Crave 02 - Sacrifice (3 page)

“He talked to you?” Millie wrinkled her nose.

“More like talked
at
me. He was thrilled with his own brilliance, he couldn’t keep it to himself,” Gabriel said. “I never said a single word back.”

“That thing is in the supply room,” Richard announced, coming into the common room with Luis on his heels. “The door’s locked and we bound its hands.”

“She’s not a
thing
,” Gabriel protested before he could stop himself.

They all looked at him, and he felt a rush of fear. He had to act reasonably if he wanted them to trust him. He had to pretend he wasn’t horrified by everything his brother had just said. Shay, with her hands bound?

As if you didn’t tie her hands yourself,
a voice inside his head whispered. He’d kept Shay prisoner and bound her during the day while he fell into the death sleep. He’d treated her like a thing too. How could he blame his family for doing the same?

“What are we supposed to do with her?” Luis asked. “It’s dangerous just to have a human here.”

“She’s here as bait,” Ernst said. “Gabriel planned to use her as a lure for the people who took him. Dr. Martin Kuffner. And that human woman Sam left us for. They’ll come for her, and then we’ll kill them all.”

“I told you Shay’s mother wasn’t involved,” Gabriel protested.

“You told us more than one person abducted you,” Ernst countered. “You said
they
put you in a van,
they
chained you to a table. Maybe the woman didn’t interact with you, but she was there, my son.”

Gabriel’s mind was spinning.
I’ve got to get to Shay.
He had tried to keep her mother out of it, but had he slipped up? He was still so enraged every time he thought about Martin and those weeks held captive in his office that it was hard to think straight. And his own feelings for Shay were overwhelming—the gratitude for saving his life, the love, and now the fear. Was she all right?

“. . . too risky drawing them here,” Richard was saying. “Gabriel knows where Martin lives. We should go and kill him there instead.”

“He’s right. What if they bring other humans with them?” Millie asked.

“No. I’m not going back there,” Gabriel snapped. “Don’t you think Martin would expect that?” Besides, Shay’s mother lived at Martin’s house. He wasn’t going to let his family attack her.

“We’re safer here anyway,” Ernst said. “We don’t want to give Martin the advantage of fighting on his home turf.”

“He doesn’t want publicity. He wants to study vampires, and he wants a monopoly on it,” Gabriel said. “He won’t bring anyone else—he doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

“Well, how long is it going to take?” Luis asked. “We don’t have any human food for the girl.”

Ernst waved his hand dismissively. “There’s no need to feed her.”

Millie made a small sound of protest, but she didn’t contradict him. Gabriel swallowed down his anger and tried to make his voice sound reasonable. “You want to starve her and keep her tied up? You’re treating her as badly as Martin treated me.”

“That seems only fair,” Ernst said.

“She needs blood at least,” Gabriel insisted. “She’s sick, like I told you. She can’t live without vampire blood.”

“There’s no sickness, there is only abomination,” Ernst spat. “We’re not going to waste our blood on that creature. We only need her alive long enough to be bait for the trap.”

G
ABRIEL CAN SEE IN THE DARK
, Shay thought.
My father—Sam—he could too. Why can’t I?

She stared at the tiny sliver of fluorescent light that marked the bottom of the door. It was all she could see. The rest of the room was nothing but blackness.
Why did I have to inherit only the bad parts of being a vampire?

Shay chewed on her lip, trying to make herself think so that she wouldn’t go crazy with fear. She hadn’t actually spent much time thinking about her father since she’d discovered who he was. She’d been too busy reeling from her new understanding of why she was sick, of why nobody had ever been able to diagnose
her illness. Of why she had to live on other people’s blood.

Well, that and being with Gabriel.

He’ll come for me. He’ll get me out of here,
Shay told herself. But it wasn’t comforting. She couldn’t even imagine what they were doing to Gabriel. Would he be in huge trouble for bringing her here? He had told her how much they hated humans. Humans had massacred their family, a long time ago, back in Greece. Only Gabriel and her father had survived. And Ernst.

But I’m not human,
Shay thought. That was supposed to matter. She was Sam’s daughter, and Sam was part of the family. Gabriel had said that family was the most important thing to Ernst . . . but Gabriel had been just as shocked as she was by Ernst’s reaction to her. Abomination. That’s what he had said. Tamara said the same thing.

Half vampire, half human. Maybe she
was
an abomination. But she still felt like herself.

A loud humming sound startled her, making her heart slam against her rib cage. “Get a grip,” she said out loud. “It’s the heat coming on.” Here in the dark, her hands bound behind her, in the lair of a gang of vampires, it was easy to feel like she was being held in some kind of nightmare world. Things like temperature control didn’t really fit in.

Shay’s heartbeat wasn’t slowing down. She took a deep breath, but it didn’t help.

“Self-check,” she whispered. Her stepfather, Martin, had made her do self-checks every few hours back when he was still acting like a responsible doctor instead of like a mad scientist. And he was a good doctor, a famous and well-respected one. Not everything he had told her was a lie. The self-checks were important.

She couldn’t take her pulse with her hands bound together by duct tape, but the pounding heartbeat told her that her pulse was too fast. Not good. But she didn’t feel dizzy at all, and her extremities weren’t cold. Well, no colder than the rest of her body. She did feel a little nauseous, though, and there was a monster headache building behind her eyes.

The effect of the blood is wearing off,
Shay thought. She’d drunk from Gabriel before they stole the Escalade and set off for Tennessee. But she’d only taken a little. They had a long drive and wanted to get started. And she’d thought—they had both thought—that there would be plenty of time for her to have more when they got here.

They hadn’t planned on Gabriel’s family roughing her up and tossing her in the basement. But it had taken its toll on her, clearly. She didn’t feel exactly weak yet, but she definitely wasn’t as strong as she had been at the beginning of this interminable night.

What time was it, anyway? They’d arrived around midnight. It had to be at least three in the morning by now. Or maybe the darkness of the room and her terror just made it seem like more time had passed. Maybe upstairs, Gabriel was still explaining it all and once his family heard the whole story, they would let her out and she’d be able to feed from Gabriel.

I can pretend to write in my journal again,
Shay thought desperately. That’s what she had done during the day that Gabriel had tied her up, back when she was his prisoner. Before they’d realized that she was Sam’s child. Before they’d made love.

Okay. Mind journal. Um . . . hi, I’m Shay and I’m an abomination.
She let out a short, hysterical laugh.
“Abomination.” That’s what I’ll call my autobiography.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” a voice muttered at the door. The sliver of light grew to a rectangle as the door swung open, and a figure stood silhouetted against it. “They didn’t even turn on the light?”

Suddenly, the room flooded with fluorescent light that seemed unbearably bright. Shay blinked back the tears of protest that sprang to her eyes.

“Sorry about that.” It was a woman’s voice. Shay tried to focus on her. Red hair, an elfin face.

“Millie,” she croaked.

“Yeah. I’m on guard duty.” Millie stepped into the room and let the door close behind her. She frowned at Shay. “Are you all right? I promised Gabriel I would check on you, not just stand out in the hall.”

“Has someone been standing guard out there all this time?” Shay asked. “But my hands are tied. And any one of you could snap me like a twig.”

Millie’s eyes widened in surprise. “Well, yes. But you’re human.”

“Half,” Shay muttered.

“Are you all right?” Millie asked again.

“No. My arms are aching from this,” Shay admitted. “Why do I have to be tied?”

Millie hesitated. “I don’t really know. It seems pointless to me.” She glanced around the room—which was a storage room for things like office supplies and paper towels, Shay now saw—and picked up a letter opener from one of the shelves. She stabbed it through the duct tape that bound Shay’s wrists, breaking the bond in about a tenth of a second.

“Thank you.” Automatically, Shay reached for the locket around
her neck, the locket that had come from her father, Sam. It was what she always did when she was upset, but this time the movement sent pain shooting from her shoulders down both arms. She winced. “Where’s Gabriel? Is he okay?”

Millie’s eyebrows drew together. “Why do you care?”

“I care about him,” Shay said. “Just like you do. I know you . . . did he tell you that?”

The vampire girl took a step backward, toward the door, wary. “He told us your father kidnapped him and used his blood to feed you.”

“Stepfather,” Shay corrected her. “And I had no idea where the blood was coming from. But it gave me visions—during my transfusions—and I saw you in them.”

“Okay, now you’re freaking me out,” Millie said, twisting the beaded bracelet she wore.

“I’m sorry. Sorry. I just don’t understand.” To her horror, Shay felt herself beginning to cry. She swiped angrily at the tears, the motion sending pinpricks through her hands. They’d gotten numb when they were tied behind her. “I saw your family in my visions, and there wasn’t any evil or . . . Look, I liked you. I liked Ernst. I don’t know why you’re all treating me this way.”

“Because you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t even exist,” Millie said.

“Everyone keeps saying that!” Shay burst out, her breath coming fast. “But I
do
exist. I’m right here in front of you.” She held her arms out wide. “And I didn’t ask to have a vampire father and a human mother. I didn’t ask to be sick all my life.”

Millie didn’t reply, just continued twisting her bracelet around and around.

“Now I need a place to be safe, because of what I am. You’re Sam’s family and Sam was my father,” Shay continued. She wasn’t sure why she kept saying that to these people. They obviously didn’t care. “That meant something to Gabriel,” she murmured. “He loved Sam.”

“I loved him too,” Millie said, taking her by surprise. “I miss him.”

Shay stared at her, stunned by this simple kindness.

“But what he did was wrong. To breed with a human—it’s . . .”

“Verboten,” Shay finished for her. Gabriel had told her that, had tried to make her understand what a big deal it was. And Shay had thought he was being bigoted. Why hadn’t she listened better?

“Yes.” Millie gazed at her for a long moment. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

“Can you get me some water?” Shay asked. “Or food?”

“We don’t have any food,” Millie told her.

Shay’s heart sank. If she didn’t eat, the weakness would take hold even sooner. “Water, then?”

“Okay. I’ll find some.” Millie left, and Shay heard the lock turn in the door behind her.

Luis had said that lock was wonky. Should she try to get out?

Sure, why not? Get out into the nest of vampires so they can kill me for trying to escape,
she thought. Shay took a deep breath. It wasn’t a good time to try. The vampires were still awake, so it wasn’t dawn yet. When the sun came up, they would fall into the death sleep. She’d seen Gabriel like that many times now, and she knew that almost nothing could wake him up. If she could last until morning, she’d have the whole day to figure out how to leave.

And what then?
a voice inside her head whispered.
I can’t live without Gabriel’s blood. The amount of time the strength lasts is getting
shorter. Even one day without feeding from him might be too long.

“Cross that bridge later,” she murmured. For now she needed to try to rest, and to drink the water that Millie brought back, and to preserve whatever strength she had for the daytime.

And to call for help.

Shay gasped, yanking her cell phone from the pocket of her cords. With her hands free, she could call someone!

Mom,
she thought immediately, reaching to dial. Then she froze, her finger hovering over the keypad. Her mother had helped Martin capture Gabriel, had helped him steal Gabriel’s blood and give it to Shay—all without telling her. Shay knew that Mom had only done such terrible things out of desperation, to keep her sick daughter from dying. Well, and maybe out of anger at Sam, the vampire who’d abandoned her when she was pregnant with Shay. She didn’t know how much Sam had really loved her.