September Moon (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #8)(109)

Our eyes met and I froze. I knew him. Something deep inside me recognized him as mine, and yet all I could think about when I looked at him was death. He was the one. He was the one who killed me.

“Alexa?” He took a tentative step toward me. “I can help you through this, but you have to trust me.”

A snarl bubbled up in my throat. Arys’s memories echoed inside me. He had killed me, and he had loved it.

All at once the remnants of who I was swam to the surface. I was immediately overcome by a torrent of emotion. It was intensified, imbued with an abyss-like passion that outweighed any feelings I’d ever had before. I wanted to cry, scream, and dissolve into hysterical laughter all at the same time.

Arys took another step toward me, his hands held up in surrender. “It’ll be ok. I promise you, my wolf. Let me help you.”

“Help me?” I repeated, not recognizing my own voice. “You did this to me. You knew what would happen, and you did it anyway.”

I backed away, unable to understand why I should trust him. It just didn’t compute amid the sudden confusion and mental distress.

“There will be time to talk about that later. Right now we need to calm your bloodlust before you run amok and terrorize the city. You know me, Alexa. All of me. You know you can trust me.” Holding a hand out toward me, Arys pleaded with his eyes for understanding.

The hallway hummed with the intriguing energy of vampires. Like an intricate, fascinating song, it played through me, a beautiful piece of music that resonated in every fiber of my being. It was no longer merely something I felt from outside of me, but something that lived within.

Arys didn’t give me a choice. He continued toward me, and I reacted. The power went out from me with no real thought to guide it. My intent was to ward him off and that’s what it did.

Stronger than ever before, I threw Arys backward; he flipped over the small bistro table in the bedroom before hitting the floor. It had taken no effort on my part, sapping none of my strength.

I didn’t wait around for him to get up. Turning on a heel, I darted down the hallway toward freedom. The red glowing exit sign was suddenly before me as I cleared the entire length from one end to the other in seconds.

The door slammed open, and I was gone, shooting through the parking lot like a bullet from a gun. Right away I felt the coming sunrise. It was less than an hour off. Instinct warned me to be careful. There was no taunting the sun and living to tell the tale.

I ran down the street, darting across in front of traffic, ignoring the sound of horns blaring and drivers telling me off. Running north, I followed the erratic urge to flee, paying no mind to where I was actually headed. My legs moved like the wind carried me. There was no gasping for breath. It felt like a dream.

Then something did bring me to a halt. As I passed the university a few blocks from The Wicked Kiss, the scent of humans and the sound of voices drew me to the dorm parking lot.

Despite the early hour there were people just getting out of a vehicle. I didn’t pause to reconsider. There was no moment of tortured decision making. The bloodlust was in charge, and I was its slave.

They barely had time to scream. Two men and a woman, I was on them before they could react. The men went down fast and easy. Their blood sprayed, and I greedily consumed all that I could. The rush of their fear was perhaps the best part. Bittersweet and mesmerizing, it quenched a thirst I hadn’t known I had.

The woman ran. She made it to the next row of vehicles before I caught her. With wide eyes and an expression of pure horror, she begged for her life. Not a single word penetrated the blood-crazed force commanding me.

Jerking her close, I breathed deeply of her scent. So human and so tantalizing. My fangs slid into her vein with perfect precision. It was leaps and bounds better than using wolf fangs. I could get used to this.

Only when she lay dead at my feet did I come back to myself. Slowly, like surfacing from a deep sleep, I became aware of where I was. I stared at her bloody throat, wide eyes, and mouth frozen open in a silent scream. At first I felt nothing but confusion. Then the fog lifted from my brain, and what I’d just done sunk in.

“Oh my God.” I clapped a hand over my bloodstained mouth. This couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t be.

I backed away from the corpse, bumping into a nearby car, which set off the alarm. The lights began to flash, and the horn honked repeatedly. There was no time to linger. It would draw attention soon enough. I fled, continuing for several blocks. As I ran I asked myself if this was reality because if it was a horrible nightmare I really needed to wake up now.

When I reached Saint Joachim Catholic Cemetery I let myself stop. Amongst the headstones I felt a sense of safety. Everyone there was already dead; I couldn’t harm them.

I walked along the paths that wound between the trees. Fallen leaves crunched beneath my feet, the only sound to accompany my descent into madness. It was impossible to wrap my mind around it all, what had happened and what I was now. It just couldn’t be real.

But it was. Knowing that I’d been trapped inside myself while the bloodlust commanded my actions was terrifying. I could not be a prisoner inside my own body.

Slumping against a headstone, I lay down in the leaves and waited for sunrise. It was the only way out of this. What I had known of the bloodlust thus far had been nothing, a bare shred of what it really was. I couldn’t control a force like this.

I dissolved into hysterical tears. With clawed fingertips I held tight to the headstone, praying that death would be fast. The stone gave beneath the pressure of my grip. With such little effort, it crumbled. Perhaps the claws should have been comforting, a sign of the wolf that dwelled within. In that moment I could only focus on the taste of blood and the memory of how damn good it felt to spill it.