By day, Lachlan runs Kane Atelier, his specialist leatherworking studio where he creates beauty from the skin of death. But by night, whenever Leander Mayes calls, my brother becomes the ruthless tool of the devil.
Personally, I enjoy taking the lives of whatever scumbags happen to float my way through the hellish soup of modern society.
Lachlan…? I don’t know if he enjoys much of anything these days. He kills with purpose but shrouds himself in cool detachment. Unless he’s carving hide with his hands or taking the piss out of me and Fionn, I don’t think life matters to him at all.
A pang hits my chest as Lachlan rises from his chair, pocketing his blade and cracking his neck as he threads his stropping belt back into place across his waist. A faint trace of his smile returns when it lands on me.
“Be safe, dickhead,” he says.
“You too, asshat.”
Lachlan sneers, but still claps a warm hand on my shoulder as he passes by. He presses his head to mine for a breath and then he’s gone, heading toward the door to do the same with Fionn. Our youngest brother has never been good at hiding his worries. Fionn wears every shade of sadness and worry in his light blue eyes, and he watches Lachlan stride away with aching concern spread across his boyish features.
“See you later, kids,” Lachlan says as he strides over the threshold and disappears down the dimly lit hall. “And move home, Fionn.”
“Hard pass,” Fionn replies, and a chuckle responds from the dark before the heavy door of my apartment closes with a reverberant thud. Fionn turns to me, that anxiety still etched as a crease in the space between his brows. “You sure this trip of yours is a good idea? I mean, how well do you even know this Sloane?”
I drop Fionn’s gaze, grinning as I zip my duffel and sling it over my shoulder.
“Not well at all. I’ve met her only once.”
Fionn’s nervous swallow is nearly audible. “Once? How did you meet?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
“This sounds a bit impulsive, Rowan, even for you. I know you’ve got the whole middle child thing going on,” he says, waving a hand in my direction the way he and Lachlan always do to explain my wild behavior and reckless decisions. “Meeting with some serial killer woman who you’ve only spoken to once a year ago is…not normal.”
My laugh seems to do little to reassure him. “Nothing about us is normal, but I’ll be fine. I have a gut instinct about her.”
The burner phone dings in my pocket.
I’m about to take off. If this were a race, you’d already be behind.
Oh wait… it IS a race! Look at that. I hope you like disarticulated eyeballs because I’m going to kill this shit, pun intended. Safe travels and get fucked! xo
“Yeah, Fionn,” I say with a bright grin as I slide my phone back into my pocket and head toward the door. “I think I’ll be okay.”
5
CERTAINTY
SLOANE
T his is absurd. I’m absurd.
I’m sitting in the lobby of the Cunningham Inn, trying to focus on the same page on my e-reader that I’ve been stuck on for the last five minutes as I deliberate between making a run for it and staying.
What the fuck am I doing with my life?
This is dangerous.
And stupid.
Absurd.
But I can’t seem to make myself leave.
My lungs fill with the scent of Pine-Sol and bad decisions as a deep, nervous sigh passes my lips. Giving up on my book, I sit back and take in the quiet lobby where my only company is a morose gray cat who glares at me from a leather chair next to the unlit fireplace. The room is dated but comfortable, with dark oak paneling and an ancient patterned carpet that was once burgundy. The antique furniture is mismatched, but polished and gleaming. A pair of taxidermied owls in mid-flight stand guard over the sun-bleached reproductions of Rodin paintings and heirloom railway and mining tools scattered across the walls.
I sigh again and check my watch. It’s almost two in the morning and I should be tired, but I’m not. There was a lot of rushing around tonight, between slicing up Michael Northman’s body and stuffing him in my freezer as I booked a flight out of Raleigh, to packing in a record thirty minutes, to renting a car for my arrival in West Virginia while Lark drove me to the airport. When I lamented that this whole escapade was a stupid idea, her response was: “Maybe, but you do need to get out and make more friends.”
“I have a friend,” I’d said. “You.”
“You need more than one, Sloane.”
“But this particular friend? This random Rowan guy? …Really?”
I can still hear the chiming cadence of Lark’s giggle as she glanced over at my confusion with a gentle smile. “Having another friend who can understand you, the real you, is maybe not a bad thing,” she said with a shrug, her grin untarnished by the scrutiny of my unwavering stare. “You haven’t jumped from the moving vehicle. We’re still heading to the airport. So yeah, I guess this random Rowan guy is your friend now.”
Maybe I should have jumped from the car.
I groan as I slide further into the depths of my chair. “Her rationale didn’t even make logical sense,” I say to the cat as I replay that conversation with Lark, the feline glaring back at me with simmering, judgemental fury.
“Trying to consume its soul, Blackbird?”
I drop my e-reader as I startle, turning toward the source of the subtle Irish accent with a hand clasped to my heart. “Jesus Christ,” I hiss as Rowan emerges from the shadows by the door with a smirk. My breath stops short when reality hits me that he’s here, really here. Rowan looks exactly the same as he did a year ago. I might look a little better than our first encounter, having not spent the last few days in a disgusting cage as a body putrefied a few feet away. I’m not sure if he would care that much about my lack of makeup or knotted hair or chapped lips, considering he spent so much time staring at my tits. The memory makes me blush, and not out of embarrassment.
I swallow down a sudden burst of nerves. “Maybe I should consume the cat’s soul. Mine just left my body.”
“I figured that was how you acquired your freckles. Stealing souls.”
“I see you’re just as hilarious as the first time we met.” I roll my eyes and move to pick up my e-reader but Rowan gets to it first. “Hand it over, pretty boy,” I say as he gives me a magnetic grin that fills my senses and douses my worries with a different kind of anxiety. The straight scar through his lip seems to brighten as his smile turns rakish.
“What does my nervous little Blackbird like to read, I wonder?” he teases as he waves the device at me.
A dismissive huff leaves my lips, even though his words crawl into my veins and inject my cheeks with crimson heat. “Monster porn, clearly,” I reply. Rowan laughs and I manage to snatch the device from his grip, which only makes him laugh harder. “The sentient dragonman has two dicks and he knows how to use them. A forked tongue too. And a very talented tail. So don’t make fun.”