Destined to Die (The Briar Creek Vampires, #3) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (17 page)

Professor Fleur shrugged his
shoulders and shook his head. “I do not know zee answer,” he
replied. “There’s not a set age when people find out that they are
vampire hunters. It usually happens before they are eighteen years
of age. It can be later. My best advice is to pay attention to your
body’s signals. You could be a vampire hunter.”

“How does one know if they’re a
vampire hunter?” Gabe asked. “This has always intrigued
me.”

Professor Fleur turned to Lexi.
“The only way to know if you are a vampire hunter is if you have an
overwhelming sense to hunt and kill vampires.”

The professor glanced at each of
them. “If you begin to feel as though you can sense when vampires
are near or find yourself drawn to them, you are a vampire
hunter.”

A thought crossed Lexi’s mind.
Could she be so drawn to Gabe, and even Craig, just because they
are vampires?

*

That night at dinner, Lexi told
Anna and Austin what she had learned about vampire hunting and her
bloodline.

“Dude,” Austin said. “Why can’t I
be Ben’s son? My mom chose the wrong husband. Do you know how cool
I would be if I were a Hunter?”

Anna elbowed him playfully. “I
think you’re cool, even if you are just a Graham cracker.”
Lexi laughed at Anna’s nickname for her cousin. She hadn’t heard
her use it before, but she thought it was really cute.

“No, but seriously . . . I could
get so many girls if I had super powerful blood like you, Lexi. I’d
use it to my advantage.”

Lexi rolled her eyes. “You’re such
a typical ex-football player, I swear.” She noticed that Anna had
gone quiet and was now playing with the green beans on her red
cafeteria tray. “Anyway, it’s good to know that I’m actually not
bad at vampire staking. It would suck if I couldn’t even get the
stake through its heart or something.”

Anna snorted. “Sort of like this
girl last year. She kept going for the wrong side. Who doesn’t know
that most of your heart is closer to the left side?”

Austin shrugged his shoulders. “I
don’t know . . . I suck at geometry.”

From across the cafeteria, Lexi
noticed that Veronica was staring at them. Her face was mostly
blank, but when her eyes met Lexi’s, Lexi could tell that they were
filled with jealousy and what appeared to be hatred. Keeping her
eyes on Veronica and smiling, Lexi reached over and grabbed Gabe’s
hand.

Gabe didn’t look at Lexi,
squeeze her hand, or respond in any way like he normally did when
she held his hand. When Lexi glanced over at him to see what was
causing his lack of response, she realized that his eyes were fixed
on Veronica.
*

After dinner, Lexi bolted out of the cafeteria
and went straight to her dorm room. She didn’t want anyone to see
the tears that had built up behind her eyes.

It made her angry that Veronica was throwing
herself at Gabe. It was bad enough that another girl (or woman?)
was interested in
her
Gabe, but what was worse was the way
he was responding to Veronica’s attention. Lexi was also beginning
to feel like he had been keeping secrets from her. She knew that
she was being a hypocrite, though. She had been keeping secrets
from him, too. Her mind flashed to Craig.

Just then, the door to her dorm room was pulled
open and Anna stepped inside, a concerned look on her face. “Hey.
You okay?”

Lexi shrugged. “I have a question. What do you
know about Professor Lindstrom?”

Anna sat down on her bed and smoothed out the
mattress. “Not much. He’s our newest professor. He seems to keep to
himself a lot more than the other teachers do.” She glanced up at
Lexi. “What is it that makes you ask?”

“Well, it’s just that . . . I know him. He was
my gym teacher at Briar Creek High School.”

“Okay?” Anna paused, waiting for Lexi to say
something more. When she didn’t, Anna asked, “What are you getting
at?”

“Well, I don’t know much about Huntington and
all, but . . . isn’t it kind of strange that Craig works alongside
our enemies? Won’t he turn me over to them?”
“Well, he probably doesn’t work there anymore,” Anna pointed out.
“He’s here most of the day.”
“Is he here at nine thirty?” Lexi asked, thinking back to when she
had class with him.
“I’m not really sure,” Anna replied. “I wouldn’t worry about it,
though. He doesn’t seem suspicious to me at all. He wouldn’t be
here unless he really wanted to be.”
Lexi flopped on her bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore
the weird feeling that she had about Craig.

****

Chapter 11

That same night, Lexi was hanging out with Gabe
and Austin in their dorm room doing homework when there was a loud
knock at the door. Fully expecting it to be Anna, who had gone to
the vending machine to get them all snacks and drinks to fuel them
for studying, Lexi swung the door open and nearly gasped when she
saw the mess of blonde hair in front of her.

“Hey, Lexi,” Dan said, beaming a wide grin at
her. She glanced over at Gabe and noticed that his body had
stiffened. It made Lexi happy to know that she wasn’t the only one
who couldn’t stand being around Dan.

“Do you have any updates for us?” Austin asked,
strolling over to the door.

Dan hesitated, as though he were trying to
recall all of the events that had taken place since any of them had
last heard from him or the other people in Briar Creek.
“Mary-Kate’s pissed at you,” he told Austin.

Austin groaned. “I expected that. Didn’t you
give her my messages about why I stood her up at that
day?”

“Yeah, I told her,” Dan replied, shrugging.
“She’s still pissed at you.”

“Well, I’ll deal with that sometime later. I
need to know the important stuff right now. Are they planning
anything?”

Dan shook his head. “Not yet. They’re trying to
come up with a plan as we speak. They do know that Lexi is with
Gabe. They have no idea that you’re alive yet, though.” Lexi
couldn’t help but think that it was crazy that Austin was alive and
hardly anyone knew. Maybe she should give Dan more credit. This was
a big secret to keep bottled up inside, and he had been keeping it
to himself for months longer than she probably could have.
Remembering the night he had attacked her, she shook the thought
away. Dan could not be trusted.

“Figures,” Austin replied. “We should have kept
Gabe in Briar Creek for a little while longer so it wasn’t so
obvious. They haven’t come up with any ideas yet?”

“A few,” Dan replied. “The first is pretty
complicated, so I don’t know how they’re going to pull it off.
They’re trying to find the vampire who created Gabe.”

“How would they do that?” Austin asked. “They
don’t even know who it is. That would be like looking for a needle
in a haystack.”

“They’re offering a fifty thousand dollar
reward to the vampire who created Gabe,” Dan said. “There have been
a few vampires who have come forward, pretending that they were the
ones who created him. What they don’t know is that in order to
receive the reward money, they need to tell Greg where he is first
and he needs to be located. So, no, it’s not going to be that
easy.”

Lexi gulped and glanced over at Gabe, who had
his head in his hands. The whole situation wouldn’t scare her so
much if Veronica wasn’t only a town away from Briar Creek, a place
where they could easily find her. “She’s selfish,” Gabe said. “I
know she’d turn me in and take the reward money.”

“Well, you need to stop thinking about it,”
Lexi snapped. “We don’t want her finding out about it by tapping
into your thoughts or something. And, honestly, I don’t know if she
would turn you into them. She’s too busy obsessing over you. She
wouldn’t want to hurt the chances of you getting back with
her.”

Gabe looked up at her, a pleading look in his
eyes. Lexi looked away. She knew that she was being mean, but she
couldn’t help herself. Just thinking about Veronica made her
angry.

“That’s not their only plan, though,” Dan said,
interrupting the argument that Lexi wanted to pursue with Gabe.
“Their other plan is a lot more feasible. They’re planning to take
Gabe’s mom hostage until he comes forward.”

Gabe stood up. “That’s it. I’m going to make an
appearance in Briar Creek . . . and prove to them that I’m not with
Lexi.”

Lexi grabbed his wrist. “No, you can’t do that.
Who knows what they’ll do to you.”

“I don’t care,” Gabe replied. “I don’t want
them hurting my mom.”

“I don’t want them hurting
you
,” Lexi
replied. “There has to be a way around this. Can’t we find some
place for your mom to hide? Does she have any friends or family in
other states that they don’t know about and can’t
locate?”

Gabe shook his head. “No, she has no family.
All of her friends who she could trust have already died years ago.
All she has is me.”

“Well, I have a solution then,” Austin spoke
up. “We just need to get in touch with Ben. I know it’s been months
since we’ve talked to him, but we’ll just keep trying until he
responds to us. He has to have somewhere secret she can hide out.
Maybe even his bed and breakfast.”

Gabe nodded. “That would work. We have to hurry
up and get in touch with him as soon as possible, though.” He
turned to Dan. “Your job is going to be to convince everyone to go
with the first plan or think of other plans.”

Dan frowned. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Lexi asked. She was beginning to
feel like she was right. Dan really wasn’t on their side if he
couldn’t do this simple task for them. What if they really needed
him to do something important?

“I’m here because I want to leave Briar Creek,”
Dan replied. “I want to stay at Huntington. I don’t want to be
around them anymore. Mary-Kate feels the same way.”

“Absolutely not,” Austin replied quickly.
“There’s no way Mary-Kate can come here. It would be one thing if
she had no personal ties to them, but Greg is her father. He won’t
rest until he finds her if she comes.”

“What about me?” Dan asked.

Austin sat down on his bed and sighed. “You can
come under one condition.”

“What?” Dan asked.

“You go back and tell them that you got a call
from Lexi. Tell them that she said she’s in Las Vegas. That should
throw them off track for at least a couple of days. Once they leave
to go searching for her out there, you come back here. We’ll go
back to Briar Creek to get Gabe’s mom while they’re gone,” Austin
replied.

Lexi shook her head. “No. This isn’t going to
work.”

“Why?” Gabe asked.

“My aunt and uncle aren’t stupid. They know
that I wouldn’t just call Dan for no reason,” Lexi replied. “They
know that I can’t stand him.” She looked up at Dan, catching the
pained expression on his face. She didn’t feel guilty though, it
was his fault that she disliked him.

“I’ll say you were trying to get in touch with
Mary-Kate, but you only had my number,” Dan said. “That sounds a
lot more believable.”

“I guess.” Lexi sighed. Something about this
plan made her feel really nervous, even though she had a feeling
that, if they played their cards right, it could work. The only
thing that sucked about it was that Dan was going to be living
here, too.

Then again, that seemed like a better plan than
letting him stay in Briar Creek, where he had access to all of the
people in the town. Even if he didn’t intentionally let everyone
know that Austin was alive and that they were all hiding out at
Huntington, all it took was for him to slip up once and say the
wrong thing. Just one wrong statement could end everything, and
after taking Conflagration class today, Lexi knew she wasn’t ready
to fight any vampires yet. She wasn’t emotionally prepared for it
just yet.

“I guess I better get going then. I want to get
out of there as soon as I can. And Lexi?” Dan said. “Stay safe,
okay?”

Lexi nodded, just as Gabe barked, “I’m keeping
her safe. Just worry about you, and I’ll worry about
Lexi.”

And Veronica,
Lexi couldn’t help but
think.

*

Sometime after three o’clock a.m., there was a
knock on Lexi and Anna’s dorm door. Startled, Lexi got up and
opened it. Austin stared back at her, his face as white as a ghost.
“It’s happening again,” he hissed. “Gabe. The same as what happened
in the shower that day. Go to the dorm room. I’ll stay
here.”

Forgetting to put on a pair of shoes, Lexi ran
down the hall barefooted. She didn’t care that her shorts were so
short that anyone who saw her would think she was a slut or that
her bra straps were hanging out of her tank top. She didn’t even
care about what was going on with Veronica. Lexi just had to make
sure that Gabe was okay.

When she got to the dorm room, Gabe was laying
on his side, facing her. His skin was paler than usual, and it
looked like he was staring into space. He didn’t look like a
vampire. He looked like a zombie.

“Gabe?” He didn’t respond. “You have to drink
from me, okay?” Lexi knelt down on the ground in front of him and
pulled her hair to one side. Minutes passed, and nothing
happened.
Just as she was sure that he wasn’t going to do anything and she
was going to have figure out a way to get her blood down his
throat, Lexi felt his fangs sink deep into the back of her neck. A
feeling of warmth rushed through her body as she felt Gabe’s tongue
swirl around her skin. He pulled away and then sunk his fangs even
further into her neck, this time hungrier and more
forceful.