Burn Like Fire (8 page)

Chapter 15

Back inside Westbrooke Vampire Training Facility, Lexi watched as the frown crossed Darius’s face. “I’m sorry, Anna. Please tell me that your mother told you about all of this . . . about her volunteering as a blood donor at Westbrooke.”

Anna shook her head, her dark brown and pink highlighted hair moving with it. She looked small and fragile, like a kitten. When she spoke again, Lexi could hear the tears of surprise in her voice. “No, my mother never said anything about it.”

“I didn’t mean for this to be such a big shock to you,” Darius said. “Why don’t you step inside my office so I can have a word with you about your mother’s situation in private?” His eyes drifted over to Lexi and then to Dan and Austin. Lexi found herself getting offended; it was like
Darius didn’t think they were trustworthy enough to tell Anna whatever he was going to say to her in front of them.

Anna shook her head and placed her hands on her hips. “No. Anything you have to say in front of me, you can say in front of them, too.”

Darius studied Anna’s face carefully for a moment, as though he were sizing her up, before nodding. “It is your decision, of course. Some of the things that you learn may surprise you.”

“Try me.” A look of triumph filled Anna’s chocolate brown eyes, as she tilted her head, daring Darius to tell her everything he knew about her mother’s relationship to Westbrooke.

Darius’s eyes darted down the hallway. “Are you sure you don’t want to step into my office? Your friends are welcome to come, too.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “I don’t really care if everyone in this building hears what you have to say about my mom. It doesn’t matter what you say because,” she said, glancing around the empty hallway, “because my mom is
dead
. And, apparently, you know what happened to her. So, please, just start talking.”

“Okay,” Darius sighed relentlessly and cleared his throat. “Your mother, Annemarie, first came to Westbrooke during the summer of 1988. She’d heard about us because her old college roommate, Lisa White, was also a donor here. Lisa had insisted that Annemarie had to try it out for herself. The first time I saw Annemarie, she looked so young and innocent, but she was also really head-strong. It was obvious just from taking one look in her eyes that you didn’t tell her what to do.”

Lexi watched as Darius closed his eyes, as though he were remembered what had happened like it were yesterday. When he glanced back up at Anna, he had a nostalgic look in his hazel eyes. “When your mother first came here, I tried to tell her to leave. We were still in the testing stages of our facility, and I wasn’t sure how safe it would be. Our vampires were getting stronger by the day, and even though we emphasized that we wanted them to practice self-restraint, we also knew that we had to be practical. As much as we didn’t want a vampire attack to occur, it was a real possibility.

“But Annemarie . . . your mother . . . she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. She was positive that being a donor was what she wanted to do. I thought it was because she had some weird vampire fetish, or that it was because she wanted to experience how truly pleasurable it can be to allow a vampire to drink from you. But neither of those reasons had anything to do with why Annemarie wanted to be one of our blood donors. The real reason was because she wanted to help us.”

Darius glanced down at his hands, with a small smile on his face. “Your mother thought that we deserved the chance to feed under controlled conditions if it helped us learn to use more restraint when we were exposed to human blood. When I asked her if she was afraid of us, she stared back at me with a blank expression and said, ‘You’re standing across the room from me, and even though I have a cut on my finger that’s covered with a Band-Aid, you’re not trying to kill me. You may be a vampire, but it doesn’t mean you lack a heart’.”

“How many times did my mom donate her blood here?” Anna asked quietly. From the tone in her voice, Lexi could tell that the idea of her mom donating blood to random vampires at this facility made Anna feel disgusted.

It even made Lexi feel disgusted, and she had never actually met Anna’s mother. It was hard for her to understand how someone could volunteer to be a part of this world. Lexi had fallen into this life because she hadn’t had any other choice, but if she had been told that there were vampires out there who wanted to drink from random women, she would have been terrified. There was no way she would have been able to go through with being a blood donor.

“How often your mom donated varied by year,” Darius replied to Anna. “Are you aware that your mother lived in Ohio at one point?”

Anna shook her head. “No, I didn’t know.”

“When she first began donating, she would fly out from California once every few weeks, but the cost of flying halfway across the country just got to be too expensive for her. She said she wanted to make more of an impact on Westbrooke, and I think she had other reasons for wanting to live here.” Darius smiled to himself, and Lexi got the feeling that something had happened between him and Anna’s mom. “Anyway, she lived out here for a good number of years, but eventually, she left. And then she met your father and had you. During that time, she would still donate, but her visits became fewer and fewer—usually once or twice a year.”

“Her ladies’ weekends,” Anna whispered, seeming to piece things together.

“Ladies’ weekends?” Austin asked, sounding curious about whatever Anna had figured out.

“My mom would always say that she went away one or two times a year on ‘ladies’ weekends’,” Anna explained, making air quotes with her fingers. “She claimed to go on getaways with her girlfriends from college, but I bet she was really coming here.”

“I’m pretty sure she did say that was her excuse for her absences,” Darius agreed, nodding his head.

“Okay, so, now I know my mother was a donor here, but you still have yet to tell me . . . what does any of this have to do with her death?” Anna stared back at Darius through narrowed eyes.

Darius sighed. “I can’t tell you for certain that I know who killed your mother, but I do believe I know who it was. There was a vampire who we were training at our facility. His name was Geoff. He drank from your mother on two separate occasions. He was staying here for about eight months. The day before your mom was murdered, Geoff disappeared from our facility.”

Leaning against the wall, Darius met Anna’s gaze. “That might not sound all that weird—for a vampire to leave our facility at their own will, but it’s not in their contracts. When vampires choose to stay at our facility, they agree to a minimum of two years. Some of them even agree to five right away. So, Geoff had one year and four months to finish before it was okay for him to leave Westbrooke, and he happened to leave the day before your mother’s murder? And no one here has heard from him since. It doesn’t seem like much of a coincidence to me.”

As goose bumps creeped down her arms, Lexi glanced around the hallway. She suddenly felt weird knowing that the vampire who had most likely killed Anna’s mom had probably lurked around this very same hallway at one point.

“That doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me, either,” Anna murmured. She pointed her chin higher in the air, as though she were trying to prove that she was brave enough to say whatever she had to say next. “But how do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

Darius stared back at her blankly. “Why would I lie to you about this?”

“It seems to me like you might be trying to divert the attention away from someone else—like maybe yourself. How do I know
you’re
not really the one who killed my mother?” Anna questioned.

Darius didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Lexi was positive she saw a look of pain pass through his eyes. “You think I killed your mom?”

Anna shrugged. “I’m not ruling you out as a suspect. Why was it so important to you for me to come here? You could have just told me this information over the phone if you really wanted me to know about your facility,” she said, pointing her chin at the hallway around them. “But you insisted that I come here to meet you instead. Why? So you could kill me, too? If that’s all you want to do, why don’t you just get it over with?”

Lexi noticed that Anna was reaching in her pocket for something. It took Lexi a moment to realize what it was, but when she did, her stomach tightened. Anna was reaching for a pack of matches; she was preparing to light Darius on fire in the event that he tried to attack her.

Lexi wanted to warn Anna that this was a bad idea. Hadn’t she paid any attention in Conflagration Studies—otherwise known as Fire Studies—class? Although it was possible to kill a vampire by using fire, it took a lot of planning in order to make it work. The vampire had to be locked inside a burning building long enough to actually die. Otherwise, their organs would simply regrow, and the flames and fumes wouldn’t actually kill them. It took hours for them to actually die.

Just as Lexi was about to take a step closer to Anna and pinch her wrist, to make sure that she didn’t actually go through with this, Darius spoke again, focusing his gaze on Anna. “Anna, the truth is, I didn’t kill your mother. I couldn’t have . . . I loved her.” He inhaled deeply. “The reason I insisted that you come here to our training facility, the reason I wouldn’t give you the information over the phone or by letter, is . . . I had to meet you. You’re all I have left of Annemarie.”

Anna shifted awkwardly in her shoes, but she pulled her hand out of her pocket. Lexi breathed a sigh of relief.

Anna wasn’t going to try to set Darius on fire. His words must have been believable to her—and why wouldn’t they be? Even Lexi found herself feeling sorry for the poor guy. Whether Anna’s mom was married or not, it still had to be sad to lose someone who you really love.

When Anna glanced over her shoulder at Dan and Lexi, her eyes also had an empathetic look in them. “Guys, would you mind giving me some time alone with Darius?”

Lexi tugged at Dan’s sleeve and smiled at Anna. “Sure. We’ll just go take a walk. Take all the time you need.”

As they began to walk away, Lexi heard Austin ask, “I get to stay, right?”

“Actually, Austin,” Anna said, a note of hesitation in her voice, “I would appreciate it if you could give me a minute or two with him, too. If that’s okay.”

“Oh.” Austin sounded surprised by Anna’s decision. “Okay. I’ll be back.”

Lexi and Dan stopped to wait for him. Once he caught up to them and they were down the long hallway,
Austin whispered, “I don’t know why I couldn’t be there for this.”

Dan shrugged. “She probably just needs her privacy, dude. It’s gotta be tough, you know—finding out her mom had an affair and everything.”

“Yeah, I know,” Austin agreed.

As they rounded a corner, Lexi nearly bumped into someone.

“Watch where yer goin’,” a voice barked, until the woman turned to see who had almost bumped into her. “Lexi?”

“Gertie?” Lexi asked, laughing nervously as a mix of emotions washed over her. As nice as it was to see a familiar face, she also felt confused about what Gertie was doing at Westbrooke. She asked the first question that popped into her mind. “Are you a vampire?”

Gertie laughed. “Little ‘ol me? Naw, of course not!” She glanced down the hallway nervously before turning back to Lexi. “It was my husband who was the vampire, you see. Well, my late husband, that is. He passed on a few months ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Lexi couldn’t help but feel truly sorry for Gertie. Even though her mom had never trusted the woman, Lexi did. She was one of the few people who had ever been nice to Lexi since she had arrived in Briar Creek and although she was known for not being able to keep a secret, she had been able to hide this from Lexi until now.

Lowering her voice, Lexi asked, “Did he have Wilkins’ Syndrome?” If she found out that Gertie’s husband had died from Wilkins’ Syndrome and she hadn’t done anything to prevent it, it was going to make her feel extremely guilty. The only person who she had ever bothered to attempt to save was Uncle Tommy. Saving him was the whole reason she’d become an immortal. Aside from that, though, she hadn’t tried to help anyone—mostly because it seemed like everyone was selfish, deranged, and out to get her.

Gertie shook her head. “No, my husband . . . he wanted to die. It sounds morbid, and maybe it is, but he wanted to die quietly at home.”

Lexi couldn’t ignore how sad Gertie looked talking about her husband’s death, and it made Lexi
wonder. Had her husband really chosen to leave her behind? Lexi understood not wanting to be an immortal. It wasn’t the right decision for everyone. She knew that Gabe had sometimes struggled with it. But why had Gertie’s husband opted to leave her behind instead of waiting to die after she was already gone? It didn’t make very much sense.

“My husband was having an affair,” Gertie explained, as though she were reading Lexi’s mind. “He had a whole other family and kids with a woman who I never knew anything about. He felt too guilty to go on, so he asked a friend of his to put a stake through his heart while we were at home.” Gertie shrugged her shoulders, and her eyes moistened a little. “Screw him. I’ll be better off without him.”

“What brings you here?” Dan asked, politely.

Gertie glanced over him, registering that he was there for the first time. “Well, even after her husband dies, a woman has needs, if ya know what I mean. Just because my husband’s gone doesn’t mean I have to give up vampires altogether, now does it?”