Sunrise at Sunset (41 page)

“It was so nice to be outdoors again. I bet you two were glad that I didn’t decide to go on a jog out there,” he quipped with a mischievous grin.

Paige rolled her eyes and retorted, “And you’d be on your own, Mister Blowtorch.”

But Katrina simply gave him a wicked smile, pulled herself to her full height to tower before him, and replied ominously, “The sun would set before you knew it, and you’d be free game for me, my love.”

His smile faded quickly, and he adopted a more humble expression as he folded his arms across his chest. “Sorry, Kat,” he muttered with a tone of respect evident in his voice. “Thanks so much for letting me outside this morning.”

“That’s what I thought,” she replied smoothly with a sly smile. “And you’re welcome.”

Alton chuckled as he walked into another room.

By late morning, Alton told Caleb that Paige wanted his help in the garage. On his way there, he reflected on his most recent visit there when Paige was interrogating one of the assailants who had attacked them. He wondered why Paige wanted his help and momentarily considered the pile of dead bodies that she had stacked on the floor following the attack. He shivered, anxiously hoping he wasn’t going to be handling corpses.

As he slowly peered into to the garage from the hallway near the kitchen, he heard someone pulling something heavy across the garage floor. His vision into the garage increased, and he saw Paige placing a broken china cabinet against the wall. It was one of the larger pieces of furniture damaged in the house during the assault. He let out a sigh, happy it wasn’t something of a more grisly nature.

Paige looked up with a smirk and teased, “Hey there, kiddo. Where’ve you been hiding? I need help clearing some space for all the junk we have to stack out here for disposal.”
Caleb gave a nervous grin and asked, “Oh, that. Where’s all of the, um, you know?”

Paige adopted a perplexed look and smiled at his intended reference. “Oh, so that’s why you had that look on your face,” she offered with a knowing tone. “Alton and I disposed of those thugs last night after he and Katrina returned. We found their panel truck and hauled them off in it.”

He frowned. “But how did you dispose –”

“We buried the weapons and ammunition in a rural location and burned the bodies inside the truck some distance from the weapons. It’s not very tidy, but should be far enough away from Atlanta that our tracks are covered. We returned just before dawn, not long before you came downstairs this morning.”

Caleb’s eyes widened. “Well, that’s impressive.”

“Thanks,” she replied with a smug expression. “Now, let’s clear some space out here.”

The perky vampire tossed some gloves to Caleb, but he had to step back to get a good catch angle on them. As he did, he abruptly backed into Katrina, which startled him as he staggered slightly off-balance. Katrina chuckled at his surprised reaction while her left arm instantly wrapped around his waist to steady him against her. She fluidly presented him with his cell phone in her right hand.

“Vampires are too stealthy for their own good,” he mumbled with a degree of embarrassment.

“Your voicemail is clean, and there are two messages from coworkers you’ll want to listen to. Also, your work and home email inboxes are cleaned out. Again, you’ll want to read a number of new messages,” she informed him while ignoring his comment.

He leaned his head back against her shoulder as he retrieved his cell phone from her hand. Its return lightened his former irritation at having been caught off-guard by Katrina’s sudden appearance. “Thanks,” he offered appreciatively. “And was there anything bad?”

She paused and draped her right arm across his upper chest to hug him for a moment. Paige watched the two of them with a curious expression.

“Yes, my love,” she replied in a displeased tone. “Three very bad voicemails and some rather unpleasant, graphic emails with gruesome attachments of some unfortunate victim.”

He nodded. “You know, it’s macabre, but I’m dying of curiosity. Maybe you could just describe one or two things for me?”

She kissed him on the back of the head while considering his request.
He’s an adult after all
, she mused, although she would have preferred not to give Chimalma the satisfaction, even belatedly, of even a cursory level of awareness on Caleb’s part. She sighed and offered, “A man was beheaded, and she wanted to share the experience visually. There was screaming from the victim before he succumbed to either death or unconsciousness.”

He considered the brief description and quickly decided that he wasn’t more curious. “Oh,” he replied. “You were probably right not to let me see that. Pretty disturbing stuff. Any idea who the victim was?”

“None.”

“And the voicemails?”

Her facial expression turned stony. “Well, Chimalma had some cruel and grisly ideas on which body parts she wanted to remove from you while you were alive to experience it firsthand. There were other messages, but you get the idea.”

He tensed and was almost sorry he asked. Pulling away from her slightly, he bent his head up to kiss her soft lips. She happily responded in kind, appreciating the feeling of his lips against hers.

“Thanks, for everything,” he murmured.

“Glad to be of service,” she replied with a smirk.

“Okay, love birds. Catch-up kissing later, moving stuff now,” Paige insisted as she rolled her eyes at them. She told Katrina, “You’re distracting my worker-bee, Red.”

Katrina released Caleb from her embrace and countered, “Oh, dry up.”

He slipped the pair of gloves on and shook his head with a smirk as Katrina stuck her tongue out at her short friend.

Part of the day involved Paige and Katrina’s surveying and recording the damage caused from the incursion of the mercenaries the prior evening. Caleb quickly joined in, if only to spend time being around Katrina. Following their forced separation and the dangerous events of the past few days, he was feeling more thankful for her presence in his life.

Katrina looked around the basement area, noting a bucket containing some broken bottles of wine on the floor near the wine racks. As her eyes quickly scanned the room, she stopped and stared at the steel crowbar that Caleb had used lying on the workbench table. She moved towards it and hefted it in her hand.

“Ah, yes, the crowbar,” she muttered darkly. She recalled Paige’s quick summary of his confrontation at the foot of the stairs. Her gaze swept across the room until stopping on the refrigerator, which was riddled with bullet holes. She noted the scrubbed area of the floor where the spilled blood was cleaned up for the most part. Tightness formed in her chest as she realized Caleb’s final moments could have been on that very spot. She shuddered and tightly closed her eyes for a moment. She was grateful fate wasn’t cruel on every occasion. However, she also didn’t like the idea of the risk he had taken by doing what he did. She sighed as Paige watched her reaction intently.

“That was dangerous,” Katrina chastised as she put the crowbar back on the table and turned to look at Caleb directly.

“I refuse to be helpless for the rest of my life,” he said as he stood with his arms folded before him.

She reached out to grasp Caleb’s chin firmly in the fingers of her right hand and rotated his face slightly upwards towards hers. Her green eyes gazed down into his pale blue ones in a penetrating fashion with an expression that Caleb thought was part disapproving and part contemplative. After a few silent moments, she slowly moved her face to his and kissed him warmly on the lips. He gratefully responded in kind, thankful she had determined not to be cross with him.

“Perhaps being helpless is indeed bad. After all, I can’t be everywhere at once,” she agreed. “But I encourage sensible caution in the future versus reckless risk-taking. Understood?”

An approving smile formed subtly on Paige’s face as she stood behind Katrina, though in clear view of the exchange with Caleb.

He smiled. “Understood.”
I’m more than willing to concede that.

Her eyes seemed to lighten somewhat as she briefly kissed him again and whispered, “Thank you.”

Her attentions returned to the ruined refrigerator next to the concrete stairs. Caleb reached out and entwined the fingers of his left hand into Katrina’s right, and she grasped it gently in return as she shook her head.

“I suppose we have shopping to do sometime soon,” she noted absently. “New furniture and a new refrigerator.”

“And a new garage side entry door,” Paige reminded the tall, red-haired vampire.

“I’d love to do some shopping,” Caleb remarked brightly. He realized that he must have been dying to get out of the house for a while, because shopping wasn’t actually one of his favorite pastimes.

Katrina raised an eyebrow and regarded him thoughtfully. “I’m sure you would.”

“There’s bound to be a home improvement center nearby,” Paige muttered off-handedly.

“We’ll make a trip out this evening then,” Katrina decided.

Caleb smiled brightly, pulled on Katrina’s hand as he moved towards the stairs, and urged, “We’d better start making a list then. I can do some price comparisons on the Internet and check out product reviews, as well.”

She smiled with amusement as she allowed him to draw her back upstairs in a hasty manner. Paige snickered as she trailed behind them.
I just adore you, Caleb
, Katrina thought happily.

“This house is too quiet,” Paige complained as Caleb and Katrina began their list of items, tools, supplies, and furnishings needed for repair or replacement in the house.

Alton looked up thoughtfully from reading
King Lear
in the main living room recliner. “Some music might be nice,” he agreed.

Paige grinned. “Katrina’s computer has volumes of music on it. I’ll pick out something and pipe it thought the house speakers.”

She bounded out of the room as Alton shouted, “Pick a variety, at least!” He shook his head and returned to reading.

A few minutes later, The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” began to stream over the speakers. Paige danced up the hallway, looking spritely in her jeans and Ramones concert T-shirt as she swayed her arms and hips to the beat.

Katrina and Caleb walked through the house with a clipboard inventorying the furniture, carpeting, and walls for damage assessments and soon found themselves tapping or swaying to the music. It was an odd sort of setting, three vampires and a human going about various seemingly-domestic activities in the window-shuttered house. And while Katrina and Caleb were more obvious about their mutual happiness, it would have been surprising to all that each member in the household was feeling rather contented as time passed.

It became sort of a game, as each person made their way down to Katrina’s computer throughout the day to add their own preferred songs into the playlist. Together they made for an eclectic series of selections. Alton chose arrangements by Chopin, Clause Debussy, Mozart, and Vivaldi and then surprised everyone by including popular cuts from Al Green and the Rolling Stones.

When “Let’s Stay Together” played by Al Green, Katrina took Caleb in her arms and began to kiss him warmly. He dropped the clipboard to the floor and wrapped his arms around her waist as they began swaying to the music.

Paige selected songs by The Clash, the Ramones, Coldplay, Johnny Cash, and No Doubt. When Garbage’s “Temptation Waits” played, Caleb explained to Katrina how she had played that as a diversion technique during the mercenary incursion.

Katrina scowled and commented darkly, “I approve.”

As “Train in Vain,” by The Clash, played, Caleb was surprised by how well Katrina could dance. He joined in to the best of his ability and realized it was the first time they had danced together as a couple. He happily noted that she seemed to enjoy it as much as he and made a mental note about that for the future.

As “Just a Girl” played by No Doubt, Paige suddenly appeared upstairs and danced past Caleb as she sang the song out loud and abruptly began to tickle him in the ribs. He flailed on the floor, laughing and writhing as he struggled against her swiftly moving hands and fingers digging at his ribs. Katrina giggled contentedly as she watched the display. By the end of the song, he was laying face down on the floor, trying to catch his breath, and Paige strutted away as she danced to another tune.

When Katrina stole away from Caleb briefly to make her own music selections, she queued up some operatic renditions by Luciano Pavarotti, jazz from Miles Davis, and popular tunes from Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and U2. But she also surprised him by selecting some songs from Jem and Fiona Apple.

The entire affair was very enlightening for Caleb, providing additional insight into the personalities of each vampire. He hooked his Apple iPod to Katrina’s computer and made selections from his own library. He played a number of tunes from Silversun Pickups, as well as some popular songs from Our Lady Peace, Foo Fighters, and Greenday. However, he surprised the vampires by also selecting a few classic cuts from the 1960s and ‘70s. When “Golden Years,” by David Bowie, played, Paige returned to dance with him some, admiring his sense of rhythm.

“You, me, clubbing, soon,” she demanded at the end of the song while holding her thumb and forefinger to her ear, making the universal hand symbol and mouthing the words: “Call me.”