King Among the Dead (Hell Theory Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  Finally, the hard look melted, and Kay let out a reluctant chuckle. “Damn, honey. You ain’t no meek mouse, are you? My mistake.” She went back to smoothing the sheet, and her next question was asked with her usual blend of casual curiosity. “He tell you where he’d been?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask.”

  “Smart girl.”

  She hadn’t asked, but she’d run possibilities through her head. She’d lived in the Bends most of her life, had gone to school for years with other Bends kids – kids whose parents and older siblings and even some of the kids themselves had worked in the even seedier parts of town. She knew the sorts of places a man might go when he left the house after ten p.m. The drug dens, the strip clubs, the sex clubs. Places to pay for an hour of a woman’s time; places to bet on bare-knuckle fights. Places to stick a needle in your arm and make the whole world go away.

  She’d seen junkies, though, and Beck wasn’t one – if he dabbled in that arena, it was only dabbling, and he played it off well. He’d had a cigarette that night, though, and a drink. He’d said after. After what? She imagined a woman raking her nails down his black-clad chest, playing with his holster straps, and she wanted to bare her teeth.

  “He trusts you, though,” Kay said, surprising her. “The way he looks at you…”

  She trailed off, and Rose wanted to ask what way? Because she’d met his gaze again and again, knew intimately the way it could chill or heat her, knew that she could drown in its intensity sometimes. But she didn’t understand it, not really. Not in any way she’d dare name.

  “He’ll tell you eventually,” Kay continued with a resigned air. “When he does, I guess we’ll see.”

  “See what?” If she bristled, it was only natural. Kay was being strange and distrustful, and Rose was more than a little hurt by it.

  Kay glanced up and met her gaze, her own flat and cold as a shark’s behind her lenses. “If you can handle the truth,” she said, and went back to work.

  EIGHT

  Her tense conversation with Kay in Beck’s bedroom made her think that a crisis point was looming. It came sooner than expected, and not in the manner she’d predicted.

  Even as she grew to love her new life, the specter of her old one never loomed too far in the back of her mind. She feared the day that the authorities would turn up on the doorstep wanting to ask Beck about Tabitha; that someone had seen them walking through the rain that evening, had seen the stippling of blood on Beck’s nose and known him for what he was. That Mr. Fisher would go by the old apartment, angry that she hadn’t shown up for work, and find the body, file some sort of report. Someone had to have found Tabitha’s body by now; if nothing else, the smell would have alerted the neighbors, eventually. The landlord would have come knocking, and found a horrible surprise.

  All of Rose’s old Child Services paperwork had been doctored to make her seem younger than she was, but it had existed, locked up in Tabitha’s liquor cabinet. If Tabitha had been found, then someone would know to look for Rose. Someone might even think Rose had been the one to kill her.

  The thought didn’t leave her shuddering like it should, but the prospect of being caught did.

  Her social worker would have contacted the police, surely. And then what? APB? Fliers? Canvassing?

  If they hadn’t been spotted, no one would know to look for her here. And she hadn’t left the townhouse but once, and that was their shopping trip to Steinman’s.

  Had they been caught on a camera there? Beck had paid with a card, which would be attached to his address, and phone number. They could be found, if someone wanted to find them.

  She lay awake some nights after she’d turned out the lamps, trying to convince herself that, in the scheme of all that was wrong in this city, one dead foster mother and a missing foster kid weren’t at the top of anyone’s worry list. There was the Castor family to worry about, after all: the city’s unthinkably powerful crime family, responsible for the murders of politicians, judges, and businessmen, clean crimes that splashed across the newspapers, but which never went to court; loopholes and a lack of evidence and payments made through handshakes. The city had a drug problem, and a random crime problem, and an energy problem, pollution problem – too many problems to name. Rose Greer wasn’t a problem by comparison.

  Still. She worried. So when she waited for a crisis, she waited for the day that she would bring hell raining down on this house and the people she’d come to think of as her family.

  But that wasn’t what happened at all.

  The rain was mostly sleet at this point, hitting the window with the force of thrown pebbles, too unsettling to allow her to sleep. After an hour of tossing around in the dark, wondering about Beck, who’d gone off into that cold, miserable mess two hours before, she belted on her robe and went down to the library in her new shearling-lined slippers.

  She was almost used to such finery by now; comfortable with it in a way she hadn’t been before.

  She built up a roaring fire, picked up her current read – a meandering, literary doorstop coming-of-age story about a family’s small, petty dramas – and snuggled into her chair.

  She’d read only four pages or so when she heard a loud crash from the kitchen.

  Beck, she thought with a jolt. He always came in through the back door after he’d been…out.

  She dropped the book and headed that way at a jog.

  In the kitchen, the door that led out to the courtyard stood open, and there was enough glow from the security light outside to reveal the silver flash of sleet blowing in around the half-crumpled figure who clutched the doorjamb, other hand pressed to his side.

  “Beck!” She hit the light switch and filled the room with a warm glow.

  It was indeed Beck, soaked to the bone, head bowed, wet hair hiding his face. He was all bent arms and legs, wet leather, a wounded, feral thing on the doorstep, and she went straight to him without hesitation, pulse leaping as a cold blast of fear for him shot through her chest.

  Up close, she could hear the unsteady rasp of his breathing; see his hair dance and flicker as he trembled. Sleet pelted her face and her feet as it fell in around him.

  She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Beck? What’s wrong?”

  He lifted his head, his face starkly pale, bloodless, his teeth bared in a grimace. “It’s fine,” he hissed. “Go back–” He pulled the hand from his side to wave her away, and there was no mistaking the slick, crimson shine of blood. It covered his whole palm, had pooled between each finger. The faint light picked out a glimmering patch along his torso: it was his blood. He was hurt.

  “Oh my God.” She gripped the arm he held the doorframe with in both hands and tried to tug him inside.

  He resisted, but only weakly. “Rose…no…you can’t…”

  But she could. Twisted around and ducked under his arm as he staggered forward. He was heavier than he looked – all long bones and hard muscle – and her knees threatened to give beneath the sudden weight, but she managed to help him forward into the kitchen, and kick the door shut behind them.

  “You shouldn’t – I’ll be fine…” Each sentence trailed off into nothing, his speech alarmingly slurred. His body, where it pressed alongside hers, felt too cold, nothing like the usual shocking heat of his hand when it covered hers.

  “I’m helping you,” she said, firmly, adrenaline and fear bleeding into a useful kind of anger. “So shut up.”

  He breathed out a sound that was half laugh and half groan, but he stopped protesting.

  She got him to the table, and managed to get him perched on the edge of it. The knobby soles of his boots caught in the grout lines on the floor, and she had a feeling that was all that kept his legs from sliding out from under him. He curled forward at the waist, holding his side again, hunched and protective.

  The lights were much brighter here, in the center of the room; bright enough to cook with. “Beck?” Rose pushed his hair back from his face, tucked the icy wet strands behind his e
ars, took his face in her hands. He was freezing. His lips were chapped and faintly blue, his eyes glassy. His swallowed with an audible click; she felt his jaw work beneath her palms. “What happened? Where are you hurt?”

  “It’s fine,” he huffed between labored breaths. “Just a scratch.”

  “Liar.” She slid her hands down to his throat, alarmed by the unsteady flutter of his pulse. “You’ve lost too much blood.” And clearly, his hand wasn’t doing anything to staunch the flow.

  She took the collar of his jacket in both hands and peeled it back; started trying to wrestle it off his shoulders. She’d had fantasies about this jacket; vague at first, but then proper ones after her talk with Kay. Had thought of it cool and smooth against her bare skin. But now, she could only spare the thought that it was surprisingly soft for leather that spent so much time in the rain. He must take great care of it.

  He grunted.

  “We have to take it off. I have to get a look at where you’re bleeding.”

  “I can…manage…by myself,” he croaked, teeth chattering.

  “Yes, you look like you can,” she muttered. “Here, off it comes.”

  He gave a low growl of discontent, or maybe of warning – one she didn’t heed – but he dropped his arms and let her shove the jacket down them and help him pull them through; his limbs were heavy, unwieldy, like he was having trouble controlling them.

  Fear was a buzz under her skin; a staccato beat in her ears and throat.

  Without the jacket concealing it, the shiny patch on his shirt glistened in the lamplight. She could see the difference in texture that gave evidence of blood running down his hip and leg, staining his pants, already dry: he’d been bleeding a while.

  Ordinarily, she would have danced around him, breathless just from daring to skim her fingertips along his arm. But panic drove her now – he was hurt, was maybe even dying, a possibility she could not consider – and so she took the hem of his shirt in her hands and peeled it all the way up to his chest.

  He hissed when the fabric pulled away from the wound.

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  It wasn’t a large wound, but it was deep, and fresh, red-black blood still welled from it and trickled down his side. When he breathed, it shifted, and she caught a glimpse of white subdermal fat – and a glimpse of white bone, his anatomy lessons supplying her with that horrifying knowledge.

  “God,” she breathed. “Beck…”

  His hand gripped her arm, and she lifted her face to meet his gaze; her own was glazed with tears, she had to blink to see him clearly.

  He looked white. His voice shook, but he managed to string together a sentence. “Sweetheart, it’ll be fine. I’ve had worse.” Managed to reassure her, or at least try. “Go upstairs and get Kay. Tell her to bring the kit.”

  Her eyes and throat burned. He couldn’t die; she wouldn’t let him. “I have to stop the bleeding.”

  She left him perched on the table, prayed he didn’t fall down to the floor, and rushed across the kitchen to pull a clean hand towel from the drawer.

  “Rose,” he said when she returned, and pressed the cloth to the wound – pressed tight enough that he hissed again. You had to put pressure on the bleed, she knew. Had to force it to stop. “I don’t want you…to see me like this.”

  “Shut up,” she commanded. “Just shut up and don’t die. I’m going to get Kay.”

  “Go get me for what?”

  Rose turned and saw the woman standing in the doorway, in her own robe and slippers, her gray hair in its curlers, and could have sobbed with relief. “He’s hurt. He’s lost so much blood.”

  The only sign of shock Kay offered was a quick jump of her brows. “Hellfire and damnation, boy,” she said on a sigh, coming into the room, slippers slapping on the tile. “What’d you do this time?” She waved Rose aside, and Rose moved, but only a step, hand still pressing the towel to the wound.

  “Got – got myself – knifed,” Beck panted. He attempted another laugh. “Rookie mistake.”

  Kay tutted and shooed some more until Rose peeled back the towel enough for her to get a look. “Dumbass,” she admonished. “How many of them were there?”

  “Seven. I think.”

  “Wonder you’re not dead in the gutter.”

  “Heh.”

  Kay pressed the towel tight. “Alright, I can fix this, but it isn’t gonna be pretty, and you’re gonna feel like hell. Walking all that way in the rain, bleeding out…” She tsked. “Rose, I need you to go up to my room and fetch me down my kit. It’s a big black bag under my bed, can’t miss it. Go lock that back door first, and pull the curtains.”

  Before she complied, Rose glanced over at her, questioning. The glint in Kay’s eyes was unmistakable: the hard, knowledgeable assuredness of a general; competent, calm, determined.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and rushed to do as told.

  The steps were old, and steep, and it was a long climb to the third floor, but Rose took the stairs at a run, losing traction with her slippers, clutching at the bannister on the turns. Her pulse was choking her by the time she reached Kay’s attic suite, making her dizzy.

  The ceilings were sloped up here, the windows angled, and the sleet rattled against them, an ominous sound like the clicking of bones, she thought, wildly, as she crossed to the high bed – with its step-stool Kay used to climb up into it – and knelt down to search for the bag. There it was, a big, black zippered thing the size of a small cooler with a red cross on the side. It weighed a ton, but Rose looped her head and arm through the strap and started back down.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Beck was slumped shirtless in a chair, his shirt, holsters, and the guns and knives they contained heaped in another. Hair in his face again; blood dripping in slow plinks down onto the tile.

  Kay bustled over with a steaming tea kettle that she set on another chair, and waved Rose closer. “Here, there’s a sterile sheet on top, we’ll lay that down.”

  Rose thumped the bag down and unzipped it; as promised, a cellophane-wrapped plastic sheet was on top, and she passed it up to Kay, who had it open and spread down the length of the table in short order. Under the sheet, the bag was full of compartments and trays. Rose spotted gleaming silver bowls, scissors, gauze, and bags stamped with the biohazard symbol.

  “Breathe, honey,” Kay said, drawing her attention. When she glanced up, the woman offered a tight smile. “If you’re gonna be my nurse, you can’t be passing out when you go to hand me a scalpel.”

  “Nurse?”

  “He needs surgery. Take a breath. Take a shot of whiskey if you need it, but.” Her gaze hardened. “We need to hurry.”

  ~*~

  They wrestled Beck up onto the table, flat on his back, hair fanning wet and limp around him on the blue sterile sheet. “Night-night for a bit,” Kay said, and gave him an injection that had his lashes fluttering and his breath hitching. She pulled up his eyelids and checked his pupils. “He’s out. I don’t like his breathing, though. Go scrub up.”

  Rose took off her robe and washed her hands ‘til they felt raw at the sink. Snapped on the gloves Kay had given her.

  “Come stand by me,” Kay instructed.

  When she peeled the towel away, they found half-clotted blood, and the wound didn’t start weeping again. Still, Kay let out a displeased sigh that rustled against the fabric of her paper mask. “He lost a lot of blood.”

  Rose took a steadying breath behind her own mask, and swore she could taste her own fear. “What do we do?”

  “Irrigate, first. Then I gotta make sure nothing important got hit. Then sanitize, and stich him up.”

  Nausea threatened, but Rose swallowed it down. He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Good girl. Hand me that bottle over there.”

  ~*~

  Once clean, the wound was even deeper than it had looked. Kay clucked and tutted over it, calling Beck an idiot. “The intestine, really?” she muttered, and spread t
he wound wider.

  Rose passed over everything when Kay asked for it; held the basin to catch blood, to catch saline solution. Watched all of it, queasy, pulse pounding in her ears, sweating. Don’t die, please don’t die, please.

  Kay’s hands were steady and sure; she never flinched from the blood or the glimpses of viscera, and so Rose refused to, either. Beck had slit a woman’s throat for her, and she could look at his insides without weeping if it meant saving him.

  It seemed to be one long, drawn-out moment, the sort of precipice moment when you were caught on the edge of panic, deciding whether to run or fight. But when Kay taped down the last of the bandaging, stepped back and said, “Well, that should do it. Now we have to pump him full of meds and hope infection doesn’t take hold,” Rose looked up at the clock and realized it was nearly five in the morning. It had taken hours.

  Rose realized she was shaking. Her legs and back were on fire, her ankles and knees throbbing from standing so long. But the only thing that mattered was the steady, shallow rise and fall of Beck’s chest.

  She stared at it now, its light dusting of hair, darker than that on his head, a match for the trail that led down from his navel and disappeared into his waistband. His nipples were drawn up to tight peaks in the cold. His skin was paler on his body than on his face, and even paler now, from the loss of blood. As smooth as his voice – save for the scars, and there were many. A few ugly, puckered marks that looked like old gunshot wounds, and jagged streaks and fishhooks from knives or any number of sharp objects. None looked as wicked as the wound they’d just closed.

  “He’ll be okay?”

  “Hopefully.” Kay pulled down her mask and stretched out her back with a quiet curse. “He’s strong, and stubborn as all hell. We’ll get him on some meds, make him stay in bed a week or so – or, hell, as long as he’ll let us. He should pull through just fine.” If it was bluster, it sounded real enough.