Cold as Ice
Cold as Ice
© 2012 by Jody Morse and Jayme Morse
Cold as Ice is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are products of the author’s imaginations or have been used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons or locations is coincidental and not intended by the authors.
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Chapter 1
The sound of shoes clacking against the tiled floor outside of Lexi’s dorm room at Huntington High filled her ears. She rolled over onto her side and pulled her blanket over her head, hoping that whoever it was would just go away. The last thing she needed right now was for anyone to see her like this, with her eyes red and puffy from crying.
She wasn’t that lucky, though. The door clicked open, and the sound of her cousin Austin’s laughter drifted into the room. It was followed by a fit of giggles from his girlfriend, Anna, who was also
Lexi’s roommate.
From her place under the blankets, Lexi rolled her eyes. How could Austin and Anna be so
happy and cheerful at a time like this?
“Is she sleeping?” Lexi heard her cousin ask Anna.
“Yeah, I think she’s asleep,” Anna whispered back to him.
“I think she’s really upset about this,” Austin said in a quiet voice. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”
There was a long pause. Finally, Anna replied,
in
her naturally high-pitched voice, “I think she’ll be okay once Dan comes back. I think she feels guilty.”
“Guilty about what?” Austin asked.
“She thinks it’s her fault that Dan didn’t come back
with her
. For the past three nights, she’s mumbled something
about leaving him there alone
in her sleep.”
She did?
Lexi didn’t remember anything like that, but her dreams had been really vivid so
it wasn’t all that surprising. In her dream, s
he
was
floating in the sky, staring down at Dan helplessly as her crazy, deranged half-sister, Mary-Kate, snuck up on him from behind, fully prepared to launch a stake—one of the only things that could kill him—into his heart. Lexi warned him to watch out, just as she was sucked out of the 1800s and back to the present time.
Every night, she replayed the memory over and over again in her mind. And somehow, it was more painful each and every time.
“Anna, what’s going to happen to Lexi if Dan
doesn’t
come back?” Austin asked quietly. There was a genuine sense of worry in his voice.
Lexi felt tears sliding down her cheek again, stinging her eyes and forming a new puddle on her
pillowcase.
“I don’t know,” Anna replied quietly. She, too, sounded worried. “I-I guess Lexi will just have to find a way to move on . . . to live with it.” She paused before asking, “Do you think Dan is alive, Austin?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t understand why he’s not back yet. I’ve been wishing for him to come back, and you know
damn well
that Lexi’s been doing the same. I wish we could all get inside that book and go find him
and bring him home. I hate seeing her like this
.”
“
I do too.
What if
we’re going about this the wrong way? We keep wishing for him to come back, and you know he must be doing the same, but what if it’s pointless . . . what if
the book is the problem?” Anna questioned. Austin didn’t say anything in response, but Lexi imagined him staring at his girlfriend blankly. Anna continued. “I mean, Lexi’s been trying to get inside the book, and she can’t. What if Dan’s been trying to get
out . . . and he can’t, either?”
“Let’s hope that’s
all that’s
going on,” Austin replied. “Because Lexi will be crushed if Dan never makes it back.”
A long moment passed before either of them said anything. All Lexi could hear was the sound of the clock ticking above her head. It annoyed her because it was only just another reminder that no matter how many minutes upon minutes and hours upon hours she waited, Dan might
never
be coming back.
“Do you want to go grab something to eat in the cafeteria?” Austin asked finally, breaking the
uncomfortable
silence
that had washed over the room.
Lexi rolled her eyes. It’s not like Austin even
had
to eat—vampires didn’t actually require food; her cousin just liked to eat it because his taste buds hadn’t died yet. But how could he even think of food at a time like this? His best friend was either dead or stuck in the 1800s with Mary-Kate (who also happened to be Austin’s ex-girlfriend).
Once she heard the door click open and close again, Lexi climbed out of bed and opened the book. She opened it to the “magical page” which she had bookmarked that could take her to the 1800s and read the words out loud. Her mind barely processed what she was reading because she’d done it so many times over the past three days in many unsuccessful attempts to travel inside the book to bring Dan back.
And, just like every other time she’d done it so far, nothing happened.
Lexi slumped back down in her bed and closed her eyes, deciding that the best thing she could do right now was sleep. With any luck, Dan would be back when she woke up.
But she seriously doubted it.
Just as she started to drift off to sleep, Lexi heard a knock at the door. Assuming that Anna was just having one of her friends check on her, like she had been doing over the past few days while she was busy attending her vampire hunting classes (which Lexi had been excused from due to her emotional state), she called, “Go away!”
“Lexi? It’s me,” a guy’s voice called back.
Lexi’s heart dropped to her knees. Even though she hadn’t heard the voice in a long time, she recognized it all too well. Before she could get up to greet him, he flung the dorm room door open.
Chapter 2
Her dad’s light green eyes, identical in color to her own, were kind and gentle—exactly the way she remembered them.
What she didn’t expect to see was that he hadn’t aged one bit since she was a child; there were no tiny wrinkles in the corners of his eyes like there should have been, and no sunspots on his fair skin. His hair wasn’t gray or balding; it was the same shade of cornflower blonde as it had always been.
Then again, she supposed that she should have been expecting that. Vampires didn’t age . . . and they couldn’t spend a lot of time in the sun unless they used a sunscreen designed specifically for their skin. That prevente
d skin damage for most of them, though she knew that vampires had powerful healing capabilities, anyway, if they weren’t seriously injured.
“Dad? What are you doing here?” Lexi asked quietly, glancing down at her outfit that consisted of a t-shirt and sweatpants—the same pair that she had been sporting for the last two days. Her hair was a mess from lying in bed all day, and her eyelids felt swollen from crying so much. Of all the times for her to reunite with her father since she was a child, it just had to be when she looked like complete and total shit.
“I live here, Lexi. At Huntington,” her dad reminded her. He raised a brow at her, and she knew that he was trying to decide if she was mentally stable. Even she knew that it seemed out of sorts for her
to forget something like that.
“Oh. That’s right.” Lexi stared down at her hands, feeling stupid for having forgotten. But it was partly his fault, too. She had been back to Huntington for days, and this was the first time he had come to visit her. “Why haven’t I seen you yet?”
Her dad glanced down at his clasped hands. “I’ve been away on business for the past few days. I’m sorry that I haven’t been to
see you sooner than right now.”
“It’s okay,” Lexi muttered. Nervously, she added, “I’m sorry I look like a wreck. I haven’t been feeling well lately.” She wasn’t about to tell him that the reason was because she was depressed over Dan, but something in his eyes told her that he al
ready knew that was the reason.
When she glanced back up at her father, he was staring at her intently. “You really need to stop worrying about Dan, Lexi.” Before she could protest or tell him that he didn’t have the right to tell her what to worry about since he hadn’t been in her life for so many years, he went on. “I saw him back in the 1800s, without you. He’s still alive . . . or at least, he was f
or a while after you were gone.”
Recalling that they had seen her father during their journey to the past, Lexi could feel her own eyes lighting up with hopefulness. “Are you sure it was with him?”
Her dad nodded his head. “Yes, it was Dan, the boy you were with when I saw you—the first time I ever saw you. Before I even knew I was going to have a daughter.” He smiled at the memory. “I’ll be honest. I thought you were a bit crazy at the time. It’s not every day I had a girl randomly come up to me at the market to tell me that she
was my child from the future. I could never forget it.”
“You must not have thought I was
that
crazy,” Lexi pointed out. “You seemed calm about it. You didn’t seem like you didn’t believe me. And you kept the bat pendant safe for me, just like I asked you to.”
Her father nodded and laughed.
“That
,
I did. As much as I thought you were crazy, I knew that you were honest. You did know that I was a vampire, after all. So, I kept the pendant safe for you because I knew that you were going to need it one day, for whatever reason. I didn’t know what the reason was at the time, but I knew it had to be important for you to ask me to hold it for you.”
Lexi frowned. “But Mary-Kate was your daughter first. How did you know you weren’t supposed to give the bat pendant to
her? She could have been the daughter who visited you in the 1800s?
” And considering there were two bat pendants, she was actually surprised that Ben hadn
’t given Mary-Kate one of them.
Benjamin shook his head. “I remembered your name. Alexandria, a name fit for a princess.” He chuckled at the memory that he had of bumping into Lexi in the 1800s and telling her that’s what her name reminded him of. “I didn’t name Mary-Kate because I knew that my decision might sway what her name would be. I probably would have named her Alexandria
, since I knew that I would have a daughter named Alexandria one day. At that point in my life, I hadn’t thought that I would have any more children
.
But, w
hen her mother chose the name Mary-Kate—a combination of her grandmother’s name and her mother’s name—I knew that s
he wasn’t the right daughter.
“When we found out that her mother couldn’t have any more children, that’s what made helped me realize she wasn’t the right woman for me.” When Lexi stared back at him questioningly, he explained, “I knew that I was destined to have another daughter. And then I met your mother.”
Lexi didn’t say anything in response. She had been wondering all this time why her father would leave Mrs. Lawrence for her mother; it seemed so heartless and selfish considering Mary-Kate had been so young at the time. But now that she knew the real reason, she couldn’t blame him. If he had stayed with Mrs. Lawrence, she wouldn’t be here.
Hesitantly, Benjamin added, “I-I always saw through Mary-Kate, you know.”
“What do you mean?” Lexi asked, surprised. How was it that their father who, as far as Lexi knew, rarely saw Mary-Kate knew what she was really like?
“It was always just a hunch,” Benjamin replied with a shrug. “She’s just like her mother—an emotional train wreck.”
Lexi raised he
r eyebrows at him in question. Out o
f all of the times she had seen Mrs. Lawrence, she hadn’t seemed stable, and the last time she saw Mary-Kate, she had tried to kill her, so she wasn’t about to disagree with him.
“Mary-Kate
would always do things to try to get my attention,” her dad explained. “I’ve caught her in many lies over the years. There was also the time when . . .” He trailed off.
“When what?” she pressed, curious to learn about the side of Mary-Kate that she hadn’t known existed until recently.
Her dad glanced up at her. “There was a time when she threatened to kill me if I reunit
ed with you.”
Lexi gulped. She had no idea her sister had interfered in her relationship with her father.
How could she?
It wasn’t fair. Mary-Kate had Greg, the crazy mayor who was her stepfather and adoptive father. It was none of Mary-Kate’s business if she and their father reunited.
“Is that why we . . . didn’t reunite?” Lexi
tentatively
asked her father. She hoped that she didn’t sound as pathetic and as lame as she felt for asking, but she really
wanted to know the answer. If Mary-Kate
was the reason, it would break her heart
that he had chosen to listen to her
, but it would be b
etter to know than to not know.
Benjamin shook his head, running a hand over the blonde stubble on his chin. “No, that’s not the reason why.”
“Then why?” Lexi squeaked. Even she had to admit that she sounded whiny, so she could only imagine how she sounded to her father, but she didn’t care. She wanted to hear from him the real reason why she hadn’t seen or spoken to him in years. Lexi had blamed herself for so long, but she knew now that she was older that it wasn’t
her fault
. Her father hadn’t been around for his own reasons. She just needed to know what they were
so that she could be at peace with them
.
“Your mother thought it was a bad idea for me to be
around
the two of
you,” Benjamin replied. “Mostly, she didn’t want you to be at risk. She knew that if you spent a great deal of time
with
me, you would come to understand what I was—what you were. She wanted you to be clueless as to your genes. I can’t say that I agreed with her at the time, but I respected her wishes.
We did what she thought was best for you.
”
Lexi’s face twisted in anger; she had thought
all along
that her mom was what had kept her
father
from speaking to her, but it made her mad to finally hear it from him. “You just let her have her way? Didn’t it bother you? To not talk to me? Or did you not even care?”
Her father reached over and grabbed one of her hands, but she pulled away from him. He explained, “Of course it bothered me, Lexi. But the truth is, I know now that your mother was right. I can’t blame her. You were better off in New Jersey. In fact, you should have been even further away from Briar Creek.
You should have been on the other side of the country. I don’t know what your mother
was thinking by bringing you back
here in the first place. I know that Gabe saw that it needed to happen, but I have to wonder if things would be different if your mother had enough common sense to keep you
both
away.”
“You’re blaming this on my mother?” Lexi whispered. It was the first time she’d heard someone else blame everything on her mother, and it made her feel angry. Part of her agreed that her mom hadn’t made the wisest decisions since she knew that vampires existed, but the other part of her wanted to defend her mom’s decisions, especially now that she was gone and could no longer defend
them
herself.
Letting go of her hand, Benjamin nodded solemnl
y. “She disobeyed me. After she had fled with you to New Jersey, and
people began to wonder where you were, I asked her to keep you away from your aunt and uncle,
and to break off all contact with them,
but she didn’t listen to me.” He glanced down at the ground, probably because he felt guilty when he realized that he had
told her
things that
she had been completely unaware of.
Lexi felt her eyes widening at this newfound information. “We cut off ties with Briar Creek because you asked my mom to stay away?”
Her father nodded. “I’m sorry, Lexi, but . . . it was in your best interest. Violet and Tom have wanted to
get back at
you for many years now, and I just thought—”
“I don’t care what you thought,” Lexi interrupted him. “Things might not have gotten to this level if you didn’t make us stay away. If I kept seeing Violet and Tom, I would have been closer to them and—” She paused, the teardrops stinging her eyes. “And they could have just asked me for my blood, and I would have given it to them willingly to help save them. Instead, they had my mother killed so they could get to me.”
“And I am terribly sorry for that,” Benjamin said. “If I could go back and change the past, I would. If it were up to me, I’d be a mortal, just like yourself, and neither of us would be in this mess. I live with this wretched guilt every day. I wake up every
day knowing that if I were not a vampire, our lives would be different. Your mother might be alive right now, and we would be the happy family that I envisioned us to be. But that’s not the way it is, Lexi. Your mother is dead, I am a vampire, and you are a Hunter. The most we can do is try to make our future better than the past has been.”
Lexi gaped at him. “You’re an insensitive asshole.” She didn’t normally disrespect her elders, but she just couldn’t help herself. It felt like
he
was disrespecting her mother, after all.
“Lexi, I’m not trying to be insensitive,” Benjamin replied, shaking his head. “I just think we need to look at the bigger picture right now. We need to figure out how to conquer the vampires of Briar Creek
once and for all
. Don’t you agree?
They’re a town away and all we’re doing is hiding out at a high school.
”