Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6)

by Darling, Giana

  “Little Lou,” he growled, too angry and shaken to curb his volume.

  I watched as Loulou successfully soothed him, hands in his tangle of gold-tipped dark hair, lips peppering kisses over his craggy face.

  When I turned back, Bat was looking at them, then to Amelia, who was sitting up on the asphalt drinking the water Seth had found for her. Even from a distance, I could hear her wax on about Seth’s heroism and her gratitude.

  “She’ll be okay,” I assured him, hoping he couldn’t hear what I did.

  Bat’s coal dark eyes cut to mine, more eloquent than any words he could have said. This, somehow, at the end of many years of an unhappy marriage, was the end of the road for Bat with his wife.

  Then Dane was there, jogging instead of sprinting, even though his face was cast in marble, features fixed in anger. Steele, Shaw, and Tempest made room for him as he stopped a foot away from Bat and looked him over.

  “You good?” he said finally in a tight voice vibrating like a plucked string.

  Bat reached out to squeeze his shoulder, and I noticed they were exactly the same height. “Good, man.”

  The tension in Dane’s shoulders eased, then fell slack entirely when Tempest stepped forward to give him a hug. Steele and Shaw, not wanting to be left out, hugged them too, then dragged Bat into the fold. The group hug made the back of my eyes burn, and my throat itch.

  Everywhere around me, scared people were being consoled by their loved ones.

  Except for me.

  I turned to find my grandpa and saw him with Phillipa hugging him slightly awkwardly because she was not a hugger.

  My throat closed up.

  Tears threatened to overtake me, and I tried to breathe through the flux of emotion, reminding myself I am not weak.

  But that voice was Priest’s, and it didn’t help.

  I closed my eyes to count my breaths and my blessings.

  I was safe. I was loved by so many. I was healthy.

  I was alone.

  Instinctively, I went back to the door of the church, needing the solace of its embrace to soothe me. Firemen had arrived out front and were going through the front doors to survey the damage, but I slinked through the back. The back corridor was empty, only a faint twinge of smoke polluting the air. I trailed my fingers along the stone wall, the rough rock like Priest’s strong, calloused fingers. I pulled away, chastising my thoughts for always leading like a one-way track back to that man.

  The main chapel was coated in soot the length of both walls, and some of the pews were damaged, but otherwise, it was blessedly intact. Firemen filtered in and out of the now wide-open front doors.

  Out them, framed like a disciple of Christ in the wintery blue light, was Priest.

  He stood on the sidewalk a few metres from the entrance staring into the hallowed space as if it was doomed to the foulest reaches of hell.

  But he was there.

  I blinked, wondering if he was a mirage conjured by shock.

  The image of him remained, the long, dark-robed length of him stark against the snow-capped street tableau. He was too far away to see his eyes, but I knew somehow that they were pinned on me.

  Deliberately, a booted foot lifted and stepped forward. He shuddered as if even this slightest movement closer to the holy place burned in him.

  I’d never seen him within a block of First Light, and he was there, determinedly waiting outside, standing sentry as he had every night for weeks to make sure I was safe from harm, even if that duty brought him his own measure of pain.

  Tears burned the backs of my eyes again, but this time they stemmed from the well of surging happiness and hope in my belly.

  I ran.

  Slipping slightly in the wet that put out the fires, stumbling over the uneven flagstones in my high heels, dodging past chastising firemen, I ran out the doors of the church heading straight into the arms of the devil.

  And you know what he did?

  After a brief, painful expression seized his stern face, he opened his arms and caught me.

  I buried my face in the crook of his neck, inhaling the leather, clove, and sharp, bracing scent of fresh air imbued in his beard and skin. Vaguely, I was aware of him taking a deep drag of fragrance from my hair.

  “You’re good,” he declared, strong hand flexing on my bottom, one of them tracing the notches in my spine from tailbone to neck beneath my open coat where it fisted in my hair to bring my face out of hiding. His eyes burned on my skin as he searched my features for lingering fear and pain. “You’re fine.”

  “Good,” I agreed, squeezing myself tighter around him to confirm it. “Fine.”

  He nodded curtly, but that hand in my hair loosened so he could dive underneath the locks to find my pulse point with his thumb. His ruddy brow furrowed as he took a moment to feel the patter of my heartbeat.

  “Fuck, mo cuishle,” he muttered on a staccato sigh that fanned minty air over my mouth. “Not lettin’ you outta my sight again. Not till this motherfucker is put down.”

  “Okay,” I agreed easily, smoothing his messy hair down with my hands, staring into his gorgeous face with awe because I was currently living a miracle. A miracle where I had the right to touch him. “I’m good with that.”

  “Should’ve known you’d be here,” a gruff, deeply unimpressed voice said from over my shoulder.

  Priest didn’t put me down to address the man. Instead, he tucked me slightly to one side of his body so I could face the man too. There was a dangerous glint in his pale eyes, a promise that whoever was speaking to him was this close to being ripped to shreds.

  “Tend to show up when I got family who needs me,” Priest agreed with faux ease as he ran a possessive hand down my hair and wrapped it languidly around his fist. “Can I help you with somethin’, Officer Travers?”

  The cop squinted at him, hands on his gun belt, legs braced as if for war. He had the face of a pugilist and, apparently, the manners of one too. “Seeing as this is a crime scene, you can tell me what went down here.”

  “He just arrived,” I told the asshole, sticking my chin in the air to glare down at him from my advanced height perched on Priest’s hip. “If you want a statement, ask me. I witnessed the entire thing.”

  Officer Travers opened his mouth to speak, but Priest turned his back on the man, dismissing him. Before the cop could protest, my psycho moved us down the slight incline to the parking lot where the rest of our family milled together in the chaos.

  “You called us family,” I said quietly, not wanting to spook him by repeating his words. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you refer to anyone as family.”

  Priest slanted a look down the strong line of his nose at me. The skin beside his eyes and lips was smooth, no smile lines or brackets around that expressionless mouth because he so rarely emoted. But I could read the depths in those peridot eyes, and I saw the way they flickered with bank flames.

  “Death makes you realize real quick how you feel ’bout someone. Lost Mute and realized what the club meant to me. Feels like I’m nearly losin’ you just as I got ya, and that did it too.”

  “Did what?” I breathed as he manoeuvred through the clusters of shocked churchgoers to the far side of the lot where the club congregated, outsiders by their choice yet also ostracized by the parishioners. It was amazing to see social divides existed even amidst all the calamity.

  “Made me realize you make me feel human,” he grunted without looking at me. “Not sure I like it, but there it fuckin’ is.”

  “Human’s good,” I promised him, pressing a kiss to his beard because I couldn’t help it. Because joy was ballooning inside me with nowhere to go, and I needed some outlet for it.

  “Human’s weak.”

  “Hey.” I tugged on the short end of his beard, then raked my nails through it in a way that made him shiver despite himself. “You think I’m human, and once, you told me that I’m not weak.”

  He considered me for a moment, a muscle in his cheek popp
ing as he chewed over my words. Finally, he dropped me to the group and took a step away as if I was suddenly infected with some highly contagious disease. As if he might catch my feelings.

  “No, Little Shadow,” he murmured even as he turned away, only his fingers still connecting us together as they curled hard around my wrist. “You’ve never been weak.”

  When we broke through the last of the crowd separating us from our chosen family, they were all watching us, clearly having tracked our progress from the sidewalk down to the lot. Priest hesitated, boot suspended mid-step. I watched from slightly behind and to the side of him as he cocked his head to study their varying expressions of confusion and open curiosity.

  I waited, wondering how he would process their interest in whatever was going on between us.

  Loulou broke free from Zeus to come toward us but stopped abruptly when Priest stepped in front of me, blocking her way.

  They stared each other down, my big sister and my beloved psycho, communicating in the way of alphas, without words using only intense body language.

  Slowly, Priest pulled me by the wrist to his side, then deliberately wrapped his big hand around the back of my neck under my hair to anchor me to him.

  “She’s mine,” he said slowly, each word barely leashed with aggression.

  Loulou mimicked him, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes. Her hip cocked to the side as she folded her arms across her chest and arched a brow. “And you’re hers?”

  He shrugged one shoulder casually, but the hand on my neck flexed in spasm. “Whatever there is of me to have.”

  I made a little noise of protest in my throat, but Priest only pressed his thumb tighter to my throat.

  “Someone seems damn intent on hurting her,” Lou continued as if there was no one but her and Priest in the parking lot, no firemen or policemen, no eavesdropping neighbours. I realized this was the MC Queen speaking to her soldier, seeing if he could be trusted with the biggest responsibility she had to dole out.

  “I’ll kill them before they get to her,” Priest stated flatly.

  A little shiver moved through my badass sister before she could quell it. “You’d kill me if I hurt her too, wouldn’t you?”

  Priest just blinked slowly in answer.

  A smile flickered around my sister’s lips. “Okay, then.”

  “Jesus, you can smell the testosterone from the street,” Lion Danner announced as he parted the crowd behind him with some officers following. “If you lot are done showing off for the townsfolk, you mind telling me how you saved the damn day?”

  Zeus laughed his great, bellowing laugh, drawing the attention of everyone who wasn’t already listening, though there were few. “Seems the damned saved the pious today. Maybe they’ll think twice next time they campaign against the club, eh?”

  “Wouldn’t hold your breath,” Seth muttered from behind me, then smiled when I turned. “Just wanted to check on you, Bea.”

  A growl built in Priest’s chest. I slapped my hand against it.

  “I’m fine, thanks, Seth. I’m more concerned about you! You were a hero in there.”

  He beamed at me, his face classically handsome even covered in soot. “You’re too sweet. Tell me you’ll still come to dinner tonight with Phillipa. We need to band together in times of trouble like this.”

  I bit my lip, aware that Priest was still as death beside me. He didn’t want me to go. I didn’t want to go. But I wouldn’t cease being who I’d always been just because I was in love with a man who didn’t believe in some of the things that were dear to me. Seth, Tabby, Eric, Grandpa, my community at First Light were all important parts of my life, and I owed it to both them and myself to continue to prioritize them.

  I tipped my head up to look at Priest, who was already gazing down at me, his face utterly expressionless. I thought, maybe, it wasn’t because he was unmoved by the idea of me leaving his side, but because he didn’t want to impose his own thoughts of the matter onto me.

  In its own way, I thought that was awfully sweet.

  “Drop me off and pick me up?” I asked softly, for some reason not wanting Seth to be in on this little moment.

  Maybe because it felt so concrete, a normal conversation between a girlfriend and a boyfriend.

  Priest’s hand dug into the back of my head and tugged once, just hard enough to make it sting in a way that reminded me how much I loved when he pulled my hair like that seated deep inside me. I flushed then squirmed when his eyes grew dark with lust.

  “Wait outside while you do your thing,” he agreed, his eyes flicking up to shoot a glare at Seth. “But that arsehole puts a single hand on ya, I’m breakin’ in the damn door and slittin’ his throat.”

  “That’s reasonable,” I confirmed, knowing my eyes were sparkling, that my entire body was bowed toward his like a magnet caught in his pull.

  “She’ll be in good hands,” Seth replied in a way that implied I would be in better hands than I could’ve been with Priest.

  My man didn’t even grace him with a look. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his hoodie beneath The Fallen cut and produced something that flashed silver. It was a small switchblade in glittering steel wrapped up paradoxically in a pink bow. I recognized it as one of the many I kept in a box beside my bedside table. It warmed me to think of Priest plucking the velvet length from the wicker basket while he watched me sleep. There was something about the contrast, the knife and the pink bow, that perfectly symbolized us. Violence harnessed by purity, romanticism tempered by discipline. It wasn’t the first weapon he’d given me, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. It was just another in a long line of actions that Priest had taken to show me that he cared for me in his own dark and broken way.

  “You are not weak,” he repeated the mantra softly, coarsely, palming my throat in one hand even though it made Seth gurgle in protest. “You’re strong enough to make a dead man walkin’ feel, Bea. You remember that you’re ever in a bad place and I can’t get to you fast enough, yeah? You remember not even the reaper of The Fallen can scare you, and then you motherfuckin’ defend yourself.”

  When I only accepted the knife mutely, mouth trembling with the effort to hold back my sudden tears, Priest crowded closer, blocking me from Seth’s view. The hand on my neck moved up to grasp my chin to bring my gaze to his, which was bright with purpose, savage with a violent kind of truth he felt in his core.

  “I’m a killer,” he reminded me quietly, words murmured into my open mouth like a carefully placed communion wafer. I felt it dissolve sweetly on my tongue. “You’re a killer.”

  As I grasped the knife in my cold hand, felt the weight and rightness of it in my grip and remembered how scared my entire community had been locked in a burning church, I decided unequivocally that if I was faced with the serial killer that terrorized us, I’d kill him myself.

  Bea

  Bile surged up my throat, painting the powder room toilet bowl in Seth and Tabitha’s ocean-front mansion with my vomit. I clutched the porcelain in my sweating fingers as I retched and moaned, crouched over the toilet, alone and miserable in the middle of a dinner party.

  I didn’t want to be here.

  My stomach wouldn’t stop churning like the undertow of the Pacific Ocean outside the bathroom window, tossing and heaving up the walls of my gut. I was sick with uneasiness, with this foreboding sensation that slicked my skin with clammy sweat.

  I couldn’t shake the sense that the serial killer was just playing with us all. Setting the stage for his greatest act yet like some demented theatre troubadour. He’d almost burned down an entire church, something that should have been sacred to a truly religious man, just to prove his point. He wasn’t a cut-out killer from a textbook in my violent crimes class. He was a fully realized nightmare with complexities so vast, I found myself terrified just contemplating his next step.

  All I knew for sure was that he seemed to know me, and more, he wanted to play this game with me. Aside from the stripper in do
wntown Vancouver and the woman on the reservation, every murder could be linked to me, and this latest crime, though without casualties, was no exception.

  I thought, maybe, he was growing bored with me. Tired of my inaction, waiting for some specific reaction he felt I should be having as a result of the crimes, he was starting to deviate from his plan.

  Deviation was worse than premeditated murder. Case in point, an entire church filled with people versus a single victim.

  Bile surged up my throat, my stomach cramping so hard I cried as I threw up the last dregs of my lunch. Finished, I spat into the bowl, flushed, and washed my face and hands with icy water to revive myself for the rest of what was turning into a very strange night at the Linley's.

  Truthfully, even though I loved Tabby and Seth, I never really enjoyed spending time with them together. It had always been my philosophy that a couple should bring out the best in each other, but some strange alchemy occurred when the Linleys were together that tarnished both of their good natures. They seemed tense and forceful, exerting too much energy just by being in the same room. This was especially true that night.

  Or maybe it was the entire atmosphere of the dinner that had my teeth on edge. The Linleys were gracious hosts—everyone gathered at the beautifully set dining room table was dressed in elegant winter finery, laughing lightly as they drank fine wine and spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the murmur of Christmas music playing. It was all so civilized, so prettily manufactured, and so utterly fake.

  I could feel the festering ugliness under the proceedings, the way Margaret Huxley kept shooting me narrow little looks as if my presence offended her, the way Tabby kept touching the golden cross around her neck as if atoning for a sin she hadn’t yet committed.

  Only Seth seemed nonplussed, as charismatic and lovely as always. He carried the conversation even when his wife trailed into silence and entertained my mother with story after story that made her giggle like a teenager.