Wicked Sunset (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 4) (14 page)

At least it was a shared experience.

We were like two competitive, slightly dysfunctional sisters. Inevitably, one got annoyed with the other enough that it occasionally came to blows.

Afterward, we made up eventually and everything would be okay again; at least, until the next eruption.

Our spats rarely got out of hand or went to extremes. And despite our occasional grievances, I loved Paige dearly.

Only this time, the person that means more to me than life itself got caught in the crossfire between us.

I took a deep, steadying breath as waves of anguish threatened to overwhelm me.

No, I’m a terrible friend and sister. And now, in the end, I’m not even a very good mate.

“I’m not good enough for you, my dear Caleb,” I whispered. “I’m too dangerous for you.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I let them fall where they may.

The door to the room abruptly opened and, in the blink of an eye, Paige was standing at my side, holding me and cradling my head against her stomach.

“Shh, it’s going to be okay,” she said.

“You don’t know that,” I said.

She said nothing as she continued to embrace me.

Minutes later, the door to the room opened.

“Ethan,” Paige said.

I sniffled and pulled away from Paige. I gratefully accepted the tissues that she pressed into my hand and dabbed at my eyes.

Once I focused on Ethan, his eyes were tight around the edges. He held a blue patient folder in one hand, which appeared half-stuffed with paperwork and charts.

“Let’s have a chat in my office, shall we?” he asked.

I frowned at him curiously. “Here’s fine.”

He gestured toward Caleb and pointed to his ear with one finger.

I hadn’t even considered that he might be able to hear us at some level.

Ethan remained silent and somber-looking as Paige and I accompanied him to the third floor to his office.

This can’t be good…

The tension level rose to such a furious height inside me that I wanted to scream.

Ethan’s office was a small, spartanly furnished affair with a single, shuttered window.

He closed the door behind us and gently tapped the edge of the folder against his open palm. My eyes were drawn to it as a feeling of foreboding washed over me.

“We need to bear in mind that he already had a rather serious concussion,” he said.

“Let’s not rehash that,” I said. “Just tell me where we are.”

“The CT scan results are in,” he said. “As I feared, he has a subdural hematoma, also referred to as a subdural hemorrhage.”

My heart sank.

“Essentially, he has a pocket of blood gathered on the surface of his brain. In this case, it’s in the area around the base of the skull near the brain stem,” Ethan said.

“Well, is he going to be okay? Will it heal?” Paige asked in a tight voice.

I looked into Ethan’s eyes, seeking anything hopeful or positive.

“We suspect that the bleeding is filling the area around his brain very rapidly, compressing vital tissue as is progresses,” he replied. “Unless we operate immediately, Caleb’s probably going to die. Even then, there’s no guarantee that he’ll survive the surgery.”

“We can inject him with some of my blood,” I said. “It will heal him.”

“I considered that, as well. However, I’m afraid that’s not good enough,” Ethan said. “The blood needs to be carefully applied directly into the brain, near the damaged area. But too much would start the transformation process, which his body wouldn’t survive in its current state. Too little, and well, he dies anyway. There’s simply no precedent for this; at least, not that I know of. I don’t even have any idea of how much blood to safely use for something like this.”

“No,” I whispered as my legs gave way and I crumpled to the floor.

Every bit of strength and courage that I embodied, every ounce of alpha female that had enabled me to confront nearly ever challenge or threat over the centuries, was suddenly spent and useless.

I’d finally confronted an insurmountable challenge.

“Red!” Paige said as she and Ethan bent down after me.

I curled up into a fetal position on the floor, crying uncontrollably; my body wracked with sobs and anguish. The pain was unbearable and I simply wanted to die.

“Shh, stop that,” Paige soothed, holding onto me and brushing her fingers through my hair. “Caleb needs you now.”

The door to Ethan’s office opened abruptly, and I glanced up to see Alton striding confidently into the room, dressed in one of his fitted charcoal gray suits.

Tears streamed down my face. “This is all my fault. I just want to die.”

“Katrina,” Alton said, immediately squatting down to sweep me into his arms.

“How in the
hell
did you get here so quickly?” Paige demanded.

“You’d be surprised what I can accomplish when I need to,” he said.

“As in defying all laws of time and space?” she asked incredulously.

“I was already in the States. Never mind that now. Dammit, somebody give me a status report,” Alton ordered in his crisp, English accent.

* * *

Alton had reached down and pulled me into his lap like I was some overgrown child, just as he’d done only a couple of times in my past. He sat and patiently listened to everything Ethan had already revealed to Paige and me.

There had been a couple of occasions that felt like an eternity ago, when I’d been rather vulnerable in my post-human existence; Alton had been the rock that I’d needed.

My mind felt numb as I felt his arms enfold me protectively. My eyes caught Paige’s as she stared back at me with a shocked expression.

I wanted to escape to someplace quiet and safe.

Moreover, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. I wrapped my arms around Alton’s neck and pressed my head against his chest for the first time in centuries.

Given the hopeless circumstances, he was the only potential solace, the only remaining safe harbor, available to me.

Escape. Think about anything else.

Alton.

He was my dear friend, my former mentor, and had been the only vampire who sheltered and nurtured me when I thought all had been lost in my world. Suddenly, I felt like that same helpless, nearly broken woman he’d taken pity on over five centuries ago.

I owe everything that I’ve become to him. He’s the reason I learned not only to adapt and survive, but to flourish. He trained me to be an alpha.

And then the renewed sense of anguish that surged back through me was once again too much to bear. There was little respite from it, even in Alton’s protective embrace.

I felt irreparably broken.

“Katrina!” Ethan said, drawing me back to the present.

My eyes immediately found his.

“The recommendation and medical consensus is to proceed with the operation,” Ethan said. “We have to relieve the pressure of blood around the brain.”

What do I do?

“I concur,” Alton said quietly.

“As do I,” Ethan agreed. “But it’s not my place to say. This has to be Katrina’s decision.”

I felt everyone’s attention on me, and I glanced up at the other faces in the room.

Think, dammit. Think.

“I agree. We have to operate,” I said weakly. “It’s the only chance he has.”

Despite sound logic, I felt as if I’d just bestowed a death sentence upon my mate and lover.

“You’ll need to apply some vampire blood near the damaged brain stem area, as well,” Alton said.

My head jerked up to stare him in the eyes. “You heard what Ethan said about that. It’s too dangerous. We don’t even know how much to use.”

The corners of Alton’s mouth edged upward slightly. “Indeed, you likely do not. However, I do,” he said confidently. “I’ve learned a thing or two in eight hundred years.”

I was too shocked to speak as I stared at him.

“I
can
do this, Katrina. You have to trust me,” he insisted.

“I do,” I mumbled, somewhat dumbstruck. “I trust you.”

While I’d have gratefully embraced any far-fetched effort in order to save Caleb’s life, a single spark of hope flared merely from Alton’s confident tone.

It seemed as if there was nothing the nearly millennium-old vampire couldn’t do.

At least, I hope so.

In fact, it was his long-distance advice to Paige over the phone last year that had enabled her to save Caleb from a near-mortal wound at the hands of a renegade vampire.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He said nothing but merely pressed his lips to my forehead in a soft kiss. With that kiss came a sliver of a chance that the heavy curtain of doom clouding my mind might lift.

With luck.

“Right then, my dear. Let’s get ready to save that young scalawag of a mate of yours,” he said good-naturedly into my ear, his warm breath tickling my skin.

I looked over to see Paige’s tear-filled eyes staring back at me as Ethan held her in his arms.

“Now, off my lap, young lady,” Alton gently said. “I have hasty phone calls to make, a hospital administrator to bribe, and a surgery to prep for. Doctor, if you would be so kind to arrange immediate introductions for me.”

He half-lifted me from his lap as I struggled to stand, wiping more tears from my eyes. He spared only an additional moment to take hold of my chin between his strong fingertips.

“No more of those tears, dear lady. Caleb’s going to need that alpha lover of his back again very soon,” he said in an almost paternal manner.

“How can you be so certain of that after what I did to him?” I asked.

He smiled in a completely disarming fashion.

“Never worry. He’ll forgive you, Katrina. I understand that young man far better than you think,” he said with an uncharacteristic wink.

I half-choked, half-chuckled back at him with a nod.

How could he be so damned chevalier?

Then, like a monarch venturing out into his kingdom, he departed the room with Ethan trailing behind him.

He’s practically vampire royalty, of sorts, I suppose.

“That dude is so in control of things,” Paige said.

“He’s a force of nature,” I said.

“No,
you’re
a force of nature,” she countered. “He’s more like gravity on a planetary scale.”

I frowned at her. “Where did you get that from?”

“The Science Channel,” she said with a shrug. “One of Ethan’s fixations. You can’t help but pick some of that stuff up, I suppose.”

I shook my head at her as she regarded me with amusement.

A fleeting split-second of quasi-normality felt almost reassuring, given the past day or so.

In fact, I craved it, drinking it up like cool water in a hot desert.

Then it was gone, passed by like a shooting star.

Paige was so dear to me, and yet, I’d been driven into such a rage that I had half-wanted to kill her the previous night.

“I’m sorry for last night,” I said.

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “We’ve been about two decades overdue for our next big fight.”

However, she regarded me sadly and then hugged me in a tight embrace. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I should probably learn to keep my opinions about relationships to myself; particularly
yours and Caleb’s
.”

I sighed. “Yeah, well, I need to try to be less bitchy and controlling, I suppose.”

“Nah, our boy seems to like that sort of thing,” she said. “Well, maybe not the bitchy part.”

I separated from our embrace to stare down at her.

“
Hey
,” I said.

“Oops, there I go again,” she said, quirking her lips together.

* * *

Daytime went and evening again as I sat at Caleb’s bedside, holding his hand in mine and whispering words of encouragement to him.

“I can’t lose you, my love,” I whispered in his ear, feeling every syllable resonate in my heart.

I hope he can hear me.

“You’re the love of my life, the one chance I have at true happiness in centuries. I can’t live without you, so you don’t really have any choice in the matter.”

An impromptu inspiration struck me.

“This is your alpha mate, ordering you to get well,” I said in a loving, yet commanding, tone. “You will obey me, my love. I haven’t given you leave to do otherwise.”

Suddenly, he stirred slightly, as if returning from a deep sleep. My eyes darted to meet his, but they remained closed. And then, almost as soon as it began it was over and his body resumed its sedate state.

“You heard me,” I whispered encouragingly in his ear before kissing him lightly. “I love you, and I need you, just as much as you need me.”

We need each other.

Despite the rekindling of anguished feelings, I paused to reflect on the previous night’s dire events.

“And this time, I’ll do a far better job for you,” I promised with a resolve that slowly welled from deep within me. “I’ll be the alpha vampire and dedicated lover and mate that you’ve always dreamed of, that you deserve.”

I placed a soft kiss against his cool, dry lips. Then I reached to the small hospital table beside me and retrieved a stick of lip balm that the nurse had left, which I applied to his dry lips.

Please get well, my love. Return to me…

The door to Caleb’s room opened, and I turned to see Ethan and Alton regarding me with solemn expressions. Both were dressed in blue surgical scrubs, which surprisingly seemed to suit Alton.

“It’s almost time,” Alton said. “They’re making final preparations for us.”

“We’ll need to draw your blood now,” Ethan said.

“How in the hell did you manage to arrange all of this?” I asked.

Alton shrugged, as if were nothing at all. “I explained that Ethan was a qualified surgeon in his own right, and that this hospital was about to become the first hospital to conduct a highly-secretive but cutting-edge experimental procedure that may revolutionize the treatment of cerebral hemorrhaging,” he said.