Cursed (28 page)

“Why not?”

“It’s gold for transitions, honey, but he’s already transitioned. I just don’t think it’s what he needs.”

Sienna could see by Xavior’s expression that he’d already thought of that likelihood, but he seemed desperate—like he would try absolutely everything and anything to restore his brother to his former self. She wondered what lengths he’d already gone to and for how long.

She definitely wasn’t thinking straight when she looked up at the black-eyed male and asked, “Rayven, does my scent affect you in any way? Do you have an almost overwhelming desire to taste it?”

That inky gaze returned to her and she was struck once again by just how lifeless they were. “No.” He could have been a computer for all the emotion he portrayed.

“Huh. That has to be a first,” Knox muttered.

“Shut up,” she said, elbowing him in the ribs. “I’d like you to—”

“I’d think very carefully before finishing that sentence,” a familiar voice said from the direction of the hallway.

A moment later, Greyvian entered the room, causing butterflies to erupt within her belly. It felt like she hadn’t seen him in forever. Their last training session had been two days ago and he had kept his presence very limited since then. She couldn’t believe how much she’d missed looking at his face, trying to read the thoughts and emotions behind his light grey eyes.

“Why? Do you think we’d need a frypan?” she teased, pleased when he narrowed his eyes at her.

She smiled. Since meeting Rayven, she couldn’t believe she’d ever thought Greyvian to be without expression. Compared to that male, Greyvian was a billboard of emotion.

“What’s this?” Xavior questioned, looking from one to the other curiously.

Katarina took great delight in explaining it to him. “When Jacob transitioned Greyvian donated a lot of blood. We hadn’t thought to get Sienna out of the apartment at the time and he almost killed her. The back of his head met the hard surface of a frypan—hence, the only reason she’s still alive.”

“Really,” the redhead said, eyeing her speculatively. “How did she taste?”

Uh oh, Sienna noticed the instant Greyvian’s eyes went to black, but instead of looking at her, his eyes remained focused on Xavior.

“You will never know,” he replied, ice cold.

Xavior smiled slightly and raised a brow at Knox. “I thought you said he was just like Rayven.”

The blonde returned the smile and inclined his head. “He was never quite as bad, but... things change.”

Xavior’s eyes locked onto hers the moment she glanced his way, filled with a hope she wished she could fulfil. She was more than willing to try, but what were the chances that her blood would really cure his brother? When she’d been about to offer, it was a passing thought, a couldn’t-hurt-to-try kind of deal, not a ‘hey, my blood is awesome. I bet it would work,’ kind of thing.

Still, it really couldn’t hurt to try—could it? Glancing at Greyvian, she realised that if she were to truly offer her blood to Rayven, Greyvian couldn’t be around. Not in his present state of hunger, that was for sure. She had the feeling that if he saw even one drop of it, he wouldn’t be able to control himself. As much as she wanted that intensity of desire again, she wanted to live just as badly.

A nerve jumped in Greyvian’s jaw, as if he were pissed that they were talking about him like he wasn’t there. He was definitely hungry. Normally he would just stare impassively until they moved onto another subject.

“Jacob and I need to feed,” he announced, holding Xavior’s gaze for a long moment, as if silently ordering the male to keep his fangs—and his brother’s—sheathed. “We won’t be long.”

Xavior nodded. Whether in acknowledgement or agreement that nothing would happen wasn’t entirely clear, but because he wanted Greyvian to give Rayven some blood, she had a feeling Xavior would prevent anything from happening even if she pushed for it.

Hopefully they would all survive the onslaught to come in order to test the theories.

*  *  *

Images of bathing in blood flashed through Jacob’s mind as Greyvian drove like a bat out of hell towards a more populated area where they could feed. He figured it was just because he was so damn thirsty-hungry or whatever the hell this need for blood was. At least, he hoped that was the cause of the disturbing visions.

Funnily enough, those ones he could handle. It was the visions of sinking his fangs into the smooth skin of Sienna’s neck that were the real problem. He’d tasted her blood, knew without doubt that drinking it was like the greatest sex of his life joined with the most delicious meal he’d ever had. He wanted that again—every minute of every day since he had fed from her. It was hard to look at her and not immediately think about it, and the desire to do something about it was growing stronger day by day.

The arrival of their backup was just in time. He and Greyvian had been avoiding her like recovering alcoholics avoided bars, but they still had to train. Kobus was coming and they had to be ready.

“How long do you think it will take Kobus to find us?” he asked Greyvian, still finding it hard to think of the male as his father when they looked the same age.

“Not long. We’re not exactly hiding from him.”

“And, why aren’t we doing that again?”

Greyvian glanced at him and then returned his eyes to the road. He was silent for so long that Jacob had given up on getting an answer when the male finally spoke. “We’re not hiding because I’m done with running. I gave that up a century ago and I am not going back to it.”

Fair enough. Still… “Even if it means we might all die?”

“I don’t think that will happen.”

Jacob sighed and stared out the window without really seeing the trees flash by. “Let’s hope you’re right.”

At the speed Greyvian was driving, the trip to the city took about fifteen minutes. Finding a victim took another ten. He was aware the entire time that the others could already be under attack, but he didn’t want to choose just anybody. If something happened, if he damaged them somehow, he didn’t want that person to be a complete innocent. He decided finally to get Greyvian to choose the target.

The male nodded and took the lead, his eyes focusing straight ahead as they walked down one street and then across to another. The longer it took, the more anxious Jacob became. He wanted this over with already. Sienna was in danger.

“Her,” Greyvian said finally, nodding in the direction of a well-dressed female walking towards them. Her blonde head was held high and she walked with purpose, clutching a large white bag like it was filled with gold.

“Do I want to know why?” Jacob asked, his fangs descending of their own volition as he waited for her to close the distance between them.

“Probably not,” Greyvian replied, eyes hard as he watched the woman stride toward them.

That was good enough for him. Deciding to attack without warning, he waited until the woman was level with him and then wrapped his hand around her arm, swinging her into his body and sinking his fangs in as soon as she was close enough. She gasped and jerked with the surprise of the attack and then fell silent and still, as if being the victim of a vampire feeding was no big deal.

Time stretched into infinity. The woman’s blood couldn’t compare to Sienna’s, but it was a pleasure all its own. Soothing, calming, lulling him into a trance where everything else but the blood flowing into his mouth simply fell away into nothingness. A dim voice in the back of his mind told him to stay aware of the situation, but it was drowned out by the sensation of life filling his body, a pleasant wave of tingles that started in his gut and travelled outwards.

Everything abruptly came back into focus as he dropped to his knees, suddenly boneless. By some miracle the woman hadn’t followed him down to the pavement and was standing in front of him, swaying slightly, her eyes listless. He flinched when Greyvian roughly pulled her into his arms and savagely bit into her neck, causing her to jerk once again, this time with a cry of pain.

He couldn’t look away as his father drained the woman of what was left of her blood and then let her slip down to the pavement, staring blankly into space. He should have known that was coming. Greyvian did not let the humans he chose walk away with their lives.

A part of him wanted to know what Greyvian saw in them so he could feel a little better about their deaths, but from the bleak look on the male’s face, he figured he was probably better off not knowing.

“We should find another for you,” Greyvian said, the woman now forgotten. “See if you can keep your head while you drink. See if it’s possible for you to keep yourself from killing.”

Jacob nodded slowly, his eyes still glued to the woman’s sightless eyes. Death was so final. So lonely. He wondered if the woman had done anything good with her life.

“Forget about her,” Greyvian said curtly. “She doesn’t deserve any sympathy.”

Dragging his gaze away, he looked up at the male. “Shouldn’t we… you know, cover it up?”

Greyvian shook his head. “Not this time.”

Curious, but at the same time not really wanting to know the reason for that, he got to his feet and followed Greyvian as the male headed off up the street. A shout rang out behind them as their concealing Awareness moved away from the prone woman and revealed the grisly scene. The streets weren’t crowded, but they weren’t empty either, and people started to run past them to the scene of the crime.

Funny, he hadn’t even noticed this time that the people he passed hadn’t looked at him—as if he’d gotten used to it already. Or maybe he’d just been so focused on finding someone to eat that he hadn’t cared. He noticed it now though, especially as they walked away from the spot where they’d just murdered someone.

“Don’t think about it,” Greyvian told him, as if he knew exactly what Jacob was thinking.

“Kind of hard not to,” he replied, glancing back at the crowd that had gathered around the woman.

“Would it make it easier to know that she obtained her wealth from selling drugs to children? That she enjoyed it when they overdosed in front of her?”

Jacob looked away from the scene behind him and forced himself not to look back. “It does a bit,” he replied, jogging a few steps to catch up to the male.

“Then take heart, for that was the least of the evil inside her.”

Shit. He so didn’t want to know what the most was.

“Down here,” Greyvian said suddenly, making a sharp right turn down an alleyway.

Jacob saw the man about halfway down, only moments before he heard the sobs. It was a woman, repeating something he couldn’t quite understand over and over. The man laughed at her, his hand at his pants. As they closed the distance, Jacob could smell blood in the air.

A sudden release of pressure in the air told him that Greyvian had lowered his Awareness shield.

As if the man could feel it too, he suddenly looked over his shoulder and then turned, a knife in his hand. “I’d get lost if I were you,” he sneered, waving the blade back and forth in warning.

Greyvian didn’t stop, simply walking straight for the guy and catching the man’s wrist in a blindingly fast movement as he slashed at Grey. He then twisted the man’s wrist until the guy was forced to drop the blade. Once he had the all clear, he stepped into the man’s personal space and it was all over from there. The whole thing didn’t take more than a few seconds from go to woe.

Greyvian was a hell of a male to watch in action, but the feeding was just too intimate to watch for long. Staring sightlessly past the two of them, he silently urged Greyvian to hurry up.

It was only then that he noticed that the man had a strange smokey red haze surrounding him, rising up around his head like a wave of heated air. Focusing on him, Jacob’s eyes locked with the pleading, wide-eyed stare—but he wasn’t so much looking
at
the male, as
into
him. He knew then with sudden surety that
this
was what Greyvian had meant that first time about looking through the human.

Sucking in a deep breath, he tried to look away, to avoid what he knew must surely follow, but it was too late.

Images suddenly flashed in his mind, like a cross between memory and vivid reality. Too quick to fully comprehend, they left an impression nonetheless. Drugs. Rape. Extreme violence. Murder. Like a disturbing showreel of the most violent parts of a movie running through his mind’s eye, complete with surround sound.

No matter how violent or disturbing, he could have dealt with them if they were that alone. A movie was nowhere near as frightening, no matter the mastery of cinematography, as having those images connected to the very real emotions of a person of evil. Emotions that felt as if they were his own. Yet, at the same time, they carried with them a sense of wrongness—like an alien presence within his mind, forcing itself upon him much the same as the human had done to countless women over his lifetime.

Rape. Women. The woman! He’d forgotten about the sobbing woman.

Filthy whore.
The thought flashed through his brain, burning like a trail of fire, sulfurous and blistering in intensity. The anger—no—the righteous fury that came with it caused Jacob to suck in a sharp breath as it threatened to suffocate him with its all-consuming rage.