Chapter 472
Something like a cyber caf¨¦ sat in the middle of the shopping center. The walls, striped in orange and yellow, gave Katelina a headache. She was glad they didn't wait long to get a computer.
Jorick sat patiently as she signed into her email and typed up a hopefully cryptic note.
To: Otakudoll@jnet.com
Subject: The old guy
They think the old guy is hiding in the mountains outside of Obigarm, Tajikistan. We're waiting for them to approve transportation. J thinks it might be by tomorrow. Do not bring everyone with you. It would draw unwanted attention.
Jorick nodded his approval and she hit send.
"Are you sure that will be enough?" she whispered. "How will she find us once she gets there?"
"Hopefully she will get there first and scout out the situation. If we're lucky she may be able to interfere with whatever Malick's doing."
Katelina rolled her eyes and clicked on her inbox. The top message was from her cousin with the subject "OMG! Are you OK?"
"Let me answer this message real quick. Then we can go."
Jorick leaned back in the chair, and Katelina quickly scanned the mail.
Your mom said you turned up again. Thank God. We were all worried. We thought you'd been kidnapped. She said you were in Germany? What are you doing there? Are you really living in a van? Marshy and Cinna both made honor roll last semester. Yay! I feel old with kids in junior high school. Are you going to be around for Easter? I think it would be nice to get the whole family together again like we used to when we were kids. Let me know.
Katelina licked her lips. Her tongue found the points of her new fangs and she stiffened. Easter. As if she could think about that now. She couldn't eat dinner with them and, even if she could, it wasn't like they'd wait until after dark. This sort of thing was why she'd wanted to wait to become a vampire!
Jorick asked, "Are you going to type or stare at the screen?"
"I don't know what to say." With a sigh of defeat she closed the tab. A search engine looked back at her and on a whim she typed in her own name. With a grunt of disgust she clicked the top link to be greeted by a collage of photos featuring herself and her best friend Sarah.
"What's that?" Jorick asked.
"It's a website my mother and Brad made. You know, the guy who used to be dating Sarah but is screwing around with my mother now?" The whole situation was bizarre, especially since he maintained a website looking for his missing girlfriend.
She was glad to see that most of the references to herself had been removed. The "Updates" page had a brief paragraph saying that Katelina had been found, but that she and Sarah had not been together, and that she knew nothing of her friend's disappearance.
That was what she had to say. How could she tell them the truth; that Sarah had been taken and killed by vampires who'd mistaken her for Katelina? No, she had to leave them forever wondering.
"And screwing around," Katelina muttered darkly. If Brad really thought Sarah was alive, then what the hell was he doing with her mother?
The information on Sarah was the same; more photos, her birthday, a detailed description, a paragraph about the last time she'd been seen. There was nothing new, just holes where Brad had taken Katelina's information out.
It was more than she wanted to deal with, so she closed it. She leaned back in the chair and stared at the computer monitor as if it was a window to another place. In it, she imagined she could see Sarah and Brad laughing. The scene faded, replaced by blood and death.
Jorick cleared his throat. "Anything interesting in the news?"
"I doubt it." She clicked on the homepage's news stream and scanned the headlines and synopsis. "Not really. The news is mostly stupid crap. Seriously, listen to this. We have 'How to lose Belly Fat by Eating Miracle Fruit. Many Americans suffer from'-Blah, blah. Never mind. Oh, here we go. 'New Shelay album to be released posthumously. After the murder of pop singer Shelay last November, we thought there'd never be another album,' and we didn't care. And for our daily human terror we have 'Murdered Boy in Ottawa Linked to Child Killer. A dead boy in Ottawa has been positively linked to the string of child murders plaguing Ontario.' That's thrown in there so we can all panic, even though the killer is hundreds of miles away. And here's our international piece, 'Chinese Museum Artifacts Found in Parking Lot. Experts have positively identified the robe and hair combs found in a parking lot in downtown Tianjin last week as belonging to Empress Cixi. The artifacts are part of the museum collection at Chengde Palace. How did they come to be there?'" She broke off. Robes. Hair combs. What was the chance it was the set she'd lost?
The curiosity disappeared when her eyes landed on another headline. "'Terrorist Nuclear Plot Thwarted. Terrorists attempted to gain control of a nuclear missile silo in Russia yesterday, but their plans were thwarted by authorities who-' took all the credit. Of course they did. Not like they could tell the truth." She closed the browser and leaned back in the chair. "It's all just stupid. And shallow. And pointless."
"You've summed up life. Come, let's find some of this entertainment Wolfe promised us."
Jamie was wandering around a store that sold incense and "magic" crystals. Jorick didn't comment when his fellow Executioner purchased a large chunk of aquamarine, though an amused smirk revealed his opinion.
With nothing else to do, they wasted the night browsing the stores and even watched a movie in English with Russian subtitles. Like the news articles from before, the evening felt shallow and pointless. By bedtime Katelina's bad mood had gotten worse.
She dreamt that she and Jorick attended her cousin's Easter dinner. While they were sitting over giant pieces of pie, Malick and his henchmen attacked. The battle that ensued was bloody and sporadic. Somehow Katelina found herself holding the drained lifeless bodies of her cousin's daughters, the taste of their blood still in her mouth.
She woke with a cry to find the Russian bedroom cloaked in twilight gloom. She kicked off the lime green bedspread and padded to the bathroom. It was only when she looked for a place to sit that she realized there was no toilet. Why would there be? Vampires didn't need it anymore. She didn't need it anymore. While that in and of itself wasn't a bad thing, it felt wrong. All the things she'd been taught were importantfood, shelter, clothing, plumbing, light, heatno longer mattered. She was cut adrift in dark waters where everything she'd ever known was useless.
"Luckily, I have Jorick." She couldn't imagine how horrible the transformation would be with someone like Malick as a master, or to be abandoned and left to figure it out alone, as Loren said Micah had been. No wonder the bald vampire was such an ass.
When she got out of her shower, Jorick was still in bed. Though her watch was set for Central time, she instinctively knew that the sun was down. She hollered at him as she finished getting dressed. He didn't even flinch.
"Jorick?" She stood next to the bed and prodded him. "Jorick?" There was no reaction. A sudden terrifying thought popped into her head. She'd heard of people doing things in their dreams that they were physically doing in their sleep, like walking or eating. She'd dreamed about draining someone dry. What if
"Jorick?" She shook him hard, her voice panicked. How was she going to explain this? Would anyone believe she'd done it accidentally? What would she do without him?
