Crave 02 - Sacrifice Read Free Page A

Gabriel. The thought made him sick. But if that’s what it took to keep Shay safe, that’s what he would do.
    “This Martin, he’s a monster,” Gabriel went on, the words coming quickly. That part was true, and it was easy to let his fury and hatred show. “He’s almost pathologically ambitious. He never cared about Shay’s sick blood, he only wanted to find out what characteristics were vampiric, so he could use them in his science. Create medicines with the blood, isolate what makes us strong, what makes us immortal. It’s the fountain of youth, and he wanted to discover it.”
    Ernst leaned forward, his long fingers steepled in front of him as he listened. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “They know everything about blood now, about DNA, about life itself. I should have seen this threat coming.”
    “It’s very recent science,” Millie pointed out. “Barely the blink of an eye to you. You spent centuries in a world where people believed in dragons and demons.”
    “All the more reason to keep them from believing in vampires,” Ernst shot back. “I shouldn’t have let Sam’s woman live.”
    “It’s Martin you have to worry about,” Gabriel said. “He’s obsessed. When Shay’s blood proved useless, he went looking for her father.”
    “And he found you online. What then?” Ernst asked.
    “I agreed to a meeting. I know I shouldn’t have,” Gabriel said before the others could. “I wasn’t thinking. I wanted to find out how he could know about Sam. I didn’t think there was any danger.”
    “And?” Millie asked.
    “And he had hawthorn,” Gabriel said. “He injected it before I even knew he was there.” It wasn’t true, or at least not the whole truth. A human could never have snuck up on him unless he was distracted . . . and he had been, by Shay’s mother. She was talking to him, proving to him that she knew about Sam. And Martin had come from behind while he was focused on Emma.
    “He knew how hawthorn would affect you?” Ernst asked.
    “I guess maybe Sam had told . . . the woman,” Gabriel admitted. “Maybe he didn’t really believe it, who knows? None of us had ever actually experienced hawthorn before. I always thought the danger was a myth myself.”
    “It didn’t kill you,” Millie said.
    “It paralyzed me. I could see everything, hear everything . . . but I couldn’t move.” Gabriel wrapped his arms around himself, a feeling of nausea overtaking him at the memory. “It didn’t dull my senses at all, or my thoughts. I was entirely awake, in the prison of my own body. I had to watch while they dragged me into a van, while they chained me to a lab table. I was a rat to be experimented on. I had to listen to Martin describing his plans for glory while he drained my blood day after day, and I couldn’t so much as spit at him.”
    “The hawthorn must have severed our communion,” Ernst said. “If I’d felt you in such distress, I could have followed your emotions to you. I would have rescued you.”
    “The link was cut immediately,” Gabriel agreed. “As soon as the paralysis set in, I reached for the comfort of my family. But you were gone, all of you.” It had been the worst part, in fact. Since the day he gave up the sun, centuries ago, Gabriel had been able to feel his family’s emotions, to know where they were and that they were withhim. The communion was a gift that the blood ritual gave to them . . . and that the hawthorn had taken away.
    “Gabriel, you were gone for almost a month,” Millie said. “Were you—How long did the paralysis from the hawthorn last?”
    “I’m not sure. I tried to count the death sleeps, but at the beginning I was panicked and then I was weak from hunger. I think it was only a matter of days. But he had me chained fast, and he took huge amounts of blood. Even after the paralysis wore off, I couldn’t escape. And I couldn’t feel any of you.”
    “Do you think the communion will ever come back?” Millie