Sunset Rising (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 5) (14 page)

Then I was back on a train to Newark, where
I changed direction and took a train northwest to Scranton,
Pennsylvania.

At Scranton, I boarded a bus for Syracuse,
New York and passed the time perusing state maps from the region to
contemplate my future destination. Along the way, my mind wandered
until my thoughts gravitated to Katrina.

The memory of her was almost painful to
me.

She was the last person I wanted to think
about at that moment. I couldn’t bear to focus on her or our
relationship.

But she was the reason I was there.

If not then, when exactly did I intend to
contemplate the central reason for my abrupt cross-country
excursion?

I wasn’t ready yet. That much I knew.

So I returned to alternating between
perusing maps and passively staring out at the passing traffic and
surroundings.

It’s startling how quickly time passes when
you’re avoiding confronting strong emotions.

Before I realized it, we were nearly at the
outskirts of Syracuse, and I stared dumbfounded at my watch to
realize that nearly three hours had passed.

Where the hell did the time go?

I ate a quick lunch and decided to go on to
Rochester and then to Buffalo. During the layover in Rochester and
some heavy traffic, I was able to sit and mull things over for
nearly four additional hours.

By the time we reached Buffalo, it was
almost early evening, so I stayed in yet another cheap hotel.
Despite room conditions that were somewhat improved from my
previous experiences, I nevertheless closely examined the bed
before going to sleep.

One thing was certain about life with
Katrina and all its trappings: I tended to stay in upscale,
well-maintained accommodations. The Spartan reality of my life
before Kat was quickly reasserting itself, like a half-forgotten
memory of days gone by.

In reality, it had only been more than a
year since I met Katrina. And yet, in some ways it felt like a
lifetime. Perhaps that was because my life had changed so
drastically over that short duration.

I had experienced unimaginable passion and
adrenaline-rushing excitement, as well as confronted moments of
heart-stopping terror. It felt as if I had already lived an entire
range of lifetime events.

But it was the lighter moments with Kat that
I cherished the most. I reflected upon those and it lulled me into
a state of relaxation.

Sometime during my musings, I fell
asleep.

I abruptly awoke to the sounds of someone
banging on my hotel room door.

“
Hey, open up,” came a
gruff voice.

The room was dark as my mind struggled to
grasp where I was amidst renewed knocking.

I instinctually grabbed my combat knives
from beneath my pillow before slipping into my jeans.

I tip-toed to the door and carefully glanced
out through the security peephole to see a tall, heavily bearded
fellow facing forward.

“
C’mon, open up, asshole,”
he said. “I haven’t got time for this shit.”

He obviously had the wrong room and it sort
of pissed me off that he’d woken me out of a relatively peaceful
slumber.

I took a deep breath while slipping one
knife into my back waistband, then unsheathed the other and held it
at the ready.

I quickly unlocked the door and jerked it
open, startling the guy. I snatched him by the collar of his
leather jacket and jerked forward, catching him off balance.

“
What the—”

I swung him downward onto the floor while
placing the tip of my knife to his throat.

“
Wrong damned room,
asshole
,” I
said.

“
H-hey, what gives,
dickhead?
You
called
me
,”
he stammered.

“
I don’t even know who you
are, idiot,” I said, increasing the pressure of the blade against
his neck.

“
Whoa, whoa, Peterson,
back off,” he said, holding his hands up with palms
open.

“
Peterson? Who the hell is
Peterson?”

“
Wha—You’re not Blacktop
Peterson?”

I stared down at him. “Do I look like
Blacktop Peterson?”

Whoever the hell that was…

“
Uh, how should I know?
This is the drop, room 27 for Peterson,” he said. “Are you a cop?
You’ve gotta tell me if you are.”

“
Well, I’m
definitely
not
Peterson,” I said between gritted teeth.

“
Oh…shit,” he said. “I
thought he said 27.”

Despite my heart racing, I was really pissed
off for some reason.

“
I oughta—” I
said.

“
Hey, whoa-whoa,” he said.
“Let’s just calm the hell down before someone gets
jacked—”

“
That’s
you
,” I said, pinning
the guy beneath my knee while patting him down for weapons with my
free hand.

I heard a door open across the hallway, but
didn’t want to take my eyes off the guy before me.

“
Hey, man, are you selling
to him instead?” asked a tentative voice from the doorway behind
me.

I held the knife at the prone man’s throat
and reached behind me to withdraw my other knife. I turned to my
newest unwanted guest.

“
Do you want a piece of
this, too?” I asked.

The man’s eyes went wide and he took off at
a dead run.

“
H-hey, this don’t have to
end bad, you know,” the guy on the floor said. “I don’t want no
trouble.”

I gave him my best hard glare.

“
Did you hear that other
guy running down the hall?” I asked.

“
Y-yeah.”

I removed the knife from beneath his throat
and rose to stand.

“
You better beat him outta
here.”

The fellow slowly rose to his feet with his
hands held above his shoulders and gradually moved toward the open
door.

“
Go!” I said.

He ran down the length of the hallway. I
heard rapidly retreating, heavy footfalls and a door fling open at
the end of the hallway. I carefully peered around the corner in
time to see the metal stairwell door shut with a thud.

Despite the late hour, I wasted no time
hastily packing my things and heading downstairs to check out.
There was no way I was waiting around to see if the guy came back
and with renewed courage and perhaps a gun.

The desk associate was wary to check me out,
but I told him about my unwanted guest, for which he apologized
profusely.

“
Absolutely, sir,” he
said. “I’ll make sure my manager is notified. Should I call the
police?”

“
No, they’re both gone
now,” I said. “But I’d keep the phone handy, if I were
you.”

To his credit, the guy appeared
sympathetic.

“
I only charged you for
half the normal rate. The manager left me his override card,” he
said. “But would you mind giving me a good rating on a customer
survey?”

Seriously?

“
Yeah, for you, sure,” I
said. “Not so much on my room experience.”

He gave me a sheepish look. “Yeah, I don’t
blame you there, really.”

The associate gave me directions to the
nearest decent hotel, so I cautiously made my way out into the
night.

What a weird night.

Suddenly, I doubted the wisdom of my road
trip escape from New Haven.

Once I had checked into a hotel just down
the street, I went to the bathroom and splashed warm water on my
face. I looked into the mirror at my tired expression.

Lying in bed, I replayed the events from my
recent hotel experience. I was annoyed over how awkward everything
had felt, and I silently critiqued my actions and technique.

I need more practice on
takedowns
, I mused.

I almost made a mental note to ask Roman
about it during our next workout. It was odd how easily my mind
fell into routines, no matter how undesirable.

Over the course of various training regimens
and events ranging from enlightening to nearly lethal, I had
morphed into a decidedly different version of me over the past
year. I could scarcely envision the person I had been before
meeting Katrina.

I could have pondered if that was a good
thing or not, but I already knew that would have been silly, as
well as pointless.

I respected the person I had become; I was
better equipped to live in the world around me, as well as survive
its challenges.

The remainder of my night was restless
despite my fatigue, and I slept very little.

The next morning, I undertook a bus trip to
East Aurora, the historic township where Millard Fillmore and his
wife had lived in the 1920s prior to his ascendency to the
presidency.

Only a history nerd like me would appreciate
that veritably forgettable moniker.

The journey permitted me more time to
contemplate my life with, and lately without, Kat.

East Aurora was quaint and I availed myself
of a cozy café with public Wi-Fi to send a message to Kat, Paige,
and Alton to tell them that I was safe and would be in touch again
soon. I kept my notes brief while trying not to dwell on the
emotional, bordering on furious, emails from each of them. There
was even a message from Roman in which he threatened to beat my ass
when he saw me next.

It was nice to know he cared.

I lingered long enough to take in some brief
sights and eat lunch before returning to Buffalo. From there, I
took a train to Silver Creek, right off the shores of Lake Erie.
Afterward, I went all the way to Cleveland, Ohio where I killed
some time and awaited another train departure.

My life came full circle as I contemplated
an emotional selection for my next destination.

Columbus, Ohio.

I was born and raised there.

When I was only a boy, my abusive alcoholic
father died there at Katrina’s hands; a memory only recently
returned to me thanks to the hypnotic ministrations of a
London-based vampire psychiatrist named Dr. Roehl Guilhelm.

Perhaps the worst memory was that my mother
died of cancer in Columbus while I was still in college.

I had many demons to exorcize there.

Night had fallen once my train pulled into
Columbus. However, I remained in town and avoided a taxi ride out
to my old childhood home on the outskirts of the city.

There might be demons, but I wasn’t in the
mood to be a demon hunter quite yet.

Instead, that night, following a quick meal,
I decided to pick someplace restful for further contemplations.

I selected Ohio’s Tar Hollow State Park,
located just south of Laurelville on state highway 56. There were
over sixteen thousand acres of forest woodlands to lose myself in.
It was a scenic location that I’d briefly visited while growing
up

It seemed absolutely ideal.

I was pleased to find that Laurelville
actually supported an infrequent bus route, which I quickly secured
passage on.

The road trip was restful and there weren’t
many people on my bus, so it was relatively quiet. Every time I
tried to think about Kat and the issues that inspired me to run
away, my mind rebelled. Instead, I morosely stared out the window
at the passing landscape.

What was I going to do?

I couldn’t just keep running away. My
available timeline wasn’t limitless.

Was it?

Chapter 12

Caleb

When the bus pulled onto Main Street in
Laurelville, I thought we’d landed in the midst of a cliché.

I had the distinct impression that the town
might fit into the back of two semi-tractor trailers. Heck, for all
I knew, the townspeople might all fit into the Greyhound bus that
had brought me there.

I was the only person exiting the bus, and
as I watched the bus pull away, I felt a wave of uncertainty wash
over me. I spared a few moments to scan my surroundings.

It looked bleak and remote. The nearest
homes that I could see looked as if they’d been built decades
before I was born. The place seemed wholly removed from modern
times; an anomaly stuck in a time pocket.

Had I just stepped into
the
Twilight Zone
?

“
God, I’m so
screwed.”

I hoisted my backpack over one shoulder and
walked just up the street to a small diner called Cooper’s Cafe,
conveniently placed directly across the street from Laurelville
Feed and Seed.

As I crossed the café’s threshold, the half
dozen customers turned to look at me.

“
Just sit where you’d like
and I’ll be right with ya,” said a waitress standing behind an
old-fashioned counter.

“
Sure thing,” I said,
making my way toward an empty booth situated before one of the
front picture windows.

The other patrons quickly dismissed me and
returned to their meals.

As I sat and perused the crumpled
single-sheet laminated menu, the waitress arrived at my table.

“
Hi, I’m Bel. Can I get
you something to drink while you look at the menu?” she
asked.

What an unusual nickname. Or is that her
actual name?

“
Um, iced tea, I
suppose.”

“
I’ll be right back,” she
said. “Oh, and our special today is fried catfish.”

Minutes later, after looking over the menu
and sipping some tea, I took out the brochure about the Tar Hollow
State Park cabins.

“
Tar Hollow, eh? Sort of
missed the season, didn’t you?”