A Bloody London Sunset (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 2) (13 page)

Another picture was his mother standing with him next to a sparsely decorated Christmas tree, which had been their first Christmas together the year his abusive father had disappeared from their lives when he was eight. He stared at the picture, noting that he and his mother both had forced smiles. It had been a strange year, his father disappearing one evening after work from their home and not even taking the family car with him. Less than a year after the photo had been taken, his mother had secured their new home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio.

He slipped the picture back into the box and reached down absently to stack the scattered photos into a pile.
I can look at old photos some other time,
he resolved. His past, particularly his youth, wasn’t necessarily something he wanted to reminisce about at length. As he grabbed at three remaining pictures on the floor, one slipped from between the other two and floated just out of reach. After placing the other two in the container, he reached for the lone one. He quickly scanned the photograph, but something triggered in the periphery of his mind, causing him to scrutinize it at length.

The picture was of his mother and a number of her coworkers at Columbus Mortgage at the banquet where they had won a company raffle for their children’s college scholarships. Caleb had no memory of the event because the children had not been present that evening, but his mind screamed with alarm when he saw not one, but two, familiar-looking faces in the photograph. First was his mother, of course, but the second was a young brunette woman standing to the left of the winners. The caption read,
Columbus Mortgage Award Recipients with Company Owner, Amber Simmons
. Though Amber’s hair color was different, there was no mistaking her telltale green eyes and guarded smile. Her face resembled Katrina.

His ears rang with a piercing intensity that blocked out the music from his ear buds. Searing images flared within his mind like a series of vivid flashbacks, nearly blocking out his vision and causing him to lurch where he squatted on the garage floor. He saw brightly glowing emerald vampire eyes appear like giant orbs before him. A split-second later came the image of his father bearing an evil grimace and brandishing a leather belt in his hand. That vision sent a rush of sheer terror though his body. He felt a sudden pain in his left arm, followed by the image of blood running down it. A loud cracking sound like a branch breaking erupted in his ears, and he thought he saw the blurry image of his father falling to the floor. Then he was vaguely aware of sitting on the cold garage floor with the photograph lying on the floor next to him. He realized that the music on his iPod was still playing as if nothing had happened.

“Crap,” he muttered breathlessly while trying to understand what had just occurred.

The visions he experienced were all new to him, save for the flashback of Katrina’s glowing green eyes. He’d seen them last fall on the night she revealed her vampire nature to him, the night he fled from her in panic after receiving a similar flashback.

His heartbeat raced, and a surge of adrenaline rushed through his body as the implications of both the flashbacks and the picture impacted him like a hammer to an anvil. His attention returned to the old photograph as he picked it up from beside him and tried to divine its meaning. Katrina knew, or at least had met his mother and was apparently the former owner of Columbus Mortgage, the company his mother spent years working for until her death just a couple of years ago. A host of questions buzzed through his head simultaneously.

When did she cease being Amber to become Katrina? How well did she know my mother? Did she know me as well? Was her enrollment in my history class last fall more than just a coincidence? Was that why Katrina seemed so familiar to me last fall when we first met?

“And why the hell didn’t Kat tell me about this already?!” Caleb growled.

Since meeting him as a student in his history class last fall, she had never mentioned ever knowing him or his mother. In fact, during numerous evenings of getting to know each other, well before Katrina revealed she was a vampire, she had asked questions of him implying she knew nothing about him or his past.
She lied to me?

Caleb held the picture in one hand as he massaged his temples with the other, wondering if looking at the photo would cause additional flashbacks. He went into the house to the kitchen where he tossed the picture onto the countertop. After retrieving a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and twisting the cap off, he took a few swigs. The cold liquid burned slightly as it coursed down his dry throat. Finally, he plopped onto a barstool with a heavy sigh and stared down at the picture before him.

“What the hell?” he demanded, his mind clawing for answers and meaning to the abrupt revelations.

Radiohead’s “Reckoner” was an ominous soundtrack from his iPod as he ruminated over the picture and started on a second bottle of beer. He felt shock, anger, and a sense of betrayal at Katrina for having kept such important information from him. By the time he opened a third beer, he was unsure how long he had been sitting at the counter staring down at the picture. He was only half-finished with his beer when he heard the garage door open.
It’s about time
, he mulled angrily as he heard the familiar purr of the Audi’s engine.

As soon as Katrina exited the Audi, she noticed an open box lying on the garage floor next to the storage shelves. On her way into the house, she glanced casually at the box, noting that it contained some photographs. When she walked into the kitchen, she noticed Caleb sitting at the counter listening to his iPod. She immediately smelled beer and saw two empty bottles and one that was half full. She frowned as she observed the dark, almost angry, expression on his face. It was a mix of pain and anger, but laced with confusion.

“Caleb?” she asked tentatively as she sat her purse on the counter. “Is everything all right, my love?”

He remained silent as he stared levelly at her and took another swig of beer. He swallowed the mouthful of beer in one gulp and firmly banged the bottle back down onto the countertop. She blinked from the harsh, clanking noise it made against the marble.

“No, not all right,” he stated coldly, flicking the photograph in her direction with a swift motion of his hand.

She slapped her hand over the picture before it floated off the edge of the counter, and her keen eyes focused instantly on it with a mix of surprise and growing horror. Her past had finally come back full circle to haunt her, and a secret she long wanted to reveal in her own time had been released prematurely. Suddenly, Pandora’s Box was open, and it was too late to slam the lid shut.
Oh shit
, she thought with a combination of shock and weariness.

“Please, Caleb,” she pleaded. “Let me explain.”

He jerked the ear buds from his ears, lifted his beer bottle to take a quick swig, and held it up to her. There was only a third of the contents remaining.

“You have about that long,” he answered flatly.

She had never seen him act this way before, and it worried her. But she tried to concentrate on how best to approach the topic of the photo, desperately wishing she had more time. Yet time was no longer a luxury at her disposal, and her mind raced for something to say. “I owned Columbus Mortgage, the company your mother worked for. The picture was from an awards banquet for college scholarships --”

“I know that already! I’m not completely stupid,” he snapped, causing her to wince at his tone. “I can deduct all that from the picture. Tell me something I don’t know, such as why you never told me about this. When we first met, you made me think you didn’t know my mother or my past. Why did you lie to me?”

He’s so angry
. She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I never lied to you, Caleb. I listened intently to everything you told me about your past, but I never actually declared that I didn’t know you.”

He wasn’t amused and deliberately lifted the beer bottle to his lips to swallow a larger-than-normal mouthful. Then he placed the bottle down before him resolutely. Only a quarter of the contents remained, she noted distinctly.

Something else happened
.
He never drinks like that
.

“Caleb, my love, you have to understand that I never wanted to hurt you. And I’ve done everything in my power to protect you from harm,” she blurted.

But he ignored her last comment, demanding, “How long did you know my mother?”

She blinked. “I only spoke to her directly on one occasion, the evening of the banquet. Even after I arranged for Wanda to receive an offer for a position at the company soon after your father disappeared, I maintained my distance from her.”

He frowned at length as he processed that information. “Wait. You arranged for her to be hired? Why did you do that? Who was my mother to you that you would do that?”

Here we go
. A cascade of memories flooded through her mind at once. She silently recalled how Caleb, then an innocent young boy, had helped her by calling for an emergency blood delivery as she had lain in a painful, burned condition beneath his father’s car in their ramshackle garage. She remembered how bravely he had delivered the blood supply to her and later returned to check on her. Later that night, Caleb’s inebriated father had discovered him in the garage and been enraged, having assumed the child had been playing in the garage against his wishes. In the child’s defense, she had killed Ted Taylor in that garage, though regrettably within Caleb’s view. She had tried using a hypnosis technique, typically only useful for training animals, to try erasing Caleb’s memory of the event. Of course, she wasn’t sure it was prudent to blurt all of that out to him in his current state and instead chose a simpler response.

“Wanda was a single parent to a wonderful young boy, and she needed help at a critical time in her life,” Katrina answered, momentarily recalling the adorable image of him at age eight.

“But how did you
know
that?” he demanded irritably. “And why would you have cared? You’ve told me before you try to stay out of the lives of humans because they’re a threat to you.”

She frowned at his rather base opinion of her motivations, but she accepted it in the interest of trying to placate his temper. Instead, she concentrated on how to answer best the more direct question.

“Because I cared about you, Caleb,” she explained softly. “You saved my life when you were a child, and I couldn’t help but try to repay your kindness in some way.”

His eyes widened with shock as his gaze shifted to meet her eyes. His mind raced as he challenged, “What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t even meet you until last fall in my history class.” He once again recalled the sense of familiarity he had felt upon first meeting her, and yet had no idea why. There were no specific memories tied to that feeling, and it confused him.

Katrina saw the look of bewilderment on his face and moved towards him to try to comfort him. But he jerked his hand up with his palm held outwards to her.

“No,” he insisted. “Just stay right there.”

She stopped abruptly, folding her arms across her chest as she frowned at his curious reaction towards her.
What’s gotten into you
?

“I helped you to forget me, Caleb,” she began with a sigh. “It was a technique that normally only works on animals, but somehow as a child you were susceptible to it.”

“Why would you do that to me?”

She paused, wondering how he would react following her next revelation to him. “You were just eight years old,” she explained quietly. “And you saw something no eight-year-old should see.”

His heartbeat raced, and then the flashbacks from earlier in the garage flickered in his mind. Something bad happened that he was having trouble remembering. He had memories of an abusive father, but somehow felt there was something even darker, something critical that he simply couldn’t remember.

She heard his heart racing and wondered even at that late moment if she were doing the right thing.
Please don’t freak out on me, my loving angel
.

“What?” he insisted in a raspy voice. “What shouldn’t I have seen?”

A nervous, tense knot formed in her stomach as she stared directly into his eyes. “Your father was abusing you in your garage after you helped me,” she began.

His jaw tightened, and his hand strangled the beer bottle as he listened and waited.

“And I killed him.”

Caleb’s jaw dropped open in shock, and he nearly slipped off of the barstool. “What?!”
Holy crap!
Kat killed my father?
He shook his head. “No. I don’t remember that. That can’t be true. He disappeared, but --”

A flashback hit him like a lightning strike. A loud snapping sound rang in his ears, and he saw a horrifying vision of his father’s face as he stared back at him through hollow, empty eyes. Then his father’s body plummeted limply to the floor. Caleb lurched from the barstool as his hands went to his ears, and his eyes widened with distress.

Katrina was shaken as she watched his reaction, sensing that something had jarred both his mind and body.
A flashback?
She had seen that powerful a reaction from him only once before, last fall when they had walked in the park together. She had revealed herself as a vampire to him, and he had endured a flashback after viewing her glowing eyes. He had fled through the woods from her in terror and nearly fallen into a steep ravine. Fortunately, she had been able to grab his leg at the last minute to prevent him from falling.

“Oh God,” he gasped once the flashback faded.

She moved towards him in a flash and wrapped her arms around him protectively, willing the pain from his body with her strength. But she felt him struggle in her arms.

“No,” he growled. “Let go of me!”

He twisted his body in her grasp before she finally relented and released him. She was very worried about his reaction and wondered what thoughts were going through his mind at that moment.