The Lost Girls (Chris Cerulli Vampire Story)

Chapter 14

I didn't pay attention to where I was heading, I was focusing on putting as much distance between myself and them as possible. As the trees began to thin out I jumped behind a large log to hide. The sound of my heart pounding made it difficult to hear much else for a moment. What had I been thinking? Had I truly managed to believe that Chris would somehow be an exception to the main rule of being a vampire? That he didn't kill people?

A sudden shift in the darkness had me ready to spring to my feet, but before I could do just that a pair of hands pressed me down to the fallen tree. I opened my mouth to let out a scream, but one of the hands clamped over my lips.

"Ashlyn, it's me. Calm down." Chris whispered.

I struggled to get out of his hold, but it was clearly useless. Hot tears blurred my vision and slid down my cheeks to run into Chris' skin as I feared what he was going to do next.

He moved his hand to stroke my jaw murmuring, "Please don't cry, I'm not going to hurt you."

My voice struggled as I asked, "How am I supposed to believe that? How did you even find me?"

"Because I know your scent and your heart is too loud to not hear right now. You know that I've had plenty of chances to harm you, but I didn't. Why would now be any different?"

"Because, you know that I know what you are."

He shrugged, "That doesn't mean anything to me. I knew you were going to find out eventually, just not like that."

"But Chris, you kill people." I whispered desperately and then demanded, "You were trying to take me to them as prey too, weren't you?"

His grip on me loosened as he sighed, "Yes, at first I had. But then I got to know you and I just couldn't do it."

"So what about that poor girl back there? What made her any different from me? Is it just because you were attracted to me? Is that the only thing keeping me alive right now?" I growled and even though I was angry, I still worried that I should probably be biting my tongue.

"No, I knew that if I gave you to them I would be killing more than you. You forget that I was a human not too long ago, I had parents and siblings too. I know how badly I made them suffer by disappearing."

"Then why fuck did you choose to be like this?" I hissed.

"I didn't! I never wanted to be this fucking creature! I just wanted to have my band and Carly, but now look at me! She tricked me into this!" He confessed and I felt his hands trembling against me.

"Who did?" I asked in a much smaller voice.

"Danielle." He spat.

Despite my better judgement I leaned into him and he seemed to realize what I was trying to do as he put his arms around me, while I did the same. I pressed my face to his chest, listening to the extremely faint heartbeat he had.

"Chris, I'm so sorry."

"No, I'm sorry. But I need you to trust me when I say that I've never hurt anyone myself. I was basically bait for them to be able to kill."

No matter how much my heart protested and said that I should do as he asked, my mind advised against it.

I shook my head slowly murmuring, "I can't."

I sat back to see his lips tighten into a hard line as he cast his eyes down. "I understand."

He shocked me as he pressed a quick kiss to my lips and then suddenly he was gone.

I sat there in the dark for quite some time before finally getting up. It took a while for me to find my way out of the woods, but I was glad to see that I had made it to the parking lot. I felt a painful twist in my chest as I wondered if that would be the last time I saw Chris. I knew I shouldn't feel so saddened by the thought, but it has turned out that Haylee had been right. I did have a crush on Chris.

As I made my way home, countless fears and ideas popped up in my head. One thought stuck out in particular, I couldn't stop thinking about what Danielle could have done to trick him. As I rode past a telephone pole covered in missing person flyers, I wondered how many of those they were responsible for. Then something hit me, I should be searching for answers in Chris's past since looking in the present was pointless. Maybe I could find something to tell me how he wound up the way he has.

I was relieved to find that everyone had gone to bed when I finally made it home. I snuck to the old computer in my grandmother's tiny office room, thankful that she even had one at all. It took a few minutes to find Scranton's list of missing people from two years ago, but one I did Chris was easy to pick out. Chris's face stared back at me through the monitor, frozen in the age of nineteen, if only it was that way in just the photograph. The only difference I could see from back then was the look in his golden-brown eyes.

His eyes used to be clearly happy and full of life, no matter how serious he tried to appear in the picture. The eye's that belonged to the Chris I knew were cold and a never-ending exhaustion seemed to live inside them. Seeing the difference only made me that much sadder. I tore my gaze away from the image and found a phone number to call if information could be provided about his whereabouts. After I had scribbled it down on a post-it note I put everything back like I had found it and crept up to my room.

I knew that I would have to wait for a more reasonable hour to contact the number, but I still felt as if I might be one step closer to finding out more about Chris's past. As I laid on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, a thought crossed my mind. What if Chris didn't want me to help him?