Crave 02 - Sacrifice (25 page)

She struggled to open her mouth. “Mom,” she tried to say. But her tongue was thick with the hawthorn poisoning. The word came out like a grunt.

But that was enough for her mother. She looked at Shay, then looked at the window. Immediately she turned back to Martin. “I want you out of here. Now! Or I’ll call the
New York Times
. Or, even better, your good friend Oprah.”

“This isn’t over,” Martin growled. But he obeyed, the door slamming shut behind him. Shay’s mother grabbed a kitchen chair and wedged it under the knob.

“At least you didn’t get much hawthorn,” she murmured as she
knelt by Shay. “Only skin exposure. The paralysis shouldn’t last too long.” She wrapped her arm around Shay’s waist and hauled her to her feet. Shay tried to speak again, to explain what she needed.

The words wouldn’t come out clearly, but as she almost always did, Mom understood. “Your death sleep is coming. Don’t worry. I’ll get you into bed and close the shades and curtains.”

Relief flooded through Shay. She tried to send it on to Gabriel, even though she could barely feel him anymore. She wanted to keep their communion. She didn’t know how she felt about him. He’d killed her father. He’d saved her life. All Shay knew for sure was that she wasn’t willing to let him go, not yet.

The sun pressed so heavily on her that Shay stumbled on the way upstairs. But Mom held her up, and Shay didn’t feel any sense of panic about the death sleep approaching. Her mother would take care of her. It was incredibly comforting and familiar to have her mom helping her into bed. She’d done it so often when Shay’s body had failed her. Shay wished she could at least say thank you, but she was still having trouble forming intelligible words, and now the sun was draining all her energy.

Shay lay still and watched through heavy eyelids as Mom lowered the shades, then closed the curtains over them, checking to make sure that no light could leak around the edges. Had she done this for Sam when it was time for his death sleep?

“You’re safe, baby,” her mother said as she sat down on the edge of Shay’s bed. She brushed Shay’s hair out of her face. “Are you hungry?”

Shay was too weak to nod, but her gaze automatically went to her mom’s throat. She couldn’t help it. Her body demanded blood.

Mom just nodded. She stretched out next to Shay and wrapped
one arm around Shay’s shoulder. She coaxed Shay’s head down to her throat. “Drink.”

Shay didn’t try to resist. She was hungry, always hungry. As gently as she could, she began to drink, feeling strength flow into her with her mother’s blood.

Mom continued to run her fingers through Shay’s hair as Shay fed. “You’re home,” she said again and again, soft and sweet as a lullaby.

Shay closed her eyes, allowing herself to feel safe and relaxed for the first time in days. The sun’s warmth stole into her mind, but it wasn’t a threat this time. More like a warm blanket cuddling her as she drifted off to sleep. Everything was all right. Finally.

Agony.

Shay’s eyes snapped open, and she jerked away from her mother. Pure pain—physical, emotional—shot through her, filling her with anguish beyond anything she’d ever known.

Gabriel. It’s Gabriel’s pain. Our communion is still there,
she thought.

Shay moaned, almost sick with the intensity of the feeling. Gabriel was awash with hopelessness and despair. It felt as if he’d just lost everything in the world he cared about.

I’ve got to help him,
Shay thought.

But then the sun came up, and she was helpless.

G
ABRIEL FLOATED BACK
into consciousness. The sun had gone down. He wished he could see it one last time. It would be a better way to die than this, lying here chained in the cellar. He stretched as much as he could with wrists and ankles shackled to the stakes planted deep in the ground.

Immediately, he searched the communion for Shay. He felt his family’s communion—Millie’s sorrow and panic, and Tamara’s fury and hot anticipation of the ritual that would continue later that night. He felt Luis’s numbness and resignation. But Shay . . . Where was she? Last night, close to dawn, their bond had almost been severed.

The sensation of Shay slipping away from him had sliced through the pain of his blood being stolen from his body. In that last hour before dawn, he’d fought to keep their communion tight and he’d thought . . . it had felt as if she was trying to keep the communion too.

That had to be a delusion, something his brain had conjured up to give him comfort. Shay wouldn’t want to be connected with Gabriel. Not now that she knew he was responsible for Sam’s death. She hated him.

And last night he’d confirmed for himself that his father did too. If it wasn’t hatred, then Ernst would have protested when Gabriel said those words, when he forced himself to say aloud that Ernst hated him. Ernst hadn’t protested. He hadn’t replied at all. It had been like a bomb going off in Gabriel’s chest. His guardian, his mentor, his friend, his
father
hated him. Gabriel had succumbed to the death sleep with that truth filling every cell of his body.

They had lived together for four hundred years. Even after everything Ernst had done to him, to Sam, to Shay, Gabriel still wished for his father’s love.

He continued reaching for Shay through the communion. If what he’d felt from her last night was a delusion—and how could it be anything else?—he wanted it again, a sweet drug to ease him through this night and the next. Then he’d be free, free of guilt and shame, free of having betrayed and being betrayed by others, free of the world. Dead. That was still what he wanted. There was nothing left for him in this life.

Shay.

Gabriel drew in a deep breath, relieved. He could feel her, faintly
but definitely. Was it his imagination? Could his brain really create this feeling of Shay with such accuracy? Or was it truly her? Gabriel decided to let himself believe he had found her. He focused his entire being on what he could feel from her through their communion.

She was safe. He savored that emotion. She had found a secure place to undergo the death sleep, and she’d fed recently. Shay was hungry, all new vampires were hungry, but the craving for blood wasn’t tearing at her. She was in control.

What happened to our communion last night?
he wondered.
Why did it almost break?

Gabriel promised himself he’d be vigilant. He had no reason to think that concentrating on her would strengthen their connection. But it certainly couldn’t hurt. His communion with Shay would end forever tomorrow night. While he still had it, though, he wouldn’t let his attention wander even for an instant. He played memories of Shay over and over again in his mind, the way a simple touch of her lips had set his entire body on fire when they first kissed, and that moment when he realized he loved her, just as she was being dragged away from him.

When he died, his love for Shay would live on. He was sure of it.

He lived in those memories and in the communion with Shay until the soft sound of footsteps pulled him back to the cellar and the second night of the blood ritual. Gabriel raised his head as much as he could, so he could watch his family return to the circle. Tamara glared back at him, running the tip of her tongue over her lips as if tasting his blood already. Luis kept his eyes straight ahead as he walked over to his position, and Millie didn’t look up from the ground as she took hers. Ernst didn’t avoid Gabriel’s
gaze, but his steely eyes told Gabriel nothing of how he felt.

It doesn’t matter. I know how he feels—he detests me and blames me for Richard’s death.
Maybe it was a kindness that Ernst showed so little emotion, a kindness that their communion had been shattered by the hawthorn dart.

“Tonight we act as one,” Ernst announced. “That is because in all the ways that matter, we are one. Our lives are so tightly bound together that what is good for one is good for the entire family, and that which threatens one, threatens the entire family. Tonight we continue to take the blood, and the life, of Gabriel, who was once family but is now a stranger who brings danger to us all.”

Gabriel let his head fall back onto the ground. A stranger. He might be many things, including a threat to his family, but he could never be a stranger to those gathered around him, much as they might wish he were.

“We will again drink in the order of youngest to oldest,” Ernst continued. “You may not be able to withstand as much of the poison blood as you did last night. Take only as much as you are able. This will be the last night you drink deep. Tomorrow night I will finish this, while the rest of you stand witness, until the end. Then together we will take the last drops, sharing the responsibility among us.”

This time Millie did not wait for Ernst to call her name, although her footsteps were slow and reluctant as she approached Gabriel. His eyes sought hers, but he didn’t try to pick her emotions from the communion. He was concentrating on Shay, only Shay.

Then, suddenly, he heard Millie moving away, rushing toward Ernst.

“I can’t do this again,” she cried, her voice quavering. “I can’t!”

Luis put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. It’ll all be over soon.”

“We’re all here with you, Millie,” Ernst told her. “I know it’s hard, and that’s why it’s something we do as a family.”

“Family?” Millie exclaimed bitterly. “Gabriel was right when he said if we were truly a family, we would have accepted Shay.”

“I don’t want to hear that name,” Ernst warned her.

Tamara jumped in. “If Gabriel cared about his family the way he should have, he would have fought by Richard’s side, as a brother should.”

“Richard should have stood by his side, too!” Millie insisted. “That’s what we’re supposed to do. When Gabriel fell in love, we should have shared his joy. Instead, Richard mocked him and hated him for it. We all did.”

“Millie—,” Ernst began.

“No! If being a part of this family means vengeance and hatred and anger, then I don’t want to be in this family.”

Gabriel was shocked by her words, by her empathy and bravery. Millie had done what no one had done for Sam. No one had seen Sam’s side. Every member of the family, none more than Gabriel, had believed Sam’s death was just and necessary.

There was a clatter as Millie ran up the cellar steps. Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel saw Luis start after her. “No,” Ernst told him. “I’ll do it.”

But first he stepped up to Gabriel’s side and stared down at him. “I thought you’d damaged our family as much as was possible. But you continue to destroy us.”

“Not me. You.” Gabriel wondered why he’d never realized it
before. “I brought a new member to our family. Someone who would have made us stronger and better. You turned her away. It’s you who are destroying us, Ernst.”

Ernst didn’t reply. He signaled for Luis to come and drink, and Luis obeyed.

He loves me. Gabriel loves me. That’s true. I can feel it in every bone, every inch of skin. I can feel it deep in my heart, and even deeper in his soul. I can’t feel much from him through the communion; Martin’s dose of hawthorn almost ripped it apart. But I can feel Gabriel’s love.

What do I do with that? He betrayed my father—his own best friend. How many visions did I have of Gabriel with Sam, loving Sam? He thought of Sam as his brother, and still he told Ernst that Sam was going to marry my mom. What did he think Ernst would do? Did he know the punishment for loving a human was death? Because in my vision, Gabriel didn’t seem too surprised. And he helped carry it out—he drank Sam’s blood. He killed him.

That’s all I need to know, right? Gabriel killed my dad. End of story.

But I can’t unknow him. He said that to me once. That he had tried to keep from thinking of me as Shay, and to only think of me as “the human girl”—so that he wouldn’t feel anything for me. Because I’m human and he’s supposed to hate humans, all of them. But he had spent time with me, he knew who I really was. And he couldn’t go backward. He couldn’t unknow me.

And I can’t unknow him. The Gabriel I loved was sensitive and loyal and funny and brave. He suffered a terrible trauma at
the hands of human beings, and that’s why he hated them—us. I understand that. And he loves his family more than anything. I get that, too. I can’t help it, I can’t go backward. I fell in love with him. How can I turn off that kind of feeling? No matter what he did in the past, he’s still the guy I knew.

But still, to kill a person you love? Your own brother?