Crave 02 - Sacrifice (19 page)

S
LOW DOWN
, Shay ordered herself.
Slow waaaay down.
She reduced her speed until it felt like she was running through Jell-O, although intellectually, she knew she was still sprinting by human standards.

How far had she run from that guy she’d left lying in his pickup, that guy she’d almost drained?

Almost killed.

Shay swallowed hard. She could still taste his blood in her throat. The blood held traces of the beer he’d been drinking, salty peanuts, and something sharp, almost electric. Not a taste she was familiar with.

Fear. I’m tasting his fear.
The thought hit Shay with the power of a punch to the stomach. He’d been terrified when Shay’s fangs
came down. She’d felt that emotion as if it were her own when they connected, her teeth deep in his neck, his essence flooding her. His blood had to have been charged with adrenaline in that moment, and that’s what she was tasting now.

Shay swallowed again, the taste of the blood both thrilling and repulsive. She forced herself to slow down even more and take a careful look at her surroundings. There was another strip mall on her right—Laundromat, Celebrity’s Hot Dogs, mini-mart, one car in the parking lot. A sad-looking office complex across the street, with an empty parking lot. And an SUV passing her now, the middle-aged woman driver shooting Shay a concerned look. Concern for the teenage girl out by herself so late at night, not concern at seeing a vampire.

I’m passing for human. Good,
Shay thought.

Her knees went weak, her legs suddenly wobbly. Carefully, she lowered herself to the curb. She had to
pretend
to be a human being. She wasn’t human anymore. From the moment Gabriel had transformed her, she’d been going on instinct, running, hiding, feeding, surviving. She hadn’t considered what she’d become, or at least only in the ways that being a vampire was new and different. She hadn’t actually thought about what she had lost.

Her humanity.

A harsh bark of laughter escaped from her throat.
I really am “speh-shul,”
she thought, remembering the journal entry where she’d used that word to describe herself, the way she’d heard everyone else use it to describe her for her entire life. They didn’t want to say “sick” or “disabled” or “dying.” So they said “special” and they all pretended that it meant something different.

She recalled the definition she’d copied from the dictionary:
“distinguished by some unusual quality; being in some way superior.” They’d thought she was special when she was the sick girl. Now, forget about it. There wasn’t a special enough word to describe her.

Shay pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut tight, trying to block out the overwhelming rush of sensations. Trying to
think
. What was she supposed to do? She knew she couldn’t allow the sun to touch her. She knew she’d have to drink blood to survive. But what was she actually supposed to
do
? With her life?

Her life. Shay had been so used to thinking of her life in terms of years and, lately, in terms of months and days. Now she had decades, centuries, maybe all eternity. For a moment, only a moment, she felt time stretch out in front of her, out, and out, and out. People dying all around her. Shay living on. Alone.

She shuddered, and then she wanted Gabriel more than she’d ever wanted anything. She wanted his arms around her, his mouth on hers. She wanted him with her for every second of that forever.

No. That wasn’t true. What she wanted was the old Gabriel, the Gabriel she’d believed she loved.
That
Gabriel hadn’t betrayed and murdered her father.

That Gabriel didn’t exist.

A car slowed down and came to a stop beside her. She opened her eyes, feeling the vibration of the engine. The passenger window glided down. Shay caught a whiff of tobacco, Wint O Green Life Savers, detergent, shampoo—Suave 2 in 1, she thought—pencil shavings, and underneath all that, the wonderful scent of blood. “You okay?” the driver, a man Shay figured to be in his late seventies, asked.

“Yes.” Shay stood up. “I’m fine. I just had a fight with my—my boyfriend. I called someone to pick me up.” The old man hesitated, then nodded. The window slid back up as he drove away.

There were hours of night left, but Shay couldn’t stand to be out on the streets any longer. She could see the glow of a neon sign about half a mile away. When she focused, she could pick out the sound of the neon’s hum from the barrage of other noise. It seemed like the right kind of neighborhood for a cheap motel, the kind that’s never full. The kind of motel Gabriel would choose.

Was he still influencing her somehow? Shay knew she wouldn’t have been able to stop feeding if Gabriel hadn’t somehow reached out and stopped her. Did the impulse to go to that motel and break into a room come from him or from her?

It doesn’t matter,
she decided. She needed a place to rest. Well, not rest exactly—her body was still revved and ready to run for a few more days without stopping. As horrifying as it had been to nearly kill that Giver, she couldn’t deny the effect of his blood. Her vampire body was at full strength again, just like that. It was as if she’d been dead and was now arisen, full of health and strength. But her mind was still her own mind, and she was still her old self. She might not need physical rest, but she needed a place where she could feel safe, so she could begin to figure out what to do with the rest of . . . the rest of forever. Or at least the next couple of days of it.

Shay headed toward the neon light, making sure not to move faster than your regular, ordinary human person. It was a motel. Sleepy Time Motel, specifically.
Original on the naming,
Shay thought as she trotted into the parking lot. It wasn’t hard to figure out which of the sixteen rooms was empty. She could
hear the beating hearts of the people inside seven of them.

She chose a room that had empty rooms on either side. The door frame splintered as she forced the lock.
Damn!
How long was it going to take her to get used to the power of her vampire body? Shay glanced around, checking to see if the sound of cracking wood had drawn any attention. No. No, she was safe. She ducked into the room. She hadn’t screwed up the door to the point that it wouldn’t shut. That was something.

Now what?
Her eyes darted around the room and stopped on the phone.
Mom.
That’s what she wanted. She wanted to talk to her mother. It was completely irrational, but there was a little part of Shay that still believed her mother could fix anything. Without thinking about what she’d say when Mom answered, Shay dropped down on the way-too-soft bed, grabbed up the phone, and dialed. Olivia had said that Shay’s mother was coming back from Miami. She should be home by now.

But it was Martin who answered. The sound of his voice was like an ice cube slithering down her spine. She slammed the phone back into the cradle and held it there, hand trembling. A memory screeched through her brain. Martin in the research facility. Shooting Ernst with a dart. Ernst collapsing.

Martin hadn’t even looked around to see if she was there. Not that it was a news flash that he didn’t give a crap about her. He’d proved that the night he’d hit her in the parking lot, to get her out of the way so he could recapture Gabriel. All her stepfather cared about was securing a vampire for his research. And now she was one. He’d probably love to strap her to a table in his lab, just the way he’d done to Gabriel.

Shay pulled in a deep breath, picked up the phone again, and dialed a phone number that was almost as familiar as her own. “Be there, be there,” she muttered as the phone began to ring.

“Talk to me.”

Tears sprang to Shay’s eyes the moment she heard her best friend’s voice. “Olivia. Olivia, it’s—”

“Shay!” Olivia interrupted. “What the hell? Do you know how worried I’ve been? You can’t start a call like that and then—”

“I’m sorry. I know. Someone took my phone,” Shay told her.

“Who? That guy you’re with?”

“No. Anyway, I’m not with him anymore,” Shay answered.

“Okay, I’m coming to get you. No argument. Where are you?”

A bubble of hysterical laughter broke out of Shay’s throat. That was her second bout of crazed laughter today. Definitely on the mentally unhealthy checklist. “I don’t know. I don’t even know.”

“This gets better and better,” Olivia muttered. “How can you not know where you are? Did you faint or something? Martin said you wouldn’t make it without your transfusions.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Shay assured her. She spotted a creased sheet of paper with the motel’s address and number at the top and the phone rates below that. “I’m in Vinton. It’s in Virginia, not that far from the Tennessee border.” She hadn’t even known which direction she’d run in when she left the caves. Or how far she’d come.

“I’m Googling it,” Olivia said.

Shay pressed the phone tighter against her ear. Olivia’s voice was like a Valium or something. She felt calmer just listening to it.

“Okay, found it. It looks like it’ll take about a day to get there. Can you hold on till then?” Olivia asked.

“Yeah.” Shay let out a shuddering breath. “Yeah. Now that I know you’re coming.”

“I’ll leave first thing in the morning. So Kaz and I should hit town Wednesday morning, okay?”

“Yeah. Good. I’ll call you on your cell when you’re on the road and tell you where to pick me up,” Shay replied. She tilted her head from side to side, easing the tension out of her neck.

“And on the way back home, you can—and will—explain everything.” Olivia had slipped into that mom voice she frequently used with Shay. The did-you-take-your-medicine, have-you-been-getting-enough-rest voice of the best friend of a sick girl.

Shay had always hated that tone of voice. Now it just sounded like home.

“Yes, ma’am,” Shay said. “I’ll explain—” Her words caught in her throat. What had she been thinking?

She hadn’t been thinking. At all. For starters, she couldn’t meet Olivia, or do anything else, while the sun was up. She’d be busy death-sleeping.

I should just hang up,
Shay thought, panicked.
I should stay away from her. Only badness is going to come from Olivia getting anywhere near me.

“Shay?”

“I’m here,” Shay said. “You know what, I was just freaking out. I’m okay to get home by myself.”

“Sure you are,” Olivia said. “Shay, you didn’t even know where you were when I asked you. You’re not okay to do anything. Google just found me a Starbucks on Euclid Ave. Find it. And be there Wednesday morning.”

“Can you leave tonight instead?” Shay asked.

“First you don’t want me to come, now you want me to leave in the middle of the night? Shay, what is going on?” Olivia demanded. “I think you need to tell me everything right now.”

“Let me wait until you get here. Please leave tonight. You’re right. I’m not okay to get home. I’m scared, Liv. Completely losing it,” Shay admitted. And she wanted her friend with her. She couldn’t handle this on her own. None of it. She’d figure out something to tell Olivia.

“All right. I’m calling Kaz. We’ll get there as fast as we can. Be at that Starbucks,” Olivia instructed.

“I will. I promise. Thanks, Olivia. This is—You don’t even know how much this means to me,” Shay said. “Go call Kaz.”

“Right now. See you soon,” Olivia replied.

I need a plan,
Shay thought as she hung up.
I can’t let them know I’m a vampire.

She sat for a moment, lost in thought. So far, the major things she’d discovered about her new self were that she was strong, she was fast, and she was hungry. Strong and fast she was already working on, trying to remember to take them down a notch. Hungry was a bigger problem.

The most important thing is to feed before I see Olivia and Kaz. I have to be so full that I have no desire for their blood,
she decided.

The hospital. As soon as she woke from her death sleep on Tuesday night, she’d find that hospital she smelled. She’d steal enough blood that feeding wouldn’t be an issue. Then she’d come up with some kind of story to tell Olivia and Kaz.

Shay pulled the spread off the bed and dragged it into the bathroom. Perfect—no windows. She locked the door behind her. Not
that someone couldn’t bust it down while she was in the death sleep, but it made her feel a little safer.

She lay down and rolled herself up in the bedspread. It wasn’t time to sleep, but all she wanted to do was lie there, keeping still, keeping safe.

“It’ll be okay,” she whispered. “It’ll be okay. Really.”

Gabriel stared up at the ceiling, giving himself over to the feelings the communion brought him from his family. And from Shay. It was easy to tell them apart, as easy as telling one voice from another, one face from another. Besides, Shay’s emotions were stronger. The communion between them hadn’t been broken and re-formed the way it had with his family.