Crave 02 - Sacrifice (22 page)

“Shay!” Olivia screamed.

Shay didn’t turn back. There was a gas station just off the exit. One car at the pumps. A woman next to it, pumping gas. Giving herself over to her instincts, Shay hurled herself at the woman, knocking the nozzle out of her hand. Before it had the chance to clatter to the ground, Shay’s mouth was filled with blood. She had one arm locked around the woman’s waist, one hand pressed over her lips to keep her from screaming, as Shay took what she needed.

The dizziness left her body. She felt clear and strong as the blood flowed from the Giver to her, bringing with it a collage of emotion, almost too many feelings to absorb.
Don’t take too much,
she told herself.
Not too much.
But she had to have a little more.

“Shay!”

The familiar voice was so full of horror and disgust that Shay
instantly released the woman, who slumped to the ground. Not drained, though. A part of Shay was still aware of the blood coursing through the woman even as she turned to face Olivia.

Olivia let out a long, shrill shriek. In her friend’s eyes Shay could see her own reflection. Blood dripped from her mouth down her chin. Involuntarily, she licked it away, and Olivia let out a low retching sound.

“It’s not—” Shay didn’t have time to finish, not that she knew what to say anyway. Olivia turned and tore back toward the car.

“Sorry,” Shay said to the lady on the ground. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Then she chased after Olivia. Too late. Olivia slammed herself into the car. Kaz gaped at Shay, eyes wild, as the automatic door locks went down.

Olivia floored it, and the car sped off, tires squealing.

Shay stared after it, mouth open, still trying to come up with the words that would make Olivia understand.

Like that was even possible.

S
OON THEY WOULD COME FOR HIM
. The death ritual would begin at three a.m., the soul’s midnight, the time of night when more humans let go of life than any other, when the barrier between this world and what lay beyond was the thinnest. It was one of the first things Ernst had taught Gabriel, back when he was still a young human boy. He’d called it superstition back then, but when it had been time to take Sam’s life, Ernst had wanted to do it at three o’clock. Gabriel suspected that his father still bought into the “superstitions” he’d learned in his own youth more than even he realized. He was absolutely sure that Ernst would follow the same rules for his own ritual that they’d followed for Sam’s.

Let them come,
Gabriel thought. He lay in one of the farmhouse bedrooms, waiting.
Let my life end. What is there to live for now?
There was no joy without Shay, who now despised him. Without his family, whom he had betrayed to save her.

And maybe Shay would be happier once she was released from the burden of communion with him.

At least she wasn’t in any immediate danger. Several hours before, he’d felt devastation and grief slicing through him. Shay’s devastation; Shay’s grief. But those feelings had subsided a little. Whatever had happened, she had survived it.

His mind drifted to Sam, and he wondered what had filled his brother’s thoughts as Sam waited for the family to begin his final blood ritual. Unlike Gabriel, Sam had had so much to live for—a woman who loved him passionately, a child soon to be born. He had been going wild inside, that much Gabriel knew from their communion.

He usually kept the memories of that night locked in a deep, dark place inside of him. But tonight the memories crashed down on him relentlessly. Sam had fought with all his strength to free himself from the family as they dragged him into the circle where the ritual would take place, screaming at them to release him. Screaming, then begging, with his eyes locked on Gabriel’s face. He’d continued to struggle until the last moment of the third night of the ritual, when the last of his life was drained away. When he’d forgiven them.

Why couldn’t he have died cursing Gabriel, damning him for what he’d done? After Gabriel had taken everything from Sam, betrayed him in the most awful way, how could his brother still have had the generosity of spirit to think of Gabriel’s suffering instead of his own?

Sam’s forgiveness has been the hardest burden to bear,
he thought.
At least I’ll be free of my guilt once I’m dead.

The smell of smoke permeated Gabriel’s room, pulling him from his thoughts, and for a moment memory and reality blurred and blended. That smell . . . it could have come from the night Sam was killed. The night Gabriel helped murder him. It took him a moment to realize that the smell of smoke was from the present, not the past. The circle for his ritual was being prepared down in the cellar. Not much time left. A blink, a sigh, compared to the years he’d already lived.

And what had he done in all those years? What had he accomplished?

I gave Shay life.

That was something. It was enough. And maybe, in its way, saving Sam’s daughter had partially made up for what he’d done to Sam. Not that anything could truly absolve him, not even Sam’s words.

Gabriel heard the lock click, and a second later the door swung open. Ernst stood there, face expressionless except for the look of steely determination in his eyes. Gabriel got up and went toward him, though neither of them spoke. When Gabriel reached him, Ernst turned and walked down the hall. Gabriel followed, Luis and Tamara falling into place, flanking him on either side.

Tamara was blazing with hatred. And anticipation. She wanted Gabriel dead and she was eager to see him suffer. Her fury ran through the entire communion. Luis’s grief over Richard’s death hadn’t turned to anger the way hers had. From Luis, Gabriel felt a deep sadness along with resignation.

The smell of smoke grew stronger as they moved through the old
house. Silent as a funeral procession, as if Gabriel were already dead, they took the stairs from the kitchen to the cellar.

Gabriel wished that the blood ritual could take place outside. The moon was full, and it would illuminate the night. He would rather die in light than darkness, but it was not to be.

Ernst led the way across the empty space to a large perfect circle burned into the dirt floor, smooth gray stones rimming it.

Millie waited for them there inside the scorched ring. She bent and removed one of the stones, allowing them passage into the center of the circle. Her eyes were filled with grief as Gabriel passed her, and he could feel the same grief from her in the communion, but she placed the stone back in place without a word.

He had helped Ernst prepare the circle for Sam’s death, trying to harden his heart the entire time. Millie’s grief was simple and pure, but Gabriel’s had been twisted by his anger—at Sam for falling in love with a human, at all humans for taking yet another brother from him.

He’d asked Ernst how he knew what to do, where the ritual had come from. Ernst hadn’t known the answer. He’d learned the runes that had to be painted on the stones in red—red from the blood of the family—from his creator, although they weren’t Germanic in origin. Gabriel hadn’t seen anything like them before or after Sam’s execution. Until tonight. He could smell the blood of his family around him, not quite dry yet on the stones.

Ernst nodded at him. Gabriel knew he was expected to shed his clothes and lie down in the circle. He’d prepared himself for this moment and had been convinced he was ready. But when he looked at Ernst, he knew he didn’t want to die without reconciling with the
man who was the only father Gabriel had ever known.

“Could we have a private moment?” he asked Ernst. “I’d like to say good-bye to you, Father.”

“I didn’t have that chance with Richard,” Tamara spat.

“Ernst?” Gabriel said.

“You’ve forgotten how this family works,” Ernst replied in a cold voice. “We are bound together. We are one. We share our lives, our emotions, our fate. There is no need for privacy among the family.”

It was clear nothing Gabriel said would penetrate the stone wall that Ernst had raised between them. He felt so distant from his father. He could only guess what Ernst was feeling now that the hawthorn had broken the communion between them again.
So let it end. Just let it end,
he told himself.

Gabriel stripped off his clothes and lay in the ash in the middle of the circle. It was still faintly warm, and the cellar air was damp and cold. The heightened awareness of the physical world was the thing Gabriel marveled at the most when he was first transformed. Shay had given him back that sense of wonder. He’d thought it had been lost forever after Sam died, but somehow she had found an ember of it still burning in him and brought it blazing back.

Gabriel sought out the emotions that were Shay’s. She was still all right. Getting calmer, pushing down whatever it was that had filled her with devastation and self-loathing. She was strong, stronger than she knew. She would find a way to make her new life matter.

He let that thought comfort him as Luis and Tamara drove four stakes into the ground. They chained each of Gabriel’s hands and each of his feet to one of them. It wasn’t necessary. It had been for Sam, but Gabriel had no intention of trying to escape the will of his
family. He deserved this, for what he’d done to them, to Shay, and to Sam.

When they finished, Ernst began to speak. “As I said, we are a family, with one life that belongs to us all. If one of us is in danger, we all are. If one of us is in danger, we all fight until that danger is gone.” He paused. “What has happened to our family is the ultimate betrayal. One who should have been protecting us, fighting by our sides, brought danger into our home, our place of safety and security.”

There was no protest. No one spoke out to defend him, to say that what Gabriel had truly brought into their home was another member of their family.

“Because we are all one, we must all take responsibility for what is to be done tonight and the next two nights. We must all share in the ritual. We must all share in the blood, not only because it would be fatal for any one of us to drink so much of the blood of our own kind, but because we must share everything. We must share the grief that it is impossible not to feel. And the guilt.”

“I won’t ever feel guilty for this,” Tamara muttered. “He doesn’t feel guilty for what he did.”

She was wrong. Gabriel’s guilt over Richard’s death was heavy within him. He said nothing. No words would convince her.

But Ernst. Did Ernst actually feel guilt and grief over condemning Gabriel to death? Did Ernst still love Gabriel? Did he still see Gabriel as his son? He’d never said so, but Gabriel knew something had broken inside Ernst when the family took Sam’s life. Would the ritual leave him shattered this time?

I wish I could tell him I understand,
Gabriel thought.
That I know he believes he’s doing the right thing, doing what he has to do to prevent
another massacre. I felt the same way when we performed Sam’s ritual. It was only after falling in love with Shay that I truly understood what we had done, how wrong we were.

“The youngest will begin,” Ernst announced. “Do not take more than your body can safely process. Stop when you feel the nausea and dizziness overtake you. The purpose of the ritual lasting three nights is so that this may be done safely. Tonight I will not drink. I will watch over all of you. My turn will come later.” Whatever Ernst was feeling didn’t come out in his voice, which was steady, his tone cool.

Gabriel kept his gaze locked on the ceiling, waiting for the fangs of his sister to pierce his flesh. Millie was the youngest. She would go first, followed by Luis, who was older, and Tamara, who was older still.

“Millie,” Ernst finally said, the one word an order. Revulsion and sadness and a little anger—he thought at Ernst—pulsed through the communion from Millie as she approached Gabriel. She knelt beside him. He could hear her shifting slightly, hesitating.

He turned his head and looked at her elfin face. “It’s okay, Mils.”

“No, it’s not,” she whispered.

“It is. Ernst was right. I didn’t mean them to, but my actions got Richard killed. In our family that is punishable by death,” Gabriel told her. He willed her to realize that if she refused to take part in the ritual, she would be the next to die. Ernst would never allow the discipline of the family to break down.

He looked back at the ceiling, thinking it would be easier for both of them if there were no eye contact. He tried to imagine the sky, the moon, the stars. He heard Millie sigh, then her hair brushed against
his cheek as she brought her mouth to his neck and began to drink.

Sensations bombarded him as a purplish haze stole over his vision. The feeling of his blood being siphoned through his veins. The nausea Millie was already beginning to experience. Tamara’s bloodthirsty satisfaction. Luis’s revulsion—and his surprise at his own reaction. From Ernst, nothing. They hadn’t restored the communion, and Gabriel knew he’d never feel his father’s emotions again.