Crave 02 - Sacrifice (10 page)

“He’s poisoned your mind,” Richard snapped.

“You’ve always had a tender heart,” Luis told Millie. “But it’s naive to—”

“Don’t be so condescending, Luis,” Millie shot back. “You’re ten years older than I am. Ten. That’s nothing to us. It’s a blink. Just because I’m daring to disagree doesn’t mean I’m softheaded.”

Gabriel was grateful to Millie for being open-minded enough to see beyond the hatred for humans she’d been taught. He could feel how much it hurt her to go up against the family. She’d always been the peacemaker.

“I thought you just said we should all be happy and not
arguing,” Tamara pointed out, raising one eyebrow.

“Isn’t it almost day?” Richard ran his hand through his hair. “I can’t take his anger anymore.”

“How do you think I feel?” Gabriel cried. Their anger, confusion, pain, and feelings of betrayal were constantly bombarding him.

“It won’t last much longer.” Ernst stood just inside the doorway, his face pale and drawn. “Dawn approaches. When we wake tonight, it will be time to spring our trap.”

“Are we all going to Asheville?” Millie asked hopefully.

“No. Gabriel and I will go alone.” Ernst’s eyes found Gabriel’s, and he smiled ever so slightly.

Gabriel felt a wave of shock and anger from Richard. Millie and Luis turned toward him, but Gabriel kept his eyes on Ernst. “Together we’ll avenge you, my son,” Ernst told him.

“What about the halfblood?” Richard spat. “You can’t be in the car alone with Gabriel, not if she’s there too. He’ll try to save her.”

“I just left her. She won’t make it through the day,” Ernst said.

Gabriel staggered backward as if he’d been punched.

“You said the woman wouldn’t come unless the halfblood was there,” Tamara said. Her voice sounded distant, lost amid the horror rushing through Gabriel’s mind.
Shay . . .

“If she dies during the day, we’ll put her body in the car. That will be enough to lure the woman,” Ernst said.

“No.” The moan felt as if it came from Gabriel’s gut.

“Ernst, that’s cruel.” Millie wrapped her arms around Gabriel as if she were trying to hold him together, but she didn’t repeat her plea for mercy. “You can’t expect him to sit in a car with . . .”

With Shay,
Gabriel finished silently.
Shay, dead.

“G
ABRIEL
! G
ABRIEL, WAKE UP
!”

It was Ernst’s voice, sharp with urgency. The cave had been invaded. The smell of blood, his family’s blood, filled his nose and mouth and throat, suffocating him.

“Gabriel, I need you!” The sun was still up. Gabriel could feel it filtering into his nightmare of the massacre, that terrible day when Ernst had woken him to the smell of death. His brothers and sisters. Lysander. Philo. Lizette.

“Gabriel,
now
!”

Hands gripped his shoulders, pulling him up from his cot. Gabriel forced his eyelids open. Not a dream. Ernst was here, waking
him in the middle of the day, just as he had all those years ago, in the caves in Greece.

Gabriel tried to focus, tried to ignore the feel of the sun sapping his strength. He forced his eyes open. “What is it?” he asked, trying to shake off the remnants of his dream.

“The alarm’s been triggered,” Ernst replied. “Someone’s coming.”

Gabriel stared at him stupidly, trying to force the words to make sense. He felt so . . .
heavy.

“Protect the others,” Ernst ordered, yanking Gabriel to his feet. “I’m going up front to see what’s happening.”

Ernst tugged Gabriel’s arm, pulling him roughly out to the common room.

“Gabriel.” The word was a question.

“I’m awake,” Gabriel said. “Go.”

Ernst took off toward the hallway at a speed no human could match, vanishing in less than a second. Gabriel drew in a breath, convincing himself that he was actually standing upright, shaking off the death sleep for the second time in two days. It was disorienting, and his body trembled with the shock of it.

A blaring siren wormed its way into his awareness, loud enough that it hurt his eardrums.
Loud enough to wake the dead,
Gabriel thought ruefully. But it wouldn’t have woken him, not on its own.

“The alarm is triggered from two miles away,” he said out loud, even though his voice was lost in the blaring Klaxon. The physical act of speaking forced his mind to work through the fog. “From the base of the hill.”

Any time a car crossed the mountain road after the last turnoff, the alarm would blare inside the lodge. It was loudest in Ernst’s
sleeping chamber, since he was the only one who could be reliably awakened. The system only went on during the day. If anyone was insane enough to show up at night, well, they’d have six powerful vampires to deal with.

Gabriel took another deep breath. Still awake. He glanced around the lodge—the doors were closed, all except his and Ernst’s. Had Ernst been standing guard at Gabriel’s door again? Or had he just awoken Gabriel because he was the next oldest, the second-in-command, the automatic choice? That’s how it would have been in previous days, before Martin.

Before Shay.

I’ve got to get to Shay.
Gabriel felt a sudden jolt at the thought, and he was finally fully awake. Shay was locked in the vault. Ernst had gone to check the lobby, in the lab building. Everyone else was in the throes of the death sleep.

This was his chance, maybe his last chance, to save the girl he loved.

Gabriel took three steps toward the vault before the guilt hit him. Someone was coming. It could be nothing, just a family of vacationers lost on the mountain roads, people who would turn around in the parking lot when they saw that the road dead-ended in a closed research facility. Or it could be an attack.

The screams of his dying family echoed through Gabriel’s mind. His brothers and sisters in Greece, slaughtered while they slept, defenseless, waking only as the blades slit their throats and the fire ignited their bedclothes.

I can’t leave my family unprotected,
Gabriel thought. The last time he had been younger and weaker. He would’ve died too, except that
Ernst had woken him up and Sam had shouted for Gabriel to run. Only the three of them had survived to start their new family—Ernst, Sam, and Gabriel.

Ernst woke both Sam and me that day,
Gabriel thought. Without giving himself time to consider what he was doing, Gabriel whirled around and ran for Richard’s door. The sleeping chambers locked from inside, but there was an override. Gabriel typed the emergency code into the keypad next to Richard’s door and pulled it open so fast that the door slammed into the wall behind it, leaving a dent.

“Richard!” he yelled. Richard and Tamara slept together, both of them unmoving. “Richard, wake up. I know you can. Richard!”

Gabriel grabbed his brother’s shoulders and shook, using all his vampire strength. Like Ernst had done all those years ago.

Richard lay like a dead man, unresponsive.

“Richard, wake up. Fight the sleep,” Gabriel urged him. “The alarm has been triggered. We’re under attack. Wake up!” Desperate, he hit Richard across the face.

“Wha . . .” Richard’s eyelids fluttered, and Gabriel felt a burst of hope.

“Get up!” He hit his brother again. “Refuse the death sleep. I’ve done it. You can do it too. I need you to protect the family.”

This time Richard’s eyes opened all the way, but there was no awareness in them. Gabriel hit him a third time.

“What . . . ,” Richard murmured again, voice thick with sleep.

“The alarm. Get up.” Gabriel hauled him to his feet. “You have to protect the family. Are you awake?”

Richard bent over double, retching.

“Fight it, fight the sleep. You’re old enough now, you’re strong
enough. It’s an emergency,” Gabriel told him. “The family needs you.”

“Why is the alarm ringing?” Richard asked, baffled.

“Ernst went to check. I’m going to follow him.” Gabriel felt a stab of guilt at the lie, but he didn’t hesitate. “You stay here. Stay awake, in case you have to protect the others.”

Richard frowned. “Ernst?”

“He wants the family protected. That’s your job now,” Gabriel insisted. “Richard, do you understand?”

“Yes.” Richard was swaying on his feet but staying upright. “I’m awake,” he told Gabriel. “I am. Go.”

Gabriel ran.

But instead of taking the corridor to the lab building as Ernst had done, he raced downstairs to the vault. The door stood open. Papers and boxes lay strewn about, a mess. But no Shay.

Gabriel’s heart seemed to roll over in his chest. Where was she?

Shay. . . .
He smelled her scent, but that could be because she’d been here earlier. What had happened to her? Ernst said she wouldn’t make it through the day. Was she dead?

“No. No no no no.” Gabriel turned and sprinted for the stairs. He didn’t think, he just ran. She wasn’t in the vault. She wasn’t in the lodge, or he would’ve seen her. The only place she could be was the lab building.

Maybe Ernst didn’t wake with the alarm. Maybe he stayed awake on his own, like yesterday,
Gabriel thought as he raced down the corridor connecting the buildings.
Ernst must have moved her during the day.

It was the only explanation. But had he moved her in case Gabriel fought the death sleep again? Ernst must have realized by now that
Gabriel had been trying to save Shay when he caught them. Or had he moved her because she’d died?

Gabriel didn’t slow as he approached the lab building. The thick metal door that was their first line of defense against intruders was standing open—but that made sense since Ernst had come this way to check on the alarm. It seemed odd that he hadn’t closed it behind him to protect the sleeping family, but maybe he’d been panicked.

Can’t stop to figure it out. I’ve got to get to Shay,
Gabriel thought.

As soon as he entered the lab building, he veered right. There was a shortcut through the lab room to get to the stairs. And his vampire senses told him there was a heartbeat—a human heartbeat—downstairs.

The smell isn’t right,
his brain screamed at him as he ran through the room.
Shay’s scent isn’t entirely human, but there’s an overpowering human smell.

Gabriel ignored the thought and tore open the stairwell door, jumping to the bottom of the stairs in one leap.

The storeroom door was still hanging open, shattered. No Shay.

But he smelled her more strongly now, her own unique half-human scent.

Gabriel grabbed the handle of the door to the broom closet. It was the only other place that could be secured. He yanked, discovering that someone had driven nails through the flimsy wooden door and into the door frame.
Nails to keep the door closed, to prevent escape.
Gabriel felt a burst of hope.

Sure enough, Shay lay slumped inside the tiny closet, her head resting awkwardly on a mop bucket, her arms limp at her sides.
She’s no threat to anyone in this condition, but Ernst still had to nail the door shut?
Gabriel thought, infuriated.

“Shay.” He knelt beside her. Her eyes were closed, her dark hair wet with sweat. He’d never seen her so pale, and he felt a rush of panic. “Shay, it’s me.”

She didn’t respond. Not even a twitch.

“I know you’re alive. I can hear your pulse,” he said, slipping his arms underneath her. He lifted her as gently as he could. “I don’t have time to give you my blood, not here.”

“Gabriel . . .” Shay’s voice was barely even a whisper, but it sent a shock of relief through him.

“Yes. I’ve got to get you out of here, somewhere safe enough to let you feed from me.” He crept up the stairs. “We have to get to the caves. We can reach them through the lodge. It’s still daylight. We can’t go out the front doors.”

It meant going back to where Richard was, awake. It was a risk. But Gabriel had no choice. The tunnel to the caves was there, in the basement. And he’d had to rouse his brother to protect the family. He’d assumed that Shay was still in the vault, that he could rescue her and go straight to the tunnel, all without going back up to the common room. But the only thing he could do now was hope that Richard had stayed in his chamber like Gabriel told him to. Somehow he had to get Shay past his brother without being seen.

He hesitated when he reached the top of the stairs. The overpowering human smell was here again. It was a familiar scent.

“. . . think you’re a dream,” Shay murmured, drawing his attention.

“No. I’m real and I’m going to save you.” Gabriel tried to sound confident, but he had a hard time hiding his fear. She seemed to weigh nothing in his arms, yet she was scaldingly hot to the touch. Would his blood be enough? She had never been so far gone before. “Stay
quiet, okay?” He used one hand to press her head against his chest.

He pushed open the stairwell door and stepped out into the hallway. But before he could cross to the lab room, a voice yelled from the lobby: “Strong enough to blow you all into dust!”