Forget About Midnight (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #9)(102)

“I know. I’m sorry about that.” He appeared about as sorry as I felt when making bad choices. “It was all about you. Killing the Doghead wolf wasn’t nearly as satisfying, but it was a damn close second.”

The icy hand of horror gripped me. It was all so clear. Arys had sought out a wolf in an attempt to recreate the high from the night he killed me. This was all kinds of awful. Shifter blood was mortal, able to quench the vampire hunger, yet it was potent, stronger than human blood. Vampires had been known to form addictions to it. This was much worse. Arys wasn’t merely hungering for shifter blood. He wanted the high of their death.

If I’d still been mortal, I would have felt faint. Instead I just felt shocked and lost. Dayne could never know about this. He didn’t trust me as it was.

Arys’s confession on top of what Gabriel had told me about Juliet was all too much to take in. My head pounded. What was I supposed to do to fix this? Was that even possible?

“Can you forgive me?” he asked. “For everything I’ve done to you? Can we somehow find peace?”

His anguished plea resonated within me. We were both so lost without each other.

There was no condemnation in him. He was the only one who didn’t hate me for what he saw on Briggs’s video, because he’d been there once too. His past was littered with such things. It wasn’t that he allowed such recklessness or condoned it but that he understood.

When he took my hand, there was a spark of blue and gold. Overwhelmed with an onslaught of emotion, I nodded, both sad and grateful that we’d been forced on this journey together.

“I forgive you,” I said, my voice shaky. “It’s going to take some time to forget.”

“Of course.”

“Shaz can never know about the Doghead wolf. He’s joining the pack. His loyalty will be to Dayne first and foremost. Not to us.” Mentioning Shaz made me wonder if perhaps he wasn’t as safe with Arys as I’d once believed.

“He doesn’t know,” Arys confirmed. “Nobody does. Just you.”

I didn’t want to have to ask, didn’t really want to know, but I needed to. “Is this going to be a problem? I mean, the wolf thing. Is that going to happen again?”

Arys considered this so long it made me worry that perhaps it already had. Shadows passed through his deep-blue eyes. “I don’t think I can answer that. Can you? The Falon thing. Is that going to be a problem?”

It already was. That’s not what I said though. This wasn’t about shaming one another. We just had no concrete answers as far as our insanity was concerned. And it was insanity. How could our actions be anything remotely close to sane?

“I don’t want it to be,” I said, shunning senseless, empty promises.

Arys nodded. “I don’t want it to be either.” He wasn’t referring to Falon but to his new hunger for wolves.

We sat there together, holding hands, knowing we were so f*cked up and yet still here. Still able to fight back against what it was that guided us into these dark places.

When dawn drew near, I left. Arys walked me to the door, looking better than he had when I arrived. Just being together had done wonders for us both. It was like having a light shone in a dark corner, exposing what hid there.

“We didn’t come this far to go down without a fight.” Arys gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Right?”

As I turned to go, our hands began to slip apart. The broken connection echoed inside me, leaving me feeling hollow and empty. “Right.”

Epilogue

“I told him that he shouldn’t even be staying there full time. It’s a hazard to his mental health. But he won’t take advice from me, and I guess I can’t hold that against him.” Jez was yattering on about her last phone conversation with Kale. Apparently he’d been spending a lot of time in The Wicked Kiss Las Vegas.

I nodded to indicate that I was listening although I didn’t really have anything to add to the conversation. Kale wouldn’t talk to me. A few nights had passed since he hung up on me. Maybe he just needed more time. Or maybe it was better this way.

“He doesn’t know what he’s missing,” Jez continued. “This is going to be a blast. Is this the place?”

We approached an apartment near the downtown city core. I read the number on the door and nodded. This was the place. Brinley Kane had been reluctant to come to me again asking for a favor. I’d assured him that it was no imposition at all. It was a pleasure to help him out.

“Yeah, this is it.” I headed inside while Jez finished her nasty cigarette. By the time she joined me, I had unlocked the exterior door.

Five minutes later, we had a child-pimping pig face down on the floor of his kitchen, squealing like the pig he was. Jez had his hands pinned behind his back and a knee pressed against his spine. When he wouldn’t shut up, I crammed a dirty dishcloth from the sink in his mouth.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t kill every one of these despicable human beings. But a little torture could go a long way.

“Where’s the money?” I asked, sliding the Dragon Claw out of its sheath. “Every dime you made last night. Where is it?”

Brinley had come to me, concerned about a girl who had called him at three in the morning, crying and begging for help. She claimed this man on the floor had coerced her into turning tricks with threats and blackmail. As a recent victim of blackmail myself, I had no sympathy for blackmailers.