Change of Fate (The Briar Creek Vampires, #4) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (6 page)

Craig smiled. “Yup, that would be me.” He sat down
on the bed next to her and looked at Gabe. “So, what’s going
on?”

“I had a vision,” Gabe told him. “Ben is somewhere
near a beach. That’s all I’ve seen so far. I need to take a walk,
but would you mind telling Austin and Anna when you see them?”

Craig nodded. “Sure. I’ll let them know.”

“Thanks,” Gabe muttered before walking out of the
hotel room, slamming the door behind him.

Craig glanced over at the girl. “So, now that you
already know my name, what’s your name?” he asked.

“Rhonda,” she replied, smiling at him. She leaned
back on the bed, resting on her elbows. Her hair fell over her
shoulders, and there was an unusual glow to her skin.

No wonder Gabe was moving on so quickly. Something
about this girl was oddly attractive.

Chapter 9

****

That night, Lexi dreamt that she was
alongside a river where there were hundreds of butterflies swirling
around her, attaching themselves to her clothes and to her hair.
The sun was shining, and everything seemed so happy . . . when
suddenly, everything turned black.

Dark clouds moved across the sky like a movie
screen, and the rain began falling down all around her. As the rain
began to soak her clothes, Lexi looked for cover.

She found it beneath a canopy of willow
trees, which had branches that loomed over her protectively. Just
as she hugged the trunk of the tree, loud footsteps sounded from
behind her.

“She smells alluring,” a man’s voice said
quietly, as though in whispers. Then in a whispery voice, he said,
“Hunter blood.”

“Aye, very alluring. I bet she’s delicious,”
a second man’s voice agreed. This voice sent chills down Lexi’s
spine. It sounded gruffer; she was sure that it belonged to someone
much more mature than the person who the first and seemingly more
innocent voice belonged to.

“Do you want to drink from her or shall I?”
the first voice asked. Although this voice was filled with desire,
Lexi knew that he was submissive enough to listen to whatever the
first voice would tell him to do.

“Let us share her. You may go first, but
don’t be too greedy,” the second voice replied.

Feeling a hot breath on her neck, Lexi tensed
up and cracked open one eye.

There was a guy, who appeared to be not much
older than she, hovering over her. When he met her eyes with his
own cat green eyes, he appeared startled. The guy glanced over his
shoulder before turning back to Lexi and, covering her mouth with
his hand, sunk his teeth into her neck.

Lexi felt a warm feeling rush over her body,
sending chills down her spine, as the vampire drank from her. She
should have known that this was going to happen without the bat
pendant. There must have been a reason Belinda had been making the
bat pendants in the first place. Vampires had probably been
stalking Albert for weeks at this point.

As she felt her blood gush from the wound,
the vampire swirled his tongue around her skin, lapping the blood
up hungrily, Lexi began to lose focus of her thoughts. The guy was
drinking from her forcefully – more hungrily than Gabe ever had –
and it was making her feel weak.

Deciding that the end of her life was in
sight, Lexi stopped struggling and gave in to the attack. Her mind
drifted to Gabe. They would never see each other again. She would
never get back to the 21st century. This was it. She was going to
die.

At some point, Lexi felt the guy stop
drinking for her. She waited for the second guy to begin drinking,
but she didn’t feel him move towards her. Not that it was
surprising; she didn’t feel anything at all. It was as though her
body had gone into some sort of shock. She couldn’t bring herself
to open her eyes – partly because she was too afraid to see what
was happening to her, but mostly because she felt too weak to even
try.

Lexi felt strong hands grabbing her waist and
lifting her up before everything turned to blackness.

*

A bright light shone in Lexi’s eyes, and her mom
appeared in front of her.

“Mom?” Lexi whispered. Even though she still felt
weak, she was really excited to see her mom. It had been a long
time since her mother had paid her a visit. “I didn’t think you
would be able to find me here.”

Her mom’s lips turned up into a warm smile and she
touched Lexi’s face with her fingertips. “I’ll always be able to
find you, no matter where you are. You have to listen to me, Lexi.
What I’m about to tell you next is very important.”

“Okay,” Lexi replied, nodding. She never questioned
when her mom gave her advice because there were times when she
didn’t understand it . . . like when her mom had told her that she
had to forgive Gabe even after he had tried to kill her.

“You have to open your eyes,” her mom instructed.
“It’s not your time to go yet. You have to be strong. A lot of
people are depending on you.”

“What do you mean? Who’s depending on me?” Lexi
asked. “You can’t mean the people of Briar Creek.”

“They are depending on you, Lexi. But not in the way
you’re probably thinking,” her mom replied. “I can’t explain it at
all to you right now, but you have to trust your instincts. Next,
you have to be careful about
who
you trust. Not everyone who
you care about is being honest with you. Some of them have ulterior
motives and bad intentions.”

“Is Gabe one of them?” Lexi whispered. Her mom had
insisted that she trust him before. Could she really be taking it
back now? Just thinking about the possibility that Gabe could have
ulterior motives or bad intentions made her feel sick to her
stomach. It was then that she realized how much she loved him – how
much she didn’t want to be apart from him. Gabe had the capability
to hurt her, to break her down, to tear her to pieces, because she
cared about him so much.

Then again, maybe Gabe didn’t even want to be with
her anymore. She had caught him with Veronica, after all. Maybe he
was
the one who she couldn’t trust.

“Remember the rules, Lexi,” her mom said, shaking
her head. “I can’t tell you much about your fate or I won’t be able
to visit you again. What I will say is that I do like Gabe,
though.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Lexi wondered if her mom
knew that Gabe had cheated on her with Veronica?

“Things aren’t always as they seem,” her mom said.
It was as though her mom had read her mind, but Lexi didn’t
question her further. She still felt so weak. “When you wake up,
Dan will be waiting for you.”

“Dan?” Lexi asked, confused. Why did her mom think
that Dan was going to be waiting for her when she hadn’t even seen
him since she’d left him at the general store?

Her mom’s muffled voice filled her ears. “Lexi,
forget about how you feel about Dan. You and he have to go to see
the witch to ask her an important question and –”

Before her mom could finish her sentence, a cloud of
smoke fogged Lexi’s vision and, once again, everything went
black.

*

When Lexi opened her eyes and looked around, she
heard the sound of flowing water. Her skin was pressed against
something rough.

“You’re awake,” a familiar voice said from behind
her.

Glancing over her shoulder, Lexi realized that she
had been lying in Dan’s lap. The rough feeling against her skin was
denim jeans. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice merely
a whisper.

Dan looked at her with a confused expression on his
face. “You don’t remember what happened? You said my name
before.”

“That was just a dream . . . or something,” Lexi
replied, shaking her head. Had it been a dream? Seeing her mother
had felt
so
real. This was the first time she had really
seen her mom while she was asleep – except for the time in the
hospital when she had imagined being at the beach with her, but
Lexi was pretty sure that was a side effect of one of the
medications that she had been given. Normally, her mom visited her
when she was very much awake, leaving no doubt in her mind that she
was in ghost form during her visits.

Maybe this time had been different because Lexi had
been on the brink of death . . . or had she? “So, what happened?”
Lexi asked Dan. She tried to sit up, but her pounding headache
forced her to remain in Dan’s lap. “Two guys came to drink from me
. . . I think.”

“Yeah, there were two of them,” Dan said. Lexi
thought that she noticed a nervous tone in his voice. “There was
also a girl standing guard on the other side of the house, but I
killed her right away.”

“You
killed
her?” Lexi shrieked, twisting her
head back to look at Dan. Realizing how loud she had been, she
covered her mouth with her hands.

“I killed all of them, Lexi,” Dan said, looking down
at the ground. Lexi could tell that he wasn’t proud of what he had
done. Still, she couldn’t believe that he had done it
for
her
at all.

“Why would you kill someone to save me? I mean, I’ve
been such a bitch to you.”

Dan shrugged, meeting her eyes with his own blue
eyes, which sparkled in the moonlight. “I couldn’t just let them
kill you. I have to bring you home . . . and not just for the
reasons you think.”

“Then why?” Lexi asked. “If it’s not just so I can
be the town blood donor, why do you need to bring me home?” She
decided that she shouldn’t mention right now that she didn’t
consider Briar Creek to be her home.

“Because,” Dan replied, tucking a piece of hair
behind Lexi’s ear. “If something were to happen to you here, I’d
never forgive myself.”

Lexi stared into his eyes, studying them to see if
he was telling the truth. Dan stared back at her without blinking.
As much as she wanted to believe that he was a creep, it seemed
like he was being honest with her right now. Her mom had told her
to trust her instincts – and her instincts told her that she should
believe him.

Glancing around at her surroundings for the first
time since she had woken up, Lexi realized that they weren’t behind
the bushes next to Albert and Belinda’s house anymore. Instead,
they were lying next to the river bank. Lexi could see the house
through the trees, but it seemed like they would be well-hidden
from Albert and Belinda if either of them should look out the
window. “How did I get here?” Lexi asked.

“I carried you over here after I killed them,” Dan
explained, running a hand through his sandy blonde hair. “I washed
your wounds with water from the river. You’ve lost a lot of blood,
so I don’t expect you to be feeling a hundred percent for a few
days – or at least not until we get some nutrients in your
body.”

Lexi gave him a weak smile. It really seemed like he
was trying to keep her alive. If he really was against her, he
wouldn’t have gone through the effort of killing three vampires and
bringing her here to clean her up . . . would he have? Unless he
was trying to keep her alive so that he could take her back to
Briar Creek and become the town hero, Lexi seriously doubted that
he would have bothered with her. In fact, at one point, she would
have thought that Dan would have been the one to kill her, but
something had definitely changed since then. He seemed to genuinely
care. “How did you even find me?” Lexi asked.

“Well, at first I was going to follow you from the
general store when you left me there. But then I knew that I didn’t
have to follow you because I’d be able to find you anyway. Without
your necklace, your scent is really strong,” Dan explained,
standing up and taking a step closer to the water. “So, earlier
this evening, I followed it to the woods near where you were
staying. I saw the other vampires when they came. They must have
been lured by your scent, too. Sorry I took so long. I couldn’t do
anything right away. I had to wait until the timing was perfect or
they probably would have ganged up on me.”

Lexi stood up, balancing herself. She felt really
dizzy and weak, but she knew that she was going to be okay. “Thank
you for saving me,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how I’ll ever
be able to repay you, but . . . if you think of something, just let
me know.”

Dan glanced over in her direction and smiled. “I’ll
keep that in mind. Are you hungry?”

Lexi nodded. She was hungry – really hungry, in
fact. Dan must have been right. All of that blood loss must have
really depleted her nutrients.

“I picked you some blueberries and a watermelon from
that garden,” Dan said, motioning towards Albert and Belinda’s
house. He pulled a wicker basket out from behind him. Lexi raised
an eyebrow, and he explained, “I kind of stole it from the garden.”
Shrugging, he pushed the basket in front of her.

Lexi bit into one of the blueberries. Its sweet,
ripe juice seeped into her mouth. Hungrily, she began eating all of
the blueberries, one by one, until they were all gone.

“Dang, you
were
hungry,” Dan said, laughing
at her.

“Hush,” Lexi said, giggling. “Become a human and go
get ambushed by a bunch of vampires who are drawn to your super
powerful blood, and see what happens to your appetite.”

Dan looked down at the ground, his expression
turning to stone. “Do you want the watermelon now?”

Lexi shook her head. “No, I’ll save it for the
morning. Dan, what’s wrong?”

Dan looked away from her. “I’ve never killed someone
before. Sure, I’ve been in situations where I probably could have .
. . and should have . . . killed. But, I never did it until
tonight.”

“Oh,” Lexi replied quietly. It made her feel guilty
that Dan was going to have to live with this weighing on his
shoulders. If she had have thought about it before, she might have
been able to steal the bat pendant from the witch’s house. Maybe
then this wouldn’t have happened.
I
f I hadn’t opened that
book in the first place, maybe this wouldn’t have happened
,
Lexi thought.