Cursed (22 page)

It was a long while before he managed to drag his gaze from the two of them to glance at Lucas and Katarina to see if they were just as hypnotised by the fight. Lucas was suitably entranced, but Katarina was watching Knox, not Greyvian, her eyes following the half-breed like she wanted to jump the guy’s bones the first chance she got.

Smiling, he focused his attention back to the fight. He had the feeling Knox was going to have his hands full with that one.

Ten minutes might not seem that long, but when you were going all out physically and mentally fighting somebody, it was an age, especially when blood loss was involved. Knox didn’t last much longer than he or Katarina before his chest was heaving and the effort took its toll. Finally he surrendered and joined them on the sidelines, palms resting on his knees while he drew in air like he couldn’t get enough of the stuff.

“Damn, he’s fast,” Knox commented to no-one in particular as Lucas stepped forward.

Jacob wondered for a second if Katarina was going to offer her tongue to Knox, but the blonde was already licking his own wounds. Glancing at Katarina, Jacob noted that it seemed to be to her utter disappointment. Smiling, he lifted his eyes to watch how Lucas faired against Greyvian.

To Jacob’s complete surprise, Lucas—quiet, laconic, ultra-relaxed Lucas—could actually move pretty fast when he wanted to. And the guy was into Capoeira. When the male started moving, all fluid fight-dancing with his arms and legs, Jacob felt for sure that Greyvian wouldn’t know what hit him. Surprisingly, or perhaps absurdly, Greyvian was no stranger to the style and came back at Lucas in kind, the perfect dance partner—completely in-sync. The two of them kicked and spun back and forth for a minute or two, each of them trying to land a kick that would plant the other on his ass, but neither of them connecting.

It was fascinating to watch.

Of course, Greyvian had to go and ruin it all by changing tack when he grabbed hold of Lucas’s ankle, halting the male mid-kick as if Lucas had suddenly collided with a wall. Lucas countered by falling to the ground and twisting, pulling his ankle from Greyvian’s grip, but not before his father managed to sink his teeth into Lucas’s calf.

Not to be outdone, Lucas also changed tack and chose a different style of martial arts for the next round. Still, the half-breed was no match for Greyvian and, in the end, came away with a dozen more bites and nothing to show for it. When he finally pleaded exhaustion and stepped to the side, Greyvian was finally breathing heavily—after forty or so minutes of hard exercise, it was only now that the guy showed signs of exertion. Unbelievable—and utterly enviable.

Turning towards them, Greyvian raised both hands and waved them all forward. At first, Jacob thought he only wanted to talk to them, but with the way the male stared through them, not at them, he pretty soon came to realise that Greyvian meant for them all to attack. It was adding insult to injury, really. Even four on one they didn’t stand a chance.

By the end of the hour, they were all covered in smears of blood while Greyvian was merely breathing hard. It was unfair, really.

“Good effort,” Greyvian told them, once again standing straight with his hands clasped behind his back. “Tomorrow you’ll fight each other, and then we’ll begin instruction. By the time I’m finished with you, you might even be able to mark me.”

If Jacob hadn’t known better, he might have thought that Greyvian’s eyes were twinkling with amusement.

“Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?” Knox asked wearily, sitting on the floor with his forearms resting on his knees.

Lucas sank down beside him, the fresh blood on his arms seeping slowly and catching Jacob’s eye. When he realised he was staring at it and wondering what it tasted like, he diverted his gaze to Greyvian and tried not to think about it.

“Many places,” his father replied. “Wherever I could find a master.”

“Human?” Katarina asked suspiciously.

Greyvian nodded. “Mostly.”

“And just how many humans did you kill in order to train with them?” Katarina asked, her tone accusing.

Jacob didn’t get it at first, but then he remembered that Greyvian would have had to have made the human Aware of him the entire time they trained together. That would have taken effort and require daily feeding if what Knox had told him was to be believed.

Greyvian stared at his sister a moment and then asked, “Do you really want to know?”

Katarina closed her eyes and looked a little pale but didn’t reply; her silence was answer enough. Jacob decided not to linger over it but hoped they’d all been evil.

For the next three days, they trained at least three times a day for an hour at a time. Fighting each other was more of an ego boost than constantly failing to mark Greyvian, each of them giving as good as they got and learning pretty quickly that the less clothing they wore to training, the more clothing they had to wear later. Teeth turned out to be pretty vicious weapons when they were as sharp as a vampire’s and used to effect.

Surprisingly, Greyvian was actually a very good instructor, able to break down the moves and guide their limbs to their most lethal destination over and over until each of them knew what to do without having to think about it. He wouldn’t have expected it from a male as standoffish as his father.

The more they trained, the more Jacob could barely believe how much he had to learn about fighting, but then, he’d never been trained to deal with fangs before. It was quite humbling to find that you weren’t as good as you thought you were.

After each training session, they would all retreat to their rooms to shower and rest before getting together again for some fun and games which usually involved a game of snooker, a movie, some other activity, or just ribbing each other over a meal about a particular move that had been made during training. Greyvian, of course, said very little and was often extremely hard to find, joining them only on the odd occasion. It seemed his father liked his solitude.

It didn’t surprise him. Grey wasn’t exactly the social type.

When the male did manage to hang around for a while, getting information out of him was like herding cats—sometimes you thought it was all coming together, but in the blink of an eye, your hold on the situation scattered to the winds. The most he could get out of Greyvian was a few one-word answers—yes, no, the occasional non-descriptive replies—that kind of thing. But he did manage to glean the fact that his father was born in the Netherlands a long, long time ago, and that if he was to be believed, Jacob had a very extensive family—who would probably all try to kill him on sight should they learn of his existence. It was kind of depressing, really—to go from an orphan, to finally finding out that he had more family than any living human, to then realising they all wanted to kill you for the crime of genetics.

It sucked to be him sometimes. But he couldn’t complain about the fact that he was now immortal (so long as nobody stopped his heart or cut his head off). The blood drinking would take some getting used to, but it was pleasurable—which was most of the getting used to part, especially where males were involved—so he had a feeling getting used to it wouldn’t be a chore. Even if life was a big unknown now, it was kind of exciting.

A sudden vibration against his ass cheek was a reminder to call Sienna. He’d promised to call her regularly with updates, but each day it kept slipping his mind so this morning he had set himself a physical reminder. Good thing, too, because conversations with Knox and Lucas could easily suck hours out of the day without him even realising just how much time was passing. He’d learnt more about his father and what he could expect from being a vampire talking to them than he ever would from the male himself. Which was why he hadn’t called Sienna before now. By the time he realised he should call her, it was already 1am or later.

Dragging himself away from the conversation the two in question were having about the merits of vampire invisibility in a movie theatre, he went out onto the terrace and pulled his phone from his pocket, navigating to Sienna’s number. She picked up on the second ring.

“So you are still alive,” she greeted, her tone dry.

He winced, feeling instantly guilty. “Yeah, sorry. I meant to call back sooner, but time kept getting away from me.”

She sighed loudly, but he knew it was just for effect from her tone of voice when she said, “That’s fine. You’re knee deep in your new life and can’t remember that you left your best friend all alone with no one to talk to of an evening.”

“Is it bad? Too quiet?”

“Only when I get into bed and can’t hear you swearing at the TV.”

He smiled in amusement. “I still maintain the computer cheats.”

The next few minutes of conversation were idle chit chat until she finally asked, “So have you gotten to know him any better?”

No prizes for who she meant by
him
. “Not from him. Knox and Lucas have plenty of stories where he’s concerned, but I think they’re more legend than anything based in fact. Although, he does seem to be more Hollywood vampire than average human-like bloodsucker like the rest of us are supposed to be, so maybe there is some truth to their tales.”

He might then have gushed about Greyvian’s fighting ability like a schoolgirl would about a crush but he’d prefer to remember it as an in-depth critique by someone with a professional eye. Sienna even let him get away with it, which told him she was missing him more than she was going to let on. Normally she’d never let that kind of thing go without comment.

“We should get together for coffee or something,” he said, feeling a bit guilty for not thinking about her more often. “We need to take a break tomorrow—training has been pretty brutal and we’re all completely stuffed—so that’d be a good time. Grey’s bites have been getting harder and deeper, so he probably needs to feed.”

“What about you? Feeling peckish yet?”

“Not that I can tell. It’s not like a gnawing ache in my gut like I get when I haven’t eaten anything for a while.”

“Meet you at Joe’s?” she asked after a slight pause.

“Sure. I’ll message you when I can get away.”

“Cool.”

The silence following their agreement wasn’t uncomfortable; each of them lost in a world of thought and just enjoying the ability to talk to the other if the urge struck them. Jacob took the opportunity to look out across the large expanse of grass that was Greyvian’s backyard: a clear perimeter that was more than large enough to see anybody trying to sneak up on the mansion that would give anyone in the building enough time to possibly grab a weapon and start shooting before the perpetrator was within range. Given his father’s past, it was probably necessary. Conversely, beyond that, there was an entire forest full of pines and oaks that would provide decent cover for said perpetrator, but also for anyone in the house should they wish to flee.

It was kind of sad that the whole thing was necessary.

He almost forgot that he was still holding his phone to his ear with Sienna on the other end of the line when Knox came out onto the terrace and stole the phone from his ear before he could react.

“Hey Sienna, how’s things? Missing us already?”

The male laughed at whatever she said and then proceeded to chat for the next ten minutes, asking her about work and her other friends and how she’d been keeping busy the past few nights without them. If Sienna was going to fall for a vampire, Knox would definitely be the less complicated choice.

Lucas joined them soon enough, but he didn’t take the phone from Knox, instead getting up close beside him so he could listen in. Twenty minutes later, Knox finally said goodbye and handed the phone back with a cheeky smile that had Jacob rolling his eyes.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said, voice dry.

Sienna laughed and agreed, bidding him goodnight.

14

Sitting in an outdoor booth at Joe’s café, twiddling her thumbs, Sienna could think of little else but whether or not she would ever see Greyvian again. The male was on her mind constantly. She even thought she could feel his presence at times, which was silly, really. He had better things to do than haunt her apartment, or the café, or the streets on the way to work. Wishful thinking was a cruel mistress.

Scenes from their time together played through her head with annoying regularity. Annoying because she knew it was an impossible relationship that was never going to happen, bittersweet because the memory of him was all that she had. But you couldn’t help what thoughts popped into your head. You could try to stop them once they’d begun, but sometimes that couldn’t be helped either. Like thoughts about when she’d first walked into the apartment and gotten her first glimpse of him. It took only a second for that memory to replay and it had the unsettling effect of starting a whole stream of memories pertaining to the male.

The heat of his body under her hands, the smell of the leather he wore, the feel of him pressed against her, the tingling heat that one look at him could arouse. Every tactile memory she had of him came to mind in an instant, to be followed by the less tactile ones that seemed to create a stronger ache of sadness and regret that included his quiet intensity, the confidence with which he carried himself, the way that he looked at her—burning stares or distant appraisal—it didn’t matter which, just so long as he was looking.

As if her longing to have that again wanted to become reality, she suddenly felt eyes on her. Looking up with unrealistic hope, she immediately spotted Jacob and his entourage walking down the street toward her, people melting from their path like they were being pushed away by an invisible force. Greyvian, however, was not amongst them. His absence hit deep.

Forcing him from her mind with difficulty, she smiled up at her best friend and tried very hard not to focus on the fact that he looked so much like his father. “Hey, stranger.”

“Hey, babe,” Jacob replied with a grin, sliding onto the bench seat beside her.

She wasn’t prepared for him to keep on coming, for his chest to turn towards her, his arms to lift like he was coming in for a hug. For a moment, she thought that was what he was doing—until she saw that his nostrils were flared and his black eyes were on her neck. Time seemed to slow. She pulled back at a snail’s pace, her eyes dropping down to his mouth where a pair of fangs had dropped lower and seemed sharper than was possible for comfort in the mouth. She tried to scrunch her shoulders up to her ears to deny him her neck, but it proved unnecessary.

In the blink of an eye, Jacob was out of the booth and standing beside Knox and Lucas, the two of them having pulled him back away from her. And just like that, everything went back to normal.

“Sorry,” Jacob apologised sheepishly, sliding into the booth across from her. “I can now understand what they all meant about you smelling so damn good.”

Knox slid in beside her and took a deep breath. “Oh, yeah,” he sighed, grinning. “It’s back. You know—I actually missed it. But I can say that now because I’ve fed today, unlike some people.”

Sienna eyed her best friend who just shrugged and said, “I was hoping I wouldn’t need to.”

“So, do you two feed on each other?” she asked, looking from Knox to Lucas and back again. “Does that even work?”

Knox smiled. “It works if we’re in a pinch and there’s no-one else to feed on. It sounds like a paradox—me feeding on Lucas and then him feeding on me—but it’s not really the amount that matters—as long as we’re not starving—it’s the foreign cells that are needed to start the process of duplication that’s key.

“But no, we don’t generally use each other for that. It’s much nicer if shared with a member of the opposite sex if you catch my drift.”

Remembering the orgasm she’d had right before Greyvian had been knocked off of her via a frypan to the head, she could well imagine why that would be.

“That’s why we took so long getting here,” Jacob explained, shooting Lucas a leering grin. “Lucas here had to make a pit stop.”

Lucas just shrugged one shoulder when she raised an eyebrow at him, unperturbed by the insinuation. She smiled. She really liked Lucas’s devil-may-care attitude.

“What about you?” she asked, turning to Knox. “Who did you feed on?”

Knox smiled slightly and tilted his head a little while shrugging in an I’m-not-telling kind of way.

“Really?” Lucas asked, amazed, obviously knowing exactly who his father was talking about.

“What can I say? She’s hot for my blood.”

“Must have gotten a taste for it, huh?” Lucas smiled crookedly.

“Guess so.”

Sienna looked from one to the other and then shook her head in amusement. Jacob seemed likewise intrigued, his eyes narrowing as if perhaps he had an idea who they could be talking about. Seeing as her friend only knew two other vampires, she guessed it was most likely Katarina. Good for her. Knox was a really nice guy—vampire—whatever.

“Have you ordered?” Knox asked, deflecting the direction of the conversation.

“No. I wasn’t sure what you and Lucas would want.”

As if by magic, Katey, their usual waitress appeared, smiling down at her politely. “What can I get you?”

After ordering a chocolate milkshake and a slice of banana bread, she watched in fascination as Katey’s gaze seemed to flit between the vampires, her expression confused and a little lost as she tried to find something to lock her eyes onto.

Knox saved her in the end, Katey’s eyes suddenly zeroing in on him. Confusion changed to a flirtatious smile.

“Oh, hello again.” If Katey found it odd that she hadn’t noticed him before now, she didn’t show it. “Back for more chocolate cake?”

“No. I think today I’ll have one of the savoury muffins and a cappuccino.”

Katey nodded and jotted it down on the notepad. When she looked up, her eyes gravitated towards Lucas. Glancing across the table at Jacob, Sienna could see a deep frown etching his forehead—his concentration face. She sent a questioning look his way, but he was too involved in whatever he was doing to notice.

When it came his time to order, Katey’s eyes seemed to linger on Lucas before finally making their way over to Jacob. Recognition sparked and she smiled like she’d spotted an old friend.

“Hey, Jacob. I didn’t see you there.”

“Katey,” Jacob said with a nod, his voice strained. “I’ll have the usual, thanks.”

“Sure. How you been?” she asked, jotting more notes on her paper.

“Good. I—,” his words cut off as Katey suddenly turned around and walked away as if he hadn’t been speaking.

Knox chuckled and shook his head. “You lost her shortly after ‘thanks’.”

Jacob grimaced. “It wasn’t that hard last time I tried it.”

The blonde shrugged and sat back, his head resting on the padded headrest, eyes on Jacob. “You had more blood then, and you hadn’t been training three times a day. The less blood your body is making, the harder everything else is—especially raising Awareness.”

Jacob made a face and then rolled his eyes at her in a what-can-I-say kind of way. She smiled and then realised that his pupils had once again expanded to twice their normal size. His gaze also dropped down to her neck. Not a good sign.

“I really don’t like the fact that I’m invisible,” Jacob said, never once shifting his eyes from her neck—as if he couldn’t make himself look away. From the expression on his face, he didn’t even seem to realise.

“It has its perks,” Knox said, grinning suggestively.

“Pervert,” Sienna accused, deciding to ignore Jacob’s eyeballing for the moment.

“Of the worst kind,” he agreed willingly.

Their food arrived shortly after, managing to snap Jacob out of whatever vampire trance he’d gone into with his staring routine just long enough for him to drink his mocha and eat his muffin with only a few moments of neck staring in-between. When he was finished, however, his eyes slid straight back to her neck.

Knox sighed and slid out of the booth, his eyes on Jacob. “Sorry. I think we’d better get you fed.”

Jacob mumbled something non-committal and leaned forward onto the table, towards her. His eyes were almost completely black now, with only a thin rim of grey to add variety. She wasn’t particularly worried that he wanted to eat her. Not with Knox and Lucas to hold him back. It was a little sad though that he now had something like that to contend with—something that seemed to take over his mind without him even realising it.

“Come on, Jacob, snap out of it,” Knox said, amused.

Jacob opened his mouth, fangs visible—and growled. It was as dangerous a sound as she’d ever heard. A clear warning to back off. If she didn’t think he’d bite her hand off, she would have slapped his face. Partly to snap him out of it, and partly to put him back in his place.

Lucas sighed audibly and then grabbed a handful of Jacob’s shirt, dragging him out of the booth like he was a sack of potatoes. She half expected her best friend to bite Lucas’s arm off, but, instead, he just shook his head, his eyes coming back into focus, a thick rim of light grey returning to the mix.

He shook his head again and squeezed the bridge of his nose like he had a sudden headache. “Sorry, Si. Guess I am in need of a drink.”

She narrowed her eyes at him but couldn’t hold the glare, her face relaxing into a grin. “Go. We’ll catch up later.”

He nodded and headed off after Lucas.

“Good to smell you again,” Knox said, grinning in his cheeky way and departing with a wave.

Shaking her head, she finished her milkshake alone and sat staring off into space while she went over the past half hour again in her head. A part of her had almost hoped that Jacob could come back some day when he’d gotten control of the whole vampire thing, but she knew now that there was no way that would ever happen. The thirst could sneak up on him without him realising, and if it was stronger than he could control, there’s no way she could avoid being eaten.

Not that she minded being eaten. It was the not surviving being eaten that she feared.

Without realising it, her eyes started to track someone that was walking down the street towards her. It was a petite woman, smartly dressed, pretty, but otherwise not too different to the rest of the foot traffic that was going by. After a moment of watching her, and the way that people seemed to melt out of her path, it became clear to Sienna what had captured her attention. Quickly averting her gaze, she hoped like hell that the woman hadn’t noticed her staring.

Trying to act natural while a vampire who was invisible to everyone else walked down the street towards you wasn’t as easy as you’d think it should be. Her brain wanted to keep checking if the woman was really a vampire while her instincts told her brain to shut the hell up and to keep her eyes on the table in front of her.

Before too long, the woman passed on by and Sienna could finally relax her head back against the booth in relief.

Life had been far less complicated before vampires had come into it.

*  *  *

Greyvian stood concealed in the entrance to an apartment building in the middle of the city and quickly came to the conclusion that he had no self-control. Feeding issue aside, how else could he explain the fact that he was standing across the road from where Sienna sat, waiting for Jacob? He could try to tell himself that it was just coincidence that he happened to track his prey to the vicinity of the café where Jacob was to meet her. Just as he could try to tell himself that last night it had been sheer coincidence that he had gone out onto the balcony and overheard the location in the first place, even though he knew damn well that Jacob had set an alarm for himself to call his best friend at that exact moment. But, he would have known they were lies. He was standing across the street, watching her like one of the mentally deranged monsters that he fed on, because he couldn’t help himself.

It was that simple.

It didn’t matter that seeing her again seemed to silence the twisted thoughts and images that he had just added to the already overloaded store of depravity in his brain that came from feeding on evil, the taint collecting in his brain from the very first moment he’d discovered his little ability. The female was human. Her life span was but a blip on the timeline of his life and he could ill afford to start relying on the woman to ease his torment.

Nor did he deserve any reprieve from it. Living with the damage was part of his punishment for the innocent lives that he had taken over the centuries.

Even knowing all of that, he couldn’t bring himself to leave. His eyes remained glued to the booth where Sienna sat, her dark hair shining in the mid-morning sun. He drew in a deep breath hoping to catch a hint of her unique scent, but she was too far away for that. His memory worked to supply it to him anyway, the rich chocolatey aroma finding his senses in a weak but accurate depiction of the real thing.

As focused on the memory as he was, he was not so far gone that he didn’t feel the arrival of the half-breeds. The moment he felt the first signs of pressure against his skull, he lowered his Awareness so they wouldn’t be looking for another vampire and eased further back into the entrance of the building in front of which he lurked. Watching the trio walk down the street, he waited until they spotted Sienna before slowly raising Awareness again, a trickle at a time so they would barely feel it and more than likely overlook the slow merge if they weren’t feeling for it.