Forget About Midnight (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #9)(12)

“Alexa, be careful.”

He seemed to want to say more so I nodded, cutting him off as I headed for the door. Spinning my key ring on one finger, I slid my boots on and waved. “Don’t worry about me. I won’t be long.”

Afraid he would stop me, I made a hasty exit. The quiet outside was heavy. The neighborhood was asleep. My big red Dodge Charger Daytona sat on the street in front of the house. With a press of a button on the key fob, the headlights lit up the night as the doors unlocked.

I slid behind the wheel with a sigh. Some time alone was not necessarily the best thing for me. Considering what I had planned, it was likely a huge mistake. Even though I sat there consciously making the decision to do something horrible, I didn’t feel all that bad about it. The dark part of me knew nothing of remorse.

As I cruised through the city streets, I kept watching my mirrors, expecting to see an FPA tail. Nothing. Maybe Falon was blowing smoke up my ass about them. He wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy person. Having a tail would have seriously blown my evening since I was on my way to FPA headquarters.

The moon shone bright, like a beacon in the sky above me. It wasn’t full, not yet, but I could feel it calling to my wolf. I hadn’t shifted since the turn. I was afraid. What if I couldn’t? What if Lena’s spell didn’t work after all and the wolf was trapped inside me?

Anxiety thoughts, all of them. My worry was wasted on the what-ifs, but I just couldn’t silence the antagonistic voice within. Eventually I had to find out for sure. The wolf was restless, disappointed with the changes in me. I didn’t know how to deal with it.

Loud music helped to drown out my anxious thoughts. The local rock band, Crimson Sin, played at my club a lot. Their catchy riffs and take-no-shit lyrics had led me to put them on regular rotation in my car as well.

After another fifteen minutes on the road, I turned onto a side street near the Charles Camsell Hospital, aka, Federal Para-Intelligence Agency HQ. It was a dreadful place. Filled with restless spirits, the building housed a certain evil that preyed on those who dared to enter.

My hands grew shaky on the wheel as I drew closer. I pulled over and turned off the engine, trying to regain my composure. Returning to the place of my death was hitting me harder than I’d expected. Still, it felt like progress. I had yet to return to the place where I awoke as vampire. I wasn’t ready to have everyone stare at me. The hybrid. A true hybrid now.

There were hybrids of various kinds scattered throughout the city’s underworld. Jez herself was one of them. None were like me though. I was the one and only vampire and werewolf hybrid in the world, as far as I knew.

Shifters could be turned vampire, but they lost their animal component upon their death. Thanks to an amazing friend, I had kept my wolf. I had to trust that she’d known what she was doing in creating the amulet that saved my beast.

I got out of the car and walked the rest of the way. The hospital was just around the corner, and even though I expected to see it, the sight of it still stopped me. A sense of urgency gripped me. Maybe I couldn’t do this after all.

The massive structure was dark, as it always appeared to be. Several stories high, it loomed, an eerie quality to its sinister silence.

There was nobody outside. There rarely was. The spirits within were enough to keep most people away. Anyone who made it inside faced both vengeful ghosts and armed agents. So I wasn’t going inside. The evil in the basement would make me its bitch if I tried.

I followed the sidewalk down the street and around to the back of the building, where the parking lot sat. It was early still. Agents would be arriving for the night shift.

Moving among the shadows between the streetlights was easy. With the keen instincts of the wolf and the sly stealth of the vampire, I moved with a predatory grace that felt amazing.

Becoming a wolf had been like getting superpowers. It had taken years to adjust to, and it never stopped being a surprise. Now, a vampire, it was like nothing words could describe. I felt like a force of nature, f*cking unstoppable.

I reached a gap in the fence. The Feds didn’t bother to maintain it since the real dangers couldn’t be kept out by any fence. I hesitated. Stepping onto the property would take me back to that night. I was afraid.

Being afraid pissed me off. What was done was done. But it haunted me, and because of that, I wasn’t able to move on. I had to start somewhere though.

It was all very uneventful. I stepped onto FPA land and expected to have a moment of emotional torment. Nothing. My purpose here was not to relive the night my lover killed me. No, I had something much more fun in mind.

One thing that did strike me right away was the heavy sense of the many entities inside the building. They were watching me, hoping I would dare to come inside. I could feel their anticipation.

The malevolence in the basement called to me, but its influence was weak out here. It needed me to enter the building to make me its slave. I reached out mentally, searching for any sensation of Lilah’s demonic power. There was a door to her evil empire here, locked up tight. I had only ever felt it when I held the key inside me. I did not feel it now.

I had just started to cross the parking lot toward the back entrance the agents used when a vehicle turned in. Nice. I didn’t even have to wait.

A man got out of the grey sedan. His black suit confirmed that he was an agent. He headed for the door, but thanks to the speed of two monsters, I was already there.