Death Wish (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #5)(3)

I could almost hear her voice: Sometimes this is the natural order of things; as hard as it might be to believe, it’s meant to happen. A bond like this lasts to the death.

She had given us a warning though, one I’d never forget. A bond like this could drive one absolutely mad. Lena had made me promise to be careful. I’d never guessed then how deep it went.

I knew why I kept coming back to that very first journal entry. It was because Arys had seen me as a wolf before I’d ever been born. It was confirmation that everything with Raoul, the attack and my change to wolf, had been meant to happen. That was hard to swallow. During my childhood years, playing with my sister as a clueless, happy child, all of this had been there, waiting to happen. The loss of my innocence, my misplaced love for the man who killed my family, it was my destiny. And, I hated that.

“Stop torturing yourself.” Arys made a half-hearted attempt at swiping the book from my hands. “I gave it to you so you could find answers. Not so you’d drive yourself crazy.”

“Cut it out. This journal is fragile. Don’t wreck it.” I turned the page, giving him a teasing glare. “I am finding answers. I’m just not happy with some of them.”

I skimmed through the next page. It was a detailed account of a gruesome night out. Arys and Harley had been busy boys back in those days. The first time I’d read about how they had seduced a young woman and driven her into a sexual frenzy, I’d been disturbed. I didn’t want to read it again. Still, I couldn’t help but linger over a few especially creepy parts.

Harley brought her to the brink of climax, enjoying her pleas for more. She oozed sexual energy, and we devoured it. I bit her wrist, letting the blood flow over my tongue. It stirred my every hunger to life. I longed to be inside her, taking all of her. Body and blood. But, Harley had had enough play. Now, he wanted her to scream.

I shuddered and turned the page before I could read anymore. My own memories of Harley were not fond ones. However, they were nothing compared to the depravity that lay within these pages. Arys and I shared one another’s memories, thus everything he had written about his sire brought those horrific memories from my subconscious to the surface where I was forced to relive them as if I’d been there.

I distinctly preferred to keep those memories safely entombed beyond the reach of my conscious mind, so maybe Arys was right, maybe I never would finish reading his journal.

“Did you get some kind of perverse pleasure out of recording your debauchery with Harley? It makes me want to scream.”

“Yes. I suppose I did. I also get some perverse pleasure from your reaction to it.”

There was no humor in his eyes. It was my own fault. I’d been dumb enough to ask about his past, and he’d answered. I easily forgot how dangerous Arys was. He was part of me in so many ways, and yet sometimes, I felt like I didn’t know him at all.

“Fantastic,” I muttered. Shrugging off the feeling of unease creeping over me, I kept flipping pages.

Bypassing previously read tales of blood play and wicked games, I paused where I’d left off. It had been several days since I’d read the journal. I was starting to think it would leave me with more questions than answers. Only one way to find out.

November 17, 1849

I had the strangest dream that I was a wolf. I awoke confused and startled. As a vampire, I know that can never be. It’s she, inside my mind again. I’m sure of it. I need to know whom she is before it drives me insane. I don’t dare speak a word about her to Harley. Not yet. I need to find her.

I need answers. Alice has been called a charlatan, a fraud, but I’ve seen enough to be sure that she knows things. Answers from Alice won’t come easy or cheap.

I glanced down to find Arys watching me intently, likely waiting for my expression to change as I read. I stroked a hand through his soft, ebony hair.

“Why don’t you tell me these things yourself, Arys? Then you can censor the parts I really don’t want or need to know.”

“You need to know all of it, my wolf. Just read it.”

I was skeptical. “I really need to know about all the fun you and Harley had driving women into a sexual frenzy while you killed them? I doubt that.”

Arys snickered, and it sent a shiver down my spine. “You don’t want to read it because it gets to you. You start to remember, and you like it.”

“Screw that.” My response came too fast, and my pulse quickened. I hated it when he was right.

“Keep reading. The worst of it never made it into that journal anyway.”

“That’s reassuring.”

It wasn’t. I did not want to read more about Arys’s murderous activity, but I did want to know more about Alice and what, if anything, she knew about us.

January 4, 1850

Alice is either a liar and a thief or a woman who knows too much. She read my palm, an act that seemed very contrived and only for show. Then she started talking, and I almost wished I’d never gone to see her at all. She confirmed what I already knew, that the wolf is mine, somehow. Twin flame. That is the term she used. The wolf is my twin flame. I had never heard of this before. I asked if she meant we were soul mates. The shriveled old hag laughed as if I were a fool.

Twin flames and soul mates are often confused though never the same. According to Alice, soul mates are two different people meant to be together, but twin flames are part of one another, created as one and split into two. Two separate beings, two separate souls, and yet we are one. Alice claims that twin flames rarely ever exist in the same lifetime. They aren’t meant to. Yet if they do somehow unite, it is for a reason. A spiritual purpose. Of course, I asked why. Alice was unwilling to part with more information without parting me from more money. I concluded that she had little else to share. Perhaps I will go back. Perhaps I never will.