by Primo, Jaz
The movie was enjoyable, and by the end of the film each of them had openly laughed a number of times. The romantic aspects of the feature weren’t lost on Caleb, and at one point he gently grasped Katrina’s hand when it appeared on his thigh. Despite still feeling annoyed with earlier events, he couldn’t deny that he loved her.
For Katrina’s part, she endeavored to keep the evening light-hearted. For one fleeting night, she wanted to act like any normal couple out on a date and leave all the dramatic vampire-themed events of the present behind them. Granted, such things would return to the forefront of their lives in mere hours, but she desperately needed to show Caleb that she could still be what she enjoyed being most of all for him: his mate and companion.
It was very late by the time Alton drove them back to the conference site. Dori dozed in the front passenger seat, while Caleb yawned nearly the entire time. He fought the drowsiness that threatened to overcome him, determined to see as much of his surroundings as the pervasive darkness would allow. The conference site had begun to feel like an oversized prison to him.
By the time Katrina and Caleb finally stood outside the door to their suite, he was no longer able to fight his fatigue. His red-headed mate observed him with amusement as he opened his mouth in a cavernous yawn, one that he thought would unhinge his jaw. He quickly squeezed past Katrina to enter the dark suite, making his way directly to the bedroom for much-welcome slumber.
Unfortunately, he ran directly into the back of the couch with a resounding “Umph.”
“Careful. And try not to fall asleep before I can give you a goodnight kiss,” she teased.
She shut the door and reached out for the light switch. It wasn’t as if she needed the illumination, but she didn’t want Caleb injuring himself on his trek to the bedroom.
As she flicked the light switch, every lamp or light fixture in the room snapped on. However, instead of the muted lighting that she expected, the room was filled with much more penetrating light.
“What the hell?” Caleb snapped as the lights in the bedroom and bathroom all popped on at once.
Katrina immediately felt intense pain, and her skin began to sizzle like bacon on a hot grill.
The next seconds passed like a lightning strike as Katrina’s hand slammed into the light switch, though it failed to extinguish the lights. Her other hand reached for the suite’s door handle, which fell away in her hand, leaving the door closed in place. She darted nearly blindly towards the bedroom but only saw more lights, so she sped into the coat closet beside her.
“Kat!” Caleb yelled with alarm as he had only caught a fleeting glimpse of his mate’s scorched skin.
He immediately realized what was happening as he felt increased heat emanating from the nearest lamp. It was like the entire suite was a giant tanning booth. Grabbing one lamp, he jerked its cord from the nearby receptacle, rendering it harmless.
“Don’t worry, Kat! Just hang on!” he shouted while racing to the various light switches in the room, though none of them extinguished the lights.
He wielded the lamp pedestal in his hand like a bludgeon and ran to each light fixture on the walls to smash the bulbs until they were dark and useless. He had to jump up in order to break the ceiling-mounted lights, but quickly progressed through the living room until all lights were broken. Then to save time, he raced to the bedroom and slammed the door shut, leaving him standing in complete darkness.
His momentary night blindness hampered his efforts to cross the room as he barked, “It’s okay, Kat! The lights are out.”
His efforts were met with his shin’s painful, abrupt impact against the coffee table, which tripped him.
“Dammit!” he cursed while trying to maintain his balance.
He thought that he heard the nearby closet door open and felt a blur of movement nearby. The smell that followed nearly made him gag. It was like burned meat, and he shuddered upon realizing it was his mate’s flesh.
“Oh God, Kat,” he gasped.
“I’ll be okay,” her terse voice tried to reassure him.
Her anger was barely kept in check as she effortlessly moved through the darkness to part the curtains covering the windows. Although it was nighttime, the meager light filtering in through the coated glass from outside would allow her mate to see more easily.
“Jesus! Are you okay?” he insisted as his eyes began to adjust enough that he could make out her form near the windows.
He felt a blur of air rush past him again, and she disappeared from view. An acrid smell assailed his nose in her wake.
She opened the small refrigerator in the suite and withdrew two packets of blood she had stored there for convenience. She quickly assessed that her skin was only slightly damaged, and that fresh blood would speed the healing process.
“What can I do, Kat?” he asked. “You can have my blood right now,” he immediately offered.
“No, my love,” she countered while emptying the blood into a large ceramic coffee mug, which she placed in the nearby microwave.
He felt useless while watching her by the dim light emanating through the microwave’s glass door, and his mind raced with a host of questions all at once. She moved to the nearby phone and punched a few digits even as her skin throbbed with pain from the burns that she had endured.
“Alton? Get to my room immediately. Something’s happened,” she ordered in a flat voice before pressing a button to end the call and get another dial tone.
She dialed again as Caleb carefully negotiated his way to her.
“Paige, grab your boss and get up to my room. There’s been an event,” she ordered and hung up the phone.
She turned to the microwave and retrieved the mug of blood. The thick substance felt soothing as it washed down her throat and into her stomach. She could almost feel the healing effects begin to accelerate as her body’s cells began converting the blood to useful energy.
Vampires are nothing if not highly efficient biological machines.
Her eyes swept the room, falling upon the helpless, tortured expression on Caleb’s face, and it almost broke her heart.
“It’s okay, my love,” she reassured him. “I’m going to be fine.”
His tension abated somewhat, quickly changing to anger.
When I find out who did this...
A knock at the door interrupted his tumultuous thoughts.
“Katrina?” came Alton’s voice from the hallway.
“Move!” Paige’s voice ordered, followed by a clicking sound in the door lock mechanism.
Somebody rattled the exterior handle, but the door remained shut. Abruptly, a loud thud preempted the crashing of the door as it slammed into the wall and swung closed again. Finally, the door pivoted open, casting a swath of light across the floor of the suite as Paige, Alton, and Major Pietari crowded through the doorway.
“Why are the lights off?” Paige queried as her gaze swept the room. Her vision settled on Katrina’s face, and her breath caught in her throat. “And what the hell happened to you?!”
“UV-light bulbs happened to me. Caleb broke out the lights because the switches were disabled,” she added, noting Dori’s cautious appearance in the suite’s doorway.
Paige noted the light emanating underneath the doorway to the bedroom and moved in that direction. Caleb’s arm swept out, managing to encircle her petite waist.
“Same thing in there,” he snapped. The last thing that he wanted was for more vampires that he cared about to get hurt.
Paige’s eyes darted to the young man and back to the bedroom door. “This took some time,” she absently noted while affectionately patting his arm.
“We’ve been away all evening,” he interjected.
“Are you okay?” Alton asked, staring at the red-headed vampire.
“I’ll be fine,” Katrina replied.
She sipped from the mug of blood and stepped into the light of the hallway so the major could get a better look at her burns, which were already beginning to heal
. The pain still throbbed through her body, but at a greatly reduced rate.
Caleb stared at his mate, recalling memories of when he was only eight. That was when he first met her on that fateful summer day after she had been severely burned by the sun. Her skin had appeared scaly and blackened. His earlier grudge against her for the implant in his shoulder suddenly seemed somewhat petty.
Her eyes met his, and she tenderly smiled back at him, despite her obvious discomfort.
“The door handle was disengaged on the inside,” Dori pointed out.
“She should’ve just kicked the door off its hinges in the first place,” Paige admonished.
“I was caught off-guard and just wanted to block the painful radiation at the time,” Katrina retorted.
“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to hurt her,” Alton observed.
“I’ll check the maintenance logs to see if anyone noted any contractors arriving on site,” the major offered. “We took the surveillance system offline for a time tonight to diagnose and reinitialize the system, but I’ll check the video logs to see if we can see a glimpse of the culprits.” He looked at Paige. “Get this cleaned up and fixed, Turner.”
He turned and barreled from the room like a man on a mission.
“Yeah, sure,” she irritably replied. Somehow it didn’t surprise her to get stuck with the cleanup detail.
A thought occurred to Caleb, and he moved to the nearby phone to dial one of the rooms in the hotel. Nobody paid him any attention as they continued to chat about what had happened. He heard someone pick up on the other end. It was Talise.
“I’m sorry for calling so late. But can I please speak with Aiden? It’s important,” he apologetically inquired.
“Who are you calling?” Paige asked.
A sleepy male voice on the phone asked, “Hello?”
“Aiden? It’s Caleb. Listen, something important just happened, and we need your help,” he insisted.
“We do?” Paige asked as the others watched with perplexed expressions.
“Just get dressed and get over to our room,” he ordered and hung up the phone.
“What are you up to?” Alton asked in his crisp English accent.
“Somebody just pulled off a big electrical job here. Who better to help sort it all out than a master electrician?” Caleb asked with a sly expression.
By the time Aiden and Talise arrived at the suite, temporary lighting had been set up around the room. Additionally, the light bulbs had hastily been replaced in the bedroom and bathroom with ordinary ones. Paige and another security officer were discussing further investigative topics, while Alton and Katrina stood in a corner quietly conversing.
Caleb quickly briefed Aiden, and the sleepy-eyed young man used a multi-purpose tool to remove the panel from the light switch nearest the door. Dori and the vampires in the room quickly gathered around to watch.
Caleb noted with satisfaction that Katrina’s skin only looked like it had sustained serious sunburns instead of the scarred tissue from earlier. Her skin was reddened and blistered-looking. She patted him on the shoulder with a reassuring expression.
“Wow, this is sophisticated,” Aiden observed as he viewed the wiring before him. “Somebody really knew what they were doing here. See this? They installed a mini-breaker to act as the kill switch when the contact was activated.”
“Hmmm,” Alton murmured. “Rather elaborate for such a limited effect. Surely, they realized their trap wouldn’t actually kill Katrina before she managed to escape the room.”
“Yeah, but it’s a hell of a message,” Paige blurted.
And I need to find out from whom, she resolved.
Aiden politely passed through the group, making his way to another light switch, only to discover the same alteration to the wiring. The young man frowned and sharply looked at Caleb.
“Somebody had to crosswire all the suite’s switches in series to all the other light fixtures, as well.”
“Can any electrical contractor do that?” Dori asked.
Aiden shrugged. “Yeah, sure. But they’d need the electrical blueprints to know how everything was already wired. Normally, we’d balance everything so you didn’t overload any one circuit in a suite like this, so you’d want to know how they tie into the main breaker panel. The phases all have to be balanced, you see.”
Paige glanced meaningfully at the security guard standing next to her.
“I’ll check the electrical room on this floor,” the guard offered before departing.
“So, it wasn’t necessarily an inside job,” Talise ventured.
“Oh, there was an inside component to this, I’m sure,” Paige said. Katrina nodded. “Somebody de-programmed the door to the suite, too.”
“Yep, I’ve installed those types of locks on some of my previous construction jobs. They’re pretty standard in places like hotels. Each door has a standalone lock, so it takes someone with access to the master key cards or somebody with one of the handheld programming units to make the changes,” Aiden said.
“But it allowed me in the first time,” Katrina countered.
“Aw, those locks are pretty dynamic, actually. You can program them to reset, or even deactivate, after the first swipe, if you want,” Aiden explained.
Talise appeared impressed and moved to stand next to Aiden. “You’re pretty handy,” she observed in an approving tone.
He winked and kissed her on the cheek in response.
But Alton appeared less than amused exchanging knowing looks with both Katrina and Paige. “A rat in our midst, for certain,” he said.
“I’ll run down who has access to those components,” Paige promised. She looked at Aiden. “Mind if I tap your expertise on this?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Not like I’ve got any other plans.”
A couple of tired-looking maintenance men showed up outside the suite and politely knocked on the door jamb.
“Is this the suite with the faulty door?” one of the fellows asked in thick Slovene-accented English.
Everyone turned to stare at the men, who stood directly beside the ruined door as it barely hung from one hinge, seemingly aloof of its condition.
“You’re kidding, right?” Paige incredulously asked.
“No offense, but you’re gonna want to call somebody else, I think,” Aiden sardonically whispered.
* * * *
As the process of repairing things in the suite was going to take time, and rather than bothering to transfer to another suite, Paige offered the use of her room to Caleb and Katrina. When Caleb woke the next morning, he rolled over to stare into the perky-featured face of Paige as she lay fully dressed on top of the covers, perching her head on one arm.
“Well, look who’s sleeping in my bed,” she playfully chimed with a sparkle in her bright blue eyes.
He sleepily peered back at her. “Chasing me out?” he asked.
“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting forever to get you like this,” she teased. “Wanna try my handcuffs on for size now?” she asked with a daring gleam in her eyes.
Following a roll of his eyes, he stifled a yawn while stretching his muscles. “Maybe later. But thanks for letting me crash here. Where’s Kat?”
“Too bad,” she mock-lamented with a pouty expression. “Your old lady left for the conference room a couple of hours ago. Alton was pretty anxious to inform the group of last night’s events in order to gauge their reactions.”
“Think it’ll help?”
“Not so much,” she soberly replied, rolling off the bed to stand. “Some vampires are good at feigning their reactions.”
“Any leads yet on who altered our room’s light fixtures?” he asked while sitting up.
“Not yet. As the major said, the security system was offline for a while, which was probably when they snuck in to do the job.”
“Perfect timing, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, a little too perfect.”
He yawned and plopped back down onto the bed.
>
She adopted a more upbeat expression, planted her hands on her hips and badgered, “Hey, time to get up, twerp. Whaddaya think I’m running here, a hotel?”
After showering and changing into the fresh clothes he had brought from his suite, Caleb went to the lobby to acquire a card key to his and Katrina’s new suite. Much to his surprise, there was a similarly-sized room available at the opposite end of Paige’s floor. He couldn’t help but wonder if either of the two most important women in his life had a hand in that.
Probably both, he determined. Still, it made him feel happy to know that Paige wasn’t far from him. Well, that’s when she’s actually off-duty, which isn’t very often lately.
As he turned to head to the dining room for something to eat, he caught a glimpse of Paige in a freshly pressed security blazer and slacks standing near the elevator intently watching him with her arms crossed before her.
He held up the new room key for her to see. She adopted a mischievous smirk and winked at him.
He deliberately went out of his way to walk past her on his route to the dining room and teased, “How convenient. Making access easier to feed on me?”
“That,” she conceded in a light tone, “and I like to keep troublemakers close by.”
He stuck out his tongue at her over his shoulder, and she giggled.
Once seated in the dining room, he ordered brunch and waited for his food to arrive. While he was perusing a day-old copy of The New York Times, Dori appeared at his tableside and pulled up a chair next to his.
“Why is it that I’m always finding you down here?” she teased.
He looked over the top of his paper at the beguiling brunette, hoping that her positive demeanor portended good news.
“I happen to like eating.”
“Your appetite is epic,” she remarked with a smirk.
“Somebody got up on the right side of bed.”
She shrugged and accepted fresh coffee offered by a passing waiter.
Watching the man depart, she informed him, “I have discovered something interesting about Alton’s new toys.”
His eyes darted to her with rapt attention and he laid his newspaper aside. “Such as?”