Cursed (24 page)

Looking down at his son, he noticed that the male was barely moving, the skin of his face and body hanging slack and pale with the physical signs of severe blood loss. Greyvian might have been concerned had he not known better than any vampire alive that a vampire couldn’t die of starvation or loss of blood. There was always a trace of blood left, no matter how meagre an amount, which seemed to be more than enough to sustain life within their immortal form.

The room was quiet. Too quiet. Casting his gaze in Knox’s direction, he noted that the blonde’s eyes were on his body. In fact, so were Lucas and Katarina’s. It took him a moment to figure out what they were looking at: he was shirtless and the tattoo was exposed.

Redisluud.
Meaning ‘redemption from sins’ in the old language. His constant reminder that he had a past to account for—should he grow complacent and forget—and a warning to those that would stand in his way.

“Greyvian—” Katarina began, her eyes round with some hopeful emotion as she met his eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he cut her off before she could say anything.

He pinned Knox and Lucas with a similar warning expression and then turned his attention back to Jacob. The male really was quite pale.

Knowing full well what that kind of starvation felt like, he bit into his wrist without further delay and held it to Jacob’s mouth, gratified when the poor bastard showed signs of consciousness by opening his mouth and then swallowing.

His son had an impressive constitution. Good. It would serve him well in the years to come.

As Jacob drank, he could feel three pairs of eyes on his body but ignored it for now, concentrating instead on how much blood Jacob was taking from him. A small part of him felt regret for what he’d done to his son, but there was nothing to be done about it now so he chose to ignore it. When he was certain Jacob had taken enough to kick-start cell production, but not enough to cause Greyvian to need to feed again, he removed his wrist and closed the wound.

Jacob sighed and closed his eyes, passing out cold now that he had sustenance.

Greyvian didn’t look at any of them as he rose and left the room. He knew there’d be questions later, that he wouldn’t be able to avoid them—especially from Katarina, who would want to know all about why he had ‘redemption from sins’ tattooed across his body when to all outward appearances he didn’t give a damn about the lives he’d taken—but, for now, he just wanted to be alone.

Solitude was his saviour.

15

“…how can he be redeemed when he’s still killing humans?”

“Maybe he isn’t.”

There was a moment of silence. Jacob took that moment to try to work out where he was, who was talking above him and why the hell he seemed to be lying on the hard floor.

“Even if my brother has managed to learn restraint, there would always be that rare occasion when he would be unable to stop himself. As long as he’s killing innocent people, he can never be redeemed.”

Katarina—the name came to him from out of the ether.

“Would you condemn a wolf for hunting deer?” Knox asked philosophically. “Are they not entitled to survive while the innocent deer pay with their lives? It’s the circle of life, honey. Animals, humans, even vampires on occasion—they all die. Sometimes it’s someone you care about and that sucks, but that’s the way it works.”

Jacob cracked an eye open and looked up at Katarina’s unhappy expression as she retorted, “Try telling me that if someone kills Lucas.”

Knox conceded the point with a slight tilt of his head and then said, “Greyvian
is
trying to make it right though. By helping half-breeds transition, he’s balancing the scales. Sometimes that’s all you can do.”

Kat didn’t seem convinced, but Jacob could see that she was thinking about it.

Trying to sit up, he grunted and groaned and still couldn’t remember why he felt like a train wreck. Did he have an accident while training? Did someone kick him in the head? Or the neck? Knox was there in a moment, helping him upright.

“What happened?” he asked, rubbing the sore spot on his neck. Glancing around, he realised Greyvian was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Grey?”

“Jesus, he must have really drained you if you can’t remember,” the blonde said, shaking his head in disgust. “I’d really love to know what had his knickers in a knot.”

“Maybe he ate someone who didn’t agree with him,” Lucas suggested. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Jacob wasn’t out of it enough to not remember that.

“I feel really…” he couldn’t even begin to describe it.

“Dizzy? Like your head is full of cotton wool? Body aches?” Knox nodded. “We’ve all been there. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up and fed.”

Fed sounded like a good idea. Creaking to his feet, he waited a moment for his head to stop spinning and then managed a step or two on his own before he had to stop again and bend over a bit so he could wait out his head again. The others were very patient as he hobbled and weaved his way to his room, entertaining him along the way with more discussion about Grey and his tattoo.

“Just how many half-breeds has Greyvian helped?” Katarina asked, her tone subdued—no longer with the high-and-mighty one-sided view of her brother’s diet.

“Saved, Katarina. Saved. They would have more than likely died without his blood,” Knox replied firmly. “As to how many? Quite a few. We don’t pop up that often, usually only about one or two every few years, but we’re out there and increasing in number—I’m sure your father would be ecstatic to hear that.”

Katarina made a non-committal noise and then fell silent.

When they made it to Jacob’s room, they left him to grab a shirt and waited in the hallway. The thing was: he was so out of it that he completely forgot what he was supposed to be doing within about two seconds of the door closing behind him. The next thing he knew, he was standing outside his old apartment door fishing out his keys, completely unaware of how he had made it to the apartment in the first place.

Looking down at himself, he noticed that at least he was wearing a shirt.

A momentary thought flashed through his head that he should get the hell away from the door and as far away from the apartment building as was possible, but it was a distant part of his mind. A part that had no control over the fact that he was now raising his keys and sliding one into the lock. Opening the door, he breathed in deep, taking in as much of Sienna’s scent as could possibly fit into his nostrils at any one time. Shuddering with the pleasure of it, he didn’t even feel his fangs punch out into his mouth as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

“Jacob!” Sienna’s voice cried in delight as she came from the kitchen to see who had broken into her apartment. “What are you doing here?” She looked past him, searching. “Where are the others?”

In some strange trance that left the rational part of his brain locked away in some deep recess of his mind, he walked towards her and shrugged. “Don’t know, to be honest.”

“You don’t know where they are, or you don’t know what you’re doing here?” she asked in amusement, meeting him beside the coffee table, her big blue eyes looking up at him with total trust.

“Both.”

She frowned up at him, her gaze searching his face.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “You look a little pale.”

He nodded his head a little woodenly and tried to will his fangs to recede. He was far from alright, but completely unable to tell her just how fucked up he was right now.

“What happened?” she asked quietly, her blue eyes luminous and searching.

Her concern seemed to be just what he needed to unlock that part of his brain that was screaming at him to get the hell away from her. If he couldn’t physically force himself, the next best thing was confessing the state of his mind to her.

So he told her everything that had happened since they’d last seen each other; the telling more of an exercise in memory than anything else. Sienna listened without comment, her expression the only clue he had as to what she was thinking.

When he was finished, having just told her that he’d been drained and was now in her apartment with no idea how he’d gotten there because he was so out of it, she surprised him by ignoring that part of it and jumping back to the beginning.

“Greyvian was furious?” she asked, her expression thoughtful. “I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I saw him not long after you left me at the café. I think he may have followed me from there.”

Jacob’s brain was foggy, so he didn’t truly appreciate the significance of this.

“He seemed pretty level-headed at the time and our conversation was pleasant enough—if you could call it a conversation, of course. We barely said two words to each other—but he apologised for almost killing me.”

“He apologised?” Jacob asked incredulously. An apology just didn’t sit well with his view of his father.

Sienna nodded and smiled. “I was pretty surprised myself. But then he just walked away. Maybe something happened between there and his place? Or maybe he was furious that he apologised and that’s why he was so shitty.”

Jacob shrugged. His brain was too foggy to give it much thought and his eyes had dropped down to Sienna’s neck as his thoughts turned to blood.

“So, what did this tattoo mean again?” Sienna asked, managing to pull his eyes from her neck with the question. “Redemption or something? I didn’t quite hear what you said.”

That’s probably because he’d slurred his words.

God, he was tired.

“Redemption from sins,” he explained.

She nodded slowly and bit her lip as she thought it over, drawing his eyes downwards until they once again reached her neck. He could see the thick vein along her throat pulsing with life. Coupled with her intensely desirable scent, he could think of little else but blood once again.

Needing to distract himself, he said the first thing that came to mind. “He only kills evil people, you know. He told me he can see their deeds when he looks at them.”

“I didn’t know that, no.” She paused, and then with a frustrated groan asked, “Why the hell didn’t he tell me that when he first said he killed people?!”

Jacob smiled, his eyes unfortunately still glued to her neck. “I think he prefers people to think the worst of him. Saves them being disappointed later were they to find out why he needs to be ‘redeemed from sins’.”

Sienna sighed and shook her head. “He has serious trust issues. But I suppose I can’t blame him—he
was
hunted by his own family for over a century.”

He couldn’t fight it any longer. One minute he was standing before her, the next he had his teeth in her neck, his arms around her slim body. He barely noticed that she sucked in a sharp breath, that the palms of her hands were pressed to his shoulders in an attempt to push him away. As soon as his fangs retracted and that first spray of blood hit the back of his throat, he was lost.

His previous experiences with feeding were nothing compared to this. Sienna’s blood was rich and sweet, but perfectly balanced. Utterly perfect. The more he swallowed, the more perfect it became. It was a divine experience. Even the erection straining his pants couldn’t interfere with it. She spoke his name over and over as if trying to get through to him, but he was too far gone for that. His hand was holding the back of her neck, pulling her to him even as he pushed his mouth against her. Her skin was so soft, so warm. She had no chance at all to pull away from him.

He had no idea how long he drank, how long that wonderful elixir flowed down his throat, but sooner than he would have liked, his name coming from her lips, in that familiar voice he knew so well, finally got through to him. In an instant, he came back to himself to find that Sienna was hanging slack in his arms, that she was pulled against his chest like a rag doll might be held by a child. Pulling his head back in horror, he set her down on the sofa.

She was pale. So pale. And the name flowing from her lips like a mantra was just a whisper. Her eyelids looked heavy; she was blinking slowly. He knew then that he had almost killed her.

Raising his wrist to his mouth, he punctured the skin with his teeth and then held it to his best friend’s mouth, praying to whoever might be listening that she was aware enough to start swallowing. As if someone
was
listening, or just out of sheer dumb luck, her mouth started to move and her throat worked as she swallowed.

Breathing out in relief, he closed his eyes and thanked the universe that she was still alive.

When her body convulsed like she’d been jabbed with a Taser, his eyes snapped open in fright. She settled back down a moment later though, so he assumed it was some strange reaction to vampire blood and slumped back against the sofa once more.

After barely a minute, she pushed his wrist away, making a face that spoke volumes about the taste. He wondered idly why simply ingesting his blood would revive her when she wasn’t a vampire herself, but could come up with no specific answer. He imagined that perhaps a little bit of magic might be involved.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice a little stronger now.

“Are you sure that’s enough?” he asked, concerned. Some of the colour had returned to her face, but she still looked incredibly tired.

“Probably not, but I don’t think you can afford to give much more,” she said with a slight smile. “Don’t want to start a vicious cycle of you drink from me, I drink from you, you drink from me…”

No, he definitely did not. Not with how close he’d come to killing her.

“Dammit,” he swore, shaking his head. “Now I’m no better than my father.”

She laughed softly and then winced, her hand going to her neck where the twin puncture marks were still seeping slowly.

“Here, let me,” he said, leaning towards her. It said a lot about her trust that she didn’t flinch from him. A quick lick became two and then three, the blood a pleasant tingle on his tongue. Sitting back was an effort.

The wound was still there. “Shit. I must have to do something special for that to work.”

“Maybe try thinking about closing the wound while you do it,” she suggested.

Willing to try anything at this stage, he did as suggested and was shocked that it actually worked this time. When he sat back, the skin of her neck was utterly smooth, as if he had never bitten her to begin with.

It helped a little with the guilt.

“Good?” she asked, looking at his face, her expression sleepy.

“Good,” he replied and then started to apologise, feeling like a total leech.

“Stop,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s fine. I’m still alive... and it’s actually kind of enjoyable.”

“Really?”

She smiled and nodded. “Not as orgasmic as when Greyvian drank from me, but it was nice.”

Jacob smiled back and then looked down at his crotch. “Yeah. Nice.”

They knew each other too well to be embarrassed.

“So, when it comes to blood, I’m a turn on, huh?” she joked.

He laughed and readjusted himself. “Don’t joke. I almost came in my shorts.”

“Seriously?!”

They looked at each other speculatively and then chuckled.

Without warning, the door to the apartment swung open and Knox came flying into the room, eyes wide, tension in every line of his body. When he saw that the two of them were both alive and well, he let out a breath, his body sagging along with it. He then rolled his eyes, closing the door gently behind himself.

“At least I didn’t need a frypan,” the blonde quipped as he walked towards them and dropped down into an armchair across from them. He looked from one to the other and then settled on Jacob. “I thought you couldn’t stop yourself.”