by Melinda Metz
“Shay, why are we arguing about this? There’s nothing we can do. What’s going to happen is going to happen, no matter how either of us feels about it.” Her mother sounded frustrated, but it was nothing compared to Shay’s anger.
“Will you please just leave me alone? Please,” Shay burst out. She couldn’t stand to hear Mom say one more time how powerless Shay was. Gabriel’s pain was still there, getting worse.
“I have nothing else to say anyway.” Shay could tell from her mother’s tone that she was hurt, but Shay didn’t care. She was relieved when Mom left the room, shutting the door behind her with a gentle click.
Shay stretched out on her back on the carpet and closed her eyes. Gabriel’s vertigo was so overwhelming that she had a hard time separating herself from it. She needed to think. There had to be some way she could help. She focused all her attention on the communion for a moment, trying to feel as close to Gabriel as she possibly could. If she couldn’t find him, she could still be with him. She wasn’t going to let him be alone as they drained the life from him.
She concentrated on the image of his face: his chestnut eyes that seemed to be able to see deep inside her; his beautiful lips, so perfectly full; the straight slash of his eyebrows; the sharp angles of his cheekbones.
Yeah, he was gorgeous, but that was just a tiny part of him. She thought about the way they could have philosophical discussions, how much he loved his family, how his hands felt as they moved over her body, and how the way he saw her had changed the way she saw herself. With Gabriel, she’d never been the sick girl, even when she could feel her body’s deterioration accelerate.
I’m with you, Gabriel. You aren’t alone, she thought.
The dizziness subsided for a brief moment, and a sense of comfort seeped through their communion.
And then pain again. Anguish. So strong, so awful . . .
Shay’s eyes snapped open. The pain was coming from her right. She sat up, following the feeling, letting it draw her forward. “Gabriel?” she whispered.
Love. Guilt. Agony.
His emotions. And they were all coming from the same place, from the same direction. Shay closed her eyes and felt it, just as she would’ve been able to feel the warmth of the sun on her cheek.
“‘I can sense where they are,’” Shay breathed, suddenly remembering what Gabriel had said back before they went to Tennessee. He was still recovering from drinking her blood. They’d been in a motel and he could barely move, so they had spent the whole night talking. He told her about a link to his family, how he knew if they were in trouble . . . and how he could sense where they were. They’d talked about so much that night—about him being a vampire, about her being the sick girl—that she’d almost forgotten about that detail.
“Mom!” she yelled. “Mom!”
Her mother burst through the door, eyes wild. “What? Are you okay?”
“The communion. It tells me how to find Gabriel,” Shay blurted, her words falling over each other. “I can follow his emotions if they’re strong enough. He told me that once, but I just now remembered.”
Shay ran to her window and stared outside at the barren tree branches. That way. All of Gabriel’s feelings came from that direction.
She could find him. She could help him. Shay hoped he was feeling her exhilaration as powerfully as she was feeling his physical weakness.
“Shay—”
“He’s west. That way.” Shay pointed out her window. “I don’t know where exactly, but it’s definitely west of here. I can follow it, follow his emotions like a . . . like a dog on a trail, I guess.” She laughed at the image, giddy with relief.
“West.” Mom’s voice sounded skeptical.
“I need to borrow the car,” Shay said. Earlier that night, she and her mother had abandoned the car she’d stolen in a not-great part of town. Keys in the ignition, fingerprints wiped off. Shay hoped the owner’s insurance would pay up fast.
“You’re not going anywhere,” her mother said firmly. “I understand how you feel. But I’m not letting you put yourself in danger. Not after I just got you back.” As if Shay were still a little girl. A little sick girl.
“I don’t need your permission,” Shay told her. “If you won’t loan me the Mercedes, I’ll find another car.”
“Steal one, you mean,” her mother snapped.
“If I have to,” Shay shot back. “Stealing or letting someone die because he cares about me.” She made scales with her hands, balancing them up and down. “Not hard to decide which matters more. So can I have the car or not?”
“No! It’s almost dawn. You’ll be going into your death sleep. If you’re out on the road when that happens, you’ll crash. Or the sun will . . .” Her mother shook her head. “You have to start thinking, Shay.”
Shay frowned, wanting to fight. But Mom was right. The sun was coming. Shay had been so distracted by the communion that she hadn’t noticed the growing pressure.
“I have to get to Gabriel,” she said, even as she felt the beginnings of the death sleep pull at her.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow night,” her mother promised. “Let’s get you to the bed.”
“Tomorrow night—” She didn’t have the energy to speak. The death sleep consumed her. Tomorrow night will be too late, she thought as her vision went dark.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
THE GROUND TREMBLED underneath her. That was the first thing Shay became aware of as she awoke from her death sleep.
What was—
Gabriel! Memories of the last moments before dawn raced back into her mind, driving out everything else, any other questions. They were going to kill Gabriel. And there was no way she’d be able to get to him in time to save him.
Her eyes snapped open as she jerked into a sitting position. The ground still trembled, and she felt motion. Shay shook her head, disoriented. She was in a small, dark . . . not room. Car. She was in the backseat of a car with the windows blacked out and a heavy board separating her from the front seat.
Her vampire vision didn’t give her much help, because there wasn’t much to see, but Shay was pretty sure the car was her mom’s immaculate Mercedes. She twisted around and pounded on the board with both fists. It cracked instantly, and Shay jerked her hands back. She really had to try to remember how powerful she was.
“Hang on, Shay. Give me a minute. I’m pulling over,” her mother called. “No more knocking. We’re going to need that board tomorrow night. I hope.” She muttered the last two words, but Shay had no problem hearing them.
The car slowed, veered left, then came to a stop. Her mother yanked free the board that separated the front and back seats. “You did say west, right?” she asked, with a small smile. The smile widened to a grin in response to the expression on Shay’s face.
Shay scrambled into the front seat next to her mother and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek. “I love you, you know that?” she asked as her mother began to drive again.
“I actually do,” Mom said. “There are some bags of blood in the mini-cooler.”
Shay pulled one out and began to drink. “How did you—”
“I know my way around a hospital, remember?” her mother asked.
“But why?” Shay narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t expect you to help.”
Her mother sighed. “After you fell asleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about something Sam told me once. About his mother, his vampire mother, Gret. She’d been dead for ages, but he never stopped missing her.”
Shay’s hand went to the locket around her neck. Gret’s locket.
“Sam said that Gret always chose love and forgiveness, while his father—”
“Ernst,” Shay said.
Mom nodded. “Ernst tended to choose anger. Sam lived his life trying to be like Gret. That’s what he said.” Shay’s mom reached over and took her hand. “And you, you’re just like your father. You think the way he did. The reason he was able to fall in love with me was because he didn’
t see all humans as being like the ones who had hurt him. He saw humans as individuals. And he died for it. I couldn’t let that happen again.”
Her mother’s words gave her more strength than the blood entering her body. Mom understood. She really got it.
That joyful thought was followed by a deeply disturbing one. It was incredible that Mom had decided to help. But Gabriel’s family hated her mother, maybe even more than they hated Shay. They saw her mom as the cause of Sam’s death.
“Let’s find a motel for you,” Shay said. “I can take it from here, now that it’s dark. I’ll pick you up on my way home.” If I survive, she silently added.
Her mother shook her head. “I’m getting you where you have to go.”
Shay didn’t have time for a big argument. “Okay, but that’s it. You get me close, and I do the rest.”
“By the way, I don’t really know where we’re going,” her mother told her, not agreeing or disagreeing with Shay’s statement. “I hope you do.”
“Let’s stop for a minute. I need to concentrate on Gabriel and see if I can feel the way. I’m still new at this vampire stuff. I’m not sure if my vampire GPS was telling me to go west for three miles or three hundred.”
“We’ll, I’ve been driving since about noon, so let’s hope we weren’t just supposed to head to the end of our block,” her mom said. She pulled over on the shoulder of the highway.
Shay climbed out, wanting to smell the air, to see the moon. None of it would help her find Gabriel, but somehow she felt better being outside. “Please let this work,” she murmured.
She stood facing the scrub trees that lined the edges of Interstate 80. She smelled raccoons in the woods, pine needles, and a lot of car exhaust. If she concentrated, she could hear voices from the houses in the development on the other side of the woods. She was tired. Exhausted, even though she’d just awoken.
I need Gabriel’s feelings, not my own, she thought. I’ve got to get to Gabriel.
She bit her lip, hard, trying to block out the flood of sensations that filled her with every breath. Her own vampire senses were still a little overwhelming. And the emotions coming from Gabriel were weak.
“There!” she gasped. She’d hardly even registered the fact that she was feeling him. Gabriel’s fatigue seeped through her, and she suddenly understood why she felt so tired—or rather, she realized that she didn’t feel tired. He did.
He’s almost dead.
Shay focused on the weakness, because that was Gabriel. She blocked out her own feelings and concentrated on him. Love. Still love. And sadness. “Resignation,” she whispered. That was the word for it. Gabriel was resigned to dying.
“Fight it,” she told him, as if he could hear. “It’ll make it a hell of a lot easier to track your feelings if they’re stronger.”
She jogged back to the Mercedes and climbed inside.
“We’re going the right way,” she said shakily. “I feel him, and I think I can keep feeling him as we drive. I’m hoping I’ll know if we start to go in the wrong direction. It’s not as if I can get a picture on a map, I just have to follow the emotion. I don’t know how far away we are.”
Her mother nodded and pulled back out onto the road. They drove for a moment in silence. Outside, the highway whipped by in the dark, punctuated by a strip mall here and there. It reminded Shay of driving with Gabriel, back when he was holding her captive, driving through the night toward his family.
That wasn’t a good memory. She’d hated him during that drive. Shay pushed the memory away. She didn’t want to send negative emotions to Gabriel, not when he was so weak.
“So he’s alive?” her mother asked after a moment.
“Yes.” Gabriel wasn’t in pain, at least not right now. That made Shay feel better. And he was still pulsing out love—love for her, she was sure of it—although she could feel panic shimmering around the edges. I’m coming, she thought. I’ll be there in time, I promise.
“I guess they weren’t killing him, then,” Mom said. “Or he’d be dead.”
“They don’t do it quickly,” Shay replied, not wanting to tell her mother too much about the horrible way Sam had died. She felt sure they were killing Gabriel the same way. “It’s a ritual.”
“Oh.” Her mother began to knead the steering wheel with her fingernails. Shay knew she was thinking about Sam.
“How’d you even think to do all this?” she asked, trying to take Mom’s mind off it. “The windows and the barrier?”
Her mother glanced at her in surprise, and then she laughed. “I used to date a vampire, remember?” she said. Shay heard her mother’s heart beat a little faster, and the scent of blood grew a little stronger as her mother blushed. “Where do you think you were conceived, anyway?”
“Oh, that is just TMI,” Shay cried, covering her ears in mock horror. But she laughed too. For so many years, when Shay was so sick that she could hardly ever make it to school, her mom had been pretty much her best friend. Shay had lost that feeling somewhere along the way. It had gotten buried in the resentment of her mother trying to control her—even if the control had been all about wanting to keep her alive longer. But now that best-friend feeling was back.
“So what’s the plan, besides getting there?” her mother asked. She ripped open a bag of BBQ-flavored corn nuts and dumped some directly into her mouth.
“The plan is to stop the other vampires from killing Gabriel,” Shay told her. “That’s the only plan I’ve got.”
Shay stared out into the darkness, her gaze reaching for miles. I’m on the way, she thought. And she wasn’t a dying little girl, the way she’d been last time she’d faced his family. She was a vampire too.
A vampire who would be outnumbered four to one. Shay had no clue what she should do when they reached the vampires, but she was leaving with Gabriel. Either that, or they’d have to kill her.
It was time. They were coming. To drink the rest of the life out of him. Gabriel hadn’t cared before. He’d wanted it. He’d wanted the release and sweet oblivion of death because he didn’t believe there was anything to live for.
But now . . . Shay. Something had changed in her emotions. There was worry, fear even. She’d been afraid on and off ever since she became a vampire, but this was different. She wasn’t afraid of something that was happening in her life. She was afraid for him. Gabriel could tell the difference—there was a tinge of horror along with the worry, and a strong sense of urgency. She didn’t hate him. She was worried about him.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make Gabriel want, suddenly, to live.
Gabriel strained against the bindings that held him to the ground. His arms and legs trembled with the effort. There was no escaping. There was no hope for survival.
And they were coming in. Ernst leading the way into the scorched circle. No Millie, Gabriel realized. Fear for her rippled through him. What price would she have to pay for standing against Ernst on his behalf? He searched the family’s communion for her. The mix of grief, anxiety, and fear he found didn’t tell him anything other than that she lived. Were they holding her prisoner?
“Tonight this ends,” Ernst announced, pulling Gabriel out of his thoughts. “I will drink until I feel his life force begin to flicker. Then we will all drink together, sharing in the moment of Gabriel’s death.”
“All?” Tamara asked. “I don’t see Millie. She’s still a part of this family, isn’t she?”
So angry. Was she always this angry, and being with Richard just calmed her? Gabriel wondered. Ever since his death, Tamara had been filled with rage. Most of her fury was directed at him, but now it spewed toward Millie, too.
“If Millie doesn’t drink tonight, she is no longer one of us,” Ernst replied. “It will be a hard life for her on her own, but the decision is hers.”
First Sam, then Richard, then me . . . now Millie, Gabriel thought. The entire family will be gone before Ernst realizes the error of his ways.
Gabriel’s stomach cle
nched as he heard his father walk toward him. Ernst didn’t immediately kneel down. Instead, he stood over Gabriel, staring at him. What is he thinking? Gabriel was simultaneously frustrated by and grateful for the fact that Ernst’s connection to the communion had been severed. He was curious about what Ernst was feeling, but he also didn’t want to spend the last hours of his life awash in the hatred of his father.
Ernst continued to stare at him, looking down into Gabriel’s face. Gabriel forced himself to hold his father’s gaze as the seconds ticked away, away, away. “What are you wai—,” Tamara began, but Luis shushed her before she could finish.
Why the hesitation? Gabriel knew how deeply Ernst believed that any threat to the family must be eliminated. He’d believed it just as passionately once, fervently enough to take Sam’s life.
Finally, Ernst dropped to his knees, landing heavily. “Gabriel,” he said in a whisper. Then, fast as a snake strike, his eyeteeth bit into Gabriel’s throat. Gabriel’s blood went molten as it sped through his veins into Ernst’s waiting mouth.
Memories of his life flickered through Gabriel’s mind, and Ernst was a huge part of almost all of them. Many of the memories were good, but now they brought only pain. Gabriel loved Ernst, even now, even after what Ernst had done to Shay, even after Ernst had handed down a death sentence to him. And Ernst was killing him.
Gabriel was hyper-aware of each vein, each artery, each capillary. They were all throbbing. It was as if they were trying to cling to his blood. Trying uselessly.
I’m dissolving, Gabriel thought woozily. The ground began to do a slow spin underneath him, increasing his dizziness. Then he was free. He’d slid out of his body and was now hovering near the wooden beams of the ceiling.
He could see his body below him, bound to the dirt floor of the cellar. The body spasmed as Ernst continued to drink. Gabriel couldn’t see Ernst’s face—it was still buried in the throat of his body. His body. That thing down there. It didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore.