Destined to Die (The Briar Creek Vampires, #3) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (18 page)

When he was done drinking from her, he pulled
back. Lexi looked up into his sparkling steel blue eyes. “Thank
you,” he whispered before kissing her. She kissed back, trying to
ignore the grossness factor of kissing someone after they had just
gulped down her blood. Then again, she was just glad that he was
alive – and that he wasn’t kissing Veronica instead of
her.

“So,” Lexi said, climbing onto the bed next to
him, “tell me about your vision.”

Gabe closed his eyes tiredly. “It was the same
vision I had last time. I saw the arms carrying the book again.
This time, I know that it was a woman, though.”

“How?”

“Their sleeves were hot pink this time. None of
the guys I know who live in Briar Creek wear hot pink,” Gabe
replied. “I also saw the person’s skin tone. I think the arms
belonged to Violet, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. Does she
have a yellow gemstone ring?”

Lexi shook her head. “Not that I’ve ever seen,
but I also didn’t know she was a vampire either. She’s pretty good
at keeping secrets from me. It probably was her,
though.”

“That’s the only thing I saw. I guess I just
got so weak from it because once again, my visions were pretty
close together.” Gabe sighed. “I feel like my visions are almost
teasing me in a way. I’m getting to see everything in bits and
pieces, but who knows how many more I’m going to have to endure
before I actually find out who took the book.”

Lexi didn’t say anything. She wished that his
visions would hurry up, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. It
would just make him feel pressured, which might make it even more
difficult for him to have visions about the book. “I guess I’ll go
back to my room now that you’re okay.”

“Wait,” Gabe said, grabbing her arm. “Don’t go.
Stay here with me tonight?”

“What about Austin?” Lexi asked.

“He’ll figure it out on his own. Don’t worry. I
want to be with you.”

“Okay.” Lexi curled into a ball next to Gabe.
He wrapped his arm around her waist. Before she drifted off to
sleep, Lexi thought about Veronica. She hoped that Veronica would
tap into Gabe’s mind right now, so that she would know who was in
bed with him – and that it wasn’t her.

*

Lexi didn’t sleep well that night. She kept
having dreams about the book. In one of the dreams, it was being
dangled in front of her and she tried to chase after it, but she
ended up falling off a cliff instead. All of her dreams were that
way; she was put through some sort of test to get the book in her
own hands, but each time, she ended up falling to her own death.
Lexi wasn’t big into dreams before all this, but she really hoped
that the dreams she was having weren’t a sign that she would never
get the book.

When she woke up the next morning, she reached
for Gabe, but he wasn’t there. Huffing, Lexi climbed out of bed and
left his dorm room. Lexi felt like she was on a walk of shame.
Students were all getting ready for breakfast, each of them giving
her funny looks – probably partly because she was coming from the
boys’ dorm and partly because her outfit was so
revealing.

As she was stumbling with her keys to open her
own dorm room door so she that she could get changed, Lexi noticed
the guy standing in front of her.

“Lexi,” Craig said. She felt his eyes hovering
over her body, noticing her attire. “What are you doing
here?”

“What am I doing here?” Lexi snapped back at
him. She opened the door to the room and, glancing inside to make
sure that Anna wasn’t there, motioned for Craig to follow her. “I
need to talk to you.”

“Lexi, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Craig
said when Lexi had shut the door and locked it. “There are rules
here that teachers must abide to at Huntington.”
Lexi scoffed. “There were rules that you were supposed to abide to
at Briar Creek High School, too, but that didn’t stop you from
making out with me in the janitor’s closet.”

Craig looked like he was about to say
something, but decided not to. “Anyway, do you want to tell me what
this is all about?”

“Why are you here? Why are you teaching at
Huntington?” Lexi asked.

“I’m not sure that it’s any of your
business.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that most of the
teachers here would find it a little odd, to say the least, that
you taught at Briar Creek if they don’t already know.”

“Oh, they know. They were well aware of it
before they hired me,” Craig replied, running a hand through his
straight hair. “Is that all you wanted to talk to me
about?”

Lexi shrugged. She wanted to ask him about
Mary-Kate. And she wanted to ask him why he had been mingling with
the enemy. She wanted to ask him a thousand things, but the only
thing that she could manage to say was, “I guess.”

“Too bad. I thought you were going to tell me
that you’re insanely in love with me.” He opened the door and
closed it gently behind him. As Lexi began undressing, she heard
the door swing open again from behind her. “Craig! I can’t do this
right now.”

When he didn’t answer, she turned around. Gabe
was staring back at her, a look of anger on his face. Before Lexi
could come up with the right words to say, he had already left the
room.

****

Chapter 12

After she scarfed down a blueberry bagel and
almond milk, Lexi followed Austin and Anna to Vampire Geography and
Tracking class. Gabe hadn’t shown up at the cafeteria like usual,
and Lexi hadn’t said much to Austin and Anna during breakfast. No
one asked her why she was upset or why Gabe hadn’t come. For all
she knew, maybe he had already told them why and what he had
witnessed.

Lexi knew that what Gabe had seen probably
looked really bad. If the situation had been reversed and she had
seen Veronica leaving his Gabe’s room and then found him without
some of his clothes on, she would probably think that he had
cheated on her, too.

What she really was dreading was going to
Veronica’s classroom. She wished that she could find a way to get
out of Vampire Geography and Tracking altogether, but Anna kept
telling her what an important class it was. Lexi didn’t really
understand because it didn’t seem important to humans or
humans-turned-vampire since only to those who were biologically
predetermined to be vampire hunters were able to track down
vampires. It may have been useful for other humans to learn where
the highest populations of vampires were, but Lexi didn’t care; all
she cared about was the vampires who lived in Briar Creek. They
were the only ones who wanted her to die.

Austin and Anna separated from Lexi to take
their seats in the back of the classroom. As she settled into her
own desk, she felt Gabe’s eyes glaring at the back of her
head.

When Veronica came into the classroom, wearing
a short black dress, she glanced over at Lexi and, laughing,
flashed a red lipstick smile. Lexi gritted her teeth. It was
obvious that Veronica had somehow gotten into Gabe’s mind today. It
made Lexi wonder if Veronica had ever tried to tap into his mind
before they had all arrived at Huntington . . . and why he hadn’t
told Lexi if she had. It made her wonder what other secrets Gabe
was keeping from her.

*

“Houston, we have a problem,” Austin said, as
his cafeteria tray which was loaded with two burgers, French fries,
and a pudding cup clanked against the table.

“Oh, so, you found out about your taste buds
changing,” Anna said matter-of-factly.

Austin raised his eyebrows at her.

“You haven’t heard?” Anna asked. “Geez, didn’t
Gabe teach you anything about the transition into a
vampire?”

“I guess not.” Austin shrugged. “So, what’s
this about taste buds?”

“Well, when vampires turn about two hundred
years old, they completely lose their sense of taste, but it
dwindles before then. Taste buds take slightly longer to die than
other organs. Most scientists think it’s so that you can see that
blood tastes better than food before you lose your sense of taste
permanently – and your appeal for food.”

“I doubt that will ever happen to me. Food’s
like my BFF. How do you even know about all of this? You’re not a
vampire,” Austin said, reminding Lexi that she wasn’t the only
human who was going to Huntington.

“Professor Males teaches a class on Vampire
Biology every other semester,” Anna replied. “It’s actually really
interesting.”

“Well, I have two hundred years to worry about
my lack of taste buds. This is something more relevant to right
now.” He took a big bite of his hamburger and wiped away the
ketchup that dripped down his chin. “Ben’s phone is
disconnected.”

“What do you mean it’s disconnected?” Gabe
asked as he sat down at the table. “That can’t be
possible.”

Austin shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.
We haven’t heard from him in a while, which is weird enough in
itself. He said that he would keep the lines of communication open
for us.”

“So, are you saying that you think something
happened to him?” Lexi asked, feeling the panic rising in her
throat. This was the first time since she was a kid that she had
even the slightest bit of hope that she might be able to reunite
with her father, but what if it wasn’t going to be possible now?
Or, even worse, what if her dad really wanted nothing to do with
her now that he had the opportunity to finally see her again after
all this time? Maybe he was too occupied with his other family, the
mysterious one that no one knew about. Maybe he felt like he didn’t
have the need to get to know another kid.

“I think something weird is going on,” Austin
replied. “And we have to get to the bottom of it soon so we can get
Gabe’s mom out of here. So, here’s the new plan. Me and Gabe are
going to go look for Ben.”

“Do I get to come?” Lexi asked,
hopeful.

Austin shook his head. “No . . . definitely
not. It’s way too dangerous for you to come with us. Someone might
see you and turn you into the police.”

Lexi had nearly forgotten that the people of
Briar Creek were claiming that she had murdered somebody – and as
much as she wanted to see her dad and basically meet him all over
again for the very first time, she knew that she couldn’t argue
with Austin’s logic. She might feel like she was in a prison here
at Huntington, but she didn’t want to go to a
real
prison
for a crime that she didn’t commit.

“Besides, it will be safer for you here,
anyway,” Austin went on. “You’re at one of the safest places to
hide from vampires. No one here will let anyone hurt
you.”

Anna grabbed Lexi’s shoulder. “And, hey, it can
be fun. We’ll have a girl’s night. We’ll have a sleepover and watch
chick flicks and do each other’s nails and makeup. It will feel
like we’re normal teenage girls for once.”

Lexi smiled at her. “Yeah, I guess it can be
fun.” She tried to ignore the fact that she was going to be
worrying about Gabe and Austin the whole entire time they were
gone. “So, when do you guys leave?”

“Tonight,” Gabe replied. “As soon as it gets
dark so that no one will see us.”
“They won’t recognize that car anyway,” Lexi pointed out. “It’s so
old and beat up that it won’t draw anybody’s attention.”

“We’re not traveling by car,” Austin told her.
“We’re flying.”

*

Austin spent over an hour primping in the
bathroom that was connected to Anna and Lexi’s dorm room. Lexi
couldn’t figure out why; all the times Gabe had come to visit her
in bat form, he’d ended up just falling onto the bed or floor and
getting his hair all messed up anyway. Austin insisted that he had
to make a good impression on her dad, though, because he had done
so much for him.

Even though Gabe and Lexi had hardly said two
words to each other the entire day, she decided she better say
goodbye to him anyway. Otherwise, she knew that she was going to
end up regretting it. Lexi also really wanted to at least try to
make things right between them before he left or she knew she would
spend the entire time he was gone moping around and stressing about
it.

Lexi knocked on the dorm room door. When there
was no answer, she called, “Gabe?”
There was still no answer. Twisting the doorknob, she was surprised
to find that the door was unlocked. Stepping inside, she covered
her mouth at what she saw.

Veronica was standing in the dorm room, in
nothing more than revealing red lingerie. Gabe stood next to her,
the top two buttons of his shirt undone. “I know you want me,”
Veronica murmured quietly.

When Gabe met Lexi’s eyes, he froze. “Wait!
Lexi!”

Lexi turned around and bolted from the dorm
room. Realizing that she was too embarrassed for Anna to see her
tears as they streamed down her face like a waterfall, she ran to
the courtyard.

She sat down on a bench and stared down at the
ground, feeling a wave of anger pass over her body. How could she
have been so naïve and trusting? She should have been expecting
something like this to happen. Gabe had tried to kill her, after
all. If it hadn’t been for her mom insisting that she should
forgive him, Lexi probably wouldn’t have. It made her feel angry at
her mom, for letting her fall for Gabe, and Lexi really hated being
mad at her mom now that she had died.