Balthazar Page 7

  She’d had very little to say to him since the day she died.

  “Charity,” Balthazar whispered. “Is Redgrave asleep?”

  “Yes.” Her place in Redgrave’s bed was as assumed, and as unnatural, as Balthazar’s place beside Constantia.

  “Very well. That gives us a chance to go.”

  “Go?” It was as if that were not a word in English, so flat was her incomprehension.

  After a century and a half of captivity, who could blame her? Balthazar reminded himself to speak slowly and clearly. Sometimes Charity failed to understand, but this—this she had to understand. “We’re leaving them. The vampires. We’re going this morning. Setting out on our own. You and me.”

  Charity’s brows knitted together in consternation. “Leave Redgrave?”

  “Yes. Charity, this is our chance. We can leave them behind. Let them follow the war. We’ll make our own way. Maybe—maybe on the outskirts of a city, where we can hunt animals in the woods and nobody will bother us.” Balthazar knew she would resist this—Charity liked human blood far too much—but surely it would be worth it to her, if it meant escaping the murderer and rapist who had held her captive so long. “Just us. As it should have been. You understand me, don’t you?”

  Slowly, Charity nodded.

  Balthazar smiled. Thank God. Why had it taken him so long to see just how simply, how quickly, their long nightmare could end? He had no idea where creatures like he and his sister could find peace in the world—they were unholy, damned, no part of God’s creation—but they could look, couldn’t they? They could try. Together, they might find a way to exist without Redgrave, without Constantia, without the bloodshed. It was just possible that he and his sister might have the chance to be … happy.

  Then Charity said, “You want to take me away from Redgrave.”

  “Yes.”

  “Away from him. Away from all the blood. Away from everything.” Charity’s body trembled now, shaking almost as strongly as a convulsion.

  “Charity, listen to me.” Balthazar took her shoulders in his hands. “This isn’t how we should be living. You know that, don’t you? Don’t you feel it, deep down?”

  A tear trickled from the corner of Charity’s eye as she nodded. The glowing embers pinked her pale cheek. “I do. I know how it should be. And I know who took it from me.”

  The shove hit him as hard as a blow, sending Balthazar sprawling across the room until he landed flat on his back on the stone floor. Charity stalked toward him, her fragile hands balled into fists.

  “Come with you? Trust you?” Charity shook her head. “Not you. Never you!”

  “Charity—”

  She reached into the fire, pulling out a superheated pair of tongs that glowed red in the early morning light. Metal near melting cast pinkish-red light onto her face, onto her unearthly smile. “Get out. Go away. Or I’ll behead you myself.”

  “Come with me,” Balthazar pleaded. “Charity, please. This is our best chance.”

  “You didn’t choose me!” she screamed, so loudly that he knew at least one of the vampires would wake.

  So Balthazar pushed himself up from the floor, drew his coat more tightly around him, and ran out into the snow. As it sloughed into his boots, chilled him head to toe, he continued hurrying away from the inn—from Redgrave, and Constantia, and the only life he’d known since his death.

  He still had no idea what kind of existence a monster like himself could expect.

  He knew only that he had to find it—and face it, alone.

  Chapter Seven

  BALTHAZAR REACHED INTO THE INNER POCKET of his long coat, taking hold of the bone handle of the wide-bladed knife he’d put there. This would do for a beheading if he got the chance.

  Not that it was likely. Redgrave wouldn’t invade Skye’s home with anything less than full force. Lorenzo, Constantia, and the rest of the crew he’d acquired since they’d last met—they would all be with him. That meant Balthazar had to stick to the plan and put off his ultimate revenge until later. Even though there was nothing he wanted more than to make Redgrave pay for what he’d done to him, what he’d done to Charity—

  —his eyes sought Skye, her form visible in the darkness, young and frightened but trying so hard to be strong—

  —because of what Redgrave was doing to Skye, too. Because of every foul, selfish thing Redgrave had done these past four centuries. It was more than enough reason to take off a guy’s head.

  Not tonight, Balthazar reminded himself, though he followed it with an inner promise: Soon.

  The footsteps reached the stairs, heavy against wooden floorboards. Skye jumped slightly, and Balthazar could see that she was trembling. He laid one hand on the small of her back, and she steadied herself immediately. It was humbling to think that she would rely on him so completely, given how he’d failed with Redgrave in the past.

  Starting, of course, with the day of his death.

  The tribe was in the hall now, mere steps from the door. Skye’s breathing had become as fast and shallow as a deer’s at the moment of slaughter. Balthazar pressed his hand more firmly against her back, just for an instant, before he took it away to step in front of her, between her and the danger.

  So faintly that Balthazar could barely make it out, Redgrave laughed.

  He thinks it’s funny. Funny that Skye’s scared to death, funny that I’m up here waiting for him.

  We’ll see how funny he thinks it is in a minute.

  The door swung open. Redgrave stood there, framed by darkness, as though he were alone. Skye gasped, but Balthazar forced himself not to turn back to her. Redgrave would see that as weakness.

  “Well, well,” Redgrave said. “I always knew we’d meet again, but I hardly thought it would be in a girl’s bedroom.”

  “Get out.” Balthazar didn’t expect Redgrave to do this, but it was all he had to say to him.

  Redgrave just grinned. “You were making a pet of her, weren’t you? Can’t say I blame you, Balthazar. She’s quite lovely. You never did indulge enough. But I hope you’ve already had your fill.”

  “You’re seriously disgusting,” Skye said, but Redgrave didn’t even glance at her. To him, she wasn’t a person, merely a vessel for the blood he craved.

  “I said, get out. Turn around and walk out of here,” Balthazar said.

  “You don’t really expect me to do that, do you?” Behind Redgrave, at the edges of the doorframe, a couple of the other vampires appeared, as if to prove to Balthazar just what he was up against. They might have been any other set of young people—college aged, perhaps, one of them still wearing her hipster horn-rimmed glasses—but Balthazar could sense the ferocity behind their bland faces.

  “No, I don’t expect you to go,” Balthazar said. “But I thought I should give you fair warning.”

  Redgrave grinned, his smile refined, even beautiful, despite the evil heat in his eyes as he looked past Balthazar to Skye. “Do you even know what you’ve got there?”

  The flickers of the intense flashback he’d experienced that day lit up within Balthazar’s mind, reigniting his anger. “You’re the one who doesn’t know what he’s dealing with.”

  As Redgrave stepped forward—stalking turning into attack—the room’s temperature plummeted to a chill so deep that Balthazar felt as if he would go numb. Skye’s human breath created a small cloud of vapor in the darkness of the room.

  Redgrave hesitated only a moment, but that was long enough.

  Brilliant, aquamarine light flooded the room as ice began to coat the windows, the walls, and the ceiling. In the center of the light, Bianca took shape, spinning from something not unlike a wavering candle flame to herself, red hair streaming around her.

  As Redgrave lifted his head to see her, Balthazar could tell the ancient fear still held sway over him—that he, and all of his tribe, were still violently repelled by one of the only things that vampires dreaded as much as fire.

  One of the vampires behind Redgrave whis
pered, “Wraith.”

  Bianca swept forward, sliding horizontal, somehow turning herself into a blade that slashed through Redgrave, the wall, the door, all the vampires. Balthazar knew from having seen her in battle that this wouldn’t kill any of them, but it apparently hurt like hell. Half doubled over, Redgrave hissed something in his old language, the one Balthazar had always refused to learn, and the entire tribe fled.

  The only sound for a moment was the thumping of the back door as they went out the way they’d come.

  Then Bianca laughed. “Wow, some vampires scare easy.”

  “You’re telling me vampires are so terrified of wraiths that they’ll steer clear of this house just because they saw Bianca?” Skye, who had already scooped out most of the ice from her room, shouted over the whirr of the hair dryer she was currently using on her bed quilt.

  “It’s an old superstition that goes deep for us.” Balthazar himself didn’t care for being around wraiths who weren’t named Bianca, and even that had taken some getting used to. “Deeper for Redgrave than for most—he always had a particular horror of the wraiths. I’d seen him panic at the sight of one before. Trust me, he won’t come back to confront Bianca again. From now on, at least, you can spend time here and sleep without worrying about being attacked every single second.”

  Bianca reappeared in the room; Skye jumped only a little bit. She was making progress. “I’ve searched everywhere,” Bianca said. “Where’s your ghost?”

  Skye blinked at her. “How did you know I used to have one?”

  “That’s the only way humans got admitted to Evernight Academy,” Balthazar explained. “A connection to the wraiths. Ghosts. Haunted houses, that kind of thing.”

  “Like Clementine’s haunted car,” Skye said thoughtfully. “The house I grew up in, in the center of town, that one was haunted. It was a little girl who sat by the fire with me sometimes. She never said anything; she just seemed to want somebody to sit with. I liked her. Thought of her as, like, an imaginary playmate who wasn’t imaginary.” Her expression was fond, even warm; Skye’s ability to deal with the supernatural continued to surprise Balthazar. “But we moved here two years ago. New construction. No haunting here that I know of.”

  Bianca frowned. “That’s not good. I’d hoped I’d be able to talk to your ghost and make sure you were protected all the time. I can’t stay here permanently.”

  “We should be all right,” Balthazar said. “Relatively few vampires know the ways to trap or repel ghosts. He won’t try this house again. It’s the rest of town we’ve got to worry about.”

  “You really know how to cheer a girl up,” Skye said, and he smiled at her apologetically.

  Bianca, who now had a very odd smile on her face, said, “You know how to call us if you need us. Skye, thanks again for everything. You’re in good hands. Balthazar—it’s nice seeing you like this.”

  Like what? Balthazar wondered, but it was enough to bask in her approval. Though his old love for Bianca had finally shifted into something simpler and less romantic, he thought he’d always have a weak spot for her smile. He lifted one hand in farewell as Bianca faded slowly from sight—returning to Lucas yet again.

  Skye tucked a lock of her thick brown hair behind one ear as she said, “I’d forgotten you two used to go out.”

  “That was never—Bianca was always with Lucas, really. Our relationship was more about hiding their romance.” And if he’d been fool enough to forget that for a while, he thought, he had no one but himself to blame.

  “But you liked her, didn’t you?” This girl had seen right through him. “Do you still?”

  “No. I mean—of course I care about Bianca. I always will. But she never wanted what I wanted. It took me a while to accept that, but I have.”

  Why did it feel so strange, talking about that with Skye? It felt like … like talking about one girlfriend to another. Bad form. Though of course Bianca had never really been his girlfriend, and Skye—that couldn’t happen, for her sake.

  They’d cleared the last remnants of ice from her bedroom, and he’d double-checked the entire first floor and fixed the locks—though Redgrave’s phobia of wraiths meant that the doors probably could be left wide open from now on without the tribe returning. Tonight’s crisis was taken care of: time to look toward the future.

  “You’re going to take the bus to school in the morning, right?”

  Skye gave him a look across her darkened bedroom. “Of course. I’m not going to walk along the road again by myself. But what do we do after that? If they came after me on one of the main streets in town, they’d come after me in school.”

  “I’m working on that,” Balthazar said. He didn’t want to make any promises before he knew for sure. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Wait—you’re leaving?” She looked stricken.

  “I promise you, they aren’t coming back tonight.”

  “But you could still stay here. My parents wouldn’t see you.”

  “There are a few things I need to take care of. If I did that here, I’d keep you up.”

  “Like I could sleep after this.” Skye sighed, but more in tiredness than frustration. Balthazar disliked leaving her, but for the moment she was safe, and he had to think about protecting her in the long term.

  “Just go to school tomorrow and trust me, okay?”

  He tossed the words out lightly, a phrase and nothing more. But Skye’s expression became solemn as she said, “I trust you.”

  She really meant it.

  He hadn’t realized, until that moment, how badly he’d wanted to hear her say that.

  That night, he returned to the cheap hotel room he’d rented on the edge of town, when he’d believed he would be here for only a handful of days. Obviously he’d need a longer-term solution, with Redgrave on the scene. The danger to Skye wouldn’t go away in a day, or a week. This required long-term thinking. This required commitment.

  Balthazar went to bed around midnight. Though he, like most vampires, preferred to remain awake at night and rest during the day, he knew that behaving this way separated him too completely from human society. There were times he’d allowed himself to drift into a vampiric existence; those were the times when he’d looked up to see that a year or a decade had come and gone without his having had a single meaningful experience. No more, he’d decided.

  Besides, if he wanted to help Skye, he’d need an early start.

  And he did want to help her—more strongly than he could have imagined he would after only a couple of days—

  Refusing to think about it anymore, Balthazar went to sleep.

  And dreamed.

  1988.

  How long had he been out of synch? Five years? Closer to ten, maybe. Balthazar’s jeans and T-shirt weren’t quite right—everybody wore jeans washed out pale now, and the stripes on his shirt’s sleeves had gone from ubiquitous to unfamiliar. But he could pass. He could manage.

  It wasn’t like he hadn’t left the house in Chicago for ten years. He’d made trips to the hospital blood banks and the butchers, to get the blood he needed. He’d walked to the nearest bars and walked back. Sometimes he went to the store for cigarettes. But depression hung a kind of veil over everything—clouding it, making it more distant than it really was.

  Now that Balthazar was pushing himself out again, that veil was gone. In its place was a world transformed.

  Like cars. When had cars become so dull? Everything was white or gray, boxy and boring.

  Women’s fashions were interesting—sort of like the 1940s on acid. Big hair, big shoulder pads, brilliant neon colors: It would take some getting used to, but he’d give it points over the 1970s.

  And the storefronts all seemed to have gone away. Maybe this was because of those “malls” he’d heard about. He’d have to see one.

  “Look at this,” said Redgrave, falling into step beside him. “Balthazar’s revisiting his glory days.”

  Balthazar stopped where he stood, staring at Red
grave, trying to understand how he could be here. It made no sense—he hadn’t seen Redgrave in at least—in at least—

  “You tried to destroy my tribe. To destroy me.” How was Redgrave in his mind? Everything around them was changing now. The twilight Chicago street seemed to be shimmering—no, melting, not vanishing but melting the way candle wax did—taking on new shapes.

  The shape of a dance club in the late 1970s.

  He’d been here once. No. This was the first time. Balthazar’s confusion only increased as Redgrave became more and more gleeful, clapping his hands as he circled Balthazar. A haze of smoke from cigarettes—and other smoked substances—made the blinking lights around them seem almost eerie.

  “I’ve only just begun finding ways to hurt you,” Redgrave said. “Take this dream, for example. I’d never have done anything so rude, if you would only mind your manners. But Charity says you haven’t minded yours at all.”

  Charity. His baby sister. Balthazar looked across the club and saw her—

  —Charity and Jane in their dresses from the 1600s, with Constantia standing between them—

  “Do you want to live it all again? I’ll make sure that you do.” Redgrave leaned closer to Balthazar, his feral smile bright in the gloom. “Unless you get out of town now. Leave Skye to me.”

  Skye—Skye didn’t belong to this place, to this time—

  Balthazar sat upright in bed, startled awake. That dream had been a vivid one.

  Too vivid.

  Any vampire’s dreams could be invaded by that vampire’s sire. Normally it was an affectionate gesture—which was why Redgrave had always left him alone. Balthazar had hardly thought of this skill before last year, when Charity had taken to invading Lucas’s dreams during his time as a vampire. She had tormented him psychologically all night long until Balthazar had stopped her—by invading her dreams in turn. It had been a savage business, one that sickened him to think of.