by Melinda Metz
“I moved her to the vault,” Ernst said. “There’s no escape.”
True. Even if she somehow made it out of the room itself and then managed to get up the stairs, she’d never make it past the metal door that separated the lodge from the rest of the facility.
Luis glanced at Gabriel. “We’re all anxious to begin. It hasn’t felt right since you disappeared.”
“Not for me either, brother,” Gabriel replied truthfully. “I don’t think I ever realized how much I rely on our communion. This past month is the first time I’ve been truly on my own since . . .”
“The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth?” Millie finished for him.
They all laughed, and Gabriel joined in. “Are you saying I’m old? You’re no infant yourself, you know.”
She grinned at him like she’d done a million times before. But then there was an awkward silence, as if nobody could figure out how to go back to normal. As if they all knew that normal was never going to happen again.
“It feels strange to do a blood ritual in the common room,” Richard said finally. “Like we’re reality-show vampires hanging out in our fake house. Can we at least turn the overheads off?”
Ernst flicked off the lights, and Gabriel’s eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness. “We could go to the caves,” he suggested.
“No need,” Ernst said. That settled it. Ernst always had the final decision. “I’ll begin. You all remember how we brought Tamara into our family?”
Gabriel nodded along with the rest. It was a ritual Ernst had come up with, a sort of miniature version of the blood ritual that created a vampire. When a child raised in the family made the decision to give up the sun, the entire family gathered and together drained the human’s blood. Each vampire drank of their new sibling’s blood until he or she was emptied. Then, at the moment of death, the candidate drank from the family—one at a time, taking the blood of each family member in, and with it, their very life essences. When it was done, the new vampire shared in the communion of the family. The new vampire could feel the emotions of each one he’d drunk from, and they could feel his.
Tamara had already been a vampire when Richard brought her to them. They couldn’t empty her of blood, and she couldn’t drink their blood, because vampire blood was poison to another vampire. So Ernst had made up a new ritual: Tamara drank a drop of blood from each of them, just enough to burn the tongue, not enough to cause any damage. And then they all fed from her, just a tiny bit. It had made everyone a little sick, but it had also worked. She became linked to them. And their healing powers had cleared the effects of the poison within an hour.
Tamara’s communion has never been that strong, Gabriel thought now. He’d always wondered if it was because they hadn’t shared as much blood during her ritual. It used to make him sad, but now it seemed like a blessing. If this ritual allowed Gabriel’s family to access only a tiny portion of his emotions, maybe they wouldn’t realize how madly, utterly in love with Shay he was. Maybe they wouldn’t be horrified enough to storm down to the vault and kill her immediately.
I can’t think about that. I can’t think about Shay at all, Gabriel told himself as Ernst approached him. He couldn’t let his strong emotions for her into his mind as they drank. I’ll think about Martin instead, about how he captured me and tortured me. Maybe the strength of my fury at him will mask the strength of my love.
Ernst nicked a vein on his wrist and held his arm out to Gabriel. “Drink, my son, and rejoin your family,” he said.
Gabriel obediently bent his head to his father’s wrist. He took only a taste of Ernst’s blood, powerful and old, toxic to Gabriel. It burned like lava in his mouth, but even so, it was Ernst. His life in all its joy and sorrow shot through Gabriel: love for Gret, his wife; anger at Sam, his son; horror and fear and fury at the humans who murdered their family in Greece; relief at seeing Gabriel home safe.
Gabriel lifted his eyes to Ernst’s, and smiled.
“Richard?” Ernst said.
Richard stepped forward, opening his vein. Gabriel lifted his brother’s arm and drank. The essence of Richard filled him—his happy youth with the family, how he’d adored Sam and Gabriel back when he was a child in New York; the shot of pure love he felt when he met Tamara; and then the misery over Sam. And something new, too, a feeling that Gabriel didn’t remember ever having gotten from Richard: jealousy. Jealousy toward Gabriel.
He dropped Richard’s arm, surprised. But there was nothing unusual in Richard’s expression, and he leaned over to put his arm around Gabriel’s shoulders, a brief hug.
Now Luis offered his blood. Gabriel was starting to feel a little dizzy from the poison, but he forced the feeling aside. He drank from Luis, taking in the distant sadness of Luis’s parents dying on their Texas farm; the impatience to become a vampire as he stood guard over Ernst, Gabriel, and Sam while they slept; the overwhelming boredom of the bat research; the guilt about Sam.
“I thought I’d lost another brother,” Luis said when Gabriel stopped drinking. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“So am I,” Gabriel told him.
“My turn,” Millie said. She held out her wrist and grinned at Gabriel. “Feeling sick?”
“I am,” he admitted. “But it’s worth it.”
He fed from Millie, reveling in the familiar emotions of her. She loved wholeheartedly—him, Sam, Ernst, the other vampires, the bats. She yearned for something more, excitement and fun and novelty. Worry and confusion about Shay snaked through her every emotion, mixing with confusion about Sam. And she felt overwhelming relief that Gabriel was back among them.
When he moved his mouth away from her skin, Millie threw her arms around his neck. He hugged her back. “I missed you, Mils.”
Gabriel turned to Tamara, the last one of his family. Her gray eyes stared back at him blankly. Did she have the same theory he did—that this mini-ritual didn’t create as complete a communion as the full blood ritual? He’d never said anything to Tamara about how he felt less connected to her than to the others. He’d never even thought much about it. But maybe Tamara had known it all along.
“Welcome home, Gabriel,” she said, holding out her arm, a thin trickle of blood snaking its way down her wrist.
“Thank you,” he murmured, feeling almost sorry for her. She’d been with them for decades. Had she felt like an outsider the whole time?
Gabriel drank from her, and the rush of her feelings was as strong as the others. Tamara’s life was unknown to him, but he felt the emotions: love for her twin brother, devastation over his long-ago death, intense loneliness from her years of wandering the world on her own, and finally gratitude and love for Richard.
Tamara pulled her wrist away, and Gabriel stepped back. She’s the only one who didn’t feel Sam, he thought. The only one whose life wasn’t impacted forever by what happened.
“Gabriel?” Ernst asked.
“I’m all right. The blood burns, but I didn’t take too much,” Gabriel said. “I . . . I feel you all again.” He felt tears rise to his eyes. He’d missed the communion so much. And if there was less intensity to it than before, if it felt like the communion through a layer of gauze, well, it was still an incredible comfort to him. Maybe that’s how Tamara felt about it.
If it goes both ways, if the others feel my emotions less intensely, that can only be good, he thought. He didn’t want them to feel his constant worry for Shay, his desperate fear that she was getting sicker by the minute, locked away from him and his blood.
“Prepare yourself, my son,” Ernst said. “Now we will all drink of you, and our communion will be restored.”
Think about Martin. About how I felt lying in the exam room, chained to the table. Martin stealing my blood, Gabriel told himself. He held his arms out, his head thrown back. His family approached. Gabriel closed his eyes and felt mouths on his pulse points—his neck, the hollow inside his elbows, the throbbing veins in his wrists.
Not Shay. Martin, he thought. The coldness in
his voice as he told me he would synthesize what made me a vampire. He would achieve historic greatness by taking my blood, get a Nobel Prize for holding me against my will and studying me like a lab rat. Studying my blood in Shay’s body—
Gabriel’s eyes jerked open. He couldn’t think about Shay, couldn’t let himself feel anything for Shay right now. Only anger. Rage against Martin for tearing him apart from his family, for harvesting his blood, for imprisoning him. From now on, Gabriel had to feel only rage.
His family was drinking of him. The blood slipped from his body, a hot line straight to their mouths. It felt like a release, and a purplish haze stole over his vision. He was giving himself to them just like any other Giver. When a vampire fed from you, you were helpless. Your essence flowed to him even if you were a vampire yourself.
They are my family, one with me, Gabriel thought. My feelings are theirs. My fury, my need for vengeance . . . my love for Shay.
“Enough!” Ernst stumbled back from Gabriel, blood on his lips, shock in his eyes.
Richard shoved Gabriel’s arm away, and the warmth of his mouth on Gabriel’s wrist vanished, along with the feel of Tamara’s mouth in the crook of his arm. Tamara retched, turning her back.
“Gabriel . . .” Millie had released his other wrist and stood staring at him in horror. Luis wrapped his arm around her shoulders, not even bothering to wipe Gabriel’s blood from his chin.
Gabriel stared at them, his heart pounding from the sudden return to reality. “Did it work?”
“You love that thing, that halfblood,” Tamara whispered. “I felt love.”
“Love for an abomination,” Ernst spat. “For the creature that cost us Sam.”
Gabriel’s head swam, the emotions of his family pressing into his mind. The communion was back. He could sense their feelings, maybe not as strongly as before, but strong enough: They were horrified. All of them. Sickened by the idea of his love for Shay, disappointed and frightened and most of all angry. The weight of their fury felt like a boulder threatening to crush him.
“She’s not an abomination. She’s the best person I’ve known in a life that’s spanned centuries. She saved my life, when she had every reason to fear me,” Gabriel whispered. How could he have been so self-deluded as to think they wouldn’t feel his love?
“He must not be left alone,” Ernst said slowly, his rage calming into something more like worry. “He can’t be trusted near the halfblood. One of us must stay with Gabriel until it’s over.”
Until it’s over, Gabriel thought, sinking to his knees. Until Shay is dead.
CHAPTER
FOUR
“MAKE THE CALL,” ERNST SAID. He held out a cell phone, not the laboratory’s phone. “It’s the halfblood’s phone. It should have Martin’s number in it.”
“I found it in the storeroom,” Millie volunteered, her gaze darting from person to person without staying long on anyone.
“I don’t want to hear his voice ever again,” Gabriel said. It was the truth. Martin’s voice was seared into his memory along with the feeling of being trapped, chained down on a table, drained of blood. He’d refused to speak to the man, but Martin continually talked to him, telling Gabriel all his grandiose plans. Being restrained on that table, listening to him, was almost as dark a memory as the night the family was massacred in Greece, or the night of Sam’s blood ritual.
“He’ll recognize you. We don’t want him to know there are more of us,” Ernst said reasonably. “An ambush only works if it’s a surprise.”
Gabriel actually laughed. He had taken Shay away from Martin—rescued her rather than staying to fight with Martin the way he’d wanted to. Martin wouldn’t believe for a second that he was going to kill her. More than that, Martin wouldn’t care.
“This man won’t come for Shay. He only wants a vampire to study,” Gabriel said. There was no point in lying to his family anymore. “I tried to tell you, my original plan had been to use her as bait, but then I learned that it wouldn’t work. He’s after us, and the only reason you know about it is because Shay broke me out of Martin’s lab and saved my life. Because of her, I could come home and tell you about this threat. And yet you have her locked in the vault.”
“Enough of this talk!” Richard burst out suddenly. “If the halfblood is useless, why don’t we just kill it now?”
“The doctor may come to recapture his vampire, but the woman will come for the halfblood,” Ernst said, the words sending a chill through Gabriel.
“I told you, I never saw the woman,” he protested.
His father didn’t even bother answering him. “Either way, it costs us nothing to keep the halfblood alive for another day.” He thrust the phone at Gabriel again. “Make the call.”
“Why can’t you do it? Or Luis or Richard?” Millie asked. “Gabriel told us he never even spoke to his captor. This Martin won’t recognize his voice.”
“This is a danger that Gabriel brought on us all,” Tamara said. “It’s his responsibility to remedy it.”
“It’s needlessly torturing him after he’s already been through hell,” Millie argued.
Gabriel didn’t move his eyes from his father’s. Ernst wasn’t even listening to the others. He was simply waiting for Gabriel to obey him, assuming that he would, as he had for hundreds of years.
Gabriel took the phone, found Martin in the contacts list, and made the call.
Martin answered on the first ring. “Shay?” he barked.
“No. You know who I am,” Gabriel told him, “and you know you’re never going to get me back into your exam room.”
Martin snorted. “You wouldn’t be calling me if that was all you had to say.”
Gabriel felt a trickle of loathing creep up his spine. He hated Martin. As much as he wanted to feel fury, simple and righteous, what he actually felt was more complicated. Hatred and, yes, anger. But also fear. This man had kept him captive and made him weak, had used him, studied him, treated him as something less than human.
Maybe he was something less than human. Maybe they all were. Why else would they have done what they did to Sam, just for falling in love? Why else would they have Shay locked up like . . . well, like something less than human? An acid mix of guilt and shame swept through Gabriel’s body.
“I have Shay. If you want her back, you’ll meet me in Asheville, North Carolina. Sunday night. There’s an abandoned gas station off Route 70.”
“Tell him she’s in bad shape,” Millie whispered, her voice anxious.
“Be there,” Gabriel said. “You know Shay can’t live without transfusions. She won’t last long.”
He hung up before he could hear Martin’s reply. He was afraid it would be laughter. Martin didn’t care if Shay lived any more than Ernst did. All Gabriel could hope for was that Martin wanted to keep Shay’s mother happy. If he did, he might come to save Shay. And maybe, just maybe, there would be a moment of confusion during the ambush when Gabriel could grab Shay and run.
If she was even still alive.
I like Luis better. Richard came in here once and found me looking through a box of old tintype photos, and he grabbed them away from me and spat on the floor. I mean, literally, he spat on the floor like an old lady trying to show her disdain. I didn’t care that he took them. I didn’t recognize anyone in the tintypes. For all I know, it was just someone’s childhood collection of weird pictures. I’ve gone through half the boxes in the vault, and there is some strange stuff.
Then later Luis came. I was trying to rest. I can’t really sleep anymore, or maybe it’s that I can’t tell when I’m dreaming and when I’m just thinking. Maybe I’m dreaming right now. Although if I’m dreaming, why couldn’t I be dreaming that Gabriel and I are together, back in the barn, no humans, no vampires, just Gabriel and me?
I’m pretty sure I’m writing in my so-called journal and not dreaming at all, but I don’t trust myself too much. My grasp on reality is basically gone. And let’s face it, once there were vampires, reality didn�
�t seem quite as rock-solid as it used to anyway.
So Luis came in, and I was lying there in the middle of all these papers and little china dolls that I’d found in an old pillowcase. His face was an exact replica of Mr. Bonetto’s whenever we wouldn’t clean the beakers carefully enough in AP bio. I get the feeling Luis is a neat freak. Anyway, I said sorry for the mess, didn’t mean to skeeve you out.
And he smiled. It was only for a second. Maybe I imagined it. But I could swear he smiled at me before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to. Then he left.
They don’t say anything to me; I think they’re just checking to see if I’m still alive.
It’s never Gabriel. They probably don’t trust him to come near me. When I try to think of his face, I can’t remember what he looks like.
Did I dream him?
Shay dropped the pen. Or the pen fell. It was probably that the pen fell. She had to concentrate to make her fingers wrap around it now, and it was difficult to press hard enough for the ink to mark the paper. Writing words was hard too—she had to think of each letter, how to write it, and then what the next letter was, and the next. It was as if her brain couldn’t comprehend an entire word at once, not when she was looking at it on paper. She could still think, though.
She sighed, rolling onto her back again. She hadn’t sat up in a while—she’d been writing in that weird half-reclining position she used in her hospital bed at home. It was easier than trying to stay upright. The small room seemed to swim around her, the shelves spinning slowly past, holding their secrets packed away in the boxes and chests and bags. She couldn’t reach the top shelves, but she’d made her way through the bottom ones, searching for any more information on her father.
