Sunset to Sunrise (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #7.5)

There was nothing special about my house. Two floors, a backyard I’d never stepped foot in and neighbors that left me alone. All in all, it was adequate. But it wasn’t home. Nothing felt like home anymore. Not for a very long time.

I paused in the entryway, trying to recall the last time I’d been here for something other than a change of clothes. It had been a while. Some might say I spent too much time at the club bleeding victims and fucking away the night. Some might be totally correct in that assessment.

A layer of dust had settled atop the counters. I’d have to make a call to the cleaning service so it actually looked as if someone lived here.

I shed my jacket, tossing it over the back of a chair. After a quick visit to my bedroom, the rest of my clothing landed in a heap on the floor beside the laundry basket. Wearing only my favorite pair of grey sweatpants, I turned on the television and flopped down in the center of my bed.

I knew I should sleep at some point. Vampires didn’t need a lot of slumber though going without made it harder for us to stay alert and at full strength. Of course, sleep came much easier when it wasn’t filled with dreams that quickly became nightmares.

“Give me a fucking break,” I muttered as I channel surfed past an infomercial for some magic weight loss solution. Humans were far too eager to latch onto the first person or product claiming to give them all they ever wanted. Who was I to judge? I’d been one of them once.

It was hard to remember my time as human. It was so short compared to my time as vampire, almost nonexistent. Just twenty-nine mortal years I’d lived before my fate was sealed.

I liked to pretend I would change things if I could. But if changing it meant never knowing Alexa, then perhaps I would choose to suffer as I do. I could accept that she was not to be mine, I just couldn’t accept that I loved her in spite of that.

Alexa. I couldn’t think about that damn woman without immediately going back to that night in the rain. The night we’d made love. Fuck. My dick grew hard despite the many times it had been satisfied earlier that night. That’s what she did to me. I would always want her.

I scowled at the TV, angrily hitting buttons on the remote. Loathing boiled up inside me, spilling over until I threw the remote in a fit of poorly executed rage. Why couldn’t I escape her?

The remote bounced off the TV and hit a lamp, causing it to smack the floor with the sound of shattering glass. With the phony commercial chatter a constant noise in the background, I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Being enslaved to Alexa was growing more difficult to accept with the passing of each night. She had purposefully drawn me into her thrall, forcing her blood upon me. Blood that she knew I had a weakness for. The night she stopped Shya from killing me in the graveyard was the night she shackled me for all eternity. Did she still not realize what she’d done?

Eva. The name floated through my thoughts, rising up from a deep, dark place where my greatest secrets and fears were kept. With it came the image of a woman with long red hair and a body that would make even the strongest man weep. She was a goddess. I had awakened to find myself within the walls of her elaborate mansion. Sent by order of the king to spy on her, I’d quickly realized the woman spoken of so suspiciously by so many was no woman at all.

Eva never gave me a choice. She turned me the very night she discovered me and my fellow men. I was the only one. She killed the rest in an act of torture and mayhem that I later learned had taken days.

It was my eyes that saved me. She told me it would be a shame to destroy someone so beautiful. Being a werewolf did nothing to stop her. She had no sympathy for my beast when she ended my life and gave me a new, much darker one.

That had been a very long time ago, back in the 1500s, a rich time when both David and the Mona Lisa were brought to life. The New World had still been new to many then. I didn’t see it myself until many years later.

Europe had been my home for so long. Leaving had been difficult but important to my personal growth. Shedding my accent had occurred naturally over time. I couldn’t even fake it now if I tried. The person I was then no longer existed.

“I hope you’re burning in hell now, bitch,” I whispered aloud to no one.

I regretted not telling Alexa about my wolf. It had been trapped inside me for so long now, an echo of what it once was. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. It had taken decades to get over the feeling of having it caged inside a form that cannot shift. Eventually I ceased to feel it altogether.