Crave 02 - Sacrifice (29 page)

Tears fell from her eyelashes down onto Gabriel. Tears of absolute joy. He was kissing her back. The movement of his lips was faint, but Gabriel was definitely alive. “Drink,” she murmured against his mouth. She pulled away ever so slightly. “I need you to drink all of this.” She tipped the blood from the bag into his mouth, and this time his throat spasmed.

“He’s taking it,” Ernst said. His voice sounded . . . reverent. As if he’d witnessed a miracle.

“And now what?” Tamara demanded, arms crossed. Her voice sounded harsh in the hushed room. “Is she going to bring Richard back from the dead too? And what about that woman?” She jerked her chin toward Shay’s mom. “She’s the one who started this all. Without her, Richard wouldn’t be dead. We’d all still be a family, Richard, Sam, Gabriel, all of us.”

“She didn’t kill Richard. Gabriel didn’t kill Richard. Shay didn’t either.”

The words stunned Shay. It was the first time Ernst had spoken her name.

“That man did. Martin,” Ernst continued, still staring at Gabriel.

“I’m sorry. I’m the one who told him about your kind,” Shay’s mother said. “I wanted to save Shay. I didn’t know what kind of man Martin really was.” She turned to Tamara. “I’m sorry.”

Tamara hissed in reply. Lightning fast, Luis reached out and grabbed her by the arm. Tamara spun toward him, fighting to free herself.

“You won’t attack the human,” Luis told her, holding tight. “There will be no more killing here tonight.”

Tamara stopped struggling, but her eyes went back to Shay’s mother, and they were filled with fury. Luis didn’t release her arm, and Shay felt a burst of gratitude toward him.

“That bag is gone,” Millie said, pulling Shay’s attention back to Gabriel.

As Gabriel drained the bag, Millie handed Shay another one. Gabriel still hadn’t registered her presence. She wasn’t even sure he saw the room around him. But he was coming back to her with every swallow of the blood.

Gabriel’s eyelids fluttered, then closed for a moment. When they opened, he looked at Shay, his eyes clear and filled with love for her. “Shay. I hoped when I died I would get to see you again.”

“You aren’t dead,” Shay told him. “Neither am I.”

“I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “About Sam. It’s the biggest regret of my life.”

“I know.”

“That was my fault,” Ernst put in. “I was the head of the family. I—”

“No.” Gabriel tried to push himself into a seated position. Millie had undone the rest of the ties that bound him to the stakes. Still, he had to lie back down. He was too weak to hold himself upright. “I was an adult. I’d been an adult for hundreds of years. It was my responsibility to do what I believed.” He reached up and squeezed Millie’s hand. “The way you did,” he told her.

With his free hand, he ran his fingers down the side of Shay’s face, brushing away tears. “And you. You came back for me. After everything.”

“I couldn’t let the same thing happen again,” she said. “Love isn’t supposed to be so tragic.”

He smiled at her. “You really are so much like Sam. He forgave me too—with his last breath, he told me that.”

“My mom—,” Shay began.

The sound of footsteps thundering down the stairs interrupted her.

Before Shay could even turn all the way around, Martin barged into the cellar. A trio of huge, unsavory-looking guys came down the steps behind him. Unlike Shay and her mother, they’d come prepared. They each held a tranq gun, and Shay was sure the guns were loaded with hawthorn.

M
ARTIN MUST HAVE FOLLOWED ME and Mom
!
Shay thought. She threw her body on top of Gabriel’s. Martin wasn’t going to get him back. She would not let Gabriel be dragged back to that lab and used as a test subject again.

Pffft!
A tranq dart flew over Shay’s head, and almost immediately, Millie collapsed in a heap next to Shay and Gabriel. Shay scrambled over to her—positioning herself so that she blocked Gabriel, still so weak, as well as she could. She searched Millie’s body for the dart, hoping if she pulled it out fast, Millie wouldn’t be completely paralyzed.

Out of the corner of her eye, Shay saw Tamara leap onto the
back of one of Martin’s goons and wrap her arm around his neck.
Jerk. Crack.
The man went limp, neck broken. Tamara gave a whoop of triumph.

“Martin, stop this!” Shay’s mother screamed.

“Mom, run!” Shay yelled. She found the tranq dart embedded in Millie’s thigh and pulled it free. “Just get out of here!”

Instead, her mother ran toward Martin. Tamara ran at him too. She reached him first, fangs bared. Before she could sink them into the flesh of his throat, a tranq dart hit her in the back. She swayed on her feet. Ernst grabbed her before she could topple. He turned to another stairway, one Shay hadn’t noticed. In one bound, Ernst was up the steps, Tamara cradled in his arms. He kicked open the door, and a blast of night air hit Shay’s vampire senses. Ernst disappeared outside with Tamara.

With vampire speed, Luis went after the goon that had shot Tamara. The third of Martin’s men headed for Millie. “Got one down over here!” he shouted. “Taking it to the van.”

Nobody’s getting taken to the van,
Shay thought. As the man leaned down to grab Millie, Shay backhanded him. He flew across the room and hit the wall with a dull thunk.

Shay stared at him for a moment, astonished by her own strength. She was a complete badass.
Pffft!
A tranq dart came whistling toward her. She twisted her body away from the sound, and a second later she heard the dart hit wood.

Ernst approached. Shay hadn’t even seen him return to the cellar. There was too much going on, and everything was happening so quickly. He kept his body low to the ground as he scooped Millie up into his arms. “You save Gabriel,” he told Shay. “Move fast.”

“I can walk,” Gabriel said, struggling to his feet. Shay saw tremors rippling through his naked body. A second later his knees buckled, and he would have fallen back to the ground if Shay hadn’t wrapped her arm around his waist.

“Lean on me,” she ordered. She and Gabriel had only taken two steps after Ernst when she heard Martin shout her name.

She jerked her head toward him. He held her mother pinned tightly against his chest. The third goon was on the ground behind him—dead or unconscious, Shay wasn’t sure—and next to the goon lay Luis. The yellow tail of a tranq dart stuck out from his shoulder.

“Time to choose, Shay,” Martin told her. “Mommy or the boyfriend.” He brought a gun to her mother’s head. Not a tranq. A real gun. One that shot bullets.

Shay’s body went cold. She looked Martin in the eye, and she knew he’d do it. He would kill her mother.

Ernst had vanished up the steps with Millie. Shay was on her own.

Martin jerked his head toward the closest of the fallen goons. “Take that gun and tranq your vampire or I shoot her now.”

“What we did was wrong, Martin,” Shay’s mother cried before Shay could answer, before she could even
decide
what to answer. “We treated him like an animal. I wanted to pretend he didn’t have any emotions, that there was nothing human about him. But I was wrong. We were wrong. We need to let them all go.”

“I wasn’t wrong,” Martin snapped. “What’s it going to be, Shay?”

Everything slowed down as Shay stared at the gun to her mother’s head. Mom’s breathing had been fast and panicked. Now
the moments between breaths stretched out . . . out . . . out.

Shay could smell Martin’s sweat. A harsh chemical scent clung to him too. From the tranq guns? She wasn’t sure.

She heard Ernst’s movements outside. He was running, faster than any human ever could. But he wouldn’t make it back in time.

Gabriel’s body pressed against hers. His muscles tensed as he struggled to stand upright without her support. Shay wrapped her arm more tightly around him. He needed her strength whether he thought so or not.

Click.
With that sound, everything felt like it was moving at normal speed again. Martin released the gun’s safety. His finger twitched on the trigger.

“Take me!” Gabriel demanded, pulling away from Shay. “Just take me and let’s end this.”

“No!” Shay’s mom reached down to a small metal cylinder hooked to Martin’s belt. She stuck one finger through the metal loop at the top of the canister. With her other hand, she held the lever at the back of the canister down. “Enough.”

Martin slowly lowered the gun, but he didn’t let go of Shay’s mother. He kept his face expressionless, but Shay could hear his heart thundering and his breath coming fast. The acrid scent of his sweat grew stronger. He was terrified.

“That’s an incendiary grenade. If you pull that—,” Martin began.

“If I pull it, the safety pin comes off. Then if I let go of the lever, there will be fifteen seconds until it explodes and sets this whole place on fire.”

Shay stared at her mother in shock. When had she become a weapons expert?

Mom’s head was lowered, her attention focused on the one finger she had positioned through the metal loop. “I was with you when you were planning Gabriel’s capture, remember?”

“So you’re going to kill us all?” Martin demanded. “Including Shay? She
can
burn. You know it’s one of the few ways she can die.”

“So now she’s Shay again? You were calling her a monster just the other day,” Shay’s mom taunted him. “I’m not doing anything that would hurt her. She’s a vampire now. In fifteen seconds she can easily get herself and Gabriel to safety. I’ll only be killing the two of us.”

“Mom, no!” Shay begged.

“Martin and I did some terrible things,” her mother replied. “And I’m sorry for them.” She looked at Shay, then moved her gaze to Gabriel. “Very sorry. Now you two get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Shay cried.

“I want you to have your life. That’s what I want more than anything,” Mom said.

Shay shook her head, tears blurring her vision.

“Gabriel is going to need your help to get out fast enough.” Her mother used the metal loop to pull the safety pin free. “Shay. Go!”

Martin let out a high bleat of panic. He wrenched the grenade off his belt, jerking it away from Shay’s mother. Her fingers slipped off the lever. Martin hurled the grenade as hard as he could, then turned and raced for the stairs.

“Run, Mom!” Shay screamed as she heard the grenade hit the far wall and fall to the floor. She hauled Gabriel toward the stairs.

Her mother raced ahead of her, but she was no match for Shay’s
vampire speed. Still holding Gabriel with one arm, Shay grabbed Mom and
threw
her to the top of the steps—and safety. She might be injured, but she’d be alive.

“Luis!” Gabriel managed to protest.

“I got him out.” Ernst stood at the top of the stairs, blocking their exit.

Shay’s heart gave a thump of fear—had Ernst changed his mind about letting Gabriel live?

Then Ernst gathered himself and leaped into the air, almost flying over their heads . . . and right into Martin. The velocity of Ernst’s body knocked Martin back into the cellar, with Ernst sprawled on top of him.

Ernst twisted his head to look at Shay and Gabriel. “Go!” he shouted. And Shay understood. He was going to hold Martin there until the fire overtook them. He was going to sacrifice his life so she and Gabriel could escape.

“No!” Gabriel cried.

“Go!” Ernst ordered. “And know I love you!”

Shay wrapped both arms around Gabriel. “There’s no time left,” she shouted. She bent her knees and jumped for the top of the steps, pulling Gabriel with her.

They landed on soft pine needles outside, but Shay didn’t linger. Still hauling Gabriel, she took off at a sprint, running faster than a sick girl could ever have dreamed. Her mother had already made it to the tree line.

The explosion came almost immediately.

Shay felt herself and Gabriel flung through the air. They landed
in a heap twenty feet away. When they turned back to look at the farmhouse, it was an inferno. Shay prayed that Martin and Ernst were already dead. Escape was impossible.

Shay watched as the house collapsed into the cellar, then turned to Gabriel. His face was twisted with grief.

She didn’t know what to say to comfort him. There wasn’t anything
to
say. Instead, she held him tight as flying sparks lit up the night.