Destined to Die (The Briar Creek Vampires, #3) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (10 page)

“Or what?” Austin asked, raising his strawberry
blonde eyebrows at her.

“Maybe someone other than you and Gabe knew
about your plans for the Halloween festival. Maybe they got the
same costume you two were planning to wear, and wore it to the
carnival to scare me so that when I would see your costume at the
Halloween festival, I would stay away from you,” Lexi said,
glancing up at him. “I don’t know which one of you it was, but it
did freak me out a little when I first saw the costume.”

“Lexi, only Gabe, Mary-Kate, and I knew about
the plan. No one else could have known because we didn’t tell them.
Besides, the skeleton costume was really popular this year . . .
that’s one of the reasons why we chose it. Anyone else could have
bought it from the party store. It was probably just a
coincidence.”

She wondered if Mary-Kate might have
accidentally mentioned the costume to Dan. For some reason, she
still got this nagging feeling that he was involved in it somehow.
She remembered that Dan was supposed to show up at the corn maze
that day, but she didn’t end up seeing him. It sounded like he was
pretty sure that he was going . . . but never showed up. Lexi
shrugged, deciding that she didn’t want to start another argument
with Austin over Dan. “I guess you’re right.” As she took another
bite of her mostly uneaten chocolate chip pancake, she realized
that she was already full. That had been happening to her a lot
lately, she noticed. It was hard to have an appetite when her
stomach was constantly in knots.

Whether Dan was responsible or not, Lexi had
this overwhelming feeling that Austin was wrong; whoever was
wearing the skeleton costume that day in the corn maze hadn’t been
wearing it by coincidence. Whoever it was, if they knew some of
Austin’s little secrets, like which Halloween costume he had been
planning to use, it made her wonder if they knew his biggest
secret: that he was still alive.

When Gabe came back to the house, he looked
startled. Lexi’s felt her heart speed up out of fear. “Oh, no!” She
gasped. “Did someone see you?”

Gabe shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I
nearly crashed the car because I had another vision on the way
home. Luckily, it was a really quick one and I was on a back road.
Otherwise, I probably would have crashed into someone.” He flopped
down on the leather couch. “I’m feeling lightheaded
now.”

“Do you need blood?” Austin asked. It was the
first time Lexi had ever heard the question asked so bluntly, which
was weird because before all of this, she would have thought that
blood drinking would be a private thing that no one actually talked
about. Hanging out with vampires had really opened her
eyes.

“I don’t know yet,” Gabe said, shaking his
head. “Not like I did the other day.” He sat down on the leather
sofa. “This vision . . . it was different from any others I’ve had
before. There were no people in it.”

“What was in it then?” Lexi asked,
confused.

“A book. It looked really old and frayed,” Gabe
replied. “Actually, there was a person in it, but I couldn’t see
their face at all. Someone was flipping through the pages, and they
stopped on page one hundred and ninety.”

Austin grabbed a piece of paper from the coffee
table and scribbled something down. “We’ll need to remember that.
You say the book was old? What color was it?”

Gabe closed his eyes as he tried to recall the
color of the book. “Brown? Or black, maybe. I’m not really sure,
but I think it was dark in color.”

Austin looked over at Lexi. “Are you thinking
the same thing that I’m thinking?”

Lexi nodded. “Yeah, it has to be the book that
was in my tote bag.”

Austin closed his eyes. “I knew that book was
going to be important one day. I shouldn’t have trusted you with
it.”

“Austin, she didn’t know she was going to lose
it,” Gabe replied. “She didn’t even know how important it was at
the time. Don’t be mad at her over it. It’s your own dumb fault for
not keeping it in a safe place somewhere.”

“I’m not mad at Lexi. It’s just really
frustrating. We obviously need to find that tote bag.”

“So, anyway, back to my vision. After I saw the
person flip through the book, my mind did a flash-forward to Lexi’s
gravestone with flowers on it. I think that if we don’t find out
what’s on page one hundred and ninety, she’s going to die.” Lexi
felt her heart sink. Her life was hanging on by a string and a page
out of a book – that she had lost – was all that could save her.
That was just her luck.

Austin nervously tapped his fingers against the
coffee table. “Can you control your visions? I mean, if you want to
see something, can you see it?”

Gabe frowned. “It depends. There are times when
I can, but other times I can’t. I’ve never actually tried to see
something so serious like this, though. What makes you
ask?”

“Have you ever had a vision of the past?”
Austin asked.

“I have, but only once. It was of the day my
dad died. The thing is, I didn’t mean to do it. It just sort of
happened that way.”

Lexi studied Gabe’s face. He hadn’t told her
much about his family. He’d never mentioned anything about his
father. She hadn’t realized that they had something in common; they
had both lost a parent. Lexi wondered how long it had been since
his father had died and what had been the cause of his death, but
she didn’t want to ask right now and bring up painful memories or
upset him.

“Do you think you can try to see into the past
for us?” Austin asked Gabe. “We need to find out who took that bag
as soon as possible so that we can get it back.”

“I wish I could tell you that it will work, but
I don’t know if it will,” Gabe replied. “I will try, though. I’m
going to need to spend a lot of time alone so that I can try to see
something.”

Lexi leaned her head against Gabe’s shoulder,
trying to remember when she had tossed the tote bag in the bushes.
Who was the next person she had seen or last person she had seen?
Her mind drew a blank. The only thing that she could remember after
tossing the bag was seeing Gabe with her aunt and uncle – and the
feelings of anger that she’d had. “Weren’t you able to read
anything on the page of the book in your vision when the person
opened it?”

Gabe shook his head. “No, for some reason, I
couldn’t make out any of the words that were written. They were too
blurry.”

“Figures,” Austin mumbled, brushing a hand
through his strawberry blonde hair. “Nothing seems to be coming
easy lately.”

That’s for sure
, Lexi
thought.

*

“I sense that you are aware that a certain
curse is affecting a large group of people. What you need to
understand is that they are not the only ones who are cursed. To
break the spell, you must gain a better understanding of its
originator . . . The only safe place is the place where you will
become reunited with a lost one.”

Lexi bolted up in bed. She felt beads of sweat
pouring down her forehead, and she felt sick to her stomach. The
psychic’s words replayed through her head loud and clear. She had
nearly forgotten about the confrontation that she had at the
Halloween festival with the psychic.

What the psychic had said at the time had
seemed important, but it was shortly after their run in with each
other when Lexi discovered that Austin was still alive. In
comparison, the psychic’s words had seemed insignificant and,
naturally, she had forgotten them. Until now . . .

Next to her, Gabe breathed heavily. If she
hadn’t known that he was a vampire, Lexi would have assumed he was
actually sleeping, but she knew the truth.

“Gabe?” Lexi whispered, shaking him.

Slowly, each one of his eyes opened and he
looked up at her. “What? Is everything okay?”

Lexi sighed. “Yeah, I just had a dream about
what the psychic said on Halloween, and I get the feeling that it’s
important.”

“What psychic?” Gabe asked. “And what did she
say?”

“I don’t know,” Lexi said, shrugging. “Just
some psychic in Briar Creek. I ran into her shop when I was hiding
from my aunt and uncle. Anyway, she gave me a fortune, I guess, for
free. It seemed like a really cryptic message.”

Gabe stared at her, waiting for her to
continue.

“She said that in order to break the curse, I
need to ‘better understand its originator.’”

“So, you need to understand the witch, then,”
Gabe said, putting the pieces together. “That’s pretty easy, I
think.”

“What do you mean it’s ‘easy’?” Lexi
asked.

“I just mean that it’s easy to understand why
the witch did what she did,” Gabe replied. “Albert Hunter was the
love of her life. Zachary Wilkins really devastated her by turning
him into a vampire. I’m not justifying what she did or saying that
it was right, but it’s easy to understand why she did what she
did.”

Lexi knew that Gabe was right. It was easy to
understand why, in the moment of heartache, someone would resort to
a curse like the one the witch had put on the people of Briar
Creek. She probably hadn’t been thinking about the long-term
effects – that people would still be suffering today because of the
disease that had affected their ancestors and that it would put the
remaining family members from the Hunter bloodline in danger. The
witch probably hadn’t known that her curse would cause so many
people to be murdered and so much suffering. It seemed asinine that
she could put a curse on people who weren’t even alive at the time.
Actually, that didn’t even make sense. “I’m a little confused about
something,” Lexi began. “Violet and Tommy weren’t even alive when
the witch cursed the vampires in Briar Creek. How do they have
Wilkins’ Syndrome? Why does the curse affect them if they’re new
vampires?”

“The curse affects them because it affects
all vampires
who would ever live in Briar Creek,” Gabe
began. “Even if I were to have children one day, it would be
possible for them to contract the disease if they were to drink
from another vampire. So, basically, the curse is on all Briar
Creek vampires, not a certain group of vampires.”

“Oh,” Lexi replied. Things made a little bit
more sense now. “Okay, so that’s the first part of what the psychic
told me. I don’t know if it’s as easy as what we think or if I need
to come to some sort of revelation. The second thing she told me is
that I will only be safe in a place where I become reunited with
someone I’ve lost.

“Hmm.” Gabe shifted to his back and stared up
at the ceiling. “That can be taken in so many ways. It’s so broad
that it makes me wonder if the psychic was even real.”

“What do you mean it makes you wonder if the
psychic was even real?” Lexi asked.

Gabe glanced at her. His blue eyes glimmered in
the moonlight that poured in through the curtain-less window.
“Well, to be honest, I’ve never heard of a legit psychic during my
one-hundred and twenty years on Earth.”

Lexi rolled over and, leaning on her elbow,
glared at him. “Well, during my first sixteen years on Earth, I
never heard of a legit vampire. It doesn’t mean you didn’t
exist.”

Gabe chuckled. “That’s a valid point. I’m just
a skeptic of the supernatural, I guess.”

Lexi scoffed. How ironic. A vampire who was
skeptical of the supernatural? Annoyed at Gabe, she rolled onto her
side, away from him. It felt like he just didn’t believe her that
the psychic was real, similar to the way he didn’t believe that
person had followed her in the corn maze. She didn’t like being
doubted.

“Lex? What’s wrong?” Gabe asked, trying to pull
her back towards him. “Are you mad at me?”

She shook her head, unsure if Gabe could even
see it in the dark. “It’s not you . . . it’s just everything. It’s
being cooped up in the house, knowing it’s not safe to go anywhere.
It’s wondering if we’ll all still be alive tomorrow.”

A few moments passed before Gabe said anything.
Finally, he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer
to him. “We are going to be fine for the foreseeable
future.”

Lexi rolled her eyes, but inched closer to him
so that his breath was warm against her neck. “That doesn’t make me
feel better. You’ve already foreseen the near future, and I’m not
going to be okay.”

“Things could change,” Gabe replied quietly,
obviously and unconvincingly trying to mask the doubt in his voice.
“And we should make the most of what time we do have. One thing
I’ve learned since I’ve become a vampire is that human lives are
shorter than you realize.”

Lexi opened her mouth to speak, but quickly
closed it and bit her tongue. There was something she had been
wondering about Gabe, but she’d been too afraid to ask him – or
even admit her own curiosity to herself, for that matter. Lexi
wasn’t even sure if she wanted to know the answer, but she was too
curious to not ask. “Gabe, have you ever been in love
before?”

“You mean before right now?”

“Yeah,” Lexi replied, blushing. She didn’t want
to seem like a psycho, insecure girlfriend, but she was curious
about his past relationships.