Change of Fate (The Briar Creek Vampires, #4) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (20 page)

“People who want to kill me!” Lexi protested.
“Why would I want to save people who are willing to sacrifice
me?”

“Do you not understand the severity of their
disease?” Mary-Kate asked, raising her voice. Without your blood,
they’re going to
die
. That means they won’t be able to come
back! Or are you such a selfish bitch that you feel the need to
keep your precious blood all to yourself?”

Lexi felt tears form behind her eyes, and she
blinked them away. Where was all of this coming from? Mary-Kate had
told her that she wanted them to go to college together and really
be the sisters that they had never had the opportunity to be their
whole lives. Now, she was just being really mean . . . almost as
though Lexi had done something wrong. But she had been stuck in the
1800s for so long, how could she have done anything to hurt
Mary-Kate?

It wasn’t until Mary-Kate had jumped into the
water and lunged at her, wrapping her hands around her throat, that
Lexi realized that her half-sister wasn’t just upset with her. Her
eyes were full with hatred.

Chapter 29

****

With Mary-Kate’s fingers clasped around her
throat, Lexi couldn’t breathe. She felt her head being pushed under
water, and she closed her eyes. All she could hear was the muffled
sounds that came with being underwater, as she tried to hold her
breath and fight her way out of Mary-Kate’s grip.

Mary-Kate pushed her head even further under
water, holding her down. Lexi wasn’t about to give up. She had
lived through so much. She couldn’t let her half-sister kill her.
She wasn’t ready to die yet.

Scratching at Mary-Kate’s arms and swimming
forward with all her might, Lexi managed to get away from her long
enough to emerge from the water. As she gasped for air, her sister
came closer to her. Lexi did the only thing she could think of: she
kicked her sister hard in the stomach.

A look of pain crossed Mary-Kate’s face. Her
eyes flashed with anger and she screamed, “You bitch!” Mary-Kate
splashed water at her angrily.

“I don’t understand why you’re so mad at me!”
Lexi yelled back at her. “I care about you! I thought you wanted to
be sisters.”

Mary-Kate scoffed. “You don’t care about
anyone except yourself. You don’t care about
me
. If you did
care, you wouldn’t be hurting me so bad.” Mary-Kate lunged at Lexi
again, but this time, she didn’t have to defend herself. Dan
grabbed Mary-Kate and held her arms behind her back. Lexi knew that
Dan had probably been too shocked by all of this to stop Mary-Kate
from attacking her the first time.

“What are you talking about?” Lexi asked her
sister. “What am I doing to hurt you?”

“My mother is dying right now!” Mary-Kate
screamed, splashing water with her feet as she fought to get away
from Dan’s hold on her. “If you were a real sister, you would have
offered to give her your blood so that she could get better instead
of just letting her die!”

So,
that’s
what had sparked
Mary-Kate’s outrage – her mother dying. “You should have asked me,”
Lexi told her softly. “If you asked me, I probably would have tried
to help her . . . but you didn’t even let me know that you were
upset about this.”

“I came here to bring you back so that I
could force you to give her blood,” Mary-Kate said, spitting water
out of her mouth. “But now, I know that I don’t need you to help
me. I don’t need your blood to save her! There’s a better way that
will let her live forever!”

Lexi raised her eyebrows. She wanted to give
her a sister hug and tell her that she completely understood what
she was going through. She had lost her own mother, after all. But
the look in her eyes told her this was a bad idea. So, instead, she
just said, “I thought Hunter blood was the only cure for Wilkins’
Syndrome.”

“Unless she becomes an immortal,” Mary-Kate
said. Biting Dan in the arm and kicking him in the groin, she
managed to get away from him and began swimming to the river
bank.

Lexi watched her sister for a minute,
absorbing everything that had just happened, before she realized
what she was doing. Dan must have realized the same thing, because
he yelled at Lexi, “She’s going for the potion!”

Lexi began swimming to the other side of the
river. Thank God for all of those swimming lessons her mom had
forced her into when she was a child and for all of the laps her
swimming coach had forced her to do every day after school because
she had one hell of a breast stroke. Lexi swam past Mary-Kate and
was already on the bank of the river before her sister was even
close.

As she grabbed the jar of potion and pulled
on her pants, Lexi tried to figure out what to do. Mary-Kate was
swimming towards her faster now, even as Dan tried to pull her
back. Doing the first thing that came to mind, Lexi started
running.

She ran towards Belinda’s house, still trying
to decide what to do. She pounded on the front door, but no one
answered.
Figures
, Lexi thought, as she spotted Mary-Kate
coming towards her. She ran around to the side of the house,
crouching down behind the bushes that she had hid behind when she’d
first arrived. They were tall enough to shelter her from
Mary-Kate’s sight . . . Lexi hoped.

Mary-Kate ran around the corner of the house,
scanning the backyard. Lexi held her breath, hoping that her
half-sister wouldn’t hear her. When Mary-Kate didn’t see her, she
turned back in the direction that she had come from.

Continuing to hold her breath, Lexi stared at
the potion in her hands. It felt like she was back to square one;
back in Briar Creek, everyone was fighting her for her blood, and
here, it seemed like Mary-Kate wasn’t going to give up without a
fight over this bottle of potion. Lexi felt half-tempted to throw
the jar on the ground, shattering its ability to make her or Mrs.
Lawrence an immortal. She couldn’t do it, though. Her mom had told
her that she had to do what Belinda said . . . which meant becoming
an immortal, whether she liked it or not.

Lexi still wasn’t sure if she wanted to drink
the potion, but throwing it on the ground and smashing it would
prevent her from being able to do so. Maybe once she got back to
the 21st century, her mom would visit her again and explain why it
was so necessary for her to become an immortal. She doubted it,
though. Even though she knew that her mom tried to lead her in the
right direction about what she should do, there were times when she
couldn’t tell her everything. Somehow, her mom’s advice made it
even more difficult to determine right from wrong.

Something in the bushes rustled, and Lexi
drew in her breath. She didn’t know what Mary-Kate had up her
sleeve. For all Lexi knew, her sister was armed and ready to kill.
She had been really close to drowning Lexi in the river, so why
wouldn’t she have a weapon on her, ready to kill her now?

Luckily, it was Dan’s face that appeared in
front of her. “She thinks you ran back towards town. That’s where
she’s headed,” he whispered to her, sitting down on the ground next
to her, concealing himself behind the bush as well. “We have to
figure out a way to get the hell out of here.”

“You’re telling me,” Lexi whispered, taking
his hand in hers. She felt so much safer when he was around. “I’m
so glad you’re here with me. I don’t think I would have been able
to do this alone.”

Dan flashed her a smile. “I’m glad I’m with
you, too. I would have been worried sick about you.”

“I wonder how she got into the book,” Lexi
said, shaking her head. “I wonder if she’s the one who had it the
whole entire time.” When Dan stared back at her for an explanation,
she continued. “You know how Gabe saw a vision of it in the
Lawrence’s house? He thought Greg was the one who took it, but
maybe it was Mary-Kate who had it all along. I wonder if Greg even
knew it was there.”

“Probably,” Dan replied, shrugging.
“Mary-Kate’s a really manipulative person.”

Lexi raised an eyebrow. “Why is this the
first time I’m hearing about this?”

“You never asked me. I don’t know why no one
else told you. I’ve known it for awhile now,” Dan said, shrugging.
“I always thought she held her blood over people’s heads . . . guys
mostly. She usually didn’t let guys drink from her unless they took
her on dates or bought her expensive gifts. I got forced into that
a few times myself.”

Lexi felt her jaw drop, but she quickly
turned her head so that Dan wouldn’t see her shock, and closed it.
When she had first met Dan, she’d seen a picture of him kissing
Mary-Kate in a box she had found in Austin’s room. Lexi still
didn’t know why Austin had that picture, but she’d later found out
that Dan’s brother, Dave, had been on a date with Mary-Kate, even
though he was dating her best friend, Julie. At the time, Lexi
couldn’t understand why Dan didn’t have a problem with his brother
being with a girl he’d kissed . . . or why he’d been kissing
Mary-Kate himself, since she was supposed to be dating Austin at
the time.

Now it all made sense, though. Neither of
them wanted to be with Mary-Kate because they’d liked her. They’d
just wanted her blood, which was part of their own survival. Lexi
felt silly now for wondering if Dan had really been Austin’s friend
or if he had been betraying him the whole time.

And she couldn’t even believe that Mary-Kate
had done that to those guys. Here, she had been thinking that her
sister had been this great person for allowing people to use her as
a blood donor. It had seemed noble and brave. But really, she had
her own selfish motives for doing it. Thinking about the fact that
Mary-Kate had done this to Dan and probably Gabe and Craig, too,
made her feel sick to her stomach. She wondered how far any of them
had gone to please her sister enough to allow them to drink from
her.

“There was also this time when Mary-Kate
kissed me,” Dan said quietly. When Lexi looked over at him, he
didn’t meet her eyes. “She had someone take a picture of it, and
then she sent it to Austin. It was around the time he wanted to
break up with her.” Dan shrugged. “I guess she wanted to seem more
desirable, and Austin even got mad at me over it for a while. He
came to his senses and forgave me eventually . . . And I guess her
little scheme worked because Austin never broke up with her.” Dan
shook his head. “I’ve tried to warn him about her, but he doesn’t
seem to want to listen. I guess he doesn’t believe me.”

Lexi sighed. It was just like her cousin to
look for the best in everyone. “Well, he’ll have to believe you
now, after this. I’ll be here to back up your story.”

Dan squeezed her hand. “That’s true. I don’t
know how he’ll be able to deny it.”

“I barely even fought back, I was in too much
shock. I wanted Mary-Kate to be my family . . . I can’t believe I
had been so wrong about her.” Lexi rested her head against his
shoulder. “I don’t know what we should do. I guess we both just
need to keep thinking about how we want to go back.”

Dan nodded. “That’s all we can do. Do you
think Belinda will let us sleep in her house tonight?”

“She probably would, but to be honest, I feel
sort of bad,” Lexi admitted. “I think she needs some time alone . .
. with Albert and all.”

“Ah, good ole Albert,” Dan said. “He should
be waking up by now.”

Lexi reached for her neck. “I’m wearing the
bat pendant now, at least, so he won’t be able to smell me.”

Dan glanced at her neck. She watched as his
eyes drifted below her neckline, and for the first time since
they’d been sitting behind the bushes, she realized that she was
only wearing her bra. Thankfully, she hadn’t worn one of her ugly
white or beige bras on the morning they’d time traveled and had,
instead, worn a red lacy push-up bra that gave her small breasts
the extra boost they needed for her to feel confident about
herself. Otherwise, she would probably feel a little awkward right
now.

“Here,” Dan said, pulling his shirt over his
head. “You can wear this.”

“Thank you,” Lexi blushed, quickly sliding it
over her head.

“You know, it’s funny,” Dan said. “There’s
always a good sister and a bad sister.”

“I hope you’re trying to say I’m the good
sister.”

“I am.” Dan grinned at her.

“Do you think Mary-Kate is all bad? She’s
been through so much. Her mom is dying . . . everyone handles
things differently.” Lexi hoped that Mary-Kate was just having a
nervous breakdown and would be back to her normal self soon.

“So is mine,” Dan said. “You don’t see me
trying to kill you.”

“I’m sorry,” Lexi whispered. “I didn’t know
that.”

Dan shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It
happens, I guess.”

As Dan pulled her closer to him and she
curled up against his cool body, she found herself, once again, not
thinking about how she wanted to go back to Briar Creek. All she
could think of was how she could make things better for Dan.

Chapter 30

****

Austin laid on the bed in Anna’s dorm room,
trying to keep his mind off of Dan and Lexi. It was all he could
think about ever since Ben had told them that there was nothing
they could do to get them back. Where were they? Were they in
danger? Had they stuck together, or had Lexi pushed Dan away,
assuming, as usual, that he was out to hurt her?

“Do you ever wish your life was different?”
Anna asked from her place on the bed next to him. They had curled
up to watch a rerun of
The Golden Girls
, which was Anna’s
favorite show. It was also Austin’s mom’s favorite. Watching it
sometimes brought back memories of his mom, back when they were a
happy family, even though he knew that was ridiculous. His mom
didn’t love him, so how could he ever think of her in a positive
light?

“I wish it was different all the time,”
Austin murmured. Actually, that was a lie. He tried not to think
too much about his life, instead putting the people who did care
about first. Even so, it was true . . . and he couldn’t even begin
to explain it. Anna couldn’t possibly understand what it felt like
to be him. He felt sorry for her because it definitely had to suck
for her mom to be killed by a vampire, but what they had gone
through was so different. His mom actually believed that she had
killed her own son and was, somehow, able to live with herself
every day. Just thinking about the fact that his mom still looked
at herself in the mirror every day and thought that what she had
done (or what she thought she had done) to him was worth it made
Austin feel sick to his stomach.