Coda (Alexa O'Brien Huntress Book 13) Page 5

  Not knowing what to expect, I climbed the stairs. It was quiet. Fatigue clouded my head with each step. I didn’t sleep much since turning. But even vampires needed to rest sometimes.

  Which was why I found Arys asleep in my bed, an arm flung over his face. Shaz sat up against the headrest on the opposite side of the king-size bed, scrolling through his phone. A vast space spanned between them.

  Seeing the vacant spot where I always curled up in the middle made me sad. Why did everything have to change?

  “You ok?” Shaz asked quietly.

  Tentatively, I crawled onto the bed from the bottom, making my way up between them, hoping to avoid disturbing Arys. I couldn’t go another round with him right now.

  “Yeah, a good run helped clear my head. What’s with the hole in my wall?”

  Shaz slid a glance at Arys’s prone form. “It really pissed him off that he couldn’t go after you. I’d say you won that round.”

  Inwardly I laughed. I’d known that would upset Arys. I knew him so well.

  “Well good. I needed a win.” Snuggling in close to Shaz, I rested my head on his lap and enjoyed the closeness.

  With a gentle hand he stroked my hair. The comfort of his loving touch lulled me. My eyelids grew heavy. Safe in my bed with the two of them, I was able to give in to sleep.

  Unfortunately there was a reason I didn’t sleep much. Not any more than I absolutely had to anyway.

  The dreams. It was rare that I managed a peaceful sleep. Usually slumber brought with it the deepest anxieties that lived in my subconscious. For a time it had been the night Raoul had turned me. Then Arys’s moment of absolute joy as he killed me haunted my nightmares. Since Kale had come home, I saw him.

  Or more precisely, I watched him crumble to dust. Because I killed him.

  I was right back there, in a time that had yet to come. Peering into his beautiful eyes, I begged and pleaded. But he remained unmoved. In the worst of my mind’s imaginings Arys stepped in, taking my place. Shoving me aside despite my attempts to fight him, he plunged a fist into Kale’s chest and tore his heart free.

  My screams filled the void of my nightmare. Echoing all around me and inside me, it was all I could hear. My greatest fear played out before me. The one man I could never escape, killing the one man I could never have.

  There was no set rhyme or rhythm to the dream. Each time it played out a little differently, but it always ended the same. With me on my knees, drenched in bloody tears. And I knew that no matter how it all went down, this part was real.

  “God, how I wish I could be there to see it.” A voice shattered the illusion. A familiar voice that I did not miss in any way.

  The dream setting fell away, and I was left standing in what appeared to be a vacant parking lot in the middle of a city I’d never known. “What are you doing here, Briggs?”

  I found the federal agent standing behind me. This part was real. Briggs, a dreamwalker, had reached out in the only way he could. By violating the sanctity of my subconscious.

  “Enjoying your suffering. As I’m sure you’re enjoying mine.” He smirked, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Despite the dream scenario Briggs didn’t look well. His usually gleaming dark eyes were dull and lifeless. Right away I could tell he was pretty much starving. And though the gleam was missing, something else lived within his piercing gaze. The entity.

  “What the hell is Juliet feeding you?” I asked, eyeing him warily.

  His expression soured and he muttered, “Pig blood. From the butcher. Just enough to keep me alive. If you can call this alive.”

  I didn’t. I called it torture. Even though Briggs had been a royal pain in my ass for the last year, he was mine. And seeing him in such a state felt wrong.

  “You kind of deserve it.” I refused to let on how his state disturbed me.

  “Does anyone deserve to be starved? Tormented by this fucking voice that just won’t stop talking.” Briggs glanced about, looking at something I couldn’t see.

  The entity. Dear God.

  As shitty as Briggs had been, I didn’t think he deserved to be starved, and it worried me that my sister did.

  Still, I’d never admit it to him. “Does anyone deserve to be a lab rat?” I countered. “Experimented on? Viewed as a living weapon? You’re lucky she’s not doing that to you.”

  Briggs stared at me with a vacant, dead-eyed expression. The way he cocked his head slightly to one side told me the entity spoke to him. Even though it was with him, trapped on FPA property, I shuddered, remembering its oily voice in my ear.

  “At least she’d be doing something to me. She won’t even speak to me. Sends someone else to throw a bag of pig blood at my feet.” Briggs turned in a slow circle, talking to himself more than to me. “What’s she so afraid of? That I’ll hurt her? Kill her? I thought I loved her. But now… Now I just want to taste her.”

  Yep, that sounded like entity talking. I tried to break in, hoping to be louder than it was. “That’s my sister you’re fantasizing over.”

  “Sure is. Your younger sister. Whom I’ve fucked in every position physically possible all over my house. The only part of her I haven’t tasted is what’s in her veins. Yet.” A sinister laugh that sounded nothing like Briggs followed his horrific confession.

  “You’re a creepy motherfucker, you know that?” I pondered the scenario, glancing about, wondering how I could wake up and leave the twisted bastard behind.

  Briggs lunged at me. Grabbing my shoulders, he shook me until my teeth rattled. “You did this to me. You made me a monster, and now this thing won’t leave me alone. This isn’t me. This is not who I am.”

  So Briggs was still in there after all. Somewhere. I threw him off, holding up a hand to ward off any further touching. “You were a monster before. Don’t give me this self-righteous bullshit. Your obsession with recreating me landed you in there. You made a fucking zombie, Briggs. So deal with it. I’m waking up now.” At least, that was the plan.

  Unfortunately waking up on demand wasn’t really a thing I could figure out.

  I walked away from him, searching for some kind of exit, but the parking lot spanned on as far as I could see. Stupid dreamscape.

  “Alexa, you’ve got to get me out of this shithole. If I stay here much longer, this thing will change me. I can feel it.” The pleading note in his tone was new. Definitely wasn’t like him to beg. Unless he was pushed to the point of true desperation. “Kill me if that’s the only way, but don’t leave me in here. Please.”

  Throwing up my hands, I pinned him with a death glare. “You didn’t care so much about that hole when you threw Kale in there. And me along with him. You didn’t care when you stole my blood and locked me up so that entity could have its way with me and Falon. Why the hell should I care now? Pretty sure it’s called karma, bitch.”

  I was up to my eyeballs with problems, and I saw no room to add Briggs to the mix. He was locked away right where he deserved to be, and I could not afford to care.

  Briggs tilted his head, listening again. He smirked. “It says it can only convince you to do what you already want to do. It finds your weakness. Something you want but can’t admit to yourself. It exploits you, encourages you, but you make the choice.” For a guy who begged me for help, he sure was taking an awful lot of glee in telling me I’d screwed Falon the very first time simply because I’d wanted to.

  Since I needed to hold onto a shred of denial, I refused to acknowledge him. “We’re done here. Enjoy your pig blood. And insanity. The further you fall into it, the easier it gets.” Ready to wake up now, brain. Any time.

  A vein throbbed in his forehead. He muttered to the entity, telling it to shut the hell up. To me he snarled, “Enjoy your nightmares. I hope they haunt you for the rest of your miserable existence.”

  To my unpleasant surprise the parking lot faded, taking Briggs with it. And I was plunged right back into my dream of Kale’s death.

  Arys didn’t kill Kale this t
ime.

  My hand shook with the Dragon Claw clutched in my grasp. Honey-sweet blood stained my fingers.

  With wide eyes, Kale gaped at me.

  I wanted to change my mind. To take it back. But it was too late.

  My dagger protruded from his middle. In a panic, I jerked it free. And then he collapsed into dust and ash at my feet.

  I screamed.

  “Lex.”

  Someone shook me awake. I grew aware of Shaz’s comforting scent as I came back to myself. Both he and Arys were sitting upright, staring down at me as I flailed in the bed.

  I grabbed the hand he offered and held it like the lifeline it was. “I’m ok.”

  “You called Sinclair’s name.” A strange detachment in Arys’s voice revealed exactly how he felt about that.

  “I had a bad dream,” I offered, uneasy with the accusation on his face.

  He didn’t press it.

  Whatever Shaz felt, he kept it to himself. Arys rolled out of bed and went to the washroom. The sound of the shower followed. Shaz resettled himself beside me. After several minutes his breathing evened out as he drifted off.

  I laid there staring at the ceiling, hoping to never sleep again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Woody’s Pub. It had been quite some time since I’d been to the little watering hole that Willow adored so much. From the outside the place appeared abandoned. Dragging open the beat-up wooden door revealed a tiny world where men shouted at sports on the TVs mounted in every corner, drank a lot of beer, and got in the occasional brawl.

  He had to be here. This was where he came these days to drown himself in tequila.

  I found him sitting alone at the bar. Shoulders slumped, head bowed, Willow stared at the gouges in the wood. Before him sat a full shot glass of tequila. I wondered how many he’d had already.

  “What are you doing here, Alexa?” He didn’t glance up when I slid onto the stool beside him.

  Willow had understandably been upset with me since the night I used angel blood to make him human. In his fragile human form, he’d begged me to turn him, to make him a vampire. To give him back some kind of power. Helpless and terrified, he’d pleaded.

  And I had walked out on him.

  In my defense, he’d become a demon, fallen so deeply into darkness, to save my light. Now that he was free of evil, how could I curse him with an eternal lust for blood? Not to mention that any vampire who tasted my blood would always crave me, and I couldn’t do that to him.

  “I wanted to check on you. You haven’t come around much.” I waved a hand to the bartender, indicating I didn’t want anything. The noxious fumes of tequila assaulted my nose. Willow’s blood reeked of it.

  Without looking up he said, “You know I can’t go to Wicked. Not anymore.”

  I understood completely. Not only did he not want to be seen as a potential victim, but he wanted to avoid Falon and anyone else like him who might come around. Willow had gone from a place of massive power to nothing. He was vulnerable. Endangered.

  And it was my fault.

  Still, I’d done what I had to, to save him from himself. And if he hated me forever, I would live with that because no longer did evil consume him. So maybe I had damaged our friendship, but something good had come of it.

  “You can do anything you want, Willow. You’re safe there. Always. I promise.” I raised a hand, wanting to touch his shoulder. Fearing rejection, I thought better of it and kept my hands to myself.

  “I’m not safe anywhere,” he muttered before slamming back the tequila. “At least getting drunk is a fuck of a lot easier now.” Judging by the slight slur to his words, yeah, definitely drunk.

  “We need to talk, Willow. Or maybe you need to listen.” Despite Arys’s insistence that we needed to find the hunters, I had opted to come here instead. To once again beg Willow’s forgiveness even though he had never withheld it.

  And this time to ask him about the keystone. Last night had been one step too far. Shaz didn’t deserve to be caught in middle of our twin flame destruction. If there was any way to restore our keystone, we needed to do it now.

  “You don’t need to keep apologizing, Alexa. I hold nothing against you.” Finally he dragged his tired gaze to mine.

  Every time I saw those golden-flecked green eyes my heart burst with something like joy. I couldn’t feel bad about that. I wanted to but I just couldn’t. “I love you, Willow. Let me help you. Sitting here until you drink yourself to death is no way to experience humanity.” Speaking softly I mustered the courage to touch him. A light touch on his elbow, just enough to let him know I was there. And I gave a damn.

  A forced smile crossed his face. He patted my hand as if I were the one who needed comforting. “There’s only one thing I want you to do for me.”

  A grimace pulled my face into something tight and uncomfortable. “You know I can’t do that. I won’t enslave you, Willow. Trust me, you don’t want that.”

  He signaled the bartender for another shot. The guy raised an eyebrow but didn’t question him. Even human there was something commanding about Willow. Much of his power dwelled in who he was. That part hadn’t disappeared.

  “Alexa, do you remember what it feels like to be human? How vulnerable and weak you were?” He studied me closely, analyzing my reaction.

  In truth that kind of thing faded over time. Of course I remembered my human days, but they felt so distant. “Yes. But I suppose I don’t remember it quite so clearly anymore.”

  Willow raised the shot glass to his lips but didn’t yet drink. Waving it lightly beneath his nose, he breathed in the noxious odor. “Before I took on your darkness, I imagined it would be hell. Still, I was prepared to do anything for you. To protect your destiny. You and Arys both. But this, being human and so pathetically vulnerable all the time… This is hell.” He tipped the glass back and swallowed down the contents.

  I watched his throat work as he swallowed. The pulse in his neck pumped human blood. No longer did he possess a supernatural vibe, and I missed that. Eyes bloodshot, a faint sheen of perspiration that smelled like tequila, he was human in every way, and yet he lived in greater torment than when the darkness had claimed him.

  What I knew of hell was different. Because we all lived in our own personal hell. But how could I force him to stay there when I had the power to take it away?

  A sob lodged in my throat. So many times I’d cried for Willow. I’d done what I deemed necessary, but perhaps from here on out the decision was not mine. As with Kale, I needed to back down and let Willow call his own shots.

  “Arys will do it. But I want to be there.” Saying it felt wrong. However, Willow knew what he asked for. And all I knew was that I couldn’t bear to subject him to a mortal life if it meant seeing pain and agony in those beautiful green eyes.

  Surprise lit up his face. He turned to me with a hesitant smile, like he was afraid he hadn’t heard me right. He clasped my hand between both of his. “Thank you.” His words were so quiet, barely a whisper.

  But I heard. And I saw it in the anticipation that lit up his eyes. I would probably never feel right about it, but I loved him too much to say no. “I just want you to take some time to think about this. Really be sure. Because once you do this, there is no going back.” That was all I could ask of him.

  He nodded, willing to promise me anything.

  Okay, I could ask one more thing. “Willow, I need to know more about the keystone. How you did it? I need to know if it can be re-created.”

  He searched me for a moment, a hand reaching to touch the side of my face. “How bad has it gotten?”

  I bit my lip and shook my head. “Every night it’s worse.”

  “That’s what I hoped to prevent. The two of you, you’re meant for great things. Which is why you’re assaulted by so much darkness.” Willow sighed, and the sound alone was a sucker punch in the gut. “It took angelic power to make Shaz your keystone. I did it before my fall, and I broke a rule when I did.”

>   “So there’s no way to get it back?” A pointless question born of desperation.

  “Nothing is impossible although it is unlikely. You’d have to find an angel willing to break the rules. Not easy to come by, by any means.” He pulled me into a hug. It clouded me with tequila, yet it felt comforting and familiar. “I’m sorry.”

  I wouldn’t allow for him to feel bad. “Don’t. You did everything you could. And then so did I. We kind of saved each other. Of course there’s always collateral damage.”

  Willow signaled the bartender for another. “I suppose I better get my fill of this shit while I still can.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Careful. That shit can kill you now in a high enough dose.”

  A natural ease settled over us. We talked and joked, laughing at a group of older men as they erupted into a loud argument over hockey. I had my friend back, and for a few minutes everything was normal.

  Normal wasn’t a thing for people like Willow and me. So as he enjoyed his tequila while he still could, I enjoyed my false sense of ordinary. Inside the little pub nestled away in a quiet part of the city, real life felt worlds away.

  By the time I left him, I’d had a good talk and an even better laugh. I made him promise to be careful. Too many big bads out there wanted a shot at him now that he was vulnerable. He assured me that his angelic brother, Serene, had been looking out for him. People in high places still cared greatly for Willow. It made my heart happy. But we both knew Serene couldn’t be everywhere at once.

  Willow had been staying with Shaz until he’d recovered. Now he lived in a small apartment above an old church. A protected church. It was as safe as he could get.

  As I stepped out of the pub into the winter night, the air rippled. Before he appeared I knew it was Falon. He could’ve ambushed me inside and used his presence to taunt Willow. Seeing as Willow had kicked his ass a few times, he had every reason to take advantage of Willow’s newfound vulnerability. Far from classy, Falon continued to prove he wasn’t all bad. I still wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

  We hadn’t spent much time together since Falon had cornered me at The Wicked Kiss and all but threatened me to find a way to release him from the strange hold I seemed to have over him. So this visit was somewhat unexpected.