Crave 02 - Sacrifice Read Free Page B

asked, turning her eyes to Ernst. He was the oldest of them and the one who’d raised almost all of them. Any question a family member had always went to Ernst.
    “No,” he said.
    It felt like a slap. Even though his family was holding Shay now, Gabriel missed the connection to them. Its absence was a nagging pain.
    “But we can restore it,” Ernst added quickly. “Once broken, it won’t come back on its own. We’ll do a blood ritual, like we did when Tamara joined the family.”
    Gabriel nodded. Tamara had been a vampire already when Richard brought her to them. He loved her, so they all agreed she would join them. And Ernst had devised a ritual to let Tamara join their communion.
That’s how easy it is when you fall in love with another vampire,
Gabriel thought.
If only Sam’s love for Emma had been so simple. Or mine for Shay.
    “I’ll gather the others.” Millie stood up.
    “Not now,” Ernst told her. “Gabriel, you said this Martin would come for the girl. Why?”
    “She’s his test subject,” Gabriel replied. Shay was also his stepdaughter, but he knew Martin didn’t care about that. The way Martin had backhanded her across the face when she’d tried to keep him away from Gabriel had proved it. “He’d been giving her transfusions of my blood, and it made her stronger. He thought it was a breakthrough.”
    “That’s why he drained your blood? But she isn’t a full human. He had no real breakthrough,” Ernst said.
    “He was trying to figure out how the two could work together, vampire and human,” Gabriel replied. “He told me that even for long life, no one would buy a drug that made them need to drink blood. No one would want to actually become a vampire. People would only want the strength and longevity, not the ‘undesirable’ aspects.”
    “He talked to you?” Millie wrinkled her nose.
    “More like talked
at
me. He was thrilled with his own brilliance, he couldn’t keep it to himself,” Gabriel said. “I never said a single word back.”
    “That thing is in the supply room,” Richard announced, coming into the common room with Luis on his heels. “The door’s locked and we bound its hands.”
    “She’s not a
thing
,” Gabriel protested before he could stop himself.
    They all looked at him, and he felt a rush of fear. He had to act reasonably if he wanted them to trust him. He had to pretend he wasn’t horrified by everything his brother had just said. Shay, with her hands bound?
    As if you didn’t tie her hands yourself,
a voice inside his head whispered. He’d kept Shay prisoner and bound her during the day while he fell into the death sleep. He’d treated her like a thing too. How could he blame his family for doing the same?
    “What are we supposed to do with her?” Luis asked. “It’s dangerous just to have a human here.”
    “She’s here as bait,” Ernst said. “Gabriel planned to use her as a lure for the people who took him. Dr. Martin Kuffner. And that human woman Sam left us for. They’ll come for her, and then we’ll kill them all.”
    “I told you Shay’s mother wasn’t involved,” Gabriel protested.
    “You told us more than one person abducted you,” Ernst countered. “You said
they
put you in a van,
they
chained you to a table. Maybe the woman didn’t interact with you, but she was there, my son.”
    Gabriel’s mind was spinning.
I’ve got to get to Shay.
He had tried to keep her mother out of it, but had he slipped up? He was still so enraged every time he thought about Martin and those weeks held captive in his office that it was hard to think straight. And his own feelings for Shay were overwhelming—the gratitude for saving his life, the love, and now the fear. Was she all right?
    “. . . too risky drawing them here,” Richard was saying. “Gabriel knows where Martin lives. We should go and kill him there instead.”
    “He’s right. What if they bring other humans with them?” Millie asked.
    “No. I’m not going back