Crave 02 - Sacrifice (16 page)

It was close enough to the truth that they wouldn’t be able to tell. He forced himself to focus on his family, not to think of Shay at all. Their communion had shrunk now to just himself and them, no Ernst. And his connection, like Tamara’s, wasn’t as strong as it once had been.

“It all went wrong. Martin shot Ernst and tried to drag him outside. Richard ran to stop him, and Martin activated the bomb. It would have blown the whole lab up. It would have killed us all.”

Tamara let out a moan.

“Richard grabbed it and ran out into the woods. He threw it in the ravine before it went off,” Gabriel said.

“He went
outside
?” Millie whispered. “During the day?” Tamara rocked back and forth, hugging herself, her expression blank.

“He had no choice. He saved us all,” Gabriel said. Eventually, they would think to ask what Gabriel had been doing during that time and how he had ended up in the caves, but there were more important things to think about first.

There was a stunned, devastated silence for a moment.

“I’m sorry, Tamara,” Gabriel said quietly. “It should have been me.”

Tamara looked up at him then. “Yes,” she said. “It should have. Ernst woke
you
up to help, not Richard.” She dissolved into tears. “Not Richard.”

Gabriel closed his eyes, but he couldn’t close out the emotions roiling through their communion. Tamara and Richard had been together for years. She was grieving, and it was his fault. All of this was his fault—Ernst’s paralysis, Richard’s death, Shay’s anger . . . and Sam’s murder. Because that’s what it was, murder. At the time it had seemed like the only choice, like justice for the fact that Sam had chosen love over his family.

I wish I’d been as clear-sighted as Sam,
Gabriel thought.
Sam knew that if he wanted to be with Emma, he had to leave the family. If only I’d run away with Shay, if only I’d never brought her here . . .

It didn’t matter. Shay would still have found out the truth about what happened to her father. She’d never forgive Gabriel, and it was right that she shouldn’t. He didn’t deserve her forgiveness. But while he couldn’t save his relationship with Shay, maybe he could still save his family.

“What about the fire? Did the humans come here?” he asked aloud.

Millie and Luis shook their heads. “We didn’t even know about a fire,” Luis said. “We haven’t left the lodge, except when Millie followed you to the cave.”

“And Ernst is unresponsive?”

“Yes.” Millie sounded scared.

“Luis, check the front. The forest outside was on fire, but it started down in the ravine. It’s a fifty-foot drop. It’s possible that the fire stayed mostly down there or went up the other side. Richard threw the explosives there on purpose.”

Tamara moaned.

Luis frowned. “The fire alarms aren’t going off.”

“But the firefighters may have tried to get in anyway, to use the lab as a base of operations or to evacuate anyone inside,” Gabriel said. “It’s okay if they see you now—make up a story about being in the caves with the bats. We’re all awake. I just couldn’t risk them finding out we were here during our death sleep.”

Luis nodded and headed off toward the lobby.

“It will be better if we can say the fire damaged our facility,” Gabriel said. “In fact, I’ll turn the sprinkler system on and let the water destroy the place. It gives us an excuse to drop the bat research and close down the lab.”

“Close it down? You mean leave?” Tamara asked. Her voice was dull, but her emotions were still out of control.

“We have to, as soon as possible. Tonight,” Gabriel said. It meant leaving Shay alone as a new vampire. Now that he was stronger, and the sun was gone, he could feel his communion with her. He felt hunger, fear, and desperation. She needed him, and her emotions were strong enough that he could follow them to her. But she’d never accept help from him—not after what she’d found out. She had run from him, and he still felt anger boiling beneath her other feelings. He had lost her forever.

At least he could be here for his family. Get them to safety. After that . . . what did it matter? He’d lost her. “Our location is compromised—Martin knows where we are, and he won’t come alone next time,” Gabriel told his brother and sisters. “And besides, we can’t risk staying here. Even if the firefighters didn’t come today, they’ll come soon. The university will send people to check on the lab. The authorities will notice if we’re not around during business hours. This is only a safe place for us if we’re left alone.”

“But the people at Duke . . .” Millie’s voice trailed off.

“If necessary, we simply disappear. I’d prefer to use the fire as an excuse so we don’t raise too many questions.” Gabriel took a deep breath. “Tamara, get all the research off the computers—just send everything we have to the university. Millie, take care of Ernst. We’ll have to go to the house in Indiana, which means leaving within the hour.”

“What about our things? The vault?” Millie asked.

She was asking about Shay. But Gabriel wasn’t about to discuss that, not yet. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We’ll have to leave everything.”

“But—”

“Go! We have to move fast,” Gabriel barked. “We can deal with loose ends once we’re safe.”

Millie nodded, wide-eyed. They had emergency plans in place for times like this, but it was usually Ernst giving the orders. Gabriel felt like a fraud taking charge. He was the next oldest, Ernst’s second-in-command—his family would do what he said.

But he knew that the instant the hawthorn wore off and Ernst could talk, he would tell them all what Gabriel had done. And once
they knew Gabriel had chosen to save Shay instead of Richard, they would turn on him.

I’ll get them to safety first,
Gabriel told himself.
They’re still my family, and I’m the one who has put them in danger.

It wouldn’t be enough. But it was all he could do.

Shay took a deep breath, and for the first time all day, her shoulders relaxed. Suddenly, her head felt clear. Well, more clear than it had, anyway.

The sun went down.

She knew it as certainly as if she were outside watching the sunset over the horizon. It was gone from the sky, and the pressure of it was gone from her body.

Shay didn’t move from her spot in the dark cave. She hadn’t moved since she fell down here, at first because it hurt too much, and then because the feeling of her cracked skull healing itself had freaked her out too much. She hadn’t been aware of the sun—even when she was up there near the cave entrance, it had been overcast and gray. But apparently, her vampire senses had been tracking the sun all day.

Fighting with the sun all day,
she corrected herself.
I wasn’t even supposed to be awake during daytime. No wonder I felt like I was losing my mind.

She sat up slowly, waiting for her head to spin the way it had earlier. But it didn’t. Everything in the cave looked as sharp and clear as before, and she could still hear water dripping from a mile away. But her brain didn’t seem stuffed with cotton anymore.

Maybe if you become a vampire during the day, it messes up the
system,
she thought. Well, why should this be any different? Her body had never done what it was supposed to when she was human either.

“Okay. Let’s try this again,” she said aloud, hoping the sound of her own voice would stave off the loneliness she felt. By herself, at the bottom of a cave somewhere in the mountains in Tennessee, far from her mother or her friends . . . or Gabriel. If she thought about it, the terror of her situation might crush her. So instead, she focused on the one thing she felt more than anything else.

Hunger.

She was ravenous.

Her body had fully recovered from that fall onto solid rock, and she felt incredibly strong. She peered up at the ledge she’d tumbled off of. In her visions Gabriel had jumped distances like that. Shay bent her knees and gave it a try, springing upward with almost no effort. This time she landed on the cliff. The cave entrance smelled different—less plant and more animal. Or maybe that was her hunger?

It was dark outside, and she didn’t hesitate. She ran right through the cave, ducking down to fit under the three-foot-high overhang of rock. The rain had stopped, but the ground was still wet.

Shay stood still and looked around, enjoying the cold air on her skin. She was on a mountainside, but at a low elevation. There were trees everywhere and thick underbrush. She couldn’t see a path or a road or even an electric light.
I am really in the middle of nowhere,
she thought.

Something moved in the bushes, and Shay’s head snapped toward it. Her hunger was growing by the second. It wasn’t like anything
she’d ever felt before. No rumbling stomach or head rush from low blood sugar. This was a full-body ache, like there was some vital part of herself that was missing. She thought that she might die if she didn’t eat soon.

Eat what?
she thought.
What does that even mean?

She was a vampire. She had to drink blood. Gabriel had told her that his body couldn’t even digest regular food.

The thought made Shay queasy. She’d drunk blood from Gabriel on several occasions. It hadn’t bothered her—she’d needed his blood to live. It gave her strength. So this was no different. She needed blood to live.

But it won’t be Gabriel’s blood,
she thought. And that’s where the queasiness came in. Gabriel had wanted her to drink, and she’d been almost in a trance every time she did. She’d been so immersed in the visions of his life that she was barely even aware of the actual blood in her mouth and throat.

But it wouldn’t be Gabriel’s blood this time—or ever again. And there wouldn’t be visions. He’d said that vampires didn’t get visions, and none of his family had seemed to believe her that she had them. Gabriel had figured it must be some strange side effect of her half-vampire nature.
I’m a full vampire now, so no more blood visions,
she thought a little sadly.

It made her long for Gabriel, just for a second. She didn’t want to see him, not now that she knew what he’d done to her father. But she desperately wished she could go back to the Gabriel she had thought he was, the one who loved her and who saved her. The one who was her father’s best friend.

That was never true,
she told herself.
Gabriel was lying to me about
Sam the entire time. He knew that he’d murdered my father, and he didn’t tell me. I can’t ever forgive him for that.

The bushes moved again, and a fox suddenly darted out and sped off down the hill. Shay stared after it for a moment, wondering what on earth had happened to her. Sick girls weren’t allowed to go wandering around deserted mountainsides after dark, hanging with wild nocturnal animals. Her mother didn’t even like it when Shay stayed at Olivia’s house after dinnertime.

Slowly, she began walking down the steep hill, following the direction the fox had taken. She felt worried. She didn’t know what she was doing, and becoming a vampire was disorienting even with the whole family there for support.

Shay stopped short. That hadn’t been her thought.

It hadn’t really been a thought at all, she realized. Just a feeling. Worry. Concern over the strangeness of her situation.

But it wasn’t her own worry. Her worry had more to do with the fact that she was so, so hungry. Shay frowned. She began to jog. The sooner she found some kind of food, the sooner she’d feel better.

The sound of running water caught her attention, and she automatically turned toward it, breaking into a run. She was heading straight downhill, and at a pretty steep angle, but she wasn’t scared. Her feet hit the ground with total confidence, and she sped around trees and jumped small bushes without even thinking. She wasn’t the least bit tired.

Before long, she found the water—a medium-size stream flowing from somewhere higher up.

Shay stopped and looked around. Now what?

A burst of guilt hit her, so strong and bitter that she gasped.
Guilt, depression, misery . . . it brought tears to her eyes.

But why?
She shook her head, trying to shove the feeling away. It made no sense. She had nothing to feel guilty about. She’d been thinking about how to find blood, and suddenly this overwhelming emotion.
It’s not my feeling,
she thought.
Just like the worry from before. It’s not me.

Shay drew in a breath, forcing herself to concentrate. The guilt melted away. But before she could relax, it was replaced by something else.
Love.
Deep and strong. And then guilt again.

“Oh my God, it’s Gabriel,” she muttered. “It’s his psychic link thing.”

He’d told her about it a few times, and she had felt it—sort of—during the blood ritual to transform her. The communion, he’d called it. He’d said that she would be linked to him because he transformed her.

Shay groaned. Gabriel was the only guy she’d ever loved, and he had taken away her family before she was even born. Because of him, her mother had been angry and miserable for years. She herself had felt abandoned since the day she was born. Because of Gabriel, she would never know her father.

And now she had to have him in her head, forever? Of all people in the world, she had to feel Gabriel’s emotions? The one person she never wanted to think about, and there he was, shoving his feelings at her.

“Screw that,” she said, jumping the stream. There was some kind of animal on the other side, a beaver or a muskrat or something. It was busily chewing on a log along the banks. Shay didn’t let herself think, and she definitely didn’t let herself
feel
, because who knew whether
it would be her own emotion or Gabriel’s? She just snatched up the animal with the lightning-fast speed she now had, and she brought it to her mouth.

Her fangs extended instantly, and she bit.