He raised his eyebrows and extended one of the shovels my way. “Ever dug a grave before, sweet Bea?”
Oh, but this was a test, and he was enjoying administering it, pushing me hard to see if I would run crying back into the light.
I’d show him.
I hiked my chin in the air, quickly tied my hair back in its pink ribbon, and accepted the wooden handle of the shovel the way an incumbent queen accepted a golden sceptre on the throne. “No, but I’m an exceptionally quick learner.”
There was laughter in Priest’s voice, though his face was emotionless as he stood with the other shovel and moved to hoist the body into his arms once more. The sound of it made his voice rumble, abrading my skin until it pebbled with lust. “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
Armed with our burial weapons, Priest led the way out of the crypt and moved economically through the graves once more.
“So what’s with you using a creepy crypt as a storage shed?” I called ahead because he was moving fast and my high heels, though thickly wedged, kept slipping on the frosted mud. “Just for morbid kicks or what?”
Something like a snort was half lost in the wind as it rattled the dark arms of the oak and cedar trees surrounding us.
“Kodiak,” he explained when he came to an abrupt stop at a seemingly random grave in the middle of the unkempt cemetery. There was a massive stone cross nearly the same height as Priest with faint markings at the base that were too worn to read properly. “Kodiak’s family mausoleum.”
I blinked, blowing a lock of hair out of my face as it fell from my ponytail. “And he’s okay with you using it as a tool shed?”
“Was his idea,” he murmured as he laid the body down and arranged his tools in exact alignment beside it.
“Oh-kay,” I drawled. “I thought Kodiak was First Nations? Don’t they have different burial rights?”
In truth, I didn’t know much about the mysterious tracker in The Fallen other than that he’d appeared a few years ago and never left, and that he was decidedly beautiful with the thickest, longest black hair I’d ever seen. Truthfully, he was almost as scary as Priest, which was saying something, so I didn’t exactly make a point of prompting small talk with him.
“His dad’s white,” Priest grunted as he shucked his cut. “Hates him and that whole side’a his family. Think the idea’a this desecration gets ’im hard.”
His smile was a sharp slice of white teeth in the dark, a Cheshire cat grin that was slightly manic. He didn’t have to say the blasphemy turned him on too because that much was obvious.
I was about to tease him for it when he shocked me by taking off his black hoodie. The black, long-sleeved thermal he wore underneath kissed every inch of his skin, highlighting the dips and hills of his beautifully honed muscles beneath the thin fabric. This was as close as I had ever been to seeing Priest naked. Even in the summer, he wore long sleeves and denim. I’d always wondered idly why, until recently when it became apparent something was going on beneath his clothes besides the ink of his tattoos.
I wanted desperately for him to show me his naked self in so many aspects, least of all the bare skin of his torso and legs, but he stopped at the tee and put a shovel over his shoulder as he walked out the dimensions of the grave.
My eyes hungrily mapped his sheer power as he reared back with the shovel lifted, then stabbed it deep into the hard crust of the earth.
He worked quietly for a few minutes, seemingly unaware of my drooling and shameless ogling before he graced a hand against the shovel where it was planted in the earth and cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Witnessin’ and doin’ dark deeds are two very different things. Told you once, I’ll tell you again, if I’m a killer, you’re a killer. Not like most men in the MC, mo cuishle. I got no plans to keep secrets from you, but this is an all or nothin’, you get me?” He jerked his chin at me. “Get goin’ or go.”
Harsh, but in his own way, with his own wisdom, fair too. I fished in the overlarge pocket of my coat, pulled out a handful of Fuzzy Peaches I always kept in my pockets, and popped them into my mouth with vigor.
“Okay,” I said with a mouth full of sugar. “Move aside; a new gravedigger is in town.”
He tried to hide it, but I swore I caught a glimmer of a smile in his beard.
* * *
* * *
Apparently, Priest had many burial sites and body disposal methods. He didn’t go in-depth, explaining all the wonderful ways he covered up murder, but he grunted enough to paint a certain kind of picture. He used Evergreen Cemetery because it was at capacity and mostly forgotten save a few family crypts that still had space for more members. I was amazed to learn that up to six bodies could fit in a single grave. There was such resourcefulness in digging up someone already buried and forgotten to add more, knowing no one would ever look there again.