A Bloody London Sunset (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 2) (20 page)

As Gil rambled on, both vampires abruptly sniffed the air, and Katrina cast a sidelong glance at Paige with a knowing look in her eyes.
Caleb’s blood
, she determined.

Paige seemed to sense the same conclusion, because she jumped up from the couch and held up her hand for Gil to stop talking. “Wait!” she insisted. “Where’s Caleb?”

“Caleb?” Gil asked. “I dunno. Maybe he’s hosing off the car tire.”

She frowned with confusion, but Katrina already sped past her and was following the blood scent trail through the house.

“Car tire?” Paige asked with narrowed eyes. “Why would he --”

“One of those assholes peed on the car,” Gil explained.

Paige sighed and demanded, “Where were you two again?”

Gil started to speak, but Paige grabbed him by the arm and led him into the kitchen saying, “Never mind. Let’s get you cleaned up first. And don’t bleed all over the new carpet; Katrina’s had it less for than a month.”

* * * *

Caleb removed his bloody t-shirt and dropped it to the tile floor atop his blood-soaked sweatshirt. As he washed his face in cold water, the bathroom door knob rattled. Then came an immediate knocking sound and Katrina’s voice.

“Caleb? Caleb, are you okay?” she insisted with concern.

“Fine. Everything’s fine,” he reassured her, “I’ll be out soon.”

Outside, Katrina exhaled a deep breath and shook her head.
Yeah, right
.
That’s typical guy talk for, “I’m hurt and don’t want you fussing over me
.
”

“Open the door right now, my love, or I’m breaking it down,” she ordered.

Caleb winced from her tone and held a damp washcloth over the left side of his face where it was still bleeding. He unlocked the door and turned back to the sink to the freely flowing cold water.

The door opened, and Katrina literally towered over him from behind as she looked into the mirror to see his face. “Turn around, Caleb,” she insisted gently, grasping him by the shoulders and pivoting him around.

She examined his hand, noting the cuts and bruises on his knuckles and pulled the washcloth away from his face. She gazed upon the gash above his left eyebrow, the cut on his right cheek, his bleeding lip, and the bruises on his face. “Oh, Caleb,” she gasped softly.

Paige appeared behind Katrina, scrutinizing Caleb with a clenched jaw and steely expression. “How many?” she demanded tersely, her blue eyes flaring angrily.

“Three,” he replied as Katrina took the washcloth from him and rinsed it in the cold water. “But don’t worry, we gave as good as we got.”

“We?” Paige dubiously challenged. She had not noticed much damage to Gil, which made her think it was less Gil and more Caleb doing the fighting.

Katrina used the washcloth to dab at the cut above his forehead and moved forward to roll her tongue over the wound to seal the cut. The taste of his blood sparked a momentary pang of thirst in her, but she quickly suppressed it.

“Well, Gil helped,” Caleb insisted.

“Hold still,” Katrina complained as she held his face in place firmly and returned to sealing the cut.

“Do you think they followed you?” Paige asked.

“Don’t know. They were still lying on the parking lot when we left,” he replied absently, appreciating Katrina’s ministrations as the pain in his face ebbed.

Katrina pulled away from him and looked at her mate with surprise. “Really?”

He nodded. “Yeah, really. I got tired of being beat upon by everyone, it seems.”

She raised a curious eyebrow, while Paige considered him with an introspective expression.

“Who started it?” Paige asked.

As Katrina returned to lick at another cut on his face, Caleb considered the question briefly and replied, “They did. The waitress said they were troublemakers. Hell, they were pissing on the car when we went out to the parking lot. I tried to avoid a fight, but there it was.”

Katrina listened closely to his response, but felt that something was missing from his story.

“Hey, is Caleb okay?” Gil asked, popping his head into the bathroom.

“We’re working on that,” Paige replied. “Gil, Caleb’s a little hazy on how that fight got started. Care to enlighten us?”

Caleb started to speak up, but a hard look from Katrina quieted him.

“Well,” Gil hedged, “those guys harassed us in the bar and attacked us after we left.”

Paige pressed, “You didn’t happen to antagonize them, did you?”

“Aw, c’mon, babe,” he retorted. “Just ’cause some tumbles happened at our band’s club gigs, you think I started this?”

“I’m just saying, you’re good at pissing people off, Gil,” she remarked. “Quite a few of the performances your band gave ended up in fists flying. Bouncers tended to get busy around you.”

Gil smirked. “You’ve got some pretty good moves in a fight, too.”

But Paige wasn’t amused. “Yeah, well, you don’t, as I recall. And you appear to be in pretty good shape compared to Caleb right now, too.”

He puffed up his chest a little and shot back, “Oh, so now it’s my fault just because Caleb caught some more action than I did? What if I did a better job dodging fists than he did?”

“Gil --” Paige warned.

“Hey, chill. Anyway, babe, I always told you I’m a better lover than fighter,” he continued, to which she scoffed derisively.

“Lame, Gil. If you can’t finish them, don’t start them!” Paige snapped.

He made a sour face. “Well, old Caleb here sure took care of those bastards. Hell, he was wiping the floor with ’em!”

Katrina heard Caleb’s teeth clench, and she whipped her head around to address Paige and Gil in a flat voice, “Take it upstairs. We’re busy here.” She didn’t like what she was hearing, although a similar stream of thought as Paige’s had occurred to her, as well.

Gil took a deep breath, exhaled, and left.

Paige moved past Katrina to stroke Caleb on the less injured side of his face with her fingertips lightly. “Nice job, kiddo,” she complimented. “And thanks for looking out for Mister Trouble.”

“Yeah, sure,” he replied with a slight nod, although he wasn’t particularly enthused about taking Gil out on the town again anytime soon.

Paige disappeared in a blur, leaving Katrina and Caleb alone in the bathroom.

“I’m proud of you, my love,” Katrina offered. “Remember after the attack that night in the forest, when I said that if Devon were a human the results could’ve been quite different?”

Caleb nodded.

“Humans didn’t fare so well against you today. And someday, vampires won’t find you as easy a target, either,” she remarked sagely.

“Good. I’m tired of playing the victim,” he remarked acidly.

But his tone made Katrina frown, and she considered it would be important to observe him as his combat training progressed. Attitude was important, but so was control. She momentarily wondered at the condition of the three men who he had fought, as well as whether or not they might have reported Caleb to the police. Her experience had shown that often enough the victorious victim could end up appearing as the perpetrator if the loser pressed charges first.

But then, I’ll deal with that if I have to
.
Dead men tend not to press charges
.

“I want to lie down for a while,” he remarked as a growing sense of exhaustion began to flow through him. “Got any aspirin?”

After a welcome nap, he lay on the bed on his right side beneath a blanket, Katrina curled up alongside him. The room was dimly lit from a table lamp across the room, and he was unsure what time it was.

“Feel better, my love?” she inquired gently.

He yawned. “Yep. How long was I asleep?”

“About four hours,” she answered. “It’s almost eight o’clock now.”

He was surprised by that and stretched to sense how sore he felt. While achy, he felt better than expected. He paused to appreciate lying next to Katrina and would have preferred to stay there for the rest of the evening. But he recalled Gil had wanted to go clubbing that night to some of the alternative rock venues they’d noticed earlier in the day. Then the mid-afternoon encounter with the men at the bar replayed in his mind, and he sighed.

“Thinking about earlier?” she asked, running her fingers through his hair lightly.

“Yeah,” he replied. “And how I need to get up, take a shower, and change.”

“We can stay in tonight,” she offered.

He would have liked that.

“Sounds nice, but I promised Gil,” he countered. “Besides, you and Paige have been cooped up at home all day while we were out picking fights --”

“You didn’t pick it, you finished it,” she interjected mildly.

He nodded and conceded, “Okay then.”

She reached around from behind him to pat him his chest with the flat of her hand, one of the few places he wasn’t sore, and suggested, “Let Paige take Gil out. We can curl up with a movie in the theater room or something.”

He considered that for a moment and quickly warmed to the idea. But a pang of guilt flowed through him. “That’s a nice idea, but I wouldn’t mind taking you out tonight. That is, if you don’t mind my looking like I was dropped out of the back of a speeding truck,” he said, deliberately injecting some enthusiasm into his voice.

She chuckled and kissed the back of his neck. “You might want to look in a mirror, my love,” she recommended. “I worked on you while you slept, and your face looks pretty good to me.”

His mood brightened as his fingers probed his face tentatively, realizing he felt no scars. In fact, his face was only mildly sore in places. He wondered how long she had spent using her saliva to heal his face. “Is your tongue tired?” he teased.

She giggled. “It was worth it, my love. There’s no bruising or scars, but you might want to avoid any more fights over the next few days until your facial tissue heals fully.”

He smiled and rolled over to face her. He puckered his lips, and she kissed him. “Thanks, Kat. I’ll try to stay out of fights, but just for the next few days,” he teased.

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, you will. Because I’ll be the one doing the fighting for you in the foreseeable future.”

“Just the foreseeable?” he inquired playfully.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Forever. Except when you refuse to let me and, of course, when you seek trouble while I’m not around.”

“Hey, sometimes trouble finds me before you can arrive,” he challenged.

She conceded the truth of his statement and kissed him on the tip of his nose. “
Touché
,” she capitulated. “And while I admit I wouldn’t mind going out tonight, we’ll only stay out for a short time. Paige and Gil can pull an all-nighter if they want, so we’ll take separate vehicles.”

Caleb smiled wryly. “Yeah, I better hose off your car first.”

She grinned. “No need. Paige made Gil do that earlier, actually.”

“Good,” he replied irritably.

She frowned. “Tell me, did Gil do something to draw you into that fight?”

He considered the question, not particularly wanting to lay blame on Gil, but admitting the man’s behavior hadn’t helped their situation and may have antagonized the men further. “Those guys were real troublemakers, Kat,” he explained. “But I’ll admit that Gil did antagonize them a little bit. Hell, maybe I should’ve never let us walk in there in the first place, so it’s partly my fault too.”

She shook her head at her mate’s attempt to defray blame and let the topic drop. However, it didn’t engender much appreciation for Gil in her opinion, either. “Okay. Go start the shower, and I’ll join you in a minute,” she suggested as she removed her arm from around him.

“Hmm, maybe I’ll rethink my plans for tonight,” he ventured suggestively.

Please, tempt me
, she thought as she watched him get up. It was only the past day or so that he had begun to warm up to her again after the Devon and photograph issues. She felt that she needed to work particularly hard on smoothing the rough edges of their relationship.
A couple can only endure so much conflict at one time
. Though it wasn’t any lack of resolve on her part that bothered her; it was her concern that he might give up on her first, and she couldn’t bear the thought of that.

Caleb changed into a pair of black casual slacks and royal blue sateen shirt, and then went upstairs. Katrina had gone to the master bedroom on the second floor where she kept many of her more elaborate outfits, and he was anxious to see what she picked to wear for their evening out. And of course, he was looking forward to Paige’s being part of the event.

Caleb went to the kitchen, observed Paige standing next to the bar counter, and stopped in amazement. She wore a red key-hole halter dress that perfectly fit her petite frame and ended halfway between her upper thighs and her knees. She spun in a quick circle for him. The crossed spaghetti straps at the back revealed her smooth, pale skin, and she accented the outfit with some strappy, spike-heeled shoes and ruby earrings. Her outfit, coupled with her 1920s hair style, gave her the edgier, modern appearance of her life as a former flapper. While he smiled appreciatively at her, he noted a somber expression on her face.

“Howdy, Miss Sassy, Sexy, and Supernatural,” he greeted her. “You look amazing, Paige.”

She smirked in classic Paige fashion and retorted, “Well, well, if it isn’t our newest resident street fighter and upcoming bar room brawler himself. And yet, you have that subtle out-on-the town look tonight.”

He was happy that her quick wit seemed intact, but noted she still seemed more subdued than normal. “Too ordinary looking?” he asked self-consciously.

“Hardly, tiger,” she assured him. “Everyone in clubs nowadays is trying to look either too Hollywood or like a rock star, but it’s overdone and over-rated. I happen to like men with a subtle and confident look; you don’t see that as much anymore.”

“Thanks,” he replied with bolstered self-confidence before assessing her more closely.

She watched him curiously as he walked up to her and reached out with his two index fingers to lift the corners of her mouth into a forced smile. She deliberately revealed sharp-looking fangs against the backdrop of her otherwise beautiful white set of teeth.