Crave 02 - Sacrifice (13 page)

Then Gabriel spoke, and Shay’s consciousness retreated again. “Leave our home? Abandon our family?”

Sam put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and the weight of it felt comforting. “Our brothers and sisters are dead. We must look to the future now, for what is left of the family. The three of us. We will start again, build a new home. But not here, Gabriel.”

“There is too much danger. The island is small, and the humans know some of us escaped their massacre,” Ernst said, anger dripping from his voice.

“I’ve never left the island.” Gabriel knew he sounded like a child even though he’d lived several lifetimes. He was afraid.

“Do not fear. We will be together, always,” Sam said.

Gabriel moved, pulling his wrist from Shay’s mouth for only a split second, but it was enough to startle her into awareness. From the warmth of the darkened beach in Greece to the chilly cave in Tennessee. The change made her feel disoriented, and then Gabriel’s blood filled her mouth again. This time Shay didn’t need to tell herself to suck—her body did it automatically.

Millie and Luis were fighting, their yelling getting louder and louder as they ran through the halls of the house in New York. Shay—
Gabriel—
winced at the noise. “Quiet! The neighbors will hear.”

From beside him on the sofa, Sam laughed. “There are no neighbors for a mile. It’s only your vampire hearing magnifying the noise.”

“They’re supernaturally loud,” Gabriel grumbled.

“They’re still human children,” Sam replied. “They are not as loud as you think.”

Gabriel watched as they ran into the room—Millie’s red pigtails a mess, her elfin face filled with rage as Luis held the doll out of her reach.

“Luis, give it back. It’s nearly time for Millie to go to bed,” Gabriel said.

Luis rolled his eyes, but he handed over the doll.

“It’s not fair. Why doesn’t Luis have to go to sleep?” Millie demanded.

“Because he’s ten years older than you. He gets to stay up later,” Sam told her. He glanced at Gabriel. “She reminds me of Lysander. Always wanting to be treated like the older kids.”

Gabriel didn’t answer. He couldn’t—the rush of pain he felt at the mention of Lysander was too great. The younger boy had been taken from the orphanage with him, had grown up in the vampire family with him, just as Millie and Luis were growing up together. As siblings. As family. When they were teenagers, they went through the blood ritual and became vampires, just as Millie and Luis would. They lived for more than two hundred years afterward as brothers . . . until Sander was murdered by the humans.

How can Sam talk about him so casually?

“We have a new family,” Sam said quietly. It wasn’t the communion—Sam had always been able to tell what Gabriel was thinking. “You cannot live a long life if you hold on to the pain of the past. You’re going to be here for centuries, Gabriel. Tragedies will happen. You must let them go.”

Gabriel turned away, frowning. Sam was his best friend, his brother. But sometimes he seemed like a stranger. How could he “let go” of the pain of losing their family? Gabriel never would, even if he lived for a thousand years.

“Don’t be like Ernst,” Sam said. “He’s grown more bitter with each loss—first Gret, then our family. . . .”

“Why shouldn’t he be bitter?” Gabriel cried.

“It’s going to twist him eventually. Gret always said that anger hurts more than grief.”

Gabriel just shook his head. Sam was being naive. He wanted to see the good in things, but sometimes he went too far.

“Shay—” Gabriel’s voice broke into Shay’s mind. “Stop.”

He pulled his wrist from her mouth, and Shay moaned as reality crashed back in around her. The cold air, the eerie limestone of the cave . . . but she could see more now, details of the whitish rock walls. Was it just her imagination? She was looking through her own eyes, but it felt more like one of the visions when she looked through Gabriel’s eyes.

“I need . . .” Gabriel’s voice was weak, and she studied his face. His eyes were different—not their typical dark color, but lighter, almost purple. It was beautiful. But other than that, he looked tired. Exhausted, really. She felt a stab of worry—had her blood sickened him? If she kept taking his own blood, she could weaken him too much. It might kill him. But she wanted more. She craved it. She couldn’t control herself. Shay pulled his wrist to her lips and drank.

“It’s all right,” Gabriel murmured, the purplish cast to his eyes growing even more intense. “You need enough to transform. I’ve never done it by myself.” His other hand stroked her hair for just a moment, and Shay felt a sense of warmth steal through her.

Or maybe it was the sun beating down on Gabriel as he swam in the waters off the island in Greece. Shay sank into the vision, but her own thoughts hung on longer than before. Hot sun . . . he wasn’t a vampire yet. Next to him swam Lysander, grinning widely.

“How can you be so happy?” Gabriel asked, turning to float on his back.

“I am enjoying the day, brother. Tonight I join the family!” Sander dove like a dolphin and vanished under the waves.

Lysander was in the last vision, too. They talked about him,
Shay’s thought whispered from somewhere.

It was enough to interrupt the vision, and then suddenly, she was in the sleeping cave in Greece. She recognized it immediately, or rather Gabriel recognized it. They stood in a circle, the entire family, with Lysander on the floor in the middle. Ernst knelt next to the youth, drinking from his neck. He stopped and looked up. “He’s dead.”

Gabriel felt a momentary pang of fear. He wasn’t in the circle with the others, because he hadn’t given up the sun yet. He stood behind them, watching. Learning. He’d known what to expect, of course. Ernst had explained it many times. But seeing Lysander dead on the floor . . . it frightened him.

And then Sam stepped forward. He was the eldest of them—other than Ernst—and, therefore, he would take the first turn. Sam knelt at Lysander’s side and lifted the young man in his arms. He nicked a vein in his wrist and held it to Sander’s mouth. “Drink, brother,” Sam said simply.

Immediately, all of Gabriel’s fear vanished. Sam would take care of Lysander. He always took care of all the younger ones. If Ernst was their stern father, Sam was their nurturing father. Gabriel smiled. Or else Sam was their mother. He wasn’t, of course. But Sam had told him once that he tried to be as much a mother as he could, ever since Gret had sought the sun and turned to ash. Sam had grown up in the vampire family with a mother, Gret. The rest of them hadn’t. Sam thought it wasn’t fair.

He would’ve been an amazing dad,
Shay thought. And she knew instantly that it was her own thought, not Gabriel’s. She was still there, in the vision. Still in Gabriel’s body, watching the blood ritual with Gabriel’s eyes and thinking Gabriel’s thoughts.

But suddenly, her own consciousness was there too. Shay, separate from Gabriel. Shay’s thoughts. Shay’s emotions.

It’s because I’m becoming a vampire,
she realized.
The visions have never been like this before because I have never been like this before. I’m changing. I’m drinking Gabriel’s blood as I have before, but this time it’s turning me into something else.

Sam held Lysander, letting him drink. Transforming him into a vampire.

Sam.
Shay stared at him, her father. He was the one she wanted to watch. She had seen so many parts of Gabriel’s life through these visions . . . but she didn’t need to live his life to know him. She had the real Gabriel now, in her life, in her arms. He loved her, he was saving her. When they were done, she would be a vampire and they would be together forever. But Sam—she had never met him and she didn’t know if she ever would. The only way to know her father was through these visions, through Gabriel’s experiences with Sam.

I’ll follow him,
she thought.
I’ll focus on Sam and follow him through the visions. I’ll take control of what I see.

But nothing happened. The vision continued just as before, with Shay watching through Gabriel’s eyes as Sam gently eased Lysander’s mouth away and another member of the family took his place, guiding Sander to drink from her vein.

The blood ritual,
Shay thought.
It’s on Gabriel’s mind because he’s performing it right now, on me. Somehow I’m seeing visions about the blood ritual and the people Gabriel has seen go through it.

Shay summoned all the strength she had and forced her mind away from the vision and back to reality. She was feeding from
Gabriel. On some level she knew that. She herself was participating in a blood ritual. She had to stop.

“Shay, keep going,” Gabriel whispered.

Shay blinked, back in her own body again. The cave surrounded them, and Gabriel slumped against the stone wall, pale and sweating. Shay frowned.

“Can you feed on your own yet? Is it working?” Gabriel asked weakly. “Your eyeteeth—can you release them?”

Shay automatically ran her tongue over her teeth, not sure what he meant.

“You have to keep going,” he breathed.

“I’m killing you. If I take more blood, you’ll be too weak.” Shay’s voice sounded strange in her ears. It was the first time she’d spoken since she died.

“I’ll recover.” Gabriel met her eyes and smiled, a ghost of his usual smile. “Vampire strength.”

Shay nodded, the movement causing the cave to spin around her. She was still weak too, maybe even half dead. What was she, exactly? A vampire? A dead girl? Something in between?

“You feed. Do it yourself,” he said. “The transformation, it takes . . . a lot.”

Shay thought of the ritual she’d seen, the whole family waiting their turn to give their blood to Lysander. Would there even be enough blood in Gabriel’s body for them both?

He leaned his head back, exposing his throat. Shay stared at it, focusing on him to stop the cave from whirling. A strange sliding sensation in her mouth caught her attention, and she used her tongue again to explore it.
Fangs.

Gabriel’s smooth tawny skin seemed to draw her forward. Her fangs ached with wanting him.

Shay bent to his neck and inhaled the scent of him. Then her teeth sank into his flesh, blood flowing into her mouth, her consciousness spiraling down into another vision.

Sam,
Shay thought.
I want to see Sam.

“The only choice is a blood ritual,” Ernst said, his voice muffled by the still air of the cellar under the old house.

Shay frowned—
Gabriel
frowned. She stood in Gabriel’s body, speaking Gabriel’s words, just like always in a vision. But there was something different. A wall of tension, an undercurrent of confusion. “But if Sam were willing to give up the woman . . . ,” Gabriel began.

“I won’t. You know that better than anyone, brother,” Sam spat, his voice filled with fury. “You knew it when you told Ernst about my love for Emma.”

Gabriel refused to look at Sam, shackled to the dirt floor. But he felt Sam’s anger like a physical blow.

What is going on?
Shay thought frantically. It was her own thought, not Gabriel’s, but the turmoil of Gabriel’s feelings made it hard to figure out what was happening in this strange vision. And there was something else—other emotions that came from outside of Gabriel. Anger from Sam, who lay on the ground. A cold hatred from Ernst. Fear from Millie . . . and Millie wasn’t even in the room.

“It would take more than giving her up. The human woman is a threat as long as she knows about us. We have to kill her.” Ernst sounded annoyed at the prospect, like it was an unpleasant errand he had to run.

“No.” Sam’s voice was half fury, half fear. But the emotion coming
from him was suddenly an all-encompassing terror. Shay felt sick from the intensity of it—or was it Gabriel feeling sick?

I don’t understand.
Shay’s own thought again, or at least she assumed so.

“Did he tell you where she is, who she is?” Ernst asked Gabriel.

“No. Just the name, Emma,” Gabriel replied.

My mother,
Shay’s thought said.
Mymothermymothermymother.

“During the blood ritual, when he is weakened, he will tell us how to find her,” Ernst said.

Now Gabriel felt afraid. He loved Sam, even after this betrayal of the family, he still loved Sam. “Maybe there’s a way to avoid a blood ritual,” Gabriel said desperately. “If Sam did it, if he killed her. Then we could forgive him, couldn’t we?”

Shay felt a wave of astonishment wash over her at the words that had just come out of her own mouth.

Not my mouth,
she thought.
Gabriel’s mouth.

She pulled away from him, jerking her fangs from his flesh, the reality of the cave crashing back in on her like a train wreck. Nausea spread through her body when Gabriel’s blood stopped sliding down her throat, and she moaned.

“Keep feeding,” he whispered. “The transformation’s not complete.”

“I felt other people’s feelings,” she said. “In the vision. Not just yours.” It was too much. Too overwhelming. Had she even seen a true vision? It had been hard to tell where Gabriel’s thoughts ended and the others began.

“It’s the communion. We feel one another’s emotions,” Gabriel said. “It’s why the whole family participates in a ritual—so that we’re all linked. But I’m the only one this time. You should only be linked
to me.” His brow furrowed in confusion, but he didn’t move otherwise. He looked worn out.

“The visions are changing. Everything seems sharper, like smells and sights. And I can think my own thoughts,” Shay said, forcing herself to take a deep breath. “I felt the others’ emotions, but I think it was because you felt them. Gabriel”—she looked him in the eyes—“what happened to Sam? You told Ernst about him and my mother.”

Gabriel gasped, panic on his face. He pulled away from her, the first burst of strength he’d shown since their private blood ritual began.