Devil's Own (7 page)

“Good to know.”
Baby. Honey. Sweetheart. Darling
. All manner of endearments went through Gus’s head, yet he couldn’t get any of them past the emotional lump in his throat. Maybe one day soon he could, though, when they would feel natural. Then suddenly he remembered what they had forgotten. “Oh shit!” Gus tried to get up, but he didn’t have his strength back yet.

“What?” Niall asked, concerned and on alert.

“The food. Damn. It’s probably all cold now.” Gus sighed, then grumbled unhappily.

“Don’t worry. We can reheat things.” Niall’s soft voice made his suggestive words a double entendre, and Gus let go of his displeasure, snuggling in closer to his lover. Niall ran his hand up and down Gus’s shoulder and arm absentmindedly. “I can’t stop wondering how we’re here. You and me. In bed, in your place. For the night. Having sex and then sleeping next to each other.” Niall sounded amazed, even a bit surprised.

At first Gus feared the worst. “You have… regrets?”

“Nope. Not a one.” Niall’s hold on Gus tightened briefly. “I mean… my sexual history is mostly composed of quick assignations and dirty one-nighters. And I’ve never slept at a guy’s place before—unless I was drunk, and that’s only happened once. No, correction. Twice. Yeah, that one St. Patrick’s Day fling. God, what a mess that was….” He shook his head, seemingly lost in thought. “This thing between you and me, well, it’s just new, you know.”

Gus snuggled a bit closer, inhaling male musk and fresh sweat. “But good, yes?”

Niall chuckled. “Very good. Just… natural and easy, you know. I hadn’t expected that. Not with you.”

Frowning, Gus shifted so he could lean his chin on his arm draped over Niall’s chest. “Why not with me?”

Niall shrugged, staring at the ceiling. “You’re not my usual type. Wait. Before you get your panties in a twist, I mean that’s a good thing. Trust me, if you were the kind I usually hook up with, we wouldn’t be here, cuddling and preparing to fall asleep.” Niall rubbed his head slightly against Gus’s hair, as if seeking a connection. Gus relaxed immediately, all doubts put aside as meaningless.

“So, what about you?” Niall asked.

Gus shrugged. “I’ve had a couple of long relationships, longer than a year. They didn’t work out.”

“How come?” Niall sounded sympathetic, genuinely curious. Gus was pretty sure the man wasn’t asking to make comparisons. “’Cause of your faith?”

Gus shook his head. “Just once. This guy I was with thought being Wiccan made me an irresponsible hippy who couldn’t function without drugs or waving either the rainbow flag or the peace sign, muttering in a daze like Cheech and Chong.”

Niall burst into a short guffaw. “You on drugs? I can’t even imagine that.”

“Never done any. Not even marijuana.” Gus didn’t want his brain to turn into mush until he was lying in his grave. “But that guy had his prejudices, and I couldn’t shake them.” He sighed. “But my other boyfriends have either understood my religion or been part of it.”

“You still close to any of them?”

“One or two. You?”

“No.” Niall’s answer was indicative of the man’s personality, Gus reflected, short and to the point. And, if he was completely honest, he liked the fact that he wouldn’t have to befriend any of Niall’s exes. “Listen, Gus. I’ve been meaning to ask….”

That sounded ominous. “What?”

“Juliette hinted that you’d had a bad experience with Satanism.” Niall quieted briefly. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Just wondering is all.”

Gus sighed. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he also kind of did. And he wanted to be honest with Niall about his past and his exes. “I knew this guy Randy. He was into the occult, sort of like me. We dated a couple of months. Then out of the blue, he suggested a black mass. The whole shebang. I was, like, whoa, what the fuck? He said being a neo-pagan, I should be more open to new ideas and experiences. He caught me off guard, and he did sort of have a point. I mean… I’m still ashamed of how prejudiced I am about… the darker religions.”

“So what happened?” Niall sounded comforting and tender, and Gus relaxed.

“It was clear from the start Randy had done stuff like that before. It was more than a black mass. It was, uh, a full-out orgy with chains and red wine and BDSM stuff.” He shuddered at the memory, visceral and haunting to this day. “I realized he was a Satanist, not just exploring his spirituality. I tried to get away. He called me a hypocrite. He didn’t get physically violent with me, but I saw the threat in his eyes, his demeanor. I got the hell out of there. Haven’t seen him since.”

Niall growled, obviously angry on Gus’s behalf. Gus found he liked the protective side of his lover. “What a fucking turd! I guess that explains why you get the, um, heebie-jeebies from them.” At the end, his tone became lighter, teasing, and Gus knew they were going to be all right.

“You know, Beltane is next week. Wanna celebrate it with me?” Gus asked, changing the subject.

Niall yawned, shifting to get more comfortable on the bed, with Gus tucked under his arm. “Shouldn’t we get cleaned up before any more pillow talk?”

Gus chuckled. “I think we’ve passed the pillow talk stage, Niall. This is more like, um, afterglow talk. Or… after-afterglow talk.” As he spoke, his body was still humming and vibrating with the remnants of pleasure coursing through his veins and thudding in his heart. He’d never felt so great with a lover, so at ease. Then he added teasingly, “Besides, I have virtually no body hair. If anyone’s gonna lose hairs over sticky substances peeling off, it’s gonna be you.”

Niall half harrumphed, half chuckled. “Aww, you’re Mr. Sympathy, aren’t you.”

“If you don’t want to join me for Beltane, it’s okay. Really. I don’t want to pressure you into anything.” Gus was reasonably sure he meant what he said. Sure, if Niall declined, Gus would be disappointed. But he was mature enough to understand that even adults in a committed relationship weren’t required to share every activity in their lives.

“Are there gonna be more Easter egg hunts?” Niall needled, letting his fingers tickle a response out of Gus.

Gus giggled and wiggled away from his lover’s nimble, tactile hands. “No. Beltane is a festival of fire and fertility. I’m gonna light the balefire and bake a special cake.” He looked up at Niall wickedly. “Beltane is all about excessive displays of nocturnal sexuality. There’s a love chase, lighting need-fires, and dancing around the maypole.”

Niall had raised his head to stare down at Gus, his eyes darkening again. “Oh. Count me in, beautiful.” Then he rested his head back on the pillow, yawned, scratched his hairy chest, and mumbled, “Not tonight, though, right? You’ve worn me out with that gorgeous body of yours.” Niall closed his eyes, but the smug smile remained on his lips.

Gus smothered a chuckle at the brazen quality of his lover’s self-confidence. It was so sexy. He tugged the covers over their naked bodies and then kissed Niall’s cheek and laid his head over the man’s chest. Niall’s chest hairs tickled his cheek, and the scent of man was pungent, but right then Gus wouldn’t have been anywhere else in the world.

“Good night, Niall,” Gus whispered, letting his relaxed state coax him into sleep.

“’Night, Gus,” Niall muttered drowsily. Gus heard the happy smile in his voice, and that was enough to send him flying high into the clouds of dreamland.

“W
HAT
UP
,
Valentine?” Hughes smirked as he spoke, as usual a morning person, which annoyed the shit out of Niall.

“Shut up.” Grumbling under his breath, he plopped down on the guest chair next to Hughes’s desk at the precinct, trying his best not to slosh the bad coffee in the foam cup. It was funny that they were in the coffee capital of the world, and the precinct still had the worst coffee imaginable.

Hughes just chuckled good-naturedly. “Late night?”

Niall tried not to feel his cheeks flaming but was unsuccessful. “None of your damn business.” He took a sip of the horrible police house coffee, grimaced, and put the cup down. He really wished he could have stayed in bed this morning. In Gus’s bed, cuddling his boyfriend to his heart’s content. But instead, here he was, back on the job. “Did the cops who answered Mrs. Talbot’s call make a positive ID of the murder victim?”

“Between the deceased and the man they spoke to? Well….” Hughes looked away with a guilty, embarrassed expression while he massaged his neck in obvious discomfort. “They think it was the same guy.”

Niall’s face fell. “They
think
it was the same guy?” He let out a long sigh, rubbing his weary eyes. This is what he’d gotten out of bed for? “Jesus.” From him, it sounded like a curse, and yes, that was on purpose.

Hughes was in control again. “It’s understandable, Valentine. The man they spoke to at the manor—Florian Talbot or not—was wearing a nightgown, just like Mrs. Talbot said. But… no blood on him. Also, the room where Angelina’s attack was supposed to have happened didn’t have any trace evidence of broken lamps or blood. Nothing to back up the lady’s, um, assertions. And at the time the door was open, so that just complicates matters.”

“Shit.” Niall took another gulp of his coffee, having forgotten how awful it was, and nearly spit it out again. “Fuck. Can’t you guys even fix the damn coffee machine?”

Hughes chuckled, his paunch jiggling. “It ain’t the machine.”

Niall dismissed the whole subject with an impatient wave of his hand. “So, what was the response time? Between Mrs. Talbot’s call and when the uniformed officers arrived?”

“There was mention of blood in the 911 call, so the first car reached the scene quick. No more than six or seven minutes.” Hughes was on top of things, and he didn’t even have to check his records for that piece of information.

“What’s the ME say?”

Hughes exhaled. “Nothing conclusive yet.” His perceptive gaze landed on Niall. “Your client is most likely innocent. What’s your interest in this still?”

Niall knew better than to lie to his friends and former colleagues. “Angelina Talbot wants to know for sure that her husband didn’t kill anyone. The blood came from somewhere.”

“She’s not one of them neurotic, hysterical rich women who screams at the shadows, is she?”

“No. Definitely not. She’s levelheaded—for a rich socialite.”

Hughes shrugged but was all business. “What can you tell me about the family? You must have better insight into them than I, what with your inside connection and all.”

“Florian’s older brother, Goddard, is in a wheelchair. He suffered a stroke of some sort, and he’s not all here”—Niall tapped his head with his index finger—“if you get my drift. His wife, Farrah, is much younger, a vapid beauty with an apparent Valium addiction. Ivan and Ida are twins, Florian’s younger siblings. Ivan’s a drug addict with a habit of burning through money. Ida’s a bit of a mystery, possibly a bisexual, not much more to go on. Millicent Marsden is Florian’s aunt, the matriarch of the family. I imagine she knows a lot about whatever’s going on inside that house. There’s also Henrietta Devin and Oswald Marsden, Florian’s cousins. She has a nervous disposition and he blends into the background.”

“Charming,” Hughes grunted, jotting down notes in his unreadable shorthand. Both he and Niall’s father, Owain, knew shorthand and used it on the job. “Now what’s this I hear about cults and shit?”

Niall sighed, buying time to decide how much to say. “It seems Florian Talbot was into the occult. He’s got a satanic coven up in Madison Park. Two people that I know of. Titus, Florian’s right-hand man, and Ella, some kind of religious groupie, age indeterminate.”

“Your client knows all these folks well?”

“No, not well at all, apparently. The family showed their true colors far too late into the marriage, it seems. They made fun of Angelina. Some of them she’s never even met personally. Only heard or read about, piecing information together from unreliable sources.”

Hughes harrumphed. “Well, better get moving then. Come with to the ME?”

Niall chuckled. “Dumb question, Virg.”

T
HE
PETITE
brunette Latina who ran the King County medical examiner’s office was, as usual, hard at work. The building, a part of Harborview Medical Center, was far removed from the police station. Traveling back and forth was commonplace for detectives.

She looked up when Niall walked in with Hughes.

“Valentine. Hughes.” Her tone was warm but warned the men not to interrupt her.

“Hiya, Reggie,” Niall said with a smile. The woman may have been spirited as a bull, but she was a good friend and an excellent ME. “I know it’s probably too soon, but did you manage to take a look at Florian Talbot?”

“The latest rich stiff? No, I didn’t. My assistant, Nell, gave him a cursory prelim. I’m gonna do a full workup once I’m done with this one.” The body of a young Caucasian male lay on the table, chest open and intestines in full view.

Niall looked away. He had never been a fan of autopsies. Not that he was squeamish about dead bodies, but seeing them open like this still churned his stomach. And a part of him saw it as disrespectful for anyone other than an ME to see them so exposed. “Anything weird?”

“Like?” Regina Mendoza prompted, working.

“C’mon, Doc,” Hughes said next to Niall, letting out a muffled burp. “Murder. Yes or no?”

“From what Nell told me, his head was smashed in with a lamp. Pretty sure he didn’t do it to himself,” Regina responded laconically.

“Time of death?” Niall didn’t like the confusion the method of death created. Only a precise TOD would help dispel the inflammatory burden landing on Angelina Talbot. And he knew Regina had asked about her assistant’s findings by now.

“Body temp suggested estimated time of death is between three and five a.m.”

Niall let out a relieved breath. Angelina had made the call to the police at 2:12 a.m., and she had arrived at her friend’s house around quarter to three. That meant she was in the clear. “Guess Mrs. Talbot—um, soon-to-be Ms. Yates again, that is, didn’t do it.”