It was like watching television, standing removed, but undeniably intrigued as I watched her humanity, her kindness and radiant personality more brilliant than the yellow light against the dark night.
Knowing someone else had been watching that, tuning into a channel I had long considered mine, made the tenuous grasp I held on my sanity tremble and quake.
I would find him, because I knew it was a him.
Bea was catnip for the freaks, the creeps, the deviants; a dark heart wrapped up pretty in a pink bow.
Of course, she’d attracted some other killer, drawn to her light in the darkness like some sadistic moth to a flame.
I’d find him, and when I did, I would dismember him just as he’d dismembered Brenda, only I’d do it with my bare hands and blunt teeth. He’d killed as a gift for a woman who wasn’t his. He didn’t know yet that she’d already been claimed by a psychopath, and I wouldn’t give her up for fucking anything.
Before I could temper the impulse, my hand snapped out to wrap around Bea’s long, delicate throat. There were gasps, but I didn’t care, not even when a heavy hand tried to jerk me away by the shoulder.
I only cared about her.
The girl with the pink bow and the dark things lurking behind those light blue eyes.
I needed to feel her alive, pulse beating against my flesh to settle the cold, murderous intention that seized every inch of my body from prickling scalp to clenching toes.
And Bea?
She didn’t flinch.
Of course, she didn’t.
Instead, she watched me unblinkingly as she slowly raised her small hand and pressed it tight to mine over her throat. The rightness of it surged through me, hot where I was cold, scorching through all the icy chambers of my heart until it burned. Until I was lit up like an old house and quickly going down in her flames.
“I will keep you safe,” I said in a voice that sounded strangely like a vow. An oath when the last promise I’d ever made was to make promises no more. “Everyone who knows me fears me, and those that don’t yet, will learn to.”
Priest
“Like hell you will,” Loulou said, pushing between Bea and I so that I was forced to drop my hand if I didn’t want to seriously hurt my Little Shadow. “You’re the one who almost killed her already.”
“She needs a man on her,” King acknowledged, stepping up beside me in a show of solidarity that meant something to me when it shouldn’t have. “Whoever did this, did it for her.”
Loulou slanted me a suspicious look, but Bea poked a finger into her shoulder and hissed, “Don’t even think it, Lou.”
I blinked dispassionately at Loulou. “You think I’d hurt your sister?”
She tipped her chin in the air and crossed her arms over her chest. “I think under the right circumstances, you could hurt anyone.”
Everyone around us was quiet, interested. It was a stand-off between the club Queen and its leashed beast. The tension was palpable in the air, but it did nothing to stir my blood. What did I care if Louise Garro liked me or not? This was my club long before it had been hers and it would be for the rest of my fucking life. I’d lived for The Fallen when I had nothing else to live for, and I’d die for it, for them, even for this bitch staring me down, because that was my definition of loyalty.
Of love, if I had any of that in my metaphorical heart to give.
“I’d sooner hurt you than her,” I said finally, bored now. I took the blade from my pocket and flipped it open to clean under my fingernails. “I’d sooner hurt anyone else than Bea.”
I knew if I looked at my Little Shadow then, there would be hope stamped on her face, and I didn’t want to acknowledge I’d put it there. I was speaking the truth, but she was too ready to read deeper into it.
Thoughts were the echo of emotion. They were never eloquent, but they got the point across. In my experience, words were even more useless.
Loulou understood me in a way Bea couldn’t because she was too involved. Lou’s eyes flashed. She knew what I was, a stone-cold killer, and she knew what I had to offer, obsession, not love. She didn’t want that for her sister.
I couldn’t blame her.
“I guess that’s fair enough,” she conceded, looking over my shoulder at her husband. “But I still don’t want you on her for this.”
“Lou,” Zeus rumbled. “Priest is one’a the best brothers we got. You want her safe, then he’s a good bet.”
“The best,” I corrected.
Bat stifled a snorting laugh behind a cough.
“I could do it,” Kodiak said in his monotone. “I’m not so good as Priest, but I could keep her safe.”