“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 bette
r 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.
“See you around.”
Caroline stood where she was until the girl disappeared around the corner. She didn’t know what to make of the situation. It was strange in a chilling kind of way, but so many random people walked the streets of Manhattan, and so many random encounters occurred because of them, that for all extents and purposes, what had just happened could be classified as normal by New York standards.
For a moment, Caroline was torn. The encounter had thrown her for a loop – she suddenly wanted to be back in a familiar place with familiar faces, no matter how recently she had met those faces. Still, thinking about Chris and Lorenzo made her temper flare again. Thoughts of violence and doing bodily harm were taking over again. She needed to cool off first. Then, when she was thinking rationally again, she could figure out what to do about… well, everything.
Lorenzo sat alone in the hotel room, comfortable in the silence, but too deep in thought to pay much attention to the text he was perusing. It had been several hours since Caroline had disappeared from the hotel, and almost as long since Christian had bolted out the door after her. He wasn’t worried about Christian – he knew the boy could take of himself. But he didn’t know Caroline Gallagher. He didn’t know what state of mind she was in, though he could imagine. She was upset and angry and looking to lash out at something, anything.
He didn’t like that she was in this situation. He had problems with the fact that Christian had divulged top-secret information to a girl he had only met a few hours before. He also had problems, however, with the fact that she was now most likely a prime target of the vampires roaming Manhattan, taking their orders from a Master Vampire.
He had to admit, to his chagrin, that he liked Caroline. She had conviction and personality, and the fact that she was so far emotionally surviving her survival attested to her strong character. He could understand the attachment Christian had already formed with her – Lorenzo could sense it. He didn’t agree with it – as much as Christian needed friends, he couldn’t afford to have them. Still, he could understand it.
Sometimes it was eerie how much Christian was like his brother. The similarities in their looks and some of their mannerisms, like the way he pulled on his ear when he was lost in a book. Brian had done that too. Lorenzo didn’t think about Brian a lot. They hadn’t been together that long. And then Brian had been killed by vampires, and his body had never been found. He had always known that there was always the possibility that his Hunter would be killed in action, and so he hadn’t let himself get that close to Brian. But when Brian died, it had still felt as if his heart had been wrenched from his chest. Which was why he had allowed himself to get as close to Christian as he had. Because it would still hurt. But he never let himself think about having to go through it a second time…
Brian had been a good Hunter. He and Christian had that in common as well. And he had been a good man. He had seen Brian and Christian interact and there had been a comfortable familiarity, a brotherly bond, and even through the inevitable teasing, fighting and sibling rivalry, the love and affection the Dreiden brothers had for each other had been obvious. But Brian had also been stubborn and hardheaded, not always listening to Lorenzo’s advice. He sometimes slacked on his training and when he got angry, his emotions got the better of him. They had ultimately gotten the better of him. Lorenzo kept it to himself, but for that, he blamed himself for Brian’s death. He had not had control of his Hunter and had not taught him well enough to save his life.
He was better with Christian. He had learned from his mistakes. Brian had had friends, had been around his family, had gone out and had somewhat of a life. But Lorenzo had grown to love Christian, considering him the son he never had, and he would do whatever it took to keep this Dreiden boy from dying. If having no life saved Christian’s life, so be it.
Shaking his head, trying to clear his thoughts, Lorenzo tried focusing on the book in his hands. It was a relatively new one, only about three hundred years old. He had found it in the rectory of Saint Joseph’s, which was one of the oldest Catholic churches built in Manhattan. At his age, there was no way he could help Christian fight the Master Vampire, except in an intellectual sense. He was convinced that the best way to ultimately defeat the Master Vampire was to discover where they came from – if he could find a pattern or clues that would help to track them down, then they could be destroyed.
For an hour, Lorenzo scoured the book in front of him, to no avail. Finally, as his eyes were beginning to water and the words swim in front of his face, a passage jumped out of him. Blinking twice, he picked up a pen and began to write it down on a pad of paper lying on the end table:
I had, by some grace of God, stumbled upon a manuscript in the crypt of San Pellegrino, dated a century prior to the emergence of the First Hunter. I could not discern who the author of the text was, although the monks of San Pellegrino claimed it to be a prophet of some sort. As far as I could tell, the text spoke of the Hunter, who was yet to come, and the words were as follows:
From the middle mountains emerge both dark and light,
and Janus will be the god who governs them.
They will be blind who seek the answers,
though the veil of darkness is but an illusion.
Be forewarned – that which is so close to the eye and the heart becomes invisible.
The shadow will disappear with night. May God protect us all.
The text is now long gone, crumbled into dust, and I know not what it means.
Lorenzo, as well, knew not what it meant, only that if he found enough passages, even the most bizarre ones should start to make some sort of sense. At least, he hoped so. He was about to start reading again when there was a knock at the door. He slowly stood and walked the length of the room to answer it. He looked through the peephole and, undoing the chain, opened the door.
“Well,” he said to the person on the other side, “I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”
Christian didn’t return to the hotel room until dusk. He had spent the last few hours scouring the city from top to bottom, anywhere he thought Caroline might have run to. As each hour passed, he became more and more worried. What would he do if he didn’t find her? What would he do if the next time he saw her she was lying dead on a slab in the morgue? He had to find her, and yet the more he looked, the more convinced he became that he she was gone. What else could he do? He vowed to keep looking until there was nowhere else to look. Still, once darkness had started to fall, he realized he would have to return to the hotel to check in with
Lorenzo and get some supplies to protect himself with; he didn’t want Lorenzo to worry about him the way he was worrying about Caroline.
He should have known she would take off, but he had thought she understood the danger she would place herself in if she left the sanctuary of the hotel. Obviously, she was stupider than she looked, because now darkness was falling, vampires were roaming, and she was out there somewhere, very much alone.
The elevator stopped at his floor, and he got off, racing to his and Lorenzo’s suite, throwing open the door.
“Lorenzo, I’m-,” his words died in his throat when he entered the room and found himself looking at not one, but two people sitting. Lorenzo was seated comfortably in one of the chairs, and across from him, on the sofa, sat Caroline.
Christian was so stunned that words failed him. She looked like she would rather be anywhere in the world but sitting in that room, but she was there. It was she who finally broke the silence.
“I wasn’t going to come back,” she said, and he heard the defensiveness in her voice, “but once it got dark, I realized I had nowhere to go and no one to turn to, so…” she shrugged, “here I am.”
A wave of relief rushed over Christian, followed by a wave of anger. He was furious with her. She had scared him half to death. He thought he was going to find her dead. Instead, she had been sitting here, maybe not happy, but at least safe.
“Do you know the hell you put me through this afternoon?” he finally exploded. “I thought the next time I saw you was going to be in the morgue.”
She frowned, and he could see that he was jump-starting her own temper, but he couldn’t make himself stop. He had never been as scared in his whole life as he had been this afternoon.
“Do you know how stupid you were? You could have died today, Caroline. I know I hurt your feelings and wounded your pride today in the park, but that was no reason to go suicidal on me!”
After the Fall: A Vampire Chronicle (Book One) Page 7