by Primo, Jaz
The young man seemed earnest in his behavior, and she detected no attempt at evasiveness.
“Fine,” she replied simply. She wondered what could be taking Alton so long.
The man hesitantly opened the wooden partition to Katrina’s right, thereby allowing her passage behind the counter. He led her down a short hallway where he unlocked a metal doorway at the end and allowed her to enter past him. The room held only two small jail cells, partitioned from each other by a concrete wall. Dori sat on a small bed in the first cell and launched to her feet at seeing them. Katrina noticed she had a blistered lower lip and slightly swollen cheeks, but otherwise seemed unharmed.
“Dori, are you okay?” Katrina asked.
“Never mind me, help Caleb,” she urged.
Her words impacted Katrina at the same moment that she smelled Caleb’s blood scent in the air. Her eyes flashed bright green, but were hidden from view of the police officer with her back turned to him. She peered around the corner wall partition to see Caleb lying on his right side with his wrists still cuffed behind him. His wrists were bloody where the metal dug into his flesh. He appeared to be only semi-conscious and had obviously been beaten from the contusions on his face, one side of which was badly swollen.
Katrina turned to glower at the officer with barely contained contempt. Part of her was breaking inside over concern for Caleb’s welfare, while another part of her wanted to tear the place apart. “Open the cell,” she flatly ordered.
The officer spied Caleb, and his eyes bulged to twice their normal size. “Oh no, this is horrible,” the young officer protested with a look of alarm as he viewed Caleb’s condition.
“You’re damned right it’s horrible,” she snapped as her anger quickly skyrocketed. “Open this cell now!”
The officer fumbled with his keys as Caleb tried to raise his head slightly and peer at her with squinted eyes. “Kat?” he weakly asked.
“Stay still, my love,” she urged in as calm a voice as she could muster. In his wounded state, she was having a hard time tearing her eyes from his prone form.
“…beat me, but…didn’t tell them anything,” he muttered with a strained voice.
The implications in that simple statement impacted not only Katrina, but the officer before her.
“What?” the officer asked with disbelief.
“Katrina!” Dori exclaimed.
“Stop!” ordered a gruff man’s voice.
Katrina turned to see a senior-level officer wearing a lieutenant’s insignia, presumably Boleslav, holding a shotgun pointed directly into Dori’s cell. Another police officer stood behind the lieutenant with an assault rifle pointed past his superior in the direction of Katrina and the young officer next to her. She noted that he had an ideal firing angle on them, which only complicated her available options.
The junior officer asked something of the lieutenant in Slovene. While Katrina didn’t speak the language well, she understood some basic phrases and terminology that she had studied before their trip overseas. The young man had no idea what was taking place and was confused at multiple levels.
Boleslav ordered his subordinate to step away from the cells and leave the room. The young man looked at Caleb and Katrina and shook his head.
“They need medical attention,” he insisted.
At least Katrina appreciated the junior officer’s sense of ethics. Her eyes darted to Caleb, who remained prone on a cot in his cell.
“Move away, or you will be shot for aiding criminals in escape,” Boleslav ordered.
It momentarily appeared that a standoff of sorts was in progress. Katrina’s eyes narrowed to glowing green slits as she prepared to attack at her earliest opportunity. One problem was that the officer next to her was partially blocking her path.
Where the hell is Alton?
The young man was visibly shaking, but he moved to stand before Katrina with his hands out in a placating fashion. In Slovene, he attempted to appeal to his supervisor’s sense of proprietary and ethics, but failed to realize he was way out of his league at the moment. Katrina thought that he would be lucky to survive the next few minutes given the hard look in the lieutenant’s eyes.
Alton suddenly appeared in the hallway behind Boleslav’s crony and pulled him to the floor with one deft motion. The man’s rifle discharged, but fired into the wall to his left.
As the lieutenant’s attention was momentarily distracted, Katrina raced past the young officer in a blur of motion, knocking him into the bars of Caleb’s cell. She managed to reach the lieutenant, knocking the shotgun barrel upwards. A spray of pellets blasted into the plaster ceiling.
Katrina broke Boleslav’s right arm with one motion while slamming the man’s head into the nearby concrete wall. His head impacted the wall with a simultaneous meaty thud and cracking sound. Fully enraged, Katrina openly growled as she picked up his body and threw it with amazing velocity.
Boleslav’s body sailed across the room, impacting against the opposite concrete wall with a deep boom. It dropped lifelessly to the floor in a tangled heap as both Dori and the young officer watched in horror.
Alton rushed into the room to inspect both Dori and Caleb. Meanwhile, Katrina snatched the cell keys from the young officer’s shaking hand and proceeded to unlock Caleb’s cell door. She entered long enough to remove his handcuffs then casually tossed the keys to Alton, who turned to release Dori from her cell.
Katrina knelt beside her mate, gently rubbing her hands across his body to assess the damage to him.
“It’s okay, my love,” she cooed. “I’m here now. We’re taking you to safety.”
She meaningfully looked to her right at the junior officer, who was still in a state of semi-shock as he stared at her.
“Yes, yes,” the officer insisted. “Medical attention for him.”
“Are you okay, my darling?” Alton asked Dori as he momentarily embraced her.
“Yes, I’ll be fine,” she gratefully replied.
Dori hastily explained that the lieutenant had beaten Caleb, while the other officer had secured her in the police car earlier that afternoon. She recounted how Caleb was beaten again during a brief interrogation in his cell, but that she had been spared anything harsher than being repeatedly slapped.
Alton’s jaw clenched as he looked at the younger officer, but Dori quickly explained that she hadn’t seen the young man before.
“He just came on duty,” Katrina irritably snapped as she lifted Caleb’s shirt to view the bruises on his back and stomach.
“Get on the phone and call your senior officers. Get them here immediately,” Alton ordered the young man. “I already called your town’s mayor before I came in.”
“Yes, of course,” the officer dutifully stammered. “This -- this is -- no excuse. I don’t understand.”
“We’ll talk about this soon enough,” Alton interrupted him. “Go make the calls.”
The man nervously slipped past Alton for the main office area. The stately vampire immediately went into Caleb’s cell and stood over Katrina as she examined him.
“We need a doctor,” she insisted in a tight voice.
“We’ll use Dr. Reynolds back at the hotel,” Alton replied. “I don’t trust anyone else right now.”
She merely nodded in agreement, not trusting her voice to utter anything further.
* * * *
At the hotel, a blanket from the police station was used as a makeshift gurney to carry Caleb gently from the SUV. The eyes of everyone in the lobby turned to stare with surprise as Caleb’s gurney was carried at one end by Katrina and the other by Alton. Dori followed behind them with one hand rubbing at her jaw.
Dr. Reynolds was already standing in the lobby wearing his white physician’s lab coat with Paige at his side, and he led them to his small examining room.
“Whoever did this is going to pay,” Paige angrily muttered as she stared down at Caleb with painful disbelief as he lay on the examining room table.
I’
ll personally rip them apart, she promised.
Caleb weakly moaned, but his eyes remained closed as he appeared to drift in a semi-conscious state.
“The primary culprit is already dead,” Katrina coldly muttered between clenched teeth.
“Good,” Reynolds whispered as he used medical scissors to cut the shirt from Caleb’s body, being careful not to tug on the material or cause him further pain.
Katrina’s and Paige’s eyes met briefly with surprise at the doctor’s comment.
After a moment’s pause, he added, “I’m a doctor, but whoever did this obviously enjoyed the task. The world’s a better place without them.”
Agreed, Katrina thought.
A momentary pang of curiosity echoed in her mind at what must have transpired in the hours that Caleb and Dori had been gone, though she realized that the time for explanations would come soon enough. Her primary focus returned to the wounded man whom she loved so dearly.
“Caleb? It’s Ethan. Can you hear me?” Reynolds quietly asked as he lifted each of the young man’s eyelids to quickly shine a penlight into them.
Caleb moaned again, and his eyes fluttered open.
“Ethan?” he asked.
He felt confused, and pain coursed through his midsection and head. His eyes managed to focus slightly, and he looked up into the faces of the doctor, Katrina, and Paige as each peered down upon him.
“Dori? Safe?” he asked with sudden recollection of the events at the police station, only hazily remembering arguing voices and the sounds of gunshots.
“I’m here, Caleb,” Dori softly replied from a nearby chair.
Alton stood with his arm gently wrapped around her shoulders.
“We need to examine you for injuries, Caleb,” Ethan said.
“Ladies first,” Caleb offered in chivalrous fashion.
He had no idea how injured Dori might be.
“Sorry, Caleb. This is a triage situation, and you won first pick,” Reynolds lightly said.
“Lucky me,” he groaned as a wave of pain shot though his stomach.
“I’ll need to ask everyone else to move into my office next door, please. I need to examine him,” the doctor politely instructed.
Alton gently led Dori from the room. Katrina looked at Paige and motioned with her head to the door. Paige patted her friend on the shoulder as she passed.
“I’ll be right outside,” she said.
After she shut the door, Reynolds looked at Katrina.
“I’m going to need a little space to work, please,” he said before returning his attention to his patient. “I’ll try not to hurt you further, Caleb, but you’ll need to communicate with me as best you can. Can you try to do that?”
“Work your magic, Doc,” Caleb said with a chuckle, which only sent another wave of pain coursing though his body.
Katrina marveled at how deftly and gently the doctor’s hands played across Caleb in assessment of his condition. It was readily apparent to her that the handsome physician wielded his medical skills with both experience and passion. She had never seen a vampire with such a measured or sincere sense of duty to care for complete strangers before; certainly he was an anomaly in her centuries of encounters with her kind.
She watched as he continued to examine Caleb, and she was proud of how her mate was enduring what must have seemed a painfully slow process. When the doctor produced a small digital camera from his lab coat, Katrina’s eyes flashed bright green, and her hand caught his wrist.
“It’s okay,” he reassured her in a soft voice. “We may need this as visual evidence in the future. I’ll need to do the same with Dori. My intention is to begin their healing process immediately, which means there may not be as compelling evidence by tomorrow.”
Katrina hadn’t anticipated that. She reluctantly assented and released her grip on his wrist.
He offered a supportive expression and turned to take the photos. She helped to turn Caleb so he could more easily photograph the young man’s back. The bruises and contusions on his body were distasteful hues of red, purple, and blue.
“You’re missing my good side,” Caleb weakly mumbled as he gritted his teeth to endure the discomfort of his body being rotated.
“Well, at least his sense of humor’s intact,” Ethan observed.
Minutes later, Katrina assisted the good doctor as he cleaned the wound areas on Caleb’s body while further examining him. It amazed her that no bones were broken, though Ethan suspected that Caleb had bruised ribs.
“Would you be willing to use your saliva to close the wounds on his wrists?” Ethan asked while turning to retrieve items from a storage locker.
“You have to ask?” she shot back as if insulted.
I’d do anything to help him.
“I’ve learned not to make presumptions about humans relative to their vampire partners,” Ethan smoothly explained.
She began licking at Caleb’s wrists. The normally pleasant taste of his blood was tinged with the flavor of the rubbing alcohol the doctor had used to clean the wounds. Still, she felt useful being able to help minister to his wounds.
Familiar and soothing numbing sensations proceeded through Caleb’s wrists as he realized what was happening. Despite the pain still coursing through his body, he was suddenly so grateful for the caring vampires in his life, particularly his beautiful, red-haired mate.
Reynolds produced a handful of gauze and a small syringe. Katrina anticipated the task at hand and immediately unbuttoned the cuff of her blouse sleeve to allow access to the veins in her arm. He delicately withdrew enough blood to fill the syringe and turned to his patient.
“Caleb, I’m going to inject some of Katrina’s blood beneath your skin now. My plan is for the healing to begin subcutaneously and work its way outward,” he patiently explained.
Caleb briefly moaned and then managed, “Okay.”
“Katrina, since you’re here, would you please use your saliva to numb the areas next to his wounds while I follow by injecting the blood?” the dark-haired physician asked.
“Don’t you want me to heal the actual topical wounds?” she countered.
He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. If he’s examined by other human physicians or government officials as part of an investigation, there would be too many questions about his rate of healing. However, if we begin the healing from inside first, nobody’s the wiser, and Caleb still benefits. We can always use your saliva to expedite the surface healing later on,” he explained.
She admired the doctor’s forethought.
You’re good. Much more than I could have hoped for, in fact.
For the next few minutes, the doctor injected small amounts of blood below or near the various wounds after Katrina numbed the injection points.
Caleb had already learned firsthand how robust the healing powers of a vampire’s blood could be. And while the process sparked renewed waves of pain, he nevertheless appreciated the assistance.
Once Reynolds completed the injections, he turned to his medical cabinet and retrieved a fresh syringe and a small bottle.
“Just a little something to help him rest,” he explained while injecting Caleb’s arm with the clear liquid. “You can use the wheelchair in my office to take him upstairs to your room now.” He put the syringe aside.
“Thank you, Dr. Reynolds,” Katrina sincerely offered as she opened the doorway to reveal Paige standing there with a worried look on her face.
“Please, call me Ethan,” he encouraged. “And you’re welcome. I’ll come up to check on him in a couple of hours.”
Reynolds and Katrina gently placed Caleb in the wheelchair that Paige retrieved, and the two women prepared to take him upstairs. Alton and Dori entered the examining room as Caleb was wheeled out, but not before the brunette woman lightly touched Caleb on the shoulder in passing.
The lobby seemed overly busy for the evening as onlookers watched Caleb being wheeled away. A number of faces reflected sincere concern, while others
appeared merely curious.
“I think I like Ethan Reynolds,” Katrina mumbled to Paige in the elevator as she lightly ran her fingertips through Caleb’s tussled hair.
Paige softly replied, “Yeah, me too. He’s something, isn’t he?”
Katrina’s eyes darted to her friend as if recognizing something more in her statement, but Paige’s expression quickly turned stoic.
* * * *
Katrina continued to watch over Caleb at his bedside while her mate slept. She felt so helpless just sitting, watching, and waiting. While she understood the need to curtail surface healing of his wounds, she nevertheless hated seeing the harsh appearance of his swollen face. Just imagining how painful it must have felt to him made her appreciate that Ethan had given him a sedative.
Caleb’s body was slightly feverish as his immune system tried to kill the vampire blood cells that were rapidly repairing the damaged tissue below the surface of his skin.
She gazed down at his still form, wondering when he might wake. Despite his need for rest, Katrina wanted to chat with him about what had happened. She was dying of curiosity to hear his perspective on what had taken place in town. Yet she was relegated to sitting in the chair staring at him while listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
At least it’s strong and healthy-sounding. That’s certainly a good sign.
She lost track of time as her thoughts fluctuated between her mate, the conference, and a host of other concerns. When she heard a light rapping at the suite door, she quietly admitted Paige into the room. The blonde vampire offered her one of the two thermal mugs of warm blood, which she gratefully accepted.
“How’s our boy?” Paige asked as Katrina shut the suite door behind her.
She had wanted to stay with Katrina as she watched over Caleb, but her duties interrupted her plans. Not for the first time since her arrival, she wished she were just a guest and not a key support person for the conference.
“Still asleep, but his heartbeat is strong,” Katrina replied. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“I’d have been here sooner, but –”
“No, it’s okay. I completely understand,” she interrupted as they sat next to each other on the living room couch.