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Six months ago, with one violent act, I was claimed by one such ravenous soul.
I stand at the entrance of the storage unit, my hand gripped to the halfway drawn roll door, a shaft of evening sunlight slashed across dingy concrete.
A file box sits in the corner of the unit. I haven’t opened that box since I sealed it closed in the early morning hours, where the sky was still black, a blank canvas awaiting a new start.
My gaze drifts across the discolored blots on the floor, my vision unfocused, and suddenly a pool of blood seeps up from a dark stain. A flash of Wellington’s mutilated face surfaces with the coarse, heavy feel of the tire iron clenched in my hand.
With a slow exhale, I blink away the disturbing imagery of the horrific scene I created in a haze of rage and vengeance. A detached moment in time that fractured my psyche is where Kallum and I were fashioned, twisted together. Stained deeper and darker than the soiled concrete.
I enter the unit and lower the roll door closer to the floor for privacy, but still allow enough natural light to filter into the small five-by-eight room. The manager gave me a decent deal, agreeing to let me rent it here in Hollow’s Row week-to-week rather than pay for a full month, as it’s uncertain how long I’ll remain on the case.
That decision is yet to be made.
Unease churns in my stomach as I lift the hem of my skirt and drag the file box away from the corner. As recovered memories can be highly unreliable, I need something tangible to help me piece together the details.
I lower to my knees and insert the tiny key to unlock the lid. One fortifying breath, then I tear the top off like a bandage over a wound.
Within are the contents of the Harbinger killer case from the third crime scene. The scene I was frantically working before I discovered the cufflink with the college insignia and Wellington’s initials that led me to Cambridge.
I shove aside files and a pair of joggers, my heart rate quickening as my gaze falls on what lay beneath. I touch the gray cotton fabric, needing confirmation of its existence, before I lift the sweatshirt from the confines of the box. Stretching the garment by the shoulders, I stare at the college name branded across the front in bold crimson letters.
A bone-deep tremor racks my body as a flash of memory assaults. The scream wrenched from my throttled airway. The cold, calculating look in his eyes as he crushed my windpipe. The sickening feel of my thumbs sinking into those callous eyes. The way the solid iron of the lug wrench reverberated off his skull when I struck his head.
The blood.
So much blood as it collected dark and shiny under the lamplights around his unmoving body.
“Breathe.”
The stranger’s deep baritone cracks into my state of shock.
“Come back to me.”
Then the warmth of his suit jacket embraces me as he drapes it around my shoulders.
The memories crash against one another. Kallum’s actions throughout this case as he attempted to jog my memory fight for dominance with my very first recollection of him that night. Every interaction with him holds new insight and meaning. Like when he placed his jacket around me in the killing fields, and his frenzied demand as he commanded me to breathe during the ritual. Every time he slipped my hair tie off, or when he dragged my shirt collar down my shoulder in the interrogation room. His thumb swiping wine from my lip like the blood he once smeared across my mouth.
His fevered whispers and professions while he brought me to the brink, over and over, our passionate lovemaking an act of magick in its own right.
And in the end, all it took was one tiny totem—Alister’s cufflink I discovered near the stream—to unlock my memory and send me reeling through time into a hellscape of my own design.
All the tangible proof is right here.
It has been the whole time, locked in a file box waiting to be unsealed, just like the latent memories were locked inside me.
With an aching sigh, I trace my finger over the collar. After Kallum gave me his sweatshirt, he burned my bloodstained clothes in his fireplace. I can still feel the heat, smell the smoke mingled with his woodsy cologne as he stood before me, his intense clashing gaze cast down at my bare shoulder.
I lightly press my fingers to that spot, the feel of his phantom touch heating my skin before I wince at the tender pain from where Devyn wounded me. Then I turn the sweatshirt inside-out to see the rusty stain—his blood—from the sigil.
Parts of that night are still unclear. By that point, shock and sleep deprivation were wreaking havoc on my mental state. I recall the intoxicating sensation that gathered inside me as Kallum traced the rough pad of his finger over my skin, the tantalizing friction burning beneath my flesh as his beautiful, captivating eyes seared through me. The way he reverently held my face, his breath brushing my lips and drawing me further into him. The dare to sever the last tether to my sanity before his lips crashed against mine.
Then everything that was past and hard and painful faded beneath the promise that kiss held.
It was sensual, and erotic, but it was also safe. I felt sheltered by his arms, where I could finally break.
A mysteriously sexy and intelligent man in an all-black suit fused himself to my soul in that moment. A man I had only just encountered made me believe in the illogical, like I was meant to find him, to belong to him. A man who witnessed me murder in cold blood and kissed me afterward, then harbored my dark secret like a shadow of the soul, waiting for me to come back to him.
Truth is, Kallum Locke is even more of a mystery to me now.
