Cursed (26 page)

To her horror, the other brother, not wanting any part of the argument, began wandering through the store towards her and Jacob. Before long she could hear him sniffing and then she felt his eyes on her.

Pretending to do bugger all at the cash register while a vampire was sniffing around you was very hard. She couldn’t understand how they hadn’t noticed Jacob yet. Did they not have a sixth sense as to who was a vampire and who was a human? She would have thought they’d spot him in an instant. Especially when the unnamed brother came closer to the register and Jacob was only jumping distance away.

“Hey Pat,” the male said, standing right beside her and taking a deep breath. “You’ve got to come over here and smell this chick.”

Sienna closed the register and pretended like she had something to do that was well away from the full-blood. Unfortunately, the vampire followed, sticking close and taking deep drawing breaths as if he were snorting cocaine.

Too soon, Patrick left his discussion with Katarina and joined his brother, the two of them circling her like Hyenas while she tried to make out like she had no idea they were there. It was hard, because she wasn’t sure exactly what a human who was unaware was supposed to do in this situation. What did she do when they stood right in front of her?

“I’ve never smelt anything like it,” Patrick said, his nose practically in her ear as he drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Kat, did you know about this?”

Katarina came over and wrapped her hand around Patrick’s arm, pulling him away from her. “Leave her alone, Patrick. You don’t like humans, remember?”

Patrick jerked his arm from her grip and glared at his sister. “I think I might be able to start in this case.”

Sienna couldn’t help it. She flinched when he stepped back towards her.

“Fuck!” Patrick exclaimed, grabbing hold of her arm and turning her towards him. “She’s fucking Aware!”

A sudden memory of the delivery boy popped into her head, so she just played dumb, staring through him and keeping her expression blank, as if she were a robot awaiting a command. It wasn’t quite how the delivery boy had reacted, but she didn’t think she should chance doing the whole eye-slide thing without giving herself away.

“She is not,” Katarina scoffed, playing along. “You’re imagining things.”

“Oh, really,” Patrick scowled, his eyes never leaving Sienna’s face. “I guess she won’t react if I have a little taste then, will she?”

“Get away from her,” Knox ordered, voice like steel.

She hadn’t realised the half-breeds had come to her defence, but there they were, standing behind Patrick and his brother, ready to attack if need be. She would have sent a grateful look in their direction, but that would have given her away.

“Why? Does she mean something to you?” Patrick asked, pulling her into his body like a shield, positioning his mouth near her neck as he faced Knox. “Would it break your little half-breed heart if I were to drain her dry?”

She had to do something. She couldn’t just stand there like an idiot hoping one of the others would be able to stop the bastard from sinking his fangs into her neck. But what could she do? He was a vampire.

And then she remembered. These vampires didn’t have super strength or speed—that was only Greyvian. These vampires were like regular human beings—they just lived longer and drank blood.

She could totally beat the dickhead up.

As if sensing she was about to take action, Jacob decided to save the day and at the same time ruin any chance he had of remaining undiscovered.

“Patrick, I think you should go home,” her best friend said calmly, walking around the counter towards them, looking so much like Greyvian that maybe, just maybe, they might be fooled.

Patrick sucked in a sharp breath of air. “Greyvian.”

Jacob said nothing, simply stared at the guy in his best impersonation of his father she had ever seen. She hoped that it had been a very long time since Patrick had seen his brother. Long enough that the male didn’t see the obvious differences between father and son of height, nose, and mouth that she had noticed immediately.

“You look different,” Patrick said, the grip he had on her arms going slack as he focused on his ‘brother’. “Of course, the last time I saw you, you were covered in blood and looking like a feral, so I suppose anything is an improvement on that.”

Jacob shrugged one shoulder, expression remaining impassive. She was impressed. Jacob was never impassive.

“You know I have orders to kill you on sight,” the male said, finally putting a little distance between him and Sienna as if he were readying himself to do just that.

Jacob smiled slightly, showing a little fang. “You could try.”

Nobody moved or said anything for the longest time. Finally, Patrick broke the silence. “Father will want a word with you, Katarina. Fraternising with half-breeds
and
hanging out with Greyvian?”

“That’s not Greyvian,” the other brother said suddenly, surprising her into looking in his direction before she could stop herself.

She had a split second to see the shock on the male’s face as he met her eyes before realising her mistake and quickly dancing forward out of Patrick’s reach.

“I fucking knew that human was Aware!” Patrick shouted, falling in beside his brother as Sienna took up a defensive position beside Jacob. The two brothers looked like they wanted to attack, but held back for some reason.

“You should leave,” Jacob said, voice hard.

Perhaps they were afraid of getting their asses handed to them?

“Who the fuck are you if you’re not Greyvian?” Patrick asked, eyeing him over.

“What, you need it spelled out for you?” Knox asked, all cocky smiles and cheek.

The full-blood looked back at Jacob and shook his head. “No way.”

“What’s your problem, Patrick?” Lucas asked, taunting. “Can’t handle the fact that now there’s two of them?”

“Father will flip when he hears this,” the other brother hissed.

“I don’t suppose I can get you to stay quiet about this, can I?” Katarina asked hopefully.

Patrick looked at her as if she were insane.

She sighed. “I didn’t think so.”

Knox and Lucas shared a look that Katarina couldn’t help but notice also.

“They’re my brothers, Knox,” she said in warning. “They might be complete dickheads about some things, but they’re still my brothers.”

The half-breed made a face and visibly relaxed, bringing attention to the fact that he’d been coiled to strike. “Suit yourself. I’ll let you do the explaining though.”

Not needing an invitation, Patrick and his brother slowly started to back away.

“Kat,” the male said, looking pleadingly at his sister, “come home now and save yourself some grief.”

Katarina shook her head and stood with the rest of them. “I’ll come home when I want to, thank you very much.”

“Fine. Be that way.” With that, the two brothers left the store, glancing back over their shoulders often.

“Well, that went about as well as can be expected,” Knox said sourly. “I fucking knew something bad was going to happen today. After the training we just experienced, I just figured it was Greyvian going hard on our asses. Damn.”

“Bags not being the one to tell Greyvian,” Lucas said to no-one in particular.

*  *  *

“Have you managed to get a hold of Katarina?” Kobus asked his wife, one true love, and the mother of all his children.

Lieke smiled fondly at the mention of her daughter but shook her head. “No. She is avoiding my calls. She did, however, send me a text to say she was fine and wouldn’t be home for a few days or more.”

He shook his head in frustration at his daughter’s social life. Of all his children, she was the one errant child who preferred to spend more time outside of the estate than in it. Too much time spent amongst humans was not a good thing.

“I hope she isn’t getting herself into any trouble,” he grumbled, accepting a kiss on the cheek with good grace.

“She’s a grown woman, my love,” Lieke scolded gently. “Leave her be.”

Kobus harrumphed, but smiled as she left the room, leaving him to his piles of paperwork.

Not even a minute later, his phone started its annoying buzz that told him someone wanted to speak with him. Was there never any peace to be had?

“What is it, Patrick?”

“I found out what Katarina’s been doing with her time,” his son replied, anger in his voice. “She’s been hanging around with that half-breed, Knox, and his equally irritating son. The pair who are constantly causing trouble.”

Kobus would have liked to say that he was surprised, but his daughter had always been fond of the humanites.

“That’s not all though,” Patrick continued. “Greyvian’s been breeding.”

The sound of his son’s name sent a now familiar shock through his system and sucked all of the air from his lungs. First, he turns up out of the blue wanting the blood drained from his body, and now this? Was it just coincidence, or were the two linked?

“Are you sure?” he asked when he was certain his voice wouldn’t betray him.

“Michael saw it first,” Patrick confessed in a strained voice. “I thought he
was
Greyvian the resemblance was that strong.”

Another pain went straight to Kobus’s heart. Why did the Gods hate him so much that they would perpetuate his image within two monstrosities? What had he done to offend them? Should he have tried harder to find his son and put an end to the curse before this could happen? Would this male carry the affliction?

He wanted to ask Patrick if the half-breed was also mad, but the words stuck in his throat.

“And Father,” Patrick said after a moment’s pause, his tone uncertain, “there was a human with them. Her scent was… intoxicating. And... she was Aware without us making her so.”

His hand tightened around the phone. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. Our shields were intact the entire time.”

Stone cold terror washed through his body, seizing his heart in its iron grip. Memories flashed through his mind, unlocked from someplace deep and dark.

“Call Marcus,” he growled into the phone, “tell him everything. I want to know about this human. Where she lives, who sired her, everything.”

Waiting for the information was torture. He spent the next fifteen minutes with his fingernails embedded in the hard wood of his desk, staring at nothing whilst the nightmares of his past came rushing back.

As soon as his phone rang, he snatched it up and held it to his ear.

“Sienna Rayven Jones,” Marcus’s dry voice sounded without so much as a hello. The male knew him well. “Twenty-five years old—born in May. Lives in an apartment at 23 Oxford Street, Delaney, with one Jacob Greyson—twenty-four-year-old male who works as a martial arts instructor. Her parents were Maria Rebecca Carter and Travis Paul Jones—died in a car accident two years ago—both human. No living relatives or siblings that I could find. She owns the clothing store where Patrick met her, paid for with the trust fund her parents left her. Shall I continue?”

Twenty-five. Born in May. Too old to be a half-breed.

Human. A human that was Aware.

“No. Get someone at her apartment and the store. I want her contained. The half-breeds will probably keep her away, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Marcus hung up without another word, the male deadly in his efficiency.

Kobus sat back in his chair, a trickle of sweat running a path down his back. His human-blood-drinking son was in the area along with his half-breed grandson and now this? Was it sheer coincidence that the half-breeds were with the human or were they planning on using her against him?

If so, what was Katarina’s aim in all of this? Picking up his phone, he dialled his daughter’s number. It went straight to message. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if his daughter was no longer in possession of her phone. Not that that would stop Marcus from tracking where it had been.

Kobus took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Yes. Of course. Marcus would track her phone. Perhaps they could sort the whole of it out in one go. Greyvian, his grandson, the human. He felt calmer with this knowledge in mind.

17

Anger and frustration warred inside of Greyvian, neither emotion coming out on top, yet both of them striving to drive him mad. The only way he knew how to deal with it was through violence, and since the half-breeds had all gone off in search of more peaceful pursuits, his only outlet was a room full of punching bags. One or two bags weren’t enough. Not when you possessed more speed and strength than one bag could handle. He should probably think of a better alternative, because in the space of one hour, he had decimated four bags and was now onto his fifth.

Yet he didn’t feel any better for it. Not when he was feeling so sorry for himself. Not when he couldn’t stop wondering what the point of his life was and kept coming up with pain and struggle for an answer. He knew the feeling wouldn’t last; knew that he’d faced this before, and that when it all got too much he would finally fall, once again, into the numbness that had saved him from suicide for the past century, but his emotions were so raw that he couldn’t see past this one moment.

Damn Sienna and her scent for pulling him from that numbness. If not for her, he could be in a pleasant state of nothing right now. If not for her, he could probably live another few centuries without feeling this out of control.

If not for her, you’d have no idea that you could feel anything good that didn’t involve blood either.

The thought was unwelcome. As were the memories of her smile, the way she looked at him without fear, the way he’d felt when they’d made love.

He shook his head at the word and went harder at the bag, punching faster, more forcefully. They had not made love. They’d fucked. That’s all it was. Lust, pure and simple. The result of too many hard-ons; the desire he felt for her blood channelled into the less dangerous option of a desire to get off, nothing more.

The truth of it stung, causing him to go harder at the bag, to snap a side-kick at the already-frayed canvas that proved the last straw, the bag splitting open, spilling its contents across the floor, effectively gutted. Kind of how he felt at the moment, except, it was his inner peace that was scattered all over the pale wood.

Tauntingly, Sienna’s scent seemed to surround him, as if it had been living inside of the bag, not just his memory, and was now free to invade his senses. With a roar of fury, torn from someplace deep and dark and entirely too enraged, he bent and jerked his daggers from their ankle holsters, the need to stab something an uncontrollable force that had him doing a forward roll towards the five remaining bags hanging a short distance away. The first, he sliced in quick movements that cut it to shreds in the blink of an eye, its contents erupting from the confines of the bag and raining down to the floor in what he liked to imagine was a spray of blood and gore. The second, he stabbed repeatedly with as much force as he could muster, the metal sliding in and out as if through butter, followed by a satisfying thud as the hilt hit the fabric. The remaining three received a combination of the two.

But it wasn’t enough. The rage was still inside of him and wouldn’t let go.

He needed to kill something.

Turning towards the door with the intention of hunting the streets, he froze. His daggers clattered to the floor, falling from suddenly numb fingers as his eyes locked onto the impossible.

Sienna was standing in the doorway, unmoving, her blue eyes wide and her mouth open in shock. Her face was pale. Faced with such violence, he expected that was fear in her expression.

But was it really her, or had the rawness of his emotions conjured her up out of memory? The way she stood there, so silent, so still, expression never changing, had him thinking her a phantom. But then she started to blink and her eyes swept over the room, taking in the ruined bags, the contents of each strewn across the floor. When they returned to his face, her cheeks had regained some of their colour.

“You know, you could have just returned them if you weren’t happy with the quality,” she said, smiling crookedly. “At least then you could have gotten your money back.”

Relief that she wasn’t terrified at the display swept through him, taking every other emotion along with it, cleansing his mind and soul of the destructive forces that had caused him to snap in the first place. In its wake, he was left with nothing. Numb, once again.

A welcome relief, given the week he’d had.

His voice, when he spoke, reflected his newfound calm. “What are you doing here?”

If she was surprised or disappointed at all by his sudden change in behaviour, she didn’t show it as she entered the room, walking over to what remained of one of the bags, dangling from a chain. She fingered the material, turning it this way and that as if inspecting the quality.

“You know,” she began, glancing over at him briefly before looking back at the bag, “these are just regular punching bags. They’re not meant to withstand super strength and speed.” Her eyes slid over to the daggers on the floor and a corner of her mouth quirked up. “Or knives. You really can’t fault their workmanship for that.”

“What are you doing here?” he repeated, unable to think of any other response to her amused banter.

She turned to him and sighed. “I met two of your brothers today. They didn’t seem overly happy to find a human that was Aware without them making me so.”

It was a good thing he was already numb, or else this would have really sent him over the edge.

“I see.”

“Knox figured I would be safest here—with you for protection.”

“Indeed.”

He couldn’t think of a worse place for her if she were in need of protection, given his desire for her blood, but due to the circumstances, he didn’t have much of a choice.

His father would be looking for her.

When it had just been Greyvian who needed to be put down, his father had been sentimental, never coming for him personally after that first encounter, always by way of proxy. It was simply public knowledge that Greyvian should be put down, open to anyone who could be bothered, never any solid advances or manned hunts.

Not after the first century, anyway.

With Sienna, there was no way Kobus would charge someone else with her death. He’d want to make sure of it himself, and he had the contacts to be able to do it. And soon.

“By the way, didn’t you say that you lived North Side in the city—in an apartment,” Sienna asked, an accusing squint to her eyes. “This is not in the city, and it is definitely not an apartment.”

“You asked where I lived in the city. I told you. You didn’t ask if I also lived outside of the city.”

She made a face at him, but he could see by the slight curve of her mouth, that her annoyance was half-hearted.

“Do you live anywhere else that I should know about?” she asked, her sparkling blue eyes telling him how happy she was to see him.

“I have real estate all over the world,” he replied, knowing that look in her eyes would haunt his dreams for weeks to come.

“Where do you spend most of your time?”

“Here.”

“So, you’d say that this is your real home, then?”

“As much as I can call anywhere home, I suppose this would be it.”

“Huh.” She surveyed the room some more, her eyes once again turning to the destroyed bags littering the floor. When she started nibbling her bottom lip, he knew that he had to move this situation along,

“Where are the others?” he asked, bending to retrieve his daggers.

“In the kitchen. Being a bunch of chickens.”

She smiled at him when he looked at her, but he couldn’t return it. Not that she’d expect him to. Nodding instead, he led the way, aware of her presence behind him, of her scent surrounding him.

This was not going to end well.

*  *  *

Sienna followed Greyvian, a little disappointed that he was all emotionally contained once again. It was downright amazing how the male could go from an absolute feral whose eyes practically glowed with rage to absolutely nothing at all. There were times when she would absolutely love to have that ability, but it seemed a pretty repressed way to live.

No wonder he’d gone all Wolverine on the bags.

At least he had a pretty harmless outlet for it—if you didn’t count the punching bags as collateral damage. Judging by the mansion he lived in, he could well afford to replace them.

“I assume Jacob and the others were with you when my brothers discovered you?” Greyvian asked, not turning around or bothering to look at her as he led the way along the vast hallways towards the kitchen. His voice was inflectionless, and she had the distinct feeling that it would remain that way indefinitely if she couldn’t do something to shake it.

“Of course,” she replied, admiring his broad back and the muscles that were well-defined beneath his snug t-shirt. “The fact that we outnumbered Patrick and the other one is the only reason I’m still alive, no doubt.”

She waited for a muttered ‘no doubt’ back at the very least, but received nothing in reply. It was seriously disappointing that he gave no reaction to her presence except to retreat into robot-mode once again. Although, there had been that split second when he’d first looked into her eyes where there’d been some raw emotion she couldn’t put a name to marking his expression, whatever it was causing the daggers to slip out of his hands and clatter to the floor.

She supposed she’d have to console herself with that for now and hope that she could draw him out again when he’d had a chance to get over the shock of finding her in his home uninvited.

“Knox was pretty adamant that I had to come back here with them,” she said, hoping to draw him into a conversation. “Is it really such a bad thing that they know about me?”

Instead of answering, he turned a corner and they were suddenly in the kitchen. Jacob, Knox, Lucas and Katarina all looked up, their eyes going straight to Greyvian as if they expected him to be livid or something. Did they not remember that he was the Poker Faced King (as Jacob referred to him)?

Without greeting or context so the others could catch up, he turned to her and asked, “Have you ever wondered why full-bloods seem to hate humans so much?”

Sienna nodded. “Of course.”

“Greyvian.” Katarina said nothing more than his name, but the warning was more than clear.

Greyvian looked at his sister. “You don’t trust them?”

“Not with this,” she replied, shaking her head.

Knox and Lucas looked suitably intrigued but for once, said nothing.

Greyvian thought about it for a long moment and then seemed to concede, as all he said was, “Let’s just say that it’s not without good reason and that my father has the best reason of all, so having a human that is unaffected by our Awareness shield will not be taken lightly.

“There is absolutely no way that he will stop until you are dead. No promises of remaining childless will sway him from his belief that you must die. Your continued existence is a threat to the entire vampire race and he knows, better than anyone, exactly what that means.”

Nobody said anything. Either they had already suspected that to be the case, or they were still processing.

Sienna knew she should be terrified, that she should be screaming that they had to get as far away as possible, but she was strangely ambivalent towards it all. Was it her absolute faith that Greyvian could protect her, or was his emotional lassitude toward danger rubbing off on her? Whatever it was, she was merely happy to be in his presence once again.

Greyvian looked over at Jacob, having made his point to her, and said, “I suppose you can count yourself lucky that his attention will be upon Sienna, and not the fact that there is another human-blood-drinking vampire in their midst.”

Jacob made a face at him. “Lucky? Sure. I escape their wrath because my best friend has drawn it instead. Yay for me.”

The sarcastic tone was not lost on Greyvian. “Perhaps if you had wanted her to remain safe, you should have stayed away from her.”

Jacob looked like he was working himself up for an argument, shoulders going back, deep frown lining his forehead, but then he slumped and sighed. “Right. They never would have come over and found her if they hadn’t sensed us nearby.”

“That’s not the first time you endangered her life though, is it?” He said it without feeling, but she could swear there was a dangerous glimmer in his eyes.

Jacob glanced at her guiltily and shook his head.

“You can’t blame the guy for wanting to see his best friend,” Knox said, coming to Jacob’s defence. “Even if we hadn’t drawn your brothers over by our presence, it was only a matter of time before one of them got wind of her. It probably would have happened while she was walking down the street. In fact, it was damn lucky that it happened like it did. If we hadn’t been there, she’d most likely be dead right now. Short of shipping her off to a tiny island where there are no vampires, there’s nothing we could have done to keep her safe.”

Greyvian stood in stony silence, eyeing the half-breed coldly. He knew it was true. She didn’t quite know how she knew that, but she knew.

“I think here is the best place for her,” Lucas chimed in, drawing Greyvian’s gaze. “No-one can protect her like you can.”