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

barked.
    “No. You know who I am,” Gabriel told him, “and you know you’re never going to get me back into your exam room.”
    Martin snorted. “You wouldn’t be calling me if that was all you had to say.”
    Gabriel felt a trickle of loathing creep up his spine. He hated Martin. As much as he wanted to feel fury, simple and righteous, what he actually felt was more complicated. Hatred and, yes, anger. But also fear. This man had kept him captive and made him weak, had
used
him, studied him, treated him as something less than human.
    Maybe he was something less than human. Maybe they all were. Why else would they have done what they did to Sam, just for falling in love? Why else would they have Shay locked up like . . . well, like something less than human? An acid mix of guilt and shame swept through Gabriel’s body.
    “I have Shay. If you want her back, you’ll meet me in Asheville, North Carolina. Sunday night. There’s an abandoned gas station off Route 70.”
    “Tell him she’s in bad shape,” Millie whispered, her voice anxious.
    “Be there,” Gabriel said. “You know Shay can’t live without transfusions. She won’t last long.”
    He hung up before he could hear Martin’s reply. He was afraid it would be laughter. Martin didn’t care if Shay lived any more than Ernst did. All Gabriel could hope for was that Martin wanted to keep Shay’s mother happy. If he did, he might come to save Shay. And maybe, just maybe, there would be a moment of confusion during the ambush when Gabriel could grab Shay and run.
    If she was even still alive.
I like Luis better. Richard came in here once and found me looking through a box of old tintype photos, and he grabbed them away from me and spat on the floor. I mean, literally, he spat on the floor like an old lady trying to show her disdain. I didn’t care that he took them. I didn’t recognize anyone in the tintypes. For all I know, it was just someone’s childhood collection of weird pictures. I’ve gone through half the boxes in the vault, and there is some strange stuff.
     
Then later Luis came. I was trying to rest. I can’t really sleep anymore, or maybe it’s that I can’t tell when I’m dreaming and when I’m just thinking. Maybe I’m dreaming right now. Although if I’m dreaming, why couldn’t I be dreaming that Gabriel and I are together, back in the barn, no humans, no vampires, just Gabriel and me?
     
I’m pretty sure I’m writing in my so-called journal and not dreaming at all, but I don’t trust myself too much. My grasp on reality is basically gone. And let’s face it, once there were vampires, reality didn’t seem quite as rock-solid as it used to anyway.
     
So Luis came in, and I was lying there in the middle of all these papers and little china dolls that I’d found in an old pillowcase. Hisface was an exact replica of Mr. Bonetto’s whenever we wouldn’t clean the beakers carefully enough in AP bio. I get the feeling Luis is a neat freak. Anyway, I said sorry for the mess, didn’t mean to skeeve you out.
     
And he smiled. It was only for a second. Maybe I imagined it. But I could swear he smiled at me before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to. Then he left.
     
They don’t say anything to me; I think they’re just checking to see if I’m still alive.
     
It’s never Gabriel. They probably don’t trust him to come near me. When I try to think of his face, I can’t remember what he looks like.
     
Did I dream him?
     
    Shay dropped the pen. Or the pen fell. It was probably that the pen fell. She had to concentrate to make her fingers wrap around it now, and it was difficult to press hard enough for the ink to mark the paper. Writing words was hard too—she had to think of each letter, how to write it, and then what the next letter was, and the next. It was as if her brain couldn’t comprehend an entire word at once, not when she was looking at it on paper. She could still think, though.
    She sighed, rolling onto