Free Crave 02 - Sacrifice by Melinda Metz, Laura J. Burns

halfblood,” Tamara whispered. “I felt love.”
    “Love for an abomination,” Ernst spat. “For the creature that cost us Sam.”
    Gabriel’s head swam, the emotions of his family pressing into his mind. The communion was back. He could sense their feelings, maybe not as strongly as before, but strong enough: They were horrified. All of them. Sickened by the idea of his love for Shay, disappointed and frightened and most of all angry. The weight of their fury felt like a boulder threatening to crush him.
    “She’s not an abomination. She’s the best person I’ve known in a life that’s spanned centuries. She saved my life, when she had every reason to fear me,” Gabriel whispered. How could he have been so self-deluded as to think they wouldn’t feel his love?
    “He must not be left alone,” Ernst said slowly, his rage calming into something more like worry. “He can’t be trusted near the halfblood. One of us must stay with Gabriel until it’s over.”
    Until it’s over,
Gabriel thought, sinking to his knees.
Until Shay is dead.

CHAPTER

F OUR
     

     
    “M AKE THE CALL,” E RNST SAID. He held out a cell phone, not the laboratory’s phone. “It’s the halfblood’s phone. It should have Martin’s number in it.”
    “I found it in the storeroom,” Millie volunteered, her gaze darting from person to person without staying long on anyone.
    “I don’t want to hear his voice ever again,” Gabriel said. It was the truth. Martin’s voice was seared into his memory along with the feeling of being trapped, chained down on a table, drained of blood. He’d refused to speak to the man, but Martin continually talked to him, telling Gabriel all his grandiose plans. Being restrained on that table, listening to him, was almost as dark a memory as the night thefamily was massacred in Greece, or the night of Sam’s blood ritual.
    “He’ll recognize you. We don’t want him to know there are more of us,” Ernst said reasonably. “An ambush only works if it’s a surprise.”
    Gabriel actually laughed. He had taken Shay away from Martin—rescued her rather than staying to fight with Martin the way he’d wanted to. Martin wouldn’t believe for a second that he was going to kill her. More than that, Martin wouldn’t care.
    “This man won’t come for Shay. He only wants a vampire to study,” Gabriel said. There was no point in lying to his family anymore. “I tried to tell you, my original plan had been to use her as bait, but then I learned that it wouldn’t work. He’s after
us
, and the only reason you know about it is because Shay broke me out of Martin’s lab and saved my life. Because of her, I could come home and tell you about this threat. And yet you have her locked in the vault.”
    “Enough of this talk!” Richard burst out suddenly. “If the halfblood is useless, why don’t we just kill it now?”
    “The doctor may come to recapture his vampire, but the woman will come for the halfblood,” Ernst said, the words sending a chill through Gabriel.
    “I told you, I never saw the woman,” he protested.
    His father didn’t even bother answering him. “Either way, it costs us nothing to keep the halfblood alive for another day.” He thrust the phone at Gabriel again. “Make the call.”
    “Why can’t you do it? Or Luis or Richard?” Millie asked. “Gabriel told us he never even spoke to his captor. This Martin won’t recognize his voice.”
    “This is a danger that Gabriel brought on us all,” Tamara said. “It’s his responsibility to remedy it.”
    “It’s needlessly torturing him after he’s already been through hell,” Millie argued.
    Gabriel didn’t move his eyes from his father’s. Ernst wasn’t even listening to the others. He was simply waiting for Gabriel to obey him, assuming that he would, as he had for hundreds of years.
    Gabriel took the phone, found Martin in the contacts list, and made the call.
    Martin answered on the first ring. “Shay?” he