by Trina M. Lee
APOCALYPTIC
ALEXA O’BRIEN HUNTRESS BOOK 14
TRINA M. LEE
APOCALYPTIC
Copyright 2018 by Trina M. Lee
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Editor
B. Leigh Hogan
Cover Artist
Robin Ludwig Design Inc.
Published by
Trina M. Lee
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epilogue
Bonus Epilogue
CHAPTER ONE
“The trail just ends, Jez. I’m not sure what to make of it. The residual energy left behind feels strange. I wish I knew how to describe it. Sticky is all that comes to mind.” I reconsidered my word choice but nothing else fit.
With my phone pressed to my ear, I studied the bloodstained sidewalk outside one of the most popular dance clubs in the city. A heavy bass beat pounded from inside, something the nearby residential neighborhood must have really appreciated at this time of night.
One of Smudge’s sources at the police department had tipped her off to the body the second it was called in. Unfortunately, this one had happened on the doorstep of a heavily populated human establishment. It had been found moments after the kill, the vampire already long gone.
So we’d split up. Jez and Smudge were scouting a location where a body had been found a few days prior in an apartment. Both vampire kills. Related? Not always but most likely. Most vampires had been on their best behavior since shit had gone down with the FPA. I was seeing more of them at The Wicked Kiss than prior as well.
Still, not everyone was content to play by the rules, especially when Arys and I so often blurred the lines ourselves. Yet something about this situation felt different. This had to be a new vampire. Although not stupid enough to have been caught already.
“Sticky?” she repeated, pausing to respond to something Smudge said in the background. “Sounds gross. So what now? Can you track it? We’re not having much luck here. The place is clean.”
With a little concentration I could feel the energy of every supernatural creature in the city. But it wasn’t like a Google map in my head. I couldn’t see the exact location of those outside my vicinity. A few city blocks or so.
“I’ll see if I can hunt down the energy signature I’m picking up, but it’s a shot in the dark really. This vampire could be anywhere by now.” I scanned the group of people milling about outside the club, smoking and talking. All human.
After glancing up and down the street, I headed in the direction I’d have gone if I were taking off after a kill. Away from the lights and noise. Toward the park a few blocks down. Slip through the park to another neighborhood and be gone. It would be safer than running the busy streets right after a public kill.
“Keep me posted if anything turns up.” Jez snapped her gum loudly in my ear. “Catch you later.”
I stuffed my phone into my shoulder bag and kept moving. I suspected that, whomever this vampire was, they either didn’t know who ran the city or they didn’t care. It didn’t matter much now anyway. Public kills didn’t fly in any city. There was too much at stake. Too much to protect.
After a recent incident involving trophy hunters coming to the city because of a video leaked by a newbie werewolf, I wasn’t going easy on anyone breaking the rules. A cunning, clever vampire could hunt and kill without drawing attention. Anyone taking reckless risks either didn’t know any better or wanted to get caught.
Strange.
I pondered this, happy to have something to keep my mind occupied. Keeping busy, mind and body, kept me from falling apart.
It had been three weeks and four days since Kale died. Correction. Since I had killed him.
It did not get easier. Every night it got a little harder. But properly grieving Kale’s loss, healing, was next to impossible when I could barely keep my shit together.
It had been the hardest three fucking weeks and four days of my life.
The darkness loomed larger in me these days than it ever had. I too had slaked my dark hunger tonight. I’d chosen a local gang leader who’d just murdered the wife and child of a rival. Their shady business was none of mine, but that crap was an open invitation.
The effort it took to maintain a semblance of rational and sane required frequent feasts of blood and power. Because the balance between Arys and me had been tipped well past the safe point. Each night the rift grew. Each night we became more unbalanced. More mentally unhinged.
Uneasy, I paused outside a small, quaint house with a family of decorative deer in the front yard. Winter was coming to a close. Soon such items would be stashed away for the spring.
Still there was a chill to the night air. I raised my nose to the breeze. Car exhaust and general city pollution. No telltale scents to explain my disquiet. Because the danger that had triggered my wariness came from within.
Panic gripped me. He was out there. He shouldn’t be out there. But he was.
Seconds after my intuition spoke, that cool wind blew inside me. I both dreaded and loved it.
Arys Knight. My dark half. Hunting me.
Moving faster, I hurried toward the park ahead. Maybe if I could stay ahead of him I could lose him.
We had good nights and bad nights. Tonight felt like a bad night, although it was too soon to tell. Thankfully we still had more good nights than bad. But when we had a bad night, it was off the charts horrible.
I could feel him getting closer. Unable to detect the exact direction he advanced from, I broke into a run. With inhuman speed, I darted down the street and into the park.
Then I froze. The park was heavily treed in parts. Then it gave way to a large grassy area with picnic tables. A building housing guest services and washrooms formed the center point. Sticking close to the trees, I made my way toward it. From there I’d figure out which neighborhoods were in which direction and get gone fast.
Heading west would take me back toward The Wicked Kiss. I had to get there before Arys though, and he’d anticipate such a move. On the other hand, I could go in the opposite direction and have Jez pick me up somewhere.
Arys drew closer. I felt it. But I was pretty sure he hadn’t gotten a visual on me yet. Hoping to keep it that way, I reached the pavilion and pasted my back up against the side of the building.
A sudden swell of cool power flared up in my co
re. Fuck me.
I might have liked to think I was a badass, but Arys had been doing this for three centuries. I was but an amateur next to him. Hunting me was in his blood. He existed for it.
Holding my breath, I listened hard. Not so much as a crunch of dead grass from where the snow had melted. Closer he came. From which direction though? He was toying with me, keeping me on my toes.
“Goddamn you, Arys,” I muttered.
Step by slow, careful step, I eased toward the corner of the building. I glanced behind me before daring a peek around the pavilion’s edge. Clear. I stepped forward, readying myself to break into a run.
Strong arms grabbed me from behind, jerking me against a firm chest. In my ear, a sexy snarl. “Trying to escape me, my love?”
I froze in Arys’s embrace, the rabbit caught by the wolf. Struggling would only encourage him. With his lips on my ear and his hard on nestled against the top of my ass, I mustered a half-hearted, breathy, “Always.”
The seductive pull of his low chuckle weakened me. It was dangerous for us to be alone together. For obvious reasons. For both our sakes, I needed to break free of him. The touch of his mouth on my neck beneath my ear made that especially hard.
“I need to feel you, Alexa. Not touching you is making me crazy.” The urgency of Arys’s desire racked me. His palms were hot through the fabric of the long sweater I wore over black leggings. Grabbing the hem, he slowly peeled it up.
I waited for the touch of his fingers on my skin. Then I sighed, melting into him as his lips found a ticklish spot on my neck. His hands slid over my midriff, up to caress my breasts through my bra.
“Arys, we can’t do this. It’s not safe.” My protest sounded less than convincing. Telling myself to make him stop was easier than actually doing it. Because I did not want him to stop.
“It isn’t safe not to.” He kissed the vein in my neck before tearing himself away with a growl.
He shoved me against the wall of the pavilion and turned me to face him. His actions were rough but not aggressive. The truth was, he wasn’t wrong. We did need to connect as badly as we needed to disconnect. A constant push and pull comprised the battle we waged every moment.
“Not like this.” A feeble attempt to shove him away went ignored. It wasn’t like I’d tried very hard. “We need Shaz.”
Holding my face gently, he kissed me with a demanding passion. Nothing else existed but Arys. Dragging his lips lazily over my jawline, he whispered, “We need to be alone sometimes too.”
As much as I enjoyed having Arys and Shaz together, he was right. Because he always friggin’ is. To truly reconnect and recharge, we needed to be alone. Together. Just us and the night.
And a fuck ton of power.
That little voice of reason inside my head shouted, He’ll kill you, you dumb bitch! As much as I feared that very thing, I didn’t completely believe it. I wasn’t so easy to kill now. If anything, we’d kill each other. In a blaze of glory.
If there’d been any hope of me resisting him, it had been tiny. Once his hands were on my hips, pulling me tight against him, I didn’t stand a chance.
Just the sensation of his erection against me brought forth a swell of arousal. We moved together in the dark, hurriedly disrobing as much as possible, needing to feel each other. When I wore nothing but my bra and my boots, Arys took me. There against the rough wooden siding.
I sighed as he thrust inside me. It was a waterfall after the desert. Sunshine after the storm. Being with him after being so horribly forced apart felt like coming home after a long journey.
Overhead the sky rumbled. Our union had become a volatile thing, affecting the energies around us stronger than ever before. A streak of lightning followed, yellow with a splash of blue. A small storm broke out above us. But only above us.
Arys filled me with frenzied thrusts, like it had been months since we’d been intimate rather than days. Although it had been quite some time now since we’d been intimate alone.
Resting his forehead against mine, he kissed me, messy and hard and desperate. “I can’t lose you.”
Fear. The driving force of the dark flame’s insecurity and all-around bad behavior.
Not knowing how to comfort him, because there was no comfort for us, I did my best. I kissed him back, a hand on his jaw, the other in his mess of black hair. “I’m right here.”
“But for how long?”
“Forever.”
A pause. A soft groan. Then Arys’s quiet declaration. “I don’t know if I believe in that anymore.”
His fear echoed inside me, and I forced him to meet my eyes. “You waited so long for me. Don’t you dare give up now.”
We moved together in perfect rhythm. Every slip of him inside of me, every slide out. It felt like finding myself. For a brief time. If only we could live in this moment of powerful peace always.
I didn’t know how to make it happen. I just knew I had to.
Arys thrust deep and I gasped. His pupils dilated in response. But I knew the glint that followed. Not mere desire anymore but hunger as well.
“If it comes down to you or me, choose you. Kill me. You might survive it.” His words came out in a rush, like they’d burst free of his restraint.
Horrified that this was even a discussion and especially now, I gaped at him. “No, it’s not happening that way.”
To shut Arys up before he could say anything else I didn’t want to hear, I kissed him again. My tongue delved into his mouth. The steel of his lip ring was warm and smooth. I tightened my legs around his waist and gripped his hair a little harder.
With a groan he broke off the kiss and buried his face in my neck. His pants and moans so close to my ear made me come undone. I couldn’t think of a better sound. His firm body against mine, the scent of cologne and laundry soap, the sound of his pleasure as he took me. It overwhelmed my senses. I was drowning in all that was Arys.
The touch of his mouth on my neck was hungry. Insistent.
I tensed.
Arys jerked his head back and stared at me with wide, scared eyes. “Don’t let me do it. I won’t be able to stop myself.”
I watched it take him. The darkness. It stole over him like a cloud over the sun. Blocking out his light. His true self. Reducing him to a mere monster.
From Jekyll to Hyde. I knew the feeling. Once the darkness overcame you, there was no fighting it.
Slamming a fist against the building beside my head, Arys demanded, “Fight me off. Do it now.”
He had me pinned against the building. His body was inside mine. There was only one way to make him back off.
Just blast him.
But I couldn’t do it. Not now, not like this. It felt wrong.
Then he went for my throat.
Both hands came up, instinctive defense. Blue and golden-yellow light burst from my fingertips. The sky lit up with the same. Thunder rolled. The blast hit Arys at point blank range, throwing him ass over teakettle onto the grassy sprawl in the picnic table area.
There was no time to struggle back into my pants. I slid the sweater on over my head and snatched up my pants and underwear, gripping them with my bag as I ran. Being nailed with his pants down bought me enough precious seconds that I was able to propel myself through the park and out the other side.
Only when I emerged onto a busy downtown street did I pause. I didn’t see or feel him approaching. Quickly I slipped my pants on, flipping off the SUV full of guys who shouted out the windows at me.
Clinging to the shadows against the myriad office buildings and bite-sized skyscrapers, I headed for The Wicked Kiss. With shaky hands I tried to smooth down my hair.
“So fucking stupid,” I cussed to myself as I hurried down the city street.
We’d played with fire and almost been burned. Too close, that call had been.
Arys and I stood on the brink of our own destruction. I’d promised to save us. I might be the only one that could. Or that might be a pie-in-the-sky, bullshit theory.
Either way, I had to try something. The darkness had escaped its barrier. The yin yang-like structure of our relationship teetered askew, the lines no longer perfectly drawn. Now it seeped through us, consuming us. The very thing Willow had fought so hard to prevent.
The real joke on all of us was that he’d taken my darkness the night I turned. To keep the balance from tipping with my death and rebirth as a vampire. But because fate could not be escaped, only postponed, Willow’s actions, caused by the darkness he’d taken for me, had led us right back to this moment.
After everything he’d done. It was so Final Destination. But worse, because Arys and I would cause our own end. We were dangerously close to stepping off the ledge and plummeting headlong into the abyss.
My guardian angel had sacrificed himself for nothing. The darkness was coming for me anyway.
CHAPTER TWO
Only when I’d slipped into The Wicked Kiss through the back entry did I let myself stop moving. Partway down the hall I stopped and slumped against the wall. Letting my head fall back, I sucked in a deep breath and held it.
I would not cry.
The time for tears had passed. Now was the time for ideas and execution.
A door cracked open down the hall. Willow’s hybrid energy preceded him, a mix of Arys and me and something else. Something all Willow, a spark of who he’d started this journey as.
I felt it when I took his blood, and I felt it now as he walked toward me. And I’d never speak a word of it to anyone who couldn’t pick up on that ethereal hum. Everything about Willow was fascinating. Unfortunately, others would think so too. Starting with Briggs. So far nobody had come sniffing around Willow, but I was braced for it.
I knew I reeked of sex and death, but Willow didn’t get weird about it. He played it so cool, like he didn’t even notice, though I knew it had to have been an immediate punch to his senses.
“What’s the damage?” he asked, easing to a stop a safe few feet away.
“No damage this time.” I squeezed out a tight smile for him. He didn’t need to be worrying about me anymore. He’d done enough of that and look where it had gotten him. “Arys caught up to me while I was tracking a vampire. I left him in the park. It’s fine. We’re fine.”
