Crave 02 - Sacrifice (26 page)

It seems unforgivable. Monstrous.

I guess that is all I need to know. My father would still be alive if it wasn’t for Gabriel. I’d have a father. I’d always have had a father.

Shay lifted her pen. It felt good to have her actual journal back again. But it wasn’t really helping her figure out her emotions. He loved her. But he killed her father. He loved her. But he killed her father. On and on and on, the same argument marched through her brain.

She glanced over at her bed. Her mother lay there, sleeping. She’d stayed up with Shay until about three, then finally dropped off. If she was dreaming, the dream had to be nice. Her forehead was smooth, her lips curved into the beginning of a smile.
Is she dreaming about Sam?
Shay wondered. She hoped so. With all the badness that had happened, at least there was that—Mom had gotten her love back.

How could Gabriel have thought the love between my mother and father was dangerous to his family?

I know the answer. I don’t like it, but I know. He thought we were all the same, humans. He thought we were all like those
people who slaughtered his family. Ernst thought that too, and so did all the other vampires I saw in Tennessee.

Well, except maybe Millie.

But if you think that, then you think any human who knows of the existence of vampires will automatically want to kill you. Gabriel thought my mother would want to kill him. Kill his family. So in a way, he was acting in self-defense.

He’d never had the chance to know a human, not until me. And then he saw, he really saw, that we aren’t all the same. He changed. He let go of his fear and prejudice. He couldn’t have fallen in love with me if he didn’t.

A sudden blast of vertigo hit her, and the pen slid out of Shay’s hand. The room spun and dizziness churned through her—dizziness from Gabriel.

Shay grabbed on to the edge of her desk and dug her fingers into the wood. She forced herself to look at her bedroom and realize that the walls weren’t moving. It wasn’t her feeling. She wasn’t sick and woozy. It was Gabriel.

“I thought he was getting better,” she murmured. Ever since she woke from the death sleep tonight, she’d felt love coming through their tenuous communion, but not pain or dizziness.

A jolt of hot agony ripped through her, so strong that it made her gasp. Shay groaned and put her forehead down on the desk, just trying to breathe through the pain. What was happening to him?

My communion with Gabriel is weak, and this is still almost unbearable,
she thought.
How must it feel to him, experiencing it firsthand?

“Shay? Are you okay, sweetie?”

Shay gripped the desk with both hands as another bolt of searing anguish attacked her. “Yeah,” she mumbled.

“No, you’re not.” Her mother jumped off the bed and rushed to Shay’s side. “Do you need to feed? What’s wrong?”

“Not me. It’s Gabriel,” Shay managed to say. “Something horrible is happening to him. I thought he was getting better, but he’s worse.”

“The communion,” Mom breathed. “Sam told me everyone in his family was connected through the communion, but I didn’t imagine it was so powerful.”

“It’s weaker than usual,” Shay answered. “The hawthorn almost destroyed it. For me to feel so much pain, Gabriel has to be in agony.” She wrapped her arms around herself, as if that would help control the waves of dizziness.

“Maybe we could put just another drop on your skin,” her mom suggested. “I don’t want you suffering like this. We need to break the tie between the two of you.”

“No!” Shay cried. She knew she should want the communion broken, but the thought made her feel cold and empty.

“But you said Sam’s family killed him. That means Gabriel . . .” Her mother let her words trail off.

“He was there. He . . . he helped,” Shay admitted, but she couldn’t bring herself to say that Gabriel had been the one who had exposed Sam’s relationship with a human. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel now. Gabriel saved my life. But he helped kill my father. But then he saved me by transforming me.”

Her mom gazed at her for a long moment. “I can see why you’re confused,” she finally said. “Right now what you need to do is take care of yourself. You’ve been through so much, Shay. You need time
to recover and to learn how to deal with . . . what you are.”

“There is no time!” Shay cried as another blast of pain hit her. “He’s dying.”

“What?” Mom said. “Why would you think that?”

“I feel it.” Shay’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God. They’re killing him. That’s what it is—the devastation he felt, the misery, and now the pain.”

Her mother’s brow was furrowed in confusion. “Who’s killing him? Why?”

“I can’t believe it took me so long to realize this,” Shay said. “It’s Ernst. His family. They’re killing him because of me! Because he loves me. He tried to bring a human into the family. It’s just like it was with Sam. . . .”

“But you’re not human anymore,” Mom said.

“They
hated
me. They called me an abomination,” Shay told her. “And then Martin showed up. It was just like before, when humans massacred their family in Greece. Martin was there to kill them all—except for the one specimen he took to run experiments on.”

She leaped to her feet, then had to stand perfectly still for a moment to battle the nausea.
I’ve got to get to Gabriel.

Except she didn’t know where he was. The vampires wouldn’t still be at the research facility, not now that Martin had discovered its location. Shay sank down onto the floor. Her mother crouched next to her. “What, baby?”

“I have no idea where he is,” Shay said.

“What would you do if you did?” her mother asked, brushing Shay’s hair away from her face. “I know you’re stronger now, much
stronger. But you’re not strong enough to go up against Gabriel’s whole family.”

Shay pushed her mom’s hand away. “So I’m just supposed to let him die?”

Her mother sighed. “Shay, it’s not a matter of you
letting
him die or not die. You don’t have any control over it. Like you said, you don’t even know where he is.”

“And you’re happy about that!” Shay accused her.

A moment of hesitation told Shay all she needed to know.

“See, you can’t even pretend you’re not,” Shay snapped. “You still don’t think of him as a person—not even after what you found out about my father.”

“I
am
happy about it,” her mom said, anger creeping into her voice. “He took Sam from me. From
you
. Don’t you think he deserves to die for that?”

“But they’re doing the same thing to him that they did to Sam. If it was wrong then, it’s wrong now,” Shay protested. And as she said the words, she felt the deep truth of them. It wasn’t right of Gabriel’s family to kill him for falling in love with her.

“I can’t be expected to care what happens to the creature who destroyed my life,” her mother shot back.

“Creature! Creature?” Shay cried. “Is that how you thought of my father? Is that how you think of me?”

“Of course not. You’re you. And Sam wasn’t the same as those other ones. Look at how they treat one another. They say they’re a family, but they go around murdering each other,” Mom said. “Everything about that family is selfish and always has been! They took children just because—”

“You keep saying ‘they.’ Like all vampires are the same,” Shay cut her off.

“No. You’re different,” her mother protested. “Your father was—”

“We’re all different,” Shay insisted. “Just like humans are all different. You can’t lump us together. I thought you understood that when you were talking to Martin, but obviously, you don’t. You’re willing to let Gabriel die for loving me, because you think he’s a creature, just some evil thing.”

“Shay, why are we arguing about this? There’s nothing we can do. What’s going to happen is going to happen, no matter how either of us feels about it.” Her mother sounded frustrated, but it was nothing compared to Shay’s anger.

“Will you please just leave me alone? Please,” Shay burst out. She couldn’t stand to hear Mom say one more time how powerless Shay was. Gabriel’s pain was still there, getting worse.

“I have nothing else to say anyway.” Shay could tell from her mother’s tone that she was hurt, but Shay didn’t care. She was relieved when Mom left the room, shutting the door behind her with a gentle click.

Shay stretched out on her back on the carpet and closed her eyes. Gabriel’s vertigo was so overwhelming that she had a hard time separating herself from it. She needed to think. There had to be some way she could help. She focused all her attention on the communion for a moment, trying to feel as close to Gabriel as she possibly could. If she couldn’t find him, she could still be with him. She wasn’t going to let him be alone as they drained the life from him.

She concentrated on the image of his face: his chestnut eyes that seemed to be able to see deep inside her; his beautiful lips, so
perfectly full; the straight slash of his eyebrows; the sharp angles of his cheekbones.

Yeah, he was gorgeous, but that was just a tiny part of him. She thought about the way they could have philosophical discussions, how much he loved his family, how his hands felt as they moved over her body, and how the way he saw her had changed the way she saw herself. With Gabriel, she’d never been the sick girl, even when she could feel her body’s deterioration accelerate.

I’m with you, Gabriel. You aren’t alone,
she thought.

The dizziness subsided for a brief moment, and a sense of comfort seeped through their communion.

And then pain again. Anguish. So strong, so awful . . .

Shay’s eyes snapped open. The pain was coming from her right. She sat up, following the feeling, letting it draw her forward. “Gabriel?” she whispered.

Love. Guilt. Agony.

His emotions. And they were all coming from the same place, from the same direction. Shay closed her eyes and felt it, just as she would’ve been able to feel the warmth of the sun on her cheek.

“‘I can sense where they are,’” Shay breathed, suddenly remembering what Gabriel had said back before they went to Tennessee. He was still recovering from drinking her blood. They’d been in a motel and he could barely move, so they had spent the whole night talking. He told her about a link to his family, how he knew if they were in trouble . . . and how he could sense where they were. They’d talked about so much that night—about him being a vampire, about her being the sick girl—that she’d almost forgotten about that detail.

“Mom!” she yelled. “Mom!”

Her mother burst through the door, eyes wild. “What? Are you okay?”

“The communion. It tells me how to find Gabriel,” Shay blurted, her words falling over each other. “I can follow his emotions if they’re strong enough. He told me that once, but I just now remembered.”

Shay ran to her window and stared outside at the barren tree branches. That way. All of Gabriel’s feelings came from that direction.

She could find him. She could help him. Shay hoped he was feeling her exhilaration as powerfully as she was feeling his physical weakness.

“Shay—”

“He’s west. That way.” Shay pointed out her window. “I don’t know where exactly, but it’s definitely west of here. I can follow it, follow his emotions like a . . . like a dog on a trail, I guess.” She laughed at the image, giddy with relief.

“West.” Mom’s voice sounded skeptical.

“I need to borrow the car,” Shay said. Earlier that night, she and her mother had abandoned the car she’d stolen in a not-great part of town. Keys in the ignition, fingerprints wiped off. Shay hoped the owner’s insurance would pay up fast.

“You’re not going anywhere,” her mother said firmly. “I understand how you feel. But I’m not letting you put yourself in danger. Not after I just got you back.” As if Shay were still a little girl. A little sick girl.

“I don’t need your permission,” Shay told her. “If you won’t loan me the Mercedes, I’ll find another car.”

“Steal one, you mean,” her mother snapped.

“If I have to,” Shay shot back. “Stealing or letting someone die
because he cares about me.” She made scales with her hands, balancing them up and down. “Not hard to decide which matters more. So can I have the car or not?”

“No! It’s almost dawn. You’ll be going into your death sleep. If you’re out on the road when that happens, you’ll crash. Or the sun will . . .” Her mother shook her head. “You have to start thinking, Shay.”

Shay frowned, wanting to fight. But Mom was right. The sun was coming. Shay had been so distracted by the communion that she hadn’t noticed the growing pressure.

“I have to get to Gabriel,” she said, even as she felt the beginnings of the death sleep pull at her.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow night,” her mother promised. “Let’s get you to the bed.”

“Tomorrow night—” She didn’t have the energy to speak. The death sleep consumed her.
Tomorrow night will be too late,
she thought as her vision went dark.