Outcry - Completed

Chapter 21

"Grandpa?" Rayne asked, staring at the elderly gentleman before her. "Where are we?" She glanced around the cavernous place, with nothing but darkness surrounding them. An odd glow seemed to engulf them, but there was nothing that directly emitted the light. It just...was.

"I am so proud of you," he said quietly, his smile reaching all the way up to his eyes and crinkling the corners. "I knew that you could handle it."

"What are you...? Where are we? Am I dead?"

A small laugh escaped him, and he approached to wrap his arms around her in a tight embrace. "Always remember what I told you," he said, and slowly he began to fade away. He became translucent and then was gone.

What is going on?

She wasn't completely sure that he was real in the first place.

Standing alone in the darkness, she could feel a pounding in her head and in her chest. Her stomach sank as if she were going to be sick.

"Rayne?"

She jerked in a circle, looking for the source of the voice.

"Rayne, can you hear me?"

"Camden?" she called out, and began to look around frantically.

"Rayne."

Slowly, Rayne's eyes fluttered open and the stabbing pain in her head was intensified by the brightness in the room. She grunted and brought her hand up to the place where the pain was radiating from. It was covered in a bandage, and there was something stuck to her arm.

Squinting, she tried to see where she was and remember what had happened. She was in her bed at Camden's house, with the covers pulled up to her chin, an IV in her arm, and fresh bandages wrapped around her head. She was disoriented, and a cloud-like fog shrouded her mind.

Connor and Paul stood along the wall, staring at her expectantly, and try as she might, she couldn't make herself smile or say a word.

"Hey," came a soft, soothing voice next to her.

She turned to see Camden sitting on the edge of her bed, his hand wrapped around hers. She couldn't stop the tears that welled in the corners of her eyes at the sight of him.

She bolted upright, and immediately regretted the move as the pain in her head sent a knife through her skull that seemed to radiate down her spine and all the way to her toes.

"Easy," he coaxed, helping her to recline again. "You took quite a fall."

"How long have I been out?" her voice was raspy, and she hardly recognized it.

"About three days." Paul approached the bed and gently patted her leg. "We were afraid we were going to have to lace ya if you didn't come to soon."

Her eyebrows furrowed in question. "Lace me?"

Connor laughed and pushed away from the wall. "Lace you. Give you some of our blood to make you heal faster."

She nodded and grimaced as she adjusted herself so that she was sitting up more. On more than one occasion now, she'd heard of the power of just a small amount of vampire blood in the human body and saw firsthand the effects of too much of it. That was one experience she hoped she would continue to have the privilege to say that she'd never had. "What happened?"

The three of them glanced back and forth between each other.

"Can you give us a minute?" Camden asked.

Paul and Connor both nodded, and shortly thereafter were shutting the door behind them.

Ice blue and emerald green locked together for a familiar electrifying moment, but there was something slightly different about it this time. It was him who broke the eye contact, glancing down to fidget with the blanket. "I'm so sorry, Rayne," he quietly choked out.