Crave 02 - Sacrifice (11 page)

“And yourself with us,” Ernst bellowed back.

But it was the first voice that had stopped Gabriel cold. He recognized the human scent now. Shay was rigid in his arms. “Martin,” she whispered. Her tone was steady and her eyes clear.

“Yes.” Gabriel would know it anywhere. That man’s voice haunted his dreams.

“How . . . ,” Shay began.

“He must have tracked your cell phone,” Gabriel said. “Is that even allowed?”

“He pays the bills,” Shay murmured. “And he’s famous and rich. If he told the phone company his stepdaughter was missing—”

“They’d help him, whether it’s legal or not.” Gabriel groaned. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of that.”

The voices in the lobby raised again, Ernst and Martin yelling. Gabriel forced himself to move, heading for the lab room. If he went through there, he could reach the corridor without going into the lobby. Ernst wouldn’t see him. Every step was agony, since it meant leaving his father behind with a human—a dangerous human. But he had to save Shay.

“No. Stop,” Shay whispered, squirming weakly in his grip.

“I can’t.” He pressed her head tighter against his chest, willing her to stay quiet. The fight with Martin would keep Ernst distracted so he couldn’t track Gabriel. His communion with the family was weaker than it used to be. He had to get as far away as he could
before he was forced to stop and let Shay feed. Going now was their only chance.

“Wait,” Shay insisted. “Gabriel—what if my mother is with him? Can you see?”

Gabriel froze. It hadn’t even occurred to him that her mother might have come too. It was too dangerous to check, it meant risking being caught by Ernst. But Shay would never forgive him if he let her mother be hurt.

Gabriel slowly turned away from the lab room and inched down the hallway toward the lobby. He peered around the corner, trying to see without being seen.

Martin stood with his back to the glass doors that led outside. He held a heavy-looking backpack in front of him like a weapon as Ernst inched toward him. There was a gurney next to Martin, and through the doors, Gabriel spotted a van in the parking lot, its back open. Even through the glass, the sunlight dazzled his eyes and he had to look away.

Ernst was having the same problem, Gabriel could tell. There was a long awning over the glass doors to block any direct sunlight from reaching inside the lobby. But it was still daytime, and any light at all was almost unbearable. They weren’t supposed to be awake, and even an overcast day or the most indirect sunlight could hurt them. Where Gabriel stood, far back from the entrance, he felt safe. No sun could touch him. But if Ernst took even one more step toward Martin—toward the natural light coming through the doors—he risked burning.

“You can’t imagine the magnitude of your mistake,” Ernst said. “One man against a family of vampires. Your research didn’t teach you enough about our strength.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel saw the door that led from
the conference room to the lobby inch open.
Richard.
Gabriel heard the hiss as Richard sucked in a breath, taking in Ernst standing so close to a human.

“I watched the other one long enough to know that vampires are like blocks of stone during daylight hours.” Martin’s voice was detached, like always, but Gabriel detected an undercurrent of fear. “You’re no vampire.”

“Then come closer,” Ernst replied. “Find out for yourself.”

He knows he can’t attack Martin,
Gabriel realized.
Not unless Martin leaves the light.

Gabriel’s eyes darted back to Richard. He was poised in the doorway, muscles tensed.

“Or maybe I’ll just set off the C4 and destroy the whole place,” Martin said. “Fire kills everything, even vampires. My research told me that much.”

Shay let out a whimper. Gabriel was the only one who noticed. The room almost crackled with the tension between Martin and Ernst. Richard took a step forward. What was he going to do? He couldn’t get any closer to Martin than Ernst could. If Richard got near enough to attack, it would mean stepping into the sunlight.

“You went to all this trouble.” Ernst’s voice took on a mocking tone. “I thought you were a scientist. Don’t tell me you’re really a vampire hunter! Out to kill us all?”

Martin pulled a detonator out of his jacket pocket and pushed a button. “Now it’s armed. Still doubt me?” He swung the backpack back and forth by one strap, preparing to throw it. “I’ll be outside before it goes off. But it’s a nice, sunny day out there, so there’s nowhere to run for you.”

Gabriel felt Shay begin to tremble, her body sending tremors into his own. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene in the lobby. Martin was right. If he detonated the C4, none of the family would escape. They’d all burn, just like his family in Greece.

But he couldn’t help them. He had Shay to think about.

“So you’re willing to leave here without a captive vampire?” Ernst asked, as if he hadn’t even noticed the detonator. “Funny, I thought you still needed a laboratory specimen. Someone to torture the way you tortured my son.”

Martin’s eyes widened. Richard took another step forward.

“That’s right. You’re dealing with an old one now.” Ernst chuckled. “You locked my son in your lab; I’ve locked your daughter in my cellar. I think she’s dead, though.”

Gabriel turned away abruptly. “Your mother isn’t here,” he whispered into Shay’s ear. “I don’t see her, and I don’t smell her.” He moved slowly so as not to attract attention from Ernst, Martin, or Richard. If he was going to save Shay, he had to leave now.

“But—,” Shay murmured.

“We’re leaving.” Gabriel’s veins felt filled with lava. His father had used Shay’s death as a way to taunt Martin. They were the same, both angry old men intent on vengeance. Let them fight. Neither of them could afford for the C4 to go off. Martin wanted a specimen too badly, and Ernst had the family to protect.

Gabriel would get Shay to the caves and he would save her life. As for Richard, all Gabriel could do was pray that he stayed where he was.

Quickly, Gabriel made his way through the lab room. There would be only one brief moment of exposure to the lobby, and then he would
be through the metal door and in the corridor. He took a deep breath, gathered Shay closer in his arms, and stepped out of the lab room.

Almost there . . .

A sharp sound came from the lobby—a gasp, or a cry. Gabriel didn’t have time to process which. He whirled around. Ernst had spotted him. He stared at Gabriel, and a mix of anger, betrayal, and fear pulsed through the communion from him.

Martin raised his arm, lifting something . . .

“Ernst!” Gabriel yelled. But it was too late.

A dart flew through the air, shot like a bullet from the gun in Martin’s hand. Ernst reached up to knock it aside, his vampire reflexes as fast as lightning. The dart pierced his hand.

Ernst dropped like a rock.

Hawthorn,
Gabriel thought. The same paralyzing substance that Martin had used to capture him.

“No!” Richard took off across the lobby. Martin ran for Ernst, grabbing his feet to pull him toward the door.

Gabriel stood rooted in place, too torn to even move.

Martin saw Richard coming, and he hurled the backpack of C4 at him. Richard caught it instinctively, and Martin sprinted back toward the entrance, leaving Ernst behind. He fumbled with the detonator as he tried to escape from the attacking vampire.

“Richard, it’s a bomb!” Gabriel yelled. “Get rid of it! Throw it!”

But it was too late. Martin pushed the button as he raced through the glass doors.

Richard didn’t even hesitate. Clutching the backpack, he put on a burst of speed, vampire speed, and ran outside.

Into the sunlight.

When the bomb went off, Richard was a thousand yards away from the lab. There was a ravine with a river at its bottom, and he hurled the backpack into it, his body turning to ash even as his arm arced through the air. He crumbled into nothingness as Gabriel watched in horror.

Rocks flew and trees exploded into flame, and from the ravine came the sound, loud in Gabriel’s vampire ears.

Martin’s van sped from the scene, the back doors still open. He wouldn’t want to be anywhere in sight when the firefighters arrived.

“Gabriel . . .” Shay’s voice was barely a whisper.

Dragging his eyes away from his brother, Gabriel gently put Shay on the floor. “Right back,” he promised her. He ran to his father.

Ernst’s body was paralyzed. Gabriel remembered the feeling all too well. The hawthorn rendered him unable to move, to speak, to defend himself. But he’d been able to watch, and think, and feel.

Against his will, his eyes went to Ernst’s. His father was conscious in there, and his gaze burned with fury and grief. He had seen Richard run outside. He knew that Gabriel had stood by and let his brother sacrifice himself. He knew that Gabriel had woken Richard in the first place so that he could go and get Shay. He’d seen them, and he knew what it meant, and he knew what it had cost: Richard’s life.

“I won’t let you die,” Gabriel told his father. He jerked the hawthorn dart out of Ernst’s hand, then scooped him up and put him on Martin’s gurney. There was some kind of thick black cloth—or maybe a body bag—on the gurney, presumably to protect Martin’s vampire prize from the sun. He’d come prepared.

I’ll kill him,
Gabriel promised himself.
If I ever see Martin again, I’ll kill him.

But for now he had to help Ernst. Turning his back on the flames outside, he steered the gurney through the lobby, past the metal door, and down the corridor to the lodge. He pounded through the common room and straight to Richard’s sleeping quarters. Inside, Tamara still slept like the dead.

Gabriel left Ernst on the gurney beside the bed. When Tamara awoke tonight, she would find him and she would help him.

As he turned toward the door, guilt and fear slammed into him. Martin would be back. He would do anything to get another vampire to study. The family would have no warning, not with Ernst paralyzed.

He won’t come back today. Not with the firefighters around
, Gabriel told himself.
Or tonight. He knows better than to come at night when we’re all awake.

But the fire. What if it climbed all the way up to the lab? Gabriel was the only one who could move his sleeping family members to safety. He wouldn’t be able to wake them.

He let out a groan. It felt as if his heart were being torn in half. Shay or his family. He had to make the choice again. The decision came almost instantly. Shay. His family might be in danger. But Shay would absolutely die if he didn’t get to her right away.

Without another word to his father, he left the room, pulling the heavy door closed behind him. He sprinted back to the lobby and flipped the switch behind the reception counter, engaging the electric lock on the main doors. When the firefighters arrived at the blaze, they would think the lab was closed. That nobody was inside. They wouldn’t try to force open the interior doors unless the place was on fire.

The forest fire is mostly down in the ravine,
he thought.
It should stay there.

If it didn’t, his family would die. If he didn’t stay to warn them about Martin, they could die.

Gabriel did the only thing his ravaged heart would allow. He gathered Shay up, unconscious, into his arms and stepped into the corridor, pulling the thick metal door closed behind him. As he ran to the lodge and then down the stairs, rushing toward the caves, it was the only thought in his mind: He had chosen Shay over his family. It had cost Richard his life.

And his father would never forgive him.

“H
OLD ON,
” G
ABRIEL SAID
, repeating it over and over as he ran through the winding stone tunnel that led from the lodge to the caves. “Hold on, Shay, just a little longer.”

They had built the tunnel themselves, blasting it out of the rock like miners. Each member of the family had gone to graduate school several times over, but they’d also managed to pick up other skills in their long lives. They had to stay out of the sun, which meant they had to have access to the underground in case of an attack. That’s just how it was. There was an official entrance to the caves from a trail in the woods behind the lab. Gabriel hadn’t used it since they completed their own private way in, one that would
let them escape during the daytime without ever having to set foot outside.

It wasn’t too far to the caves, not when you had vampire speed. But every second was precious now. Shay’s heart rate had slowed to the point that Gabriel could barely sense it. And her scent was . . .
wrong
. He had smelled enough death to recognize the smell.

“Please hold on,” he begged her aloud. He didn’t want to stop in the tunnel. Ernst couldn’t come after him for as long as the effects of the hawthorn lasted. But Gabriel had no way of knowing how much hawthorn was in the dart that Martin shot. Ernst was old and strong. He could fight off the death sleep with much more ease than Gabriel had ever realized, so maybe Ernst would be able to shake off the poison much faster than Gabriel had.