by Jayme Morse
No one in Briar Creek besides his own mother had ever known that Gabe had a brother. Gabe had gone away to live in Nebraska not long after Caroline had died. He couldn’t take living in Briar Creek anymore; it was too hard to deal with the memories, and he always worried that someone would see him. So, he’d convinced his twin brother, Kevin, to come and stay with their mother, to watch over her while he was gone.
Kevin had agreed to stay with her, but he didn’t want to go by Gabe’s name. He’d insisted on keeping his own identity.
Kevin was the guy who Lexi had met when she was a kid, though Gabe had heard about her plenty of times from his brother. Even back then, Kevin had a hard time keeping himself from drinking from her. He’d known she was a Hunter and that her blood was better than any of the other humans who lived nearby. Gabe had needed to convince him that he couldn’t just drink from a child; he had to at least wait until she was old enough to understand what she was and what vampires were.
Aside from that, Gabe also knew that there was the risk of Kevin killing Lexi if he tried to drink from her, since she was a child. It was easy to accidentally kill a child. Gabe had heard of it happening many times.
It had taken a lot of convincing, but Kevin had agreed not to drink from her even though he so desperately wanted to. Kevin had promised that he would leave Lexi alone until she was a teenager.
For a period of time, Gabe had moved back home and was going to school with Austin. He didn’t actually need to go to school since he had graduated from high school earlier in his life, but it was a way to help him pass the time more easily. Plus, half of the teenagers in Briar Creek had been going to school for many years. It helped to keep Gabe social, though, which he needed. He wanted to make friends and maybe even meet someone. And there was the added benefit of Mary-Kate, who would often let him and the other guys at school drink from her in the school bathrooms, hallways, or under the bleachers when no one was looking.
When Gabe had the vision of Lexi coming to Briar Creek and he and Austin started coming up with a plan to turn him into a vampire before his parents had the chance to kill him, Gabe knew he had to do something about Kevin. He couldn’t let Kevin hurt Lexi. Even though he hadn’t actually met Lexi yet at that point, he knew he had to keep her safe because she was going to play an important role in defeating the vampires of Briar Creek.
Gabe realized now that even back then, through his visions, he must have felt something for Lexi. He hadn’t met her yet, but he’d smiled every time he saw her smiling face inside his mind, and he had an overwhelming urge to protect her.
So, Gabe had done what he knew he needed to do. He had Austin stage a motorcycle accident to kill off “Kevin”, who he tricked Austin into believing was his second alias. Gabe had told Austin the same thing he’d later told Lexi—that Kevin was his own personal identity, one that he used in order to make sure that people didn’t start to catch onto his age. Since Austin had never seen Gabe and Kevin in the same room together, he had fallen for Gabe’s lie and had been more than willing to help Gabe “kill” Kevin.
The whole purpose of the accident wasn’t to kill Kevin, of course. Kevin wasn’t even there at the time of the car accident. The whole point of the accident was to make it appear as though Kevin really had died, so that Gabe’s mother would believe that he had died in a car accident, during which the engine had blown up and caught fire.
Gabe had felt horrible when the police officers had come to the front door to tell his mom that Kevin was gone, but that, since they were vampires, his body had turned to ash so there weren’t any identifiable remains. They only knew that he had died because Austin had told them that he had . . . and why would he lie about killing someone?
Gabe’s mom had believed the lie and had grieved over the loss of her other son for months.
The whole time, Gabe knew this really wasn’t what had happened. The same night of the accident, Gabe had taken Kevin to an abandoned building in North Dakota, leading him to believe that they were going to meet Lexi. He’d read about the abandoned storage building online, and it said there were no people or cops for a mile around.
Gabe had locked Kevin in a closet inside a room that he’d also locked and fled from the place, setting the building on fire on his way out.
He’d later read that the building had burnt down. He’d never read anything about someone’s remains being found, but it would have been impossible to find a vampire’s ashy remains in a fire as big as the one Gabe had created. Besides, most humans still don’t know that vampires even existed, so they wouldn’t have noticed a vampire’s remains even if they had been handed to them.
When Gabe never heard from Kevin again, he had assumed that his plan had worked—that he really had killed his twin brother.
So it had shocked the hell out of him earlier this evening when Kevin had come up from behind him and stuffed him in this closet. He had seen the pack of matches in Kevin’s pocket, but he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t actually used them yet. It felt really warm inside the closet, but he was pretty sure that there were no flames near him . . . yet.
Gabe had to find a way to get out of this closet before the fire got to him.
The closet door was quickly opened and then closed again.
A sinister laughter filled the room, as a tall figure appeared above him. When Kevin stared back at him, it felt like Gabe was looking in a mirror. His twin was nearly identical to him; they shared the same dark brown hair that looked nearly black in certain lightings, the same fair skin, and the same slightly muscular build.
The only difference between their appearances was that Gabe’s eyes were blue, whereas Kevin’s right eye was blue and his left eye was a shade of mossy green. Right now, though, Gabe noticed that Kevin was wearing contact lenses, just like he normally did, to make both eyes appear the same color.
“Well, well, well, look at what the bat dragged in.” Kevin paused, waiting for Gabe to laugh. When he didn’t, Kevin shook his head frustratedly. “What, Gabe, don’t you find my sense of humor funny anymore? Or is it that you don’t understand the joke? I’m not a cat, I’m a bat.” Kevin laughed again, sinisterly, at his own joke.
Gabe stared up at Kevin, afraid to know what he was going to do next. It was obvious that his twin was here to get revenge . . . and he had to be angry. Gabe had tried to kill him, after all.
“Mom has been hanging out with me the past few weeks, in case you’ve been wondering,” Kevin said. “She’s really angry at you. She can’t understand why you would lock me inside a building and try to light me on fire. I don’t understand why, either, if we’re being perfectly honest with each other.” He took a step forward and, for a second, Gabe thought about trying to slide past him.
“I’ve tried to figure out the reasons, Gabe, but I can’t seem to come up with anything. The only thing I know is that girl—that Hunter girl—came back to town. So, my guess is this had something to do with her. Is that the truth?”
Gabe hesitated. Part of him wanted to tell his brother the truth, but the other part wondered if explaining the reason was even worth it. Did it really even matter now? The damage was already done; Gabe had already tried to kill Kevin to save Lexi and, unfortunately, failed.
“Well? Is it?” Kevin asked, his voice rising with anger. He inched closer to Gabe and pulled something out of his pocket. It took Gabe a second to figure out what it was, but once he knew, he cringed. It was a match; Kevin was going to set him on fire if he didn’t answer him.
Trying to appease him, Gabe nodded his head and mumbled, “Yes.”
Kevin scoffed. “I can’t even believe you would kill me—your own brother—just to save some girl. We could have shared her blood, you know. It didn’t have to be just for me. You didn’t have to do what you did.” He narrowed his eyes. “How could you do what you did and be okay with it? How could you lie to Mom like that and let her believe I was really dead? You’re a sick son of a bitch.”
Gabe lowered his eyes to the ground
. When Kevin put it that way, even Gabe had to agree that he sounded like a horrible brother. It made him sound like a traitor and like he really was a sick person. Who really killed their own brother?
But it didn’t change the fact that Gabe knew he had done the right thing. Kevin deserved to die. He was the bad twin.
No, Gabe was completely right about what he had done. The only thing that he had been wrong about was the fact that he hadn’t been able to kill Kevin. If he could go back to that night outside the abandoned building as it was burning, Gabe would have made sure that Kevin didn’t get out alive.
“I have something to show you,” Kevin said, tugging at a black duffel bag that had been sitting on the floor next to him. Kevin slid the zipper open, revealing what was inside. Gabe’s stomach turned as the smell reached his nose.
It was Rhonda, her body pale and lifeless.
“You were there that day?” Gabe whispered, feeling sick to his stomach. How had Kevin been there in Ohio, watching as they killed Rhonda and then snatching her body, without Gabe even knowing he was still alive?
“Uh huh.” Kevin grinned, proud of himself. “Pretty soon, you’re going to join her. But first I want you to explain yourself.” Kevin stared him in the eye, coldly. “I need to understand why you tried to kill me.”
Gabe shrugged. “I . . . I just knew I had to.”
“Please tell me this had nothing to do with one of your stupid visions,” Kevin replied with an eye roll.
“No, it wasn’t that,” Gabe replied, though he sometimes wished that he had gotten a vision about Kevin and how things could have turned out. It would have helped reassure him that he had done the right thing in killing him. “I just knew you weren’t going to do anything good. You were going to hurt Lexi.”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “Since when do you care so much about mortals? And Hunters, no less.”
Gabe shrugged his shoulders weakly. “I loved her.” It was sort of the truth; he had loved Lexi, but not until after he had tried to kill Kevin.
“Love?” Kevin laughed. “Love doesn’t exist, Kid. It’s one of those made up things—sort of like fairy tales and urban legends. If you believe in love, you’re going to be in for a long, miserable life. Well, that is, anyone else would be. You’re not because this is the end of the straw for you. I’m going to make sure you don’t get out of this building alive tonight.”
Gabe stared into the darkness of the closet, wondering how much longer he had left before Kevin lit him on fire. “You don’t have to do this. We can talk things out.” Even as Gabe said the words, though, he knew his brother’s mind was already made up. Kevin wasn’t going to reason over this, and Gabe wasn’t sure if he really blamed him.
If their roles had been reversed and Kevin had been the one who had tried to kill him first, Gabe didn’t think he would be able to show much mercy, either.
“I’m going to light this room on fire, but don’t worry. I’m not going to light you on fire. I want you to watch as the flames burn down everything else in the room first. I want you to watch as they start to circle around you, and I want you to think about the fact that the next few hours—which are sure to go by long and painfully—will be the last few hours of your life,” Kevin said. “I want you to go through exactly what I went through when you tried to kill me. Thank God I managed to break through the walls and got out alive. And the only thing I could think of that whole time was that if I got out alive, I was going to do the same thing to you.”
Gabe didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what he could say at this point. It seemed pretty hopeless. Today was the day he was going to die.
Gabe watched as Kevin lit the match and tossed it onto the floor. Kevin turned back to Gabe. “I thought about putting some gasoline in here, but it would speed this whole thing up. I want you to think long and hard about what’s going to happen to you.” Kevin grinned.
Kevin was about to walk out of the closet, but before he did, he turned back to Gabe. “Oh, by the way, if you think I’m going to leave that Hunter girl alone now, you’re out of your damn mind. If anything, I’m going to make sure I drink from her now, just to spite you.” He smiled. “I have to go now. A girl named Caroline is upstairs waiting for me. She seems to think I’m you. So, I’m going to take your place. This should be interesting.” He smiled. “I hope you have a slow, painful death, Gabe.”
When Kevin closed the door behind him and fumbled with the lock, Gabe stared into the darkness of the tiny closet. Minutes went by and he watched as the flames began to rise, creeping up the wall.
The only thing that ran through Gabe’s mind was Caroline; the way her fingers stroked the piano keys, the sweet fragrance of her pear-scented shampoo, and the way her smile extended to those sky blue eyes.
Gabe had lost her once without a fight. He should have done something back then; he shouldn’t have let her go so easily.
This time was going to be different, though. This time, he was going to fight with all the strength in his body.
Gabe had to make it out alive. He had to do it for Caroline.
Chapter 40
The pages of Hunter family book flew open and a light radiated from its pages, casting a glow on the ceiling.
As Mary-Kate was tossed out of the book and onto the hardwood floor, she glanced around and smiled.
Home, sweet home.
Well, sort of. Mary-Kate actually wasn’t sure where she was. It wasn’t her own home, but it didn’t matter. The important thing was that she was no longer in the past.
Pulling herself up off the floor, Mary-Kate brushed off her knees. Now that she was back, she had a mission to accomplish; she had to find out where Lexi was.
There was no way in Hell Mary-Kate was going to allow her half-sister—if she could even call that bitch her half-sister—walk all over her the way she had done in the past.
No, Mary-Kate wasn’t going to allow that. Not after everything that had gone on since Lexi and Dan had found their way out of the 1800s, leaving her behind.
Mary-Kate had been captured by a group of vampire men who had been fascinated by the scent of her blood. They wanted to drink from her, but she hadn’t given them the opportunity. She’d killed them all, slicing each of their throats, one by one, imagining that it was Lexi who she was killing.
Well, all in good time, she reminded herself. Once Mary-Kate found Lexi, she wasn’t going to let her live to see another day.
No, Lexi Hunter was going to be gone before she knew it.
Mary-Kate was going to get revenge, once and for all.
Book 7: COMING SOON!
About the Authors
Jody Morse and Jayme Morse are sisters that reside in the Poconos. They write young adult paranormal romance and suspense novels. To connect with the authors, please visit:
http://www.jodymorse.com/
http://www.jaymemorse.com/