Nightfall Curse

Chapter 1

“Hey, you did your best,” Minho answered, always placating. “We haven’t exhausted all our options.”

“We haven’t found any options,” Hyunjin retorted.

Minho rolls his shoulders. “Okay, we’ve exhausted all the good ideas. But, whatever. It’s not the end of the road. We’ve been in worse places.”

Felix slid into the chair Hyunjin had vacated on the other side of the table, staring at both of the hunters in turn, blue eyes dark with worry. “Perhaps in the meantime, we should talk about how to manage the transformation.”

“Hell, no!” Hyunjin said sharply. “I don’t wanna be freaking Dracula.”

The concerned wrinkle between Felix’s eyebrows deepened with his confusion. “No, of course not. You are not a vampire, Hyunjin.”

Minho snickered and Hyunjin rolled his eyes.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I am certain that Dracula is a-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hyunjin cut him off. “I don’t mean the vampire part. I mean the sneaking into women’s bedrooms to impregnate them and all that shit. There’s no way I’m doing any of that. You’ll have to lock me up and chop my dick off first.”

“Let’s avoid that,” Minho suggested. “Please. We’re not telling you to go out and actually be an incubus, Hyunjin. But Felix is right. We probably have to come up with a plan B. If this curse, or whatever, is anything like what we’ve seen before, you’ll only get worse the longer you deny it.”

Wearily, Hyunjin stood up. “Keep working on it. I need some sleep. Maybe a shower. I’m worn out.” And his senses were starting to sharpen, for lack of a better word. He could smell his own sweat and even the unique scents of Minho and Felix. It made him more uneasy than anything else, counting his more acute vision and hearing. All things fundamental to helping a monster sneak into dark bedrooms and attack people. Don’t even go there.

Minho shooed his best friend with his hand. “We got this. I’ll call Jisung, too. Maybe he can speed up the online research part with those search programs he wrote. We’ll let you know if and when we find anything.”

Frustrated, still hungry, and probably a bunch of other things he wasn’t ready to contemplate, Hyunjin nodded and made his way back to his room, stripping off his clothes quickly and turning on the water in the shower to cold. He sighed with relief as he stepped under the spray. Everything was too hot, too uncomfortable. Or getting there, anyway. Minho would only worry too much if Hyunjin bothered to tell him the extent of his discomfort, and Felix... well, Felix would redouble his efforts to find answers, all the while giving him that weird kicked puppy look. He didn’t need any of that. It wasn’t their fault he’d been bitten. But what he really needed was out of the question. They’d find a cure. They had to.

His teeth started to chatter by the time he was sufficiently numb enough to get out of the shower. Clothes made his skin itch, so Hyunjin toweled off quickly and flopped on top of the comforter naked. When he slept, his dreams were fitful and broken.

Hyunjin woke with a start, shooting up in bed, heart thundering behind his ribs. He wasn’t sure what had woken him, but though it had been startling, it hadn’t been threatening enough to make him grab for the gun under his pillow. He rubbed his face with both hands, groaning softly, then glanced at the clock. It was after five in the morning. He’d slept for eight hours and he was as exhausted as if he’d only taken a light nap. Fuck. Everything hurt. It even hurt when he ran his fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. He was getting worse. No denying that anymore. If Felix and Jisung and Minho hadn’t figured out a way to cure him yet, he sure as shit hoped that they had a way to keep the curse from killing him outright while they kept researching.