Vampire Bites: A Vampire Romance Anthology

by Lori Devoti

  He slipped her finger into his mouth. On the hillside, he had been stupid. He had given into the pounding need to taste her, but he’d been smart too. He had carefully sealed her wound before releasing her from his arms.

  Now, standing next to the evidence that his brother had slipped to the other side, he didn’t need the sweet scent of her blood calling to him or Dorian.

  And her blood was sweet. Despite the disturbing discovery Cameron had just made, desire swelled inside him. His canines, which he hadn’t bothered to cover since their bite on the slope, ached.

  His fingers tightened around her wrist, over the veins that lay so close to the surface there. He swirled his tongue over the gash in her finger, willing his saliva to close the wound even as his mind filled with images of sinking his fangs into the thin blue lines he knew ran just below her skin.

  “It... oh.” A sigh, little more than a puff of air, left her lips.

  He moved his attention to her wrist, allowed himself one simple kiss, before forcing himself to lower her hand.

  She pulled her arm toward her body until her wrist was pressed against her breasts. After blowing out a breath, she asked, “What is it? What do you see? Why can’t I see?”

  She dug in her pocket as if searching for her missing phone.

  He placed his hand on her arm. “Nothing. I see nothing. Your friends aren’t in the car.”

  Her eyes darted from side to side in her face. “They aren’t...” A sigh left her body. “That’s good, right? Someone found them and took them away. An ambulance or police.” She shook her head and pressed her palm to her forehead. “I should have just waited. They say that’s the best thing to do.”

  Cameron didn’t know who “they” were, but he had no doubt Rachel leaving had one hundred percent been her best choice, the choice that had kept her alive. And now, he had to make another choice to keep her alive.

  “I’ll walk you to the road,” he said, grabbing her by the elbow and directing her back into the tire ruts.

  She went with him willingly, almost cheerfully. As they walked, the dark turned to murky gray. He slipped his hand into his pocket and pushed the caps back onto his teeth. He glanced at her as he did. In the growing light, he could see her more clearly, see the gloss of her hair and the tiny bits of dried plants and dirt that clung to her clothing.

  By the time they reached the road, the shadowy curse of the canyon felt a lifetime away.

  It was early dawn. The sun had yet to rise, but Cameron could feel its threat looming.

  He had to leave, and soon. He forced his fingers to loosen their hold on her arm and took a step back.

  She turned instantly. “They aren’t here. No one is here.”

  He kept his voice calm and reassuring, pulled one more time on his vampire talents. “They’ve left. Someone picked them up, and someone will find you too. You’ll be fine. Just follow the road, back the way you came.”

  She glanced to the left, toward Crystal City. “It’s a long way to town.”

  “Not too long. You’ll be fine.” He gave her a nudge.

  Her eyes glazing over, she stared at him for a second. Then slowly, as if her feet had doubled in weight, she took a stumbling step forward.

  The sky around them was lighter now. Cameron moved back until he was off the road, back within the realm of the canyon’s curse.

  Rachel glanced over her shoulder, but he knew, standing where he was, she couldn’t see him. He was shielded by the curse, engulfed in another world, one in which she didn’t belong. Clinging to that thought, he turned and forced his body into a jog. Rachel was back in her world. Time for him to give up impossible, childlike daydreams and return to his.

  Chapter Four

  Rachel stumbled forward. The first signs of sun colored the horizon a dusky rose. Sometime in the night, rain had fallen. The road, black and shiny, curled around the hill. The world was quiet and peaceful.

  She wanted to walk, and to keep walking. Everything would be okay if she kept walking.

  Her foot sent something clattering off into the weeds. She stared after the sound. A shiny, silver disc winked at her from just beyond the road.

  A hubcap. She frowned.

  An ache began right between her eyes. She pressed her thumb to the spot. She couldn’t remember where she was going... or even where she had been.

  Her gaze drifted back to the hubcap.

  Flashy and expensive-looking, like the ones on Nancy’s car.

  The atmosphere seemed to shift, like a blind had been lifted. The road wasn’t quiet and peaceful. It was deserted and alone.

  The temperature dropped too. Rachel shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and hunched her shoulders against the sudden cold.

  What the hell was she doing? Where did she think she was going? No phone. Deserted road. It could be days before someone came across her.

  Except... if Nancy and the others had been rescued, they’d realize she was missing. They’d send someone back for her.

  Hope flickered. She took another step, but something made her stop— an awareness. She glanced over her shoulder.

  Cameron stood just off the road, watching her. He’d come back.

  Relief, thick and hot, washed over her. She lifted her hand to wave him forward, but he was gone... disappeared.

  The ache returned between her eyes.

  She was imagining things, wanting things, and creating them in her mind.

  She looked back at the highway.

  The winding road led to town and safety, led to a world where everything would be okay.

  Cameron disappeared. The memory of the vehicle and her friends’ broken bodies disappeared. All that existed was the road and the knowledge that she should be walking down it.

  She passed the hubcap. It shone like a beacon as she shuffled by. Her foot landed on a skid mark that bisected the road.

  Something stirred in the brush.

  Slowly, she looked up and stared into the face of a monster.

  She opened her mouth and screamed.

  o0o

  Cameron didn’t hear Rachel’s scream. He felt it, like a stake piercing his heart. Panic wrapped around his body and jerked him around.

  His feet flew across the ground he had just traveled. His nostrils flared as he ran, and his fangs grew heavy.

  His body prepared for attack.

  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 che
st, 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.