Sacrifice (Crave (Quality))

by Melinda Metz

  Millie jumped down from the rock shelf, landing without jostling Gabriel. She took off at high speed, cradling him like a baby as she sped through the series of caves. Before long, they were back to the tunnel he’d come through with Shay that morning.

  “Gabriel!” Luis cried when they reached the lodge. He glanced at Millie. “Where did you find him?”

  “In the caves. He’s weak, nearly spent,” Millie said.

  “I’ll get blood.” Luis took off toward the refrigerated room where they kept their store of blood bags.

  “Was Richard there too?” Tamara asked frantically. She bent over Gabriel. “Where is he? I can’t feel him.”

  Gabriel couldn’t answer her. Richard was gone from the communion. He was gone.

  “Gabriel was alone. He’s not strong enough to talk,” Millie said. “Try to stay calm, Tamara.”

  But Tamara’s emotions were in turmoil. It was almost more than Gabriel could bear.

  When Luis returned with a bag of blood, Millie opened it and held it to his lips just as Shay had once done. Gabriel tried to shove down the feelings that the memory raised. He didn’t know how to explain to his family what had happened. Instead, he focused on the blood. His strength slowly returned, spreading through his limbs as he finished the first bag and reached for another. He felt his brother and sisters watching him as he drank, but he didn’t meet their eyes. Only when he’d finished a third bag of blood did he finally turn to them.

  “I’ve never seen anyone take so much at once,” Luis commented. “What happened to you?”

  Gabriel didn’t answer. “Where is Ernst?” he asked instead. The question distracted Luis, and Gabriel was grateful.

  “Still in my room. I found him when I awoke, but Richard was gone,” Tamara said. “Tell me where he is.”

  Her voice was steady, but she was brimming with fear. Gabriel knew they all felt it. “Can Ernst talk?”

  “No. He isn’t moving, isn’t talking, and we can’t feel him in the communion,” Luis said quietly. “But his eyes are open, and he’s . . . he’s there. He’s alive. I don’t understand it.”

  “Martin—the doctor—he came to the lab while we slept. The alarm woke Ernst, and Ernst woke me,” Gabriel explained. “Martin had a gun with hawthorn darts. And he had a bag filled with explosives. He wanted to knock out a vampire and take him captive. He had a gurney and a windowless van. He was prepared.”

  “And the explosives?” Millie asked.

  Gabriel shrugged. “He’s smart. He didn’t want to leave any loose ends. I don’t think he has any idea how many of us there are, so he brought enough C4 to torch the whole place. He knows fire is one of the only ways to kill us.”

  “So he shot Ernst?” Tamara said. “What about Richard?”

  “He shot Ernst, and the hawthorn severed his communion with us. It’s what happened to me when I was Martin’s captive,” Gabriel said. “I don’t know how long it will be before Ernst recovers.”

  “Did he shoot Richard? Did he take Richard?”

  Gabriel met Tamara’s gaze. He couldn’t keep avoiding her questions. “No. I woke Richard from the death sleep.”

  They all gasped. None of them had ever conquered the sleep before.

  “I told him to stay in the lodge, to protect you three. I went to the front to help Ernst,” Gabriel said. “But Richard . . . he must have followed me. I didn’t know he was there.”

  It was close enough to the truth that they wouldn’t be able to tell. He forced himself to focus on his family, not to think of Shay at all. Their communion had shrunk now to just himself and them, no Ernst. And his connection, like Tamara’s, wasn’t as strong as it once had been.

  “It all went wrong. Martin shot Ernst and tried to drag him outside. Richard ran to stop him, and Martin activated the bomb. It would have blown the whole lab up. It would have killed us all.”

  Tamara let out a moan.

  “Richard grabbed it and ran out into the woods. He threw it in the ravine before it went off,” Gabriel said.

  “He went outside?” Millie whispered. “During the day?” Tamara rocked back and forth, hugging herself, her expression blank.

  “He had no choice. He saved us all,” Gabriel said. Eventually, they would think to ask what Gabriel had been doing during that time and how he had ended up in the caves, but there were more important things to think about first.

  There was a stunned, devastated silence for a moment.

  “I’m sorry, Tamara,” Gabriel said quietly. “It should have been me.”

  Tamara looked up at him then. “Yes,” she said. “It should have. Ernst woke you up to help, not Richard.” She dissolved into tears. “Not Richard.”

  Gabriel closed his eyes, but he couldn’t close out the emotions roiling through their communion. Tamara and Richard had been together for years. She was grieving, and it was his fault. All of this was his fault—Ernst’s paralysis, Richard’s death, Shay’s anger . . . and Sam’s murder. Because that’s what it was, murder. At the time it had seemed like the only choice, like justice for the fact that Sam had chosen love over his family.

  I wish I’d been as clear-sighted as Sam, Gabriel thought. Sam knew that if he wanted to be with Emma, he had to leave the family. If only I’d run away with Shay, if only I’d never brought her here . . .

  It didn’t matter. Shay would still have found out the truth about what happened to her father. She’d never forgive Gabriel, and it was right that she shouldn’t. He didn’t deserve her forgiveness. But while he couldn’t save his relationship with Shay, maybe he could still save his family.

  “What about the fire? Did the humans come here?” he asked aloud.

  Millie and Luis shook their heads. “We didn’t even know about a fire,” Luis said. “We haven’t left the lodge, except when Millie followed you to the cave.”

  “And Ernst is unresponsive?”

  “Yes.” Millie sounded scared.

  “Luis, check the front. The forest outside was on fire, but it started down in the ravine. It’s a fifty-foot drop. It’s possible that the fire stayed mostly down there or went up the other side. Richard threw the explosives there on purpose.”

  Tamara moaned.

  Luis frowned. “The fire alarms aren’t going off.”

  “But the firefighters may have tried to get in anyway, to use the lab as a base of operations or to evacuate anyone inside,” Gabriel said. “It’s okay if they see you now—make up a story about being in the caves with the bats. We’re all awake. I just couldn’t risk them finding out we were here during our death sleep.”

  Luis nodded and headed off toward the lobby.

  “It will be better if we can say the fire damaged our facility,” Gabriel said. “In fact, I’ll turn the sprinkler system on and let the water destroy the place. It gives us an excuse to drop the bat research and close down the lab.”

  “Close it down? You mean leave?” Tamara asked. Her voice was dull, but her emotions were still out of control.

  “We have to, as soon as possible. Tonight,” Gabriel said. It meant leaving Shay alone as a new vampire. Now that he was stronger, and the sun was gone, he could feel his communion with her. He felt hunger, fear, and desperation. She needed him, and her emotions were strong enough that he could follow them to her. But she’d never accept help from him—not after what she’d found out. She had run from him, and he still felt anger boiling beneath her other feelings. He had lost her forever.

  At least he could be here for his family. Get them to safety. After that . . . what did it matter? He’d lost her. “Our location is compromised—Martin knows where we are, and he won’t come alone next time,” Gabriel told his brother and sisters. “And besides, we can’t risk staying here. Even if the firefighters didn’t come today, they’ll come soon. The university will send people to check on the lab. The authorities will notice if we’re not around during business hours. This is only a safe place for us if we’re left alone.”

  “But the people
at Duke . . .” Millie’s voice trailed off.

  “If necessary, we simply disappear. I’d prefer to use the fire as an excuse so we don’t raise too many questions.” Gabriel took a deep breath. “Tamara, get all the research off the computers—just send everything we have to the university. Millie, take care of Ernst. We’ll have to go to the house in Indiana, which means leaving within the hour.”

  “What about our things? The vault?” Millie asked.

  She was asking about Shay. But Gabriel wasn’t about to discuss that, not yet. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We’ll have to leave everything.”

  “But—”

  “Go! We have to move fast,” Gabriel barked. “We can deal with loose ends once we’re safe.”

  Millie nodded, wide-eyed. They had emergency plans in place for times like this, but it was usually Ernst giving the orders. Gabriel felt like a fraud taking charge. He was the next oldest, Ernst’s second-in-command—his family would do what he said.

  But he knew that the instant the hawthorn wore off and Ernst could talk, he would tell them all what Gabriel had done. And once they knew Gabriel had chosen to save Shay instead of Richard, they would turn on him.

  I’ll get them to safety first, Gabriel told himself. They’re still my family, and I’m the one who has put them in danger.

  It wouldn’t be enough. But it was all he could do.

  Shay took a deep breath, and for the first time all day, her shoulders relaxed. Suddenly, her head felt clear. Well, more clear than it had, anyway.

  The sun went down.

  She knew it as certainly as if she were outside watching the sunset over the horizon. It was gone from the sky, and the pressure of it was gone from her body.

  Shay didn’t move from her spot in the dark cave. She hadn’t moved since she fell down here, at first because it hurt too much, and then because the feeling of her cracked skull healing itself had freaked her out too much. She hadn’t been aware of the sun—even when she was up there near the cave entrance, it had been overcast and gray. But apparently, her vampire senses had been tracking the sun all day.

  Fighting with the sun all day, she corrected herself. I wasn’t even supposed to be awake during daytime. No wonder I felt like I was losing my mind.

  She sat up slowly, waiting for her head to spin the way it had earlier. But it didn’t. Everything in the cave looked as sharp and clear as before, and she could still hear water dripping from a mile away. But her brain didn’t seem stuffed with cotton anymore.

  Maybe if you become a vampire during the day, it messes up the system, she thought. Well, why should this be any different? Her body had never done what it was supposed to when she was human either.

  “Okay. Let’s try this again,” she said aloud, hoping the sound of her own voice would stave off the loneliness she felt. By herself, at the bottom of a cave somewhere in the mountains in Tennessee, far from her mother or her friends . . . or Gabriel. If she thought about it, the terror of her situation might crush her. So instead, she focused on the one thing she felt more than anything else.

  Hunger.

  She was ravenous.

  Her body had fully recovered from that fall onto solid rock, and she felt incredibly strong. She peered up at the ledge she’d tumbled off of. In her visions Gabriel had jumped distances like that. Shay bent her knees and gave it a try, springing upward with almost no effort. This time she landed on the cliff. The cave entrance smelled different—less plant and more animal. Or maybe that was her hunger?

  It was dark outside, and she didn’t hesitate. She ran right through the cave, ducking down to fit under the three-foot-high overhang of rock. The rain had stopped, but the ground was still wet.

  Shay stood still and looked around, enjoying the cold air on her skin. She was on a mountainside, but at a low elevation. There were trees everywhere and thick underbrush. She couldn’t see a path or a road or even an electric light. I am really in the middle of nowhere, she thought.

  Something moved in the bushes, and Shay’s head snapped toward it. Her hunger was growing by the second. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever felt before. No rumbling stomach or head rush from low blood sugar. This was a full-body ache, like there was some vital part of herself that was missing. She thought that she might die if she didn’t eat soon.

  Eat what? she thought. What does that even mean?

  She was a vampire. She had to drink blood. Gabriel had told her that his body couldn’t even digest regular food.

  The thought made Shay queasy. She’d drunk blood from Gabriel on several occasions. It hadn’t bothered her—she’d needed his blood to live. It gave her strength. So this was no different. She needed blood to live.

  But it won’t be Gabriel’s blood, she thought. And that’s where the queasiness came in. Gabriel had wanted her to drink, and she’d been almost in a trance every time she did. She’d been so immersed in the visions of his life that she was barely even aware of the actual blood in her mouth and throat.

  But it wouldn’t be Gabriel’s blood this time—or ever again. And there wouldn’t be visions. He’d said that vampires didn’t get visions, and none of his family had seemed to believe her that she had them. Gabriel had figured it must be some strange side effect of her half-vampire nature. I’m a full vampire now, so no more blood visions, she thought a little sadly.

  It made her long for Gabriel, just for a second. She didn’t want to see him, not now that she knew what he’d done to her father. But she desperately wished she could go back to the Gabriel she had thought he was, the one who loved her and who saved her. The one who was her father’s best friend.

  That was never true, she told herself. Gabriel was lying to me about Sam the entire time. He knew that he’d murdered my father, and he didn’t tell me. I can’t ever forgive him for that.

  The bushes moved again, and a fox suddenly darted out and sped off down the hill. Shay stared after it for a moment, wondering what on earth had happened to her. Sick girls weren’t allowed to go wandering around deserted mountainsides after dark, hanging with wild nocturnal animals. Her mother didn’t even like it when Shay stayed at Olivia’s house after dinnertime.

  Slowly, she began walking down the steep hill, following the direction the fox had taken. She felt worried. She didn’t know what she was doing, and becoming a vampire was disorienting even with the whole family there for support.

  Shay stopped short. That hadn’t been her thought.

  It hadn’t really been a thought at all, she realized. Just a feeling. Worry. Concern over the strangeness of her situation.

  But it wasn’t her own worry. Her worry had more to do with the fact that she was so, so hungry. Shay frowned. She began to jog. The sooner she found some kind of food, the sooner she’d feel better.

  The sound of running water caught her attention, and she automatically turned toward it, breaking into a run. She was heading straight downhill, and at a pretty steep angle, but she wasn’t scared. Her feet hit the ground with total confidence, and she sped around trees and jumped small bushes without even thinking. She wasn’t the least bit tired.

  Before long, she found the water—a medium-size stream flowing from somewhere higher up.

  Shay stopped and looked around. Now what?

  A burst of guilt hit her, so strong and bitter that she gasped. Guilt, depression, misery . . . it brought tears to her eyes.

  But why? She shook her head, trying to shove the feeling away. It made no sense. She had nothing to feel guilty about. She’d been thinking about how to find blood, and suddenly this overwhelming emotion. It’s not my feeling, she thought. Just like the worry from before. It’s not me.

  Shay drew in a breath, forcing herself to concentrate. The guilt melted away. But before she could relax, it was replaced by something else. Love. Deep and strong. And then guilt again.

  “Oh my God, it’s Gabriel,” she muttered. “It’s his psychic link thing.”

  He’d told her about it a few times, and
she had felt it—sort of—during the blood ritual to transform her. The communion, he’d called it. He’d said that she would be linked to him because he transformed her.

  Shay groaned. Gabriel was the only guy she’d ever loved, and he had taken away her family before she was even born. Because of him, her mother had been angry and miserable for years. She herself had felt abandoned since the day she was born. Because of Gabriel, she would never know her father.

  And now she had to have him in her head, forever? Of all people in the world, she had to feel Gabriel’s emotions? The one person she never wanted to think about, and there he was, shoving his feelings at her.

  “Screw that,” she said, jumping the stream. There was some kind of animal on the other side, a beaver or a muskrat or something. It was busily chewing on a log along the banks. Shay didn’t let herself think, and she definitely didn’t let herself feel, because who knew whether it would be her own emotion or Gabriel’s? She just snatched up the animal with the lightning-fast speed she now had, and she brought it to her mouth.

  Her fangs extended instantly, and she bit.

  Blood. Finally, blood to satisfy her hunger.

  The animal twitched in her hands, but she ignored that and drank.

  Disgust. Danger. Horror.

  They weren’t her feelings. It was Gabriel, but it was stronger than before. His feelings overwhelmed her, as if they were pushing at her, trying to . . .

  Trying to stop me, Shay thought. The emotions were stronger because Gabriel was reacting to Shay.

  The realization hit her a split second before the sickness did.

  Shay retched violently, dropping the half-dead animal. She turned and vomited onto the stream bank again and again. Her entire body seemed to fold in on itself, and waves of nausea and dizziness washed over her. Shay gazed at the bright red blood all over her hands, and she puked again.

  When it finally stopped, she collapsed onto the ground, her legs in the water, the trees and the stars and the mountainside going in and out of focus.

  Not animal blood. I can only drink human, she thought in some detached part of her mind. The animal’s blood made me sick.