Kiss of Death (The Briar Creek Vampires, #1) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (9 page)

She pulled away from him and sat back into
the passenger seat. “Thanks again. Even though all that happened,”
she made a circling motion with her hand, afraid that her voice
would falter if she spoke about the attack again. She continued,
“I’m glad I got to see you. Thank you for sharing your story with
me…It’s nice to know you trust me enough to.”

He nodded. “I do trust you, Lexi.”

She leaned in for a final peck. Gabe kissed
her back lightly on her lips. She pulled back once more and wrapped
her hand around the door handle. “I’ll see you—”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, interrupting her.
“You’re going in now?” He watched Lexi intensely and licked his
lips.

She nodded and got out of the car.

“Fine, whatever,” he said sarcastically.
“Goodnight.”

Too stressed out from the night to wonder why
he was giving her an attitude, she blew him a kiss, slammed the
door shut, and made her way to the porch.

****

Chapter 8

“What are you doing here?” Violet exclaimed,
jumping up as soon as Lexi walked through the front door.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?”

“No, I just am really surprised to see you
here, Lexi,” Violet said, playing with her robin egg blue pearl
necklace. “I thought that you would still be out with Dan. It’s
still so early.”

Lexi glanced at the big grandfather clock in
the hallway. It was 11 o’clock. “Dan ditched me, I think.”

“What do you mean Dan ditched you? He
promised me when I talked to him on the phone that he wouldn’t let
you out of his sight.”

“Well, he did. Someone attacked me and when I
woke up, I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

Violet frowned. “Someone attacked you? Did
you see who it was?”

Lexi shook her head. “No, I didn’t see who it
was. When I woke up, Gabe was there.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Tommy barked from
the couch he was sitting on, muting the TV. “Wherever trouble is,
that boy is never far away. I don’t trust him and I’d really like
you to stay away from him, Lexi.”

“What type of trouble does he get in? Someone
told me he’s just a loner. He drove me home. I would’ve had to walk
home in the dark if it weren’t for him.”

“Loner or not, he’s bad news. He beat a kid
up pretty bad once.”

Violet nodded in agreement. “I know that he
brought you home, and that was nice of him. But he’s not a good
guy, Lexi. He also has a new girlfriend over at his house every
other week. I’m surprised you haven’t run into one coming or going
yet.”

Lexi hadn’t seen any cars at Gabe’s house,
but that didn’t mean that her aunt was wrong. Thank goodness she
hadn’t gone all the way with him tonight like she had been tempted
to. Her initial decision to not have sex with him was right. From
now on, Lexi knew that she needed to listen to her gut. If
something didn’t feel right to her, it meant that it probably
wasn’t.

Lexi started for the stairs before turning
around. “Where’s my mom?”

“Oh, she went out to dinner with Mayor
Lawrence tonight.” Noting the look of confusion on Lexi’s face,
Violet added, “She and Greg dated in high school before your mom
met your dad.” Violet wrinkled her nose. “It’s been a long time
since they’ve seen each other. We always hoped those two would end
up together.”

Lexi was glad Greg and her mom had broken up.
She couldn’t imagine what her life would have been like if the
mayor had been her father. She hoped that her mom was having a
miserable time. The idea of becoming Mary-Kate’s stepsister really
freaked her out - especially since she may have been the last one
to see Austin alive.

Austin. Lexi realized that she had gotten
nowhere in figuring out what had happened to him so far. She had
been hoping that Julie would let something about him and Mary-Kate
slip, but it hadn’t happened. Lexi couldn’t figure out why Dan
hadn’t told her that he knew that Mary-Kate and Austin were dating.
Was he trying to hide something? Pulling her hair up into a
ponytail, Lexi noticed her aunt’s expression change.

“What happened to your forehead?” Violet
pointed to her wound.

“I already told you. I was attacked,” Lexi
replied, frustrated.

A confused expression took over Violet’s
face. “What do you mean by ‘attacked’?” she asked, making air
quotes with her fingers.

Lexi lightly pressed her palm against her
forehead. “I mean someone threw me into a mirror and stabbed me
with the broken pieces of glass.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just bump into the
mirror and fall down? Maybe you hit your head too hard, sweetheart.
People don’t just get attacked like that in Briar Creek.”

Lexi stared at Violet. Weren’t she and Tommy
just talking about how violent Gabe is themselves? Surely he wasn’t
the only violent person in this town. Weren’t the scrapes on her
forehead enough to prove that something really had happened to her
– something more than her just being clumsy? Lexi hadn’t even
looked in a mirror yet (in fact, the idea of looking in a mirror
freaked her out after what had happened), but she could feel the
wounds. They stung against the coolness of the air-conditioned
living room, and every time Lexi raised her eyebrows, she could
feel one of the deeper cuts slowly tearing back open. It seemed
hard to believe that you could do that just by knocking your own
head against a mirror.

“Gabe said that people were killed at the
carnival last year,” Lexi reminded herself out loud. “People do
just get attacked in Briar Creek.”

Violet shook her head. “I didn’t hear about
that. Wouldn’t it have been on the news? Besides, Lexi, like we
just got done telling you, Gabe is not the most reliable source. He
probably made that story up just to scare you.”

“Maybe he gets in trouble and maybe he’s a
manwhore, but I don’t think he’s a liar,” Lexi said, turning on her
heels. She didn’t want to deal with another argument. Her head was
already pounding from her attacker. “I’m going to bed. Goodnight,
Aunt Violet,” she said dismissively.

Once she was in her room, Lexi glanced
around, feeling completely bored out of her mind. Maybe it was good
that her mom was making her go home. She didn’t even have Austin’s
laptop to keep her occupied now.

Lexi hoped that the police were at least
making some sort of progress. If she couldn’t figure out who had
killed Austin, maybe they would be able to.

Realizing that she hadn’t checked her cell
phone since Dan had called a few days before because she’d been so
busy trying to figure out the Austin thing, Lexi reached into her
Coach handbag.

She had four text messages and two missed
phone calls. Both of the calls and three of the texts were from
Justin, her ex-boyfriend from home. Deciding that she wanted no
contact with him while on her mini-vacation to Briar Creek, she
deleted them. The fourth text was from Dan. It read: “
Where R
U?
” The text said it was sent at 10:37 PM. That was way later
than when they had been separated at the carnival.

Dan must not have been searching for her too
hard if he hadn’t bothered to try texting her right after they got
separated, or tried to text her more than once. He obviously wasn’t
too worried about her. Feeling angry, Lexi deleted the text.

Glancing around the room, her eyes fell on
her duffle bag. The “Private” box that she had stolen off of
Austin’s bed was still tucked inside. She remembered that her
duffel bag contained not only the box, but also the strange blood
vial that was inside of the box.

Shivering, she placed the bag on her bed and
unzipped it. Reaching into the box, she pulled out a few
photographs and a journal.

She flipped through the photographs. The
first picture was of Austin and Mary-Kate at the beach, his
freckled arms wrapped around her waist and his chin rested on her
shoulder. The next picture was a close-up of Mary-Kate, blowing a
kiss. A Polaroid shot was tucked behind it. In this picture, she
was blowing a kiss again, but this time, she was topless. Since
Lexi had sent nude photos to Justin before, she tried not to pass
judgment on Mary-Kate. It was hard though, with what everyone had
said about Mary-Kate, and now these pictures on top of it. As much
as Lexi wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, she decided
that Mary-Kate was probably a slut.

The fourth picture was of Austin playing beer
pong at a party with a bunch of guys from the football team. Lexi
wasn’t surprised. Austin had been lovingly described as an
alcoholic (in better terms, of course) by the majority of his
friends at the funeral. Looking closer at the photo, Lexi noticed
Mary-Kate in the background. She was kissing someone – someone who
wasn’t Austin. Someone who had blonde hair, tan skin and was
wearing the same shirt Dan had been wearing earlier tonight at the
carnival. That explained why Dan hadn’t told Lexi that Austin and
Mary-Kate had been dating for a year; he didn’t want anyone to know
that he, too, was involved with Mary-Kate. Lexi glanced at the back
of the photo to see if Austin had written the date. It had been
taken three months ago. Lexi wondered if Austin knew that Mary-Kate
had been cheating on him behind his back (literally, in this
case).

Next, she began to flip through the journal.
On the first page, Austin had written:
Mary-Kate needs to back
off. I love her, but I’m never going to do what she’s trying to get
me to do. I don’t want to be like them. I’d rather leave Briar
Creek…forever.

At the bottom of the journal, Austin had
written six numbers:
817137
. As Lexi tried to figure out
what they could stand for, the bedroom door slammed open against
the wall.

She froze. Aunt Violet looked upset. Stuffing
the journal underneath her shirt, she stammered, “Violet, I can
explain—”

****

Chapter 9

“Lexi, your mom is in the hospital. We have
to go.”

Dropping the journal and pictures to the
floor, Lexi grabbed her Coach bag and ran after her aunt.

“What happened to my mom?” Lexi asked once
they were in the car.

“I don’t know yet. Greg called me and told me
that she collapsed at the restaurant while they were eating dinner
and he brought her to Briar Creek Medical Center.”

Lexi never prayed, but she made an exception
tonight and silently begged God, and any other higher power, to let
her mom be okay. She tried to stay optimistic, but she couldn’t
control the unsettling feeling in her stomach.

Once they were in the lobby of the hospital,
Lexi felt a few pairs of eyes on her. She realized they were all
staring at her wounds. Feeling like a freak show, Lexi tried,
unsuccessfully, to cover the cuts on her forehead with her hair.
She groaned inwardly when she remembered that she hadn’t showered
yet that night. Her blonde hair was still streaked with dried blood
from her attack.

“We’re here to see Eileen Hunter,” Aunt
Violet said to the young blonde woman working at the front desk.
The woman’s blank expression made Lexi’s heart pound faster in her
chest.

“Are you immediate family?”

“Yes. I’m her sister and this is her
daughter,” Violet said, wrapping one arm around Lexi’s
shoulders.

“I’ll send a doctor out to speak with you,”
the woman said.

Sitting in a chair, Lexi looked at her yellow
beaded flip flops. Her mom had never had any medical problems that
Lexi had known of. The only time Lexi could remember her mom going
to the hospital was once when she had gotten stung by a jellyfish
at Seaside Heights when Lexi was a kid. Hospitals made her
nervous.

Just as Violet sat down in a chair next to
Lexi, a tall gray-haired doctor stood in front of them. “Are you
the family of Eileen Hunter?”

Lexi and her aunt both nodded and stood up to
meet him. “I think it’s best if you both sit back down,” he said,
solemnly looking at them with hollow eyes. His eyes were so dark,
they were almost black.

Lexi’s knees gave out and she dropped back
into the chair, knowing what would come next. “Eileen passed away a
few moments ago. We’re not sure what happened yet, so we are going
to have an autopsy done on Monday. We’ll call you once we have the
results. My deepest condolences to you both.”

Lexi felt her stomach fall. For a moment, she
forgot to breathe. How could her mom be dead? She had just seen her
a few hours ago. They had gotten into an argument and she wished
she could take it back. One of the last things she had said to her
mom was that she hated her. Lexi would never forgive herself for
all of the mean things that she had said to her. She glanced at
Violet and watched as a single tear rolled down her cheek.

“Well, let’s go home,” Violet said, brushing
a lone tear away, and quickly regaining her composure. That was
when Lexi realized that Aunt Violet and Uncle Tommy’s house was her
new home. She had nowhere else to go.

Lexi stood up and felt her feet take over, as
she began running. She didn’t know where she was going, but she
wasn’t ready to leave her mom yet. Rounding the corner, she found
herself pushing the charcoal colored door to the ladies’ room open.
Grasping the sink, she felt the bile rise up her esophagus and her
saliva start to accumulate in her mouth. She opened her mouth and
released its contents into the sink.

A bathroom stall door swung open, and a tall
brunette came out. Glancing at the girl’s reflection through the
mirror, Lexi recognized her immediately.

It was Mary-Kate, who asked her, “Do you want
gum?”

“Yes, please.” Lexi inspected her own
ghost-white reflection in the mirror, shocked to find that there
wasn’t a wound on her neck. As sharp as the weapon was, it was
bound to have left a mark. Yet, looking closer, she saw that there
wasn’t a single scratch on her neck.