Reasa stared into the open fridge, frustration threatening to spark her temper. She was tired and cranky from the long hours spent in the injured vampires’ minds, and to top everything off, her stomach was making the most ridiculous of sounds.
“Hungry much?”
The unexpected male voice startled her in the darkened kitchen, and she shrieked and spun around, the light from the refrigerator revealing Karn, the second in command at the Praetorian Compound.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” the blond vampire continued, reaching inside to grab a quart of milk. “Do you still have enhanced sight?” He gestured to the lack of light in the kitchen. “Only with your hearing now muted I would have thought your eyesight would be too.
“It is,” she answered looking away from his all-seeing eyes. “I didn’t want to disturb anyone by turning on a light.”
He watched her for a second and then crossed the room and turned on the light. “We can’t be having you bumping into things and doing yourself an injury. We don’t want Liam to put everyone back into a coma again, do we?”
She hadn’t really thought about it, but then, she tried her hardest to concentrate on the task at hand and not think about the redheaded Varcolac who was starting to be able to read her every thought and emotion the more time they spent inside each other’s heads.
“Why don’t you have a seat at the table?” Karn commented when she didn’t speak. “I suggest you snack on something light like cereal as it’s the middle of the night. It should blunt your hunger enough to get back to sleep but not be too heavy to keep you awake. I’ll have a word with Mac in the morning to ensure both you and Liam get enough rest and food breaks. Both of you look exhausted all the time.”
She watched him pour out some cereal into a bowl and add some milk. Then he placed it in front of her with a spoon and sat down at the table beside her. She couldn’t fathom out why he was being so nice to her. He had nothing to gain from it.
When she just sat there looking at him he smiled and waved a hand at the plate. “It won’t eat itself, girlie.”
She recognised that tone. It was the one she heard him use regularly around the others; it conveyed both admonishment and humour. She had particularly noticed it became especially noticeable around Elina. He appeared to delight in pushing at Liam’s cousin to try to get a reaction. Most of the time the other woman treated him with haughty distain, but every so often there would be a flash of irritation in her eyes that only served to make the blond vampire grin from ear to ear. She could tell it was the reaction he was hoping for. It was also apparent that Elina was clueless to the fact that she was rising to his bait.
Swirling her spoon around the bowl a couple of times, Reasa finally gave into her hunger pangs and took a spoonful of cereal. As she ate she watched Karn, and his gaze never left her face. “Why are you being so nice to me? Everyone else pretty much pretends I’m not here, with the exception of Liam, Elina, Mac, Lily and Brandon.”
He appeared to consider her question before he gave her a small smile. “You frighten the others.”
Reasa spluttered over her next spoonful of cereal, almost choking as it went down the wrong way. “I frighten them?!” She wiped at her mouth with the napkin Karn hastily produced. “How can I possibly frighten them? I’m human. It’s not as if I can do them any harm.”
“You forget that a handful of weeks ago youwere them, Reasa. That is what frightens them. The fact that there is a possibility that they could have their immortality removed and become as human as you now are. I didn’t say there was any merit to the way they feel, just that they do feel that way.”
When he put it like that she could see why the other vampires could fear her. She was an object lesson to all of them. If they screwed up there was a chance they could become just like her. It must be a very sobering thought for all of them. “So, because they pretend I don’t exist this makes you want to be friendly towards me?”
Karn chuckled though he kept his voice low so as not to disturb the sleeping house. “No, girlie, I want to be friendly towards you because I see how exhausted you are and yet every morning at dawn you get up and spend hours at a time inside fractured minds to help those lost souls find a way home. I see your skin tear from whatever it is that is happening mentally to you and yet you keep going in. Oh, I know Elina heals you as it happens but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel the pain. I didn’t know you as a vampire, Reasa, but what I see of you as a human woman is pretty awe-inspiring.”
Staring into his eyes she was stunned to see that he actually meant every word he said. He truly did like her for who she was now and it had nothing to do with who she had once been. For some reason , that made her feel even more ashamed of her past than anything had before. “You place your faith in the wrong person, Karn,” she said bitterly. “This woman before you is not the woman I used to be. I have done countless terrible things in my past, things that would shock you.”
To her chagrin he merely chuckled again, shaking his head in amusement. “Oh Thereasa, every single vampire in this compound can say the exact same thing, especially the older ones. We are all a product of our time, and where we come from. It’s only been the last century or so that we have started coming even close to being civilised. I dare say I could tell you tales that would make your hair curl.”
“I know that but…”
“No buts, girlie. You know I speak the truth.” Karn appeared to be thinking of something before he spoke again. He let out a low sigh and rested his elbows on the table.
“When Mac found me over a thousand years ago I was nothing more than a wild animal. I had been on my own for so long I was almost feral. I had taken to hiding up in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, only coming down when the need to feed drove me out in agony. I tried to sustain myself on animal blood so I could stop myself killing humans but it was to no avail.”