As he pulls away a fraction, his captivating gaze sweeps over my features, my skin crackling beneath his electrifying touch. “Mine,” he whispers across my lips.
A shiver encases my body as I blink up at him, my vision crystal clear, the dull heartache always present in the center of my chest alleviated by his desire. “That’s your masterpiece,” I say, referring to the flayed agent displayed in the scene behind us.
He kisses my lips tenderly before he smiles down at me. “What can I say. You inspire me, my dark muse.”
“I am yours, Kallum. Truly,” I say, knowing that when the time comes, I’ll have to again break the rules to protect us. But it’s what I owe him.
Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.
Voltaire’s verse comes to me as truth. Arms linked around Kallum’s neck, I trace a finger over my forearm, feeling the wound, the scar, the ink, the stitches. The layers of a life of tragedy and pain.
The night I first met Kallum Locke, he was witness to a violence born within me, one it’s taken until now to finally reconcile, to accept.
When you fight monsters, you risk becoming one yourself.
But it takes a monster to hunt monsters.
That night, I took a life. I snuffed out that life with a vengeance that had infected me from the darkest moment of my existence. And when my mind fractured, and I couldn’t cope with my reality, a professor of philosophy and a practitioner of the dark arts promised he could help me forget.
Kallum lowers my arms and threads his fingers through mine. “There’s a conspiracy floating around that the priestess and the Harbinger are working together.”
His use of the word conspiracy strikes a chord inside me, and I know what comes next. “We have to find Devyn.”
A striking smile slants his mouth at my inclusive we. “I’m always at your command, sweet Halen.”
The personification of my profound grief came to me in the form of a beautiful devil with clashing blue-and-green eyes and a smoldering, disarming smile.
I summoned this daemon. I asked him to cast out my grief and pain, to shelter my darkness, to siphon away my shame. To make me abstract. So abstract I no longer recognized myself.
And he’s patiently waited for the fracture to mend.
We are the high and low notes, a madness and genius that fosters harmony. Alchemy and magick, or logic and psychology. The answer to the question is less important than the fusion which creates something darkly beautiful that belongs only to us.
With Kallum, I can face my trauma with a healing peace…or a tire iron.
Alister was a monster, and if Kallum had not destroyed him, I would have. I can no more judge him for his monstrous act than I can blame the woman inside me for hers six months ago.
I killed the Harbinger.
And I would kill him all over again.
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EPILOUGE
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SYNCHRONICITY
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HALEN: SIX MONTHS AGO
The gold cufflink rests in the palm of my gloved hand.
Not just any cufflink—a personalized one, with a university insignia.
I recognize the crest and Greek initials, because my father had a similar pair that my mother had given him as an anniversary gift. And the university insignia is the college where they first met in Cambridge.
Just twenty minutes away from the Harbinger crime scene I’m currently working.
My heart drums against my chest, and I release an anxious breath and touch the diamond pendant at my neck, seeking comfort. I glance around the scene at the other caseworkers.
Tactfully, I send Aubrey a text: I’m putting in my field report early, then I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off.
Three dots immediately appear, and I have the urge to pocket my phone. But I wait for his response: Does this mean you’re actually going to sleep, Halen?
I glare at the screen, my eyelids suddenly heavy. I send one simple word in reply: Yes.
Since the report of the newest murder came in a few days ago, I’ve been obsessively working the crime scene. It’s been just as many days since I’ve had sleep…but the fear of overlooking a piece of evidence, of time running out, won’t allow for one moment to be lost to sleep.
The cufflink clutched in my fist almost scalds my palm. Proof that supports my sacrifice. I’ll get sleep when the Harbinger killer is caught.
I should bag the evidence. I should turn it in right now. But as I open my hand and stare again at the gold front face with the P and W initials, there’s an energy, a current drawing me in, and I know once I submit the evidence, it will literally be out of my hands.
As mad as it sounds, this little link has given me hope for the first time. Against all logic and reason, it’s like my parents are sending me a sign, pointing me in the direction I need to follow.
How else can I explain the connection to their alma mater and this case?
Today is my parents anniversary.
Coincidence, or fate?
Truthfully, I don’t believe in either, and up until this moment, I didn’t think the Harbinger killer would make a mistake.
What I do believe in is devolving offenders, and if the killer is in fact devolving, if he made such a grave error… Then there’s not much time to catch him.
Once the officials go through all the red tape procedures, requesting an interview, getting warrants for his home and place of work, this offender will be gone.
I have a slight reputation for circumventing procedure, not adhering quite so well to policies. But, as I’ve reminded the director of my division at CrimeTech, isn’t that why I was initially hired? To solve the stranger cases that require someone to think outside the box and operate outside the guidelines? Sometimes, we have to look beyond what we can see and touch and even reason. We have to question everything, even the rules.
I know the offender better than he fucking knows himself. I’ve studied his scenes, walked in his footsteps. I know once I lay eyes on him, I’ll be able to discern whether this cufflink belongs to the perpetrator or not.
I just want to see the Harbinger killer with my own eyes.
I’ve never felt this level of conviction, and I’m trusting my instincts. Decision made, I bag the cufflink and drive the twenty minutes to Cambridge.
As I park across the street from the university in a community apartment complex, I sit behind the wheel, trying to recall the whole drive here. Parts are missing. I shake off the disconcerting feeling. Sleep deprivation can be dangerous, I know this, but I’m so close…
Obsession can be equally as dangerous, and if I don’t find this guy, I fear what that will do to my mental state more.
I lock my doors and slip my keys between the slats of my fingers to use as a weapon. I don’t carry a firearm, and I came here completely vulnerable.
An inner voice intones that this is exactly why I’m here, this obsession with chasing a serial killer some sick need to seek out danger, something to distract me from the constant heartsickness that kept me in bed for a month straight.
Then the Harbinger struck again, his third kill, escalating the case to serial killer status.
And I buried myself in the hunt.
A reason to keep breathing.
The lampposts of the college courtyard guide me toward a side entrance of the student center, where a glass-encased bulletin board is posted, announcing a speaking event taking place tonight.
It can’t be that easy…
I run my finger down the list of speakers, stopping when I find the name with matching initials to the cufflink in my pocket. “There you are…”
