by Mia Sheridan
He ran through the trees, his breath coming short, gun gripped in his hand. “Camden.” He heard his name, said in a hushed whisper and spun around, lowering the gun to his side.
“Scarlett?” he gasped.
“Here.” He moved toward her voice, a strangled moan of love, of relief, of thankfulness coming from his throat when she stepped out from behind a tree. He rushed forward, taking her in his arms and she yelped in pain. He let go, stepping back and looking down to see her arm hanging at her side, blood splattered on her clothes. “Oh hell, Scarlett, you’re—”
“Yes. Cam, you have to come with me. I heard their trucks. They’re here. Sister Madge tried to kill me, or not her but some, oh God, one of the teachers burned in the fire I think. She had these shears. This is her blood on my shirt, not mine. Sister Madge knows about Millie. I discovered something very important. I have to tell you everything. Everything.”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down, Scarlett, it’s okay. I’m here. We’ll go through all of that later. Right now, we need to find Haddie and Millie.”
She bobbed her head again. “Haddie and Millie are fine. They’re back there. We heard someone coming. We didn’t know who it was. I came to see. Thank God, it’s you. Thank God, Cam.”
Haddie and Millie are fine. Relief all but punched him in the gut. “I wish you’d led with that,” he said, taking a moment to pull her—gently—into his arms again, holding her for only a moment before letting go. “Mason said something took them,” he said. “An animal or—"
“No, no, no. That wasn’t right. There’s something I have to show you. Cam. You have to prepare yourself.”
She held out her hand and he took it, unease causing goosebumps to form as he followed her through the woods. But he took comfort that her distress was not apparently caused by whatever she led him toward. She was afraid of what was currently outside these woods. The threat didn’t come from within. Although the sky had deepened further, the moon was peeking through the gaps in the trees, shining down and outlining the forest in muted golden light.
With trust, Camden followed Scarlett to a more open area, a large rock between two trees. “It’s Camden,” she called and a moment later Millie and Haddie rushed out. He went down on his haunches, opening his arms and pulling them both into his grasp. They squeezed him back and, for a moment, the world was right. They all were safe. Safe and—mostly—unharmed and he was with them.
A horned creature stepped out from behind the rock and Camden released the girls, coming to his feet and drawing his weapon. Scarlett stepped forward. “No!” she cried as the thing slunk back, presenting his shoulder as he dropped his head in submission. Camden lowered his weapon. “No, Cam,” Scarlett said. “He’s a man. He’s . . . he’s your brother, Camden.” Camden stepped back. His brother? What? “I think he found those horns and that fur in the cave. I think it belonged to the indigenous man, Taluta’s husband. It’s old, Cam, old and falling apart.” Camden’s head swam. She was saying words but none of them made sense.
The man raised his head, shuffling forward. He looked shyly up at Camden, a smile blossoming across his face. Camden stumbled back, a sound of shock and disbelief coming up his throat. “Bemme,” the man said, looking around and then pointing at Cam. “Bemme. Bemme. Bemme.” He looked happy, exceedingly so. Camden blinked, moving closer. “Bemme hep bobby.”
“He’s your twin, Cam.”
“How?” he whispered. “I don’t understand.” But he could see that Scarlett was right. He had a twin. A brother.
Before she could answer though, the truth hit Camden in the gut. He almost doubled over under the blow. “They left you out here,” he said. “They left you and they kept me.”
“It had to be that woman,” Scarlett said. “Narcisa. They left her baby out here to die, and then they did the same to him.” She glanced at his brother. “She couldn’t save her own baby, but she saved this one.” She paused, her gaze moving between them. “He’s probably been out here alone since she died.”
The man approached him tentatively, reaching up and placing his fingers on his arm, pulling gently and then dropping his hand, looking away fearfully as though he had just behaved badly and waited for the repercussion.
“He wants to give you something,” Haddie said. He looked at the little girl, something dawning. No wonder she’d reacted to Camden the way she had when she first saw him. She’d seen this man first. She must have been scared and confused about why Camden had his face.
Her statement repeated in his muddled mind. He wants to give you something. “What?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s important.” The man let out a burst of garbled words and Haddie’s face scrunched up as she regarded him intently. “Something hidden that he found.”
Hidden. By Kandace? Camden let out a shaky breath. The proof she’d collected? God he hoped so.
He heard the shouts of men in the distance and a light swept through the sky, something large that would illuminate the woods in front of them. They weren’t close enough yet for it to find them in the nighttime shadows. But they had to go. They had to hide. The how and why of his brother’s existence, the disbelief that was still pinging through him would have to wait to be addressed.
“Come here,” he said to Scarlett. “This is going to hurt, but I have to do it. You need use of your arm.” Fear clouded her gaze but she nodded, turning, and offering him her shoulder trustingly. He took hold of it, pausing and gathering his own strength. It killed him to hurt her, even if it was necessary. “On the count of three. One, two.” He wrenched it back into place as she let out the softest of groans, her face contorting in pain. He could tell it had cost her not to scream out loud. But her shoulder was back in place. With a grimace, she rotated it slowly, bringing her arm up, testing its use.
“Thank you.”
Camden gave one quick nod. “We’re going to split up,” he said. “You have to take the girls and get them out of here.”
Scarlett shook her head. “No. We should stay together.”
“There’s too many of them. I need you to listen to me.” He pointed. “You go that way. They’ll expect us to come out at the road, but you’re not going to do that. Follow the stream. It leads to another wooded area that lets out on a trail five miles from here. There’s an emergency phone attached to a pole. You’ll see it. Call the state police. Get them here.” He handed her his gun and though she glanced at it warily, she took it from him. “Don’t hesitate to use this,” he said. “If you have to, shoot to kill.”
She gripped his shirt. “What about you?”
“I’m going to lead them in the opposite direction. I think I can stay ahead of them with his help.” He looked over at his brother who smiled bashfully when he caught his eye.
“Bemme,” he whispered softly. It was obviously his name for Cam though Camden had no idea what it meant.
He took Millie’s hand in his, squeezing it and offering her what he hoped was a comforting nod. Then he bent down to Haddie. “If you feel anything strange, at any time, you tell your mommy, okay?”
Haddie nodded very seriously, holding her pinkie up in front of him. It took him a beat to realize what she was doing. Pinkie swear. He lifted his hand, linking his finger with hers, meeting her eyes and shaking. Haddie let go, throwing her arms around his neck, hugging him. Camden shut his eyes momentarily, drawing strength from the moment, from the unexpected affection of this special child.
The shouts grew louder, another arc of light sweeping overhead. He stood, pulling Scarlett to him, breathing her in and kissing her forehead. “I love you. Now take the girls and go.”
Tears filled her eyes but she nodded. “I love you too,” she said, kissing him hard once on the mouth. And then Scarlett took Millie’s and Haddie’s hands in hers, turned, and headed toward the stream.
God, please, keep them safe. Bring them back to me.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Camden and his brother ran through the woods, the man
next to him, though obviously mentally slow, was surprisingly swift and agile. Camden allowed him to take the lead, running a step behind so that his brother could show him which way to go.
Camden knew these woods relatively well, but this man had lived in them his whole life.
His brother. It was still almost too impossible to believe. But Camden didn’t have the luxury of examining his emotions now, on this topic or any, so he pushed them to the background. They would be for later, if in fact they got one.
He heard the men behind them, still distant, but coming from every direction now, fanning out to cover a larger ground. Hurry, Scarlett. Hurry.
When they’d gotten to a small clearing, Camden stopped, signaling his brother to put his hands over his ears, preparing him for the loud noise he was about to make. Then Camden let out a series of deep yells as though he’d injured himself somehow. A second later the men’s voices rose in pitch, bodies crashing through brush, coming straight toward them, though still a good distance away.
They ran on, faster now. The man turned left, racing through the trees, jumping easily over downed logs and rocks as though he had each one memorized. And maybe he did. As he ran, he chanted, low and mostly indiscernible, mixing what Camden assumed were Serralino words with garbled English, adding more credence to what Scarlett had said about him being raised by Narcisa Fernando. The horns he wore on his head bobbed and weaved as he ran and Camden had the insane urge to laugh out loud. He’d been afraid of this unknown “creature.” Afraid of the faraway drumbeat and the glimpse of animalistic features, afraid of the low grumbly chanting he’d heard coming from the woods. He’d been fearful not because his gut had told him to be scared, but because Ms. Wykes had made certain he was. Did she know? Did she know that the “thing” roaming the woods was just a shy, abandoned boy? He didn’t want to think about it. The awfulness, the pure malevolence of that was too big to hold.
The man slowed and Camden did too, as the dilapidated house once belonging to Narcisa Fernando came into view. “Hum,” his brother said, but he turned away, appearing not to want to enter. Home. Camden had understood that one.
This had been his home. Narcisa must have rescued him from the forest and raised him there. Then she’d died and he’d been alone. All these years, he’d been alone. Camden walked forward, looking back at his brother. His twin followed slowly, cautiously. Was he acting nervous because there was something Camden should be concerned about too? Or was he simply afraid of the place where he had perhaps found his mother—for that’s what she’d been—deceased in her bed? Voices. The far-off barking of a dog. He paused, listening. They had bloodhounds. Fuck. They had Roland Baker’s hounds, a younger guild member, part of the ten remaining original families, who lived on several acres on the hill above town. He’d seen him in with the sheriff on multiple occasions. Camden figured his father had been one of the men who chased Kandace into the woods that night. He wondered if the family had taken to dog training in case anything similar happened again.
We failed in our mission thirteen years ago. We let that girl get away. And because we fell short, evil gained strength.
No. They were the evil. They always had been.
Camden hoped to God the shouting had caused all of them to turn in his direction, away from Scarlett, but he had no way to be sure. Walk in the stream, Scarlett. Hear those dogs and walk in the stream. He hoped she knew that the dogs wouldn’t be able to catch their scent in the water but his ribs constricted with worry. He recalled what she’d said to him the night he’d helped her feed the baby bird.
I’m a city girl who never owned a pet. I know very little about animals, wild or otherwise.
Maybe she’d picked that information up in a movie or something though. He had to hang on to hope. It was all he could do. “Hurry,” Camden said, pointing into the forest where the hunters grew ever closer. The man blinked at him, looked back and then moved toward the house. He stopped at the doorway and rocked for a moment, doing that strange chanting again, a sort of self-soothing.
Camden pushed the door open and then took him by the arm. “Come on. I’m here.”
His brother smiled. “Bemme,” he said, stepping over the threshold.
It smelled like dirt and mildew inside, and struck him as a long-vacant place that had been left in a hurry. He looked at his brother, eyes darting around nervously and wondered where he’d been when they carted Narcisa’s body away. Had he watched them from some shadowy corner, chanting quietly, not understanding what was happening or why he was suddenly alone? He couldn’t let himself picture that. He couldn’t. “Hurry,” he said again.
His brother did move then, stepping forward and going down on his knees, pushing a threadbare rug aside, and prying a board from the floor. He reached underneath, bringing something out, and then stood, handing the item to Camden.
It was the brown leather bag, the one he’d given to Kandace so many years before. He pulled the flap back and looked inside to see a stack of folders, the proof she’d obtained about their mothers. It was what she’d died for.
He itched to know its contents, but he didn’t have time to look at it, not now.
His lungs burned. He smiled at his brother. He wished he could ask him where he’d found it and when. But he couldn’t, and so he settled on, “Thank you.” He pulled at his arm. “Hurry,” he said again because the man seemed to know that word.
His brother pulled back, pointing to something near the wall. A trunk. He said a word that Camden could not decipher, pulling him to where the storage container sat. “Hurry,” he said again. His brother dashed to the trunk, flung it open and grabbed something inside. Then he returned to Camden handing him the small piece of fabric.
An embroidered baby hat. And stitched on it was the name Alonzo.
“Alonzo?” Camden asked, pointing to him.
Alonzo gave a grunty giggle, looking shy, but infinitely pleased.
“Alonzo,” Camden repeated. He pointed at himself. “Camden.”
“Bemme,” Alonzo said softly.
Good enough. “Canyon,” he said but Alonzo just tilted his head, staring at him in confusion.
Camden let out a breath of frustration just as it dawned on him what Alonzo would know it as. “Novaatngar,” he said. The dark place.
Alonzo’s face lit with understanding. He nodded and they turned to the door where Camden spotted a tall spear leaning against the corner wall. He grabbed it. They could use any weapon they could get their hands on. They rushed through the door, heading back into the woods as Camden strapped the bag around his body as Kandace had surely done in these very woods thirteen years before. He was even more in awe of her at that moment, considering what she achieved. You were so, so brave, Kandace. You deserved so much more than this life gave you.
“Hurry!” he said to Alonzo and Alonzo ran, Camden on his heels, the noise of their hunters drawing closer in pursuit. If they could get to the canyon ahead of the men, they could change direction and follow the outer rim and eventually meet up with Scarlett.
And the state police.
Camden followed his brother’s lead, avoiding the shadows, trusting Alonzo to lead him to the canyon. They’d need to make it there well ahead of the hunters if they were going to get far enough away that they wouldn’t be seen in the sweeping light. They had hounds, and the hounds could follow their scent, but the dogs would also slow them down. The edge of the canyon offered little cover, but it would be the quickest way to travel, open ground where they could straight-out sprint.
They just needed to get to that trail and hope a squad car waited. You can do this, Scarlett. I know you can. Walk in the water. Walk in the water.
The trees thinned, the shadows of boulders rising around them. They were almost there when Camden heard a buzzing behind them. Alonzo and Camden slowed as the sound of the buzzing increased, dipping and rising, drawing ever nearer. It was an engine. A dirt bike, possibly two. Fuck! He hadn’t imagined they’d ride dirt bikes into a thi
ck forest, much less travel at the speed at which he could hear them coming. There were a hundred ways the driver could be injured or thrown. Or, most likely, crash headfirst into a tree.
It meant they were desperate.
There was no way they could outrun a dirt bike and it was coming fast. Camden grabbed Alonzo, shoving him in a large east-facing crevice between two boulders. The approaching light wouldn’t find him there. They’d have to pass him and look back to see Alonzo, and Camden didn’t intend to let that happen. He’d create a distraction. They were coming for him anyway, not his brother. He took the bag from around his body, and strapped it to Alonzo. Then he handed him the spear. “Hide,” he whispered. Alonzo squatted behind the boulder, gazing up at him with wide, fearful eyes. He’d obviously known that word. “Hide,” Camden repeated, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
The dogs were behind the dirt bike, but there was too much open space here for Camden to hide for long. Even if the dirt bike rider missed him, the dogs would be close on its tires and would scent him out, and he’d give his brother’s hiding spot away. The dogs wouldn’t be tracking Alonzo, nor would they have an item from which to do so. For all intents and purposes, his brother didn’t exist. He was nothing but a ghost, a horned “demon” haunting these woods.
Sadness gripped him, but so did a dreadful sense of acceptance. Scarlett would come back for Alonzo. He had no doubt of that. She’d use the files Kandace had collected and she’d exact justice. A strange peace descended. He trusted her, knew her strength. Her conviction. She would fight for him and for Kandace. For Alonzo and all the others who’d been sacrificed at the altar of Lilith House. Sacrificed by the men of Farrow.
With one final nod at his brother, Camden ran ahead, putting as much distance between Alonzo’s hiding spot and himself as possible. He ducked around one rock and then another, slowing as he walked out into the wide-open space, heading for the edge of the canyon.