Cursed (5 page)

Although, they did say that they didn’t have any super powers other than their healing saliva and a slightly higher pain threshold, so if worst came to worst, she could always knee them in the balls and then run like hell.

Or revel in the experience,
she thought, her eyes drifting back to Greyvian, who was still looking at her with that neutral expression that hid his thoughts so well
.
God, she was nuts. He’d probably kill her if he ever got his fangs into her neck and here she was thinking it wouldn’t be a bad way to go. She’d never thought of herself as especially fatalistic before, but there you had it.

“So, does this mean that vampirism is purely a genetic thing?” she asked, needing to distract herself from dangerous thoughts once again. “Or can anyone join?”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the safest topic if the darkening of Greyvian’s eyes was anything to go by. The look he gave her sent a shiver of delight down her spine.

“Yes, it is genetic.” It was Lucas who replied this time, as Greyvian seemed to have run out of words for the day from the silence that stretched before the other vampire stepped in. “And sorry to disappoint, but no. No blood conversions.”

“That is disappointing,” she murmured, her eyes drifting to Greyvian’s once again. He looked like such a predator with his unwavering gaze fixed upon her that she had to bite her lip to stop herself from ordering him to jump her. She wanted his body pressed against hers again. Wanted his mouth on her neck, his tongue…

Searching for a safe topic of conversation, she managed to pull her eyes from Greyvian and focus on Lucas instead—a much safer place to rest her gaze.

“What triggers the transition in the first place?” she asked, wanting to fan her flushed cheeks, but at the same time not wanting to draw attention to them.

“Maturity,” Lucas said, the slight smile on his lips telling her that he was enjoying the situation. “Around the age of twenty-five is said to be the age we reach peak development, bodies fully formed and brains fully developed. That’s when the gene is triggered. It’s usually a few months before we turn twenty-five, but sometimes a few weeks afterwards. Never more than that though,” he finished, eyeing her thoughtfully.

“And then what happens?”

“The body stops producing red blood cells, you quickly become anaemic, exhausted, your immunity goes down the crapper, and you generally feel like death. Once that reaches a certain point and can’t go any further, your whole body feels like it’s on fire as every cell in it transforms itself to the new and improved you.”

“Sounds like fun,” she said dryly.

Lucas smiled wryly. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine. The end process takes less than ten minutes, but it feels like an eternity. ”

“God, poor Jacob.”

“Grey’s blood will help,” Lucas assured her. “It actually takes some of the pain away and makes the whole process a lot smoother.”

She opened her mouth to ask if he spoke from experience, but Knox chose that moment to come back into the room, distracting her.

“Out like a light,” the blonde said, smiling cheerfully as he looked at each of them in turn. “Anyone for dinner?”

For a moment she thought he meant her and her heart skipped a beat in a mixture of fear and excitement, but he wasn’t looking at her, so she figured she wasn’t on the menu.

It was a damn shame, really.

“You eat food?” she asked, a tad warily.

He smiled at her knowingly and said, “Of course we do. We also drink fluids other than blood, sweat, sleep, and all that other normal stuff. Just think of us as blood-drinking humans who live a long damn time unless killed by accident or malice, and you won’t be too far from the truth.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said dryly, thinking that was going to be utterly impossible with Greyvian in the room. Knox and Lucas —sure—but Greyvian? No way.

Handing Knox the takeaway menus, she motioned for the others to take a seat at her small, round dining table. Thankfully Jacob hadn’t left a mess all over it, so she didn’t have to clean it first. Normally there were crumbs and papers scattered about the surface—evidence of him eating while he did the paperwork that went with running his own business—but, being too sick to even think about paperwork, and without an appetite for food, the place was unusually clean for a weekday. Lucas took the offer of a seat immediately, sliding a chair out with a slight scrape of wood on hard flooring, but Greyvian seemed reluctant.

“You’re not going to stand the entire time until Jacob transitions, are you?” she asked, gently teasing.

He seemed to contemplate doing exactly that for a long moment, but eventually gave in. Somewhat grudgingly, he lowered himself onto the padded yellow surface but didn’t move any closer to the table, instead, leaving enough room (so it seemed) that he could jump up at a moment’s notice. The distance looked inviting to Sienna. Just enough room for her to straddle his lap...

Tingling at the thought, she forced herself to sit on the chair beside him instead and felt a little sadistic rush of pleasure when his nostrils flared and his fingers curled into fists as a fresh wave of her scent washed over him. Especially when he turned his head and met her gaze, his grey eyes impassive, but at the same time, unable to fool her into believing that he felt nothing.

She wanted to ask him if he thought she smelled so good because he hadn’t drunk any blood for a while, which would have led to the question of how often he needed to feed, but from the way he was still reacting to her, she thought maybe it was best to steer clear of the topic of blood for a while. As exciting as his reaction might be, there
were
two other vampires in the room to consider as well, and while she might fantasise about being the center of a vampire feeding frenzy, she probably wouldn’t make it out of that alive.

Best to add that one to her fantasy-bank and move on.

“You lot okay with me ordering?” Knox asked as he looked over the menus.

“Knock yourself out,” Sienna replied, more interested in finding out about vampires than ordering food. Lucas waved a hand to show his lack of interest, and Greyvian just ignored Knox completely, his gaze never leaving her face.

“Suit yourselves,” he said, moving a few feet away to place the call.

They listened in silence while Knox began the process of ordering food until Sienna’s curiosity loosened her tongue.

“Healing saliva,” she said, looking from Greyvian to Lucas and back again, throwing it out to whoever wanted to respond. “That’s a pretty handy thing to have if you don’t have super-healing.”

Greyvian said nothing, so Lucas filled the silence with, “Yup. Personally, I’d prefer that we healed spontaneously and that just drinking our blood could heal others, but you take what you can get.”

She nodded in agreement and then grinned as an image popped into her head. “Speaking of healing others, who licked Jacob’s wound away?”

Impressively fast at ordering takeaway, Knox hung up the phone and said, “I did.”

Looking up at the blonde as he pulled out a chair, she said, “I would have loved to have seen that.”

“Why’s that?” he asked as he sat, expression amused.

“He’s not exactly into having other guys licking him, if you catch my drift.”

Knox looked surprised. “Really? He seemed okay with it to me.”

Sienna looked to Lucas for confirmation. The male shook his head slightly, the expression on his face causing her to laugh. It vanished before Knox could see it, but the blonde narrowed his eyes at Lucas like he knew what the male had been doing, making her laugh some more.

As her laughter faded, a sudden shiver travelled down her spine and her gaze slid over to Greyvian of its own volition as if dragged towards him like two magnets to metal. The shiver turned to a thrill of pleasure as her eyes locked onto his, the connection between them immediate and intense. She stared at him for a long moment, drinking him in before she had to look away. Her mother had raised her not to stare.
Why had her mother raised her not to stare?
She really just wanted to sit and gaze at him all evening; to catalogue all of his features over and over until the sight of him was burnt into her brain for all time.

Could she force herself to go against the ingrained habit?

Trying and failing, she instead gave herself a legitimate reason to look at him by asking, “Any other magical abilities I need to know about?”

Again, Greyvian said nothing, continuing, instead, to look at her as if he were about to tackle her to the floor and drain her dry. She would have been frightened if she hadn’t been so turned on by it.

God, she had issues.

“Well,” Knox said when it was clear that Greyvian wasn’t going to, “I don’t know if I’d call it magical, but we don’t get sick. No colds, no flu, no cancer. Okay, that does sound a bit magical, doesn’t it?”

Sienna nodded in agreement, and then—because her mind was still on Greyvian—asked, “No diseases either?”

Knox smiled, sending a sly glance Greyvian’s way, and said, “No diseases—sexual, or otherwise.”

Good to know.

“But the most magical ability of all,” Knox continued, “is the fact that we’re pretty much invisible to the human race.”

Sienna immediately snorted a laugh, figuring he was joking.

“I’m serious,” Knox said, his expression reflecting the statement.

Looking from Knox to Lucas to Greyvian and then back to Knox, she realised that he really did mean it. “You’re not joking?”

“Nope.”

“But, I see you fine.”

He nodded his head slowly, a deep frown lining his brow. “I noticed, and a part of me is grateful for it—but you shouldn’t.”

“Invisible?” she ventured. “Really?”

“Well, we’re not ‘invisible’ per-se,” he acknowledged, air-quoting the word
invisible
. “We call it Awareness—with a capital A. Humans can still see us—in a way—they’re just not really consciously Aware of it. It means we can walk around no problem without having humans bumping into us all the time.”

“Because how irritating would that be?” Lucas chimed in dryly.

Sienna stared at Knox for a long moment, still suspecting that he was joking, but his serious expression never wavered for a second.

“Invisible?” she asked Greyvian, pretty sure that he wouldn’t keep to the joke, as he didn’t seem the jovial type.

“He’s not joking,” Greyvian confirmed, voice inflectionless.

“But why would you want to be invisible?” she asked Knox. “Aside from all the mischief you can get up to, of course.”

The blonde laughed and said, “Aside from that, it’s not necessarily something we want. It’s just there. From the moment of transition until the day we die we become invisible to the human race. We can lower it for a time, but it takes effort and can only be sustained in short bursts.”

“Invisible?” she asked again, finding it really hard to believe.

Knox rolled his eyes at her scepticism and then grinned when there was a knock at the door.

“I’ll show you,” he said, getting up and heading over.

Pulling the door open, he looked back at her to make sure that she was watching and then proceeded to stand slightly to the side without saying anything. The delivery boy, a young brunette who couldn’t have been more than fourteen but who was almost as tall as Knox, stood there silently in return, a slightly confused look on his face as his brain struggled to comprehend what his eyes were telling him without success—that there was a man/male standing right in front of him. As the vampire-awareness-tampering did its thing, his eyes darted to Knox and then away and then back to Knox and then away again, his gaze sliding off of the male as if repelled by some unseen force until, as luck would have it, his gaze made its way into the apartment and landed on her.

His confused expression immediately disappeared and it was suddenly business as usual.

“Hi,” he said, polite enough, or not interested enough, that he didn’t gawk around at her living space as he raised the bag of food and added, “I have a delivery here for Sienna.”

“That’s me,” she said, marvelling at the fact that Knox was now standing an inch away from the kid—who didn’t seem to notice that Knox’s nose was practically in his ear.

“Cool,” the delivery boy said, going for nonchalance, even though he was starting to look a little uncomfortable—as if he subconsciously knew that Knox was flicking his tongue near his ear. “That’ll be thirty-three fifty.”

Trying her hardest not to laugh at Knox’s antics, she nodded and got to her feet. “Of course. Sorry.”

As she passed Greyvian on her way to the door, she wasn’t quite astonished enough by the evidence of vampire ‘invisibility’ not to notice that Greyvian tensed and seemed to hold his breath as she walked past him. Her new sadistic streak crowing in delight, she was more than aware that he was watching her every move and may have sashayed her way over to the door with a little more hip sway than was usual.

Arriving next to the door, she tried to act natural—and not as if she knew that Greyvian was watching her—as she dug around in her bag and found her purse.

“Keep the change,” she told the boy, only half noticing that the kid looked really on-edge now, his gaze darting around the apartment like he knew the others were there and not being able to really
see
them was freaking him out. Having Knox breathing down his neck couldn’t have helped his mental state either.