Cursed

by Rebecca Trynes

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 ha
ve 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.”

  She was totally on board with that.

  “Are you forgetting that her blood is more appealing to me than any in existence? That now that I have tasted it, I crave it like no other?” He looked at her then, his light grey eyes darkening ever so slightly. “How can I protect her when all I want to do is drain her to the very last drop?”

  A shiver of delight travelled down her spine. No one had ever looked at her the way he did. That it was lust for her blood didn’t seem to matter.

  “You’ll be fine,” Knox said lightly. “The only reason you drained her the last time was because you were drained yourself. As long as that doesn’t happen again, I’m sure your iron control will keep you in check.”

  “And if it doesn’t, we’ll be here to whack you over the head with a frypan,” Lucas quipped.

  * * *

  Sienna was bored. The vampires were all off training again and she had been left to fend for herself once more.

  When she’d first arrived at the mansion, she had been excited at the prospect of being in Greyvian’s presence twenty-four seven, but as it turned out, when Greyvian wasn’t training with the others, he was hidden away in one of the rooms all by himself or outside somewhere.

  It seemed that he’d decided to keep himself in check by making sure he wasn’t around her. Ever. That made it kind of hard to start working on breaking down the barrier he had erected around his emotions.

  She’d tried to find him the first two days, working her way through the many rooms of the mansion one by one, lingering a while in what she suspected was his bedroom—but it had all been for nought. If he was inside, she couldn’t find him. If he was outside, he could be anywhere—the grounds were extensive.

  On the fourth day, she finally decided that she’d had enough of waiting around for them all to finish. They trained several times a day for an hour and a half at a time, so that left her with too many hours of wandering around looking for things to do. In her own apartment she would have had a hundred things to do, but here? Not even Greyvian’s extensive collection of books could hold her attention.

  Maybe it was the fact that she knew exactly where Greyvian was right at this very moment that stuffed her concentration.

  She had it bad.

  Once upon a time, she had thought that the kind of intense attraction you only read about in romance novels was all a load of crap, but now she knew better. Now she knew what it felt like to want someone so badly you could almost taste it. She almost longed for the days when men had been only a think-about-them-a-few-times-a-day kind of thing, not a can’t-go-one-minute-without-thinking-about-them kind of deal.

  Almost.

  Making her way toward the gymnasium where the vampires were doing their Kung-Fu—or whatever it was—she squared her shoulders and told herself not to take ‘no’ f
or an answer.

  As she approached the door, she could hear grunting and the sounds of feet shuffling around on the floor followed by the occasional slap of body parts meeting in violence. When she opened it, she was greeted by the intensely sexy vision of Greyvian going all Jet Li on Knox’s ass. The blonde was holding his own—barely—but that was quite the trick considering who he was fighting. Grey was so fast! His limbs seemed to move in a blur, making contact with Knox’s torso or legs more often than not, until, with one final swoop, his leg swept around and knocked the half-breed off his feet.

  She barely had time to admire his lethality when he looked straight at her and demanded, “What are you doing in here?”

  Reminding herself not to be a chicken, she strode into the room with purpose.

  “I’ve come to join in,” she said, standing next to Jacob, ignoring her friend’s sharp intake of breath and the way he quickly turned his head away.

  “Out of the question,” Greyvian replied, a ring of finality in his voice.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded. “Apart from you, vampires are not super beings. They don’t have super strength or speed—they’re just regular people, so to speak. If I can learn to kick some ass, then I’ll have a better chance of surviving, won’t I? I mean, I can’t rely on you lot to keep me from harm’s way all the time, can I?”

  “Just because you learn how to fight does not guarantee that you will beat your opponent.”

  “I don’t expect to,” she assured him, “but if it means that maybe I can kick enough ass to then run away, isn’t that better than having nothing in my arsenal at all?”

  Greyvian stared at her, expression neutral, as he thought it over. No one else said a thing. Whether they agreed or not, it seemed they were too chicken to chime in. Either that or they were smart enough to know that silence could be their friend.

  Seconds ticked by. She wished he was more expressive. She really couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  Finally, he nodded once, and in a clipped voice, said, “Fine.”

  She couldn’t believe it had been that easy.