Crave 02 - Sacrifice (21 page)

“Thanks for coming, you guys,” Shay said. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”

“Like we had a choice, after that phone call,” Olivia scolded, her hazel eyes dark with concern. “You’re sure you’re okay?” she asked, dropping back down at the table.

Shay slid a chair back, getting it a little farther away from Olivia and Kaz before she sat down. It didn’t help much. Their scent was in her nose and in her mouth and throat—and so were the scents of the other customers and the baristas. She could pick out each individual person just by their smell.

Gabriel had told her that young vampires needed more blood. But this was ridiculous.

“Shay? Did you hear me?” Olivia asked, tone sharp.

“What? Sorry. I guess not,” Shay admitted.

“She just asked if you were okay,” Kaz put in. “Even though she already said you looked more than okay. So I don’t get it.”

“She looks good, actually very good, but she’s all twitchy,” Olivia told Kaz, her eyes locked on Shay. “So are you okay or not?”

Was Shay all right? She was in almost the same situation as she’d been in when she had her breakdown and called Olivia. She was a vampire. The guy she thought she loved had betrayed her. Martin was off-the-reservation crazy. But being with her friends made her feel so much better. Safer—even though, technically, she was better prepared to defend herself than they were.

“I’m good,” she said. “Now that you’re here, anyway.”

Kaz raised his arms over his head and then grabbed his elbows with the opposite hands, stretching. “So I’m thinking room service. I’m thinking pay-per-view,” he announced.

“We aren’t watching porn with Shay,” Olivia told him firmly.

“Who said porn?” Kaz protested.

“To you, pay-per-view and porn are the same thing,” Olivia replied.

“Unjust,” Kaz replied, grinning.

It took Shay’s brain a few seconds to catch up. “Wait. You want to stay over tonight?” she gasped. Because that would be bad, what with the sun coming up tomorrow and everything. She could picture it perfectly: She would fall into her death sleep, and Olivia would go into panic mode and try to haul Shay to the emergency room, and Shay would turn into a pile of ash.

“Uh, yeah. It was almost a twelve-hour drive, and that was with only one bathroom stop and one pass by a Mickey D’s drive-through,” Olivia said. “No way are we turning right back around. Besides, you and I need to talk, missy.”

“We will,” Shay promised, not that she’d figured out exactly what to say. “But I need to get home—fast. Let’s just go. I’ll drive, and you two can nap. And when you wake up, you can ask me all the questions you want to. I’d rather not go into it all here. It’s kind of hard to talk about. I don’t want to be the crying-at-Starbucks chick on YouTube.” She realized too late that she’d been talking so fast that her words were crashing into each other. She had to try to control the twitchiness.

Olivia and Kaz shared a look, a she-says-she’s-okay-but-clearly-not look. Kaz shrugged. “Okay. Whatever. This is all-about-Shay day,” Olivia said. “You know, I could have just wired you money for the train or something, if all you really needed was a way back home.”

“I needed more than that,” Shay reassured her. “I needed not to be alone.”

“Just tell me this for now. Do we need to worry about some psycho guy coming after us?” Olivia asked, flicking her long strawberry blond hair off her shoulders.

“No. Gabriel and I are done,” Shay said. Although she’d always be able to feel his emotions, so how done could they really be? Right now he was feeling something close to despair. About what had happened to Ernst and Richard? Had his family found out the truth about Gabriel choosing to save her over them?

That was not her problem. She shoved his emotions out of her
mind, the one thing she’d gotten pretty good at since becoming a vampire.

“And he knows this?” Olivia asked.

“I made it absolutely clear.” Wait. Was that why Gabriel was feeling so horrible? Could that despair be about
her
and not whatever was going on in his family? Losing her?

He killed my father. He deserves whatever despair he feels,
she thought.

Olivia got up. “All right. Let’s go, then.”

Shay stood up so fast that she knocked her chair over.

“You’ll probably need a couple of venti coffees if you’re going to be driving all night.” Kaz took a step toward the counter.

“No, I’m awake. I juiced up on Diet Pepsi Max,” Shay lied. Gabriel had managed to eat a little bite of cotton candy that she’d fed him one time, but Shay wasn’t sure what coffee—or anything else—would do to her vampire system. After her experience with the muskrat, she’d decided to stick to nothing but human blood from now on.

“Maybe that’s why you’re so—” Kaz made violent circles with his hands as he led the way to the door and held it open for Shay and Olivia.

“Yeah, I way overdid it,” Shay replied, grabbing on to the excuse. “Keys, please,” she said when they reached Kaz’s SUV.

Olivia started to get in the front seat. “Go in back,” Shay urged. “It’s better for napping.” And it would put her beating heart a tiny bit farther away from Shay.
I’m full,
she reminded herself.
Satisfied. I don’t need to feed.
Still, the smell of her friends’ blood was impossible to ignore.

Shay powered down the window closest to her as she started the car. “Shay, it’s only forty degrees out,” Olivia complained.

“Sorry.” Shay put the window back up. When they were asleep, she’d at least crack it. As she began to drive, she searched the stations until she found some music that seemed sleep-inducing. Kaz and Olivia were out within ten minutes.

Shay tried to relax. She focused on her technique—this was only the fourth or fifth time she’d ever actually been behind the wheel. Driving with superhuman vision was a little disorienting. She could see so far ahead that it distracted her from what was right in front of her. She concentrated on keeping exactly to the speed limit and signaling every time she wanted to change lanes. She needed something besides the smell of blood to concentrate on.

But nothing on the road was enough to distract her. With every mile, her thirst grew more overpowering. She felt as if she were withering inside. Once when she was in the hospital, she hadn’t been allowed water for a couple of days. She was being hydrated intravenously, but it hadn’t felt that way. Her world had narrowed down to pure thirst.

That’s how she felt now. But it was the desire for blood that consumed her this time. Blood. She needed blood. It was all she could think about.

“Coming over.” Olivia wriggled into the front seat. “Time to talk.”

“You’ve hardly slept at all,” Shay protested, her fangs nudging at her gums, wanting out. “Only a few hours.”

Olivia pressed the scan button on the radio and stopped on a Lady Gaga song. “Riding in a car all day is tiring, but not the kind of tiring where you want to sleep,” she said.

“Tell that to Kaz,” Shay replied, impressing herself by how normal she sounded. She could do this. Yes, she wanted to drink. Badly. But she could control herself. Could and would.

“Kaz is a world-champion sleeper,” Olivia said, giving him an affectionate look over her shoulder, a move that presented her neck to Shay.

Shay tightened her grip on the wheel—kneading it with her fingers just like her mom always did—and ground her teeth together. “So what’s the deal on the guy?” Olivia asked.

“He’s history,” Shay said. Her scalp felt prickly, and her hands shook despite her grasp on the wheel. She’d been insane to call Olivia. Completely out of her mind. It didn’t matter what she told herself, she couldn’t sit in this car for the hours and hours it would take to get home to Massachusetts, not without blood.

“Shay, you dragged me all the way out here to get you—after you took off, you made me lie to your mom, you slept with some guy I don’t even know, and then suddenly you’re calling for help and freaking out because you’re stranded in Virginia. This is all bizarre.”

“You have no idea how bizarre,” Shay muttered.

“Well, tell me, then. I will not let you shut me out anymore. Start with the guy or don’t, but talk. Now.”

“I couldn’t stay with him,” Shay said after a moment. The devastation of what she’d found out about Gabriel blotted out even her thirst, at least for a few moments. “He just . . . he wasn’t a good guy.”

“So he had sex with you and then he was done with you?” Olivia asked. Her words were harsh, but her tone was soft.

“No. No, it wasn’t like that.” Shay shook her head, trying to dispel
the dizziness swirling through her body. “God, what ever made me think he was so great in the first place?”

“Did he take you to his friends’ place? You said he thought the two of you would be safe there,” Olivia said.

“Yeah, we went there. But safe? Not so much. They were
not
happy to see me. I guess maybe he didn’t know his friends as well as he thought he did.” Even after what he’d done, Shay still felt sure Gabriel had believed that his family would take her in as one of them. He’d been deluding himself—but he hadn’t been trying to delude her. Not about that.

“Did his friends blame
you
for what Martin did to Gabriel, holding him captive?”

Shay gave a snort of laughter. “You could say that.” She used her tongue to push at her fangs. They’d started to release again.

“Did you tell your mom about Martin?” Olivia asked. “Because she’s home now. With him.”

“She knows some of it, yeah,” Shay replied. “But he’s so much worse than she thinks. That’s something I’ve got to deal with when I get there.”

I’m getting Mom away from him,
Shay promised herself.
I’ll drink him dry if he tries to stop me.

The thought of Martin terrified her. She had distorted, garish memories of him trying to blow up the lab. She’d been clinging to the last shreds of life at that moment. But everything was different now. Now she was the one with the power. Now Martin would fear her. She’d make him fear her.

“Are you going to call the cops on him?” Olivia asked, leaning a little closer, sending a fresh burst of blood-scent over to Shay.

“I haven’t figured it out yet,” Shay said. “I don’t really have any evidence, and cops tend to believe rich doctors over sick teenagers.” The truth was, though, that she knew whatever she did to Martin, it wouldn’t involve the police. She couldn’t afford to attract the attention of the authorities.

She swallowed hard, trying to fight the hunger that increased with every pump of Olivia’s warm blood. “Hey, Liv, do you have any perfume? The shower at the hotel was über-grungy, so I didn’t use it, and I think I kind of smell.”

Olivia twisted around again as she reached for her purse in the backseat. Her scent hit Shay even harder.

“Uh, they like you to drive in one lane or the other,” Olivia commented, handing Shay a spritzer of Wakely.

Shay realized that she’d gotten so distracted by the scent of blood that she’d let the car drift. She corrected the wheel with one hand, dousing herself with perfume with the other.

“Forty dollars an ounce,” Olivia reminded her.

“I’ll buy you more as soon as we’re home. I just don’t want you and Kaz to have to breathe in my reek.” Actually, Shay was hoping the perfume would dull the scent of the blood. And it did, some, burning the inside of her nostrils and making her eyes water.
I’m going to make it. It’s going to be okay,
she decided.

“How pissed off at you is Martin going to be—for letting Gabriel go?” Olivia asked. “I still can’t believe he had someone chained up in his office. That’s complete psycho horror movie behavior.”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that part,” Shay said. Because she didn’t care how pissed he was. He couldn’t possibly be as mad as her. “I haven’t thought about way too many things. I just
wanted to see you and get home.” She shot a quick glance at Olivia, not quick enough that her eyes didn’t have time to seek out the thin blue vein running up the side of her neck.

“Shay, one lane,” Olivia cried. “One!”

She’d drifted again. Shay jerked the wheel too hard to the right and almost took them over the edge of the shoulder.

“Stop,” Olivia ordered. “I’m driving. I’d like to make it home alive.”

“Sorry,” Shay said.

“Are we there?” Kaz asked, voice thick with sleep, as Shay pulled over.

“Hardly. We’re not even over the state line. This is northern Virginia,” Olivia told him. “I’m going to drive. Shay’s still got the twitchies.”

Shay jumped out of the car and sucked in as many deep breaths of the night air as she could before she had to get back inside, where the air was saturated with the scent of blood. The smell of the perfume was still strong, but Shay’s body had changed in so many ways. She was a hunter now, a tracker, and blood drew her, pulling her to the source.

Kaz watched her, one eyebrow lifted. “Do you need medication or something?” he asked after Olivia had pulled back onto the road. “Do you have it with you?”

“No. I’m okay,” Shay replied. She noticed Olivia shooting Kaz a worried look in the rearview. “Really,” she added.

“Do you think maybe you should go to my house first, instead of going straight home?” Olivia asked. “Your mom could come over and see you, let you know how much trouble you’re in with Martin. I don’t want him going off on you.”

This was so familiar: Olivia worrying about Shay, wanting to manage things for her, protect her. And meanwhile, Shay was using every bit of strength she had to fight the instinct to sink her fangs into Olivia’s neck and drink. She shuddered, remembering how she’d almost killed that guy in the pickup.

“Shay, what? Are you cold?” Olivia asked, misunderstanding the way Shay’s body was shaking.

“No. But I think I’m going to be sick. Pull over,” Shay cried. She had to get out of the car, before she did something unspeakable.

“You just told Kaz you weren’t—,” Olivia began.

Shay’s fangs released fully. There was no time. She reached over and grabbed the wheel, jerking the car over to an exit ramp as Olivia slammed on the brakes. They skidded to a stop, half on and half off the ramp. Shay shoved open the door and ran.