Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,88

scent of musk and wiped a cobweb from my nose. The stone structure was surprisingly large, almost cavernous, with dozens of slots for caskets and a little altar with an elaborate stone cross. Priest knelt beside it, his head bowed and hands raised, but obscured from me by his broad back, the fiery winged skull of The Fallen emblem laughing at me from the leather. If he had been anyone else, I would’ve assumed he was praying.

Instead, there was a metallic clatter, and seconds later, Priest was shifting enough to let me see the large, flat metal box he’d dragged out from under the altar. Inside, there were two shovels, rolls of canvas, rope, sheers, and a Mason jar filled with silver coins. I recognized the latter instantly as the coins Bat made for Fallen funerals, embossed with The Fallen emblem on one side and an image of a reaper on the other.

He didn’t reach for those now. Instead, he shifted in his crouch to grab a shovel, then looked up at me with as happy an expression as I had ever seen. In fact, the sight of his crinkling pale eyes and slightly tilted lips nearly took my breath away, but it was the almost boyish mischievousness in his eyes that stole my heart.

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