Crave 02 - Sacrifice (18 page)

Shay slowed to a walk and veered into the parking lot. She paused for a moment and ran her fingers through her hair to check for leaves. She knew she didn’t look threatening. She was just a tiny girl on the outside. But she wanted to look more than safe. She wanted to look normal. Nice and normal. She smoothed down her shirt and put a smile on her face.

Okay, here I am. A nice, normal girl on my way to Pizza Hut. Kinda hungry.

“Hey, girl. Looking for someone to buy you beer?”

Shay turned toward the voice. A twenty-something guy sat in the front of a pickup parked on the other side of the lot. She’d smelled him, but she’d thought he was inside one of the stores. Sooner or later, she would learn how to gauge things like that.

“Come on over here,” he called. “I can hook you up.”

This is fate, or luck, or something,
Shay thought. She strolled over to the truck, and the guy rolled his window all the way down. “You’re looking for someone legal, am I right?”

Shay could smell that he’d already had several beers of his own. “You got me,” she said, holding up both hands in mock surrender.

“I just bought a six-pack, and I’m happy to share. Come on and sit with me,” the guy said.

He was making this too easy. Shay circled around the truck and got into the passenger side. It was perfect. The parking lot was dimly lit, and no one would be peering into the truck anyway. As long as there was no screaming.

What now?
she wondered.
Just grab him and bite? But how do I keep him from yelling?

She needed to cover his mouth. But she needed to do it gently. She didn’t want to end up breaking his neck or anything. All she wanted was a little blood, only enough to make sure she could get to the hospital without collapsing.

“What’s your name?” the guy asked. He popped the top of a can of Bud and handed it to her.

“Veronica,” she said. She didn’t know why she was bothering with an alias. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to believe drunk dude here if he started talking about some chick sucking his blood. But she’d always liked that name. And maybe it would make this easier.
I’m not me. I’m Veronica the Vampire. Feeding.

She pretended to take a sip of the beer. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she actually drank it and she didn’t want to have some horrible reaction in front of him.

“I’m Billy,” he told her.

She wished he hadn’t. A name made things personal. She wanted him to stay “drunk dude.” It would also help if he was being more obnoxious.

But she wasn’t going to stop. The scent of his blood was overwhelming. Her world narrowed down to that one scent. It was everything she wanted. Nothing else mattered. Shay’s fangs erupted.

Fast as she had gone after that muskrat back in the woods, Shay jerked toward him, pressed her hand over his mouth—careful, careful, careful—and drove her fangs into his throat. His blood warmed her own throat as she began to feed. In one of her visions she’d been with Gabriel the first time he fed. The sensations had felt so strong
that she wouldn’t have believed she was receiving them in muted form.

But this was mind-bending. It was like drinking music, so many flavors. And so many emotions—everything her Giver had ever felt was rushing through her, so fast that she didn’t have time to individually identify each one. It wasn’t like the blood ritual, when the emotions coming from Gabriel were so specific. It was more like sensory overload.

Maybe that’s how the communion is formed,
she thought.
A vampire’s blood gives you access to their emotions slowly. A Giver’s blood gives you everything at once.

And everything at once was incredible. Shay moaned with pleasure.

The guy twisted his body slightly, trying to escape her hand, her teeth. A part of Shay wanted to pull away for a moment and whisper that she wouldn’t take much more. But pulling away was impossible. It would be like pulling her veins out of her body.

How did vampires not want to feed all the time? What in life could be more potent, more real, more sweet and satisfying?

Shay let herself sink even deeper into the sensation. Her whole body felt as if it were vibrating, as fast as hummingbird wings.
No, that’s his heart,
Shay thought. Her Giver’s heart was trembling instead of beating, and she felt it through every inch of herself. It was awesome. Truly awesome in the way that the word should be used.

Still, a part of her was repulsed. Maybe part of her always would be. She hadn’t been raised by vampires the way Gabriel and his family had. Maybe that made a difference. At least the pleasure was so intense. Shay could just bury herself in it and leave that little piece of human emotion behind.

The vibrations in the Giver’s heart ceased. And the feeling of revulsion grew stronger. Not just revulsion. Horror, too. And terror.

With a hard thunk, the Giver’s heart began to beat again. But erratically, in fluttering stops and starts.

He’s dying!

The thought was so shocking that Shay jerked her teeth out of the Giver’s neck. She released the hand she’d been holding over his mouth, and he slumped forward against the steering wheel.

She shivered, coldness rushing through her where there had been warmth. Had she killed him? She realized that the horror and revulsion and fear hadn’t been coming from the remains of her humanity. Those had been Gabriel’s feelings. He’d been trying to stop her.

Had he been in time to keep her from becoming a murderer? Shay reached out to put her fingers on the side of the guy’s neck, but it was smeared with blood, and even though she’d been drinking it moments before, she didn’t want to touch it. Instead, she pressed her fingers to his wrist. He had a pulse, but it was so faint. What was his name? He’d told her his name—what was it?

“Billy!” Shay exclaimed. “Billy, can you hear me?”

He gave a low moan in reply. Shay had to get out of there. She couldn’t be found with him. There’d be way too many questions. “I’m getting you help. I promise, Billy.” She jumped out of the truck and ran for the liquor store. She stopped for a moment outside to wipe the blood off her mouth, then went in.

“There’s a guy passed out in his truck over there.” She gestured toward the parking lot. “I don’t know if he drank too much or what, but I think he needs an ambulance.”

“Crap!” the man behind the counter exclaimed, then he grabbed the phone and began to dial.

Shay ducked out of the store and started to run.
It’s okay. He’s alive. I stopped in time,
she told herself. But without Gabriel, she wouldn’t have. She would have sucked her Giver—
Billy
—dry.

I never wanted to see this place again,
Gabriel thought as he sat down in the living room of the Indiana farmhouse that was the family’s closest safe house. It was the only place they’d been able to reach in one night. They’d left Tennessee only two hours after sunset, but it had still been a race to get here before the sun. They’d all run straight to their old rooms, barely making it before their death sleep. Gabriel had woken tonight with a sinking feeling in his gut. He hated this house. And he hated to think about the mess they’d left behind—sensitive scientific equipment ruined by the sprinklers, their reputations as scientists permanently destroyed by their sudden disappearance. They would all need new identities now.

But they’d needed to get away. They couldn’t risk the forest fire investigators coming to the lab during the day, and they definitely couldn’t risk the chance of Martin coming back. The family was small now, vulnerable. Ernst needed time to recuperate from the hawthorn paralysis. They all needed a place to process what had happened to them. Tamara had been in shock when they’d arrived just before sunrise, and she still was, even though she refused to admit it.

Gabriel glanced over at Ernst, who lay motionless on the sofa. He immediately wished he’d kept his eyes on the football game Luis had on TV. Ernst’s gaze was sharp and unforgiving.
As soon as he’s able to
talk again, he’ll tell them everything,
Gabriel thought for what had to be the hundredth time.

He couldn’t worry about that right now. Tamara, Luis, and Millie had looked to him as a leader, despite everything that had happened. It was second nature to them, or at least to Luis and Millie. He was the oldest. To the two of them, he was part big brother and part father. He’d been in their lives as long as they could remember.

Tamara was so devastated by Richard’s death that she hadn’t questioned Gabriel taking charge, his decision to bring them to Indiana, or anything else. For the moment at least, she’d retreated deep inside herself. He reminded himself to make sure she drank some of the blood they’d brought with them from the lab. In her grief, she might forget to give her body what it needed to function.

“I wonder if Ernst would be more comfortable back in his bedroom,” Gabriel said, shifting in his chair so he wouldn’t have to see his father’s eyes.

Millie shook her head. “We have so much to figure out. I think Ernst would want to hear our discussions about what to do next, even if he can’t talk yet,” she said.

“Yeah, he’s paralyzed, not dead,” Luis added. Realizing what he’d said, he shot an apologetic glance at Tamara. She didn’t seem to notice. She was curled up in one of the armchairs, in exactly the same position she’d taken when she first came out of her room a little after sunset. It was almost as if they had two hawthorn victims in the room instead of one.

Gabriel had expected this whole house to feel almost haunted, but it didn’t. If he went down into the cellar, though . . . He shuddered, images of Sam chained to the cellar floor filling his mind. Sam
had died down there. That was where the family had killed him.

I won’t go down there. There’s no reason to.
The entire farmhouse had blinds that were perfectly fitted and able to keep out all sunlight. The dirt cellar had been deepened and widened to give the family a place to go if the house itself became unsafe. There were two stairways leading to it, one from the kitchen and one from a hatch hidden outside.

“Before anything else, we need to e-mail the people at Duke. They must have already heard about the fire,” Millie said, pacing. “They’re going to think it’s really strange that we’ve evacuated without contacting them, even if we did send the research.”

Gabriel shoved his fingers through his hair. “Anything we say to them will only raise more questions. They’ll want to know where we are, when we’re coming back. They’ll expect us to come in for meetings and to be available during the day. When they get into the facility, they’re bound to find the tunnel we blasted without their permission.”

“And the security system we installed,” Luis put in.

“No contact with Duke. It’s time for a complete identity shift,” Gabriel said. “We have plenty of money. We can choose a new location and go into hiding for a while.” A long while. Long enough for Martin to grow old and give up looking for them. The man had the money and power to mount an intensive search.

“Hiding. Like we weren’t in hiding back at the lab,” Millie muttered.

“Maybe Ernst will okay you going back to school now,” Gabriel said, his eyes automatically sliding over to Ernst, lying there so still. “You always like being in college, Mils. And I should go back too. I need to get a more current degree.”

“How can you talk about school and money?” Tamara asked, her voice flat. “Richard is dead.”

“We know, Tam,” Luis said gently. “We just don’t know what to say. It helps to talk about ordinary stuff.”

“We should have a service for him, once Ernst is better,” Millie suggested. Tamara rested her face in her hands, as if she couldn’t stand to even consider it.

Millie turned to Gabriel. “Do we—Should we do something about Shay? You didn’t tell us what happened to her, but . . . well . . . are they going to find her body in the lab? Won’t that cause too many complications?”

“She’s not there,” Gabriel said quietly.

“What
did
happen?” Luis asked. “Did Martin take her back?”

They’d find out soon enough that he had chosen to save Shay rather than Richard, but Gabriel wasn’t going to volunteer the information. They’d been so busy traveling last night that no one had even asked about Shay. They didn’t have a communion with her like he did. The link came from drinking blood, and Shay hadn’t shared blood with anyone else in the family. They would only know whatever he told them.

“No, she’s not with Martin,” Gabriel said. “But she’s gone. On her own now.” He felt their eyes on him, knew they had questions. But he couldn’t face their anger, not yet. He knew how they’d react when they learned the truth. He would have to deal with it eventually. But he wanted a little more time first. Besides, he couldn’t be an effective leader to them once they knew what he’d done.

“On her own? Did you just put her out there for the firefighters to find?” Luis’s brow furrowed in confusion.

On her own.
Gabriel cringed at the words. He hated that Shay was alone. She needed him with her, even if she despised him. No new vampire should have to deal with her overpowering thirst alone. At least he’d been able to reach Shay through her communion and stop her from killing the Giver. He knew she would never be able to forgive herself if she took a life.

“I don’t understand. You let her go?” Millie asked. “To die? She won’t survive without vampire blood.”

“No. I . . . I did a blood ritual. I transformed her,” Gabriel admitted.

“What?” Tamara’s head snapped up, and her eyes were alert in a way they hadn’t been since she learned of Richard’s death.

“She would have died if I didn’t. She couldn’t survive as half vampire and half human, not for even another day,” Gabriel said, an edge of defiance creeping into his voice.

A wheezing cough grabbed everyone’s attention. They all turned to Ernst. He moved his lips soundlessly for a moment, then looked at Gabriel and spoke. “You will face judgment for what you’ve done.”