Time Will Tell (12 page)

Chapter 26

“I have a lot to explain,” Gabe said, turning to the others, but Lexi heard the sound of footsteps climbing the steps. Erica and Connor appeared in front of them.

“I think it’s going to need to wait until later, Gabe,” Lexi said. She was so confused about everything that had happened. She didn’t even know how she felt about him anymore. As much as she thought that she loathed Gabe recently, it was obvious that she didn’t know the whole entire story. She only wondered what she didn’t know and how it would change things between them.

But she didn’t have time to worry about that until later, Lexi realized, when she saw the terrified looks on her brother and sister’s faces.

“Mary-Kate wants to hurt us,” Connor said breathlessly. “She wants to hurt daddy, too.”

“Dad will be okay,” Lexi promised, even though she wasn’t sure if it was the truth. She hoped that her father would be okay, and she liked to believe that he would be able to hold his own against Greg Lawrence. But what mattered right now was the kids. Unlike her father, they were mortals. If things got too messy, there was a risk that they could be killed.

“We need to get out of here,” Dan said, reading her mind. “Let’s climb out a window.”

“That could be dangerous, Dan,” Lexi protested. “Erica and Connor can’t just jump out a window like we can.”

“They can if we catch them,” Dan replied. “Now, come on.”

Without any arguments, they headed into one of the bedrooms and pulled open a window. Lexi didn’t know who this townhouse belonged to or why her father had chosen to come here, of all places, but she knew that Dan was right. They couldn’t stay in the house any longer. They had to get out—even though she wasn’t sure what they should do once they were outside.

Dan jumped out of the window, and Gabe followed quickly after him. Just as Austin was about to jump out the window, Anna said, “Wait!”

“What?” Austin asked, turning to look at her.

“I’ll need you to catch me, too. I’m still a human, you know,” Anna said.

“How could I forget?” Austin asked, and Lexi was pretty sure she picked up on a note of bitterness in his voice. She knew that it bothered her cousin that Anna hadn’t become a vampire yet, but did he really need to treat her that way? Lexi knew that, after tonight, her cousin and Anna had a lot they needed to work on. Obviously Anna still hadn’t given him her answer—or maybe she had, and that was why Austin was acting so mean towards her.

Austin leapt out the window, and Lexi heard the sound of his feet hitting against the pavement below them. She turned to Erica and Connor and knelt down on her knees. Hugging both of them close to her, she told them, “It’s going to be scary to jump out the window, but I promise I won’t let anything happen to either of you. We will catch you when you jump.”

“I’m not scared,” Connor insisted. “I’m tough.”

Lexi smiled at him, happy that her brother seemed to be a bit of a daredevil. She turned to her sister. “Do you think you’ll be okay?”

Erica nodded with a scared look in her eyes, which made Lexi feel terrible about what she was forcing her little sister to do. Even though it was scary, though, Lexi knew it was what had to happen if her brother and sister were going to make it out of the house alive.

Once Anna had jumped out the window, Lexi glanced outside. She breathed a sigh of relief to see that Austin and Dan had both caught Anna in their arms.

“Okay, guys, I’m going to jump next,” Lexi told them. “You guys jump—one at a time—after me, okay?”

Erica and Connor both nodded in agreement, and Lexi flung herself out
of the window. She felt pain in her ankles as she landed, feet first, on the cement ground, but it actually gave her a bit of a rush. This was the first time she had done something potentially risky since she had become an immortal, and she actually sort of liked the feeling. If she made it out of tonight alive, she wanted to travel the world with Dan for a year or two and try other crazy, risky things.

She glanced over her shoulder as Erica stood on the windowsill. When she looked down at the distance below her, Erica’s face transformed to an even more terrified look.

“It’s going to be okay, Erica. You have to jump,” Lexi called up to her and held her arms out. “Will it make it easier for you if I count to three?”

Erica nodded, her ringlets moving with her head.

“One . . . two . . . three!” Lexi called out to her sister. She watched as her sister jumped out the window, the same way that a child might jump from a diving board, and she moved a little closer to make sure that she could catch her.

Erica’s body fell clumsily into her arms, and Lexi breathed a sigh of relief. She had been terrified that she wouldn’t catch her.

“Your turn next, Connor!” Lexi called up to him. “Dan and Austin will catch you.”

Dan and Austin both stepped forward and held out their arms to catch Connor, but before they had a chance to do so, Lexi heard Mary-Kate’s voice come from the open window.

“What are you doing?” Mary-Kate yelled. “Where’s Lexi?”

Connor quickly tossed himself out the window. He fell quickly to the ground, and he just barely fell into Dan’s open arms.

Lexi released the deep breath that she had sucked in. Thankfully, everyone had gotten out okay. Now, she just had to hope that her dad would be okay, too.

“Come on, let’s run!” Anna shouted at them. “If we don’t, Mary-Kate and Greg Lawrence are going to catch up to us, and we need a plan.”

Lexi grabbed Erica and Connor’s hands and chased after Anna. It took her a few moments before she said, “Stop! There’s something we need to do!”

“What is it?” Austin asked.

“Do you know how to pick locks?” Lexi asked.

Austin hesitated. “Only if I have something to pick them with. I can’t pick them with my hands. Why do you ask?”

“We need to break into the trunk of Mary-Kate’s car,” Lexi explained. She glanced over at Anna and noticed that she had her bangs clipped back. “Can we use one of your bobby pins?”

“Sure,” Anna said, pulling one of the pins out of her hair and handing it to Austin, as they all made their way to Mary-Kate’s
car, which was parked in front of the house.

It took Austin a few minutes to figure out the lock, but he eventually opened it with the bobby pin and pulled the trunk open.

Darlene was lying inside, her eyes open. When she saw them, a sense of relief crossed her face, and she mumbled something, but Lexi couldn’t hear what she said through the tape over her mouth.

Lexi tore the tape off her lips, hoping that it didn’t hurt Darlene the same way it did to peel off a
fresh Band-Aid, as Austin and Dan untied her arms and legs.

Once the tape was off, Darlene gasped. “Erica and Connor. Are they okay?”

“Yes, they’re fine,” Lexi said. “Maybe a little traumatized, but fine. Are
you
okay?”

“I’m feeling really claustrophobic after be
ing in this trunk for so long, but I’m okay. Alive, at least,” Darlene said. She glanced at Dan and Austin. “Can you help me get out of here?”

“Of course,” Dan said, reaching into the trunk and helping Darlene get into the sitting position. She was able to climb out of the car, though it was obvious that it was uncomfortable for her to stand on her own two feet again after being cramped in
to the trunk of the car for so long.

“Mommy!” Erica squealed when she saw her, and Darlene scooped her into a hug.

Lexi moved away from them, deciding that they needed some privacy. It wasn’t until she was at the front of the car that she saw the vampires who were headed in their direction—and there wasn’t just one or two of them; there were lines of ten or twenty, all heading in their direction.

“Oh, shit,” Lexi muttered under her breath.
“Guys, I think we better get out of here.”

“They must know you’re in town,” Dan said. “Come on, let’s get back inside the car.”

“No, actually, don’t do that,” Gabe instructed. “This is supposed to happen.” He turned to Lexi. “Remember my vision? The one where I saw you fighting all of the people in this town in front of Briar Creek High?”

“Yeah,” Lexi replied, an unsettled feeling forming in the pit of her stomach. She had thought the vision that Gabe had would no longer apply, for some reason—like the vision was wrong, or it would somehow be erased from her fate. But Lexi knew exactly what Gabe was going to say next.

“This is that fight. We need to get to Briar Creek High before they do if we want to win this thing.”

Lexi turned to Darlene. “Get into one of the cars, or take cover,” she told her. “There’s going to be a really dangerous fight, and I don’t want the kids involved.”

Darlene nodded. “Okay. Be careful. We’ll find a way to get out of here.”

“Good,” Lexi said. She was about to tell her not to go back inside the house because Greg and Mary-Kate were inside and they were determined to kill her siblings, but before she had the chance to say anything about them, she saw Mary-Kate running towards them.

“There she is!” Mary-Kate yelled, pointing at her. “Come on, Dad!”

“I’m coming, Mary,” Greg replied, as he darted down the driveway, his eyes on Lexi.

As Lexi and her friends ran across the street, she breathed a small sigh of relief. If nothing else, she was able to distract Greg and Mary-Kate Lawrence, at least. Their attention was no longer on Darlene and the kids, so it seemed likely that they would be able to get out of this mess.

Chapter 27

Anna followed after Lexi and Dan, who led the way to Briar Creek High. She could feel the vampires of Briar Creek closing in on them. It surprised her how quickly they moved, considering that most of them were supposed to be dying from Wilkins’ Syndrome.

Once they reached the front lawn of the high school, Lexi glanced over at Gabe. “Now what do we do?”

“We wait,” Gabe replied. “They’ll come to us. We need to be ready to fight them, though.” He motioned to the ground. “Find whatever sticks you can—or anything else you can use as stakes.”

They all crouched on the ground and gathered anything that had a pointed edge, knowing that they were all probably going to need more than one if there was any chance they could win this thing.

As the lawn started to fill up with vampires, Austin raised his arms over his head and yelled, “I come in peace! Let’s all try to come up with some sort of compromise—one that doesn’t involve killing Lexi!”

A few vampires who Anna recognized as guys who had once been his friends from the football team snickered. “Dude, you’re so lame. All we want is to kill Lexi. If it weren’t for her, everyone would be fine. She’s such a selfish bitch.”

“Fine, then,” Austin said. “If you want to play it that way, we’ll play it that way.” He glanced over at Gabe and asked, in a lowered voice, “I don’t have a choice do I? I’ll need to kill them.”

Gabe nodded sadly. “Yeah, you’ll need to kill as many of them as you can for us to make it out of this alive.”

Austin raised a few sticks in the air and ran forward. It reminded Anna of the way he had looked when he used to play as the high school quarterback; he moved swiftly and quickly, his mind focused on one thing and one thing only: killing the vampires.

Anna watched, in surprise, as Austin shoved the sticks through two of their chests. Once he was done, he pulled the sticks out of their bodies and used them on two more vampires. “Four down!” Austin called over his shoulder.

Anna stood, frozen in place. Even though she knew that she was going to need to kill vampires, it was the last thing she wanted to do. When she’d gotten to Huntington, it was to fight against violence—not to be violent herself. She knew that she didn’t have any other choice, though; she didn’t want to let her friends down.

So, when a young vampire woman leapt out
from behind a tree and darted towards her, Anna did the only thing she could think to do. She raised a piece of wood that she had found on the ground over her head and shoved it through the woman’s heart.

As the woman slumped to the ground, her body turning to ash, Dan held out his hand to Anna. “Nice one! High five!”

Anna smacked his hand, staring down the vampires to see who was going to be next. It happened to be a little old man who came running forward, a stake in his hand. He must have thought that she was a vampire. No matter what he thought she was, what he didn’t know was that she was a vampire hunter—and a good one, at that. She pushed the stake through his heart, and as he slumped to the ground, she scanned the high school lawn for her next victim.

And that’s when she saw it happen; out of the corner of her eye, Anna watched, in complete and utter horror, as Austin fell to the ground.

“No!” Anna screamed at the top of her lungs, darting towards him.

*

Austin hadn’t even noticed the tall, lanky vampire who had crept up behind him and whacked him over the head until he was on the ground, staring up into the vampire’s dark, cold eyes.

His head hurt and he was seeing stars, but he knew that this was going to be the end. That was why Gabe had given him such a sad look before. Gabe must have seen in his vision that Austin was going to die.

Austin braced himself for what was to come. The day he’d turned into a vampire, he had never expected that there was still a chance that he might actually die someday. For some reason, he had expected himself to be invincible—he’d thought that, no matter what happened, he was going to be okay.

Obviously that wasn’t the case, though. Obviously he was going to die.

Austin felt his eyes flutter closed, but he wasn’t sure if it was his throbbing headache or the knowledge that he was going to die, and he just wanted to get it over with. But before anything happened to him, he heard the sound of a body thumping to the ground.

Austin opened his eyes again and turned around to find Anna standing over his body. “Austin, you have to get up, or you’re going to get yourself killed. You’re lucky you didn’t die just now.”

“My head hurts,” Austin mumbled.

“I don’t care. Get the hell up,” Anna said, reaching down and grabbing his hands to help him off the ground. “You have to be strong, okay? Everyone needs you to live through this.”

“Do you need me?” Austin asked, once he was standing on his own two feet again.

“We’ll talk about that later,” Anna said with a small smile.

Austin wasn’t sure what Anna’s smile meant. He didn’t know if it was good or bad, or maybe even neutral, but he knew that he wanted to live to find out. Ignoring his headache, Austin grabbed one of the sticks that he had dropped on the ground, and ran forward, launching it into the next vampire heart he came across. 

As he moved onto the next person, Austin felt his stomach drop, the same way it would feel if he were gliding down a really tall roller coaster. His father stood in front of him, a stake that he’d brought from home in his hands.

“I won’t hesitate to kill you, the same way I killed Mom,” Austin said, deciding that it was better to be upfront about this than trying to hide his true feelings.

“Austin, relax
, alright? I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here because I heard about what Mary-Kate arranged, and I came down here to support you and Lexi. I’m on your side.”

Austin studied his father’s face, waiting to see if his reaction changed, but it didn’t matter. He knew, deep down, that there was no way his father would say those things if he didn’t mean them.

For the first time in over a year, he found it in himself to truly forgive his father for everything he’d done in the past. “Alright then,” Austin nodded, and for a moment they stood there, staring at each other in silence, but they both knew what that silence meant.

Austin knew he’d made the right decision to forgive his father when he shoved a stake through one of his favorite co-worker’s hearts, just to protect
him.