Lost (4 page)

As he raced to the spot where he had left Rachel, he cursed. The sun was up. He couldn't go to her, not without being fried.

Then, as his feet slowed, he realized what that meant. If Cameron couldn't get to her, neither could Dorian. She was safe from his brother.

He stopped a few feet from the end of the cursed ground.

Rachel stood with her back to him in the middle of the road. She was staring directly into the rising sun, to the east. Cameron couldn't follow her line of vision, couldn't bring his sun-sensitive eyes to stare that directly into the light.

Her hands hung fisted at her sides, and her legs trembled. She was frozen, like a rabbit cornered by a fox. She was prey, and she had seen a predator... Dorian.

She took a step forward.

“Rachel!” Cameron yelled.

She took another step, jerky and unnatural, her body being powered by someone else's will.

Damn his brother. Wherever he stood hidden in the shadows, he was mesmerizing her, calling her to him.

Cameron gritted his teeth and fought back, put every bit of energy he had into yanking Rachel's mind free.

Her foot rose then hung in mid-air. Cameron had no way of knowing what Dorian was showing Rachel to make her head his direction, but he knew he couldn't let his brother win. He had to offer her more.

But what?

He started with the usual— feelings of sexual hunger, feelings only he could satisfy. It was the standard lure when mesmerizing a human for feeding. But as he made promises in Rachel's mind, showed her images of his fingers dancing over her skin, her breasts brushing against his chest, her body contracting around his, something shifted. The promises weren't empty, weren't just a well-practiced exercise to get what he wanted. They were real, desperately real.

If his brother won, if Rachel walked toward him, chose him and the destruction that would come with him over Cameron...

Cameron closed his eyes briefly against the pain the possibility brought with it.

Then he turned back to Rachel. She had lowered her foot, but barely. She seemed torn and confused.

Risking the continuingly rising sun, he stared at her, and this time instead of making promises he'd made a thousand times before, he let her into his mind... into his heart. He showed her the cold reality of his life, the lack of warmth he'd grown to expect. Showed her that little boy staring through that frost-covered window, and then he showed her herself, as he saw her— young, alive, trusting, and afraid for her friends. Showed her the hunger he felt, not for her blood or body, but for her, for someone who would have those feelings for him.

Her foot finished its descent to the ground, and, in one smooth movement, she turned to face him.

“Cameron?”

She'd seen him. Truly seen him for the very first time, and she didn't run.

“What...?” She glanced over her shoulder, to where she had been staring when he approached, to where his brother no doubt still lurked. “I saw...” A shiver moved her. She grabbed herself in a hug and squeezed. Then glancing back at Cameron, she took a step toward him.

“Stop.” He held up his hand. “Run, Rachel. Into the sun. Just run.”

Across the sunny patch where she stood, hidden in the cursed darkness, something roared.

Dorian.

“Run,” he yelled again. Then he followed his own advice and charged back deeper into the cursed canyon. Prayed he drew his brother with him.

o0o

Into the sun
. Cameron's words echoed through Rachel's mind. She turned and blinked at the bright light that seemed to stream down from one open point in the clouds.

Cameron wanted her to run... away from him.

But what he'd shown her, the hurt, the hope... How could she run away from that?

She pivoted and plunged into the darkness. Ran as Cameron had told her, but not away from him... toward him.

The sound of something growling and thrashing ahead of her caused her to pause. “Cameron?” The noise didn't stop. If anything, it grew louder and more frantic. “Cameron?”

Silence. Even the thrashing stopped.

“Cameron?” She took a blind step forward. Her foot slipped on the grass. She fell and rolled downward, kept rolling until her hip smacked into something hard and cold.

The car. Nancy's car.

In a rush of emotion and pain, everything came back to her. The wreck, Cameron's lips on her neck, finding the empty vehicle, believing if she left, everything would become okay, and finally the monster— wild eyes in a death-pale face, jagged teeth jutting from his jaws, and a face like Cameron’s. Too much like Cameron’s.

She dropped her hands to the ground beside her and tried to shove herself up, but her fingers didn't find the earth. They found an arm, cold and lifeless.

Again, she screamed.

Chapter Five

Rachel's scream vibrated against the metal of the car, telling Cameron exactly where she was and what she had found.

Her friend, one of them. For some reason, Dorian had been dragging the body behind him, scrambling over the frozen ground, frenzied and intent on escape Cameron guessed, but his travels had brought him and the dead girl back to the car.

“Dorian,” he whispered.

His brother was gone, not physically, but lost to the curse. Cameron had seen the hollowness of his eyes and the bent-over posture of his body. He had turned. There was no hope for him, but there was still hope for Rachel, if Cameron could get to her first.

He raced toward the car.

Rachel lay curled on her side on the ground. Two feet away lay the lifeless body of her friend. “Rachel,” he called, hoping to convince her to come to him, or at least not to panic and run again.

“She's dead. You told me it would be okay, that they would be okay,” she muttered.

He had. He'd lied, but in his lifelong list of sins, this one was so tiny. “You will be okay,” he replied, opening his mind again, using his powers one more time to convince her to trust him.

She raised her head. Her face was damp; her hair was mussed. She looked drained and ready to give up, and suddenly the lie didn't seem so tiny.

He had given her hope when there was none, made the reality of losing her friends all that much harder to take.

Dropping his act, he took a step toward her.

A body dropped from the sky onto the ground beside her. Dorian, his clothes in tatters and his long hair twisted into ungroomed ropes and snarls, landed in a crouch. He grabbed Rachel from behind, the fingers from one hand digging into her cheek and jaw, the other hand wrapped around her waist. He leaned over her, his mouth open.

“No!” Cameron threw himself toward his brother and hit him in the gut. Dorian flew backwards— they both flew backwards, knocking into the forgotten car.

“Let me have her, brother. She can save me... blood fresh and sweet. You know it's the only cure.” Dorian clawed at Cameron's back. His nails tore through the thick sweatshirt, shredded Cameron's skin.

“Run, Rachel! Run!” Cameron yelled, but with little hope the petite human would— could— heed his urging.

Dorian reeked of blood.
From her friends?

Enraged, Cameron wrapped his fingers around his brother's neck and squeezed. “How many? How many did you kill? How many more do you think it will take?”

Dorian stared back at him with wild eyes. “Kill? Killing risks discovery. Vampires must take precautions. Renaults must take precautions. Cover their tracks.” He glanced at the body he had been dragging behind him.

Cameron's stomach clenched. He was quoting their father's words, his orders to hide their indiscretions.

A horrid, sick feeling clamped onto Cameron and wouldn't let go.

“Dorian, why did you come here so many times?”

“Cover their tracks,” Dorian repeated.

And with his reply, Cameron knew the answer, knew hidden somewhere in this canyon were bodies, one for each of his brother’s visits, but the deaths, he knew, hadn’t been Dorian’s work. They had been their father's.

“Damn you, Dorian. Damn you for listening to him. What am I to do now?”

Dorian opened his mouth, baring his fangs and making the pungent smell of fresh blood on his breath undeniable.

Cameron had no choice. He pulled up the leg of his jeans and grabbed the sharpened metal rod he had kept hidden in his boot.

“You're... he's...” Rachel's voice came from over his shoulder. Disbelief, disgust, fear. He was used to all three, but somehow he'd hoped to avoid hearing them in Rachel's voice or seeing them on her face.

His attention wavered, and his brother lunged. Dorian shot forward, knocking the metal rod from Cameron's hand and reaching for Rachel.

“No!” Cameron spun and grabbed Rachel in a hug. He jerked her to the ground. Behind them, Dorian landed.

In the second it took Cameron to regain his feet, Dorian had scuttled back into the woods and disappeared.

Failure landed heavy on Cameron's shoulders. He picked up the metal rod and shoved it back into its hiding place in his boot. He would have to follow his brother, and he would have to kill him, but as long as it was daylight outside the cursed canyon Dorian couldn't escape. Cameron had a little time, enough to get Rachel back on the road.

“This isn't a joke or a nightmare.” She sat with her knees bent and her forehead pressed against them.

“No. It isn't.” There was nothing else to say. She knew the truth now. She would never see her world the same.

“I'm sorry. Your friends... I came here to get him, to stop him. I was too late.”

She didn't move.

“You'll have to come with me. I'll have to get you out.” The canyon was still dark to her. If he left her alone, she'd get confused and lost again. But this time he knew he wouldn't have to use his powers to convince her to run into the sun, to run away from him.

She lifted her face and glanced toward the car. “I can't come back, can I? No one can come back here. It's...”

“Cursed. Just like the stories say,” he finished.

With a last unsure glance around her, she stood and held out one hand. “I have to see it first. I have to, or I'll never really accept any of this.” Her voice was strained, like she was barely holding on to her sanity. Not sure what to do, Cameron did nothing.

She shook her hand. “Take me to the car. I have to see.”

She was only a few steps away. In seconds, she was kneeling next to it, next to her friend. She placed her hand on her friend's arm. “Who is it?” she asked, but low, as if she didn't expect an answer.

Still, he replied. “Her hair is short, like yours.”

She nodded. “Karen.” Then she paused and looked up at him. “The car has lights.”

“Do you...?”

He could see her friend lying broken beside her, had seen the same friend being dragged lifeless by his brother over the frozen hill. He couldn't see how Rachel having such an image in her mind would help her any.

“The car...”

He leaned past her and flipped on the car's dome lights. Then, after a second of hesitation, he pulled on the headlights too.

“Karen.”

Giving Rachel a few moments to mourn her friend, Cameron circled the car. Twenty feet away, he found a second body. This one with blond hair that reached to her shoulders.

He stared down at it, thinking of the waste, of how much this cursed canyon had taken from all of them. He turned to find Rachel on her feet and facing his direction.

“I can carry them to the road. Give their families some closure.” He stared down at the body again. Blood stained the snow around her, but her neck was smooth and unblemished. He kneeled and ran his hand over her face.

Vampires knew death, and he knew this girl had been dead for hours, probably as soon as the car had hit.

Without speaking, he strode back to the vehicle and the first body, the one Dorian had been dragging. Like the second, there was no sign that she had been bitten, much less killed by a vampire.

“He didn't kill them. He was taking them out of the canyon.”

“Nancy isn't here.” Her hands shoved into her pockets and her shoulders hunched, Rachel stared with shock-widened eyes. “She was here when I left. She's who I tried to get free. Who told me to go.”

“She was alive.” The hope that the Dorian Cameron knew wasn't completely gone sputtered and died.

“I think she might still be...” Rachel held out her hand. Clasped in her fingers was a scarf. “It's Nancy's.” She swallowed. “There's blood on it, but there's also those.” She pointed to the side, to an area directly in the light of the headlamps. Two pairs of footprints wandered through the snow. “They aren't mine,” she added.

One set was deeper than the other, as if one person was larger or helping to bear the weight of the second.

“But if she's alive, who found her? And why didn't they go to the road?” Rachel's eyes asked Cameron for an answer, but he didn't have one to give, not one she would want to hear.

He looked away.

“Your brother. You think he took her.” Her voice was dead. She'd been through too much and was past processing anything more.

Cameron was too. He closed the space between them and pulled her into his arms. It was an insane thing to do. She had no reason to accept him, no reason to do anything but scream and run from him, but he needed her touch, hoped she needed his too.

For a second, she resisted. Her body stayed stiff. He stroked her hair and inhaled her scent, prepared himself to be pushed away. It was the expected thing for her to do... the smart thing. He wouldn't stop her, wouldn't force her to accept his comfort.

Then, with a giant exhale of breath, she collapsed against him.

He stood holding her. The lights from the car dimmed then died, but he didn't move, didn't dare to.

Finally, she looked up. “What do we do now?”

He shook his head. He still had a brother to find and kill.

“Do you have to stay here?” she asked.

“No.” But he should. He shouldn't let Dorian get too far away. Couldn’t risk him escaping the canyon come night.

“Will you walk me to the top? And find me again later?”

She needed closure too, needed to know what had happened to her third friend. “I'll find her, and I'll let you know. I won't lie to you.”