Thicker Than Water (The Briar Creek Vampires Book #2) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (14 page)

Gabe looked down at the ground and nodded.
“Yes. I swear to you, Lexi, I wanted to run away with you. But I
was worried that they would come and find us.”

“Whose they? Violet and Tommy?”

“Yeah, and pretty much everyone else in this
town. You see…I was trying to protect you from what the people in
Briar Creek are planning.”

“What are they planning?” Lexi asked, feeling
frustrated. She wanted Gabe to just spit it out already instead of
beating around the bush.

“I’m not the only vampire in Briar
Creek.”

“I know,” Lexi replied. “Some guy named Nick
Schaeffer and a few of his friends are vampires, too.”

Gabe nodded. “Yes, they are. They’re not the
only ones, though. Just about everyone else in this town are
vampires, too. Why do you think there are so many bats in this
town?”

“All of the bats in Briar Creek are
vampires?”

“Most of them. There are a few that are real
bats, but…remember that night when I slept over? The bats that were
encircling your house, banging on the windows? Those were all
vampires. They wanted in so that they could get to you.”

“Wow,” Lexi whispered, not knowing what else to
say. She was in complete shock. It made a lot of sense, though.
When she had lived in New Jersey, she had never really seen bats,
even though she knew they had them. In Briar Creek, the bats were
everywhere.

“Unfortunately, the fact that nearly everyone
in this town is vampires has caused some dire consequences for
those of us living in Briar Creek. A lot of the people in this town
have developed a disease that we call Wilkins’ Syndrome. It’s
called that because Zachary Wilkins was the first one that we
noticed had developed the condition.”

“What’s Wilkins’ Syndrome?” Lexi pressed. Her
mom was a doctor so she had heard of most diseases. She’d heard of
Lou Gehrig’s disease, Mortimer’s disease, and even Christmas
disease, but Wilkins’ Syndrome was completely new to
her.

“There are three types of blood that a vampire
cannot drink. The first, which I’m pretty sure I already told you
when you asked me about
Twilight
, is animal blood. The
second type is diseased blood. If the person we’re feeding from has
HIV, AIDS, hepatitis or anything that can be transmitted through
blood.

“We didn’t realize that there was a third type
of blood that we can’t drink: another vampire’s blood. Most of us
know never to drink animal blood for long periods of time. We can
drink it if we have no other options, but it doesn’t do anything to
keep us alive. It satisfies our hunger, but not our nutritional
needs. It doesn’t provide us with enough energy to keep going
long-term, which usually just makes us really weak and fatigued.
Although we can usually tell if someone’s blood is diseased by the
smell of the person, if we’re in a pinch and decide to drink their
blood, we generally end up getting a vampire version of the stomach
flu. We recover from it. When we drink each other’s blood, we
develop Wilkins’ Syndrome.”

“What happens when you get Wilkins’ Syndrome?”
Lexi asked, trying not to seem as fascinated by it as she felt.
Since no one really knew that vampires existed, Lexi felt like one
of the select few humans who had probably ever heard of
it.

“It depends on how much blood you’ve drank,”
Gabe replied. “It usually starts out as a mild cough, but if a lot
of blood has been consumed, the symptoms progress quickly. The
vampire gets extreme fatigue, begins to turn pale, loses all of
their hair, and eventually, they will just die. It’s a slow and
painful death, usually causing the whole entire body to experience
pain and suffering. If the vampire realizes that they have the
illness while it is in the mild stages, they can prevent the
disease from progressing by replenishing their bodies with lots of
a specific type of human blood, but there’s still no guarantee that
they will live.”

“So, do a lot of people in Briar Creek have
Wilkins’ Syndrome then?”

Gabe looked up at her and nodded. “Some have
already died from it. My mom told me that Dan’s brother, Dave, died
because he had the disease.”

“Mary-Kate told me he had leukemia,” Lexi
murmured. “She lied to me?”

“Don’t be mad at Mary-Kate for lying,” Gabe
said. “She’s under strict orders to not tell you anything that’s
going on. In fact, I’m glad that she’s not telling you because
she’d be putting her own life at risk.”

“Since when do you care so much about
Mary-Kate? Were you ever…
with
her? I could have sworn that I
saw her car at your house once.”

Gabe shook his head. “No, I’ve never been with
her the way you’re thinking. I have used her, though.”

“Used her?” Lexi was beginning to feel sick to
her stomach. Did Gabe mean that he had used Mary-Kate sexually?
Just thinking that Gabe may have slept with her half-sister made
Lexi feel sick to her stomach.

“I’ve used her to feed from,” Gabe replied,
looking down at her floor. “Most of the blood we drink is imported
in containers or we get it from the hospital. But sometimes, I get
the urge to feed from someone, and I really don’t want to get
Wilkins’ Syndrome. Unfortunately, my options of humans to feed from
in this town are limited. My only other option besides Mary-Kate is
to find someone from another town, but I really don’t like to drink
from conscious people without their permission and it’s pretty hard
to get someone to agree to let me drink their blood.”

“So, Mary-Kate’s not a vampire then?” Lexi
asked. She was already pretty sure that she wasn’t, but she wanted
a solid answer.

“No, she’s not a vampire.”

Lexi breathed a sigh of relief. It was nice to
know that she wasn’t the only one in Briar Creek who was human. “Do
you have any idea why I saw a vial of blood at her house? Austin
also had a vial of blood in his room that I found.”

“I don’t really know why Austin had a vial of
blood. He wasn’t a vampire,” Gabe replied, a tone in his voice that
Lexi couldn’t seem to pick up on. “Mary-Kate’s parents are both
vampires, so the vial probably belonged to one of them. It was
probably imported blood or something.”

“Wait, the
mayor
is a vampire? He seems
so normal. Why isn’t Mary-Kate one, then? Oh, wait, never mind. I
already know the answer. It’s because the mayor isn’t her real
father,” Lexi said.

Gabe raised an eyebrow at her. “How do you know
that?”

“Mary-Kate told me that we’re half sisters,”
Lexi replied. “So, she’s not a vampire because my dad was her dad,
right? If one of your parents isn’t a vampire, you won’t be one
either?”

“No, Lexi, that’s not how it works. Both of
Mary-Kate’s biological parents were vampires, but not everyone is
born a vampire. Only a female human and a male vampire can have a
baby, but even then, the baby would only be a half-vampire at the
most.”

Lexi gulped. “My dad’s a vampire?”

Gabe nodded. “Yes, he came from the strongest
vampire blood line that ever existed. That’s why you’re so
important.”

“What do you mean? Why am I
important?”

“The only way to cure the disease is to feed
from a human that was born from the strongest line of vampires,”
Gabe replied.

“Why am I important? Why can’t they sacrifice
Mary-Kate?”

“The person must be under eighteen.”

“And Mary-Kate’s eighteen,” Lexi whispered,
remembering the birth date that she had seen on the back of the
photograph that she had found in Mary-Kate’s room. Her birth year
had been a little over a year before Lexi’s own date of
birth.

Gabe nodded. “Your father, Benjamin Hunter, had
two other children that we know of. The only problem is, no one
knows who they are and there isn’t enough time to find them. You’re
the only person who can save this town. The whole town is planning
to feed from you, Lexi. By the time they all drink, your body will
be drained of blood and…you’ll die. That’s why I tried to kill you.
I thought that a car accident would be a less painful death for you
than basically being attacked by a bunch of overly blood-hungry
vampires.”

“But we could have just hid until I turned
eighteen, and then we wouldn’t have had to worry about it,” Lexi
pointed out, trying to understand why Gabe had to crash that car
instead of running away with her like he had promised
her.

“They would have found us,” Gabe replied. “I
haven’t told you much about my abilities, but one of them is that I
have really strong premonitions. The problem is, they always come
true. While we were in the car, I had a premonition of Greg
Lawrence pounding on the door of the hotel that we were staying at.
He was going to take you away, and they were basically going to put
you on display in a weird sacrificial type of ceremony. No matter
where we went, they were going to find us, and they were going to
bring you back here. You have to trust me on this.”

Lexi sighed. As much as she wanted to be angry
at Gabe, she knew that he was being honest with her right now. It
still pained her that he had tried to kill her, though. Shouldn’t
he have tried to fight for her? She would have fought for him if
their roles had been reversed. Killing him would have been the
furthest thing from her mind, even if she had daydreams that told
her he would die anyway. Lexi would have tried to save him. She
reminded herself that her mom had told her not to be mad, though,
and the least that she could do to respect her mom was trust her on
this, even though it sounded like a crazy idea.

“So, now what?” Lexi asked, her voice merely a
whisper. “How do we prevent them from…killing me? Are you going to
try to kill me again?” Lexi backed away from him with wide
eyes.

Gabe pulled her closer to him. “That was the
hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I thought I lost you, until you
saw me coming out of my mom’s house. I don’t want either one of us
to go through that kind of pain again. No, if my mom has her facts
straight, they are waiting to sacrifice you at midnight on
Halloween night,” Gabe replied. “We have to keep you safe until
then.”

“That’s why my tombstone said October
thirty-first,” Lexi whispered, cupping her mouth with her hand
again.

Gabe furrowed his brow in confusion. “What do
you mean? What tombstone?” he asked.

“I went looking for Austin’s tombstone. I
wanted to see if it would help me find out his cause of death.
While I was in the cemetery, I found my own tombstone. It had my
name, my date of birth…and my date of death, which was marked for
October thirty-first.”

“So, my mom was right then. It’s good that you
found your tombstone so that we know for sure what they’re
planning. We can be prepared for it now.”

“It’s going to sound crazy, but I already knew
that something was going to happen on Halloween.”

“How?”

“Don’t make fun of me, but right after the
accident I had a dream and Austin was in it. He told me that there
was a curse and that I needed to find out about it before
Halloween.”

“That’s not crazy at all.”

“I don’t get why they need to wait until
Halloween to sacrifice me. If they’re that sick and are going to
die, why don’t they just do it now? Why wait?”

“Vampires believe that Halloween is the most
powerful day of the year,” Gabe replied. “It’s more than that,
though. The dead can come back to life on Halloween at midnight. I
have a feeling that they may be thinking that if they wait until
Halloween, your blood will bring back the vampires who have already
died from Wilkins’ Syndrome and their other lost loved
ones.”

There was a knock on the door. “Lexi, I’m
coming in!”

“Shit,” Lexi whispered. “Just a second! I’m not
dressed.” She opened her closet door and motioned for Gabe to get
in.

Just as she slid the closet door shut, her
bedroom door was flung open.

“What are you doing up here?” Violet
asked.

“I was getting ready to go to sleep soon,” Lexi
replied. It seemed a little bit early to go to bed, but what else
was there for a grounded girl who didn’t have a TV or a computer in
her room to do besides to sleep?

“Well, I just came up to let you know that I
won’t be driving you to school in the mornings from now on,” Violet
said.

“Oh, okay. I don’t mind taking the bus or
walking,” Lexi said quickly, hoping to rush her aunt out of her
room.

“No, you’ll do neither of those things. Dan
will be driving you.” Violet stepped out of the room and closed the
door loudly.

Lexi listened to the sound of her turning the
lock in the doorknob. Forgetting that Gabe was hiding in the
closet, she let out an angry shriek.

****

Chapter 18

Lexi didn’t sleep that night. She lay awake in
bed, processing everything that Gabe had told her. As much as she
tried to ignore it, there was one thing that really bothered
her.

Did her mom know that her dad was a vampire? If
she knew about it, then she also probably knew about Wilkins’
Syndrome. Why hadn’t she told Lexi any of this? Sure, it would have
been a bit difficult to hear that her dad fed from humans in order
to survive, but it wouldn’t be any harder than hearing that her
father had left them for good.