Destined to Die
© 2011 by Jayme Morse and Jody Morse
Destined to Die is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are products of the writers’ imaginations or have been used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, or locations is coincidental and not intended by the authors.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Jayme Morse & Jody Morse.
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Chapter 1
Lexi stood in the dark alley, the wind blowing against her bare legs, as she stared into the face of her dead cousin. She pinched herself on the wrist, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. “Austin?” she finally managed to squeak. “Are you a ghost?”
Austin shook his head and gave her a small smile. “Nope, I’m still here. Now, hurry, we need to get to the car without anyone seeing us.”
Before Lexi could ask any questions, Austin was already opening the door of a sporty looking black coupe that was parked a few feet away from where they had been hiding from her Aunt Violet and Uncle Tommy. She wasn’t sure because it was dark out, but it looked like the windows were tinted.
Pressing her ear against the building that she was perched behind, Lexi listened to the quiet, empty street next to her. She was positive that the sound she heard was heels clanking against the pavement. It had to be Aunt Violet, coming back to make sure that Lexi really wasn’t on this side street.
Without thinking twice, Lexi ran over to Austin’s car. Being in the car with her cousin who she had thought was dead somehow seemed a lot safer than being caught by her aunt and uncle, who wanted her dead. Austin swung the car door open for her, and she climbed in.
Austin threw a ball of fabric into her lap. Glancing down at it, her jaw dropped open in shock. “Where did you get this?” Lexi demanded to know. It was the same rainbow-colored costume and wig that she had purchased at the party store weeks earlier.
Lexi had chosen the embarrassing clown costume to wear to the Briar Creek Halloween festival tonight. The costume had disappeared from her bedroom closet and had mysteriously been replaced by the white frilly costume that she was wearing right now instead.
“Where I got it isn’t important right now,” Austin replied hastily, covering his own face with the mask to the skeleton costume that he was wearing. “Just put it on. We need to get the hell out of here.”
Lexi took off the masquerade mask that she was wearing and peeled off the blonde curly wig, tossing then both to the backseat. “Isn’t someone going to be able to recognize your car?”
“No, it’s not mine. I borrowed it from someone,” Austin said, handing her a bag. “The clown nose and makeup is in here.”
“I can’t do clown makeup in the dark,” Lexi snapped at him, realizing that she sounded slightly meaner than she had meant to.
“Just put some on, okay? Make your face unrecognizable.”
Lexi froze. She had purchased the clown costume because someone had been stuffing anonymous letters into her locker at school and had been putting them on her bed. They had made it very clear that she needed to come to the Briar Creek Halloween festival in a costume that no one would recognize her in. Was Austin the one who had been leaving the notes for her? Lexi had considered who she thought might be sending her the letters, but never in a million years would Austin have crossed her mind. After all, he was supposed to be dead.
“Look, you’re going to need to hurry up with your makeup. We need to get out of here really fast.” Austin said impatiently, pointing at the time on the digital car clock. “We only have ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes ‘til what?”
“To get the hell out of here,” Austin replied.
Lexi grabbed the container of rainbow colored clown makeup out of the bag and used the sponge to dab some onto her face. She used the red lipstick to draw on clown lips and pulled the string that was attached to the red nose around her head. Reaching up to the ceiling of the car, Lexi turned on the interior light to examine her face in the car’s mirror.
“Lexi, what are you doing?” Austin hissed at her, snapping the light back off. “We can’t draw attention to ourselves like that!”
“Okay, God,” Lexi replied, throwing her hands in the air. Tears of frustration filled her eyes, and she tried to control her voice. “Look, you need to be nicer to me. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know why. I didn’t even know you were alive!”
“Yeah, I know,” Austin replied, his voice softening. “I have a lot that I need to explain to you. And I will, as soon as we get to our . . . destination. I’m going to pull out of the parking lot now, but you need to do me a favor and stay down as low as possible, okay?”
Lexi nodded and sunk down in her seat. Austin started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, hitting a huge pothole. Lexi felt her stomach lurch as he turned onto the street.
Looking out the window, Lexi realized that Austin was about to pull onto the street that the Briar Creek Halloween festival was being held on. Before she could ask him if he had completely lost his mind, Austin was already rolling down the window.
“We’re looking for a Ms. Lexi Hunter. Have you seen her?” a man’s nasally voice asked. Lexi tried not to look at him, but she could feel his eyes on her.
“Nah, man,” Austin replied, attempting to mask his voice. “Just me and my sister in here.”
The man hesitated. “I don’t think I know you, and I’m pretty sure I know everyone in this here town.” The suspicion was obvious in his voice as he eyes Austin’s mask.
Lexi held her breath as she listened to the sound of her heart pounding. They were going to get caught. She could feel it.
“That’s because we’re not from around here,” Austin replied coolly. “We just came for the festival.”
Lexi watched from out of the corner of her eye as the man nervously shifted from one foot to the other and tilted his head. “Oh, yeah? Where are you from?”
“Allentown,” Austin replied. “Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll be on our way.” Lexi felt a wave of motion sickness run through her body as Austin peeled out of the side street and turned onto the main road. Turning to look out the window, Lexi watched as the man stared dumbly after them.
Glancing at the scene that stood before her, Lexi noticed that the festival was calming down. Kids were reluctantly following their parents down the street with bags of candy in hand and, she assumed, going home. There were a crowd of adults standing in a circle shouting at each other. Violet and Tommy were standing in the center of the circle, waving their arms around in the air, looks of frustration covering their faces. Gregory Lawrence, the mayor of Briar Creek, was lingering close behind, his own face flushed with anger.
Austin must have seen them, too, because he muttered, “Shit.”
Lexi sat up abruptly. “Austin, we have to go back there.”
“Why would you want to go back?” Austin furrowed his brow, concentrating on his driving to avoid hitting any pedestrians.
“I left my tote bag. I didn’t want to carry it with me, so I left it in the bushes. I figured I would get it later on.”
“No. We can’t go back there now. It’s way too risky. We’ll go back for it some other time,” Austin replied.
“Okay,” Lexi said, shrugging. There were some pretty important things in her tote bag, including the things that Austin had left behind with his friend Anna from Huntington for her. At least, that’s what she had thought before she found out that he was still alive. What use would they be to her now?
Austin swiftly turned onto a side street that Lexi recognized immediately. It was the street that led to the graveyard.
She turned and looked at Austin. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” Austin responded vaguely, his voice completely emotionless.
Lexi felt a weird feeling form in the pit of her stomach. Something about this wasn’t right.
Austin parked the car next to the graveyard and climbed out onto the sidewalk. “Are you coming with me?”
Lexi hesitated. She wasn’t sure if it had been Austin or Gabe that she had seen in the graveyard earlier that night, since they had both been wearing the same exact Halloween costume. At the time, she thought that it was Gabe and that he was after her because he was on her aunt and uncle’s side, but now, she wasn’t so sure who was on their side and who wasn’t.
Just thinking about how Gabe had betrayed her sent the bile rising into her throat. How embarrassing would it be to ask her cousin, who she hadn’t seen in years, to pull over so that she could vomit? Or even worse, puke on him?
When she didn’t respond to Austin about if she was going to come with him, he slammed his door shut and began walking towards the cemetery. Deciding that staying in the car by herself tonight was only going to freak her out, Lexi reluctantly got out and ran to catch up to him.
Austin walked through the cemetery gate and began up the grassy path that led towards the rows of headstones in the graveyard. He turned around and motioned for her to follow him. Lexi paused, unsure if she should. It felt like she was trying to decide if she should walk towards a cliff; it would be okay if she played it safe, but there was that risk of falling down if she got too close.
When Austin continued walking, Lexi glanced around. The only street lamp was feet away from her. Anyone could come up to her at that moment and kidnap her without anyone even noticing. Not that it would really matter if anyone (besides Austin) did notice if she was abducted. The whole entire town was planning to sacrifice her tonight so that they could be cured from a fatal disease that had been cursed on all of the residents of Briar Creek by a witch in the hundreds of years ago.
Cautiously, Lexi followed Austin up the grassy hill. He came to a halt right in front of the pre-made gravestone that she had come across on her own about a month ago. The stone, which rested behind an open grave next to her mom’s tombstone, was inscribed with Lexi’s name and date of death: October 31st, 2011.
Today was October 31st, 2011.
Austin walked over and knelt down on the grass-covered ground in front of the open grave. “Gabe, I’ve got her.”
Lexi took a step backward. She really didn’t have a reason to trust Austin, but for some reason, she had just assumed that he was on her side – probably because he had made it seem like he was really trying to help her escape. Obviously, Lexi had been wrong.
Austin wasn’t on her side at all. He was the enemy. He had to be if he was talking to Gabe.
Gabe, who, as of tonight, was her former love interest, wanted her dead just as much as her aunt and uncle did.
It didn’t even make sense for Austin and Gabe to be speaking to each other after all the stories she had heard about them hating each other for the past few months. Then again, Gabe had hidden the fact that he was in alliance with her aunt and uncle, too. His awkward relationship with Austin was probably just another lie that she had been stupid enough to believe.
Lexi wondered if anything that Gabe had ever told her was even true – and if he had even had feelings for her at all.
Gabe poked his head out of the grave and looked up at her, his steel blue eyes piercing through her, before he glanced at Austin. Her heart skipped a beat. How could she have loved him this whole time without even knowing that he was out to get her, too? “Does she know why we brought her here yet?” Gabe asked.
Austin shook his head. “No, and we don’t have time to tell her right now. We need to get this over with.”
Lexi gulped. Over with? Were they talking about killing her? Or were they trying to become the town heroes by handing her over to the townspeople who were out for her blood? Either way, it didn’t sound good. She had to find a way to get away from them before something really bad happened.
Backing away from Austin and Gabe, she ran down the grassy hill and through the open cemetery gate. Her shoes clacked against the sidewalk as she ran for her life. Trying to pick up a better pace, Lexi stumbled. It was hard enough to run when she was nervous, but it was even worse when she was wearing the heels that had come with the masquerader costume. They were definitely slowing her down.
“There she is!” a sing song voice that Lexi immediately recognized as Violet’s shrieked. “Get her!”
Lexi looked over her shoulder to see Violet, linked arm-in-arm with Tommy, hurrying towards her. She began running faster. Lexi knew that if she didn’t get away from them, they were going to get what they wanted. If they caught up to her, she was going to die tonight.
It seemed inevitable.
As Lexi turned the street corner, she heard the sound of a car pulling up on the concrete alongside her. Glancing over her shoulder, she realized that it was the escape car. Austin was driving, and Gabe was sitting in the passenger’s seat. Austin rolled down his window. “Lexi, get in the car!” he hissed at her.
Lexi hesitated. Was Austin on her side or her aunt’s side? Was he just trying to lure her into the car so that he could take her someplace where the whole town could sacrifice her or was he really trying to help her make it through tonight?
When Lexi saw Violet round the corner and point her out to Tommy, she did the first thing that came to mind. She dove into the backseat of Austin’s car and quickly slammed the door shut. If her aunt and uncle caught up to her, she was destined to die. If Austin was bad, Lexi would figure out her escape route later. Right now, she was just going to have to risk it.
****
Chapter 2
“Where are we going?” Lexi asked, pulling off the clown wig and running her fingers through her long blonde hair. A sheet of nervous sweat had coated her forehead, occasionally dripping her clown makeup into her eyes; it was burning her eyes, but Lexi knew that the tears that were threatening to pour down her cheeks were mostly out of fear, not because she was in pain. Lexi blinked the tears back, determined to stay strong throughout her ordeal. She needed to come up with a plan. Lexi had been in the car with Austin and Gabe for over an hour, and neither of them had said a single word to her or to each other. The silence was far scarier to her than their words could be.
Austin glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “We’re almost there. We’ll tell you all about it soon enough.”
“Almost where?” Lexi pressed, ignoring how whiny she sounded.
Austin turned to Gabe. “Is she always this annoying?”
Gabe shrugged and muttered something under his breath that Lexi didn’t pick up on.
“Annoying?” Lexi scoffed. “Let’s think about this for a minute. I thought you were dead, Austin. I went to your funeral! And Gabe, you knew that he was alive and you just stood there at his funeral, like nothing was strange about the situation? And Austin, you show up here on the day I’m supposed to die just to ‘save me’? From your parents, no less! I don’t even know if you’re on my side or Violet’s side right now because you’ve explained absolutely nothing to me. I have no idea what’s going on. But I’m the annoying one.” She laughed a loud, sarcastic laugh.
Austin looked over at Gabe, as though he was seeking his approval, before he said, “Look, I’ll tell you everything there is to know when we get to where we’re going. And for the record, yes, I am on your side. Why do you think I went through the effort of sending you all of those letters to force you to go to the festival tonight? I wanted to make sure that you didn’t die today. Now, shush. Question time is over right now.”
“Okay, but … I have one more question.” Over the sound of Austin’s groans, she added, “Then I’ll shut up until we get to wherever it is that we’re going and wait for you to tell me everything.”
“Fine,” Austin muttered, throwing one hand up in the air.
“Why is Gabe here if he’s not on my side?”
Gabe groaned and turned to Austin. “I told you this was going to happen. I knew that’s what she was going to think.”
Austin ignored him. “Gabe is on your side, but let’s not talk about that right now,” Austin replied, nervously tapping his fingers against the steering wheel as he waited for the traffic light to turn green.
Lexi sighed. Gabe glanced at her in the backseat, and she rolled her eyes at him. She really, really hated not knowing what was going on. She also hated the silence that had filled the car. Austin hadn’t even turned the radio on to give her something to listen to. Unsure of what else she should do to keep herself occupied, Lexi rested her head against cool glass of the car window and drifted off to sleep.
When she woke up, Austin was shaking her arm. “Lexi, we’re here.”
Lexi cracked one eye open and glanced around. They were parked in front of a tiny stone cottage. It was so cute that it looked like it belonged in a children’s fairytale. Half expecting the witch from Hansel and Gretel to come out and greet them with a plate of gingerbread cookies, Lexi groggily climbed out of the car. Her legs hurt from whatever position she had been sleeping in, and even though the sky was still dark, she couldn’t seem to get a sense of how long they had been in the car.
Gabe pulled a key ring out of his pocket and opened the front door. Once he walked inside, he turned around and motioned for her to follow him. Hesitantly, Lexi stepped inside and looked around.
From the outside, the cottage seemed like the type of home that would belong to an old woman with twenty cats who spent most of her time knitting itchy Christmas-themed sweaters and baking chocolate chip cookies for her grandchildren. Lexi was expecting to see old wooden furniture and perhaps a fireplace burning. What she found instead surprised her.
A huge widescreen TV sat against one of the walls in the living room. Nintendo Wii controllers and games were scattered on the floor in front of it. There were black leather couches off to the side in front of a mahogany coffee table that was stacked with piles of dirty plates and soda cans. There were dark footprints that were very visible on the white carpet, which obviously hadn’t been cleaned in awhile.
“This place is a mess! Do the seven dwarfs live here?” Lexi asked jokingly.
Gabe turned and looked at her. “No. We do,” he said in a very serious tone.
Lexi raised an eyebrow. “You live all the way out here? What about all of those times you came to see me at Violet’s house?”
Since Gabe was a vampire, he (along with almost everyone else in Briar Creek) could turn into a bat at will. When Lexi wanted to see him, all she had to do was think about him and moments later, he would fly into her bedroom window. It usually only took him minutes to get there, though. How had that been possible when he was this far away? It had taken them hours to get to this house, after all.
“I’m just really fast at flying,” Gabe replied, shrugging. “Sometimes I was already on my way before you thought of me, though. Like I told you before, I have these daydreams that always come true. I also get feelings . . . premonitions, I guess you can call them. I could usually predict when you wanted to see me before I actually heard you in my mind, calling out to me.”
“That makes sense,” Lexi replied, though she wasn’t completely sure if it did. None of this really made sense. She reluctantly sat down on one of the couches. The leather clung to the back of her bare legs, which were covered in sweat.
“You had a long day. You should rest up and then we can discuss everything in the morning,” Gabe told her.
Still somewhat wary of Gabe, she turned to Austin. “Um, I have a little bit of a problem. I don’t have anything here to wear besides this clown suit.”
“Don’t worry. We’ve already thought of that. Well, I did,” Austin credited himself with a grin on his face. “Why don’t you go wash up? I’ll go find you some clothes to change into.”
Lexi almost forgot that she was still wearing the clown makeup that Austin had made her apply in the parking lot – or the remainder of it at least, since she was pretty sure that she had sweat most of it off. That must be why her face felt sort of itchy and stiff, like it was covered in dried clay. Getting up, she walked down the long hallway that led to the bathroom.
She began scrubbing off the makeup with a washcloth that she found laying on the bathroom sink, trying not to laugh at the way she had unevenly applied her lipstick in the dark. The washcloth was navy blue, which matched the color of the walls and the rest of the bathroom décor. Lexi found herself wondering why Austin hadn’t decorated the house a bit less drab. It was beginning to make her feel depressed. How could they have possibly used it for however long they had been here?
Moments later, there was a loud knock at the door. When Lexi opened it, she found Austin staring back at her with a pile of clothes in hand. “Thanks,” she muttered as she took them from him, thinking about how awkward it was for her guy cousin who she hadn’t seen in years and who she had thought up until tonight was dead to be handing her a lacy black bra. It was even stranger to think that he had somehow rummaged through her underwear drawer without her knowing. Just the thought made her feel uncomfortable, even though she knew it had been necessary.
Once she had changed into the clean pair of Victoria’s Secret purple sweat pants and the white t-shirt that Austin had given her, Lexi went back into the living room, where she found Gabe and Austin talking in low whispery voices. As soon as they saw her come into the room, they stopped talking. Gabe folded his hands, as though he was trying to hide that they had even been talking.
“Okay, look,” Lexi said, taking a seat on one of the couches, “I can’t wait until tomorrow . . . especially not if you’re going to be talking about everything behind my back all night. I think both of you owe me some answers right now. What the hell is going on?”
There was a long silence before either of them said anything; both of them stared off into the distance, without meeting her eyes. “You tell her,” Gabe said finally, looking down at the floor.
Austin took a deep breath. “Alright, it’s sort of a long and crazy story. You probably won’t even believe it all … but bear with me here, okay?”
Lexi nodded. Ever since she had found out that she came from a special bloodline that could save an entire town of vampires from the curse that a bitter witch had placed on them, she was willing to believe pretty much anything. Everything in her life lately was far-fetched, but it was definitely true.
“Well, for starters, let me just tell you that my mom and dad don’t even know that I’m still alive. They can’t find out now or they’d be furious at me. I’ve been hiding from them.” Austin sat forward and clasped his hands together. “My parents were planning to kill me.”
“What? Why would they kill you?” Lexi asked, shocked. It had always seemed like her Aunt Violet had cared so much about Austin. He was her son, after all. Lexi had even figured that Violet was trying to replace Austin with Dan Nichols, his best friend, because she missed having her son around so much.
Then again, thinking back to when Lexi had first arrived in Briar Creek for Austin’s funeral, Violet had seemed a little bit less sad than a mother who had just unexpectedly lost her only child.
Lexi half-wondered if Austin was a closer relation to her then she had realized. “Are you a Hunter, too? Are you here to tell me that you’re really my brother or something?” It wouldn’t be all that far-fetched. She had found out since she’d arrived in Briar Creek that she had a half-sister. If Austin did share the Hunter bloodline, it would make more sense why Violet and Tommy wanted to kill him.
Austin shook his head and laughed. “No, I’m not your brother . . . or a Hunter.”
“Then why would your parents want to kill you?”
“This is the crazy part,” Austin said slowly, looking up at her. “They were going to kill me to get to you.”
“What do you mean ‘to get to me’?” Lexi asked. She felt completely confused about why she would have anything to do with Violet and Tommy wanting to kill Austin.
“My mom has been trying to get your mom to come here for the past few years, and she never would. My mom knew that your mom would break down and rush to Briar Creek when she found out that I was dead. Killing me was the only way that they could get you here.”
“Wow,” Lexi whispered, trying to wrap her head around the idea. “Why didn’t they just say they wanted us to have a family reunion or something, like a normal family?”
Austin shook his head. “They tried a few times over the past few years. Your mom said that she was too busy working to come, but I always thought she just didn’t want to come because she and my dad didn’t get along. They needed something major to get her to come here and to bring you with her.”
Lexi nodded. Her mom had been a physician, so there was a good chance that her work schedule would have conflicted with coming to visit Briar Creek. Deep down though, Lexi had a feeling that Austin was right. She knew that her mom had definitely missed Violet over the years. She had kept a photo of them as teens on her nightstand, and Lexi occasionally caught her crying in phases of depression that she had always thought was related to Briar Creek. There had to be some other reason why she hadn’t wanted to come back to Briar Creek, her hometown, to reunite with her family, whether it was because she didn’t get along with Tommy or something else. Lexi’s gut told her that it was the latter.
“I knew that Violet was a bitch and a half, but I didn’t think she would ever sink this low,” Lexi muttered out loud. Since Lexi had been living in Briar Creek, her aunt had really shown her true colors. The truth was that she had acted like a psychopath throughout Lexi’s stay in Briar Creek. She had been super controlling of Lexi’s whereabouts and even tried to force her to date Dan, but Lexi never would have thought that her aunt would have tried to kill her one and only son just so they could get to Lexi’s blood. It seemed really extreme and kind of crazy, but then, everything that had happened since she’d arrived in Briar Creek was crazy. “So, what happened then? Why are you still alive if they were trying to kill you?”
“Well, they would have killed me but they didn’t get the chance to because I outsmarted them,” Austin said with a smug grin. Lexi could tell that he was proud of himself.
“Did you run away? Is that why there was no death file for you at the morgue?” Lexi asked, thinking back to when she had done some snooping around the hospital morgue when she was a patient after Gabe had tried to kill her in a car accident. She’d found her mom’s death certificate, which didn’t cite a specific cause of death, but there hadn’t been any file at all for Austin. Lexi’s uncertainty about Austin was beginning to come back to shore. Had Violet and everyone else only lied and pretended that Austin was dead so that Lexi and her mom would come back to Briar Creek? It didn’t seem possible. His funeral had been real . . . very real.
Austin raised his thick strawberry blonde eyebrows. “I don’t know why there’s not a death certificate for me, but I’m guessing that it has something to do with covering up for Violet and Tom. It’s weird to call them that, but the truth is . . . I don’t consider them my parents anymore. I’m just in the habit of calling them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ still. Anyway, as usual, the whole entire town was in on their plan. And no, I didn’t run away. I had a better plan than running away . . . a plan that would trick them into believing I was really dead.
“You see, a few years ago, before my parents began plotting to kill me,” Austin went on, “this was back before they knew that Wilkins’ syndrome was affecting them—”
“Wow, I thought that Tommy was the only sick one,” Lexi interrupted. “Violet seems like she’s fine.” Wilkins’ Syndrome was the name of the illness that the witch had cast on Zachary Wilkins, a vampire who had attacked the love of her life, Albert Hunter. Since Albert was from the Hunter bloodline, like Lexi, his blood was much stronger and more powerful for vampires than other human blood. It had drawn Zachary to him, but apparently, Zachary had gone too far. The witch was able to find another vampire to save Albert, but their relationship was never the same again because new vampires have a tendency to be out of control. Albert tried to attack the witch, but she managed to save herself by stabbing him through the heart.
Zachary Wilkins and the other two hundred vampires who were living in Briar Creek were exiled and were sent to an abandoned town called Briar Creek, which did not have any other people for the vampires to feed from. As a punishment for what Zachary Wilkins had done to the love of her life, the witch put a curse on the vampires of Briar Creek. It said that if the vampires fed from each other, they would develop an untreatable illness that would kill them within one hundred years unless they drank from the Hunter bloodline. Even Hunter blood was only strong enough to cure the disease until the person turned eighteen.
This was why Lexi was so important to her aunt, uncle, and most of the people in Briar Creek; she was the only Hunter under eighteen, and they needed her blood to survive. It was the whole reason they had been planning to sacrifice her tonight. They needed to save themselves, and Lexi’s blood was the only way they could possibly do that.
“Violet might seem fine, but she’s really not,” Austin continued, interrupting Lexi’s thoughts. “The disease hasn’t progressed as much for her as it has for him, so she has much more time to live. I’m not sure how much you know about the disease, but it’s possible to slow down the illness if you don’t drink blood from another vampire again. My dad . . . err, Tom . . . never stopped, though. He couldn’t stop. It’s like he’s an addict. He drinks from Violet all of the time.”
Lexi didn’t bother to ask why Tommy would continue to drink from Violet, knowing what it would do to him. She knew from her own experience that it was a very intimate experience when a vampire drank from a human. When Lexi had let Gabe drink from her, it had been like they were the only two people in the world at the time.
Lexi was thankful when Austin interrupted her thoughts of her uncle drinking her aunt’s blood. The idea kind of grossed her out.
“Anyway, before they knew that they had the disease, my parents had been trying really hard to convince me to become a vampire, too. They wanted me to be like them and like all of the other people in Briar Creek. I told them I didn’t want to and they didn’t like it. It was a constant argument between us. I never let them win.”
Lexi’s mind flashed back to the mysterious entries that she had found in Austin’s journal. She was pretty sure that he had made a reference to this in there somewhere. But that still didn’t explain what he had meant when he said his girlfriend, Mary-Kate Lawrence, was trying to pressure him into doing something that he was really against. Lexi sort of wanted to ask, but she didn’t want Austin to know that she had been snooping . . . assuming that Gabe hadn’t already told him (which seemed likely now that she knew that they were working together).
“Well, I still was against becoming a vampire, but once I found out that my parents were plotting to kill me, I knew that I had to make the change,” Austin continued. “If I ran away, there was always that chance that they would track me down eventually. Becoming a vampire was the only way for me to trick them and still be able to live. Vampires can’t die unless you light them on fire or put a stake through their hearts. So, I came up with this plan to become a vampire and to play along when the time came for them to kill me. I would go through the motions when they killed me without struggling, and I would really make it seem like I had died so that they would buy it.”
“You were at your own funeral. I saw you laying there in the coffin. How could you let all of those people believe you were really dead? Wait, how is it even possible that you got away with that?” Lexi asked incredulously. “I mean, can’t vampires smell when someone’s a human? Couldn’t they smell that you weren’t one anymore after you changed into a vampire? And wouldn’t they know that you were still breathing?”
Austin shook his head. “No. We – I mean, vampires – are technically dead already. I didn’t have to worry about anyone noticing my chest moving or holding my breath or anything like that because we don’t breathe, just like we don’t have a pulse. As for smell, that would be true under normal circumstances, but my mom and dad and most of the people who were at the funeral . . . except for you and your mom . . . have Wilkins’ Syndrome. It’s affected their sense of smell. Plus, I only had to fake dead for a little while. The plan was for me to play dead through the funeral and until after they buried me so it really seemed like I was gone. Except somebody left me in my grave longer than they were supposed to,” he said, glaring at Gabe.
“Hey, I already apologized for that,” Gabe replied, holding his hands up in defense. “I got held up with some things. It’s not like I was going to just leave you in there forever.”
“Yeah, well, don’t you worry. I will remember that if you ever get stuck six feet below and need a hand,” Austin said, rolling her eyes.
Lexi attempted to stifle her giggles as the two of them continued to bicker.
A thought occurred to her. “Austin! What’s going to happen if your mom finds out you’re still alive? Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to just tell your parents that you decided to become a vampire? Then, they wouldn’t have killed you.”
“No,” Austin replied. “Their plan still would have been to kill me, and if they knew that I was a vampire, they would have actually succeeded at it. All they would have had to do was set me on fire or put a stake through my heart, and their problem would have been solved. Besides, pretending to go along with their plan was really the only way I could figure out to get you here . . . and I needed for you to come here.”
Lexi felt the anger rising to her cheeks. “You needed me to come here? Why? So because of this, because of you, my life pretty much sucks right now.”
“I didn’t know my mom and dad were going to kill Aunt Eileen, Lexi,” Austin replied, as though he were reading her mind. He looked down at his hands. Lexi noted the sincerity in his voice and the look of honesty on his face. “If I had known that was part of their plan, I would have found another way.”
“Wait, so you know for sure that they killed her?” Lexi asked, her voice accidentally squeaking. She knew that her mom hadn’t died from E. Coli poisoning from consuming beef like she had been told because her mom was a vegetarian. This was the first time Lexi had heard anyone mention that her aunt and uncle had something to do with her mom’s death, even though it had always been in the back of her mind that they had played some role in it.
Austin shrugged. “I wasn’t there, so I don’t have any proof of it, if that’s what you’re asking. But you and I both know that your mom didn’t just coincidentally die while she was with Greg Lawrence. Something had to have happened that night.”
It made her feel relieved that someone was finally on her side. Violet and Tommy had claimed that Lexi’s mom was with Greg Lawrence, the town mayor, the night she had died. When Lexi talked to her mom during one of the times that she came to visit her as a ghost, her mom had told her that Mayor Lawrence had been asking for a favor that night: Lexi’s blood. She had told him that he couldn’t have it.
Her mom wasn’t allowed to tell her any specific details about how she had died, though. It was against the “rules” for a ghost to tell a living person details about things like that if they wanted to be able to visit again anyone in the human world again. Go figure.
Shrugging thoughts of her mom away, Lexi asked, “Why did you even want me here? I don’t understand. It’s not like I’m going to let all of the people in Briar Creek feed from me. I have no intentions in saving all the people in that town . . . not after they all planned to sacrifice me.”
“He wanted you here because of me,” Gabe chimed in.
Lexi turned and looked at him. He had been so quiet that she had somehow forgotten that he was still in the room. “What do you mean because of you?”
“I had a vision,” Gabe explained, looking into her eyes. “I saw what’s going to happen in the future and … and you were there. The only way we can stop the evil vampires in Briar Creek is with your help.”
“Why me?” Lexi asked, trying not to sound as angry as she felt. “And stop them from what? I’m the only thing they want. If it wasn’t for me being here, wouldn’t everything be normal? Well, as normal as it could be considering.” She couldn’t kid herself; nothing in Briar Creek would ever be completely normal since the entire town was made up of cursed vampires.
“We’ll discuss all of that later,” Austin interrupted. “But I knew at the time that I had to trust Gabe since his visions are always right. He saw you there and the rest of the town lying dead on the ground . . .” Austin drifted off. “Gabe’s actually the one who helped me change into a vampire.”
“I thought you guys didn’t get along,” Lexi said accusingly.
“Me and Gabe had to pretend that we didn’t get along. We made up a fake fight so that my parents would never suspect that Gabe had any involvement in this.”
“Gabe, why didn’t you tell me?” Lexi felt herself becoming angry again. “When I asked you about the vial of blood of Austin’s that I found, you told me he wasn’t a vampire.”
Gabe looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry, Lexi. I couldn’t tell you. We agreed that it would be best if you didn’t know anything about Austin being alive or being a vampire . . . or anything, for that matter. There were so many things that I wanted to tell you to try to help you, but we decided that it was best to let you find out on your own or through Austin’s letters.” He sighed, a guilty look crossing his face. "It didn’t seem likely that you would have told Violet or Tommy, but Mrs. Lawrence can read minds.”
Lexi gulped. Mrs. Lawrence really hated her, which freaked Lexi out. She couldn’t remember what she had thought while she was in the woman’s presence, but she probably had thought about something that she wouldn’t have wanted Mary-Kate’s mom to hear. It would have been nice to have had some type of warning ahead of time, but it was too late now. Whatever Mrs. Lawrence had heard, she had heard.
Lexi glanced around the cottage. “So, you’ve been living here all this time? Both of you?”
Gabe shook his head. “No, not the whole time. Austin was hiding out at my house for awhile in the beginning.”
“It’s true,” Austin nodded in agreement. “I thought you were going to catch me one of those times I peeked out at you through the blinds.”
“That was you?” Lexi asked, surprised. For some reason, she had thought that Gabe had been the creeper looking out at her. Actually, at the time, she hadn’t really thought it was that creepy because she was so busy crushing on him. It had been almost flattering. Now that she knew it had been Austin, she felt really vain for thinking that Gabe had been that obsessed with her, when it hadn’t been him at all.
If Lexi had known at the time that it hadn’t been Gabe at the window all those times, his mom would have been her second guess. Even though Lexi had never really had a conversation with Mrs. Marshall, she hadn’t seemed to like her from the very beginning for some reason. Lexi was pretty sure that there was no way she would ever like her now after she had banged on her car window like a crazy person, demanding to know where Gabe was. It also probably didn’t help matters that Gabe was here hiding out with her right now.
Austin nodded. “Yup, it was me.”
“Eventually, we figured that it was way too risky for Austin to be living across the street from his parents. If something happened and they realized that he was there . . . we would have been screwed. So, we came here on the night of the car accident. The night that I tried to kill you.” Gabe had a genuinely apologetic tone in his voice and a sad look in his eyes.
“And don’t even get me started on that,” Austin cut in, an annoyed tone in his voice. “That wasn’t part of the plan. I had nothing to do with that. The plan was for him to pick you up and then call me to meet him so that the three of us could come to this house together. When he called me, he told me that he killed you and to meet him in the graveyard. I was livid. He should be relieved that you lived through that accident because if you hadn’t, I probably would have killed him myself.”
Gabe scowled. “I already told you my reasoning.”
He had told Lexi, too. Gabe had a vision of what was going to happen to her if they did run away together . . . and it wasn’t pretty. He didn’t want Lexi to be sacrificed Salem witch hanging style like the town was planning, so he thought that killing her would be a kinder, less painful death. Lexi had mostly forgiven Gabe for it, but at first, it was only because her mom had told her to. Lexi didn’t know much about what happened to a person after they died, but she assumed that ghosts had a good grasp of what was really going on in the human world, and if her mom could forgive him, Lexi should be able to forgive him, too. Over time, she had really forgiven him.
Trying not to think about the painful memories of that night and the weeks that followed, Lexi glanced around the cottage. “So, is this your house Gabe?” Normally, a teenager probably wouldn’t be able to afford their own house (unless he was Justin Bieber or something), but Gabe wasn’t just an ordinary teenager. He was a vampire who was over one hundred years old, so it would make sense if he did own his own home after all this time.
“No,” Gabe replied. He glanced over at Austin. “Should we tell her?”
“Yes, you should,” Lexi answered for him. They both looked at her, annoyed.
Austin sighed. “We might as well. If we don’t, she’ll bug us all night about it, and I am not in the mood to deal with that. Lexi, this house belongs to Benjamin Hunter.”
****
Chapter 3
Lexi froze at the mention of her father’s name. She found herself, for some reason, laughing at the thought that she could possibly be sitting on the couch in her father’s house. “What? This can’t be my dad’s house.”
“It’s his,” Austin nodded.
Lexi’s eyes widened. “Where is he? Will he be home soon?” She tried to hide the excitement that was bubbling inside of her at the possibility of being reunited with her father. She had dreamt about this since she had first realized that he had gone missing, but sometime after she began high school, Lexi had given up hope of ever finding him. It made it even more difficult for her when her mom had refused to talk about it all of these years.
“Well, that’s the thing, Lexi,” Gabe replied quietly. “We don’t actually know where Ben is. We haven’t seen him or heard from him in about a month.”
“He let you use his house without telling you where he was even going?” Lexi asked in disbelief. “Or what, did you just come to his house because you knew it would be empty?”
Austin shook his head violently. “No, it’s not like that at all. He said that we could stay here, rent-free and everything. It might be hard for you to believe it right now, but Ben said that he wanted his little girl to be taken care of.”
Lexi gulped and tried to hold back the tears that she felt building up behind her eyes. She hadn’t seen her father since he had abandoned her and her mom before they had left Briar Creek when she was just a child. When things had started to get crazy after her mom died and she was stuck living at her aunt’s house, Lexi had found her dad’s name and phone number online. She had left him a voicemail practically begging to speak to him, in the off chance that he would come get her and save her from living at her aunt and uncle’s house, but she never got a response back. Of course, that could also be because her aunt had taken her cell phone away from her and likely would have intercepted the call.
Since then, Lexi had found out that Mary-Kate was her half-sister and that she had other half-siblings who were younger than her. No one would be able to tell her who those siblings were, except for her father, since even no one in Briar Creek knew who they were. Lexi assumed that he was trying to protect their identity so that nobody would be after their blood, too.
Lexi had known Mary-Kate, though. Finding out that they were related was really weird. As it turned out, her dad had been involved with Mrs. Lawrence until he had left her for Lexi’s mom. Being half-sisters not only added a weird twist to Mary-Kate and Lexi’s already confusing relationship, but it made her question whether or not her dad had really loved Lexi and her mom in the first place. A thought that hadn’t occurred to her before crossed her mind. She wondered if the fact that father had left Mrs. Lawrence for her and her mom had anything to do with why the woman hated her so much.
“Anyway, Ben said he’ll be back whenever he’s back,” Austin said, interrupting the awkward silence that was lingering in the room. “There’s no telling how long that will be. It’s already been months since the last time we’ve seen him . . . long before you even came here. He called about a month ago, but we missed his call and there had been a long period of time before that since we talked to him on the phone.”
Lexi had felt hurt and angry that her father hadn’t returned her phone call, but it had never occurred to her until now that he might not have gotten it in the first place or that she had missed his call back. She’d assumed that he just wanted nothing to do with her, which didn’t seem like a huge stretch since he’d never tried to have her in his life before. “How did you even find him? Or have you always kept in touch?” she asked, looking up at Austin. As far as she knew, her mom and dad hadn’t kept in touch. That didn’t mean that her dad hadn’t kept in touch with her aunt and uncle after all of those years, though.
“No, the last time you heard from him was the last time I heard from him until recently,” Austin replied. “I found him through Mary-Kate. She had his address, which helped me find his phone number.”
“Mary-Kate has his address?” Lexi squeaked. She couldn’t help but feel jealous that her father had been keeping in touch with her half-sister and not her, but that wasn’t the important thing right now. “You realize what that means, don’t you? They’ll know to look for us here! They’ll find his address and figure it out.”
“We’ve already thought of that. Actually, Ben did. That’s why he suggested that we use his summer home instead,” Gabe interceded. “Mrs. Lawrence doesn’t have this address. Mary-Kate knows where we are, though, Lexi. She actually came here with us right after the accident.”
Lexi turned to Austin as all of the pieces began fitting together. “You’re the one who she ran away with!” Aunt Violet had said that Mary-Kate ran away with a boyfriend immediately following the accident. Lexi had assumed that it was Craig Lindstrom, her cute gym teacher who had at one point suggested that they go on a vacation together. She’d caught the two of them having an intimate moment in the school hallway. Come to think of it . . . that probably hadn’t even been an intimate moment. Craig had probably just been drinking Mary-Kate’s blood. Lexi felt silly that she hadn’t figured it out before now.
“Yeah, we brought her along with us. It was the plan . . . until her dad threatened to start an investigation if she didn’t come back home,” Austin replied. “We decided that it would be better for her to stay in Briar Creek, anyway.”
“She’s sort of like our spy,” Gabe told her. “She lets us know what is going on with everyone over there so we can act accordingly.”
“So, Mary-Kate knows we’re here right now, then?” Lexi asked. “How do you know that she won’t tell anyone?”
Gabe shook his head. “She won’t do that. Mary-Kate’s on our side, whether you want to believe it or not. I know you’ve always been so suspicious of her.”
Lexi thought that she picked up on a tone of accusation in Gabe’s voice, but who could blame him? Ever since Lexi had found a message in Austin’s Facebook inbox from Mary-Kate that was sent on the night he had died, Lexi couldn’t help but wonder about her involvement in his death. All of the signs seemed to point to Mary-Kate having something to do with it. Lexi had mentioned it to Gabe and had asked loads of questions about her and Dan, but now she felt silly. She had spent so much time questioning whether Mary-Kate, her half-sister, had been involved in Austin’s death, when really he wasn’t even dead at all (at least not the type of dead that Lexi had been thinking).
“I’m suspicious of everyone, not just Mary-Kate,” Lexi replied quietly, feeling slightly guilty that she had even asked. Mary-Kate was one of the few people who had been nice to her – which should mean something because it didn’t feel like she had been able to trust many people since she’d come to Briar Creek. “Speaking of which, why should I even trust you right now? I saw you talking to Violet and Tommy earlier tonight. You were helping them look for me. Why would you do that?”
Gabe looked up at her with his piercing steel blue eyes. “I had to distract them so that they wouldn’t find you. We also had to dress in the same Halloween costume so that it would throw them off if they did happen to see Austin. They would have assumed it was me bringing you to them instead of Austin leaving with you. Pretending to be on their side was probably the only way we could have gotten you out of Briar Creek alive today.”
“And it was pretty easy, if I do say so myself.” Austin shot her toothy grin.
“Okay, that makes sense,” Lexi exhaled. She owed her life to Gabe and Austin. Lexi wasn’t sure how, but she was going to find a way to repay them both for it eventually.
Austin stretched and yawned. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but it’s been a long, crazy, and exhausting night. I think I’m gonna turn in.”
“I thought that vampires didn’t sleep,” Lexi pointed out.
“You’re right, we don’t. We do relax, though. Which is exactly what I’m going to do right now.”
As he got up to walk away, Lexi said, “Wait. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?”
“Oh, I didn’t think about that. Well, there are only two bedrooms,” Austin replied hesitantly.
“You can sleep in my room,” Gabe offered. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Lexi looked at him questioningly. “Are you sure? I don’t mind sleeping in the living room.”
Gabe nodded. “Yes, I want you to be comfortable while we live here. This couch sucks. Unlike you, I don’t actually have to sleep, though.”
Lexi thought about telling Gabe that they could share the bed, but after the night they had both just experienced, it didn’t seem like a good idea. Earlier today, she hadn’t even been sure if Gabe had been on her side or if she was working with her aunt and uncle. It just seemed too soon to share any type of intimacy with Gabe, whether it was sharing a bed or her blood with him.
As Lexi walked down the hallway that led her to the bedroom, she couldn’t help but feel a magnetic pull, as though something was telling her to go back to the living room and step into Gabe’s arms. Fighting to ignore the feeling, Lexi climbed into the double-sized bed and dozed off to sleep.
The next morning, the sun poured through her bedroom window, shining across her face and causing her to stir. Lexi climbed out of the bed. She found Austin and Gabe sitting at the kitchen table scarfing down plates of eggs, butter-slathered toast, and greasy-looking bacon that made her stomach growl.
“Good morning,” Lexi said.
Austin stood up and went over to the stove. He piled scrambled eggs and bacon onto her plate. “Good morning. There’s salsa in the fridge. I know that’s how you like your eggs.”
Lexi tried to hide her grin. “How do you know it’s still how I like my eggs?” she asked. She was happy that even though she hadn’t been able to keep in touch with her cousin, he still remembered some things about her.
“Just a wild guess,” Austin winked at her, shrugging. “Some things never change.” He handed her the plate and sat back down.
“Why are you guys eating? I thought that you only eat in front of people to keep up with your act,” Lexi said, as she grabbed the jar of salsa from the fridge. She remembered that Gabe had once told her that vampires couldn’t digest their food, so whatever they ate had to be brought up somehow. Yuck.