Destined to Die (The Briar Creek Vampires, #3) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (2 page)

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?”