Death Wish (2 page)

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.

If Alice speaks the truth then I will likely never know my wolf. I don’t even know her name. And, for some inexplicable reason, that pains me.

I read the entry a second time and then a third. Twin flames. I had never heard the term before. I flipped ahead to the next entry, but it was about an argument with Harley, something that meant nothing to me right then. My mind was stuck on the twin flame revelation. Too impatient to keep reading in the hopes of finding more information, I jumped out of bed and ran upstairs to fetch my laptop. This question required the internet.

Arys raised his head, an inquisitive expression on his face as I jostled him about while getting settled with the computer on my lap. “What’s up, love?”

“How could you not have told me this before?” I tapped my fingers impatiently on the keyboard as the laptop went through the motions of starting up. “This can’t possibly be true.”

I typed it into Google, grateful for once that the search engine corrected my spelling. My fingers were shaky on the keys. I skimmed through the search results. For something that I’d never heard of before, a surprisingly large number of websites were devoted to the topic of twin flames.

As I made my way through the sites that looked the most promising, a strange feeling began to twist my stomach into a knot. Most sources were quick to tell me that a twin flame and a soul mate were not the same thing. Twin flames were much like a coin. Each side was just half of a whole. Neither could exist without the other.

I went cold inside as I read on. The yin yang was used to explain twin flames more frequently than anything else: Light and dark. Night and day. Life and death. Each side possessed a little of the other.

I devoured everything I could find on the subject, analyzing it all with my own personal bullshit filter. What it all boiled down to was that a twin flame union was rare and usually unsuccessful. Both halves often struggled with the immense power of their bond. It usually destroyed them. Emotional turmoil and conflict would follow the twins always, as they could never hide anything from one another. The truth was always there, deep down inside.

My lungs froze when I read that last part. Our shared memories fit that description a little too perfectly. I shook my head and tore my gaze from the screen. This could not be real. It was just too much to process.

For over a hundred years, Arys had lived with this knowledge, wondering if he would ever know me. How many times since we’d met had he wanted to tell me, knowing I would never believe him? When did he know for certain that I was the one?

It was hard to swallow. I was shocked, in disbelief. Yet, I knew it paled in comparison to whatever Arys had been feeling these past few years, knowing what we were to each other while I’d lived in sweet ignorance. It must have been hell for him. 

He watched in silence as I scrolled through page after page, all of them telling me the very same thing. Could this be why I was now marked for death? Maxwell had put it together before I’d killed him. How many others knew what Arys and I were?

I gestured to the unbelievable words on the screen. “You should have said something, Arys.”

“Don’t you think I wanted to? It killed me not to blurt it out the first night we met. Or, every night thereafter.”

“If I recall correctly, you accused me of purposely entrapping you. You bastard.” I crossed my arms and glared. Let’s see him explain that one away.

Arys watched me intently as he spoke, shrugging unapologetically. “It was so hard to accept. I’d lived all these years believing I would never know you. Once we spoke with Lena, and she basically confirmed what Alice had told me, I couldn’t deny it anymore.”

“Uh huh.” I regarded him thoughtfully. “Yet, you still waited almost an entire year after that to give me the journal. You could have told me yourself.”

“And, have you refuse to believe it? No way.” Arys’s lips curved into a playful grin. “You’re hotheaded, Alexa. You’re difficult to talk to sometimes, especially when it comes to your power and your well-being. Letting you read a hundred year old journal was more dramatic and left you no room for argument.”

Mischief shone in his eyes. All it took was the right look from him to ignite the flames of desire within me, and he damn well knew it. It got him what he wanted, more often than not, but not this time.

“So what’s your excuse for pushing me to be with Shaz, then, if you knew I was always meant to be yours? Are you going to blame that on me, too?”

Arys’s smile faded. Tearing his gaze from mine, he stared across the room as if seeing something I couldn’t. “I was afraid for you, of what this will do to you. I still am. This thing that unites us, it could destroy us. I thought if you chose him, if you and I were apart, maybe you’d be better off.”

The fact that he wouldn’t look at me made me want him to look at me that much more. What would I see in his eyes? A tremor of fear shook me. Arys wasn’t alone in his concerns. I knew his fears were justified. He thought his darkness would consume me, and judging by the past few weeks, it was starting to. Still, it wasn’t his fault.

“Well, according to pretty much every site on the good ol’ world wide web, we are part of each other, and there is a reason for that. We have a purpose. It has to be worth the risks.”

“A purpose that is unknown to us and means nothing if our power destroys you.” Arys’s tone was bitter. “You’re in danger, Alexa. I can see it happening, and I know it’s my fault. If I hadn’t bound you by blood, you wouldn’t be a slave to the bloodlust. It’s like I’ve infected you with parts of me you were never meant to have.”

His guilt-riddled energy felt abrasive and cold. It wasn’t like him, and I found it irritating. “If you hadn’t done it, Harley would have. Either that, or I’d be dead.”

Arys looked up sharply with a flash of anger in his eyes. “I know. I hate that it had to come to that. He wouldn’t have it any other way. He never could accept you as part of me.”

Nothing in Arys’s expression changed, but I knew how sensitive a subject this was for him. Harley had turned him, effectively ensuring Arys never died a human death and guaranteeing that he would live to see my lifetime. As twisted as that sordid little situation had been, Harley had played his part, to our benefit.

The fact that I’d killed him made Harley a touchy subject. Arys’s true feelings for his sire became evident the night he’d stormed into The Wicked Kiss and grabbed me by the throat while snarling about how my magic pussy had seduced him.

Remembering it made my temper flare. It was long over and not worth dredging up. Arys loved me, I knew that. Yet that night was evidence of how, even that which bound us, could also divide us.

“Well, I am a part of you, Arys, and we are both part of something else. I just wish you had told me sooner. It would have saved us a lot of trouble.”

He closed the laptop and shoved it aside before reaching for me. I went gladly into his embrace.

“I never meant to keep you in the dark, Alexa. I thought I was protecting you, letting you choose your own path instead of allowing it to be chosen for you.”

I smiled at his wishful thinking; it was endearing. “Our fate was chosen for both of us. Now, let’s figure out what the hell we do with it before it kills us.”