Burn Like Fire (5 page)

Chapter 8

“Are you sure this is the place?” Austin asked, as he pulled Anna’s Ford Escalade into the parking lot at the motel that they had booked online before they’d left Huntington. The motel’s sign flashed obnoxious yellow and pink in the dark night, illuminating the words ‘Motel Dixie’.
Anna nodded, glancing down at her cell phone for confirmation. “Yeah, this is definitely the place.”

“It’s not even a hotel,” Austin commented. “It’s a
motel
. Are you sure this is the only place we could stay?”

“I’m positive. It’s the only place that would let us check in this late at night. And it looks like it’s the only place to stay within sixty miles. We’re pretty much stuck here.” Anna sighed. Austin could tell that she wasn’t happy about the motel, either.

Austin glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to catch Lexi wrinkling her nose. “It looks pretty skeevy to me.”

“I think it probably
is
pretty skeevy,” Anna agreed. Turning to look at Lexi and Dan, she pleaded with them. “Look, guys, we’ll probably only have to stay here for a night or two. I know it’s not the most ideal place for us to stay, but it would mean a lot to me if you guys could make the best of it.”

Austin watched his cousin’s face soften. “Of course we will. I mean, it doesn’t look like a luxury hotel or anything, but it’s probably not that bad. Maybe it just looks worse on the outside than it does on the inside,” Lexi offered lamely.

Austin smiled. He knew that Lexi was trying to be positive for Anna, even though she didn’t want to stay in the motel either.

“No, seriously, it can’t be that bad,” Dan commented. “We had to sleep outside and risk getting attacked by vampires when we traveled back in time.”

“Do you know how crazy that would sound to most people?” Lexi giggled. “‘When we traveled back in time.’ It makes us sound crazy.”

Dan smiled and reached for her hand. “I’m kinda glad you’re the only one who really understands it besides me. It’s something special we can share with each other.”

Lexi leaned in and kissed him on the lips.

Austin rolled his eyes. “And on that note, I’m going to go check-in.”

“I’ll come with,” Anna said, grabbing her purse and swing the car door open.

Once they were standing on the sidewalk, Austin glanced over his shoulder at Dan and Lexi. Their one kiss had turned into a full-out make out session.

Austin cringed.  Even though he knew that they were all supposed to be mature adults, he couldn’t help but grossed out sometimes when his cousin and his best friend showed public displays of affection. He was happy that they were together, but he definitely didn’t need to see that.

Anna opened the door to the motel registration office. The sound of bad jazz music filled Austin’s ears, as he closed the door behind him.

There was a tall, lanky man sitting in the office chair, his legs resting on the desk in front of him and a comic book in his hands. He didn’t glance up at them.

Anna cleared her throat. “Ahem.”

“Oh, hello. Welcome to Motel Dixie. Can I help you this evening?” the man asked, peering over his comic book. It was obvious from the dismissive tone in his voice that he didn’t really want to help them; it actually sounded like he wanted them to just go away.

“We have a reservation here for tonight,” Anna told him.

“Oh?” The man sounded bored by the conversation they were having. He continued to stare into the colorful pages of
the comic book he was reading.

“Yeah, they’re both under my name.” When the guy didn’t even bother to look up at her, she said frustratedly, “Excuse me, sir. Can you please give us
our room keys?”

The man rolled his eyes and set the comic book down. He grabbed two keys from a key holder that hung on the wall. “Here you go,”
he said, handing them to her.

Anna raised her eyebrows at him. “Don’t you need to know my name?”

The man shook his head. “No, I don’t. They’re the only two rooms that were registered to the same person tonight. This motel never sees many visitors. It’s the most business we’ve had in a few months—three rooms occupied at one time.” The man shrugged. “In any case, the two of these are yours. Rooms two and seven . . . Enjoy.”

“Thanks,” Anna mumbled, taking the keys from him. She opened the door and walked out of the office. Austin followed close behind.

“See, this isn’t going to be as bad as we originally thought it was going to be,” Austin told her. “We’re staying at a really quiet, low-key place. And we’ll be a few rooms away from Dan and Lexi, so we won’t hear anything, if you know what I mean.”

“And they won’t hear
us
.” Anna grinned at him. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. This won’t be so bad, after all.”

When Dan and Lexi saw Austin and Anna approach the car, they climbed out. “I’m looking forward to seeing what our bathroom looks like,” Dan said. “If the tub’s big enough, I might want to take a bubble bath.”

Lexi laughed loudly. “Maybe I’ll join you.” She turned to Anna and held out her hand. “Can we have our key?”

“Well, I’ll just open your door for you. Austin and I will peek inside,” Anna replied with a smile. “You can have room number two. Seven is my lucky number.”

“Seven is our lucky number,” Austin corrected her.

Anna turned to look at him and raised a brow. “It is?”

Austin nodded. “Yeah, well . . . the first time we met was October seventh. I think that makes it a pretty lucky number.”

Anna stared back at him with a dumbfounded look on her face. “It was? How do you remember that? Because I definitely don’t.”

“I wrote it down on my calendar,” Austin kidded. “Nah, seriously . . . It was the day of one of my away games. We won that day, and it was because of me. I guess that should have been my sign that you were my lucky charm.”

Anna smiled. “I should have known you would remember because of football.” She turned the key in the doorknob of Room Two. When she pulled the door open, she turned on a lamp and gasped loudly.

All Austin could hear from inside the
room was the squeaking of the
mice. He didn’t even realize
at first that the black dots moving along the walls were cockroaches or that there appeared to be a green fungus growing on the ceiling.

Chapter 9

It took Lexi a few moments to close her mouth because her jaw was hanging open in shock at the condition of their room. “No. No way,” she said aloud. “I’m not spending the night here.”

“Lexi.” Anna turned to look at her. “We’re already here now. We don’t have anywhere else we can sleep for the night.”

“We can book one of those other hotels,” Lexi insisted. “You know the ones that are sixty miles away or whatever. It’s an hour away, but it would be well worth the drive.”

“You’re right. That’s not really that far, but there were no vacancies.” Anna sighed. “We’re stuck here, at least for tonight.”

Lexi rolled her eyes. “Maybe I’ll just sleep in the car.”

“Oh, Lexi, stop being so ridiculous. You and me can handle a few mice and some cockroaches,” Dan insisted. “We slept on bales of hay when we in the 1800s. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to manage.” He paused. “I just won’t be able to take that bubble bath I was so looking forward to.”

Lexi sighed. As much as she didn’t want to spend the night in the motel, she didn’t want Dan to think she was acting like a whiny, high-maintenance bitch, either. Even though her mother had been a prominent physician at a hospital, she had never spoiled Lexi. If anything, Lexi had been more spoiled since living at Huntington. Even so, she didn’t mind spending a night or two in a hotel—or motel—that was less than stellar.

But this motel stunk—and not just in a metaphorical sense. It literally smelled like someone had been murdered in the motel room and their body had been left there to rot for weeks . . . or maybe even months.

“I guess we better head back to our own room to see if there’s any surprises for us there,” Austin said, turning to the door. He glanced over his shoulder. “If our room is much cleaner than yours, we’ll let you know and we can all hang out there for the night. Since only two of us actually need to sleep.”

“I doubt it will be much better,” Lexi muttered. Once Austin and Anna left the room, she glanced around for a place to put her duffel bag, but she wasn’t about to put her belongings on the stained, musty carpeted floor.

“Shouldn’t you be able to do something about the mice and bugs?” Dan asked, turning to look at her.

Lexi raised her eyebrows at him. “Do I look like an exterminator to you?”

“Well, no, not exactly. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to help us get rid of them.”

Lexi hesitated. “I guess I could go to the front desk and file a complaint, but that seems pretty pointless. It’s not like they’ll clean it for us right now.” She eyed the room. “It looks like it would take forever to clean this place.”

Dan laughed. “True, but filing a complaint isn’t what I meant, either.” He met her eyes. “I’m talking about magic.”

Magic . . . of course! Why hadn’t Lexi thought of that herself? Even though Lexi knew that her powers didn’t work with the twitch of her nose, there had to be
something
she could do to make
spending the night in the room slightly more bearable.

And then it clicked. Lexi realized what she had to do. She walked over to the door and left it open on a crack. She then turned back to the room and closed her eyes. The words began to flow from her lips before she even had a chance to think about them. “Little critters, with nowhere to go, leave this place, find a new home. Set out into the darkness of night. Make yourselves out of mi
nd and out of sight.”

She watched, in awe, as four mice scurried out of the room. They were followed by a line of cockroaches, who were now marching out the door like a line of ants.

Lexi turned to Dan, pleased with herself. “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”

Dan grinned. “I didn’t think it would be.”

“I’m not sure there’s much I can do about that, though,” Lexi said, pointing her chin at the dirty bedding. Wrinkling her nose, she sat down at the tiny round table.

Dan brushed her hair behind her ear and leaned down closer to her. Lexi could feel his breath against her neck, and it felt hot. Ever since she’d gained her immortality, Dan’s body had felt so warm to her . . . something that she hadn’t experienced before. When she was still human, she could only feel how cold he always was.

Parting her lips with his own, Dan pressed his mouth against hers. Lexi felt her heart pause in her chest. She grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled him in closer to her, kissing him hungrily.

She knew what Dan was leading up to and that knowledge excited her.

When she felt his teeth break through her skin, Lexi tried to hold back the moan that built up in the back of her throat, but then she reminded herself that she didn’t need to hold back like she did at Huntington. When Dan drank from her there, she tried to stay quiet so the other students wouldn’t know what they were doing in their dorm room.

Here, she could be as loud as she wanted, so as he swirled his tongue around her skin, lapping up the blood that rushed out of her veins, she let it all out. And the louder she moaned, the more hungrily Dan seemed to drink from her.

Once he was done, he leaned back and looked at her, a satisfied look in his sky blue eyes.

Lexi smiled. It was the same look that he had in his eyes when he’d drank from her before she’d become an immortal—the same look that let her know that he, for certain, was her soul mate.

Chapter 10

“This is the big surprise?” Gabe asked, glancing around the skeevy motel room that he and Rhonda were staying in.

Rhonda nodded. “Yeah, well, this is part of the surprise. If you stay right here, I’ll go get the rest of the surprise for you.”

Gabe raised his eyebrows at her. “You had the surprise sent here before we arrived?” It sort of made him feel awkward to think that she had been planning this ahead of time. He still wasn’t sure how she had convinced him to come to Boston with her, but they were here now.

“Something like that,” Rhonda muttered under her breath. Glancing at Gabe, she winked. “Don’t worry, it’s going to be one of your best surprises
ever
. I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay.” Gabe slumped down on the bed—which had a softer mattress than he was expecting—as Rhonda left their room.

Rolling over towards the wall, he closed his eyes. How had things gotten to this point? A few months ago, he thought that he was going to be happy and with Lexi for the rest of his life—or until she died, at least . . . since that was bound to happen eventually. That was the reason he had
never gotten involved with mortals before now; their lives were too short for him to allow himself to truly fall in love with them.

Lexi had been different, though. He never understood what was so different about her, but from the first moment he’d met her that day at Austin’s funeral, he knew right away that he was going to feel strongly for her.

Why did he have such strong feelings for her right away, though? Was it because she reminded him so much of Caroline, the only girl who he had ever loved before her? They both had similar features; they were both blonde with fair skin. At first Gabe even thought that Lexi acted like Caroline, too, but he had been wrong. Lexi and Caroline were nothing alike. Lexi was very strong-willed, whereas Caroline had obeyed all of her parents’ wishes for her . . . even when it came to ending her relationship with Gabe.

As much as that sounded like a bad thing, it actually comforted him, in a way. When Caroline ended their relationship, it wasn’t because she didn’t want to be with him; it was because she had seen no other way than to give into what her parents wanted for her.

Lexi, though, was a whole other story. Sure, Gabe hadn’t done anything to help their relationship. He shouldn’t have killed Justin. If he hadn’t, he and Lexi might still be together. But, at the end of the day, Lexi was the one who had decided she didn’t want to be with Gabe.

They weren’t together because Lexi didn’t want to be with him . . . and that hurt.

Shifting in the bed, Gabe sighed. Thinking about it made his head hurt sometimes.

He heard the sound of a couple walking past the motel room. At first, Gabe thought it sounded like Lexi, but he decided that he must have been imagining things. There was no way it could be Lexi when she was back at Huntington, and he was in Boston.

Gabe glanced over in the direction of Rhonda’s stuff; she had only packed one single suitcase that sat next to his own belongings.

Why had he agreed to come here with Rhonda? It didn’t matter how hard Gabe thought about it; he still couldn’t seem to figure out the answer. Then again, that always seemed to be the case with Rhonda. He could never figure out why he did anything she wanted him to do.

Was it
because he had feelings for her, too? Even though Gabe had been clear of what his feelings for Caroline and Lexi had been, he didn’t really understand the way he felt about Rhonda. She was attractive, sure, and there were even times when he was pretty sure that he really did care about her, in some way. He just wasn’t sure if it was romantic. Actually, he was pretty sure that it
wasn’t
romantic . . . although there were also times when he did have sexual urges, and Rhonda was one who he turned to.

In the darkness of the quiet motel room, Gabe realized that tonight was one of those times. For some reason that he couldn’t seem to explain, he wanted to have sex with Rhonda.

Resting his head against the pillow, Gabe wondered when Rhonda would come back to their room.