After the Fall: A Vampire Chronicle (Book One) (9 page)

             
Now she was getting angry again. He seemed to be good at that – making her angry. He could sense it even before he could see her expression.

             
“Be my Lorenzo, Chris. Give me an outlet for my rage and my need for revenge.”

             
“I can’t,” he insisted. “Don’t ask me to do that, because that’s the one thing I can’t do.”

He felt helpless. He knew what she was feeling, knew what she not only wanted but needed, but he would never be able to live with himself if anything happened to her because he gave her the go-ahead to fight his battles for him.

              “You know I have to do this,” she insisted, her eyes pleading with him. He finally had to look away.

             
“You can stay with me and Lorenzo until the Master Vampire is killed,” he said, his voice firm and hardened, belying how terrible and torn he felt about saying this. “However, you will not come into contact with any vampires. You will not fight them. And you will not come with me and Lorenzo when we leave.”

             
She simply stared at him for a second, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Realizing he was serious, she finally spoke, using all her self-control to keep her rage and voice under control.

             
“Well then, I guess I’m not coming with you.”

             
“Excuse me?” he asked, not sure he’d heard her right.

             
“I’m not coming with you back to the hotel. I’ll find someplace else to stay.”

             
“You can’t,” Christian sputtered, unable to believe she didn’t comprehend the danger she would be placing herself in, but she looked resolved in her decision. He tried to make her understand.

             
“If you don’t come back to the hotel with me, you’ll die,” he said, trying to get his point across.

             
“You don’t know that.” She was getting angrier; her face was becoming an unhealthy shade of red.

             
“I
do
know that,” he insisted, but she was already cutting him off.

             
“Besides, you can’t tell me what to do. I didn’t even know you five hours ago.”

             
Christian tried to think of an argument that would convince her that he was right. No matter what, he had to protect her. He would not let her die. He tried to change tactics.

             
“You’re right. I’m sorry, Caroline. Please, just come back to the hotel with me,” he cajoled. “I swore I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, and I’m going to keep that promise, but I need you to help me.”

             
“Then let me help,” she said simply, and he knew what she meant.

             
“Caroline-,” he started, but she stood up and interrupted him.

             
“You are unbelievable,” she said before she realized she was yelling again and people were starting to stare. She lowered her voice and leaned closer to him.

             
“There are
vampires
running loose in this city,” she whispered vehemently, “and two of them killed my family. You know what it’s like. You understand. And you just want me to sit by and do nothing while they terrorize and ruin other lives? How can you ask me to do that?”

             
“Because I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he whispered back, just as vehemently. She didn’t answer. He thought maybe she was too angry to speak. Her face was turning an unhealthy shade of purple.

             
“Will you come back with me?” he asked, but got no response. He supposed that
was
her response.

             
“Where will you go tonight?”

             
“I’ll find someplace.”

             
“Well, wherever you stay tonight, I’m staying with you.”

             
She looked at him, wide-eyed, and he thought she was imagining hitting him, really hard, but he was insistent.

             
“Until the Master Vampire is dead or until he leaves New York, I am not letting you out of my sight.”

             
“Fine,” she said. He had been so ready for a fight that her response didn’t even register at first, and when it finally did, he did a double take.

             
“What?”

             
“I said, fine. I’ll come back to the hotel with you.” She said it as if she had just agreed to eat dirt. She started walking out of the park, and Christian got up from where he was sitting and followed her. She had a long stride - he didn’t even try to keep up. He knew she was fuming and he decided she could use the walk back to cool off. As much as it bothered him to have her mad at him, he didn’t care. She had agreed to come back with him, and that was all that mattered. He was so relieved that he didn’t even bother to think how suspicious it was that she had agreed so suddenly.

              Both Caroline and Christian were so lost in their own thoughts and emotions that neither noticed the young woman with the Kool-Aid red hair look up from where she had been sitting on a park bench, pretending to read a newspaper, trying to catch snatches of the heated conversation between them, leave the paper on the bench, get up, and follow them out of the park.

Caroline remained silent the entire way back to the hotel, walking right past Lorenzo without so much as a glance in his direction, seating herself on the sofa in the front room of the suite and turning on the television. Lorenzo looked pointedly at Christian, who gestured with his head for the older priest to follow him into one of the bedrooms. With one backward glance at Caroline, who hadn’t once removed her eyes from the television screen, Christian closed the door and turned to face his mentor.            

             
“I take it things didn’t go very well,” Lorenzo stated, watching as Christian started pacing the small room. He would bet money the boy didn’t realize how clearly his agitation was showing, or how often his eyes kept drifting towards the bedroom door and the young woman sitting behind it.

             
“That,” Christian answered, “is the understatement of the year.” He stopped pacing and faced Lorenzo, an incredulous look on his face.

             
“She wants to help us fight vampires.”

             
“That is ridiculous and impossible,” Lorenzo immediately said.

             
“That’s what I told her,” Christian spat out, but just as suddenly as his anger appeared, it was gone, and he seemed to deflate, his eyes once again glancing at the door. “That’s why she’s mad at me.”

             
As much as Lorenzo disapproved of Caroline’s desire to join their cause, he understood it. He would have been disappointed in her character if she had not wanted to avenge her family’s death. However, he also knew that if he and Christian entertained her preposterous idea, she would be dead in no time at all; it was going to be difficult enough to keep her alive as it was. It would be next to impossible to keep her alive if she actively went after the creatures.

             
“She will get over it,” Lorenzo said, attempting to reassure Christian, aware that he was probably failing miserably. Christian did not look reassured in the least. Lorenzo could sense that Christian was getting extremely attached to the girl, and it concerned him, because as soon as the Master Vampire was killed, or if he decided to leave New York, he and Christian would also be leaving, and they would be leaving Caroline behind. As it was, Christian was becoming too focused on Caroline and helping her, when he should be focused on his job, and nothing else. He could not afford to have friends. The Master Hunter needed as few distractions as possible in his life, and Caroline Gallagher was definitely a distraction.

             
Christian began pacing again, stopping at the bedroom window and staring out into the world, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the evil running rampant through it.

             
“So we are both in agreement that Caroline cannot be allowed to fight vampires. Are we also in agreement that she must stay with us until this whole ordeal is over?” Christian asked, continuing to stare out at the city below. Lorenzo did not answer immediately, racking his brain for some other solution and knowing that the search was futile. Finally, he answered.

             
“Yes, she must stay with either you or me at all times,” Lorenzo answered reluctantly. “For her own safety. But Christian?”

             
Christian turned towards him, and Lorenzo’s heart went out to the young man and the turmoil he saw in Christian’s eyes.

             
“Once this whole thing is over, for Caroline’s own safety, we must never be in contact with her again.”

             
Christian clenched his jaw, and a muscle twitched in his cheek, and for a moment, Lorenzo thought he would argue, but instead, he turned back to the window.

             
“Agreed.”

             
Lorenzo suppressed a sigh of relief. Christian could be stubborn when he wanted to be, and he sometimes allowed it to override his common sense. Quite suddenly, Christian turned again and strode towards the bedroom door, stopping with his hand on the knob.

             
“Well, I guess we better go see how she’s doing.” Christian opened the door and stepped into the other room, blocking Lorenzo’s view.

             
“Damn,” he heard Christian mutter as he finally stepped out of the way, but Lorenzo already knew. Stepping over the threshold, Lorenzo scanned the room before him and muttered his own expletive under his breath. The room was empty.

             
Caroline was gone.

Chapter Eight

             
For the second time in an hour, Caroline found herself wandering the streets of New York, except this time, she had no destination. The park was out – that would be the first place Chris would look, and right now, the last thing she wanted was for Chris to find her. She couldn’t believe how chauvinistically narrow-minded he was being. She was a grown up. Or practically one anyway. She didn’t need anybody looking after her or telling her what to do, as if she was some errant child. As it was, Chris and Lorenzo probably didn’t even know yet that she was missing. For someone who claimed to care so much, Chris didn’t really care much at all if she could slip away as easily as she had.

             
She was so angry. She couldn’t believe how angry Chris had managed to make her. This virtual stranger, and she wanted to strangle him. She supposed it was because she had expected him to understand her need to help him in some aspect, any aspect, but he had shot her down without any discussion or compromise of any type. Well, she didn’t need them anyway. Damn them both.

             
Caroline was so consumed by her anger that she didn’t even see the other young woman until she had collided with her.

             
“I am so sorry,” Caroline apologized, embarrassed that she had been so lost in her thoughts that she had practically run the poor girl down.

             
“That’s all right,” the young woman responded, and Caroline got a better look at her. She looked to be about Caroline’s age, although her eyes looked ages older, as if she had seen much more than someone her age should expect to. The girl was painfully thin, skin and bones, emphasized by her tank top and jean shorts, and her hair, which was an unnaturally red color, looked as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks. If she had been healthy, she probably would have been pretty. Still, she obviously didn’t live on the streets; her clothes were new, and there was no way she lived in the city – a native New Yorker, or even one accustomed to Manhattan, would have spewed a string of curses at Caroline for lack of crowd-dodging skills.

“No matter what you’re running from,” the girl continued in a soft voice, “you should always look where you’re going. What you run into could end up being worse than what you’re running from.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” Caroline said, confused and a little alarmed by the girl’s cryptic warning, feeling a shiver race down her spine. Caroline started to back away when she was startled by the sudden smile that appeared on the girl’s face.

“Just some words of advice from someone who knows,” she said.

“Well, uh, thanks,” Caroline replied, at a loss for words. Just when she thought things couldn’t get any weirder…

“No problem,” the girl answered, shrugging. She began to walk away. Caroline was about to turn and continue on her own way when she heard the girl call over her shoulder, her voice floating on the wind.