The Hunted (60 page)

Thomas and William immediately looked up from their confrontation to see what all the fuss was about. Thomas showed no mercy, bursting into immediate laughter that wracked his entire frame from head to toe. Given his stiff posture and awkwardness since we had walked through the front door, I’d never expected his reaction, especially from Lucas’s wounded pride.

‘Shit, Elena!’ Lucas choked back as he tried to push himself back to his knees. ‘Who needs to worry about the Vampires when your own sister treats you like a goddamn punching bag?’

I rushed forward to help him the second my brain caught up with events. ‘Sorry, Lucas’ I stammered as I helped him climb back to his feet again. ‘I’m still getting used to being stronger than before.’

‘Do you think for once you could try to be a quicker learner?’ he said, dusting off his hands on the front of his jeans. ‘If you learning how to control your strength is anything like you deciphering algebra, I’m a frigging dead man.’

I turned and frowned as Thomas roared with laughter again, falling back into the folds of the couch and covering his mouth with his hand.

Lucas shot him a look of displeasure. ‘Don’t laugh at me, Thomas, or I’ll stake you in your sleep.’

Thomas laughed again, but quietened down considerably. ‘Stake away, my friend, it won’t kill me.’

Lucas snorted and cracked his fingers. ‘Now that depends entirely on where I stake you, doesn’t it?’

Thomas’s good humour subsided. ‘Where did you have in mind?’

Lucas leant forward slightly and began the same eyebrow wiggle from only a few moments before. Once again the translation was clear: grow brass balls or wear a steel cup to bed.

Humour returned to William’s face as he glanced at his friend, who had turned even whiter than his already light pallor would allow. Laughter came easily to all of us when Thomas cupped his nether regions with both hands and stared at us, wide-eyed. Strangely, he smiled warmly at me before looking to William. ‘I’ll be quiet now.’

Lucas looked at me triumphantly and grinned, jerking his thumb in Thomas’s direction. ‘Now who’s the pussy?’

*          *          *

After the whole arm punching incident and threats of disturbing the crown jewels, the four of us sat in the lounge room for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon discussing anything and everything we could think of.

One of those things was Marianne.

From what I gathered from William and Thomas, Marianne wasn’t a popular addition to the household. Apparently she was more annoying than a yapping Chihuahua in your handbag, and that was on a good day. The only reason she was still around was because she was Thomas’s twin sister, and from what I had deduced from the conversation, also had a major crush on William.

Looks like I had some competition in the form of a dead girl to look forward to.

That should be fun.

Thomas managed to loosen up a little bit once he got to know me a little better and Lucas put away the proverbial stake and started talking between them, conversations involving too many words like
animation
and
video games
, none of which were of any particular interest to me. In the meantime, William and I discussed the more interesting details of his Vampiric nature and the maturing process that I had to look forward to. Plus, we also touched lightly on his time in the Roman Guard.

Very lightly.

He cleverly skirted over most of my questions by distracting me with the seductive quality of his eyes, the licking of his lips, the glamour of his scent and featherlight caresses of my face and hands. I couldn’t exactly understand why he was so reluctant to address this time in his life, or why he put so much effort into avoiding my questions, but I concluded it had something to do with his father.

By the end of our long conversation, all I could get out of him was that he was with the Roman Guard for just over a century and there’d been a falling out that involved him forming his own coven and moving as far away as possible.

How I’d managed to sit still for the majority of the conversation and be controlled, without ripping my knickers off, throwing them over my head and swinging my bra around my fingers in a
come and get me
gesture, I had no idea.

The hours passed by quickly between William and I, and soon the sun began to trace a path across the sky that led behind the mountainous ranges outside and disappeared from sight. It had mostly been a good day, even if Marianne remained surly and unsociable. Plus, we’d broken a vase that had probably belonged to Picasso at some stage. But despite those minor setbacks, it had been fun, and like all good things, they had to come to an end.

The Vampires had plans of hunting that evening, a venture that we all hoped resulted in a plausible trail to follow. Neither Lucas nor I were invited to participate in the hunt and we didn’t ask either. We were already breaking so many of Susan and George’s rules just by sitting in this house that we didn’t want to push our luck completely.

William dropped us home a little after seven o’clock. Lucas made a quick exit from the car to puke up again (William’s driving was still way too fast), while I lingered in the front seat with William, taking advantage of the relatively small cabin space and the proximity of his lips.

I came up for air shortly after, largely because Lucas’s retching wasn’t exactly conducive to romance, and I’d just heard the sound of the telephone ringing from inside the house.

Lucas and I shot each other a fresh look of panic.

I smiled quickly back at William before slamming the car door behind me and dashing for the house, right behind Lucas, fumbling through my bag to find the house keys. As I managed to unlock the front door, Lucas shoved past me and practically sprinted across the living room to answer the phone.

‘Hello?’ he puffed into the receiver. ‘Oh, hey mum,’ he said slowly looking at me with exasperation. ‘What took me so long?’ He glanced at me again and grimaced. ‘I was upstairs in my room listening to music and I didn’t hear the phone.’ He paused. ‘Yeah, Elena’s here. Did you want to talk to her?’

I waved the phone away and slowly pacing back to the bureau to throw down my keys.

‘No sorry, we didn’t hear that phone call earlier either. We’ve both been in our rooms studying all day.’

I slapped my forehead and he shrugged. At least if he was going to tell a lie he should have said something a little bit more believable. If she believed that then she was even stupider than I thought.

God, he was a dumbass sometimes.

‘No, we aren’t studying anymore. Now we are listening to music.’ He paused. ‘Yes, we were listening to it together. Why?’ He frowned. ‘I know that I like trance music and she hates it … look, mum, are you getting to a point anytime soon?’

I rolled my eyes and tilted my head backwards in defeat. We had to be in some kind of trouble.

Lucas tapped me on the shoulder and shoved the phone into my hand, wandering off into the kitchen, leaving me to glare after his retreating figure.

I put the phone up to my ear and cringed. ‘Hello?’

‘Elena,’ Susan sighed. ‘You
are
there.’

‘Where else would I be?’

Okay, rhetorical question.

Lucas’s laughter sounded from the kitchen. I covered the mouthpiece with my hand and motioned for him to shut up. He continued sniggering anyway.

‘Lucas sounded like he was lying to me, and badly,’ Susan continued. ‘I thought you might have snuck out of the house again. He said you were listening to music together?’

‘Ah-huh. He was showing me this new band called Pussy Boy Punching Bag.’

I saw Lucas flip me off from over the kitchen counter as he unloaded the dishwasher. I poked my tongue out at him while trying to maintain a relatively straight face.

‘Sounds delightful,’ she said, sounding unimpressed and carrying on, not waiting for an answer. ‘Well your father, Malcolm, and I are in Townsville now. We’ve been settling into the hotel for the afternoon and we’re just about to go out hunting now, so we’ll call you again tomorrow.’

‘Any time in particular?’ There was silence on the other end of the line. I cringed.

Idiot.

‘Why?’

‘I want to sleep in until at least lunchtime tomorrow and I don’t want to be woken up by the telephone.’

If she buys that load of crap, then I’m packing up to go and sell ice to the Eskimos.

‘Okay. Well, we’re probably going to sleep through the day anyway, so I’ll call you both sometime around dusk.’

Well, I’ll be damned. Looks like I’m moving to Alaska.

‘Okay, good luck!’ I hung up the phone before I could say anything else stupid.

Lucas was putting what was left of the clean dishes away in cupboards, as well as restacking the next load into the now empty dishwasher. ‘What happened?’ he asked, hanging the tea towel back over the oven handle, and then turning around to close the dishwasher door.

I shrugged. ‘She bought it. They aren’t going to ring us until after dusk from now on. Sounds like they’re going to hunt all through the night and sleep during the day.’

‘At least we know they are going to be safe. If there aren’t any vânâtors down the coast like William says, then we don’t need to worry about something going wrong.’

I leaned back against the refrigerator and sighed. ‘I guess that’s one thing. That doesn’t stop us from being in danger, though, does it?’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because the alpha knows my scent. If he liked what he tasted last weekend then he won’t hesitate in coming back for seconds.’

He patted my shoulder. ‘Don’t get too ahead of yourself. We still have the Vamps on our side.’ He grinned and then pretended to gag by sticking his fingers in his mouth. ‘All thanks to you getting hot and heavy with one of them.’

I grimaced. ‘That doesn’t mean we should drop our guard, Lucas. We should be even more vigilant now than ever before. It’s just you and me in the house and we’re all alone.’

He looked around nervously and then glanced out the kitchen window and into the darkened garden. He swallowed. ‘Do you want to get out of here?’

I grinned. ‘You’re not afraid of the dark, are you, Lucas?’

‘No. I’m afraid of what
hides
in the dark. Let’s just take the car, go into town where there are lots of people and plenty of lights and have dinner somewhere. Mum left us some money in the tin for emergencies. I’d say this is an emergency, so we should spend it.’

I cocked an eyebrow. ‘I thought we were only supposed to use the car in case of a real emergency?’

He nodded. ‘This is a real emergency. I’m starving.’

I laughed. ‘And shit-scared.’

‘Yeah, that too.’

*          *          *

With Lucas behind the wheel of the car it took over half an hour to get into the city—it should have only been about fifteen minutes there direct from our house. I was flabbergasted that he still insisted on driving ten kilometres under the speed limit, persistently stopping at every set of traffic lights, whether they were red or not.

Don’t even get me started on the roundabouts.

When we finally reached the restaurant we had circled the block at least four times looking for a decent car park. Lucas then attempted the impossible.

Reverse parallel parking.