by Trina M. Lee
“Don’t worry, my lovely wolf. Chances of him forming an addiction to you are much higher. It’s better that you work out your aggressions with him than with someone you’ll regret. We can’t have you ending up like me now, can we?” There was no humor in him. He kissed my cheek and left the room, pounding down the stairs as he went.
For the first time since this all began, I wondered which one of the two of us was the bigger threat to our bond. After considering the blood and mayhem we’d both brought to the city in recent weeks, I came to the conclusion that there was no answer to that. We were equally as likely to fuck this all up.
With that assurance to drive me, I darted down the stairs to tell Jez where I was headed. She was curled up on the couch with a bowl of Froot Loops and a coffee watching some cop crime drama.
“Actually, I’m going to head over to Kylarai’s after I shower,” she said when I invited her to come along. “We’re going to shoot some pool at Lucy’s Lounge. I think I should take it easy until Shya’s party. Other than my date with another cheating spouse tomorrow night. It’s ridiculous how many P.I. jobs are just for that.”
I nodded my agreement. That was probably for the best. “Give Ky my love. Tell her I’ll come by soon.”
“Will do. Oh hey, Lex,” she called as I made to leave. “Get the rest of the booze out of the house, ok? I don’t have the willpower.”
“Of course.” I ducked into the pantry to gather the last few bottles of wine and hauled them to the front door. After double-checking that I had everything I usually left the house with, I headed out right as Arys returned.
His old Firebird was in great shape and a hot car. However, he was a terrible driver. So I didn’t consider getting in with him. Shooting him a teasing grin, I got into my car, tossing my dagger into the backseat.
Watching him exit his classic car and sidle over to mine was a perk. In jeans and a black t-shirt, he was sexy as hell. His black hair was perfectly messed, just the way I loved it. Muscles moved beneath his shirt, drawing my appreciative gaze. Biting my bottom lip, I sighed. I would never tire of looking at Arys.
The entire drive to the city, I was itching to pelt him with questions. How could he separate emotion from feeding, and why was it ok for us to do that? How was he able to keep himself from taking it all the way? Why did I feel so shitty afterward if it was just part of what we were?
We talked about what we should do about Dayne and the time limit he’d placed on me. Handing over another vampire in the place of Arys felt wrong. I was torn, unable to decide how best to handle it. We needed to touch base with Shaz. He’d sent me a message saying he’d be with the pack again tonight. It was the last night of the full moon, so I’d expected as much. The moon called to me as well, though the promise of meeting Salem called louder.
“What is it, Alexa? I know something is bugging you, so you might as well just say it.” Arys surfed through radio stations, pausing here and there to consider whichever song was playing before moving on to another.
Fine. No hiding anything from this vampire. “It’s just so hard to keep from crossing that line I try to draw for myself. Once I reach it, I don’t even care anymore. How do you keep from taking it all the way? The sex, the kill. How do I keep from going there?”
Arys sat back in his seat with a nod. “It’s hard, I know. What makes it most difficult is that you don’t want to stop. The control comes with time and experience, like with anything else. I’m sure you control this car better than you would have as a new driver. Bad example maybe but it’s the same idea. Experience breeds control.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I muttered, shoulder checking before changing lanes. Driving might be an accurate example. The drivers around these parts were nut jobs. One had to be ready for anything all the time.
“The guilt will eat you alive, Alexa. You must let it go. If it makes you feel any better, you still taste like wolf and innocence.” In the dark interior of the car, I could feel his stare. “You should find comfort in still having a conscience at all. Not all of us do.”
There wasn’t a damn innocent thing about me. I wasn’t sure there ever had been. “No wonder twin flames go crazy. Nobody can handle being both light and dark. It’s not natural.” As we entered the city, a jolt of nervous energy had me squirming in my seat. Not only were we meeting a twin flame, we were meeting Lilah’s twin flame. A freaking angel.
“No, it’s not,” Arys agreed. “But we’re not giving in without a fight. I didn’t wait this long to go down like that.”
There was steel to his tone. Despite the craziness of the last few weeks, Arys knew as well as I did what awaited us if we gave up now. Rachel and Ozzie were just one example. How many of us were out there? Lilah had been driven to a bad place by her bond with Salem. She’d done all she could to escape it, to escape him. I saw what it had done to her, but what had it done to Salem?
The closer we got to the downtown core, the more anxious I became. “Do you think Salem is harmless? I mean, it’s got to have taken its toll on him too.”
“Are any of us harmless?” Arys asked.
Well, that answered that question. I was buzzing so hard with nerves when we arrived at The Wicked Kiss that the nightly bloodlust didn’t even faze me. Yet.
It was still early. There was no line to get in yet, and the parking lot was sparsely littered with vehicles. I allowed myself only a brief glance at Kale’s Camaro as we headed inside.
Though I could sense vampires locked away in the back rooms, likely having spent the day back there with some lucky, or unlucky, person, the club was near empty. Justin wasn’t even manning the door yet. Josh was behind the bar preparing for the night. I deposited the bottles I’d cleaned out of the house on the bar. He spared me a nod before turning back to his task of organizing bottles and glasses.
“Well, at least we’re not late,” Arys mused, surveying the few people sprinkled throughout the nightclub. “I knew we had time for a quickie.”
I elbowed him in the side, ignoring his snicker.
A melodious voice behind me said, “Actually, you are late. By about ten minutes.”
I spun around and froze because I was staring into the most beautiful gold eyes I’d ever seen. Salem was tall, towering over me so I had to gaze up at him. His hair was deep brown with shocks of gold streaked through. It was parted on one side and long, falling past his shoulders. The side with less hair was braided tight against his head before falling behind his ear with the rest. Woven into the braid was a ginger lock of hair. Lilah’s hair.
“I, um, I’m sorry about that.” Breathy and weak, my voice barely formed words.
In a long, black jacket that reached his ankles and leather pants paired with boots made for kicking some ass, Salem looked like he was ready for battle. A warrior.
I knew I was openly gawking at him, but I couldn’t stop. My tongue lay thick and heavy in my mouth. He was just so regal, so primal. Absolutely awe-inspiring.
“I’ve been anticipating an opportunity to meet with you,” Salem said, his voice as serene as the tinkle of wind chimes on a stormy night. “I am Salem. I believe you’ve already met my twin flame.”
He extended a hand, which I accepted with butterfly wings tickling my ribs. The moment our hands touched a flash of bright light lit up my vision. The world spun, and a roar of white noise screamed through my ears. A connection was made, light meeting light.
A series of images flashed through my mind, so fast I could barely make sense of what I saw: A garden at night. The scent of roses, strong and sweet. A woman’s sensual laugh followed by a softly whispered: I will love you forever. Ginger hair splayed upon a ridiculously white pillow. The glint of a sword’s blade in the moonlight. Screams and the spray of blood. The haunting sound of shattering glass accompanied by a spitefully hissed: I hate you.
Pain. So much pain. The depths of it was suffocating. It thundered through me, gone as fast as it had come. I blinked a few times before realizing he’d relea
sed my hand.
“I’m Alexa,” I said, somehow gesturing to Arys as I refocused myself.
Arys cast me a questioning glance before introducing himself. “Arys. It’s good to meet you.”
Salem smiled apologetically as he refused Arys’s offered hand. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
I recalled Lilah’s claim that her darkness had driven Salem to a bad place. So bad he’d felt it necessary to imprison her in order to keep her close but somehow controlled. His unwillingness to touch another Dark Flame was understandable and deeply unsettling.
“Um, should we sit down or something?” Feeling flustered, I glanced about, trying to decide on a table that was worthy of an angelic visitor. Who was I kidding? This entire place was dedicated to debauchery at its finest.
Salem smiled, and though I think it was an attempt to put me at ease, it did quite the opposite. What should I do? What should I say?
Thankfully Arys stepped in, taking over with a calm, relaxed approach. “Why don’t we sit back here?” He led the way to a corner booth as far from the door as possible.
I fell into step behind him, resisting the urge to cling to his arm like a frightened child. I had never touched another White Flame, and I sure as crap had never so much as laid eyes on a true angel, let alone touched one. My mind was reeling. I felt flighty, like I wasn’t entirely on reality’s plane.
Arys ushered me into the booth first and slid in beside me. Salem sat across from us, continuing to blow my mind with his presence. There was this ethereal air about him. Nobody else in the building had looked twice at him; to them he must have appeared as human as his outward appearance portrayed. I could feel it though, the lie that shrouded his true identity.
Thankful that I no longer had to worry about breathing properly, because I wouldn’t have been able to, I tapped my fingers nervously on the tabletop. Arys slid his hand over mine, pressing it flat against the table. Power buzzed between us, a low but steady current. The proximity of Salem seemed to encourage it.
Salem’s shoulders were squared, his posture stiff. His golden gaze drifted between us. He seemed oblivious to our surroundings and the slow but constant stream of people coming in to get their freak on.
“I’d like to apologize for Lilah,” he began, tentative, as if choosing his words carefully. “I’m aware of what she put you through, and I am sorry. When Willow sent word that you asked to see me, I felt it necessary to come and extend my condolences for the wrongs Lilah committed against you.”
“Well, thank you, but it’s not your place to apologize for her.” Discussing Lilah was not high on my to-do list. I’d closed the door on that after Juliet sent her back to Salem’s prison.
“It is though,” he insisted. “Her actions are a direct result of our bond. She made some terrible decisions while we were apart, as did I. None of it should have happened, but it did. I am just as responsible as she is. As you both are for one another.”
Arys and I exchanged a look. Salem observed this. There was so much I wanted to ask him. Where did I even begin?
“This is still new for you both,” Salem went on, nodding in understanding. “It’s been almost a thousand years for Lilah and me. You might think it would get easier, and I wish I could tell you that it does. It does not. Every day, every year, it gets harder.”
Instantly my already sagging balloon was deflated. This was not what I wanted to hear.
“Why?” Arys asked. It was perhaps the simplest of questions but also the most loaded. There could be no simple answer. “Why us? Why any of it?”
Salem studied Arys. There was a vast wealth of knowledge behind that golden gaze. Surely he had some insight for us. “That’s like asking why the sun rises and sets, or why the tide ebbs and flows. Why does the earth turn and the seasons change? It’s all part of the grand design, as are we.” He leaned forward on his elbows, hands together in contemplation. “I don’t doubt for a moment that there is meaning to what we are. As we grow stronger in our calling, the forces that oppose us also grow stronger. We must overcome.”
“I thought we’d fulfilled our purpose when I died to stop Shya from claiming Lilah’s kingdom. Now I’m starting to think that was just the beginning.”
I found it hard to meet Salem’s eyes for longer than a few seconds at a time. His presence was just so massive, so intimidating. Salem’s beauty was a strange thing. He seemed to glow with an inner light that was both frightening and inviting. I tried to picture him and Lilah together and failed.
“Your journey is far from over,” he said. “There is much work left to be done. As you’ve discovered, there will be many obstacles in your path, but you can and will overcome them.”
Angels were damn good at giving pep talks. Though fallen, Willow had imparted such wise advice that I’d carried his words with me ever since. Listening to Salem was a comfort.
Yet his words also presented a challenge. “How? By locking each other up? How is that working for you?” I blurted the accusatory questions, feeling like an ass as they left my mouth. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I just don’t understand. This is all so…daunting.” I tensed, waiting to be obliterated. Salem might be an angel, but he was tapped into Lilah’s darkness.
He was unfazed by my rudeness. “How would you imagine it might be working for me?” Sadness passed over his face. He lost some of his tough warrior exterior as the damaged heart inside showed through the illusion he cast. “It tears me apart to see her locked up. She should be free, but she’s too dangerous. To herself, to me, to the world at large. It’s the only way to keep her from causing more harm than she already has. And it wounds me deeply to have to do it. You saw what she was like when free. Not only was she a threat to our bond, she was a threat to yours.”
Despite the fact that his energy was closed off to me, his pain was not. I felt it there in the place where my fears lived. I couldn’t know what it was like to imprison the person you loved, hated, and could never escape, but in that moment I knew a fraction of the misery that Lilah had caused in Salem.
“She said it was a curse,” I said with a short, sharp laugh. “I thought she was crazy, but lately I feel like she’s not wrong.”
Arys grew tense beside me. His hand over mine tightened. He might have enjoyed some aspects of me as a vampire but hearing his darkness in my bleak statement was not among them.
“She was wrong.” Salem’s impossibly enchanting voice hardened. He clenched his hands into fists and pressed them into the table. “Lilah’s problem was that she gave up. She left me to fight this battle alone. She chose to run from me, from our mission together. Don’t make her mistake.”
My chest tightened, and I sucked in a breath. That hit close to home, as it should. I ran too. I looked to Arys, finding him watching me with worry etched on his face.
“What are we?” I sounded as defeated as I felt. “I mean, really, what the hell are we?”
“What is it that makes the earth move? The delicate balance in nature, the perfect cycle of life and death. The very thing that keeps the stars in the sky and the sun and the moon in perfect harmony. That is what we are. Twin flames.” Each word Salem spoke rang with authority. “We are all of that given form and thought and feeling. It is the internal struggle of living with all of that inside you, things most people will never touch, never wrap their minds around. Never know. Like the sun and the moon, twin flames share a source but can never truly become the other.”
Salem paused, giving me a much needed moment to absorb what he’d said. I got it, I did. Though each time I obtained an answer, it only bred more questions.
“That doesn’t really tell me a damn thing, does it?” I laughed, a high sound that betrayed my rattled nerves. “How can we be both light and dark?”
The angry cry of an electric guitar rang out. I turned in my seat to see the girls of Crimson Sin setting up their gear. People had trickled into the building, increasing the crowd size considerably in the short time since we’d arrived.
Salem’s gaze strayed past me and locked onto the dark-haired guitarist. Her head was down and her eyes closed as she plucked through the strings, tuning them just so. He watched her intently, his face void of any expression.
Then his gaze snapped back to me, the guitar girl forgotten. “We are the balance in between, the place where light meets dark. The darkness that echoes inside you belongs to him.” This he said with a nod toward Arys. “I feel it too. The dark. Like you are the only one of your kind, I am as well. The balance must be maintained, and that doesn’t come without a fight. So you both must fight, and you must keep on fighting, and when you think you have fought your last, you must get up and fight again. If everything were easy, if success just happened, there would be no value in it. No meaning. Trust that it all means something. And know that you are not alone.”
Something inside me swelled in response to all he’d said. There was much wisdom in what he’d imparted. I recognized it as poignant and true.
Speechless, I sat there staring at Salem like a dumbstruck moron. It was so much to take in. A sense of comfort stole over me, and I gathered it close.
Arys was quiet beside me. A muscle in his jaw twitched, one of his tells that indicated he was mulling it over, analyzing Salem’s manner of presenting the best explanation he could.
“Thank you,” I managed, while feeling like that simple response could never be enough. “It means so much to me that you came and that you care enough to give us some guidance.”
Having delivered his message, Salem slumped back against the booth wall. Yet a tension remained in him that revealed he was still ready to react quickly if he must. “The odds do not favor you. However, you must stay committed to working together to face the challenges that come your way. Walking the path of the twin flames alone will only guarantee your failure.”
Again that sadness crept over him. My own short time apart from Arys had hurt, cutting deep into my soul, it seemed. How much worse must it be for Salem? My heart hurt for him.
