by Melinda Metz
But they’d needed to get away. They couldn’t risk the forest fire investigators coming to the lab during the day, and they definitely couldn’t risk the chance of Martin coming back. The family was small now, vulnerable. Ernst needed time to recuperate from the hawthorn paralysis. They all needed a place to process what had happened to them. Tamara had been in shock when they’d arrived just before sunrise, and she still was, even though she refused to admit it.
Gabriel glanced over at Ernst, who lay motionless on the sofa. He immediately wished he’d kept his eyes on the football game Luis had on TV. Ernst’s gaze was sharp and unforgiving. As soon as he’s able to talk again, he’ll tell them everything, Gabriel thought for what had to be the hundredth time.
He couldn’t worry about that right now. Tamara, Luis, and Millie had looked to him as a leader, despite everything that had happened. It was second nature to them, or at least to Luis and Millie. He was the oldest. To the two of them, he was part big brother and part father. He’d been in their lives as long as they could remember.
Tamara was so devastated by Richard’s death that she hadn’t questioned Gabriel taking charge, his decision to bring them to Indiana, or anything else. For the moment at least, she’d retreated deep inside herself. He reminded himself to make sure she drank some of the blood they’d brought with them from the lab. In her grief, she might forget to give her body what it needed to function.
“I wonder if Ernst would be more comfortable back in his bedroom,” Gabriel said, shifting in his chair so he wouldn’t have to see his father’s eyes.
Millie shook her head. “We have so much to figure out. I think Ernst would want to hear our discussions about what to do next, even if he can’t talk yet,” she said.
“Yeah, he’s paralyzed, not dead,” Luis added. Realizing what he’d said, he shot an apologetic glance at Tamara. She didn’t seem to notice. She was curled up in one of the armchairs, in exactly the same position she’d taken when she first came out of her room a little after sunset. It was almost as if they had two hawthorn victims in the room instead of one.
Gabriel had expected this whole house to feel almost haunted, but it didn’t. If he went down into the cellar, though . . . He shuddered, images of Sam chained to the cellar floor filling his mind. Sam had died down there. That was where the family had killed him.
I won’t go down there. There’s no reason to. The entire farmhouse had blinds that were perfectly fitted and able to keep out all sunlight. The dirt cellar had been deepened and widened to give the family a place to go if the house itself became unsafe. There were two stairways leading to it, one from the kitchen and one from a hatch hidden outside.
“Before anything else, we need to e-mail the people at Duke. They must have already heard about the fire,” Millie said, pacing. “They’re going to think it’s really strange that we’ve evacuated without contacting them, even if we did send the research.”
Gabriel shoved his fingers through his hair. “Anything we say to them will only raise more questions. They’ll want to know where we are, when we’re coming back. They’ll expect us to come in for meetings and to be available during the day. When they get into the facility, they’re bound to find the tunnel we blasted without their permission.”
“And the security system we installed,” Luis put in.
“No contact with Duke. It’s time for a complete identity shift,” Gabriel said. “We have plenty of money. We can choose a new location and go into hiding for a while.” A long while. Long enough for Martin to grow old and give up looking for them. The man had the money and power to mount an intensive search.
“Hiding. Like we weren’t in hiding back at the lab,” Millie muttered.
“Maybe Ernst will okay you going back to school now,” Gabriel said, his eyes automatically sliding over to Ernst, lying there so still. “You always like being in college, Mils. And I should go back too. I need to get a more current degree.”
“How can you talk about school and money?” Tamara asked, her voice flat. “Richard is dead.”
“We know, Tam,” Luis said gently. “We just don’t know what to say. It helps to talk about ordinary stuff.”
“We should have a service for him, once Ernst is better,” Millie suggested. Tamara rested her face in her hands, as if she couldn’t stand to even consider it.
Millie turned to Gabriel. “Do we—Should we do something about Shay? You didn’t tell us what happened to her, but . . . well . . . are they going to find her body in the lab? Won’t that cause too many complications?”
“She’s not there,” Gabriel said quietly.
“What did happen?” Luis asked. “Did Martin take her back?”
They’d find out soon enough that he had chosen to save Shay rather than Richard, but Gabriel wasn’t going to volunteer the information. They’d been so busy traveling last night that no one had even asked about Shay. They didn’t have a communion with her like he did. The link came from drinking blood, and Shay hadn’t shared blood with anyone else in the family. They would only know whatever he told them.
“No, she’s not with Martin,” Gabriel said. “But she’s gone. On her own now.” He felt their eyes on him, knew they had questions. But he couldn’t face their anger, not yet. He knew how they’d react when they learned the truth. He would have to deal with it eventually. But he wanted a little more time first. Besides, he couldn’t be an effective leader to them once they knew what he’d done.
“On her own? Did you just put her out there for the firefighters to find?” Luis’s brow furrowed in confusion.
On her own. Gabriel cringed at the words. He hated that Shay was alone. She needed him with her, even if she despised him. No new vampire should have to deal with her overpowering thirst alone. At least he’d been able to reach Shay through her communion and stop her from killing the Giver. He knew she would never be able to forgive herself if she took a life.
“I don’t understand. You let her go?” Millie asked. “To die? She won’t survive without vampire blood.”
“No. I . . . I did a blood ritual. I transformed her,” Gabriel admitted.
“What?” Tamara’s head snapped up, and her eyes were alert in a way they hadn’t been since she learned of Richard’s death.
“She would have died if I didn’t. She couldn’t survive as half vampire and half human, not for even another day,” Gabriel said, an edge of defiance creeping into his voice.
A wheezing cough grabbed everyone’s attention. They all turned to Ernst. He moved his lips soundlessly for a moment, then looked at Gabriel and spoke. “You will face judgment for what you’ve done.”
CHAPTER
NINE
SLOW DOWN, Shay ordered herself. Slow waaaay down. She reduced her speed until it felt like she was running through Jell-O, although intellectually, she knew she was still sprinting by human standards.
How far had she run from that guy she’d left lying in his pickup, that guy she’d almost drained?
Almost killed.
Shay swallowed hard. She could still taste his blood in her throat. The blood held traces of the beer he’d been drinking, salty peanuts, and something sharp, almost electric. Not a taste she was familiar with.
Fear. I’m tasting his fear. The thought hit Shay with the power of a punch to the stomach. He’d been terrified when Shay’s fangs came down. She’d felt that emotion as if it were her own when they connected, her teeth deep in his neck, his essence flooding her. His blood had to have been charged with adrenaline in that moment, and that’s what she was tasting now.
Shay swallowed again, the taste of the blood both thrilling and repulsive. She forced herself to slow down even more and take a careful look at her surroundings. There was another strip mall on her right—Laundromat, Celebrity’s Hot Dogs, mini-mart, one car in the parking lot. A sad-looking office complex across the street, with an empty parking lot. And an SUV passing her now, the middle-aged woman driver shooting Shay a concerned look. Concern for the
teenage girl out by herself so late at night, not concern at seeing a vampire.
I’m passing for human. Good, Shay thought.
Her knees went weak, her legs suddenly wobbly. Carefully, she lowered herself to the curb. She had to pretend to be a human being. She wasn’t human anymore. From the moment Gabriel had transformed her, she’d been going on instinct, running, hiding, feeding, surviving. She hadn’t considered what she’d become, or at least only in the ways that being a vampire was new and different. She hadn’t actually thought about what she had lost.
Her humanity.
A harsh bark of laughter escaped from her throat. I really am “speh-shul,” she thought, remembering the journal entry where she’d used that word to describe herself, the way she’d heard everyone else use it to describe her for her entire life. They didn’t want to say “sick” or “disabled” or “dying.” So they said “special” and they all pretended that it meant something different.
She recalled the definition she’d copied from the dictionary: “distinguished by some unusual quality; being in some way superior.” They’d thought she was special when she was the sick girl. Now, forget about it. There wasn’t a special enough word to describe her.
Shay pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut tight, trying to block out the overwhelming rush of sensations. Trying to think. What was she supposed to do? She knew she couldn’t allow the sun to touch her. She knew she’d have to drink blood to survive. But what was she actually supposed to do? With her life?
Her life. Shay had been so used to thinking of her life in terms of years and, lately, in terms of months and days. Now she had decades, centuries, maybe all eternity. For a moment, only a moment, she felt time stretch out in front of her, out, and out, and out. People dying all around her. Shay living on. Alone.
She shuddered, and then she wanted Gabriel more than she’d ever wanted anything. She wanted his arms around her, his mouth on hers. She wanted him with her for every second of that forever.
No. That wasn’t true. What she wanted was the old Gabriel, the Gabriel she’d believed she loved. That Gabriel hadn’t betrayed and murdered her father.
That Gabriel didn’t exist.
A car slowed down and came to a stop beside her. She opened her eyes, feeling the vibration of the engine. The passenger window glided down. Shay caught a whiff of tobacco, Wint O Green Life Savers, detergent, shampoo—Suave 2 in 1, she thought—pencil shavings, and underneath all that, the wonderful scent of blood. “You okay?” the driver, a man Shay figured to be in his late seventies, asked.
“Yes.” Shay stood up. “I’m fine. I just had a fight with my—my boyfriend. I called someone to pick me up.” The old man hesitated, then nodded. The window slid back up as he drove away.
There were hours of night left, but Shay couldn’t stand to be out on the streets any longer. She could see the glow of a neon sign about half a mile away. When she focused, she could pick out the sound of the neon’s hum from the barrage of other noise. It seemed like the right kind of neighborhood for a cheap motel, the kind that’s never full. The kind of motel Gabriel would choose.
Was he still influencing her somehow? Shay knew she wouldn’t have been able to stop feeding if Gabriel hadn’t somehow reached out and stopped her. Did the impulse to go to that motel and break into a room come from him or from her?
It doesn’t matter, she decided. She needed a place to rest. Well, not rest exactly—her body was still revved and ready to run for a few more days without stopping. As horrifying as it had been to nearly kill that Giver, she couldn’t deny the effect of his blood. Her vampire body was at full strength again, just like that. It was as if she’d been dead and was now arisen, full of health and strength. But her mind was still her own mind, and she was still her old self. She might not need physical rest, but she needed a place where she could feel safe, so she could begin to figure out what to do with the rest of . . . the rest of forever. Or at least the next couple of days of it.
Shay headed toward the neon light, making sure not to move faster than your regular, ordinary human person. It was a motel. Sleepy Time Motel, specifically. Original on the naming, Shay thought as she trotted into the parking lot. It wasn’t hard to figure out which of the sixteen rooms was empty. She could hear the beating hearts of the people inside seven of them.
She chose a room that had empty rooms on either side. The door frame splintered as she forced the lock. Damn! How long was it going to take her to get used to the power of her vampire body? Shay glanced around, checking to see if the sound of cracking wood had drawn any attention. No. No, she was safe. She ducked into the room. She hadn’t screwed up the door to the point that it wouldn’t shut. That was something.
Now what? Her eyes darted around the room and stopped on the phone. Mom. That’s what she wanted. She wanted to talk to her mother. It was completely irrational, but there was a little part of Shay that still believed her mother could fix anything. Without thinking about what she’d say when Mom answered, Shay dropped down on the way-too-soft bed, grabbed up the phone, and dialed. Olivia had said that Shay’s mother was coming back from Miami. She should be home by now.
But it was Martin who answered. The sound of his voice was like an ice cube slithering down her spine. She slammed the phone back into the cradle and held it there, hand trembling. A memory screeched through her brain. Martin in the research facility. Shooting Ernst with a dart. Ernst collapsing.
Martin hadn’t even looked around to see if she was there. Not that it was a news flash that he didn’t give a crap about her. He’d proved that the night he’d hit her in the parking lot, to get her out of the way so he could recapture Gabriel. All her stepfather cared about was securing a vampire for his research. And now she was one. He’d probably love to strap her to a table in his lab, just the way he’d done to Gabriel.
Shay pulled in a deep breath, picked up the phone again, and dialed a phone number that was almost as familiar as her own. “Be there, be there,” she muttered as the phone began to ring.
“Talk to me.”
Tears sprang to Shay’s eyes the moment she heard her best friend’s voice. “Olivia. Olivia, it’s—”
“Shay!” Olivia interrupted. “What the hell? Do you know how worried I’ve been? You can’t start a call like that and then—”
“I’m sorry. I know. Someone took my phone,” Shay told her.
“Who? That guy you’re with?”
“No. Anyway, I’m not with him anymore,” Shay answered.
“Okay, I’m coming to get you. No argument. Where are you?”
A bubble of hysterical laughter broke out of Shay’s throat. That was her second bout of crazed laughter today. Definitely on the mentally unhealthy checklist. “I don’t know. I don’t even know.”
“This gets better and better,” Olivia muttered. “How can you not know where you are? Did you faint or something? Martin said you wouldn’t make it without your transfusions.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Shay assured her. She spotted a creased sheet of paper with the motel’s address and number at the top and the phone rates below that. “I’m in Vinton. It’s in Virginia, not that far from the Tennessee border.” She hadn’t even known which direction she’d run in when she left the caves. Or how far she’d come.
“I’m Googling it,” Olivia said.
Shay pressed the phone tighter against her ear. Olivia’s voice was like a Valium or something. She felt calmer just listening to it.
“Okay, found it. It looks like it’ll take about a day to get there. Can you hold on till then?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah.” Shay let out a shuddering breath. “Yeah. Now that I know you’re coming.”
“I’ll leave first thing in the morning. So Kaz and I should hit town Wednesday morning, okay?”
“Yeah. Good. I’ll call you on your cell when you’re on the road and tell you where to pick me up,” Shay replied. She tilted her head from side to side, easing the te
nsion out of her neck.
“And on the way back home, you can—and will—explain everything.” Olivia had slipped into that mom voice she frequently used with Shay. The did-you-take-your-medicine, have-you-been-getting-enough-rest voice of the best friend of a sick girl.
Shay had always hated that tone of voice. Now it just sounded like home.
“Yes, ma’am,” Shay said. “I’ll explain—” Her words caught in her throat. What had she been thinking?
She hadn’t been thinking. At all. For starters, she couldn’t meet Olivia, or do anything else, while the sun was up. She’d be busy death-sleeping.
I should just hang up, Shay thought, panicked. I should stay away from her. Only badness is going to come from Olivia getting anywhere near me.
“Shay?”
“I’m here,” Shay said. “You know what, I was just freaking out. I’m okay to get home by myself.”
“Sure you are,” Olivia said. “Shay, you didn’t even know where you were when I asked you. You’re not okay to do anything. Google just found me a Starbucks on Euclid Ave. Find it. And be there Wednesday morning.”
“Can you leave tonight instead?” Shay asked.
“First you don’t want me to come, now you want me to leave in the middle of the night? Shay, what is going on?” Olivia demanded. “I think you need to tell me everything right now.”
“Let me wait until you get here. Please leave tonight. You’re right. I’m not okay to get home. I’m scared, Liv. Completely losing it,” Shay admitted. And she wanted her friend with her. She couldn’t handle this on her own. None of it. She’d figure out something to tell Olivia.
