of the sticky residue of a spilled drink beneath me. My temperature rose. My palms grew sweaty, and I gasped for a breath that didn’t smell like humans, blood and sex.
I watched in a dizzy haze as Arys grabbed Kale by the collar and jerked him close. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he said. The noise inside my head was too loud. A spark of gold-tinted blue lit up the place. Arys drew on the power we shared, pulling energy from me. It hit Kale at point blank range. He flipped over the bar and crashed into the bottles stacked on the back shelves. A shower of broken glass and liquor rained down on his motionless form. I held my breath, waiting. He didn’t get up, but I suspected he wouldn’t be down for long. There were only a few ways to kill a vampire. A hell of a beating wasn’t one of them.
“Come on, Alexa. We have to get you out of here,” Willow insisted.
Arms slipped around me, but it wasn’t Willow dragging me to my feet this time. I knew that touch well. Arys guided me outside as I struggled to be free of him. After what I’d just seen him do, I was enraged, or I would be as soon as my head cleared.
“Let me go,” I snarled, shoving him away.
As I got further away from the nightclub, the voices in my head disappeared. Though I was lightheaded, the dizziness faded. I walked to the far end of the parking lot, near the rear door and the back of the building. When I could no longer hear a single thought but my own, I reached down and placed both hands on the ground.
I tried to push the excess energy into the earth, to ground myself and refocus the power in my core. However, the earth refused to accept my offering. The fallen angel’s power was rejected, pushed back to me like an unwanted gift.
“Why, goddammit?” I shouted to no one in particular.
Arys stood behind me, waiting. I rose and turned to pin him with a fiery glare. With hands clenched at my sides, I reminded myself that I wanted to give him a verbal beating, not set him on fire.
“How could you do that to Kale?” My voice wavered as I struggled to speak calmly.
“Alexa, open your eyes, and see that son of a bitch for what he really is,” Arys shouted. “What you should be asking is how he could do that to you. He’s a killer. You’re blind to it. I don’t understand how you can still see him as anything else.”
I was deep in denial, and I knew it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it though. Chewing my lip anxiously, I studied Arys. His hands were balled into fists, and he looked ready to tear someone limb from limb.
“I don’t need you to tell me how unhealthy my attachment to Kale is,” I said. “Don’t think I don’t know that.”
“He violated you. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t do something about that?” Arys held his hands up in a gesture of helplessness.
I shoved a lock of hair back from my face. The power dancing in my fingertips prickled along my scalp, and I shuddered. I shook my head sadly. “You’ve done enough. I won’t let you kill him.”
“You think you can stop me?”
There it was, the challenge. One of us was always bound to issue it with little regard for the consequences.
“I think I’ll damn well try. Let it go, Arys.”
“Have you lost your mind?” He raged, raising his hands to the sky. Thunder boomed overhead, and the ground rumbled beneath our feet. “You attacked me in there. With power you can’t control. You’re the one out of line here, Alexa.”
“So killing him will make everything ok? I’ve seen enough people around me die lately. Why must you contribute to it? Will it really make you feel that much better?”
“It might.”
We stared at one another, the power of our anger spilling hot energy into the atmosphere. There was no right and wrong here. We were both entitled to what we felt, and no matter how I wished we could reach an understanding, I knew it would never happen.
It wasn’t just Kale. It was everything: our differences over Shya, my safety and my inevitable fate as a vampire. Arys and I had never seen eye to eye. According to twin flame lore, we never would.