

  Abernathy’s look could have seared the glaze off a doughnut.

  “Look, I’m sorry!” I said. “The damn head jumped off a shelf at me and Morrison showed up and it’s not exactly like I had time to knit a cozy to slip over it!”

  “Shhh!” Abernathy motioned for me to be quiet and kicked the head back into the closet as a patron ambled down the hall toward us in search of the restrooms.

  “See!” I hissed as soon as the potty door was closed. “You did it too! I don’t want to hear another—”

  “Okay, okay! Fine! We both kicked it.” He pulled the closet door open to get a better look at the body folded neatly into thirds on the second shelf up.

  “Look!” I pointed at the head’s waxy brow. “You put a huge dent in his forehead! I only made a tiny mark!”

  “Would you shut up about the head,” Abernathy said, gripping my shoulders. “We have to get this thing out of here!”

  “I’m just saying,” I said. “It could have happened to anyone.”

  We heard the toilet flush and without a word, Mark shoved me into the closet and closed the door behind us.

  “What are you doing?” I began. “The door—”

  A large hand clapped over my mouth as footfalls passed down the hall. Little splashes of shadow slid across the wedge of light at door’s base and the echoes quieted.

  “Mmmph!” I protested against steely Mark’s fingers.

  He held me like that, my back against the warmth of his chest, his heart beating faintly between my shoulder blades. I felt his body relax when the hallway again fell silent.

  “If I move my hand,” he asked. “Do you promise to be quiet?”

  I nodded into his cupped hand.

  “Those were the vampires,” he said. “One look at your face and they would have known what was in this closet.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Not once, but twice today I have discovered decapitated vampires and still managed a normal expression in Morrison’s presence.”

  “First of all, normal is not a word I would ever use to describe your expression and second, it’s not your face Morrison is usually looking at.”

  “Please,” I said. “The only thing he’s probably looking at right now is the back of his own eyelids. And anyway, what I was trying to say before someone so rudely clamped his paw over my mouth—”

  “Half the gallery could hear you.” Mark’s harsh whisper was cool on my clammy cheeks.

  “All of the gallery is going to hear is me in a hot minute. You locked us in the closet with a decapitated vampire.”

  “We’re not locked in,” he said. “I installed this door knob myself.”

  I exhaled a long-suffering sigh as I heard the knob being clicked side to side in rapid succession but refusing to turn.

  “What the...why won’t this—”

  “Because it’s backwards,” I said. “Always has been.”

  “I think I would have noticed if the door to my own supply closet was backwards,” he said. The handle rattled more forcefully.

  “Right,” I said. “Because you come in here so often to get file folders, tape, pens, envelopes, cleaning supplies...”

  “Fuck!” He growled, gave the knob one last try. “It is on backward.”

  “You think?” I reached out to poke him but connected with something wet and cold. “Oh dear God. I touched it! I touched the neckhole. Oh God! I have neck meat on my hand!”

  “Quit flailing around and let me get it,” Mark said, capturing my wrist in the dark.

  “Not so hard!” I said. “It hurts!”

  “Do you want me to get it or don’t you!”

  At that precise moment, the door flew open to reveal one Joseph Abernathy.

  The excitement in his eyes quickly dampened to disappointment when he saw me with my hand frozen in Mark’s grasp, the stump of a neck protruding between us, and the head wedged between our feet.

  “Oh,” he said. “I was hoping to find you engaged in far more entertaining pursuits.”

  Pushing past him, I raced down the hall to the bathroom, holding my hand away from my body like a dirty diaper all the way to the sink. I washed my hands five times in water hot enough to scald my skin and steam the mirror.

  Joseph and Mark stood in identical speculative postures in front of the closet when I returned.

  “This would be the third vampire those chaps were referring to,” Joseph said. “And someone is definitely working with a theme here.”

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Humphrey Bogart,” Joseph said.

  “No!” My heart sank in my chest remembering the many nights my grandmother and I had spent on her couch, popcorn bowl between us and silvery light from the TV flickering across our faces as we screened the noir-iest of noir flicks. “Not Bogey!”

  “I’m afraid so,” Joseph said.

  I knelt in front of the crumpled body, gazing down into the cool, silent face.

  “I loved Casablanca,” I said. “And To Have or To Have Not really was a masterpiece. Don’t even get me started on Bacall. She had presence, you know? I can totally see why you loved her. I mean, I loved her. Who wouldn’t love her?”

  “Hanna,” Mark said, dropping a warm, heavy hand on my shoulder.

  “Hmm?”

  “Please stop talking to the head.”

  There are moments in a girl’s life that cause her to pause and reflect to the circumstances that lead her to a pivotal moment. Hearing this sentence spoken to me, out loud, by Mark Abernathy, was one of mine.

  Gone were the days when I thought having three cats would be the thing people judged me for.

&n
bsp; “Right,” I said, struggling to my feet. I looked from Abernathy to his father, straightened my skirt, and squared my shoulders. “I think I’m just going to go check how things are going in the gallery. Because that’s—that’s a thing I should do. Right now.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Mark agreed.

  When I returned ten minutes later, the head and body were gone, along with Joseph Abernathy. I had the unsettling feeling their expediency in disposing of the body in my absence might be insurance against my inviting the head out for cocktails after the gallery show. Or schlepping it home in my purse.

  To be honest, neither of those options was totally unfounded.

  “So what now?” I asked Mark.

  “We finish the gallery show,” he said.

  “But shouldn’t we try to find out who’s behind this?” I asked, trailing him down the hallway and back toward the thinning crowd.

  “How would you propose we do that at this very moment?” Abernathy asked, pausing to look directly into my eyes.

  “Look for clues?” I suggested.

  “There aren’t any,” he replied.

  “How can you be so sure?” I jogged to catch up with his efficient, long-legged gait.

  “I suspect it’s less of a who and more of a what.”

  “What makes you think that?” An oily feeling congealed in my belly.

  “Easy,” he said, a twisted smile not quite at home on his handsome features. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t make mistakes.”

  Chapter 9

  Mistakes.

  I’ve made a few. One of them was currently passed out on my doormat in a puddle of his own vomit.

  I nudged Morrison with the toe of my shoe much the same way I had the head of Humphrey Bogart only hours earlier. Out of consideration, I used the other foot. He groaned and slung an arm over his face to shield his eyes from the old chandelier I’d flipped on in the house’s common hallway. Seconds later, his sonorous snore marked a seamless passage back into an alcohol-induced coma.

  “Hey.” I prodded him a second time. “Sleeping beauty. Wake-up.”

  No signs of life permeated the haze of scotch and stomach acid lingering about him like a malodorous fog.