“So who prayed, hot shot?” Cameron continued, oblivious of what was happening, his anger leaching into me, his pain shooting through me and into Jared. “Some little brat from Timbuktu who wanted you to make sure her uncle arrived in time for her birthday party? God forbid that Barbie Vette show up late.”
Jared grabbed Cameron’s wrist with his free hand as Cameron pushed into him. The anguish was overwhelming. Cameron’s agony had latched on to me with razor-sharp claws, slicing, suffocating.
“Cameron, stop,” Jared said between gasps.
“Who?”
“Cameron, we can’t breathe.” His concern settled heavily on me. His fingers were still padlocked around my arm, and I could feel things I never thought possible. The world began to spin around me. I could feel consciousness slipping out from under my feet.
“Lorelei!” I heard Brooklyn shout as though from a great distance.
“Who prayed and changed history? Who made it possible for you to kill her?”
The darkness Cameron had kept buried for years consumed him. I could see it in his eyes, could feel its strangling hold envelop me, entwine its tentacles up my arm and around my throat.
And apparently it was doing the same to Jared. He had no other choice. I could feel it the second he made the decision, the moment he resolved to do what he was about to do. He had to show Cameron what happened.
With tremendous effort, he forced himself to concentrate despite the smothering fog. He placed a hand on Cameron’s chest, nailed him with an intent look, focused all his energy. And just before he let the past devour us all, he whispered the truth.
“She did.”
The past rushed up like a roiling sea beneath us, swallowing us whole. The world tumbled, spun out of control, then stopped. We were suddenly in a different place, a different time. Birds chirped and the sun peered through pine needles on the trees surrounding us, casting soft rays through the atmosphere to rest on the forest floor.
“Look, Cameron,” a woman said.
Cameron looked to the side of the bicycle as his mother pointed to a bird running into the forest. We were in the past—I was in the past—and I was seeing the world through Cameron’s eyes.
“That’s a roadrunner.”
He twisted back in his plastic yellow seat and watched as she pedaled up the mountainside, and she winked at him before turning back to the trail. I knew instantly who she was. I saw her as Cameron did. Beautiful. Young. Expression soft with unconditional love. Her blond hair gave in to the breeze, fluttering like butterflies around her backpack. He loved her hair. It smelled like apples.
She pulled over to look down the side of the canyon, being very careful not to get too close. The rich greens of the mountainside filled his vision on the right. The deep reds of the iron-rich canyon met him on his left.
“Isn’t it lovely?” She turned and glanced over her shoulder at him. Her smile glistened in the sunlight, as bright as her aura and just as warming.
Then, for no explicable reason, she gasped and jumped back, falling with the bike to the ledge that overlooked the canyon wall. Harnessed in the safety seat, Cameron fell along with the bike into a bush. Its needlelike thorns punished him for invading its territory, but he didn’t care. What had happened? Why did his mother jump like that?
With panic setting in, he tried to unfasten the safety belt, but his chubby fingers couldn’t budge it. He craned his neck to look at her and managed to glimpse the top of her head. Her backpack had caught on the handlebars, dangling her over the edge. The back wheel had wedged on a fallen log, but her weight was rocking it loose.
He called out, tried to reach her.
“Cameron.” Her voice quivered. She was scared and it broke my heart. “Cameron, honey, don’t move. Whatever you do, don’t move.”
Refusing to listen to her, he pulled at his restraints.
“I’ve been bitten by a rattlesnake. I must have stepped on it.”
No. She was wrong. She had to be. Rattlesnakes made noise. He hadn’t heard anything.
The bike slipped, and she reached for a branch reflexively. But when the bike slipped a notch more, she relaxed her arms and forced herself to go still.
“Please,” she whispered as she looked toward the heavens. “Please, I beg you.”
He felt it coming before he saw it, the entity, the dark one. His lungs refused to expand. This one came for one reason and one reason only: It took people. He had seen it twice, and each time it left death in its wake. And sadness. A devastating sadness.
When it appeared, it knelt beside the bike and looked down at his mother. It was part fog and part flesh. She raised her eyes to it. This startled him. Could she see it? She had never seen them before.
“Are you sure?” it asked her.
No!
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve never been more certain about anything in my life.”
Without hesitation, it leaned over and touched the strap on the handlebars, releasing it.
His mother looked back at him, her eyes sad and desperate and full of love. In a blinding moment of panic, he pulled furiously at his restraints. He fought with every ounce of strength his three-year-old body had until she slipped quietly out of sight, falling into the canyon below.
The silence in the wake of his mother’s death was deafening. He lay in the bushes for hours before a rescue team found him, letting the thorns punish him for not being strong enough, hating the thief for what it was.
He would never forget what it looked like. It was already gone, naturally, disappearing like the coward it was. But he would never forget it. And he would find a way to destroy it, to destroy them all, yes, but especially the dark one.