Sunrise at Sunset (38 page)

“Yeah, I need to go take care of that now,” she interrupted with a glance upstairs. “Take off all of your clothes and leave them on the floor. Then go upstairs and take a shower.”

“My clothes?” he challenged.

“Uh, yeah!” she retorted sharply. “I don’t want any more blood tracked through the house than necessary. We’ve got a lot of it to clean up as it is.”

“Wait, won’t we need to worry about the police coming soon? Somebody must have heard what happened,” Caleb asked.

Paige scowled. “Around here? Nah, the house’s insulation and security paneling on the windows would’ve muffled some of it, and there’s too much distance between properties, as well as dense forest obstructions creating a sound buffer. Besides, the types of people living in neighborhoods like this care more about how nice your landscaping looks than whether or not they heard a noise from your property. Just try letting your lawn grow out of sorts. That’s when they’ll come looking for you.”

“Oh,” he replied blankly. He noticed that her T-shirt had two small holes across her midsection, and there was blood staining through the fabric. “You’re hurt!” he barked with alarm as he pointed to her shirt.

She glanced down at her midriff. “Nah. Just a couple of shotgun pellets. I’ll be fine.”

His mouth fell open in shock.

Paige tilted her head slightly and held up her hand for silence. “Gotta run,” she said.

She darted up the stairs, and Caleb was left standing alone. He sighed, stepped over to a dry portion of the floor away from the growing pool of blood, and started stripping off his clothes. Once finished, he felt extremely vulnerable as he tip-toed up the cool concrete stairs and through the house until reaching the stairway leading up to the bedrooms. He peered around carefully and crept up the carpeted stairs and into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Caleb finished showering and slipped on fresh jeans and a snug black T-shirt. Fortunately, he had grabbed a set of athletic shoes when hastily packing back at his apartment. He considered how it felt like weeks since he’d seen his own place. As he exited the bedroom and proceeded cautiously downstairs, he noticed occasional blood spots on the carpeted floor, but no bodies.

He heard muffled sounds coming from the garage beyond the kitchen. Frowning, he quietly moved in that direction.

When he arrived at the door leading into the garage, it was hanging wide open and barely suspended from its hinges. The door handle section was merely a jagged hole, as though something had taken a half-moon bite out of it. There were five black-uniformed bodies wearing body armor lying in a heap in the far corner of the garage to his right. Caleb swallowed and scanned the room until he saw Paige holding one of the attackers against the far wall by his neck. The man’s face was contorted in a look of rage laced with pain. His left arm was limp to his side, as if it were a hanging fixture from his body, and his right hand was grasping with futility against her hand as it held him in place.

“How many more of you are there?” Paige asked coldly. “Or shall I break the other arm too?”

“No more...none,” the man gasped in strangled fashion.

Caleb froze in place as he watched the event with horror. Ever since meeting her, Paige had reminded him of a sweet, mischievous, and spritely young woman. She still looked the same, save for some blood streaking her bob-cut blonde hair, but her visage was completely vicious instead of playful. It sent a shiver up his spine, and yet his eyes were unable to look away.

Part of him felt that what the assailant was receiving was well deserved, and part of him was disgusted by Paige’s violence. Somehow the middle-aged assailant with graying mustache seemed far less threatening, completely vulnerable, in fact. However, another part of Caleb wanted to be the one strangling the assailant instead of Paige. It was that thought that chilled him to the core.

As she maintained her strangle-hold, the man struggled with another emphatic response: “Just us!”

Paige froze in place and continued pinning the assailant to the wall as her head slowly turned to gaze back over her shoulder at Caleb. Her eyes were a blazing bright blue color, and their baleful appearance simultaneously filled him with both awe and terror. He felt frozen in place by her gaze, like a deer standing in the headlights of a speeding, oncoming train. At that moment, she emanated and embodied the visceral, terrifying power of a vampire.

“Caleb,” she spoke in a lethally calm voice. “You need to go back into the house now.”

“Let me go. You promised!” the man sputtered in a strangled gasp as he flailed in place with his legs.

“Oh, I’ll keep my promise,” she assured him calmly while still looking directly at Caleb, but there was something cruel in her expression.

Caleb became aware of a slight, uncontrolled tremor passing through his entire body as he stared wide-eyed at the scene before him.

“The house, Caleb,” she repeated calmly. “Please.”

He kept nodding his head up and down and stepped backwards until he felt his back hit the wall behind him. He managed to stumble down the short hallway into the kitchen only after Paige’s full attention returned to the assailant. Caleb’s breath was coming in small, ragged gasps as control slowly returned to his body.

He was barely across to the other side of the kitchen when he heard a loud cracking sound, followed by the dull thump of something hitting the garage floor.

“There,” Paige’s semi-distant voice carried to his ears. “I let you go, as promised.”

Caleb absently walked through the house without really seeing where he was going until he reached the farthest room on the lower floor, which happened to be the study. It was dark, save for the glow from the small desk lamp dimly illuminating the large oak desktop. The window behind the desk had a heavy metal plate in place blocking visibility to the outside world, and he silently stood staring at it. He was feeling a little distant from his body, as if seeing himself in a dream. And yet he realized that he was still standing before the shuttered window.

He stood silently for what felt like forever.

“Caleb,” prompted Paige’s quiet voice from the doorway. She had showered and changed into some new black jeans and a plain white T-shirt with a pink Hello Kitty on the front.

Caleb shut his eyes tightly and didn’t turn around. He wasn’t sure how long he had been standing before the study window, but noticed that the earlier tremor in his muscles had dissipated. However, his entire body was rigid, like a brick wall. A small hint of terror began to creep back into his mind, like a bad memory resurfacing.

“Are you okay?” Paige asked gently.

He was thankful that her voice had lost its quiet, lethal edge. “Yes, fine,” he replied quietly, carefully.
Please go away
.

She silently considered his response, as if studying him. “It had to be done,” she offered. “You realize that, don’t you?”

He nodded. Yet something still bothered him about his reaction earlier, something new and terrible.

She frowned and approached him from behind in a very deliberate, human way. Her bare footfalls made noticeable sounds on the carpeted floor, which he was able to detect with his own hearing.

Is that for my benefit?
he wondered.

Very gently, yet deliberately, she placed her right hand on his shoulder and immediately noted the hard tenseness of his muscles as he remained statue-still.

“You and I are okay then?” she asked softly, but with a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

He nodded. “Yes, we’re fine.”

She stepped closer, and her right arm wrapped underneath his arm and across his lean chest muscles to rest flat against his ribs. She elevated herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek ever so softly. “I’m your babysitter, remember?” she asked gently. “Your guardian. I’m here for your benefit, nobody else’s.”

His body relaxed a little, and he opened his eyes.

“I scared you, didn’t I?” she surmised easily.

He nodded. “Somewhat.”
No, you scared the hell out of me!

“Well, I’m not going to hurt you,” she reassured him soothingly. “I wouldn’t dare, even if so inclined. You’re not like other humans anymore. You’ve been claimed as a mate by a vampire. You were special before, but you’re very special now.”

Paige hugged his back snugly against the front of her body, and Caleb felt her warmth penetrate soothingly through his T-shirt and into the cool skin of his back. He hadn’t realized he was feeling chilled until her body was against his. She flexed her right arm gently to pull him against her and used the fingertip of her left hand to trace the outline of his left ear.

She felt his pulse and his heartbeat and studied his breathing pattern. “Something more is bothering you.”

He considered her statement, and the source of his feelings dawned on him in its entirety. “It’s me,” he replied faintly. “I saw you strangling the man in the garage.”

She frowned. “Yes. And?”

“I wanted to be the one strangling him.”

Her eyes narrowed as she considered his revelation and ran the fingertips of her left hand gently across the left side of his face. “Unusual for you, I think, given your disposition,” she ventured. “But understandable.”

“I’ve never felt like that before.” He frowned. “It’s not like me.”

His entire life had been a struggle for composure and avoidance to open hostility. He had feared his father as a child, feared the anger directed at him at such a powerless age. He never wanted to convey such violence against anyone else, so he avoided aggression altogether. But something had changed in the past couple of hours. Somehow the idea of violence didn’t seem so abhorrent anymore.

“Something bad has awakened in me, I think,” he whispered.
What’s happening to me?

Paige considered his response. “Well,” she whispered soothingly into his ear. “I guess we’ll have to help you tame it. Avoidance is dangerous, but control is useful and healthy.”

A silent moment passed.

“I appreciate it,” he responded numbly.

She gently pressed her lips to the back of his neck and lightly kissed him.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“Because I’m proud of you, kiddo,” she whispered soothingly. “You did very well today.”

He smirked. “Thanks, babysitter.”

She patted his chest lightly with her right hand. “Come on, tiger. Let’s try to get this house cleaned up again. And we’ve got a door in the garage to repair, as well.”

“Wait,” Caleb said suddenly.

She kept her arm around him and asked, “Yes?”

He reconsidered asking his question, but curiosity burned in him to know the answer. “Earlier, when I was in the basement, and I heard you fighting those men,” he began.

She waited for him to continue.

“Where the hell did you learn to fight that many people at once?” he asked intently.

Paige paused, patted him absently on the chest a couple of times with her hand and finally responded in a quiet voice, “Katrina taught me while I apprenticed with her. I honed my skills with her for a few years, occasionally joining her to do mercenary work in unpleasant parts of the world.”

He let that sink in for a moment.

“No human’s going to harm you while I’m here, Caleb,” she reassuringly whispered in his ear. “I learned from the best. So, come on. You can help me now.”

Paige pulled away from him and turned to lead the way from the room. He turned to follow her and detected a more hopeful sensation beginning to replace the dread that had permeated his earlier feelings.

“You were pretty scary today. I didn’t expect that from you,” he said. “And you seemed prepared, just like you said a couple of days ago.”

“Well, not totally prepared, really,” she replied sourly as they proceeded down the hallway.

“Yeah? How so?” he asked.

“I forgot to pack more than one Shirley Manson T-shirt,” she replied glumly. “The one I was wearing was ruined, of course.”

The recollection about her stomach wounds resurfaced suddenly, and he reached out to grasp her shoulder from behind. “Oh crap, the gunshot wounds!” he exclaimed. “Are you okay?”

She stopped, turned to him, and lifted the lower portion of her T-shirt to reveal two small, faded scars slightly reddened against the pale, smooth skin of her stomach. “Healing up fine,” she replied happily.

He gaped at her. “You heal fast, but what about the bullets?”

She smirked, reached into her pocket, and revealed two large shotgun pellets in her open hand. “Vampires are resilient, Caleb,” she offered with a smile. “Aren’t we amazing?”

He frowned, briefly recalling the earlier scene in the garage between her and the assailant and replied darkly, “Amazing and terrible all at the same time.”

“Maybe a little of both,” she agreed in a subdued tone as she lowered her T-shirt.

Katrina raced from the interior of the facility, trying to maintain a degree of stealth as she gave the storage building a wide berth in favor of approaching from the opposite direction. In the end, it was a sound decision.