by Jayme Morse
Tapping her finger against her chin, Anna hesitated for a long while. “Rhonda . . . she came to the motel. I don’t know why she was there, but she forced me. She controlled my mind, just like she does to Gabe sometimes.”
Gabe glanced up at Anna. Even she thought Rhonda was able to control his mind? Actually, come to think of it, he remembered Anna mentioning that to him once, a long time ago . . . Why hadn’t he taken her more seriously at the time?
“She made me come here with her,” Anna went on. “She told me we were going to a party, and I was the guest of honor.”
Dan scoffed. “Guest of honor, my ass . . . unless she was planning for this to be your death party or something.”
“Death party?” Anna questioned. “What do you mean?”
Lexi sighed. “Anna, Rhonda was planning to kill you. Well, not herself. She forced Gabe to drink from you. Her plan was for him to drain all the blood from your body.”
Anna’s eyes filled with a look of fear. “But . . . why?”
Gabe noticed that there was a note of hurt in her voice; she couldn’t understand why Rhonda would kill her. He couldn’t understand why, either, though. He hadn’t known Anna for all that long, but she had never been anything but sweet to him.
Gabe hoped that wasn’t why Rhonda had wanted her dead. He would feel guilty as hell if the reason was because he had somehow led Rhonda to believe that he was into Anna and she was jealous.
Lexi shrugged. “I tried to find out why . . . before I killed her. All she told me was that you knew too much, and you had to die because of it.”
“Wait, hold up. You killed Rhonda?” There was a look of amusement in Anna’s eyes.
Lexi nodded. “I . . . I had to. It was the only thing I could think of to get Gabe to stop drinking from you. He might have killed you otherwise.”
Anna sat up and stretched her arms out. “Thanks for doing something to stop it.”
Gabe felt Anna’s eyes fall on him. “I just want you to know I’m not mad at you, Gabe. I know it wasn’t your fault that psycho bitch forced you to do this.”
For some reason, it stung for Gabe to hear Anna call Rhonda psycho. Even though he was pretty sure that was, in fact, an accurate description of her, it almost made him feel guilty. He was the one who had turned her into a vampire, after all. Was it his fault she had turned nuts? It almost made him wonder if, in the event that he turned another human to a vampire, he was capable of creating another psychotic creature.
Not that Gabe ever planned to find out. He hoped that the horrible mistake that had happened with Rhonda would never happen again.
“I’m sorry, Anna,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Anna replied. “Do you want to come back to the motel with us? I’m sure you could use a ride so you can gather all your stuff.”
Gabe hesitated. Even though he wasn’t sure if Austin was really okay with the idea of being in the same car with him, the thought of leaving the four of them alone together to talk about what had happened made him nervous. He didn’t want them to team up against him.
“Sure,” he agreed after a moment of deliberation.
“Awesomesauce.” Anna grinned. “Oh, and Gabe? We’re really not in Boston. We’re definitely in Ohio.”
Gabe lowered his head to the ground again, feeling stupid that he had allowed Rhonda to fool him over so many things.
“Wait, guys,” Lexi said, as they started to walk away from the clearing. “What are we going to do with the body?”
“Should we dump it somewhere?” Dan questioned, glancing down at Rhonda’s pale, limp body.
“I say we just leave it.” Austin shrugged. He held Anna in his arms, carrying her to the car.. “The less we touch it, the less it can be connected to us.”
“What if someone finds it, though?” Lexi questioned. “I don’t want it to be all over the news.”
“Let’s bury it,” Anna suggested, from Austin’s arms. “That way, it might stay hidden for a while. Hopefully until after we leave Ohio at least.”
“Yeah, let’s bury it,” Lexi agreed. She glanced around at them. “Does anyone have a shovel?”
Gabe shook his head. “No. Why don’t we come back with one?”
“Okay,” Anna agreed. “We’ll go buy a shovel and come back. No one’s going to find her here, anyway. We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Yeah, we’ll come back.” Gabe glanced over his shoulder at Rhonda’s lifeless body one last time before taking off for the car. Even though he felt bad about the fact that he had nearly killed Anna today, there was one good thing about this day.
Rhonda was officially gone, and she was never coming back.
Chapter 27
When they got back to the clearing, Anna carried the shovel. Somehow, it made her feel almost protected by being the one who carried it. If, for some reason, Rhonda happened to resurrect herself from the dead, Anna would be able to protect herself. Hopefully.
As they reached the area where Rhonda’s body had fallen, Anna felt a sick feeling form in the pit of her stomach. There was a small pool of blood in the dried out grass, but Rhonda’s body was gone.
“Guys, where is she?” Lexi questioned, a horrified expression on her face.
“I don’t know,” Austin said. “But I think we better get out of here.”
“Yeah, let’s go,” Dan agreed.
They turned to go back in the car, none of them looking over their shoulders to the spot where Rhonda’s body had been only a half hour before.
Once they all slammed their car doors shut, Anna asked, “What happens to a vampire body when someone puts a stake through their heat?” She knew that she should have known the answer from her studies at Huntington, but her mind was drawing a complete blank; she’d like to attribute it to the blood loss, but she wasn’t so sure.
“Nothing happens to it,” Austin replied. “A vampire body turns to ash if it’s burned in a fire, but when their heart is pierced, it’s just like when a human dies.” He paused. “There’s no way that body moved on its own, and it definitely didn’t evaporate into thin air.”
“Then, what happened to it?” Lexi asked from the backseat, asking the same question Anna was wondering herself.
“Someone must have moved it,” Austin replied, keeping his eyes on the road ahead of him.
Lexi sighed. “Yes, but who? We all stayed together. No one else knows what happened. Do you think someone was watching?”
“I don’t know,” Austin replied, “but I’m not so sure I want to stick around to find out. It’s time for us to go back to Huntington. As soon as we get back to the motel, we’re packing our shit and getting the hell out of here.”
Anna shuddered, thinking about the fact that someone could have been watching them in the woods. They might have seen Gabe almost kill her, and there was a good chance they may have seen Lexi kill Rhonda. Whoever it was might not have even known that vampires existed; it may have been a human, who was now going to report them to the authorities and make some sort of witch-hunt out of this.
As Austin pulled the Escalade into the motel parking lot, Anna nearly bolted from the car. She was ready to leave this place and, hopefully, never come back.
Chapter 28
Almost as soon as Lexi and Dan got back to their motel room, Lexi’s cell phone rang. Lexi glanced down at the caller ID. It was her father.
“Dad?” Lexi asked into the phone.
“Lexi, Huntington’s on fire,” her dad’s voice sounded on the other end of the line.
“What do you mean Huntington’s on fire?” Lexi nearly screamed into the phone.
“I mean, someones trying to burn down the school,” her father replied. “And they’re pretty sure they know who did it.”
“Who?” Lexi’s heart pounded against her chest. Huntington was the only real home she’d found since her mom had died, and it made her angry to think that someone could want to destroy it. It
felt like someone was always out to destroy everything that made her happy, and she didn’t want to just sit back and let it happen again.
Her father hesitated for a moment before saying, “Greg Lawrence.”
The anger rose to Lexi’s cheeks. “I should have known.” She glanced over at Dan, who was staring at her, waiting for an explanation about who had set fire to Huntington. She mouthed ‘Greg’ and watched as Dan shook his head in disgust.
Turning her attention back to her father, Lexi asked, “What can we do? Should we come back to Huntington and get ready to fight?”
“No, that’s exactly what I don’t want you to do. We’re not sure if they’re going to continue to try to attack us, but if they do, we don’t want you to be here, front and center, in the middle of it all. Not when we know you’re their main target.”
“But we might be able to help—” Lexi started to protest, but her dad interrupted her right away.
“No, absolutely not. We have the situation under control here, Lexi. I don’t want you to come here under any circumstances. Do you understand that?”
“But where are we supposed to go? Huntington is our home.”
“I don’t know. Go wherever you need to go to stay safe. I just don’t want you to set foot anywhere near Briar Creek or Huntington. Are we clear?”
“I guess,” Lexi mumbled, even though she wasn’t sure that she actually agreed with what he wanted her to do. It wasn’t right for Greg to light the whole school on fire when she was the only one who he wanted to hurt. In a way, she almost wanted to show herself, to tell him that if he was going to try to hurt anyone, it should be her and not the innocent students at Huntington.
There was a muffled sound on the other end of the line. Her dad said something to someone in the background before saying into the phone, “Lexi? I need to go now. They need me to help make sure all of the students have been properly evacuated.” He paused. “Promise me you won’t come anywhere near Huntington.”
“I promise,” Lexi replied with a sigh. “Dad?”
“Yeah?” her father asked.
“Stay safe, okay?” Lexi could feel the tears build up behind her eyes as she began to worry about her father. It was the first time she had ever really worried about him; they hadn’t been close in so long. She also couldn’t help but worry that Greg Lawrence would try to use her father as a target because of his relationship to Lexi.
“I will, Kiddo,” her father replied into the phone. “I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.”
Lexi hit the ‘end’ button on her cell phone and stuffed it inside of the pocket of her jeans. She turned to Dan. “Well, I don’t know where we’re going to go, but we can’t go back to Huntington.”
Dan hesitated. “What about your dad’s house?”
Lexi shook her head firmly. “No, I don’t want to risk it. I know we could stay there if we really wanted to, but I don’t want to put Erica and Connor at risk.” Erica and Connor were her father’s other children, her half-siblings, and even though she was only just starting to get to know them, Lexi already felt attached to them. She wasn’t about to put them in the middle of this, not when there was the risk of them getting killed.
“Why would your brother and sister be at risk?” Dan asked, raising his brows at her.
“If Greg Lawrence is crazy enough to put all of the people and vampires at Huntington at risk, he would hurt my half-siblings if he could find them.” Lexi sighed. “I just don’t want to risk it.”
“Well, we can’t stay here,” Dan said, glancing around the dreary hotel room. “It’s not safe anymore.”
Lexi tried to think of somewhere else they could go, but her mind drew a complete blank.
“Well, I guess this only means one thing,” Dan went on. He rose to his feet and picked up his overnight bag. “We’re going to stay at my family’s house.”
“We are?” Lexi gulped. Even though she wanted to be okay with the idea of staying at the Nichols’ house, his mom made her feel really uneasy. Mrs. Nichols didn’t seem to like her because she couldn’t figure out what Lexi was doing with her vampire son.
If only his mom knew that she wasn’t as normal as she seemed—that she, too, was an immortal now. Lexi wondered if his mom would be more accepting of her if she knew the truth . . . or if, more likely, his mom would begin to see her as some sort of monster, the same way she saw her son.
Glancing over at Dan, Lexi asked, “Shouldn’t you ask your mom to make sure it’s okay first? I don’t want her to think we’re intruding.” She wasn’t about to tell Dan that she really just didn’t want to see his mom again anytime soon and, deep down, she was sort of hoping that Mrs. Nichols would say that they weren’t allowed to stay there.
Dan stared back at her knowingly. “It’s okay . . . I get it. You’re not a fan of my family.”
“No, that’s not exactly true. Your sister and your father both seemed nice enough. It’s just your mom who I’m not a fan of,” Lexi admitted quietly.
“I understand. The way my mom acted even surprised me,” Dan murmured, his eyes clouded over at the memory of their visit to his parents’ house. He met Lexi’s gaze. “My parents aren’t home right now, though. I was chatting with Caroline on Facebook a few days ago, and she said our parents are in Europe for the next few months. We’ll have the house all to ourselves.” He paused. “Well, except for Caroline, that is.”
“Oh, Caroline’s going to be home?”
Dan nodded his head. “Yeah, she doesn’t start Julliard for another week. They still have off for winter break until then.”
“Oh.” Lexi could feel her face fall a little. Even though Dan’s sister seemed nice enough, it still made her feel awkward to think that she would be at the house while they were staying there. She had only met Caroline once; spending an indefinite amount of time under the same roof didn’t seem fun.
Plus, Lexi had sort of been hoping for some time alone with Dan. Then again, she realized, even if Caroline wasn’t home, that wasn’t going to happen. They couldn’t just leave Austin and Anna at the motel . . .
“I guess we’ll be bringing Anna and Austin with us, too,” Dan said, as though he were reading her thoughts.
Lexi nodded. “Yeah, we better go to their room and let them know we can’t go back to Huntington.” She rose to her feet and led Dan out the motel room door.
They began to walk towards the room that Austin and Anna were staying in when Lexi saw him out of the corner of her eye; Gabe, sitting on the sidewalk outside his own room, cradling his face in his hands. He didn’t seem to notice they were there . . . or if he did, he didn’t say anything to them.
Once Lexi and Dan were a little closer, she heard it—the soft sound of Gabe’s sobs, which sounded like they were caught in the back of his throat.
Dan glanced over his shoulder and then met Lexi’s eyes. She knew that he had heard Gabe crying, too. What she couldn’t tell, though, was if Dan felt sorry for Gabe or not.
Tugging on his sleeve, Lexi pulled him down a sidewalk between the two buildings that led to the ice dispenser. A mouse scurried in the corner, flitting away from them.
Lexi turned to Dan. “We can’t just let him go back to Huntington. Not when the school is under attack like my dad said.”
Dan’s sky blue eyes sparkled even in the dim lighting, as they penetrated her own. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
“That he comes back to your house with us,” Lexi replied quietly, darting her eyes away from him. She didn’t want him to think that she was still interested in Gabe because the truth was, all of the feelings that she’d once had for him had completely diminished once she had become an immortal.
She only had eyes for Dan now. It was like she had no choice but to love him; he was the only one her heart truly wanted.
At the same time, she couldn’t just allow Gabe to go back to Huntington during the midst of Greg Lawrence’s attack. Gabe would probably be one of Greg’s first targets because Greg knew that Gabe had onc
e been involved in Lexi. Greg probably still thought they were together, so he’d probably figure that Gabe could help lead him to Lexi.
Gabe’s current mental state was also another reason why Lexi didn’t want him to go back to Huntington right now, either. Even though Lexi wasn’t sure exactly why Gabe was crying, she guessed it probably had something to do with Rhonda. He was probably in pain because of the bond that formed between two vampires who were so connected to one another.
Gabe was crying because, no matter how good or bad Rhonda was, he was affected by her death. And while Lexi might never be able to forgive Gabe for what he had done to Justin, she felt sorry for him right now.
“You really want Gabe to come back home with us?” Dan asked, tapping his foot against the sidewalk nervously.
Lexi nodded. “Yeah, I do. Just until everything gets sorted out at Huntington.”
Continuing to tap his foot on the ground as he considered the option, Dan sighed relentlessly. “I guess we can ask him to come along.” He met Lexi’s gaze. “You’re lucky I love you because I’d never agree to this otherwise.”
“You’re right. I am lucky.” She smiled. “I love you, too. And thank you. I know it’s not the most ideal situation, but . . . I don’t want to think about what might happen to him if he goes back there. Even though we’re not together, I still don’t want anything back to happen to him. I couldn’t live with myself if something did.”
Dan nodded. “I can understand that. It’s sort of like how I felt about you when you were with Gabe.” A shadow crossed over his face, and Lexi knew that he was remembering how things had been between them—before they had traveled back to the past together, and Lexi had fallen head over heels for him. Before then, Dan had been interested in her, but she’d always thought he had been out to get her, which seemed really silly now that she knew he’d been watching out for her the whole time.
“Well, come on,” Dan said, interrupting her thoughts. “We better go tell Gabe before he leaves or something.”