Forget About Midnight (36 page)

I was torn between two mindsets: the rational wolf who wanted to heed his advice and the irrational vampire who wanted to scoff at it and hand out a beating to Gabriel. Since I couldn’t choose a side, I decided to play it by ear.

“Alexa, I was hoping we’d get a chance to talk.” Gabriel spoke first, ruining my smack-down moment. “Can we go outside?”

Exchanging a look with Shaz, I shrugged. Might as well hear the kid out before I did anything rash. We followed the long-haired, lanky vampire outside and down the street, away from the crowd around the door.

Gabriel held both hands up in surrender. The power that wafted around him like a scent cloud was familiar, sharing elements of my own. Where it differed was the murky essence of black magic that stained him like a spill that would never come out. He’d been a black magic witch before becoming a vampire, a deadly combination.

“I totally understand if you guys came here to kill me. But please, hear me out. I want to apologize for my role in everything that night. It was stupid, and I regret every second I spent with Shya.” He paused, allowing us to process this. “I spoke with Arys. He wore pretty much the same expression you have. But I mean it. Really.”

Gabriel and I didn’t share a lot of history. We’d met through Brogan, a mutual friend, and our interactions since had mostly consisted of me warning him about Shya and him ignoring me.

“I’m not here for you,” I said. “I came to find Jez. Have you seen her?” When he shook his head, I continued. “Shya says you’re being a rebellious teenager. So I guess that means you’re probably not lying.”

“I’m not.” He gave his head a vigorous shake, his black hair falling in his face. “I thought I knew what I wanted, but dying changed that. It was the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me. I saw… bad things. Talk about perspective.”

I scoffed and crossed my arms, fixing him with an intense, watchful wolf stare. “Yet you still fought for him while he tried to use me as a sacrifice. You hurt Shaz. He could’ve been killed.”

Gabriel and Shaz shared a look. Gabriel dropped his gaze and nodded, shoving the hair back out of his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry, and I don’t expect that to be good enough for you. But I don’t know what else to do but try to make peace with you and Arys.”

“Why?” Me? Mistrustful? Just a little.

Gabriel fidgeted with a loose thread on his jacket. There was an awkwardness to him that was all teenager, revealing that beneath the powerful exterior, he was still so young and so inexperienced in this world. “Because I don’t have anyone else. Shya just sees me as another of his minions. I can’t even be around my mom without wanting to hurt her. And I have a link to you guys. I can feel it.” He didn’t meet my gaze as he mumbled. Nervous energy danced around him. It tickled my senses.

The kid was asking for a family. I stared at him for so long without speaking that Shaz nudged me. I wasn’t sure what to say. When I’d offered Gabriel guidance, he had shunned me, but now he was confessing his error and asking for help.

I sighed as my need for vengeance died. It should have been reassuring to know my empathy hadn’t suffered total destruction.

“If I give you the benefit of the doubt, you had damn well better not let me down. If I catch you working for Shya, then it’s over for you.” Even as I uttered the warning, I could hear an echo of Hurst in my mind, his warning that Gabriel must not be made a vampire. It was too late now. All we could do was wait and see why that warning had been issued. I was sure that we would soon find out.

“Understood.” Gabriel gazed down the street, watching those gathered outside the club to smoke and talk with cool disinterest. “Look, Alexa, I feel like I need to be honest about something. I want you to trust me.”

He looked down at his feet, gathering himself. I tensed. That didn’t sound good. His energy grew so frazzled with nerves I actively had to shield against its irritating touch. Just when I was about to shake him and demand that he speak, he did.

“When Arys turned me and we touched, I saw something. I saw Arys… and your sister.” There was a moment of silence as he paused, letting that information hang between us. “I saw him attack her. That’s all I saw. I don’t know if it gets worse.”

For a moment my tongue wouldn’t move. My emotions overloaded, and I snapped. Grabbing Gabriel by the throat, I dragged him close and snarled into his face. “Are you fucking kidding me? This better not be a lie.”

“It’s not, I swear.” Gabriel’s voice rose, but he was otherwise calm. “Arys doesn’t even know what I saw. I tried to tell him, but he didn’t want to hear it.”

“Lex.” Shaz’s one word was a warning. Keeping a respectful distance, he didn’t try to intervene. Yet that one word cut through my wrath.

I let Gabriel go with a shove. “Don’t speak a word of this to anyone. I’ll handle Arys.”

“I won’t. I promise.” He blinked a few times, and his gaze darted about in a frantic way that led me to believe he’d just seen something when I touched him. Gabriel’s greatest gift was also a curse, as most gifts tended to be for people like us. Well whatever it was, I didn’t want to know.

“Where’ve you been staying during the day, Gabriel?”

“Wherever I can. Usually a victim’s house. I move on pretty quickly.” Looking guilty, he clasped his hands together, then unclasped them before shoving them into his pockets. “It’s so hard to stay in control of myself.”

I’d never been the nurturing type. That had always been Kylarai. Still, I wasn’t an entirely heartless bitch. “Stay at The Wicked Kiss. There’s a room there you can have. It’s safe during the day, and you should have a place of your own.” I paused, hoping that Gabriel wouldn’t give me a reason to regret this. “You should spend some time with Arys. He can help. It’s tough in the beginning.”

I didn’t miss the pointed look Shaz shot me. Yeah, yeah, I know.

“Thanks, Alexa.” Gabriel peered at me through a fringe of black hair. “I honestly didn’t expect you to be so cool. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well, don’t give me a reason to regret it.”

Without guidance Gabriel was lost. Having only Shya, who did not have his best interests at heart, he was isolated in his newness. I felt bad for him. Kale had kept me from being alone in those first dark days, and now Arys was waiting for me to trust him.

I gave Gabriel strict instruction to be safely inside The Wicked Kiss before sunrise. Harley’s old room and now Kale’s were both empty. I told him to take Harley’s. It was just as well. Both rooms harbored bad memories for me, but Harley’s was worse. I’d woken up as a vampire there.

With my attention on Gabriel and ensuring he obeyed my instruction, I didn’t notice Shaz pull his phone from his pocket. I vaguely noticed when he turned away, staring at the screen. But I sure as hell noticed when he turned back to me looking like he’d just seen a ghost.

“Lex?” That one word was loaded with unspoken questions. His expression was frozen somewhere between fear and horror.

My insides shriveled. This was it. The moment I discovered if handing Briggs over to Shya was worth it. My video had been leaked.

Needless to say, the drive over to The Wicked Kiss was uncomfortable. A strained silence plagued us. There was nothing I could say.

Having failed to find Jez at The Spirit Room, I was going to get my car from where she and Shaz had left it at the vampire bar. Then I was going to track her down, starting with her apartment. But I couldn’t leave Shaz with that image in his head without saying a word.

Afraid to force the conversation, I left him to stew on his feelings until he was ready to talk. Only when we pulled into the parking lot at The Wicked Kiss did he finally speak.

“Help me understand,” he said, his voice strangled with tightly reined emotion. “What was it? The evil in the building? The bloodlust? Tell me what happened there.”

We parked at the end of the lot, facing the brick siding of the building next door. I stared at the dark-red brick pattern, knowing that I could never make him understand what it felt like to have a constant war between light and dark going on inside my mind, my heart, my soul.

“Yes, it was both of those things, in a way.” I turned in my seat to face him. It was hard to meet his tortured green gaze. “But mostly, it was escape. It was the chance to forget who I was. For a while.”

Shaz fisted a handful of his hair. Turning off the engine, he leaned against the door, facing me head on. “With Falon? You hate him. At least, I thought you did.”

“I despise everything about him. That’s what made it so easy. There was no emotional connection. No fragile feelings. No guilt. Just… nothing.” What I didn’t say was that it had been a welcome reprieve from the struggle. Like a time out when, for just a few minutes, I didn’t have to be me.

Shaz looked ill. His breathing was fast and erratic. The adrenaline thrumming through him gave his energy a frazzled quality. “I know it wasn’t you. You would never do something so messed up. It’s your dark side. It’s worse than I thought it would be.” His head dropped back against the window with a dull thud. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“You and me both,” I said. “I did throw up. Kind of. Briggs probably edited that part out.” Studying Shaz, I found that there was now a glint of repulsion in his eyes when he looked at me, one that hadn’t been there before. “Shaz, one thing you have to realize now is that I am my dark side. This isn’t something it made me do. It’s something I wanted to do.”

His expression tightened, like I’d just told him the worst news he could have possibly received. “But it’s your dark side that makes you feel that way. It’s not you. You’re light. Wolf.”

The desperate tremor in his voice pained me. But it only went so deep before it just felt numb. It was so much easier to shut down than to feel each scalding emotion.

“I’m both, Shaz. That’s what makes it so fucked up. When Willow took my darkness, it kept me from being consumed by it. It left me with the light and dark balance I’ve been struggling with since Arys and I found each other. But worse. It created a Jekyll and Hyde effect. Everything is stronger now. More intense. I am both the vampire and the wolf, but they are in constant battle inside me, Shaz. I know what I am, but I don’t know who I am anymore.”

He slammed a fist into the dashboard. Pure wolf eyes landed on me. “It won’t always be this way. Let Arys help you, Lex. He said it would be worse in the beginning. I refuse to believe you’re a lost cause.”

A sad smile crossed my face. “I am a cold-blooded killer, Shaz. Never believe otherwise.”

“Stop that,” he snapped. “Why are you talking like that? Are you just giving up? We’re all killers, Lex. Even me. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re the bad guy now. That isn’t who you are.”

I recognized the truth of his words. Yet, I also knew there was more to it than that. “But I like it, Shaz. That’s the part that makes me a monster. I fucking love it.”

“So does Arys, but he’s not running amok like a fucking lunatic slaughtering college kids and fucking fallen angels.” A growl made his words sound as vicious as they were. Shaz might be a genuine, sweet guy, but he wasn’t a pushover. I admired that.

“No,” I agreed. “Just killing Feds and strippers. He has done things you and I can’t even wrap our minds around.”

“And you brought out a better side to him,” Shaz countered, his fist clenched. “Let him do that for you. God, let
me
do that for you.”

I started to reach for him, but his tension and vehement anger stopped me. “You do. You both do, but this is not something you can fix. I can’t be fixed, and I don’t even want to be. Because as long as you think I’m damaged goods that need to be repaired, neither of us will be happy. You can’t turn me into your ideal version of me, Shaz.”

And that was it, right there, the harsh, startling reality. He wanted me to be who I was before, but that person no longer existed.

The interior of the small car began to feel exceedingly tight. I didn’t want it to be this way between us, but Shaz had some inner demons of his own to battle. I couldn’t do that for him.

“I think I’m going to head home,” he said after the silence had grown deafening. “We’ll talk later.”

“Ok.” My tone was soft, weak. Watching a wedge be driven between me and those I loved made me feel powerless. No matter how much power I had, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

I got out of the car and waved, but he wasn’t looking at me. He drove away, leaving me standing there, watching his taillights disappear. I’d finally convinced him to see how things had changed, how I had changed. Hurting him was never my intention. All I wanted was to spare him inevitable pain and suffering. So much for that.

As I turned to go inside, my gaze landed on Kale’s Camaro. I’d have to move it to my house at some point. Kale. No sooner had I thought of him than my stomach tightened with longing.

That was over though. He’d probably seen the video by now too. Making my way inside, I crossed through the club to the back to fetch my dagger and shoulder bag from Harley’s old room where I’d left them. Gabriel’s room now.

There were a few text messages, one from Kale the previous night telling me he’d arrived safely in Las Vegas. Knowing I shouldn’t put it off, I called him, pacing the back hall as I listened to it ring.

I could feel that most of the rooms around me were empty. They wouldn’t be for long. Soon they would be occupied by drunken humans seeking a thrill and blood hungry vampires seeking a fix. And the world continued to turn.

“Let me guess,” Kale said when he answered, his voice smooth and low. “You called to tell me that you miss me. I miss you too. At least I did until this video ended up on my phone.”

“Kale, let me explain.” Before he could stop me, I rushed on, telling him about turning myself in to protect my sister for a lie dreamed up by Briggs. “You know what that place does. It gets inside your head.”

It sounded like an excuse, but it wasn’t. Kale knew. It had driven him so crazy he’d tried to rape and kill me. Still, I had forgiven him.

“It’s none of my business who you sleep with. It never was.” His tone was detached, cold.