Lovely Bad Things: A Dark Romance (Hollow’s Row 1)

HALEN

Fear can be a potent aphrodisiac. Fear heightens our senses, sends a rush of adrenaline to our heart. Every nerve in the body is stimulated. The onslaught of rousing heat fires into a frenzied climax.

As my mind comprehends the danger, my body clings to the moment of bliss—the pure, rapturous experience of a suspended moment where I exist on another plane.

“Oh, god damn.” Kallum groans as my sex clenches around him. “That’s it, sweetness,” he coaxes. “Squeeze the fuck out of my cock. Let me taste that sweet fear.” His hand collars my throat, cutting off my air supply.

Frightened tears spring to my eyes, and he licks the salty trail streaking my cheek.

Kallum’s primal growl hurls me over the edge—even as I cannot take my eyes off the beast of a man advancing toward us. He moves like a disjointed demon. The closer he gets, the better I can discern his severe features. The black thread stitched into his eyelids. The massive antlers mounted to his shaved head.

The rapid orgasm spirals through me so torturously strong, my body trembles uncontrollably as it burns through my muscles. A turbulent storm of pleasure and pain swallows me when Kallum loosens his grip on my throat. I gasp in a desperate breath that shatters me from the inside.

Kallum pumps vigorously inside me to claim the last dregs of my orgasm. His cock pulsates against my swollen channel, and his hot cum spills down my thighs.

Above logic and reason, pain and suffering, all sensation exists in a cosmic vacuum of euphoria….before I’m clawed down into the darkness.

My system overwhelmed, I sag against the tree, my bound wrists on fire. I feel the throb of Kallum still inside me as his climax tapers. His warm breath drifting over my skin, he rests his forehead to mine, his muscles strained and skin heated as our pulses sync.

As Kallum draws back, his devastatingly beautiful eyes seek mine through the chaos. My heart aches from the intensity, from the way his face fills with awe as he gazes at me.

He licks his lips and captures my mouth in a brutally demanding kiss that constricts my heart. He tastes me in slow, sensual caresses before he breaks away.

A devious smile crooks his mouth as he hikes his jeans up and takes a step back. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist you.”

A cold splash of fear hits me.

Adrenaline blasts my veins, the sounds of the field muffled beneath the roar in my ears. The stagnant marsh air chills my slick skin.

My gaze darts to the horned man. Bare-chested, his gleaming muscles bulge in the waning firelight. His booted feet clomp the earth near the fire ring. The skin surrounding his seamed eyes is inflamed. His movements are jerky and off-balance, hindered by his inability to see, but he utilizes his other senses as he progresses with deliberate steps around the sizzling hiss of cinders and heat.

The fine hairs on my body bristle at the inhuman sight of him.

The overman.

Kallum turns to gauge the intruder. “Fuck, he’s big.”

Yanking my wrists against the binding, I try to loosen the rope. “Untie me,” I demand.

He spares me a quick glance before he lowers himself to the ground to grab the discarded knife. Relief uncoils the tension threading my spine as I wait to be set free, until Kallum sets off in the direction of the man.

My heart plummets.

I struggle harder to free myself.

Kallum’s cut form stalks in careful, measured steps toward the center of the cleared circle where the dwindling fire provides enough light to make out the horned man’s brawny build.

He stands opposite Kallum, towering by almost a foot. The antlers give him another two-to-three feet over Kallum.

He’s not a monster, yet he is monstrous. He’s a mortal man who believes he’s invoked the horned god and has become divine in a bestial form. He exerts power and strength in every flexed muscle of his intimidating physique. His biceps are enormous. His thighs are sharply defined along his jeans.

Kallum creeps toward the offender, wielding the knife in a sure grip. The knife carrying our blood—the DNA evidence that will be left on the perpetrator and traced back to us if he injures him, or worse…

This man could be the only way to locate the victims.

The horned man shifts his attention in Kallum’s direction, and my heart flips inside my chest.

“Kallum, no—” I shout, futilely twisting against the rope. “The victims.”

I cry out as I tear one of my hands free of the rope.

Breath caught in my aching lungs, I watch Kallum take a swipe at the beast.

Angling backward out of reach, the horned man barely evades the attack.

My relief is short as a guttural roar is unleashed from the offender. I shiver, my blood icing in my veins. The giant man brings his large hands together to trap Kallum’s neck.

Hefting Kallum off the ground, the horned beast lifts him into the air by his throat with inhuman strength. The knife never makes contact as the offender throws Kallum to the ground with such force, I feel the vibration in the soles of my feet.

A scream wrenches from my gut. My vision wavers along the borders as the beast turns his fury in my direction.

Chest rising with my desperate attempt to fill my lungs, I rush to untie my other wrist. My fingers are numb and clumsy as I fight the knot, my wide gaze staying locked on the stitched eyes.

He charges straight for me.

My hand slips free of the rope and I drop to my haunches. Naked and shivering, I sink my fingers into the damp earth. The horned man with no eyes barrels forward.

His feet thump the ground in heavy beats, sounding louder and speeding faster than the distant drumbeat floating through his ritual ground.

As he nears, he staggers off kilter before righting and correcting course. I take advantage of his misstep and glance around in search of a weapon. Nothing within reach, I look down at my fingers dug into the mud…at the rope.

My vision flickers, swapping the sight with an image of another object in my hand.

A tire iron.

A jolt of alarm pierces the disturbing imagery, and I’m yanked back into the present as his roar shatters the nightmare. I glance at Kallum. He’s splayed out on the ground. I’m facing the beast alone and, as he draws near, I don’t think.

I grab the rope.

Stilling my breaths, I try to control the tremble of my body. I don’t make a sound as his booted feet enter my line of sight.

Slowly, I track my gaze up his large physique. He stares down at me with those empty, stitched sockets, his bare chest heaving. His nostrils flare right before he sways to the right.

I drag in a quick breath. I grip the rope.

He takes hold of one of the slender fawn antlers on my crown. He traces the curve of the bone with reverent curiosity, then inhales deeply as if he’s sniffing me.

With a queasy tumble to my stomach, I realize what he’s scenting.

My blood.

Warmth trickles down my thigh, and I squeeze my legs together. A tremor ricochets through my body, but I try to keep still. Confusion etches the man’s chiseled features and he tilts his head.

He sways again and staggers, releasing the antler.

I don’t waste time wondering what’s wrong—whether he’s intoxicated or wounded—I seize the opportunity to wrap the rope around his ankle.

Using the force of my whole body to dislodge him, I fall backward and bring the beast to the ground with me. Half his weight lands on my legs, pinning me to the earth.

A savage panic rises up from the shadowy trenches of my mind. The fear of being trapped—helpless; attacked—lights a wick of desperation and fury.

Coated in wine and mud and blood, I wrestle my legs from beneath and climb atop his chest like a wild animal. We are two horned beasts battling for dominance.

This man fears death.

That is my only advantage.

His massive body quakes beneath me as his hands flail in frantic search. I hunker low to his torso and secure the rope around his thick neck.

My vision goes dark. The fading embers of the fire casts eerie silhouettes against the veil obscuring my sight like a dreamy shadow play.

The obscured face below me flickers to the distorted crime-scene photos of the Cambridge murder. Like two movie reels have been spliced together, the scenes flip between two faces.

Villain and victim.

The rope gripped in my hands morphs into a tire iron.

Blood…so much blood.

I’m thrust out of the vision as I feel a large hand clamp my throat. I tighten my grip on the rope until my palms burn, and his roar rattles my eardrums. His hands throttle my neck, cutting off my supply of air. Pressure builds at my temples, my eye sockets ache.

Panic fists my lungs until I lose feeling of the rope in my hands—and I know I’m going to die.

I’ve never feared this moment. Even yearned for it when the heartache threatened to destroy me. So I don’t understand why I’m struggling so violently against it now, terrified of never taking my next breath…

Cast by the waning embers, Kallum’s shadow moves into my line of sight. Relief sails through me so fucking powerfully, tears spill over my eyes.

I search for him on the perimeter of my dwindling vision, and when our gazes connect through the strobing reel of my life, hope is strangled from my veins.

Kallum stands over the struggle with a calmness that chills my blood.

He’s going to let me die.

The longer the seconds stretch, the more my vision blacks, the more I accept the outcome and the totality of my life. Then the flickering reel flashes a terrifying scene in such startling clarity, a muted scream claws its way past my constricted throat.

Kallum moves. Looming over me with features carved in brutal fury, he raises his foot and brings it down on one of the beast’s antlers. The crack vibrates in my bones.

Dropping to his haunches, Kallum grabs the point of an antler and meets my eyes through the darkened haze. He thrusts the weapon into my hand.

One second where I register the weight of the bone in my palm, then the next I drive the point of the antler into the beast’s jugular.

His hands fall away, and arms band my waist. I’m pulled from the mountain of the overman.

Legs thrashing and air raking my lungs, I search for a stable place to land. Pain radiates in my head to split my brain in two.

Kallum’s arresting features materialize through the blinding pain. I cough and fall to my knees, where Kallum follows, his hands searching my naked body. He’s saying something, but I can’t hear past the pounding of my heart.

As the sounds of the hushed marsh drift to my ears and I slowly resurface, I draw in the crisp night, recognizing Kallum’s touch.

“Breathe,” he says. His bloody hands cup my face, and the feel of the cuts on his palms grounds me in the moment.

With concern slashed across his brow, he searches my eyes to make a connection, then he wraps his arms around me in a consoling embrace. I feel safe for a fleeting moment, until the memory shatters the illusion.

The memory of when Kallum first told me to breathe is so sharp, on reflex I push away.

In my mind’s eye, I see Kallum standing in the dark. The dim light from lampposts illuminate his profile. He’s holding my face between his palms, his clashing gaze trying to break through the fog.

There’s a body.

My throat raw, I strain to talk. “Oh, god.” My head whips around, the sudden fear of what I’ve done crashing over me.

Splayed on the muddy ground, the man’s giant body is racked with tremors as he holds the broken antler lodged in his neck. The antlers that terrified me as they rose amid a field of deer spear the earth as he sputters and coughs. A foamy white substance bubbles in his parted mouth.

“I strangled him. I stabbed him.” Acute terror punches my chest. “I killed him.”

“No, you didn’t.” Kallum’s sure voice draws me further out of my confused sate. “He was seizing before you attacked him.”

The vile substance that leaks from the man’s mouth matches Kallum’s claim. I drive my hands into my blood-matted, tangled hair. The circlet of bones lies on the muddy earth next to the convulsing man. I’m filthy and covered in dirt and wine.

And blood.

I still feel Kallum inside me. He’s still so deep beneath my skin.

The present slams against the images in my mind, shaping a macabre scene that pitches my stomach.

Thoughts racing as fast as my heart, I lower my hand and stare at my palm, dazed as the memory of my nightmare crests above the ensuing anxiety. The tire iron was in my hand.

“He was as good as dead before you impaled him,” Kallum says, ripping me out of my tunneling vision. He climbs to his feet and then hunkers near the suspect. “You’re fierce, sweetness. But this brute is next level.”

As I study the foamy substance coating the suspect’s mouth, only one logical explanation breaks through my spiraling thoughts. “Hemlock poisoning,” I say.

Kallum turns a guarded look on me. “That’d be my guess.”

I stare into his eyes. “You…” I swallow hard. The tightness in my neck feels like hands still throttle my airway. “You made me stab him.”

He hikes an eyebrow in amusement. “You’re welcome.”

He saved me. But first, he watched me nearly die.

Kallum stands and grasps the back of his neck. “Fuck, he shook me like I weighed nothing.”

As my body accepts I’m no longer in danger, the adrenaline coursing my bloodstream begins to ebb, leaving me painfully aware of every wound and bruise.

Converging memories still fight for control in the space of my head. The two timelines bleed together until I’m forced to ask: “What is wrong with me?”

Turning his full attention on me, Kallum absorbs my entire state of being before he walks away, saying nothing.

I look down at the man again. He’s no longer seizing. A ribbon of foamy saliva streams down his thick neck. His face is twisted in a horrific expression. He looks every bit a monster.

I recall when I told Detective Emmons that I’d seen a lot.

I’ve never seen or felt anything more terrifying than what I’m experiencing in this moment.

“He’s dead,” I say. Uttering a curse, I swipe a hand over my face. Every nerve ending in my body fires at once, eliciting a prickling sensation beneath my skin.

I can’t process the ramifications right now. This man is the potential suspect Alister’s team is searching for. And he’s dead. Possibly poisoned by his own crop of hemlock. The victims are still out there.

Panic runs its talons down my spine.

I’m here, I tell myself. I’m here in this moment.

I haven’t suffered a panic attack in months, and this one grips me in a vise, crushing my chest. My head is light and dizzy, and nothing feels real.

I touch my forearm. Feel the scar. Look at the script. Reciting the mantra over and over inside my head, I start to feel my heart rate calm.

Focus on the present. Tend to my garden. Do the work.

He could have a clue on his person.

I swallow the painful ache in my throat and try to examine the suspect, taking note of his missing ear where a leather strap has been stitched to secure the antlers. The stitching on his eyelids is sloppy. Something feels off.

No—everything feels off.

Coarse material touches my shoulders, and I flinch. Kallum drapes the bathrobe around me. I didn’t realize until just this moment how badly I’m shaking.

Because, even as I try to process being attacked by a terrifying beast-man, there is something far more sinister vying for my attention.

From the second Kallum sliced his palms and bathed me in his blood, flashes of another life—someone else’s memories—started assaulting my mind.

I cross my arms and turn to face him. “Why am I seeing your memories of the man you murdered?”

It’s Wellington’s bloody and mutilated face that keeps surfacing to drag me under.

“Not my memories.” Kallum stands before me, his expression grave. “You purged it from your mind.”

A cold weight bears down on me. “For once, Kallum, I need you to be clear. To tell me the fucking truth. What the fuck have you done to me?”

“I said I’d be an open book to you,” he says, his tone too calm. “I’ve never told you a lie.”

Fury ignites in my chest. “Maybe you even believe that,” I say, shouldering past him. “I need to call this in—”

As I take off in search of my phone, he grabs my wrist. “You asked me to charge a sigil on your body, Halen.” The conviction in his voice draws my gaze to his. “I put it right here.” He grazes the pad of his finger along the curve of my shoulder and neck. Right over the bite mark.

My chest rises and falls in frantic rhythm to the fierce drumming of my heart. “Your delusions have escalated.” But even as the accusation hits the air, the images are taking shape in the dark hollow of my mind.

I shake my head, trying to force the imagery out. “You drugged me,” I accuse, pointing to the discarded wine bottle. “You…somehow planted this absurd false memory in my head. You’ve done something to me.”

Only the sharply filed pieces of the puzzle won’t stop snapping together. They form so quickly, coming together to create a terrifying and morbid picture I can never unsee.

Kallum keeps hold of my wrist, his fingers pressed to my pulse point. “This happened to you, Halen. I was there.”

My mind tunnels as the vision overlays the dark world around me. From a grainy black-and-white film, to a crisp, full-color motion picture with surround sound, it plays back in cruel clarity.

I swallow the acid burning my throat. “There’s something missing,” I say, my voice quivering.

“But you remember enough.”

Glancing at my hand, I envision the tool from Wellington’s car. The lug wrench from the backseat.

As the world tilts, I find Kallum’s clashing eyes. This isn’t real.

He lifts his chin, the contours of his face cut in serious edges. “I’d never seen a more beautiful creature. All fury and frenzy and passion.”

“But how?” I demand. “How could you see me?”

“I’m the one who helped you stage the scene.”

The flash of memory attacks. The blood on Kallum’s hands. I blink it back, and the images flicker between the cuts he administered tonight and the red staining his palms in the dark…after he severed the head.

“Oh, god.” I touch my forehead. My head is splitting in two.

Stomach roiling, I squeeze my eyes closed and wrap an arm around my waist, as if I can stave off the sickness.

“No. No.” I repeat the word, not believing my own mind. Everything is off. This is a dream. A goddamn nightmare. I bled tonight. I was bleeding, even though a doctor told me I never would again. “This isn’t happening.”

“What happened that day, Halen? The day you left the crime scene?”

His question reaches beyond the bounds of my anxiety and plucks the memory from the furrow of my psyche.

“What happened on that day in particular,” Kallum continues, “to make you get in your car and drive twenty minutes away from your case and attack a stranger?”

The calming cadence of his voice centers me, and it feels like he’s waited a long time to ask me this.

Despite my reflexive impulse to deny the allegation, I think back to that moment in time.

I was buried in the Harbinger case. I was breathing it. Delving deep. Because the alternative was to suffer the debilitating guilt of not visiting my parents’ gravesite on the anniversary of their death.

But it had only been four months since I lost Jackson. And I was more alone on that day…more heartsick than at his funeral. I was raw. Bitter. Angry. And I couldn’t escape. Everything was a reminder of what had been stolen.

Their alma mater was only a short drive away. I remember I had thought… I could visit their college, at least. That would be less painful than seeing their graves. They had met at a concert—a Van Halen show—and then discovered they’d been attending the same school for three years. That was their story. Their meet cute. The reason for my name.

I had thought of driving to the university—but I never went. I remember the gnawing guilt because I was relieved to be buried in the high-profile case.

Then the next day, I got the call about the Cambridge murder. A scene that would forever taint my memories of my parents and embolden me to take the stand against the murderer.

The memory is faded and fuzzy around the edges. I blink it away, finding Kallum’s eyes. I shake my head, refusing to play into his psychosis.

“I didn’t drive anywhere,” I tell him, controlling the tremble of my voice.

A wisp of something dark and violent fumes in his eyes. “You lie so pretty, sweetness.”

A chill coasts my skin, but then he draws me close to him. Despite the panic still flaring within me, I don’t fight. His body heat is real, and it shields me from the frigid early morning, where I fear the daybreak more than the darkness.

He touches my face, gently stroking his thumb along my jaw. “You killed a man,” he says, his terrifying words clashing with the comfort of his touch. “And then we staged the scene to look like the Harbinger murders. It was your idea. Out of fear or guilt or desperation, you pleaded to forget. I knew how to help you forget.” He releases a heavy breath, his gaze absorbing me, his hands clasping my face. “Come back to me, Halen.”

A collage of memories assault my mind, dragging me back down to the abyss…and I break out of his hold.

“I can’t…” I swallow down the bile coating my throat. “This is…no.”

I look at the dead suspect as a fresh wave of panic rises. “I have to call this in. I have to contact Alister.” I lift my gaze to Kallum, my next words dredged from my soul. “And I don’t know what the hell is happening to me, but I have to report this, too.”

“No.” Kallum issues the command with flashing eyes. “I didn’t serve six months in a goddamn insane asylum for you to do that now.”

I pull the robe tighter around me. My skin flames and pulses with every scrape, bruise, cut, and bite. I’m a walking map of evidence—evidence of Kallum and I together.

“Why would you?” I ask him, incredulous. Confusion draws my brows together. “God, if you believe this, why wouldn’t you tell anyone? That, right there, raises every doubt, Kallum.”

He lifts his chin defiantly. “I wanted to protect you,” he says, then he gingerly touches the sigil inked on his chest. “I had to trust that, if my will brought you to me the first time, it would bring you back. I had to have faith in the course. No matter where it led.”

A startled laugh falls from my mouth. “That is insane. You’re insane.”

A snap of anger tightens his jaw. “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” He stalks right up to me and clasps my face. “You brought me the music, little Halen, my beautiful muse. And now you hear it, too.”

I latch on to his wrists. “No Nietzscheism is going to explain away this madness.”

He refuses to release me, and panic wells in my chest. Heart slamming my rib cage, I push against his shoulders until he finally relents.

Crossing his arms over his bare chest, he says, “I did what you asked of me. Against my own greedy, selfish nature that wanted to keep you for myself, because—for the first time in my goddamn life—I felt pain. Your pain.” He eats the distance between us; I can’t escape him. “I cut my finger and drew the sigil right here.” He traces a design over the delicate junction of my neck. “Blood is a very personal charging method. But it was your will to forget.”

I rake my dirty nails through my hair. “This is insanity,” I whisper to myself. “What you’re describing is a psychotic break.”

“Call it what you want, Halen. The terminology doesn’t change the facts.”

I look down at the dead body, then stare at the fire pit, where only the pulsing embers remain. The marsh is growing darker.

Darkest before the light.

Reaching for some rational thought, I march to the wine bottle and grab it off the ground, then pick up any evidence I see as I head toward the table. I snatch my bag and push everything inside.

I’ll have the contents of the wine bottle tested. I’ll have a toxicology workup on my blood. I’ll take a fucking pee test—but I won’t be pulled into Kallum’s delusions.

“And when no reason can explain it away?” he asks, as if reading my rampaging thoughts. He locates his discarded shirt and shoves his arms inside the sleeves.

I meet his eyes—eyes that I willingly fell into tonight, that made me feel safe and worshiped despite drowning in fear. I craved his touch. I wanted his darkness to shelter me. I let myself go so completely…embracing emotions and sensations I’ve never experienced before. With anyone.

That’s what the darkness will do. Eclipse us in the deepest recess of our mind, where every aching desire and needy, devious yearning is hidden. Sheltered, concealed from our conscious, we give ourselves over to the seduction.

But light is always just moments away from spilling over our aftermath.

The wreck was my fault.

Kallum is my consequence, the ruin of my soul.

I hold his deceptively beautiful gaze with what strength I have left. “There has to be an explanation.”

A dangerous edge carves his silhouette against the umber sky. The black eyes of the stag skull on his chest stare into me. I can feel the shift in energy, the tide receding from the shore too quickly.

He looks through me with the callous regard of a soulless monster. “Listen to our first conversation again,” he says, a mischievous grin slanting his mouth. “You’ll hear it quite differently now.”

My blood stalls in my veins.

Dragging in a fortifying breath, I leave him to hunt down my phone. I find the device near the smoldering embers of the fire, retrieving it with trembling hands.

“What are you going to tell Alister?” he says from behind me.

Despite every fiber of my being revolting against Kallum’s claims and the images still afflicting my mind, I have to declare everything that transpired here as part of the report. Which means…

“The Cambridge murder investigation has to be reopened and examined to uncover the truth.” I light the phone screen and pull up Alister’s contact. I tap his name before I lose my nerve.

“He’s here.” Kallum nods indifferently to the body of the perpetrator. “But where are his victims, little Halen? I doubt he left behind a detailed map with X marks the spot.”

Agent Alister answers the call and, as my gaze locks with Kallum’s, I hit Mute on the phone. He’s not done. He always has something up his sleeve, just like a cunning illusionist.

He advances toward me, his lethal form stalking me like prey. “If you reopen the investigation,” he says, “I’ll let them die, Halen.”

Dread coils my body. Alister’s irritated voice sounds from the phone speaker.

“I don’t believe you.” I say. “I don’t believe you know where they are, and I don’t believe you would—”

“Then you also no longer believe I’m your devil?”

Phone gripped tight, I glance between Kallum and the dead offender, an internal battle waging.

“You know I can find them,” he says, his expression serious. “You’ll need me to find them.”

He’s setting a game board where I don’t know the rules. All I know for sure is, if he wants this so badly, then he has an endgame.

“No, Kallum,” I say, grasping for strength I don’t feel. “I won’t need you for anything ever again.”

“But there’s your Freudian slip.” He points out with a devious smile. “The locals need you. You can’t risk the victims by leaving their lives in Alister’s hands. And you can’t save them if you’re gone, awaiting a lengthy investigation. Those lives have little time left.”

A searing anger burns my resolve. “You are the fucking devil.”

“That you created, sweetness.”

I lower my gaze to my phone and end the call. My sight snags on Kallum’s ankle—on the ankle missing the tracking monitor.

There will be questions…too many questions I’m unable to answer. My phone GPS is logged by CrimeTech, and I can justify myself. But not Kallum.

I warily look over the crime scene, making a choice.

When I meet his clashing gaze again, I say, “Leave, Kallum. Go to the hotel. Just…leave.”

I can’t have my mistakes tainting the investigation to hinder the search for the victims.

One of us has to fight for a soul.

“I’ll wait for you,” he says. A glimmer of vulnerability touches his eyes.

“Don’t.”

I realize that, once Kallum walks off this scene, he could disappear. He could vanish and never be seen again. I’m torn with how that possibility makes me feel—whether Kallum Locke disappearing from my life would be a bad thing or a relief.

Kallum holds my gaze with the severity of that very threat hovering between us.

I turn away and take measured steps toward my clothes on the evidence table and dial Alister again. When I turn back around, Kallum is gone.