Lovely Violent Things: A Dark Romance (Hollow’s Row 2)

HALEN

The deep baritone of Kallum’s voice curls in my belly as I stay locked in his gaze, reminding me of our first encounter at the Cambridge crime scene. Beneath that vivid memory, however, some elusive feeling, like a misplaced familiarity, tugs at the back of my mind.

A shadow of the past is conjured against the hazy lamplight: Kallum’s hands stained in red, his suit jacket draped over my shoulders, his voice breaking through the shroud of my mind: Breathe.

I blink hard to clear the vision as the bite mark on my shoulder pulses with heat beneath the bag strap, the place on my body where Kallum claims he traced a sigil before he ever approached me at the university.

“Professor Locke,” I say, my voice breathy as I strive to control the tremor. “Welcome back.”

I wanted to be more prepared before I had to confront Kallum.

I wanted the evidence to profile him as the prime suspect of this crime scene. I wanted to pin him—without a shadow of a doubt—as the Harbinger killer.

I wanted to witness him arrested and handcuffed, where I couldn’t be forced to play his game, where I felt safely removed from his reach.

But life has never once asked my permission before it decided to blow my world apart. I don’t expect it to start now.

So I grip the bag strap tighter, lift my chin, and meet Kallum’s smoldering gaze with cool indifference. Tension infuses the air of the marshland, the silence stretching until Agent Alister clears his throat.

“Right,” Alister says. “No introduction necessary.” Sarcasm laces his words as he glances first at the progress of the crime scene, then between me and Kallum. “St. James, I heard you’ve officially been hired on by the locals.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Two expert consultants,” Kallum comments. “Feels a bit overkill.” The goading remark is punctuated by his smile that reveals the slight dimple in his cheek.

I loathe that dimple.

“There’s two suspects, so maybe not.” I tilt my head, gaze narrowed on him. “That was a fast trip, professor. You work quickly.”

“My services are obviously sorely needed,” he says, letting his gaze drift slow and deliberate down my body to further his innuendo. “And I do aim to please.” His intense eyes settle on my neck, noting the absence of the diamond pendant, and that calculated action trips my pulse.

A reactive flame licks my skin, and I’m forced to look down into the den of the crime scene to escape his knowing leer.

When Alister said he planned to bring Kallum back onboard the case, I had hoped the red tape would take longer to cut through. I wonder how Alister convinced Dr. Torres to release Kallum to the service of the feds once again rather than transferring him to another facility, as he was so intent on.

“I assume everyone will play nice together,” Alister says, attempting to dissipate the obvious awkwardness. He then bows his head in my direction. “Are you leaving?”

Finally breaking free of Kallum’s penetrating hold, I give my attention to the agent in charge. “No, just taking a short break,” I say, deciding there’s no way I can leave Kallum on this crime scene where he can potentially tamper with evidence.

“You look like you’re in need of a bed, Dr. St. James.” Kallum’s voice is fine gravel scraping at my resolve. The dark flame banked behind his clashing eyes sends up a warning flare within me, the insinuation hitting its mark.

I swallow the ache trapped in my throat and flip my white forelock out of my vision. “Some of us appreciate the sacrifice that has to be made.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I mentally claw the air to snatch them back.

Like he’s been given a gift, Kallum smiles down at me with practiced, weaponized smolder that shallows my breath. “Oh, I more than appreciate your sacrifice, Dr. St. James.”

Liquid heat pours into my veins, and my thighs clench at the empty ache in my core. A flash of memory surfaces—my wrists bound; my thighs wrapped around his thrusting hips—and I can feel Kallum so deep inside me, I have to take a step back to breathe.

My emotions and weaknesses are human. I’m a flawed design. I can’t shut off the torrent of emotions he unleashed inside me in a matter of hours. I gave Kallum a piece of me that I’d never given anyone else…and now, I can’t simply forget, no matter how badly I wish I had the power to do so.

Unlike the soulless demon standing before me, I’m not an unfeeling monster.

Regardless of the confusion waging an internal war, my mind is stronger than my metaphorical heart. It always wins out. Kallum knows this—he even believes this—the power of mind over matter, the philosophy of The Will to Power. It’s why the last words he uttered to me were spat with venom.

“There’s no way I’m ever letting you go. We are the duality.”

He wants me to give in to some illogical, immaterial passion. Which he’ll manipulate, utilizing every head game in his arsenal to cloud my reason.

A heavy bout of mental exhaustion claims me already, and we’ve barely started this dance.

When a crime-scene analyst approaches Alister, the agent steps aside to speak with him in private, and suddenly the negative space between us is charged with everything last said and unsaid.

Kallum steps closer, leaving the other agent farther behind. I purposely loosen my grip on the strap, allowing a tingling sensation to bite into my fingertips as feeling returns.

This is exactly how it feels to be Kallum’s object of obsession. First the numbing balm, then the pain.

The bandage around his left hand is stained with fresh blood. As if he knows the effect his proximity has on me, Kallum grins, leisurely rolling up the cuffs of his black dress shirt to put the bandage in my direct view.

I tear my eyes away and catch sight of the scripted tattoos which decorate the areas between the sigils and archaic designs inked into his skin.

“You’re in pain,” he says, his voice softening as his gaze tracks my body, momentarily landing on the bruises along my neck.

I’m not sure if he’s referring to the attack I sustained from the dead suspect, or our frenzied love making—but I don’t want him probing any of my wounds.

“Halen—?”

“I’m fine,” I say, cutting him off. I look at the scripted words tattooed on his skin, shifting my thoughts to a safer topic, like the verse I’ve read countless times on his arm. “There would be no harmony without high and low notes…”

He glances down at his forearm before returning his attention to me. “Heraclitus’s oppositional process of eris and dike.”

I hold his gaze, unwavering. “Strife and justice. Or is it strife and harmony? What does the philosophy expert believe?”

A flash of amusement lights his features. His tongue travels over his bottom lip, as if tasting me in the air, a snake scenting its prey. “Impressive. I’m surprised you’ve had time to memorize my tattoos to research.” He tosses an unconcerned look at the crime scene. “Then again, you never could keep your eyes off me.”

A flare of indignation blisters my face. I mentally sidestep his baiting remark. “I just find it ironic you have a quote by a philosopher known as The Obscure. It’s rather…I don’t know… Fitting?”

“Initially, he was called The Riddler,” he corrects before taking a purposeful step forward to crowd the thin space between us with his consuming, towering presence. “There’s no irony here, little Halen. I’ve never once been obscure with you. I’ve always been honest, offered you the truth. Ask me anything. Whatever you want, whatever you need, I’ll give you.”

Beneath the heavy press of his implied offer, one thing screams inside my head.

The knife.

With his severe eyes focused on me in challenge, I want to demand what he did with the carving knife after Landry’s attack. Did he take it with him when he left the ritual ground? Is it the weapon that was used to sever the victim’s head?

“I know how to find them. You know I can find them.”

These words Kallum said to me before he disappeared into the high reeds, leaving me to clean up the mess at the ritual crime scene. His claim he could locate the missing victims.

For hours, Kallum was out of my sight—out of everyone’s sight. The ankle monitor left behind at the hotel. He had just under three hours to locate a victim, set the scene, and get back to the hotel.

Thinking about it in terms of anyone else, it’s not possible. There wasn’t enough time. The walk alone would’ve taken Kallum over forty-five minutes to reach the hotel.

But we’re not talking about anyone else—this is Kallum Locke. The man who had an agenda from the moment he first approached me at the university crime scene. The man who knew his end game before I ever sat down across from him at the Briar visitation table.

The man who believes charging sigils on his skin can manifest his most coveted desires, and whose delusional, twisted concept of love is manipulating me into believing I’m a murderer.

If planned ahead, if Kallum already deciphered the location of the town’s missing victims, then it’s feasible he could have held Detective Emmons’ brother somewhere else, somewhere nearby. He removed his ankle monitor once, proving he could’ve removed it at any point prior to the night of the ritual. As he found the second crime scene with hemlock and ears in mere minutes of studying the first scene, Kallum could have known where to look for a possible third location.

There’s a lot of hypotheticals in my working theory, which is not how I break down a crime scene. The only thing I have right now is speculation, and herein lies the danger of building a profile while looking directly at an offender.

Until I find the one pivotal piece of evidence—the murder weapon—I need to focus on the why instead of the how.

Kallum’s motive is simple: Revenge.

My questions burn to be released, but I can’t give up my theory to him. Not until I have what I need.

This time, I can’t give in to Kallum or his games.

The special agent behind Kallum clears his throat, noting the tension between the two consultants is reaching a fever pitch.

“There’s absolutely nothing I want from you.” I try to back away, but Kallum reaches out and grasps my forearm. His thumb brazenly grazes the sensitive skin of my inner wrist, feeling the abraded flesh from the rope burn and speeding my pulse.

“You can’t leave,” he says, his tone taking on a serious edge. “You can’t be alone. It’s not safe, Halen.”

“I haven’t been safe since the moment you entered my world.” I snatch my arm free, severing his connection.

Weighing his next words, Kallum slides his tongue over his teeth. “Don’t you want my theory on the crime scene?”

Like baiting a worm on a hook, Kallum dangles the lure before me. For all my efforts to study the acclaimed Professor Locke, he was the one learning how I tick, how to maneuver me.

Kallum is a sociopath who needs to control the narrative. Anything he offers will be to his benefit. But even Kallum is capable of making a mistake. One way to catch a lying sociopath is to let them talk.

“Enlighten me, professor,” I say.

“With pleasure.” A grin hooks the corner of his mouth before he casts a look over the marsh. “There is no such thing as an original idea,” he says, already veering off on a tangent I know will make my head hurt. “Even the master philosophers wove their doctrines from previous concepts. One in particular—” he points to the inked script on his forearm “—Heraclitus. I find it interesting that line in particular called out to you. As if the universe was trying to offer you a clue.”

“The universe? Or a clever philosophy scholar twisting things to his advantage?”

He chuckles. “You really do have trust issues.”

“I wonder why.”

A tense beat thrums the air between us as we stay locked in each other’s stare.

“Though there was only ever one written dogma,” Kallum says, pushing his agenda, “of which nothing remains except in the teachings of Heraclitus’s successors, his core belief in flux was universally accepted.”

I feel myself being drawn in, the quicksand funneling in around me. “I’m too exhausted for existential meanderings,” I say, expelling a sigh. “Just…explain.”

He crosses his arms with a satisfied smirk. “Heraclitus expounded on flux by stating opposites coincide. He was a philosopher Nietzsche openly respected, I suspect, because he declared Dionysus was lord, and they both enjoy their paradoxes. Opposites attract and all that.” He winks at me. “So then, we have to make an educated guess that Nietzsche’s own path to self-deification was constructed from his teachings. Which means your actual suspect is on the same course. They’re seeking unity in their opposite.”

Through his whole spiel, what I latched on to was: “Opposites attract.” I nod tersely. “The duality, right? Apollonian and Dionysian.”

We are the duality.

Kallum’s gaze flares, a hunger banked in the depths of his clashing gaze. “Plato believed we all have a twin soul, that we’re all just here on this planet searching for our other half.”

I hold up a hand, stopping him. “One riddle at a time.”

“Your suspect hasn’t completed the ascension because he’s searching too, and in fact realized he needs this opposite side of himself in order to fully ascend.” His expression turns pensive. “No one likes to be alone.”

I swallow against the forming ache in my throat. “You seem to have a disturbing fixation with that particular theory, Professor Locke.”

“You have no idea,” he says, his voice a low rumble.

The intensity of the moment strains my defenses, and I’m the one to look away.

“But what I appreciate most,” Kallum says, his tone turning seductive, “is Heraclitus’s theory on the fire of the soul, how the mastery of our desires purifies us.” His fingers trace the side of my palm to pull my attention back on him. His gaze heats as he stares into me. “I can think of at least three different ways we can master our desires right now and save our damned souls, sweetness.”

My heart pounds in my chest. “Go to hell, Kallum.”

His smile is wicked. “Obligingly. But only with you by my side, angel.”

A hot coil of irritation twists my nerves. “None of what you said pertains to that scene.” I point toward the marsh. “Where does the Harbinger killer fit in to your deduction?” I challenge him.

Kallum runs a bandaged hand through his dark hair. “You’re always looking too closely to truly see,” he says. “Is it more likely the Harbinger killer needed a scapegoat, or the Overman?”

I fold an arm over my midsection, a cramp twinging my stomach. “I don’t understand. What does scapegoating have to do with the murder?”

He moves closer. Too close, forcing my head to tip back. “We need to talk about this in private.”

A breathless laugh slips free. “Of course we do.”

As Alister turns his attention on us, he releases a curt breath. “Whatever the issue is, drop it.” He steps between me and Kallum and crosses his arms. “With two psychotic killers in this town, we’re working together and pooling resources to recover the victims alive.”

I lift my chin, remaining silent as Alister moves in closer to me and drops his voice. “I meant what I said before. I’d like it if we could work closely on this.”

I lock my frame in a defiant stance. “Yes. I remember exactly what you said, Agent Alister.” Stepping around him, I add, “My initial observations have been given to the local department to share with the task force. You can request all my reports from Detective Riddick.”

Tension arcs through the boggy air. I sense the volatile shift in tide as Kallum first gauges me curiously, then traps Alister in a fierce glare. “Did I miss something important here?”

Alister ignores Kallum outright. “I’m not disputing the locals keeping you on the case, St. James. But that means you still answer to the task force that has jurisdiction. Which means, you answer to me.”

The weariness creeping into my bones steals some of my indignation. I chew back my retort. “Understood, sir.”

Alister’s mouth thins and a muscle twitches in his jaw. “What I need to know is if there are any marked differences between the Harbinger scene here and the others you’ve worked. Any deviating details.”

Despite my tunnel vision on Kallum and my desire to put Alister in his place for the lewd and degrading pass he made at me the day before, I’m still a professional. And there’s still a victim that deserves justice, along with thirty-two other missing victims who need to be recovered.

Glancing over my shoulder, I try to see the crime scene through a fresh lens. The intricate weaving of yarn to create a web where thirty-three partial tongues are displayed like shriveled trophies. Erected central to the first scene is the headless body of the victim—the decapitated head placed near the feet.

Since I arrived on site, I’ve been detangling the two scenes from each other. Teasing apart the knotted details. One a sacrificial offering made by the Overman, and the second the victim of the Harbinger.

The task force has escalated the Harbinger case to priority.

They put roadblocks up around the perimeter of town, checking all vehicles coming and going. In the letter discovered on the body, the Harbinger made a threat to the victims. He specifically called out the Overman, threatening to take out every “higher man” until the Overman “shows his face”.

I look at Kallum, again questioning just what the letter means, if it means anything at all, or if it’s only meant to derail the investigation.

The logical choice is to focus all efforts on first capturing the Harbinger. I support this. Because, while there is another threat to the victims, the fact is, the Harbinger has proven he can locate them.

And, according to the time of death of the victim here, he can locate them alive.

Relaxing the tightly threaded muscles around my spine, I take a fortifying breath and say, “Besides the fact that this is the first time the Harbinger has invaded another scene, the most obvious deviance from the other Harbinger cases is the antlers on the victim. The letter from the Harbinger was vague. I can’t glean his intent, his motive. Yet,” I add, directing a stern glare at Kallum, “it’s only a matter of time. The Harbinger was rushed. If there was a mistake made, we’ll uncover it.”

I’ll uncover it.

Alister nods confidently. “I agree. But what made this guy show up here? He’s been dormant for over half a year, now this.”

I brought him here.

The words burn at the base of my throat as I hold them back. There’s been a question plaguing me since I first glimpsed the Harbinger scene, and there’s only one person who can answer it.

If I wouldn’t have resisted Kallum at the ritual site, if I wouldn’t have refused to play into his delusion of the sick and twisted connection he believes we have, if I would have accepted him, accepted us together… Then would there be a victim at all?

He looked me in the eyes and vowed he could find the victims.

He said I needed him in order to save them.

Then I told him I’d never need him for anything ever again.

Demonstrating his claim in the most violent and gruesome manner wasn’t only a punishment, it was his proof.

The sky has lightened to a dull, overcast gray with the morning break. I glance down at the sun-bleached boards before I return my gaze to Alister. “I don’t know why the killer is here,” I say. “But it’s clear his delusion has devolved, and that’s what I’m going to focus on.”

Alister studies me intently, adjusts his shoulder harness. “You’re a hundred percent sure this is the same guy.”

I wish I wasn’t. “Chalk was used to portray the victim’s face in the likeness of the death’s-head hawkmoth,” I say, pushing my bangs from my eyes. “It needs to be confirmed by lab testing and compared to the other scenes, but I can say with a degree of certainty that it’s the same technique.”

A detail that very few people would be privy to. If you only have news stations and media outlets to view the Harbinger crime scenes, it’s easy to mistake the depicted skull on the victims’ faces to be paint.

For a brief second, I meet Kallum’s eyes, and I see the mischievous gleam.

Professor Percy Wellington was the fourth victim of the Harbinger that proved to be a crime of passion dressed up like a copycat murder. The very murder Kallum is now being remanded to a mental hospital for committing shared this commonality of the crime.

A drumbeat sounds in my head, a flash of a vision follows, and I see the lug wrench tipped in blood held in my hand…

I blink back the encroaching memory.

Kallum cocks his head. “That’s a very specific detail,” he says, an echo of what I once said to him at the Cambridge crime scene. “A detail like that would only be known to the officials who worked closely on the cases.”

“And the killer,” I fire back.

His smile is arrogant. “Right. The killer would know all the details.”

A mirrored smile spreads across my face, and it’s completely inappropriate for the moment, and I’m sure makes me look deranged.

Agent Alister regards me with a measure of hesitancy. “All right. Good,” he says. “I’ll trust your assessment on this. He’s our guy. That’s where we’re focused. Which makes my next request not so much a request.” He brings out a folded slip of paper from the inseam of his suit blazer. “We have a lot of fast-moving parts, and since there was a, uh, situation with Dr. Torres, he wasn’t able to refer a psychiatrist to Professor Locke—”

“I’ll do it.”

My abrupt offer to take Kallum back on as his field psychiatrist jars not only Alister, but also Kallum. Both men look uncertain, but it’s the twist of Kallum’s full lips that digs beneath my resolve to make me question if I really have this under control, or if I just handed him exactly what he wants.

“Halen,” Alister says, and I see Kallum bristle at the agent’s familiar use of my name. “I was going to suggest for you to refer another doctor.”

“That would take time.” Impatience bleeds through my clipped tone of voice. “Which is limited, and you’ve stressed we need to utilize our resources. Is there a conflict with me overseeing Professor Locke in the field?” I take the form and hold out my hand for a pen.

Alister hesitates a moment before he concedes. He’s a man who likes to be in control, and this situation is getting dangerously close to the opposite. Though he has little choice if he wants his task force to find the suspects and the victims.

“Since you understand our strained resources, then you can appreciate I’m only able to put Special Agent Hernandez on detail with Locke.”

I glance at the agent in a black suit and earpiece hanging back on the boardwalk. It’s not as if two agents were able to leash Kallum the first time. I sign my name on the form, placing myself in charge of Kallum’s mental health. The irony is grim.

“Done.” I hand the form and pen back to Alister.

As I step aside to head back down to the crime scene, Alister eases in front of me and takes my chin between his grip, tilting my face up to him.

I reflexively pull back, but his hold is firm. “You’ve been working the scene since I last saw you here, haven’t you?” It’s not a question as he assess what I’m sure are bloodshot eyes and dark bags. His gaze searches my face before he drops his hand. “You’re leaving. Don’t come back until you’ve had sleep.”

I trap a retort on my tongue. Alister’s action was far too inappropriate…and intimate.

Like a pop of kindling snapping the air, Kallum’s dark energy presses against me. I can sense his fury crackling the charged atmosphere stronger than the gathering storm.

I take a step away from Alister as a flash of lightning flickers across the dense cloud cover over the sky. A low rumble of thunder follows in warning.

When I don’t respond, Alister nods solemnly. “Look, I don’t care whose payroll you’re on,” he says. “This is my crime scene, and an overworked profiler isn’t touching my—”

“She’s leaving.” Kallum moves into my periphery like a dark shadow. “I’ll behave myself for a few hours without supervision.”

His words are delivered to Agent Alister with the hard edge of malice laced beneath his quip.

I expel an audible breath at the rise of testosterone as I glance between the two of them. Without a word, I shift my bag strap higher and turn to head off down the boardwalk, leaving the alpha males to their own primitive devices.

As I descend the steps, I pass a woman covered in a Tyvek suit, presumably the medical examiner here to remove the victim.

“We still need to talk.”

I’m almost to my rental, and don’t stop walking. “We did talk,” I say to Kallum, digging out my keys and clicking the fob to unlock the car. I pop the trunk and unload my gear, trying hard to ignore his demanding presence.

Rain pelts the roof of the car. I feel the cool drops on my face. Another roll of thunder travels through the marsh. As I glance up, Kallum is standing beside the driver-side door, hands deep in his pockets.

Agent Hernandez stands behind him at a distance, effectively giving us privacy, though I see his eyes lift to keep track of his charge.

“Please move away from the door,” I say.

Kallum’s drawn features soften at the weariness in my tone. Or maybe it’s the please. I’m too drained by him to keep my fight strong for much longer.

“You think I did this,” he says, inclining his head in the direction of the wetland crime scene.

Folding my arms over my chest, I stare at him and really try to comprehend how he can deny what is obvious. How does he lie so effortlessly? Does he believe his own lies?

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I say. “It matters what the evidence will prove. Now, move the hell out of my way.”

Kallum’s gaze falls to my crossed arms, to the sliver of skin exposing the rope burn around my wrist. The visceral memory of his touch detonates inside my chest with a resounding shiver.

I reach out and touch the side of the car, grounding myself. “God, Kallum. Just…please go.”

He moves closer and clasps my neck, his fingers braced along my nape as his thumb delicately skims the bruises. I swallow hard against his touch, unable to free the trapped breath, until he finally releases me and steps aside.

“I need you to stay inside your room at the hotel,” he says. “Don’t leave, Halen.”

I pull the door open and slip behind the wheel. “I’m the last person on this planet who is concerned with what you need.”

He glances down at the GPS monitor strapped to his ankle, his features strained.

“Just so you know,” I say, hand gripped to the handle, “I’ve cataloged every square inch of that scene. I’ll know if anything is altered, which could clue me in on a piece of important evidence, so I’m almost hoping you have the audacity to try.”

I slam the car door shut and key the ignition. Putting the car in Reverse, I back out of the parking spot and refrain from glancing in the rearview mirror as I drive away from Kallum.

There’s a monster that feeds off pain, and his beautiful, disarming eyes look right into me, down to the rawest truth of my grief.

The more vulnerable I become, the deeper my daemon slithers. If I can’t escape him, he won’t stop until he consumes all of me.