Burn Like Fire (10 page)

Chapter 18

Telling Rhonda that she was his family now was one of Gabe’s weakest moments he realized when they got back to the motel room. But for the first time since he had met Rhonda, he could finally figure out his own motivations when he was around her. He’d told her that she was his family for two reasons: 1.) he felt sorry for her; and 2.) he didn’t have anyone else in his life who he could consider his family anymore. At one point, his family might have been Lexi and Austin, but things had obviously changed.

Once he was settled back in the motel room and Rhonda was in the shower, Gabe leaned against the bed. He tried to force himself to get into relaxation mode, even though he felt incredibly stressed out and he wasn’t sure why.

Resting his head against the pillow, Gabe closed his eyes. He stared into the blackness that was his eyelids, as he waited for something to happen. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a feeling that a vision was coming, and that was why he was so stressed out.

And that’s when he saw it. It was the shortest vision that he’d ever had in his entire life, but it was definitely a vision: a flash of a face that looked very similar to his own. The face had a haunting look to it, and he could somehow tell that the person was up to no good.

As soon as the vision filled his mind, though, it quickly passed, like a star shooting through the night sky. It was there and vivid in his mind, and then it faded to nothing.

Gabe sat up in bed and glanced around the dark hotel room. He could hear the water spraying from the shower in the bathroom, and the sound of the cheerful voices of the people on the TV.

He didn’t feel any different, though. When he had a vision, he always felt drained right away. Though he normally did usually have visions weeks after he had drank blood and he had drank only the night before from not just one, but both of, the girls who Rhonda had brought to their room, Gabe didn’t think that had anything to do with why he didn’t feel weaker than usual.

Gabe was positive that what he had experienced was a memory. It was different than any memory he’d ever had before, but he was pretty sure he could explain that, too. It was different
because it was a memory that was driven by sadness—a sadness that he wasn’t even aware that he felt, a sadness he didn’t think he was even capable of.

It must have been all of the talk about family that was getting to him. It didn’t matter, though.

Even though Gabe felt sad, he definitely didn’t feel guilty.

Chapter 19

When there was a knock on the motel room door at a quarter past ten, Anna crawled out of Austin’s arms and climbed out of bed. She was fully expecting to see Lexi and Dan on the other side of the door, so it surprised her when the man who worked at the motel registration office was there, balancing a tray of beverages in his hands.

“Miss Anna?” the man asked. “I would like to offer you my sincere apologies for the condition of your rooms. We received complaints from our previous tenants, who left only a few days before you arrived. We wanted to offer you these complimentary drinks . . . on the house, of course.” The man flashed her a wide, toothy smile.

“I didn’t know you even had a bar,” Anna mumbled, glancing down at the drinks on the tray. They looked like fruity cocktails—strawberry and pineapple, maybe. She was actually a sucker for fruity cocktails, so she smiled at the man. “Thanks for the drinks. You really should clean the rooms better in the future, though, if you want to stay in business. This place can’t possibly meet town codes and regulations.”

The man smiled, even though it looked like an annoyed smile. “Thank you. I will take your advice into consideration in the future.” He handed her the tray and turned in the opposite direction.

When Anna stepped back inside, she set the tray down on the round table and turned to Austin. “Are you going to have a drink?”

Austin shook his head. “No, I’m not drinking that.” He kept his eyes focused on the TV. Just as Anna was about to take a sip from the glass, he said, “Wait! How do you know those drinks are okay?”

Glancing down at the glass she held in her hands, Anna shrugged. “I don’t know. They look okay to me.”

“I have a bad feeling about this. Did Lexi and Dan get drinks, too?” Austin questioned.

“I don’t know. Does it look like I’ve talked to Dan and Lexi?” Anna rolled her eyes. She knew that it was good at times to have Austin around because he was the voice of reason, but there were other times when he was just a big party pooper. All she wanted was to enjoy the drink that she held in her hands; after the day she’d had, she definitely deserved it.

“Please don’t drink it, Anna,” Austin begged.

“Fine, I won’t.” Anna set the drink back down on the tray and turned to Austin, pouting. “Are you happy now? You took away the only thing that was going to help me feel better tonight.”

Austin rested his head on one of his elbows and turned to look at her. “I can think of something else if you’re up for it.”

Anna hesitated. It had been a few weeks since Austin had drank from her, and she was actually trying to avoid letting him. The whole purpose of this trip was supposed to be for her to find out who had murdered her mother. Now she knew who had most likely done it, but it didn’t seem like there was anything she could do with that information. So, what was the point of holding back?

Turning to Austin, Anna threw her arms around her neck. She inhaled the scent of his spicy cologne; it was one of her favorite smells.

Austin’s lips came down on hers passionately; he explored her mouth with his cold tongue.

As he moved down her neck, Anna felt his cold breath against her warm skin. There was nothing that compared to the icy, hot feeling that she felt when he was near her. It only seemed to intensify every time he drank from her.

When Austin’s teeth punctured her skin, Anna had a hard time controlling herself. She grabbed the sheets with her hands, balling them with her fists. As Austin’s tongue encircled the wound and he sucked the warm blood from her veins, Anna let out the moans that had caught in the back of her throat.

Austin was right. This was even better than the feeling of being drunk.

Once he finished drinking from her, Austin closed her wound the way vampires always did by injecting her skin with a healing saliva. Just the feeling of the wound closing was enough to drive her crazy.

“I don’t want you to stop drinking from me,” Anna murmured, glancing into his turquoise eyes.

Austin gave her a small smile. “I don’t want to stop drinking from you, either,” he admitted, “but I have no other choice. We can’t risk you losing too much blood in one day. Unless . . .” He
trailed off.

“Unless what?” Anna questioned.

Austin shook his head. “Nothing.”

Anna narrowed her eyes at him. “Nothing?”

“Yeah, nothing,” Austin replied, glancing over at her. “It’s nothing, I promise.”

Anna sighed. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.” She didn’t know what type of promises her mom had made to her dad, but she doubted that any of them had ever involved Darius. As much as she didn’t want to let her mom’s unhappiness affect her own relationship, she couldn’t help but wonder how she and Austin would ever be able to work out if her own parents hadn’t had the happy marriage she always thought they’d had.

“I always keep my promises,” Austin said, quietly. “It was no big deal. Don’t worry about it. Come on, let’s go to sleep.” He grabbed the remote from the end of the bed and flicked off the TV and climbed under the covers.

When Anna allowed herself to curl against his body and listened to her own labored breathing, she sighed. This wasn’t the way she wanted to go to sleep, but she didn’t want to talk about it, either. Talking to Austin about everything would mean that they would have to discuss the issue of their future, and she just wasn’t ready to do that.

As much as Anna loved Austin, she wasn’t even sure what their future looked like.

Chapter 20

The next morning, Rhonda paced back and forth in the room that she was sharing with Gabe, worrying about Anna. It had been easy enough to convince the man at the front desk to deliver Anna the drinks containing the poison. She was going to tip the man twenty bucks to do it, but then she remembered that she didn’t even need to do that—his mind was just as pliable as everyone else’s. All she’d had to do was look at him and think about what she wanted, and the man had done it.

But this morning, she had heard Anna giggling outside in the parking lot as she and Austin left. They’d come back with bags of breakfast food, which they’d taken to Lexi and Dan’s motel room.

Rhonda seethed. Why hadn’t the poison worked? Was it because it wasn’t strong enough to kill Anna now? Rhonda knew it wasn’t because Anna had turned into a vampire yet; Rhonda could still smell her mortal blood from down the hall.

Apparently, Anna hadn’t drunk the cocktail that Rhonda had given the man to give her the night before. Rhonda was half-tempted to storm into the man’s office and rip his throat out, but she knew she couldn’t do that. It would draw attention to the fact that someone ‘bad’ was staying at the motel, and Rhonda wanted to keep Anna and Austin here for as long as she possibly could.

It probably wasn’t the man’s fault, anyway. Anna probably had chosen not to drink the alcohol on her own. She was probably some pathetic prude who didn’t believe in drinking until she turned twenty-one—which was absolutely ridiculous, considering she was dating a vampire. It’s not like little Miss Anna played by the rules all the time.

Sighing frustratedly, Rhonda sat down on the bed. She glanced over at Gabe, who was sprawled out in relaxation mode. He had been really quiet ever since they had gotten back to the motel room the night before, which only made Rhonda think that he had lied about them being a family.

It only reaffirmed what Rhonda already knew—that she couldn’t let Gabe make his own decisions, and that no one could figure out what she was doing. That was why she had to get rid of Anna, once and for all.

*

Back in the bathroom of their motel room, Lexi pulled her hooded sweatshirt over her head and tossed it to the tiled floor. She glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror. She’d noticed that, recently, she no longer got pimples or any other type of skin imperfections for that matter. It was still too early to say, but Lexi was pretty sure that immortality was taking kindly to her.

Lexi stared at herself in the mirror for a few moments before she noticed the light that radiated above her head. She turned around and that’s when she saw the white, elegant, and somewhat-translucent body floating above her.

“Mom?” Lexi squealed. No matter how long it had been between her mother’s visits, she always had the hardest time containing her excitement. Even though it was getting easier to go on without her mother, it somehow made her feel better to know that her mom probably wasn’t out of her life for good. They might go long periods of time without seeing each other, but her mom always seemed to make her way back to her sometime.

“Hi, Lexi,” her mom said, softly, wrapping her arms around her.

It was the first time Lexi’s mom had ever tried to hug her while she was in ghost form, and it felt strange—but good strange, not bad strange. It felt like Lexi was being enveloped by a cold, misty cloud-like substance.

“I miss you, Mom,” Lexi said. “But, then, I always miss you.”

“I know, Lexi. I miss you, too, but just remember that I’m always watching you, even when you don’t realize I’m there. I want you to know how proud I am of you. You did the right thing by drinking the immortality potion.”

Lexi nodded. “I know I did the right thing, but . . . it worries me sometimes.”

“Why does it worry you?” her mom asked, pulling back to stare at her. Even though her mom’s eyes were more translucent now, they still had the same twinkle that they’d had when she was alive.

“Because if I’m here forever, it means I’ll never be able to join you,” Lexi blurted. It was the first time she had mentioned that this worried her out loud to anyone. Even though she had been worrying about it for weeks, she hadn’t even mentioned it to Dan yet because admitting it made
her worries seem all the more real.

“Lexi, I don’t want you to think that way. You have to do what’s best for you . . . and for Dan. I’m happy you’ve found someone who loves you so much. Don’t take him for granted,” her mom said. “I’ll visit you for as long as I can and even if there ever comes a time when I’m no longer stuck in this in-between state, I will always be watching you. I can promise you that.”

“I know, but it won’t be the same,” Lexi said, and a tear trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away with her wrist.

“No, but sometimes, change happens and there’s nothing we can do about it but accept it.” Her mom stared at her for a long time before saying, “I can’t stay for long, as usual, but there’s something I need to tell you before I go.”

Lexi nodded. She’d been expecting her mom to say that she had something to tell her. It always seemed like every time her mom came along, it was to offer her some sort of advice.

“There’s going to come a time when someone tells you that you need to do something the way they want, but you need to go with your own best judgment. You need to be brave enough to do things the way you want to, even if it means you break a promise.”

“How I will know if I’m using my best judgment?” Lexi questioned. She hadn’t always made the best choices in the past. It made her afraid of doing the wrong thing now.

“Listen to your heart and do what it tells you to do. If it feels right, then it is.”

“I wish you could tell me what the right thing is,” Lexi said with a sigh. “I wish you could tell me what I have to break this promise about and what I should do to make everything right.”

Her mom laughed. “You don’t know how much I wish I could offer you more guidance. Unfortunately—”

“It’s against the rules,” Lexi said, finishing her mom’s sentence with an eye roll.

Her mom gave her a small smile. “Yes, it is. I should be going now. I wish I could stay longer, but I have other duties to attend to.”

Lexi raised her eyebrows. “What type of duties?”

“I wish I could tell you,” her mom replied, sadly. “Maybe I’ll be able to someday.” Her mom’s appearance began to look more transparent. “I love you, Lexi.”

“I love you, too, Mom,” Lexi replied, but before she even finished saying the words, her mom had already vanished into thin air, leaving nothing behind but a glittery residue that drifted to the tiled floor.

Sighing, Lexi began to peel off the rest of her clothes, tossing them to the bathroom floor along with the hoodie she’d already removed.

Once she was undressed, she climbed into the shower, which was surprisingly clean considering the condition of the rest of the motel room. Closing the flowing, ivory-colored shower curtain behind her, Lexi twisted the faucet to turn the water on.

No water came out.

She tried the faucet again, this time twisting it in the opposite direction. Still, there was nothing.

Lexi groaned, realizing the motel didn’t have water—even though there had been water last night to brush their teeth with.

An idea occurred to her. She could do a spell to create her own flow of water. All she needed was something to make water.

Lexi climbed out of the shower stall and opened the door. “Dan? Can you get me some ice?”