Forget About Midnight (40 page)

We walked out of the building into the cold night. I could smell the snow on the air. It hadn’t fallen yet, but it would soon, before Halloween for sure. Evidence of the coming ghoulish holiday was everywhere now. It made me think back to last Halloween. So much had happened in a year.

“Well, that was fun,” Jez observed as we headed down the street, back to where we’d parked. “Not a bad way to kick off the night.”

The last few nights had been hard for us both. Being together had helped. I’d pried the phone out of Jez’s hand when she tried to call Arrow, and she had kept me from killing Hayden when I found him at The Wicked Kiss and decided he’d do for a fix. But just barely. Falon had not made another appearance. He would. We had a demon to trap. Jez had vowed to cock block him at all costs. Her words, not mine.

Once Shya was dealt with, I intended to track down the wolf he’d forced me to turn for him as well as any others she might have turned. I needed to know where she’d ended up. All in good time.

The hardest part about helping each other resist the bad things that plagued us was that neither of us really wanted to give them up. As long as we still wanted what we resisted, it would haunt us always.

This was an exercise in futility if there ever was one. It meant more to me that Jez got clean. I meant to speak to Willow about her demon half. If it was feeding her addiction, we needed to know. Likewise, if it was going to burst out in a horrifying display of demonic evil, she had to be prepared.

For me, there was no going sober. There was only trying to keep my kill count down and my fits of insanity to a minimum. I needed Arys for that. He and I had been spending more time together, but we weren’t ready to hunt as a team yet. Or maybe that was just me.

“So,” Jez broke into my thoughts. “What do you want to do now?”

She pulled out a cigarette, and I snatched it before she could light it. A grinning jack o’lantern on the front porch of a house we passed mocked me with its toothy smile. I briefly considered hacking it up with my dagger.

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “It’s hard to stay entertained in this city without sex and violence.”

“And drugs.”

I snapped the cigarette in half and flicked it away. Jez smacked my arm, and I smiled. “Let’s go see if Willow’s at The Wicked Kiss. You can have a whiskey for me, and then I’ll drink your blood so it’s kind of like I had the whiskey.”

We reached the Charger and got inside. Jez laughed but shot me a warning look. “That better be a joke.”

It was. Kind of. I had no interest in drug-laced blood that was remotely demonic in any way, but I really missed whiskey.

On the drive to The Wicked Kiss, I listened to Jez prattle on about her latest P.I. client, a woman who thought she’d found evidence that her husband was visiting my nightclub regularly. She wanted Jez to find out what he was doing there.

Her P.I. tales were amusing, but they didn’t keep my mind from wandering. During the next full moon, Shaz would be joining the Doghead pack. Even though we’d barely spoken since our last dreadful conversation, he’d asked me to come. Dayne had allowed it. In fact, Dayne wanted me there. He had something he wanted to discuss with me. I could only imagine what that might be.

I worried that it had something to do with Arys or the wolf he killed. If Dayne found out that it was Arys, of all vampires, he would never trust me again, and my alliance with the wolves would be non-existent. Keeping that secret was vital.

Another secret I wanted to keep was Juliet’s presence in Vegas from Jenner. Since Kale wasn’t speaking to me, I had no contact there to discuss it with. If worse came to worse, I’d have to call Jenner and tell him, while also threatening him six ways from Sunday.

Perhaps it was good that Juliet had left town for a while. Not only did it mean I didn’t have her here bitching about what I’d done to Briggs, it kept Gabriel’s vision from coming true. Eventually she’d find out about Briggs though. I could only hope that it wouldn’t send her running straight back here.

“Can you believe she said that? As if I’m some kind of amateur. I know my way around a hunt. Alexa, are you even listening?” Jez punched my shoulder.

“Yes. Kind of. No, not really. Sorry. I’m spaced out. Thinking about shit.” I flashed her what I hoped was an apologetic smile.

“Well, cut it out. It’s a hazard to your health.”

“It sure is.”

The nightmares had stopped. Mostly. I was able to sleep again. Not much though. But the thinking, yeah, it was impossible to escape. My mind refused to be quiet. If I didn’t kill something soon, I was going to snap.

They call it The Dark Night of the Soul. A time of darkness named after a poem written by Saint John of the Cross in the sixteenth century. As I’d learned since starting my search for other twin flames, it was a common affliction for the twins, that helpless feeling of being consumed by the darkness in our lives. Filled with utter despair and a sense of being powerless, it caused spiritual crisis. I knew without a doubt that I was in it now.

Giving up was for cowards. I was a reckless, power hungry killer, but I was not a coward. The dark night can last for lengthy periods. Mine had only just begun. Still, I wasn’t discouraged. The spiritual crisis racking my soul was necessary for me to discover who I was now. I’d changed so much.

Going through this dark time would bring me to the place I needed to be. I could give up and wander lost in the darkness, or I could push through and stay the course until I saw the light on the other side of this dark night.

The temptation to embrace the dark was overwhelming, to become one with it. I felt safest in the dark because only there could I escape the agony of being. My dark side offered me a place of solitude where I could dwell without thought or feeling other than that of gratification and temporary euphoria.

But the spark of light that burned within me chased back the shadows. The monster within me was caged once again, and I was given yet another chance. I remembered who I was again, for a little while.

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Crazy Bitch
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Trina writes urban fantasy that is dark and gritty with a twist of romance and horror but which is ultimately about people in dark places discovering who they are and what they’re made of.

A lover of rock music, vampires and muscle cars, Trina is a dreamer who always secretly wanted to be a rockstar. She lives in Alberta, Canada with her bass player husband, fierce teenage daughter and three annoying but super cute cats. She has a Venus Fly Trap that loves baby talk and a Dodge Charger named Delilah.

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