Destined to Die (The Briar Creek Vampires, #3) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (9 page)

Austin felt the anger rush through his body
like a wave of water. “That’s it. You’re not going back home where
he can do this to you again. You’re coming back to the house with
us.”

Mary-Kate pulled her sunglasses back on. “I
can’t. I would be putting the three of you in even more danger. My
dad wouldn’t rest until he found me. And I can’t just leave my mom
with him, Austin. He hasn’t exactly been a perfect husband to her,
and it will probably only get worse if I’m gone. I’m starting to
think her sickness pisses him off.”

“Why would it piss him off?”

“He said that he ‘didn’t sign up for this.’ You
know… a dying wife. He’s afraid that it wouldn’t look good for him,
as the town mayor, to be a widower.”

Austin shook his head in disgust. It didn’t
surprise him that Greg Lawrence would feel that way. He was always
more concerned about his image and what the voters would think than
what really mattered. “I guess I can’t – and shouldn’t – try to
convince you to leave your mom there alone. But now I’m going to
worry about you all of the time. Will you come live with us when .
. . I mean,
if
. . . your mom dies.

“Of course,” Mary-Kate replied. She smiled at
him. “I’d rather be with you than at home with Greg.”

“What about Dan?” Austin asked. “Has he been
doing everything that he’s supposed to be doing?”

“Honestly, Austin, I don’t know.” Mary-Kate
paused, taking the time to carefully choose her words. “It feels
like he’s really close with your mom and dad . . . too close,
really. I don’t know if we can really trust him.”

Austin looked out the window. He was getting
sick of everyone telling him that he couldn’t trust Dan. They’d
been best friends for years. Dan wouldn’t betray him . . . would
he? Austin quickly shook the thought away. Dan didn’t even have a
reason to betray him. As far as Austin knew, Dan had no one close
to him who had Wilkins’ Syndrome, and if he didn’t know anyone with
the illness, how could he even relate to what Austin’s parents were
doing? The only reason they wanted Lexi’s blood was to cure their
disease. Surely Dan understood that Lexi shouldn’t be forced to be
a blood donor. “Fine, we’ll start being a little more cautious
about what we tell Dan from now on. I still trust him, though,”
Austin told Mary-Kate. “I should probably get going now. I don’t
want anyone to find out that either of us is here.”

Mary-Kate leaned over and pressed her lips
gently against his. When she pulled away, Austin smiled at
her.

“Stay safe, okay, babe?”

She nodded. “You stay safe, too. Let’s meet
back here on Thursday around nine.”

As Austin flew out the car window and swooped
through the night sky, a dark figure loomed in the background,
watching the direction that he was flying in, before shifting into
a bat and following him.

*

Back at the house, Lexi and Gabe were watching
a movie on the couch. Gabe still wasn’t as talkative as he normally
was, but he had stayed really close to her the whole time Austin
was gone. It made Lexi feel safe knowing that Gabe would be here to
protect her if something went wrong.

When there was a loud knock at the front door,
Lexi jumped to her feet, startled. “Who could it be?” she whispered
to Gabe.

“I don’t know,” Gabe said, coming up behind
her. “I’ll handle it, though.”

Before either of them could open the door,
Austin shouted, “Let me in!” He pounded on the door
again.

When Lexi turned the knob, Austin burst through
the front door and said, “Sorry, I forgot to bring my keys with
me.”

“Is everything okay?” Lexi asked, noting that
her cousin’s normally freckled fair skin had turned a bright shade
of tomato red.

“I don’t know,” Austin replied, his voice shaky
and a startled expression on his face. “I get this weird feeling
that I was being followed by someone.”

“Why would you think that?” Gabe asked,
scanning their front lawn through the window.

Austin shook his head, running a finger through
his strawberry blonde hair, which looked like it hadn’t been cut in
quite a while. “No. It was when I was in the sky. It wasn’t until
after I left that I noticed a bat flying behind me. I heard them
and when I looked back, there was someone there.” He turned to
Lexi. “When we’re in bat form, we aren’t able to recognize one
another. I kept changing my route to throw them off and when I was
about halfway home, I realized they weren’t behind me anymore. So I
changed my route once more and came home but I still feel like
something was strange about that bat. I don’t know what it
was.”

“So, maybe it was just a real bat then,” Lexi
said hesitantly, trying not to feel nervous. “You don’t even know
for sure that it was a vampire, do you?”

“I guess I didn’t mention that we can smell the
difference between a real bat and other vampires,” Austin replied.
“They smell different from vampires. I didn’t smell a bat scent
this time. The bat that was following me was definitely another
vampire.”

“No vampires besides us and Ben ever come out
this way,” Gabe murmured. “There’s a really low population of
vampires in this area,” he explained to Lexi. “It had to have been
someone who knew who you were.”

“But if they wanted to know where he was going,
wouldn’t they have followed him all the way here?” Lexi pointed
out. “Why would they have only gone halfway?”

“That’s the stranger part,” Austin agreed. “I
don’t know who it was or what they want, but we really need to keep
our guard up. Someone has an idea of where we are, and if it’s
anyone from Briar Creek, they’re going to try even harder to find
us. In fact, I better cancel seeing Mary-Kate again on Thursday
like we agreed.”

“But we agreed that you wouldn’t call her,”
Gabe insisted. “How are you going to let her know you’re not
meeting her and when you’ll meet her next?”

“I know. Worst case scenario, I just won’t show
up.”

“Wait, I’m confused. Why aren’t you calling
Mary-Kate?” Lexi asked.

“We’re afraid that even if we block the number
we’re calling from, Mayor Lawrence will somehow find a way to
figure out how to trace it and figure out where we are. We only
call her in emergency situations.”

“That makes sense.” Lexi paused. “I wonder if
the person who tried to follow you home also saw that we were in
Briar Creek earlier tonight. I wonder . . . I wonder if they
already know where we are.”

“No, I highly doubt that,” Gabe said. “I’m not
sure you realize how desperate these vampires are, Lexi. If they
even thought you were here, they would have come here to check it
out already.” Gabe reached over and squeezed Lexi’s
hand.

Entwining her fingers with his, Lexi hesitantly
squeezed back. She hoped that he was right.

****

Chapter 7

Lexi tried to fall asleep that night, but her
mind just wouldn’t shut off. She spent the whole night worrying
about what was in store for them next. If Gabe’s visions were
right, she was going to have to find a way to fight a town full of
vampires and not get herself killed or captured in the process –
which sounded about as simple as finding a bobby pin in a corn
maze.

Just remembering the time she had been followed
in the corn maze a few weeks ago sent clusters of goose bumps up
her arms. Lexi turned to Gabe. He was lying very still and, like
always, there were no signs of him breathing (vampires were dead,
after all). His eyes were closed, which made it look like he was
sleeping, but Lexi knew that he was just trying to catch a vision.
She shook his arm lightly. “Gabe?”

One of his eyes popped open. “What?”

“That night in the corn maze, was it you or
Austin who followed me?” Lexi asked.

Gabe shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

“Remember how I told you someone followed me in
the corn maze?”

Gabe, closing his eyes again as though he were
exhausted, nodded. “Yeah, I remember you mentioning something like
that.”

“Whoever was following me was wearing the same
Halloween costume that you and Austin were both wearing on
Halloween,” Lexi went on. “So, which one of you was it?”

“As far as I know, it was neither of us. I
could be wrong, though. You should double check with Austin to make
sure it wasn’t him.” Gabe rolled towards her, wrapping his arm
around her waist.

“Okay,” Lexi replied, sinking her head into the
soft pillow. It had to have been her cousin. She just wondered why
he hadn’t told Gabe . . . and if Austin really hadn’t mentioned it,
was there anything else that he was hiding from them?

*

The next morning, the aroma of bacon filled her
nostrils, waking her up. Glancing next to her, she found that Gabe
had already left the bedroom that they’d decided they would sleep
in together from now on. When she had crawled out of bed, she found
Austin in the kitchen flipping pancakes and jumping back from the
frying pan as the bacon grease shot at him.

“Morning,” he said, smiling at her sheepishly.
“Do you want chocolate chips or blueberries in your
pancakes?”

“Chocolate chips.” Lexi opened her mouth to ask
where Gabe was, but before she could get anything out, Austin had
already answered her question. “He went meet his mom in
Huntington.”

“Do you know why Gabe’s mom doesn’t like
me?”

Austin shook his head. “No, I don’t really know
her. Even when I was staying at their house, she was really quiet.
I don’t know if she keeps to herself, or if she was just quiet
around me. Gabe has mentioned that she doesn’t really like you, but
he hasn’t told me why. I imagine it has something to do with you
being human and all.”

“What do you mean it has something to do with
me ‘being human’? She doesn’t like humans?” Lexi asked,
confused.

“A lot of vampires believe that humans and
vampires shouldn’t mix,” Austin explained. “Some of them believe
that it’s not a good idea because there’s no way to real tell if
it’s a mutually-beneficial relationship. There have been vampires
who have gotten into relationships with humans just so they could
have someone to drink from whenever they want.” He flipped one of
the pancakes in the pan and turned towards her. “Other vampires
believe that it’s unfair for a vampire to stay in a relationship
with a human because, in the long run, they usually need to decide
if they want to turn them into a vampire or if they will just let
them die. Some see turning humans into vampires unethical unless
there’s no other choice.”

Lexi hadn’t realized that there was almost a
sense of racism in the vampire world. It was a lot like the issues
that she had experienced in the real world. She remembered once
liking a guy from Trinidad at her middle school, but his parents
wouldn’t allow him to date her because they didn’t want her to be
with a white girl. Lexi couldn’t understand because her mom had
always raised her to believe that people were all the same,
regardless of their skin tone. It made her sad to think that people
– and vampires – felt that they had the ability to judge
relationships that were not their own.

“I thought you said we shouldn’t go to other
towns anymore,” Lexi said, pulling out a chair to sit down at the
kitchen table. “What if Gabe gets caught in Huntington?”

“Nah, he should be okay because he’s driving
there. We just really shouldn’t do any flying there unless it’s
absolutely necessary and even then, we should be extremely
cautious. We also need to keep you out of Briar Creek and
Huntington.”

“Speaking of being cautious,” Lexi said,
remembering her conversation with Gabe from the previous night, “I
have a question. Were you the one who followed me in the corn
maze?”

“What do you mean?” Austin asked, a confused
look on his face as he set a plate of pancakes in front of
her.

Lexi drenched her pancakes in a pool of maple
syrup before taking a bite. “Someone in a skeleton costume like the
one you and Gabe wore on Halloween followed me when I went to the
corn maze with Mary-Kate and her friends. I asked Gabe about it,
and he said it wasn’t him.”

“It wasn’t me either,” Austin said, shaking his
head. “Are you sure they were following you? I know sometimes they
dress people up and send them into the maze as guides for anyone
who gets lost. Or maybe they were trying to make it seem like a
haunted maze this year.”

“No, whoever it was made it pretty obvious they
were following me,” Lexi replied. “It scared me at the time . . .
and I remember telling Gabe about it, but he didn’t believe
me.”

“Well, he should have believed you,” Austin
said, furrowing his brow. “There are a lot of people who are out to
get you. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of them dressed up to throw
you off guard in hopes of kidnapping you or something.”

Lexi’s jaw dropped as she remembered the
homecoming dance she had gone to. Right after she had overheard
Mary-Kate and Craig Lindstrom having a moment together, Lexi had
started up the stairs to get away from them. Before she could get
back to the gymnasium, she had been drugged. “You know, those guys
from school did try to kidnap me right around the same time,” Lexi
said slowly. “But Dan saved me. I wonder if maybe it was one of
them at the corn maze. It’s either that or . . ."