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

HALEN

The storm clouds have broken against the backdrop of encroaching night. The torrent beats the earth in relentless percussion to match the flood of emotions assaulting me.

I stand under the covered porch, staring out into the haze of sheeting gray. The heavy rain washes away all color and detail, the line between black and white blurred. “Shit,” I breathe.

Devyn’s call was a curtesy, a polite warning to be prepared. The evidence I bagged at the scene was identified as a base yarn from a strand of rope. Transfer on the fibers was conclusively matched to the rope used to bind my wrists at the ritual site. Namely, the wine and blood found in the fibers.

The rope directly implicates me.

My blood, my DNA, is on that piece of evidence.

I could hear the concern in her voice when she tried to give me a way out: “Was it possible that anyone else could’ve been there with you?”

Yes—one vain philosophy professor who gets under my skin.

Yet there’s no verifiable proof that Kallum was at the ritual scene, that he’s the one who then went to the hunting grounds—that he’s the Harbinger killer.

I made it all disappear.

Any of his DNA recovered on the rope can be explained. During questioning, I admitted Kallum helped me prepare for the ritual; his blood was all over my body.

I fell right into his trap.

The question of how that strand of rope got on the victim is enough for Agent Alister to bar me from the crime scene. Whether it’s an allegation of carelessness on my part, or an accusation far worse…

I’m already suspect in my methods. I was fired from CrimeTech for those methods. Before I was assigned this case, I was issued a warning. The personal details that negatively impacted my ability to do my job will become reasons, triggers. Any hired expert could take the stand and claim, with a clear conscience, that it’s within reason I could commit this crime.

Regardless of the outcome, with an accusation that damning, my professional career would be over.

I palm my forehead as the barometric pressure drums at my temples, an ache building behind my eyes. I hear footsteps on the porch behind me.

Agent Hernandez hovers at the edge of my periphery. “We should wait out the storm,” he suggests.

His observation feels loaded with more than one meaning. “That’d be smart.” I wait for him to return inside before I step off the porch into the torrential downpour.

I’m drenched before I reach the end of the walkway. Cold rain soaks my thermal and jeans, dousing some of the anger boiling my blood. I cross my arms and squint against the thick beads pelting my face.

“Halen—”

My eyes close briefly at the sound of Kallum’s voice. That cord tethered to him snaps taut, and I have to physically will my feet to keep moving.

He’s the storm that won’t pass.

The heavy beat of his footfalls brings him closer. I don’t stop.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“I’m not waiting for Agent Alister to send a detail after me. I’m taking myself in.”

“Make him wait.” He matches my fast pace easily. “You can’t walk all the way back into town in the storm.”

“I can do whatever I want. At least for right now, while I’m still free to do so.”

“Your fucking logic is going to get you killed,” he says, the accusation in his voice a near growl. “If you don’t get back inside the house, I’ll toss you over my shoulder and carry you back.”

I laugh; I can’t help it. “You don’t know me. You have no idea how illogical I can be.” I’ve proven as much during this whole case. “I swear, you’re destruction incarnate. Dr. Stoll. Dr. Torres… You can simply look at someone, and their whole world implodes.”

Beneath my fury, I know damn well my life was destroyed before Kallum Locke strode into my world. But before him, I might have had a chance to repair the damage.

“It’s true that we embody the violence of the stars,” he says, and I can hear the smirk in his voice. The darkness grows denser the farther we head down the gravel road. “But destruction isn’t an end, it’s a beginning.”

“Christ, you don’t stop,” I mutter, my teeth chattering from the chilly, wet air. “Maybe I deserve this.”

Although I wasn’t found at fault for the car accident that took Jackson’s life, I was the one driving. I wanted to be punished. I begged the universe to punish me. And it has finally answered.

I stumble over a pothole. Kallum reaches out to catch my arm, but I snatch it away and walk faster.

“The ancient Greeks thought of Apollo as the superior god, their god of rational thought,” he continues, undeterred. “But when a satyr of Dionysus challenged Apollo in a competition, he had him flayed alive for his audacity.”

I hug my midsection, uselessly trying to shelter my body from the rain. “What am I supposed to glean here, Kallum.”

“That it’s not our logic and reason which stops us from committing such monstrous acts.”

My steps falter. Turning to face him, I stare at him through the barrage of rain.

“Are you insane?” I ask him outright. “Are you really, Kallum. Because…I don’t know if you’re crazy or a genius, or if it’s all an act. At this point, I’m seriously questioning my ability to discern the difference.”

A crooked smile tips his mouth. He takes a step toward me, and I take a reflexive step back. “I’m crazy for you.” His gaze drifts over my body, deliberately taking in my soaked shirt. “Fucking certifiable. Capable of the most vile, monstrous acts.”

I feel exposed under his heated stare. I tighten my arms around my waist and blink the droplets from my lashes. “Then confess them.”

He licks the rain from his lips, his gaze locked with mine. His silence is louder than the storm.

I nod knowingly. “No way to lie if you say nothing at all.”

Kallum smoothes his wet hair back. “Tagore said it best. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.”

“And someone important once said… Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always the philosopher.”

His smirk is devilish. “Did you google that just for me?”

“Maybe,” I admit, and stare down at a puddle deepening around my boots. “I didn’t kill Detective Emmons’ brother,” I say suddenly.

“I know,” Kallum says. “Neither did I.”

I swallow hard as I look up to meet his eyes. “I didn’t kill Professor Wellington.”

He watches me closely, his wet hair pitch-black, the strands dripping rivulets of rain down the beautiful contours of his face. “I didn’t kill Wellington,” he finally says.

The whole truth hovers on a tenuous heartbeat. I don’t breathe. “I didn’t—”

“This isn’t a confessional,” he interrupts. “I told you, when the case is closed, I’ll give you all the answers you seek. I keep my word. But that deal has a stipulation.”

I suck in a breath. “To trust your methods. Right. The ones that lured me into a sex ritual.” My face flushes despite the frigid air, my heart pounds my ribs like the rhythmic drumming slithering up from my memory.

A dark flame ignites behind Kallum’s gaze. “But you got one of your answers, didn’t you.”

“What I got was fired from my job,” I snap.

He shrugs unapologetically. “You hated that job.”

Indignation rears hot and fierce. “I’m going to go clear my name, then beg Alister to let me stay on the task force so I can locate the victims and put an end to this madness.”

Kallum’s features harden at the mention of the agent. A rumble of thunder builds in the distance. I turn and start down the road.

“Then what?” he asks, a hard dare edged around his words. “Reopen the Cambridge case? Turn yourself in to be investigated? There are better, more satisfying ways to uncover your answers, sweetness.”

A flash of the ritual steals across my vision, snatching the breath from my lungs. Kallum’s hand around my throat, his kiss burning through me. The sigil he carved on my thigh pulses at the memory.

“You better get back to Agent Hernandez,” I warn without slowing my pace. “Rain can weaken the signal to the ankle monitor.”

“You want me to explain the scapegoat theory for the Harbinger crime scene.” He effectively switches tactics. “I can’t do that if you don’t trust me, Halen.”

I huff a derisive laugh. “You mean, trust the monster who used a high-profile case to leverage his revenge?”

“Here you are using rational deduction to your detriment once again.” He stomps through a puddle and curses. “Dammit. Look at me, Halen.”

I whirl around. “Fine. Let’s break it down,” I say. “No more games. No more manipulation. No more existential meanderings or vague philosophical quotes. Just cold, hard facts.”

He waits for me to continue, his black suit soaked, making him blend into the darkening night. The falling rain frames his silhouette with an unearthly glow, the hazy stars his own personal backdrop. I hate the fiery ache that claws at my chest at the beautiful sight of him.

“You used the case, people, actual victims to get me to perform a ritual under the guise of solving a crime. All so you could fuck me. To play some warped mind game with me. But that wasn’t enough.”

“I’m flattered you think I’m that diabolical.”

“It wasn’t enough to use the victims as a piece on your gameboard, but you had to frame me in the process. You planted the rope evidence at the crime scene. And I let you do it. I gave you the means to hurt me.” I bite down on my lip hard. “You should’ve just stabbed me, Kallum.”

Anger tightens his jaw. “You have it all figured out.”

I shrug a shoulder. “It’s not hard to put together.”

He swipes his tongue over his bottom lip, a dangerous glint flashing amid the flinty shadows of his eyes. “Then I’m about to make your pretty little head spin.”

I plant my hands on my hips, thoroughly drenched, desperate for the way he makes me feel to turn as numb as my frozen skin.

“You won’t be charged with any murder,” he says, not denying any of my other accusations. “After you reported Landry’s attack, you were taken to the hospital. You couldn’t have killed anyone and staged a crime scene, Halen. You’re not the one being framed.”

“Then who the hell is being framed here?” I demand. I blink past the rain, my thoughts a tangled web Kallum has spun around me, sank his fangs into me so deeply, I almost crave the pain. At least that I know I can handle.

“The scapegoat,” he says.

I groan my frustration. “Alibi or not, my reputation will be damaged. More. Best case scenario, Alister will accuse me of contaminating a crime scene.” A pang of guilt resonates in my chest. “Shit. Maybe I did. I don’t know. I could’ve transferred fibers from my bag, from my tools.”

“You didn’t contaminate the scene.”

The way he says this, so assuredly, drives a sliver of apprehension beneath my ribs.

“But your allegations of me?” He takes a determined step forward. “Revenge is a weak motive. I could’ve walked out of Briar any time I wanted. Dr. Torres wouldn’t have been difficult to manipulate to that end. My very expensive lawyer could’ve appealed. Hell, I have enough money and connections to have you fired from every future position—”

“That’s not how your twisted mind works—”

“I stayed there because of you. I waited patiently for you.”

“So you could fuck me, or fuck me over? Or maybe fucking me was just the icing on your payback cake.”

His hand fists at his side. “I love fucking you, Halen. I’ll fuck you ten different dirty, demeaning ways right now that will make you scream my name and plead to let you come. But sex doesn’t start with the act itself.” He takes another deliberate step toward me. “It’s heated glances and charged near touches. It’s cruel words and fiery tempers. It’s instant chemical attraction across a quad when you make that first real connection, when you feel the center of gravity shift…and you know nothing will ever be the same again.”

I swallow past the burning ache in my throat, my breath too ragged to voice any denial.

Kallum stops, keeping a safe distance between us. “We’ve been making love since day one.”

I hate the way my body reacts to his claim, the way my blood burns my veins, my bones ache as if I’m fighting an unrelenting current pulling me toward him.

“So don’t cheapen what I’ve sacrificed to prove myself to you, to keep you safe,” he says, his tone a solemn affirmation. “If you think I suffered six months in a mental institution for a piece of ass, then you’re the one who needs her head examined.”

I hold his intense gaze through the downpour. Racked with shivers, my lips numb and the weight of his words crushing me, I struggle to drag in a full breath.

“I want you,” he says, as relentless as the storm. “All of you. Your sexy as fuck body that drives me right out of my goddamn senses. Your intellectual mind, rational and logical to a frightening degree, but so fucking brilliant everyone else around you pales miserably by comparison. Your beautifully broken soul, so immersed in anguish it chokes me—” he swallows hard “—but I relish the pain. I’m begging for it, because the sweetest taste of you soothes the burn, and it’s fucking euphoric.”

He takes a final step, yet still leaves too many between us.

“And you can deny that you feel the same,” he says, his voice gravel, “but I don’t need a lame verbal profession. Because I can feel you, Halen. I can feel what you try to hide. I felt it deep inside you, buried under your skin, drowning in your emotions with such sweet pain, I wanted to carve my own fucking heart out.”

I’m trembling, shaking so fiercely my muscles are fire. The storm builds, the rain hammering down, unyielding, heightening my emotions until the dam threatens to crack.

The only thing separating me from him is the rain.

“Come here.”

Those two simple words commanded by Kallum do something dangerous to me. Every bruise and scrape and injury on my body comes alive, vibrating with a frenzied current.

Goddamn him. I wipe the rain from my face as I take measured steps to reach him, stopping once I’m close enough to feel the rain ricochet off his chest.

Kallum’s gaze stays on me as he tears the soaked bandages from his hands and tosses them to the ground. He then removes his suit jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. I shiver at the sudden embrace of his body heat, the way his fingers trace the back of my neck as he lifts my hair away from the collar. With one expert move, he snaps the hair band, bringing my drenched strands over my shoulders.

Before I can escape him, he has my face trapped between his palms. He tilts my gaze up, mercifully blocking the rain as he towers over me. The cuts on his palms are friction against my skin. The clashing blue and green of his heated gaze lures me in, and my traitorous heart riots in my chest to expose the effect he has on me.

“I love you in my jacket,” he says, a sly smile curling his mouth.

A memory of us in the university parking lot triggers with sudden fury. His jacket around me, the lampposts glowing behind him. A false memory, I correct myself, blinking the vision back into my subconscious. It’s the memory he planted during the ritual. It can’t be real—but even as I enforce this belief, I sense my conviction to trust my own mind crumbling beneath the feel of Kallum rubbing my arms to warm me.

When two different beliefs battle for dominance, cognitive dissonance is the resulting mental discomfort. Right now, I’m not mentally strong enough to hold two versions of Kallum: the one who I know is capable of atrocities, and the one sheltering me from the storm.

“I can’t do this, Kallum.” I turn my head, breaking away from his touch.

As if he knows I’m dangerously close to snapping, he drops his hands, sinks them into his pockets.

“Look. Just… Before you go in for questioning, I need you to think, Halen.” The urgent demand in his tone keeps me rooted. “You’re so obsessed with proving I’m your killer, it’s blinded you to one critical aspect.”

I pull his jacket tighter around me. “Are you going to make me play twenty questions to guess it?”

A lopsided smile breaks across his face, that fucking dimple squeezing my heart. “You told Alister there was only one difference between the Harbinger crime scenes, but there’s another. What is the other difference between them?”

“The letter,” I say instinctively. “The Harbinger never addressed his messages to anyone. But that’s not a deviation in method; that’s proof he’s devolving.” As I say this, the apprehension that I could be staring into the eyes of a devolving serial killer rears inside me.

Tentatively, Kallum removes his hand from his pocket and swipes his thumb across my cheek. The cool sensation of his ring sparks an ember beneath my skin. “We weren’t alone at the ritual site.”

Unease crawls along my spine. “I know. Landry was there. Right before he attacked us.”

“And someone else,” he says, his words dredging up the ominous feeling of eyes watching from the eerie darkness of the killing fields. “The person who injected Landry with hemlock.”

A hard shiver cloaks my body. With how fast-acting the poison was, they would’ve had to have been nearby to administer it—and to watch and make sure their plan worked.

“They know, Halen,” Kallum says, reading my anxiety. “About the Cambridge scene. What happened that night with Wellington. They heard everything we said out there.”

Panic is a vise crushing my rib cage. My heart constricts under the pressure.

“If for one second you remove me as your suspect,” he continues, “then who’s the person who could’ve staged the victims’ tongues and the Harbinger scene at the same time.”

I hold up a hand and move back, giving myself space to think. I mentally walk through the crime scene, retracing each step anew.

The impossible window of time is no longer impossible if that person staged both scenes. I was so focused on placing Kallum there, I overlooked the most obvious and logical explanation.

“The Overman,” I say aloud, lost in my racing thoughts.

Suddenly, the Harbinger’s letter has a very disturbing, ulterior message.

I see you. I have uncovered you.

“The letter was calling me out,” I say. “He sees me, has uncovered a secret that could hurt me.” Through the rain, I find Kallum’s eyes, gauging him closely.

After everything he just confessed… God, if he’s ultimately behind this, then he’s playing on a whole other twisted level.

When I first read the letter, I imagined Kallum had penned it; a threat to kill the victims.

I will eradicate your higher men one-by-one until you are fearless enough to face me.

“Why kill one of his own higher men?” I say. “That goes against his whole belief system.” Yet he killed Landry the moment he dosed him with hemlock. If the offender wasn’t one before, then he became a killer in that moment. “And then…why would he copycat the Harbinger killer…”

Kallum’s jaw sets rigid, a muscle tics along his jawline. “To make you believe it was me.”

A coldness sweeps through me, numbing me against the falling rain.

“Planting the rope at the scene wasn’t for the techs to find,” he says. “It was for you. You’re the only one who can prove I wasn’t in the hotel room, that I was at the scene. The Overman wants me out of the way, Halen.”

I shake my head. “That still doesn’t explain why he’d kill one of the victims. Especially when he needs them, all of them, for his rituals to ascend.”

His eyes darken. “Because he found someone he wants more.”

The implication hits me with a thunderous boom, the storm a deafening roar.

“He wants you, Halen,” Kallum says, emphasizing his point. “So I’m not going anywhere. Even when the carving knife conveniently turns up with my DNA to force you to confess to Alister that I was there, I’m not leaving you alone.” He sweeps the wet strand of white from my eye, gripping it between his inked fingers before he tucks it behind my ear. A forced smile touches his lips. “If you can’t trust the person, trust their intent.”

I drag in a shuddering breath, recalling how deeply I distrusted Kallum when first he said this to me. How I knew—sitting at that diner booth, staring into his clashing eyes as he held a steak knife—that I could never trust him, that he’d harm me the first opportunity that presented.

As I stare into his gaze now, there’s an open sadness there, a dejection, that feels so genuine I can taste the melancholy infusing the damp air around him.

And I could fall. Right now. Let go of obligations and consequences and even sanity, and fall over the edge with Kallum. Tumble right down into his abyss, and be lost.

Just let go.

I can’t lie to myself; a part of me wants to. That part of me which craves the surrender to oblivion that is promised in his frantic kisses and wild, feverish touches.

It’s like begging for the sweet caress of death’s kiss.

But another part of me, the one still desperately clinging to a life from my past, fears letting go of that final thread.

I’m not yet ready to be unraveled by Kallum.

“And your intent is to protect me,” I say between quivering lips, the question implied. “The villain who endeavors to be a hero.”

With a wry smile, he slips his tongue over the ridge of his teeth, then he braces the sides of my neck with both hands, his thumbs lifting my chin upward so all I can see is him.

“The villain only becomes such after he’s lost that which he cannot live without,” he says. “I’m in no need of a metamorphosis. I refuse to lose you.”

His mouth hovers so near mine, all I have to do is lift onto my toes to press my lips to his. The dare hangs there between us as he waits for me to be the one to accept him, to trust him, to seal us together.

“So, little Halen,” he says, his thumb featherlight as he brushes my cheek. “Will you trust me, or am I going to have to tie you down and force you to let me protect you.”

I place my hands to his chest, and the chaotic beat of his heart pounds against my palms. “You won’t be satisfied until I’m completely under your spell.”

A devilish smile slants his mouth. “Satisfaction is an impossible demand,” he says. “But I can be contented right this second to taste the rain on your lips.”

As his gaze hungrily traps my mouth, I’m pulled into the charged current. His lips are the lightest brush over mine, the tenderest touch, yet the fire threatens to sear us to ash.

The flash of headlights steals into the moment.

I pull back a fraction to sever the connection as the SUV coasts up the gravel road. Another pair of lights appear from the other direction, illuminating the falling rain like beads of glass.

“Fucking hell,” Kallum mutters beneath his breath. He drives a hand through his wet hair.

I escape his embrace completely at the sound of a door opening.

“Halen, why the hell are you in the rain?”

Shielding my eyes, I turn toward the sound of Devyn’s voice. I open my mouth, willing some explanation, but simply shake my head. She waves a hand, motioning me over. I look at the SUV, then Kallum.

“Don’t leave,” he says, the plea reflected in his darkened eyes. “Stay with me.”

Two directions.

And I have to choose one.

“I can protect myself,” I say to him, then slip out of the beam of light. I don’t look back as I walk toward Devyn’s car.

Once I’m settled in the passenger seat, Devyn is mercifully silent as she backs her car around to start in the opposite direction of the gothic mansion. I wait three fierce heartbeats before I look up at the last second to see Kallum still standing in the beam of the SUV’s headlights.

I grip his suit jacket around me and then touch my fingers to my lips, the heady mix of sandalwood and rain a torturous scent that sears this moment into my memory.