Sunrise at Sunset (33 page)

Caleb held up his hand in an apologetic gesture. “Fine, I’m saying I’m not in bad shape, that’s all.”

Paige adopted an incredulous visage. “And I thought you were actually smarter than the average guy. Listen champ, you may think you’re in pretty good shape, but you’re no match for us on your best day. Any one of us would wipe the floor with you. Trust me.”

He considered her thoughtfully as he stared into her blue eyes. It was difficult to envision her as overtly dangerous.

“You humans are far more fragile than you think when it comes to us,” she insisted.

He recalled being sore for days after being tossed around by Katrina that evening in the park. “She did throw me around like a rag doll the night of the branch incident,” he reminisced.

“And I bet she wasn’t even trying to kill you,” Paige ventured with a grin.

“It sure felt like it at the time,” he muttered, wide-eyed.

She was introspective as if deciding what to say next, or how best to say it. “Katrina’s like a sister to me, and I respect her probably more than you realize,” she began slowly. “And I can tell you that she wouldn’t go to this much trouble if you didn’t matter a great deal to her. You and I both know she loves you, kiddo.”

A warm feeling passed over him, and he started to smile.

She grinned at him as if reading something in his expression. “And I’m willing to bet you care enough about her to trust her to have your best interests at heart,” she ventured quietly.

He nodded and smiled back wanly.
Yes, I trust Katrina and feel deep appreciation for what she’s doing to protect me. I just yearn to be with her, maybe try and help her somehow. Instead, I’m left to sit around and hope that I have enough patience to make it through the waiting and worrying part.

Katrina and Alton checked into a hotel on the outskirts of Atlanta. They needed a temporary base of operations until determining Chimalma’s location. Rather than returning to the estate and further agitating Caleb, the hotel allowed them immediate mobility to act or relocate as warranted. Once settled in the room, Katrina’s thoughts immediately turned to her mate. She dialed her cell phone and only waited two rings before Paige picked up. After giving her a brief update, she asked about Caleb.

“Just as you predicted, he was irritable initially, but he’s doing much better now,” Paige reported in an upbeat tone.

“Where is he now?” Katrina asked.

“He’s in the shower in a guest room upstairs,” Paige explained. “He’s sleeping there while I’m in the sublevel. Do you want to chat with him?”

Katrina considered it and declined, “No, it’s probably better if I don’t just yet. He’ll likely still be upset with me for leaving him. Just tell him that we checked in and are working on tracking Chimalma further. We’ll call when we know more.”

Paige paused, prompting, “And?”

Katrina sighed and added, “Tell him that I love him, Paige.” She could almost hear Paige grinning on the other end of the phone.

“Now, that’s what I’m getting at,” she responded brightly.

Katrina shook her head with a smirk and instructed, “Say goodbye, Paige.”

“Goodbye, Paige,” the spritely vampire replied before hanging up.

Alton walked in from one of the two bedrooms asking, “Why do I feel like we’re two parents who just left the teenagers in charge of the house while we’re gone?”

Katrina chuckled. “Good thing that one of the teenagers is a vampire.”

He nodded agreeably as he powered up his laptop on a nearby table.

The first night without Katrina was difficult for Caleb. After his shower, he received an update from Paige on Katrina’s phone call. She spent the evening sitting in front of the computers and security surveillance system in Katrina’s lair, leaving him the main part of the house to himself. He lay on the main living room couch watching television until nearly 1 am before making his way up to the guest room.

Once asleep, he had restless dreams that eventually turned into a nightmare. Katrina and he happily strolled though a moonlit night at one of Georgia’s numerous Civil War battlefield parks. One moment they were walking hand in hand, and the next Katrina disappeared. He called her name while running through dense trees, across battlefield cannon emplacements, around old stockade fencing, and across open stretches of grassy fields. But his voice was barely a whisper even though he yelled at the top of his lungs.

He finally heard snarling and growling sounds and made his way towards the source. Upon entering an eerie-looking graveyard among a copse of thick pine trees, he saw Katrina facing off against Chimalma. Both looked fierce, and their eyes were ablaze with fury. He noticed that each combatant had a set of jagged claw-like fingernails, which were dripping blood. By the moonlight, he saw dark stripes covering the clothes of each woman.
Those have to be blood streaks
, he realized.

Katrina’s face turned towards him, and she hissed. In that same moment, Chimalma’s right hand darted out and plunged into Katrina’s rib cage. With one swift, terrifying movement, Chimalma’s hand exited Katrina holding her still-beating heart while blood dripped thickly to the ground. The Aztec-descended vampire screamed in exaltation. Katrina’s eyes flashed and went dark as her body slumped lifelessly to the ground. He was stunned, and watched with horror while shouting, “Katrina! No!
No!
”

Then there was nothing.

He awoke in nearly total darkness, the only light emitting from the dimly glowing numerals of a digital clock sitting atop the dresser across the room. He was breathing in short gasps and broke out in a cold sweat. “Oh God,” he muttered, putting one hand to his forehead while propping himself in a sitting position with the other arm.

Seconds later, the door to the bedroom swung open, and Paige was at his bedside. He felt a brief rush of air wash against his slightly damp face as her bright blue eyes illuminated in the darkness.

“Are you okay, kiddo?” she asked with her cool palm pressed soothingly to the side of his face.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Just a nightmare.”

“Wow, you really broke out in a sweat,” she remarked absently. “Want to talk about it? I heard you shout Katrina’s name.”

He nodded in the darkness and began to recount the brief nightmare as Paige turned on the small lamp on the nightstand. It didn’t take long for comprehension to dawn on both their faces.

“Well, I don’t have to be a dream therapist for that one,” she noted sagely.

“Yeah,” he remarked darkly. “Keep your useless butt at home so you don’t distract Katrina and get her killed.”

“It’s probably best,” Paige agreed. “But she knows how badly you want to be there with her. It means a lot to her, Caleb.”

He nodded and slipped over the opposite side of the bed. He was thankful for having put on a pair of men’s pajama pants earlier as he walked towards the adjoining bathroom. He needed to towel off and didn’t want to parade around naked in front of her.

“Nice-looking useless butt you’ve got there,” she nevertheless teased while observing his lean, shirtless figure.

He grinned and felt a growing appreciation for her company. But his thoughts quickly turned back to Katrina, and he prayed that everything would turn out completely differently from his nightmare.

It was mid-afternoon the following day as Katrina and Alton stayed safely behind the dark curtains of their hotel room that the first major break occurred in their hunt for Chimalma. Alton used his laptop while Katrina reclined on the room’s sofa drinking blood from a hotel glass. She had brought a lockable cooler with packets of blood.

“Chimalma made her first mistake,” he observed with satisfaction.

She sneered and countered darkly, “Her first mistake was coming after Caleb and me.”

He ignored her and continued, “She must be using disposable cell phones to avoid being traced. But she’s also still trying to run a small international company. My Interpol contact acquired her corporate cell phone records, and guess what?”

Her interest was piqued, and she listened closely to her friend and mentor.

Alton noted her focused attention with a grin. “She’s still accepting calls on the corporate cell phone she carries,” he added with satisfaction. “I’ve got her latest location from the coordinates forwarded to me.”

“Just how did you get Interpol to help us?” she asked.

He smiled. “Simple. Chimalma’s crimes qualify her as either a serial killer or domestic terrorist.”

“Hm, helpful,” she admired. “Would there be someone of interest there, as well?”

“Perhaps,” he replied with a smirk. “But I’m not quite ready to say just yet.”

“I’m happy for you,” she offered sincerely.

Alton continued to smile as he retrieved a satellite image, which he zoomed in on progressively. It was of an area near Warren, Pennsylvania, in the far northwestern corner of the state close to the southern border of New York. He brought up MapQuest and focused on the city of Warren. Katrina appeared at his shoulder to peer intently at the screen.

“Why there?” she asked as her mind began organizing information and assessing variables.

“It’s only a small town, barely eleven thousand people as of the last census,” he noted as he searched the Internet for additional information. “Established in 1796, its main claims to fame were oil and lumber. The town went through hard economic times, with only a few companies serving as primary employers. But look.” He pointed to the screen.

“CRE has a small corporate retreat just outside of town,” Katrina observed.

“Great location,” he mused. “Lots of forest and hills and very few people.”

“But why there?” she insisted with a frown. “She’s hiding from us? That doesn’t make sense.”

Alton murmured his agreement. “Unless she wants us there. In which case, she’s picking the battle ground.”
Katrina scowled. “Fine with me.”

“Okay, destination known. Now what’s our plan, besides you tearing her to shreds?” he asked pointedly.

She glared at him, but admitted that he was correct. Her anger would only be useful if channeled properly. “I see explosives in her future,” she said coldly.

“Quite an extreme attention grabber, don’t you think?” Alton queried. “Perhaps a simple beheading would be better and far less dramatic?”

“Immolation eliminates evidence,” Katrina countered.

“Are you suggesting we blow up a lodge full of potentially innocent people?” he insisted incredulously. “That’s pretty bloodthirsty, even for you.”

She gave him a withering expression and snapped, “Of course not. Rather, we set up a kill zone near her and draw, or drag, her into it.”

He considered the idea and conceded, “Hm, seems plausible and direct. If you’ll arrange for a charter flight, I’ll make a few calls to some contacts that can help outfit us with helpful tools.”

“We’ll need a place to stay affording both privacy and some degree of safety from sunlight,” she added.

Alton searched the Internet further as Katrina retrieved information related to corporate charter flights from a folder in her luggage. She had used Sunset Air a number of times. The company was owned by a fellow vampire and was well-known among her kind for both its discretion and safe, reliable service.

“Got it,” Alton said. “There are cabins not far from the town of Warren. I’ll reserve one for us.”

“Fine,” she warned. “But we’re picking up some dark sheets and duct tape somewhere because I’m not about to spend the day with you hiding from sun rays in a cramped cabin closet.”

He chuckled and shook his head.

It was early evening already, though it felt to Caleb that time had practically stopped. He spent most of the day reading a biography on Theodore Roosevelt that he had brought from his apartment. Later that afternoon, he had talked Paige into connecting his laptop to the Internet long enough for him to update his video drivers so he could play a computer game he’d tried loading a few days prior. However, she was attentive to his activities, and once he was finished, she disabled the wireless access in the house, much to his chagrin. Still, it allowed him to pass a few hours getting lost in the game. However, he felt guilty for being able to sit casually playing while Katrina and Alton did all of the dangerous work on his behalf.
Once again, I feel useless
, he fumed.

Paige showered, changed into some black cotton lounge pants and a baby blue T-shirt, and sat barefooted at the computer hutch in Katrina’s sublevel room. Caleb made his way down the steps and plopped down on the nearby bed. He was going stir-crazy and was prepared to do just about anything to get out of the house, even if it were just for a few minutes. He couldn’t recall a time in his past when he had endured the kind of isolation that he was experiencing.

“Hey, any chance I could talk you into deactivating the front door code for about ten minutes?” he asked in a pleasant, innocent voice.

She smiled politely. “I seem to recall Katrina’s saying something along the lines of ‘Caleb stays inside the house, period.’”