by Melinda Metz
But for now he had to help Ernst. Turning his back on the flames outside, he steered the gurney through the lobby, past the metal door, and down the corridor to the lodge. He pounded through the common room and straight to Richard’s sleeping quarters. Inside, Tamara still slept like the dead.
Gabriel left Ernst on the gurney beside the bed. When Tamara awoke tonight, she would find him and she would help him.
As he turned toward the door, guilt and fear slammed into him. Martin would be back. He would do anything to get another vampire to study. The family would have no warning, not with Ernst paralyzed.
He won’t come back today. Not with the firefighters around, Gabriel told himself. Or tonight. He knows better than to come at night when we’re all awake.
But the fire. What if it climbed all the way up to the lab? Gabriel was the only one who could move his sleeping family members to safety. He wouldn’t be able to wake them.
He let out a groan. It felt as if his heart were being torn in half. Shay or his family. He had to make the choice again. The decision came almost instantly. Shay. His family might be in danger. But Shay would absolutely die if he didn’t get to her right away.
Without another word to his father, he left the room, pulling the heavy door closed behind him. He sprinted back to the lobby and flipped the switch behind the reception counter, engaging the electric lock on the main doors. When the firefighters arrived at the blaze, they would think the lab was closed. That nobody was inside. They wouldn’t try to force open the interior doors unless the place was on fire.
The forest fire is mostly down in the ravine, he thought. It should stay there.
If it didn’t, his family would die. If he didn’t stay to warn them about Martin, they could die.
Gabriel did the only thing his ravaged heart would allow. He gathered Shay up, unconscious, into his arms and stepped into the corridor, pulling the thick metal door closed behind him. As he ran to the lodge and then down the stairs, rushing toward the caves, it was the only thought in his mind: He had chosen Shay over his family. It had cost Richard his life.
And his father would never forgive him.
CHAPTER
SIX
“HOLD ON,” GABRIEL SAID, repeating it over and over as he ran through the winding stone tunnel that led from the lodge to the caves. “Hold on, Shay, just a little longer.”
They had built the tunnel themselves, blasting it out of the rock like miners. Each member of the family had gone to graduate school several times over, but they’d also managed to pick up other skills in their long lives. They had to stay out of the sun, which meant they had to have access to the underground in case of an attack. That’s just how it was. There was an official entrance to the caves from a trail in the woods behind the lab. Gabriel hadn’t used it since they completed their own private way in, one that would let them escape during the daytime without ever having to set foot outside.
It wasn’t too far to the caves, not when you had vampire speed. But every second was precious now. Shay’s heart rate had slowed to the point that Gabriel could barely sense it. And her scent was . . . wrong. He had smelled enough death to recognize the smell.
“Please hold on,” he begged her aloud. He didn’t want to stop in the tunnel. Ernst couldn’t come after him for as long as the effects of the hawthorn lasted. But Gabriel had no way of knowing how much hawthorn was in the dart that Martin shot. Ernst was old and strong. He could fight off the death sleep with much more ease than Gabriel had ever realized, so maybe Ernst would be able to shake off the poison much faster than Gabriel had.
“In the caves we can hide better,” Gabriel said aloud, even though Shay was now unconscious in his arms. “The tunnel is just too close to home. The caverns are endless.” It wouldn’t matter. The vampires would be able to smell Shay a mile off, and they could track Gabriel by his strong emotions. Their communion let them feel everything the others did, and when the feelings were heightened, it was like a beacon, powerful enough to follow. Usually, that was a good thing—it let them find one another in times of trouble. But right now Gabriel didn’t want to be found. He wished he could calm himself, but his emotions were all over the place—guilt, grief, fear, love. He couldn’t even think straight. He just knew he needed to be deep underground, away from the chaos back at home.
Home. Gabriel felt bile rise in his throat. It will never be my home again, not after this. None of them will forgive me for choosing the love of an outsider over my family. He almost reeled with the realization. I’m just like Sam.
The tunnel was more like a series of small caves—they had blasted out the rock in between to connect the open spaces. Gabriel knew each area by heart, and he put on a burst of speed when he reached the final two turns. Soon he’d be in the first cavern, the huge, high space that held the closest bat colony. The colony would be hibernating now, the bats’ hearts beating only about once every ten minutes.
He sprinted through the limestone cavern and jumped up about thirty feet onto a rock shelf on the far side of the colony. It was a flat space at least ten feet wide, and it was hidden from the ground by a grouping of stalactites that the bats liked to hang on. It was the closest cover he could find. It would have to do. Shay didn’t have enough time for him to locate a better hiding spot from his family.
Gabriel knelt and eased Shay onto the hard ground as gently as possible.
“Shay?” he said. “Can you hear me?”
Her eyelids didn’t even flutter. Gabriel pushed her dark hair back from her face and tried again. “Shay?” he said, louder this time. “Wake up. You need to drink.”
But she was too far gone. Fighting down his panic, Gabriel nicked a vein in his wrist, then lifted Shay into his lap and held the blood to her mouth. Her lips were hot, but they didn’t close around his wound. She just lay passively as his blood trickled onto her chin.
“Please try,” he begged. He lifted her to a more upright position and forced his wrist tighter against her mouth.
Shay sputtered and began to cough.
“You’re okay,” he told her quickly, relieved to see any sign of life. “Just breathe for a minute.”
Shay’s beautiful blue eyes finally opened, and she gazed up at him uncomprehendingly.
“We’re safe for now. You need blood,” he told her. “Drink.”
He held his wrist up again, and Shay obediently opened her mouth. Gabriel felt the weak suckling, and he prepared himself for the sensation he always felt when she fed from him—the feeling of connection, a line of fire from his blood to hers, painful and pleasurable at the same time.
“No—” Shay turned her head, coughing violently. Whatever blood she’d managed to drink spilled back out, and she retched.
“Okay, it’s okay. Try again.” Gabriel tried to keep the desperation from his voice, but he’d never felt so terrified in his life. She had to have vampire blood. She would die without it. She was dying without it.
“I can’t.” Shay’s voice was rough from the coughing, and he had to lean close to hear her. “. . . too late.”
“No. You’ll feel better once you’ve fed.” Gabriel pushed his arm toward her again.
Shay tried to turn her head, but instead, it lolled back against him. She’s too weak to even control her movements, he realized. A tear ran down Shay’s cheek, but otherwise, she didn’t move.
“Please. Shay, please.” Gabriel didn’t know what else to say. Didn’t know what to think. “I can’t lose you. I love you. Please.”
“Love you,” she whispered, her eyes finding his although her head didn’t move. “Sorry.”
“No.” Gabriel swallowed, hard. “I will not let you die. I never understood why Sam cared so much about your mother, but now I do. He loved her, like I love you. You’re the first person who’s ever taught me how to truly trust, Shay. I will not live without you.”
Shay didn’t answer. Her eyes looked glassy. Gabriel didn’t know if she could even hear him anymore.
“I’ll do a blood ritual. I’ll make you a vampire,” he said.
Shay’s gaze sharpened, her brow furrowing ever so slightly.
“Yes. That’s what we’ll do.” Gabriel hadn’t given a single thought to this before, but it suddenly seemed the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re half vampire already. That’s what’s killing you, what’s always been killing you. So I’ll make you a full vampire. You’ll live.”
Shay’s lips moved, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He leaned down, so close that he could feel her shallow breath on his skin. “No,” she whispered.
“It’s not what you want. It’s not what I want for you. But you’ll still be here. We’ll be together,” he said. “Please. We haven’t had enough time.”
Shay was watching him. He knew she understood.
“Shay. It’s not easy. You have to . . . die. I have to drain your blood, all of it, before I give you my own blood to transform you.” Gabriel took a shaky breath. “I’ve never—In my family we perform this blood ritual together, as a group. I’ve never done it alone.” Gabriel gently swept her long hair away from her pale, beautiful neck. “But I will. I’ll do it for you.”
Shay twisted away from him, shocking him with her sudden strength. She managed to get herself into a sitting position, her back against the wall of the cave, before her burst of vitality—or adrenaline—gave out.
“No. Just hold me and let me die,” she whispered. “If you drink my blood, it will kill you.”
“Shay—”
“It’s poison to you. Don’t you remember?”
He did remember, of course. The very first night he’d seen Shay, she had rescued him from Martin’s exam room. She’d unchained him and helped him get out of the building . . . and he had repaid her by taking her captive. At the earliest opportunity, he’d dragged her into a motel room and fed from her to restore his stolen strength. Her blood had almost killed him.
“When I drank from you, your veins were filled with my blood,” he told her now. “You’d been having transfusions of it. It’s vampire blood that is poisonous to me. Not half-vampire blood.”
“You don’t know that,” Shay said. She had already begun to slump down, too weak to hold herself up. “I might be poison.”
“You haven’t have vampire blood in days now. It’s why you’re dying—your body is trying to function on your own blood, and it doesn’t work,” Gabriel said.
“It’s too big a risk.” Shay’s voice was fading, her eyes closing again.
She was right. He didn’t know if half-vampire blood would hurt him. Nobody knew the science behind it, if indeed it was science and not magic. They didn’t know why vampire blood made them sick, what particular aspect of it was poisonous, or even if it was the fault of the blood rather than of their bodies’ ability to process it.
Why didn’t we ever study this? Gabriel thought. Decades spent in doctoral programs, centuries as scientists, and we’ve never studied ourselves.
Only Martin had experimented on their blood. Only he might know the secrets it held.
“I don’t care about the danger,” Gabriel said, even though Shay might be too far gone again to hear him. He gazed at her pale face, still and beautiful like a marble statue. Even after he had kidnapped her and fed from her, she had stayed with him. He had collapsed, sick from the vampire blood, and she could have fled. But instead, she went and got bags of human blood. She fed him and nursed him back to health, and she didn’t expect anything in return. She was the most selfless—and fearless—person he’d met in four centuries of life. Even now, she wasn’t afraid of the blood ritual because it would kill her. She was only afraid that it might kill him.
“Maybe your blood will kill me, Shay,” Gabriel said. “But I don’t care. I would rather die than live without you.”
She didn’t reply. Her pulse was slow now, almost imperceptible even with his vampire hearing.
“I love you, Shay,” Gabriel murmured. Then he bent his mouth to her neck, and began to drink.
Mommy looks scared. She thinks I don’t notice, but I do. This time I’ve been in the hospital for three weeks. That’s a new record. I’m getting sick of the SpongeBob repeats they always have on here. Olivia sent me a picture from school with Mr. O’Leary and the whole class waving at me. I wish I could go home.
Shay stopped writing in her journal and looked up at her mother’s worried face—just as it changed. Well, the face was the same, and the worry was the same. But everything else around Mom morphed into a different place and time. They were on the beach in Florida, and Shay felt cold even though it was hot out.
“I’m fine,” she lied, not wanting to admit that their vacation was over. It was the only vacation she and Mom had ever taken, and it was only three days sandwiched in between the visit to the specialist in Miami and the long Greyhound ride back home to Massachusetts. They couldn’t afford any more nights than that at the motel.
“It’s a hundred degrees out and you’re shivering. You’re not fine,” her mother said sadly. “I think we’d better get you to bed, don’t you?”
Shay wanted to cry or scream, but she was too tired. “Why can’t they just find what’s wrong with me?” she asked.
“I think it’s a unique disease,” Martin answered, and Shay felt a jolt of surprise to see him there. Suddenly, she was in a hospital bed, the one in New York, where they’d first met Martin. He was visiting from Texas, and Mom had basically stalked him until he agreed to see Shay.
“How can that be?” Shay mumbled. But she wasn’t talking out loud, she suddenly realized. She couldn’t; she was too weak to even move her mouth.
Dying, she thought. I’m dying and my life is flashing before my eyes. That’s what people meant when they said that, apparently—that you saw all kinds of random memories.
Gabriel. Shay tried to say his name, and for one shocking instant, she realized with great clarity just what was happening. She lay in a strange, white-walled cave, locked in Gabriel’s embrace, his lips on her neck, his fangs in her flesh, her blood flowing into his mouth. He shouldn’t be doing that. Her blood could kill him.
Then reality slipped away again, blending softly into another memory. Olivia on the swing set in her backyard, her mouth opening in a scream as Shay collapsed off the swing next to her, too dizzy to hold on.
Olivia’s ten-year-old face blended into her seventeen-year-old one, and she was yelling at Shay for kissing Kaz while half the senior class looked on.
“It didn’t mean anything. I’m drunk,” Shay protested. She glanced around at her classmates. Chris Briglia was staring at her with a smirk on his face.
And then she was in the water, swimming in the Black River with Chris, both of them pushing hard for the island in the middle of the current. It was freezing.
“Don’t be afraid, honey,” her mother’s voice said, and now Shay was in the hospital again. The tunnel vision had gotten so bad this time that Shay could barely see, and her heart was pounding, loud.
The sound drowned out her mother’s voice.
Was it a memory? Or was it reality?
Her heart slammed desperately against her chest, fighting for life. She could swear her eyes were open, but they saw nothing but blackness. Shay tried to pull in a breath, but her lungs didn’t work. Dying.
Gabriel’s mouth was still warm against her skin, but Shay felt as if she were moving farther and farther away from the sensation. Farther from the cave, and from Gabriel, and from her own body.
It’s okay, Mom, her thought whispered. I’m not scared.
For a moment she floated there, in the cave and out of it at the same time. In her body and out of it. Alive and dead.
And then Gabriel’s blood filled her mouth.
Instantly, she was back in her body. The salty-sweet taste of his blood returning her to the present, to Gabriel. She became aware that she was swallowing the thick liquid, but only slowly, not really drinking as much as letting it trickle down her throat.
> “Drink, Shay, you have to try.” Gabriel’s voice sounded strange, far away and sort of muffled.
She closed her lips around the wound in his wrist and tried to suck.
More blood. And with it, emotions. Gabriel’s emotions. Fear and anger and exhilaration and love all jumbled together. She felt a moment of confusion, and she knew it was her own confusion.
And then suddenly, Shay was gone, and she was Gabriel. Like every other time she’d taken his blood into her body, she was in a vision from Gabriel’s long life. Shay stood in Gabriel’s place, thinking his thoughts, feeling his emotions, watching the world with his eyes.
It had never been this clear before. Each scent wafting by on the warm breeze was almost overwhelming in its intensity. Each star in the black Greek sky seemed blindingly bright. Each grain of sand on Gabriel’s bare foot tickled individually. The visions had always been strong, but this was something beyond ordinary strength. It was superhuman.
“They are gone. We need to leave the past to the past,” Ernst said.
Shay turned—Gabriel turned—and faced his father. “We cannot go on living like animals,” he agreed.
“So we leave. Go to Italy or to Germany,” Sam said.
Sam! The thought was Shay’s, breaking in to the vision. My father.
Then Gabriel spoke, and Shay’s consciousness retreated again. “Leave our home? Abandon our family?”
Sam put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and the weight of it felt comforting. “Our brothers and sisters are dead. We must look to the future now, for what is left of the family. The three of us. We will start again, build a new home. But not here, Gabriel.”
“There is too much danger. The island is small, and the humans know some of us escaped their massacre,” Ernst said, anger dripping from his voice.
“I’ve never left the island.” Gabriel knew he sounded like a child even though he’d lived several lifetimes. He was afraid.
“Do not fear. We will be together, always,” Sam said.
Gabriel moved, pulling his wrist from Shay’s mouth for only a split second, but it was enough to startle her into awareness. From the warmth of the darkened beach in Greece to the chilly cave in Tennessee. The change made her feel disoriented, and then Gabriel’s blood filled her mouth again. This time Shay didn’t need to tell herself to suck—her body did it automatically.
