by Jayme Morse
Time Will Tell
© 2013 by Jayme Morse and Jody Morse
Time Will Tell is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are products of the author’s imaginations or have been used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons or locations is coincidental and not intended by the authors.
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Chapter 1
Gabe Marshall inhaled the iron-like scent that came from behind the other side of the door, which had been left slightly ajar. Gabe knew, for certain, that there was blood in the room next to him—delicious-smelling blood that he desperately wished he could get his hands on, but he couldn’t because his wrists were linked together in handcuffs behind his back.
Normally, Gabe would have been able to break through the metal that bound his hands together, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to make a dent on them. He knew the reason was because he hadn’t drunk anything in a while. The longer he went without feeding and the hungrier he became, the weaker his body seemed to get.
Not that it really mattered if he was able to break through the handcuffs, anyway. Even if Gabe somehow managed to get out of them, he couldn’t leave the room—or feed on the blood—even if he wanted to. The only scent that was stronger than the blood was that of the garlic, which had been sprinkled all around him. It smelled strong and repulsive, and it made his skin crawl.
Not all vampires were affected by garlic, the way the legends claim. Some vampires—like Gabe—were allergic to it, though. It made his eyes water and his skin itch. If he got too close to garlic, it would make him faint . . . or maybe even worse, but he’d never tried to see what could potentially happen.
Therefore, the garlic, which was dangerously close to him, acted as a barrier; even if he could break through the handcuffs, the garlic would force him to stay inside the room, inhaling the scent of blood, which made his mouth water with desperation and desire.
Gabe wasn’t even sure how long it had been since he’d been left inside the room. The moon had risen and set at least a handful of times, but he had already lost count of the days a few moons ago. Trying to count how long it had been since the last time he’d been able to drink blood was the only thing that was more exhausting than not being able to drink blood.
Sighing, Gabe rolled over onto his side and stared up at the ceiling. He wasn’t even sure how he had gotten here. The last thing he could remember, the flames had been inches away from his body, as he huddled inside the closet at Huntington High.
After that, though, everything was a big blank inside his mind. It was almost as though he blacked out—in fact, he was pretty sure he did black out—but he couldn’t figure out how or why.
The only thing Gabe knew was that he wasn’t at Huntington anymore. Wherever he was, this placed looked really different.
He hadn’t seen anyone since he’d been brought here, but he knew that his twin brother, Kevin, had to be the one who was behind it. The only thing that Gabe couldn’t seem to figure out was why Kevin had bothered to bring him here at all. It didn’t make sense why Kevin hadn’t just let him burn to death in the fire that he had set at Huntington. It didn’t make much sense why he’d even bothered setting the fire in the first place if he didn’t plan to let Gabe die in it, but Kevin must have had a change of heart for some reason.
The only thing that Gabe could assume was that Kevin had moved him here because he must have come up with a better plan for him—a sick, twisted plan that involved torturing him, but how could Kevin torture him more than he already was? Nothing would ever be more tortuous than not being able to get to the blood right outside the door.
There might have been a time when Gabe would have thought that dying would have been easier than enduring the torture that Kevin was inflicting upon him, but it didn’t feel that way right now. Gabe wasn’t going to back down so easily . . . not now that he knew that his Caroline—the same Caroline who he had loved many years ago and who he was still in love with—was out there waiting for him.
No, Gabe wasn’t about to give up that easily. He had lost Caroline once already; there was no way he was going to lose her again. He wasn’t going to give up; he was going to be a fighter. Gabe was going to make it through this and once he saw Kevin again, he was going to kill him, once and for all. As long as he could break out of these handcuffs first . . .
Chapter 2
Lexi Hunter sat in a chair next to the hospital bed that Professor Fleur, her Stakeology professor at Huntington, was lying in. His skin looked paler than usual, and even though she knew that he was still alive—or as alive as a vampire could possibly be—he still looked completely lifeless.
“How is this one doing?” a brunette nurse asked as she entered the room.
“He’s stabilized,” a second, gray-haired nurse answered.
Lexi frowned. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Noah, the werewolf security guard from Huntington, had called her earlier that day to tell her that Professor Fleur was responsive and allowed to have visitors again. But ever since Lexi and her boyfriend, Dan Nichols, had arrived at the hospital, Professor Fleur hadn’t made any sort of movement.
“Is his body still taking longer than usual to heal?” Dan Nichols, Lexi’s boyfriend and soul mate, who was sitting right next to her, questioned.
Vampires’ organs healed themselves very quickly, but Noah had told them that the reason Professor Fleur had been hospitalized after the fire was because his organs were healing at a slower rate than what was usual for a vampire. Even though, like Dan, Lexi had been wondering if Professor Fleur was still healing slowly, she had a feeling that she already knew the answer.
The gray-haired nurse turned to look at Dan. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that. It’s confidential information, unless you’re a family member, which I’m guessing you aren’t since Christian Fleur doesn’t have any contacts listed.”
“No, I’m not,” Dan replied, sinking back into his chair with a sigh. He glanced over at Lexi. “Do you think that maybe we should leave? We can come back some other time.”
Lexi nodded. “Yeah, that sounds fine.” She rose to her feet and stood beside Professor Fleur’s hospital bed. Taking his hand in hers, she said quietly, “I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I would like to think you can. You have to get better. There are so many things I still need you to teach me once you recover.” Pausing, she added in a low whisper, “Please get better.”
Once she and Dan were outside, Lexi’s cell phone started ringing. She glanced down at the caller ID. It was her father. “Hey, Dad,” she said into the phone.
“Lexi, have you heard anything from Darlene?” her father asked. Darlene was his new wife and the mother of Lexi’s half-siblings, Erica and Connor.
“No, and it’s strange, actually. I called her to see what Erica and Connor were doing this weekend so we could maybe get together with them while you were away on busines
s, but she hasn’t called me back yet,” Lexi explained. “What makes you ask?”
Her father paused for a long moment before saying, “Actually, I don’t have time to discuss this right now, Lexi. I need to go. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Dad, wait. What’s going on?” Lexi asked, but before she even finished her sentence, her father had already ended the phone call.
She stared down at her phone in confusion for a moment before shoving it inside her pocket.
“What was that all about?” Dan questioned, as they climbed into his car.
Lexi shrugged. “I have no idea.”
*
When they got back to the house, they found Caroline sitting by herself in the den. She looked up from the book she was reading and smiled at them. “The two of you are like . . . the perfect couple.”
Lexi smiled back and squeezed Dan’s hand. “I wouldn’t say perfect. No one’s perfect.”
“But we are pretty damn close,” Dan said with a grin.
Caroline shrugged. “I just hope that eventually I’ll find someone who’s as good for me as you two are for each other.”
“I think you—” Lexi stopped midsentence. She was about to say that she thought Caroline already had met someone who was perfect for her, but she could tell from the way that Dan’s body had tensed up that it would be the wrong thing to say. He still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of his sister being with Gabe, which was just ridiculous to Lexi. Even though a part of her still hated Gabe for killing her ex-boyfriend, Justin, she knew that people could change for the better.
“I think you will meet someone who’s perfect for you,” Lexi said quietly, when Caroline looked at her questioningly.
“I think I may have already,” Caroline said quietly. “Oh, by the way . . . Anna’s gone.”
Lexi raised her eyebrows. “Where did she go?”
Caroline shrugged. “I’m not sure if she actually said, but I know Austin’s pretty upset about it.” In a lowered voice, she asked, “Do you think she left because the two of them are having problems?”
“She might have,” Lexi replied hesitantly. “I know Austin wanted to try to convince her to become a vampire. Maybe she doesn’t want to become one.”
“That’s a tough decision,” Caroline admitted. “But it seems to me that if you love someone enough, you should decide to do the right thing for both of you. I think that would mean becoming a vampire. If you were in love with a vampire, I mean.”
Lexi smiled. Even though she had advised Caroline not to be with Gabe because that was what Dan had wanted her to say, she really liked Caroline.
Chapter 3
Kevin Marshall sat at the rectangular dining room table at the house that belonged to Dan Nichols’ family, reading the Briar Creek Daily News. His eyes scanned over the main headline, which read: Fire Destroys Private School, Students Remembered. There were pictures of the three students who had been killed in the fire.
Kevin smiled to himself. Everyone thought that only three people had been killed in the fire, but he knew better. A fourth had been killed, but Kevin was the only one who knew about it.
Gabe had died in the fire that burned down the school. But he hadn’t died in the first round of fires that had been set by Greg Lawrence, the Mayor of Briar Creek. Gabe had died in the second fire that Kevin had set, the one that had taken down the rest of the building.
Of course, Kevin was the only one who would ever know the truth about what had happened to Gabe. Nobody would ever think to search for his remains. Even Gabe’s closest friends—and his love interest, Caroline—didn’t know the truth. As long as everything went according to plan, they would never know the truth.
Kevin was going to steal Gabe’s life for all of eternity. Pretending had been easy so far, too. After Kevin had set the fire, he left Gabe in the room alone and had hurried back upstairs, where Caroline had been waiting for him. Well, she hadn’t been waiting for him, per se; she’d been waiting patiently, and rather pathetically, for Gabe.
When Caroline saw Kevin, she had taken his hand and led the way back to her car. She’d taken him back to the Nichols’ house, where he’d been staying for the past six days, never suspecting once that Kevin wasn’t Gabe.
Kevin understood why Gabe had a thing for Caroline. She was pretty—but not drop-dead gorgeous like the types of girls that Kevin was used to dating. With his vampire looks, he’d been able to date whoever he wanted. But Caroline definitely had a certain appeal. Actually, Caroline reminded Kevin of a girl from Briar Creek that Gabe had shown him a picture of many years ago. In fact, Kevin was pretty sure that the girl’s name had been Caroline, too.
Even if Caroline wasn’t Kevin’s type, though, it didn’t matter much right now. She was Gabe’s type, and if Kevin was going to pretend that he was Gabe from now on, he needed to find a way to fit her into his plan. It had been obvious that Gabe had been into Caroline, so that meant that Kevin had to seem into her, too—at least for the time being.
“Austin and I are going to start cooking breakfast,” Caroline said from behind him, as she came into the kitchen. “Would you mind waking up Lexi and Dan, Gabe? Find out if they want French toast or chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.”
“Sure, no problem,” Kevin said, rising to his feet.
Caroline smiled at him innocently—and so trustingly. Even though Kevin wanted to believe she was stupid for not knowing the difference, he knew that Caroline and Gabe had only just met. Kevin knew that because he had been following Gabe around for weeks before the fire had happened, waiting for the perfect time to make his attack. From what he could tell, Caroline and Gabe had seemed to click right away, but they hadn’t taken things very far yet—which worked to Kevin’s benefit. If they had gotten much closer, Caroline probably would have figured out that Kevin wasn’t Gabe.
As Kevin approached the guest bedroom that Lexi and Dan had been staying in, he noticed that the door had been left open on a slight crack. Kevin peered inside, expecting to see Lexi and Dan awake and talking to one another, the same way they normally did when they left their bedroom door open.
When he peered through the crack, though, Kevin noticed that Lexi was lying on the bed and her eyes were closed. He didn’t see Dan on the other side of her; rather, he noticed that the sheets had been turned down on the other side of the bed, which was empty. As Kevin pressed his ear to the door, he heard the sound of water running from the bathroom, and he realized that Dan was taking a shower.
A small smile crossed Kevin’s lips, as he quietly pushed the door open. He tiptoed across the wooden floor, hoping that there weren’t any creaky floorboards in the room that would wake Lexi up.
This was the first time Kevin had been able to get Lexi all to himself. It was what he had been hoping for the past few days. Hanging out with Caroline, Austin, and Dan was really lame—but Lexi was another story. The opportunity to drink from a Hunter—the chance to taste the highest quality human blood that existed—made his otherwise boring stay at the Nichols’ house worthwhile.
Every day, when Kevin sat across from Lexi at the kitchen table, he had an undeniable urge to leap across the table and drink her blood. It was something he had been waiting to do for years now, but the opportunity to drink from her hadn’t arisen yet. Dan never left Lexi’s side . . . until now.
Now, there was finally a chance for Kevin to drink from Lexi. Just thinking about it made his mouth salivate. He’d imagined what her blood might taste like for years, and now, he was finally going to find out.
Kevin knelt down on the hardwood floor in front of Lexi and stared into her face—her sweet, angelic face. Lexi had no idea what was about to come, and Kevin wasn’t sure how she would feel about it if she did know. It was obvious that Lexi loved Dan, but Kevin was pretty sure that she had really loved Gabe at one point, too.
As he leaned a little closer to her and licked his lips, Lexi’s eyes flew open. There was a look of panic obvious in her green irises at first, but it immed
iately passed and was replaced with a look of relief when she saw that it was Gabe kneeling on the floor in front of her.
At the same exact moment, the stream of water stopped in the bathroom, so Kevin knew that Dan had turned off the shower faucet. Kevin held in his inner groan. It was just his luck.
“Gabe?” Lexi whispered, stretching her back and tilting her head to look at him. “What are you doing on the floor?”
“Oh, nothing. I dropped something,” Kevin lied, pretending to shove something in his pocket and then rising to his feet. “Caroline asked me to wake you up. She wants to know if you and Dan want French toast or chocolate chip pancakes.”
Lexi grinned. “Chocolate chip pancakes, please. Dan doesn’t care, since you know . . . he can’t taste it that well, anyway.”
Kevin nodded. He kept his eyes locked on Lexi’s for a moment longer, noting how beautiful she was. She would be even more beautiful when he was drinking from her . . .
The bathroom door opened, and Dan stepped into the bedroom. He met Kevin’s gaze and gave him a long, hard stare.
“Gabe,” Dan mumbled.
“Dan,” Kevin replied, not breaking their gaze. It was obvious to him that Dan didn’t like Gabe that much. Heck, who could blame him? If anything, it gave Kevin more respect for Dan, since he hadn’t liked his twin brother much, either.
It didn’t matter, though. As much as he respected Dan, it didn’t change the fact that Kevin was going to drink from Lexi eventually. It wasn’t going to happen then, as he stood there in the guest bedroom next to Lexi, but it was going to happen. The fact that Gabe had tried so hard to stop Kevin from drinking from Lexi made him want to do it so much more.
Chapter 4
Austin Graham stared down at the white piece of paper that he held in front of him. Even though he had read it through about ten times already, the words still felt unreal to him, prompting him to read it once more.