Change of Fate (The Briar Creek Vampires, #4) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (2 page)

In a way, Austin was almost relieved now that
Mary-Kate hadn’t taken him up on his offer. If she had, there’s a
good chance that she would be in the backseat right now instead of
Anna.

Austin glanced at Anna through the rearview
mirror. She was innocently gazing out the window. Austin smiled. He
had known Anna for a while, but he had only recently begun to
realize that she was the right one for him. Austin hated that it
had taken him this long to see it, even though he knew that he
should be grateful to have figured it out at all. If things had
gone according to his parents’ plan, he wouldn’t even be alive to
take a chance with her.

“So, where exactly are we going?” Craig asked
from the backseat.

Austin stared ahead at the highway; it felt
like it was a backdrop that was moving past him, and not the other
way around. He glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know.”

Chapter 2

****

“Ouch,” Lexi grunted as she fell, head first,
onto the thick, wet grass. Dan, who had been tightly gripping her
ankle, was tossed onto her back as he fell.

“Are you okay?” Dan asked.

“I’ll be a lot better if you get off of me,”
Lexi snapped.

Sitting up, she could feel the wet grass
soaking through her jeans. Bright colored daisies and pink flowers
that Lexi couldn’t identify covered the ground, telling her that
wherever they were, it wasn’t winter. The hot sun on her back made
Lexi strip off the hooded sweatshirt she had worn into the
Lawrence’s house. It appeared to be spring. That or they were in
another state with a much warmer climate – possibly somewhere out
West or in the South.

“What just happened?” Lexi asked Dan.

Dan shook his head. “I – I don’t know.” He
held up his arm. “Pinch me.”

Lexi reached over and pinched the inside of
his arm. Part of her was tempted to pinch so hard that it would
draw blood, but she knew that now wasn’t the time to take out her
anger on Dan. Wherever they were, they had ended up here together .
. . and they needed to stick together until they figured out what
was going on.

“Wow, this isn’t a dream,” Dan whispered. He
was so close to her face that when he spoke, Lexi could smell his
breath; it was an odd, sweet mixture of peppermint and cocoa.

“Nope, it’s real.” And that was unfortunate.
Ever since Lexi had found out that her Aunt Violet, Uncle Tommy,
and even her own father were vampires, her life had felt like an
out of this world, dream-like roller coaster that she just couldn’t
get off of.

Lexi stood up and glanced around. “We have to
figure out where we are. Maybe we can hitchhike our way back to
Huntington.”

Dan raised an eyebrow. “How are you so sure
that we’re just in another city? The way we were sucked into that
book, it felt like we were being pulled into another realm or
something.”

“Well, maybe we can find something that will
tell us where we are,” Lexi replied, shrugging. “A road sign or
something. Come on.” Lexi never thought that she would be telling
Dan, of all people, to come anywhere with her. Dan was Austin’s
best friend, and up until now, she had considered him to be one of
her worst enemies. Dan had formed an alliance with her Aunt Violet
and Uncle Tommy, even though Austin was convinced that Dan had good
intentions. Still, Lexi was never able to get over the fact that
Dan had attacked her. There wasn’t much that she could do about it
right now, though. Dan was here with her whether she liked it or
not – and having someone who she didn’t like along for the ride was
better than having no one at all, she supposed.

Lexi and Dan crept through the woods that
they had landed in. Everything seemed quiet . . . even quieter than
Briar Creek. When they reached a dirt road, they began walking up
it.

“Do you recognize this place?” Lexi whispered
to Dan. She wasn’t sure why she was whispering. Lexi just assumed
that, wherever they were, they could still be in danger. The book
had just reeled them in, but why? There had to be a reason – and
Lexi had a feeling that it wasn’t so they could be showered by rays
of sunshine and butterflies. Something darker had to be happening
here.

Dan shook his head, his scruffy blonde hair
moving with it. “No. I’ve never been here before. Do you?”

“No. That’s why I asked you.” Lexi scanned
the area for a road sign or even a street sign, but there was
nothing that would give them any clues as to where they were. She
turned to Dan. “Can you call Austin? Tell him that something
happened.”

Dan reached into his pocket and pulled out
his BlackBerry. He put the phone to his ear, and a few minutes
later, he started laughing. “We have no service. There’s not even
an operator to tell me that there’s an error.”

Lexi scowled. “Why is that funny, you moron?
That phone call might have been the only way for us to let Austin
know where we are! We have to
find
service.”

Dan continued to laugh. “Because isn’t it
obvious, Lexi? There are
only
dirt roads, there’s no cell
phone reception
and
no operators. Wherever we are, it’s
obviously not Briar Creek or any time in the present and unless if
we somehow ended up in Lancaster . . . we’re in the past.”

Lexi felt her forehead scrunch up as she
replied, “That’s not even possible. People don’t just go back in
time.”

Dan shrugged. “Normally, they don’t get
sucked into a book either. Besides, we’re not people.” He paused.
“Well, I’m not at least.”

Lexi sighed, getting his point. And he was
right. If vampires could exist, there was really no reason why time
travel couldn’t exist either. Even though Dan was right, the whole
concept just seemed so far-fetched. “Well, I have an idea,” Lexi
said.

An hour later, Lexi and Dan were standing
outside of the town’s small general store. Wherever they were, a
general store and a small diner appeared to be the only things that
this town had.

Lexi found what they were looking for stacked
in a large pile in front of the door. The newspaper displayed a
large headline: “Estimated 200 mysterious deaths” – an alarming
news story for such a small town. Lexi glanced to the top of the
newspaper. The date read: May 12th, 1822.

“Oh my God,” Lexi whispered, cupping her
hands over her mouth. A few people glanced over at her. The date
explained the long black skirts and the hats the women were
wearing; the neutral colors were appropriate for the time period.
It made Lexi’s own denim jeans and skin-revealing lacy tank top
stick out like a sore thumb. If Lexi and Dan were going to be stuck
in this town for any length of time, they were going to need to
find some new clothing so that they would blend in better.

1822. How in the world had they traveled back
to 1822? “I don’t understand what happened,” Lexi told Dan as they
walked down the dirt road, in the direction opposite of the way
they had come from. “All I did was open that book and read what was
on the page.”

“It must have had some sort of magic,” Dan
replied, following closely behind Lexi.

“How do you think we can get back?” Lexi
asked quietly as they passed by an old man dressed in a suit. He
eyed Dan’s polo shirt. At first Lexi thought he was looking at it
like it was inappropriate, but then she realized that there was a
look of curiosity on his face. He’d obvious never seen a polo shirt
before. Polo shirts hadn’t been around in 1822.

“I don’t know,” Dan replied. “First, we’re
going to have to figure out what you did to get us here in the
first place. Then, hopefully, we can reverse it.”

Lexi stopped dead in her tracks and whirled
around to look at him. “What do you mean what
I
did? Are you
blaming me for this?”

Dan shrugged. “You
are
the one who
opened the book and read what the page said. Not me. You should be
thanking me. I tried to save you and instead I got sucked in with
you.”

Lexi glared at him for a few minutes before
turning on her heel and stomping way. That was it. She had tried to
be nice to Dan so far, but this obviously wasn’t going to work if
he seriously blamed her for this. He made it seem like she had
planned to get stuck in the early nineteenth century . . . with
him, of all people.

Lexi didn’t need Dan to help her figure a way
to get out of here. She was going to be fine on her own, just the
way she had been before Gabe had come back to her after she thought
he had died after the car accident that he had tried to kill her
in.

Gabe. As much as Lexi was trying to stay
strong, she couldn’t help but feel pain when she realized that she
couldn’t just call him the same way she would have been able to do
if she was back in present time. And to think that Lexi had refused
to say goodbye to him the last time she had seen him because he had
cheated on her with Veronica. No, actually, she hadn’t. All she saw
was Veronica taking her clothes off in front of Gabe. That didn’t
mean that anything actually happened between the two of them. Maybe
Gabe was just as upset with Lexi for jumping to conclusions.

Lexi loved Gabe, and she was going to find a
way to get back into his arms as soon as she could – without the
help of Dan.

*

Lexi turned the corner and saw a small
rectangular building which featured a bell on its roof. Since she
had read all of the Little House on the Prairie books for her
fourth grade book reports, she immediately recognized it as a one
room schoolhouse.

Just then, the door opened and a few girls
came down the front steps. All of them were tall and slender, and
they all wore dark dresses that hit just above their ankles.

Lexi was about to cross the street and leave,
not wanting to draw attention to herself, when she realized that
the girls had already spotted her from across the road. Actually,
they hadn’t just spotted her; they were all staring at her and
whispering to each other.

Their whispering reminded Lexi of what her
first day of school at Briar Creek High had been like. Everyone had
seemed so interested in her – so intrigued by her – that it had
been uncomfortable. She’d been asked tons of questions about the
car accident and Gabe, which she hadn’t wanted to talk about. Of
course she hadn’t known at the time that all of the questions were
because everyone knew that she was a Hunter and that the
townspeople were in dire need of her blood.

“Hey, you,” one of the girls called. When
Lexi looked up, the dark-haired girl in the center of the group
nodded. “Yeah, you. Come here.”

Lexi felt the heat rise to her cheeks. Why
would this girl possibly want to talk to her? Reluctantly, she
crossed the dirt road. She searched for the right words to sound
polite. “Can I help you?”

“Do you attend school here?” the girl
asked.

Lexi shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

The girl folded her hands in front of her
skirt and stared at Lexi curiously. “Your outfit. There’s something
funny about it. It’s very . . . different. I’ve never seen anything
like it before.”

Lexi didn’t have to look down at her denim
jeans and hoodie to understand what the girl was talking about.
“It’s a new style from Paris,” Lexi lied. “My father got it for me
when he was stationed overseas.”

The girl stared back at her quizzically for a
few minutes before she seemed to accept her answer as the
truth.

“We also haven’t ever seen you around,” one
of the girls next to her, this time a blonde, spoke up. “Are you
new here?”

“We’re just passing through town,” Lexi
replied. “I should really go see if I can find my mother and father
now. They’re probably looking for me. It was a
pleasure
meeting you girls,” she said, adding a sarcastic emphasis. She
forced a tight smile before turning in the other direction.

If Lexi was going to be sticking around this
town for any period of time, she knew one thing was for sure: she
was going to have to find some new clothes to change into so that
she wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb any longer. She really
didn’t need – and didn’t
want
– any unnecessary attention
drawn on herself while she was here.

Chapter 3

****

Rhonda sat up in bed, wrapping the white
hotel room sheet around her body, as more of a protective barrier
than anything else from the college frat who she had met at the bar
the night before. His name was Dennis, and he was going to be a
dentist. What a joke.

After she’d killed her roommate, Michelle,
Rhonda hadn’t gone back to her dorm room. In fact, she knew that
she could
never
go back there. People would begin to suspect
what she had done, if they didn’t already. It probably didn’t help
that Rhonda had taken off immediately after she had finished
devouring every last drop of Michelle’s blood.

Now, she wanted more. Actually, scratch that.
Rhonda didn’t want more; she
needed
more.

Rhonda glanced over at Dennis, who was
snoring softly beside her. Normally, Rhonda wasn’t the type of girl
who just went home with a guy after meeting him for the first time,
though it seemed as though she were beginning to make a habit out
of it. First the cute guy, Gabe, and now Dennis. Tonight though, it
had been necessary, so she had chosen the least attractive guy she
could find in the bar in hopes that he wouldn’t turn her down.

Luckily for her, he hadn’t.

Rhonda leaned over and whispered, “I promise
this won’t hurt.” She knew that she was lying, though. When Gabe
had drunk from her, it had been one of the most painful experiences
in her life; at the same time, it had been a pleasurable sort of
pain. With any luck, Dennis wouldn’t even wake up.

Rhonda sank her teeth into Dennis’s neck,
puncturing his skin. The blood immediately began pouring out of the
wound and she lapped it up with her tongue.