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

said. Lexi
thought that she noticed a nervous tone in his voice. “There was
also a girl standing guard on the other side of the house, but I
killed her right away.”
    “You killed her?” Lexi shrieked, twisting her
head back to look at Dan. Realizing how loud she had been, she
covered her mouth with her hands.
    “I killed all of them, Lexi,” Dan said, looking down
at the ground. Lexi could tell that he wasn’t proud of what he had
done. Still, she couldn’t believe that he had done it for
her at all.
    “Why would you kill someone to save me? I mean, I’ve
been such a bitch to you.”
    Dan shrugged, meeting her eyes with his own blue
eyes, which sparkled in the moonlight. “I couldn’t just let them
kill you. I have to bring you home . . . and not just for the
reasons you think.”
    “Then why?” Lexi asked. “If it’s not just so I can
be the town blood donor, why do you need to bring me home?” She
decided that she shouldn’t mention right now that she didn’t
consider Briar Creek to be her home.
    “Because,” Dan replied, tucking a piece of hair
behind Lexi’s ear. “If something were to happen to you here, I’d
never forgive myself.”
    Lexi stared into his eyes, studying them to see if
he was telling the truth. Dan stared back at her without blinking.
As much as she wanted to believe that he was a creep, it seemed
like he was being honest with her right now. Her mom had told her
to trust her instincts – and her instincts told her that she should
believe him.
    Glancing around at her surroundings for the first
time since she had woken up, Lexi realized that they weren’t behind
the bushes next to Albert and Belinda’s house anymore. Instead,
they were lying next to the river bank. Lexi could see the house
through the trees, but it seemed like they would be well-hidden
from Albert and Belinda if either of them should look out the
window. “How did I get here?” Lexi asked.
    “I carried you over here after I killed them,” Dan
explained, running a hand through his sandy blonde hair. “I washed
your wounds with water from the river. You’ve lost a lot of blood,
so I don’t expect you to be feeling a hundred percent for a few
days – or at least not until we get some nutrients in your
body.”
    Lexi gave him a weak smile. It really seemed like he
was trying to keep her alive. If he really was against her, he
wouldn’t have gone through the effort of killing three vampires and
bringing her here to clean her up . . . would he have? Unless he
was trying to keep her alive so that he could take her back to
Briar Creek and become the town hero, Lexi seriously doubted that
he would have bothered with her. In fact, at one point, she would
have thought that Dan would have been the one to kill her, but
something had definitely changed since then. He seemed to genuinely
care. “How did you even find me?” Lexi asked.
    “Well, at first I was going to follow you from the
general store when you left me there. But then I knew that I didn’t
have to follow you because I’d be able to find you anyway. Without
your necklace, your scent is really strong,” Dan explained,
standing up and taking a step closer to the water. “So, earlier
this evening, I followed it to the woods near where you were
staying. I saw the other vampires when they came. They must have
been lured by your scent, too. Sorry I took so long. I couldn’t do
anything right away. I had to wait until the timing was perfect or
they probably would have ganged up on me.”
    Lexi stood up, balancing herself. She felt really
dizzy and weak, but she knew that she was going to be okay. “Thank
you for saving me,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how I’ll ever
be able to repay you, but . . . if you think of something, just let
me know.”
    Dan glanced over in her direction and smiled. “I’ll
keep that in mind. Are you hungry?”
    Lexi nodded. She was hungry – really hungry, in
fact. Dan must have been right. All of that blood loss