Crave

  The next step—more waiting. She heard a patient being brought in. Thankfully, they weren’t put in her little hideaway. They were given a nearby curtained cubicle. Shay heard the anesthesiologist introduce herself and start asking about allergies. The nurse would be taking some basic readings—blood pressure, for starters—and asking a bunch of questions of his own.

  This is probably my best shot, Shay thought. She ducked around the curtain and headed down the hall, walking on her toes so the heels of her boots didn’t hit the floor and announce her presence. She knew she wouldn’t just be able to waltz in and take some bags of blood. If this hospital was like the other ones she’d been in—and it seemed to be, right down to the smell of bodily fluids not quite covered by the smell of industrial cleaner—everything would be computerized. A nurse would have to scan the patient’s computer-coded wristband before administering the computer-coded medication. And to get the medication or the blood for a transfusion, the nurse would have to swipe a card. It wasn’t as if Shay could just pick a lock, even if she knew how to pick a lock, which she didn’t.

  Still, nurses were humans, not computers. And sometimes humans weren’t as careful as they should be. Shay ducked behind the counter. She could hear the nurse talking to the newly arrived patient. She had a minute or two. Staying low, she moved down the row of computers. There was a sweater hung over one of them. She checked the pockets. Nothing. She moved on, then turned back. She felt the front of the sweater. Score. A card was clipped to it. Shay grabbed it. One swipe, and she was through the door that led from the prep area into the hallway with the operating rooms.

  There was a cart about halfway down the hall from where she stood. She knew those carts as well as she knew her own face. Everything in every hospital was basically the same, and in the course of her life she’d seen about a hundred nurses take blood out of a refrigerated chest like the one on this cart’s bottom shelf. Shay hurried over and swiped the card through the slot on the chest. She pulled it open and saw four bags of beautiful, beautiful blood. She took them all.

  Before she could even take a step, she heard the sound of a door opening. Shay shoved the blood bags under her hospital gown and crossed her arms over them to hold them in place. Then she turned. A man in scrubs was heading toward her, studying a chart.

  “I know, I know. I’m not supposed to be back here,” Shay said before she could be questioned. “But do you know how boring it is in a hospital at night? No good TV. And I don’t have a private room, and the woman in the next bed keeps calling for the nurse. ‘Nurse, nurse, nurse,’ over and over again in this horrible voice. She keeps wanting her pain meds, says her pain is at a ten on the scale, but it isn’t time for them, and the nurse can’t get a doctor on the phone to see if she can get more, of course. The screaming was making the hair on my arms stand up.”

  She shoved up one arm of her gown, careful not to let the blood escape. She let the man see the marks of her many transfusions. She was now thinking he was medical personnel of the scrub nurse variety, rather than a surgeon or anesthesiologist. MD’s usually wouldn’t stand still for this many words. She’d seen her mother chase doctors down the hall just to get the answer to one question. “I thought I’d just duck into one of those observation rooms and get some peace. It would be like Grey’s Anatomy.”

  “I’m going to get someone to escort you back to your room,” the man told her. “This is no place for a patient.”

  “Unless they’re being operated on, right?” Shay said cheerily. “I’ve put in some hours here. Splenectomy almost a year ago.”

  The man’s pager went off.

  “Listen, I’ll get myself back upstairs. I know the surgery wing is insane. Sorry. Boredom made me do it!” She hurried away, and he didn’t follow.

  It was easier getting out than getting in. The nurse was behind the counter again, but since Shay was heading for the door, he didn’t ask her why she was there. She ducked into the restroom and took off the gowns, leaving them on a hook on the back of the door. She dropped the card she’d stolen on the floor. Somebody would find it and get it back where it belonged. She didn’t want to get the nurse in trouble or call attention to the missing blood anytime soon.

  I’ll give Gabriel the blood, then get out of there, she promised herself as she left the hospital. She repeated the promise several times as she crossed the parking lot, and quite a few more as she drove back to the motel.

  Am I insane? she asked herself as she walked to the door of the room Gabriel had broken into. He ’s a vampire. A vampire who threatened to snap my neck.

  A vampire who was kept prisoner and used against his will as my own personal blood bank.

  There really was no arguing with that. Shay pushed open the door. Gabriel lay on the floor exactly where she’d left him. Was he even alive?

  One way to find out. Shay set one of the blood bags on the bed. Later she’d wrap some ice from the machine in a towel to keep the rest cool so Gabriel could have them if he still needed more. If this even worked. If Gabriel wasn’t already dead.

  Shay studied him for a minute, then cautiously sat on the floor beside him. She rolled him onto his back without getting the smallest reaction. Well, vampires were technically dead, weren’t they? As much as she’d seen in her visions, she still didn’t know a lot about how it all worked.

  Some things seemed the same as she’d read in books, like the sun being deadly. Some things seemed different, like the fact that vampires were evil killers. Gabriel hadn’t been violent in her visions, and neither had Sam, or Ernst, or Millie.

  So maybe he was dead, and maybe that was normal for him. All she could do was try.

  Shay rooted around in the desk drawer and found the crappy pen they always left, advertising the motel. She used it to poke a little hole in the blood bag she held.

  She didn’t want to touch Gabriel again. But she didn’t want him to choke, either. She knelt back down and cradled his head with one arm, raising his head several inches off the floor. With her free hand, she dribbled a little blood on his lips.

  He didn’t react.

  “You know, I went to a lot of trouble for this,” Shay muttered. She managed to hold on to the bag while using two of her fingers to part his lips. She tried dribbling the blood again, this time with the droplets falling into his mouth.

  Was blood even going to help? He’d been drinking her blood when he collapsed. Maybe Martin had taken too much from him. Maybe Martin had weakened him to the point where he couldn’t recover.

  Martin and Mom. Shay had to keep reminding herself that her mother had known what Martin was doing. Even if she hadn’t been the one actually taking Gabriel’s blood, she had still been a part of it. She’d considered Gabriel nothing more than meat, or medicine, or a lab rat.

  “Come on, Gabriel,” Shay urged. She tore at the hole, making it wider, and let the blood flow down.

  Gabriel coughed. His eyelids fluttered, but didn’t open. Then his throat began to work as he drank.

  Shay sighed in relief. “I owed you this much,” she told him, even though she was pretty sure he couldn’t hear her. “You did the same for me, whether you wanted to or not.”

  He’s okay. He’s just sleeping, Shay told herself for at least the twelfth time since dawn. It’s hard for vampires to stay awake during the day. Sam had to struggle to do it on Gabriel’s last day in the sun.

  Still, it was unnerving to watch him—lying there so still under the bedspread she’d used to cover him. His chest did rise and fall, but very slowly. Was that normal? Vampire normal?

  She wished there was something else she could do for him. She was afraid to try to give him more blood right now. If he didn’t wake up—and it didn’t seem like he could—he might choke on it.

  He’d probably be more comfortable on the bed than the floor, but she wasn’t strong enough to move him. Between the stress of finding Gabriel, and being bitten by him, and all that running around in the hospital, she’d used up almost all the en
ergy given to her by the transfusion that Mom had interrupted.

  I should check in, she decided. They’d gotten away with being in the room so far, but that didn’t mean their luck would hold. Who knew how long Gabriel would be out of it? Maybe his day of sleep would energize him. Or maybe he’d wake up as sick and weak as he’d been last night.

  Shay left the room, careful not to let the sun in far enough to touch Gabriel, then hurried down to the main office.

  “Could I get the room all the way at the end?” Shay asked the motel clerk. “Less noise.”

  The clerk raised an eyebrow, clearly thinking, What noise, crazy girl?

  “I’m very sensitive to sound. If there’s a TV on in a room two doors down, I won’t be able to sleep,” Shay explained.

  “Check-in isn’t until noon,” the guy told her.

  “Please, can’t you make an exception?” Shay asked. “I was up all night driving, and I’m whipped. Isn’t there a room that’s ready?”

  The clerk snorted. “We’re never full, if you want the truth, but the manager is a jerk about policies.” He turned and plucked the key to the room Shay and Gabriel were already in from the Peg-Board behind him. “Thing is, the manager never comes in on Sunday.”

  “Thanks. Thanks so much.” Shay paid in cash, glad that Gabriel had broken into a cheap place. Although money was the least of her problems. Well, maybe not the least, but it wasn’t the top of the list. The top of the list was keeping Gabriel alive and keeping Mom and Martin from finding her.

  She didn’t think they’d be searching for her yet. Right now they probably figured that Shay was on her way home. Even after that big fight, they would still assume that she would come back, because where else did she have to go? Especially after Martin told her she would be dead in days.

  She knew it wouldn’t be too long before it sank in that she wasn’t coming, but they had no idea which direction she and Gabriel had headed in. They could call the police, tell them the Range Rover was stolen, but Shay didn’t think that would happen. Shay could just tell the cops that they had been holding someone captive in Martin’s office, and that would start all kinds of badness. Even if no one believed her, there would be rumors about it. Martin was just well-known enough to land in the gossip blogs, especially for something as crazy as experimenting on an actual person. He wouldn’t want that. And he definitely wouldn’t want to risk the police finding out the truth about Gabriel.

  Martin wanted Gabriel back; he’d made that clear. She was sure Martin was hoping that the vampire blood would lead to one of those go-down-in-history medical breakthroughs, the kind that won Nobel Prizes for the doctors who made them. If the blood could help her, maybe it could help people with more common blood disorders as well. Maybe Martin had never given up on finding a cure for leukemia after all.

  He wouldn’t risk losing that by calling the cops.

  For now, she needed to concentrate all her attention on Gabriel. She couldn’t waste her time worrying about Mom and Martin, trying to guess what they might do. She needed a plan.

  Shay opened the door to the motel room and slipped inside. Gabriel hadn’t moved, at least that she could tell. She put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and hoped that nobody would notice that the lock had been broken. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where they’d check on the rooms too often. Shay crossed to the window and made sure the curtains were completely shut. Sam had said vampires turned to ash in the sunlight.

  Now what? She checked her watch. After nine. Early, especially for a Sunday morning. But if Shay knew her mother, which she absolutely did, her mom had already called Olivia.

  Shay pulled her cell out of her pocket and hit speed-dial two. “Where are you?” Olivia demanded before Shay could get a word out.

  “I had to take off,” Shay answered, according to the only plan she could come up with.

  “Yeah, no kidding. Your mother called me at five o’clock this morning, wanting to know if I had any clue where you were. Which—as you know—I didn’t,” Olivia told her.

  “Mom and Martin were driving me insane. They keep treating me like I’m still as sick as I was, which isn’t true,” Shay said. “I had to get away from them for a while. And I need your help. I just need a few days, and you can talk them—”

  “This is such bullshit,” Olivia interrupted. “First of all, you are still sick. Maybe you’re feeling a little better, but you’re still passing-out-need-to-be-taken-care-of sick. And second, you’re lying. I’ve known you forever, and I can hear it in your voice. So what are you really doing?”

  Shay’s mouth dropped open. Her brain revved as she tried to come up with something to say. It had never occurred to her that Olivia wouldn’t believe her.

  “You have two seconds before I hang up,” Olivia snapped.

  “You’re right. It’s bullshit,” Shay burst out. “But I really do need your help, Olivia. That part is completely true.”

  “Oh my God, you are out of control!” Olivia shot back. “Why call me? All you’ve been saying lately is you don’t want my help. It’s obvious you haven’t wanted me around, period.”

  “You’re right,” Shay said.

  “Did you try Jacey first or Lai-wan?” Olivia went on. “What am I, the only one left?”

  “No!” Shay cried. “I never even thought about calling anyone else, Liv. I’m sorry. I am. There’ve been a lot of things happening to me lately that I haven’t told you about.”

  “We’re supposed to be friends,” Olivia said more quietly. “Best friends.”

  “I shouldn’t have lied to you or kept secrets from you,” Shay replied desperately. “I need to stay away for a while. That’s the real truth, Olivia, but not because my mom and Martin are acting like they always do.” Her voice began to quaver. She hadn’t meant for it to, but it just did. She’d gotten herself in way over her head.

  “So what’s actually going on?” Olivia sounded a little more sympathetic, but only a little.

  “Martin … he’s not who I thought he was. Something happened with him, and I can’t be around him, not until I figure out what to do,” Shay told her. She couldn’t bring herself to say that she felt pretty much the same way about her mother.

  “Are you—did he touch you?” Olivia burst out. “That fucker. I always knew there was something weird about him. Shay, you have to tell your mom. And the cops.”

  Shay didn’t think she’d ever heard Olivia say the word fucker before, and she couldn’t believe how much she appreciated it. “No, not that,” Shay said quickly. “But I found out … well … he did a bad thing. He really hurt someone.”

  Except he did it for me, Shay thought. Well, me and a Nobel Prize.

  But not her mother. Mom had done it all for Shay. She would have let Martin drain her own entire body of blood if it would help Shay live longer. Her mother would literally die for her. But that still didn’t make what she’d done right or even okay.

  “So don’t go home. Come here, Shay,” Olivia urged her. “Come straight here. We’ll figure out what to do.”

  “I can’t. Not right now,” Shay said. “My mom would find me at your place, and she’s not going to be exactly easy to convince. She thinks Martin is practically a god. She thinks he’s the only one who could have kept me alive this long. And she’s probably right. But that doesn’t mean he’s a good person.”

  “She’s your mother, Shay. She’s going to believe you, whatever it is you found out about Martin.” Olivia’s voice was strong with conviction and anger.

  “Please just help me, Olivia. I need a couple of days without Martin coming after me. Can you just tell my mom … tell her that I’m going to Miami,” Shay begged. “That will send them in the wrong direction.”

  “Your mom is never going to believe that. That’s not a Shay thing to do,” Olivia said. Shay was surprised Olivia still thought she knew exactly what Shay would and wouldn’t do.

  “She’ll believe it,” Shay insisted. “I’ve been acting, you know
, not-Shay lately.”

  “Really?” Olivia asked. Shay could almost feel the sarcasm dripping into her ear from the phone.

  “So she’ll believe almost anything. Tell her I know I’m dying, and that I want to have some fun before I do. That’s why I want to go to Miami. Sit in the sun, look at cute guys, swim in the ocean, feel the sand between my toes. All that seize-the-day stuff.”

  “And where will you really go?” Olivia asked.

  “I don’t know. Not yet,” Shay said.

  Olivia was silent for a moment, and Shay knew that she was trying to decide if Shay was lying or not. Finally she sighed. “Look, I’ll lie to Martin. I have no problem with that. I’ll lie to your mom, too, which isn’t going to be easy because she is completely losing her mind worrying about you,” Olivia said. “But I’m not really on board with this, Shay. If you want my help, you have to check in with me every day—phone, text, whatever—and tell me whether or not you’re okay. And you have to tell me the truth. I’ll know if you don’t. And if you lie or you skip a day, I’m calling everyone I can think of. Cops, your mom, reporters. Everyone.”

  It wasn’t ideal, but Shay could tell it was the best she was going to get. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re a good friend, you really are. The best.”

  “You better believe I am,” Olivia answered.

  And Shay did believe her. But it didn’t mean that Olivia might not call Shay’s mother the second Shay hung up. She could imagine Olivia repeating every word of the conversation they’d just had. For Shay’s own good, of course, because Olivia was such a good friend, because she did really care about Shay.

  “I’ll be in touch tomorrow,” Shay promised. Then ended the call.

  Shay yawned. Her eyes felt gritty, and her body ached with weariness. She had to sleep. There was nothing more to do for Gabriel right now. She’d done the best she could.

  She wrapped the remaining blanket around her shoulders and curled up at the foot of the bed, staring down at Gabriel. Now that the insanity of the past several hours was over, she could finally take in the fact that he was real. He was here in front of her.