Destined to Die (The Briar Creek Vampires, #3) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse

Destined to Die

© 2011 by Jayme Morse and Jody Morse

Destined to Die is a work of fiction. The
names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are products
of the writers’ imaginations or have been used fictitiously. Any
similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events,
or locations is coincidental and not intended by the
authors.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not
purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. Thank
you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, without permission in writing from Jayme Morse &
Jody Morse.

Connect with the authors at:

http://www.jaymemorse.com

http://www.jodymorse.com

****

Chapter 1

Lexi stood in the dark alley, the wind blowing
against her bare legs, as she stared into the face of her
dead
cousin. She pinched herself on the wrist, just to make
sure she wasn’t dreaming. “Austin?” she finally managed to squeak.
“Are you a ghost?”

Austin shook his head and gave her a small
smile. “Nope, I’m still here. Now, hurry, we need to get to the car
without anyone seeing us.”

Before Lexi could ask any questions, Austin was
already opening the door of a sporty looking black coupe that was
parked a few feet away from where they had been hiding from her
Aunt Violet and Uncle Tommy. She wasn’t sure because it was dark
out, but it looked like the windows were tinted.

Pressing her ear against the building that she
was perched behind, Lexi listened to the quiet, empty street next
to her. She was positive that the sound she heard was heels
clanking against the pavement. It had to be Aunt Violet, coming
back to make sure that Lexi really wasn’t on this side
street.

Without thinking twice, Lexi ran over to
Austin’s car. Being in the car with her cousin who she had thought
was dead somehow seemed a lot safer than being caught by her aunt
and uncle, who wanted her dead. Austin swung the car door open for
her, and she climbed in.

Austin threw a ball of fabric into her lap.
Glancing down at it, her jaw dropped open in shock. “Where did you
get this?” Lexi demanded to know. It was the same rainbow-colored
costume and wig that she had purchased at the party store weeks
earlier.

Lexi had chosen the embarrassing clown costume
to wear to the Briar Creek Halloween festival tonight. The costume
had disappeared from her bedroom closet and had mysteriously been
replaced by the white frilly costume that she was wearing right now
instead.

“Where I got it isn’t important right now,”
Austin replied hastily, covering his own face with the mask to the
skeleton costume that he was wearing. “Just put it on. We need to
get the hell out of here.”

Lexi took off the masquerade mask that she was
wearing and peeled off the blonde curly wig, tossing then both to
the backseat. “Isn’t someone going to be able to recognize your
car?”

“No, it’s not mine. I borrowed it from
someone,” Austin said, handing her a bag. “The clown nose and
makeup is in here.”

“I can’t do clown makeup in the dark,” Lexi
snapped at him, realizing that she sounded slightly meaner than she
had meant to.

“Just put some on, okay? Make your face
unrecognizable.”

Lexi froze. She had purchased the clown costume
because someone had been stuffing anonymous letters into her locker
at school and had been putting them on her bed. They had made it
very clear that she needed to come to the Briar Creek Halloween
festival in a costume that no one would recognize her in. Was
Austin the one who had been leaving the notes for her? Lexi had
considered who she thought might be sending her the letters, but
never in a million years would Austin have crossed her mind. After
all, he was supposed to be dead.

“Look, you’re going to need to hurry up with
your makeup. We need to get out of here really fast.” Austin said
impatiently, pointing at the time on the digital car clock. “We
only have ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes ‘til what?”

“To get the hell out of here,” Austin
replied.

Lexi grabbed the container of rainbow colored
clown makeup out of the bag and used the sponge to dab some onto
her face. She used the red lipstick to draw on clown lips and
pulled the string that was attached to the red nose around her
head. Reaching up to the ceiling of the car, Lexi turned on the
interior light to examine her face in the car’s mirror.

“Lexi, what are you doing?” Austin hissed at
her, snapping the light back off. “We can’t draw attention to
ourselves like that!”

“Okay, God,” Lexi replied, throwing her hands
in the air. Tears of frustration filled her eyes, and she tried to
control her voice. “Look, you need to be nicer to me. I don’t know
where we’re going. I don’t know why. I didn’t even know you were
alive!”

“Yeah, I know,” Austin replied, his voice
softening. “I have a lot that I need to explain to you. And I will,
as soon as we get to our . . . destination. I’m going to pull out
of the parking lot now, but you need to do me a favor and stay down
as low as possible, okay?”

Lexi nodded and sunk down in her seat. Austin
started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, hitting a huge
pothole. Lexi felt her stomach lurch as he turned onto the
street.

Looking out the window, Lexi realized that
Austin was about to pull onto the street that the Briar Creek
Halloween festival was being held on. Before she could ask him if
he had completely lost his mind, Austin was already rolling down
the window.

“We’re looking for a Ms. Lexi Hunter. Have you
seen her?” a man’s nasally voice asked. Lexi tried not to look at
him, but she could feel his eyes on her.

“Nah, man,” Austin replied, attempting to mask
his voice. “Just me and my sister in here.”

The man hesitated. “I don’t think I know you,
and I’m pretty sure I know everyone in this here town.” The
suspicion was obvious in his voice as he eyes Austin’s
mask.

Lexi held her breath as she listened to the
sound of her heart pounding. They were going to get caught. She
could feel it.

“That’s because we’re not from around here,”
Austin replied coolly. “We just came for the festival.”

Lexi watched from out of the corner of her eye
as the man nervously shifted from one foot to the other and tilted
his head. “Oh, yeah? Where are you from?”

“Allentown,” Austin replied. “Now, if you don’t
mind, we’ll be on our way.” Lexi felt a wave of motion sickness run
through her body as Austin peeled out of the side street and turned
onto the main road. Turning to look out the window, Lexi watched as
the man stared dumbly after them.

Glancing at the scene that stood before her,
Lexi noticed that the festival was calming down. Kids were
reluctantly following their parents down the street with bags of
candy in hand and, she assumed, going home. There were a crowd of
adults standing in a circle shouting at each other. Violet and
Tommy were standing in the center of the circle, waving their arms
around in the air, looks of frustration covering their faces.
Gregory Lawrence, the mayor of Briar Creek, was lingering close
behind, his own face flushed with anger.

Austin must have seen them, too, because he
muttered, “Shit.”

Lexi sat up abruptly. “Austin, we have to go
back there.”

“
Why would you want to go back?”
Austin furrowed his brow, concentrating on his driving to avoid
hitting any pedestrians.

“I left my tote bag. I didn’t want to carry it
with me, so I left it in the bushes. I figured I would get it later
on.”

“No. We can’t go back there now. It’s way too
risky. We’ll go back for it some other time,” Austin
replied.

“Okay,” Lexi said, shrugging. There were some
pretty important things in her tote bag, including the things that
Austin had left behind with his friend Anna from Huntington for
her. At least, that’s what she had thought before she found out
that he was still alive. What use would they be to her
now?

Austin swiftly turned onto a side street that
Lexi recognized immediately. It was the street that led to the
graveyard.

She turned and looked at Austin. Her voice was
barely a whisper. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” Austin responded vaguely, his
voice completely emotionless.

Lexi felt a weird feeling form in the pit of
her stomach. Something about this wasn’t right.

Austin parked the car next to the graveyard and
climbed out onto the sidewalk. “Are you coming with me?”

Lexi hesitated. She wasn’t sure if it had been
Austin or Gabe that she had seen in the graveyard earlier that
night, since they had both been wearing the same exact Halloween
costume. At the time, she thought that it was Gabe and that he was
after her because he was on her aunt and uncle’s side, but now, she
wasn’t so sure who was on their side and who wasn’t.

Just thinking about how Gabe had betrayed her
sent the bile rising into her throat. How embarrassing would it be
to ask her cousin, who she hadn’t seen in years, to pull over so
that she could vomit? Or even worse, puke on him?

When she didn’t respond to Austin about if she
was going to come with him, he slammed his door shut and began
walking towards the cemetery. Deciding that staying in the car by
herself tonight was only going to freak her out, Lexi reluctantly
got out and ran to catch up to him.

Austin walked through the cemetery gate and
began up the grassy path that led towards the rows of headstones in
the graveyard. He turned around and motioned for her to follow him.
Lexi paused, unsure if she should. It felt like she was trying to
decide if she should walk towards a cliff; it would be okay if she
played it safe, but there was that risk of falling down if she got
too close.

When Austin continued walking, Lexi glanced
around. The only street lamp was feet away from her. Anyone could
come up to her at that moment and kidnap her without anyone even
noticing. Not that it would really matter if anyone (besides
Austin) did notice if she was abducted. The whole entire town was
planning to sacrifice her tonight so that they could be cured from
a fatal disease that had been cursed on all of the residents of
Briar Creek by a witch in the hundreds of years ago.

Cautiously, Lexi followed Austin up the grassy
hill. He came to a halt right in front of the pre-made gravestone
that she had come across on her own about a month ago. The stone,
which rested behind an open grave next to her mom’s tombstone, was
inscribed with Lexi’s name and date of death: October 31st,
2011.

Today was October 31st, 2011.

Austin walked over and knelt down on the
grass-covered ground in front of the open grave. “Gabe, I’ve got
her.”

Lexi took a step backward. She really didn’t
have a reason to trust Austin, but for some reason, she had just
assumed that he was on her side – probably because he had made it
seem like he was really trying to help her escape. Obviously, Lexi
had been wrong.

Austin wasn’t on her side at all. He was the
enemy. He had to be if he was talking to Gabe.

Gabe, who, as of tonight, was her
former
love interest, wanted her dead just as much as her aunt and uncle
did.

It didn’t even make sense for Austin and Gabe
to be speaking to each other after all the stories she had heard
about them hating each other for the past few months. Then again,
Gabe had hidden the fact that he was in alliance with her aunt and
uncle, too. His awkward relationship with Austin was probably just
another lie that she had been stupid enough to believe.