Found, a Vampire Romance by Lori Devoti

 
     
    Chapter 1
    Dark surrounded him.
    Hunger clawed at him.
    Already on his knees, Dorian Renault doubled over and dug his fingers into the dirt. He fell forward onto all fours. The monster inside him was growing, taking over his mind. It had whispered to him, had told him to drain the blonde his brother had protected. His body shook.
    And he would have if Cameron hadn't stopped him. But his brother, older, wiser... better than Dorian could ever be, had stopped him.
    "Dorian!" Cameron called.
    Dorian tried to stand, but his knees bent and his back arched. The pain was too great and the hunger too all-encompassing.
    "Dorian." Again, softer. Cameron was moving the wrong direction, farther away.
    Dorian lifted his hand and tried to speak. He needed to call Cameron back. He needed his big brother to find him... to kill him.
    But, despite his efforts, only a guttural noise made its way past his lips.
    His brother, with his vampire-killing stake, had wandered too far away.
    Dorian was lost. The monster inside him had won.
    He fell back onto the dirt.
    A cry sounded, and something scrabbled in the dark. Not Cameron, but—Dorian inhaled— a human. A wounded human.
    His mind flashed to the car, the mangled mass of metal that had been a car. He hadn’t seen the wreck, but he had heard it. At first he had still had some control. He had known the scent of blood that had to surround such a scene would be too much for him, and he had resisted approaching it, but then he had weakened and gone closer.
    There had been one live girl there, with Cameron. His brother had protected her, taken her to the road where day was appearing, where Dorian couldn’t follow. But he must have left another.
    Why would Cameron have left one behind? He'd known that Dorian was here. Known of the hunger that consumed him.
    Dorian's nostrils flared. Blood . The scent was strong. Something inside his brain clicked. He needed blood. He'd told Cameron as much, and his brother must have agreed.
    Even as the thought formed, Dorian knew it wasn't true. He knew his brother wouldn't sacrifice a human, not even to save his only brother.
    But the monster... The monster didn't care.
    o0o
    Rocks cut into Nancy Bonnelly's face. She twisted her neck to avoid them, but pain shot through her back.
    She gasped and gritted her teeth. Pain was good. It told her she was alive. Something she'd heard on some TV show... stupid . She closed her eyes and willed the pain to leave. It didn't. She reached around and groped at her back. Something hard and sharp protruded from her body.
    She jerked her hand away. Blood, warm and sticky, coated her fingers. She gagged and gasped for air.
    She was hurt, badly, but Rachel knew that. Her friend had gone for help, and then there had been someone else....
    Nancy’s head ached. She couldn’t remember, or she was remembering wrong. Someone had spoken to her, told her to come with him. He’d led her away from the wreck, helped her walk, but the pain had been too much. She’d stumbled and fallen. And he had let her.
    Why would the man— it was a man, or male, at least— have left her lying in the dirt?
    Maybe he had gone for help. Which meant someone would come soon. They had to.
    She tried to push herself up, but her arms wouldn’t hold her weight. She was weak, too weak to lift her body even an inch.
    As her fingers dug into the earth, all she could do was lie still, inhale the scent of cold, damp dirt, and listen to the quiet of the canyon around her.
    There was no wind. No sound of leaves or grass moving. No normal night sounds either. No frogs or crickets. Nancy was from a small town. She was used to the woods and nature. That was one of the reasons she’d known she’d be able to handle the trip into the canyon.
    The other girls in her sorority might freak, but Nancy wouldn’t. And she hadn’t. Not until...
    She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think back to the wreck, the shrieking metal and screaming girls. The sound of