Balthazar (3 page)

“They're in Albany. Lobbyists, and their bill is under discussion, so—I've hardly seen them for more than ten minutes a day since Christmas.”

“That's not much.”

“They have their reasons.” There was humor in Skye's gaze as she glanced back at him. “And why wouldn't I tell them the truth? You're an old friend from school who's come to say hi.”

“Do they know about Evernight? What it really was?”

“Nope. I figured I'd rather close out my senior year at my hometown school than a mental institution. Though I'm not sure I see any difference.” She sighed as she dismounted.

“Is anyone else at home? Do you have a sister or brother?”

Skye stiffened at the question, and he hesitated before getting off the horse, unsure why this was such a sore subject. Then she said, shortly, “My brother died last year. It's just me.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't know.”

“It's okay. I'm on my own, but I can take care of myself.”

Clearly, this wasn't something she wanted to discuss. So he dismounted without another word.

Balthazar led Eb into the warm stable and began unsaddling him. One other horse, a mare with a reddish coat, whickered as if welcoming them inside. Skye didn't interfere, just watched him put up the tack and brush Eb down. Only when she appeared satisfied that Balthazar really understood how to care for a horse did she speak. “Okay, so, how did you know to show up in the woods like that? Do you just go around finding people in trouble like… Vampire Batman or something?”

He had to smile. “I wish. No, Lucas told me you were having some trouble and asked me to drop in on you, check things out. He didn't mention any vampire attacks, though.”

“There haven't been any. Not before today, I mean. I only wrote him about—” Clearly this was difficult for her to talk about. “About the visions. The deaths.”

“So, you're still seeing them.” Lucas had said that she was being overcome by what appeared to be wraiths; instead of being haunted, however, Skye was witnessing deaths in vivid, graphic detail—constantly. First they needed to find a pattern. “Is it happening more frequently now? Does it happen at night, during the day, after you've done something or not done something…”

Skye shook her head. The lantern light burnished her dark hair, bringing out the hint of auburn beneath the brown. He'd hardly ever allowed himself to notice before, but she was a strikingly beautiful girl. “It's not about anything I do or don't do. It's only about where I am. If I'm in a place where somebody died, I see it. But it's more than seeing—I know how everyone felt. The victim and the killer, if it was a murder.”

“They aren't all murders?” Wraiths were created only by homicide; if she was seeing other kinds of deaths, then wraiths had nothing to do with it.

“Sometimes they are. But sometimes they're just—sudden. Violent. None of them are peaceful.” Skye folded her arms in front of her, unconsciously shielding herself. “The first one I saw was on the drive home from Evernight. We got caught in traffic on the interstate, and while we were idling there I saw this car crash—the aftermath of one—and this crumpled body… I thought I must be going crazy. Or that all that weird stuff at Evernight had me, I don't know, not in my right mind. But when I watched that crash over and over—watched that guy die, heard it, even
smelled
it—I knew it had to be real.” A shudder rippled through her. “Did you know you can smell blood in smoke? You can.”

“Yes, I knew that.” Best not to get into how. “So you see the visions whenever you're near the site of a sudden death.”

“It's like the dead want me to pay attention. Like they want me to go through it all with them. When it's happening, I have to fight to remember who and where I am. I want to snap out of it, but sometimes I can't. Is this—did Lucas send you because you know a lot about this kind of thing?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Balthazar kept brushing Eb; he'd forgotten how much this simple, repetitive act helped him concentrate. Working on cars was fun, but it had nothing on caring for a horse. “Lucas and Bianca would've come themselves, but Black Cross has been giving them trouble lately.”

“Black Cross?”

“Oh. I forgot you didn't know.” For the first time, it occurred to Balthazar that Skye was still an outsider in the world of the supernatural. Despite everything she'd seen and done, much of his world remained a mystery to her. “Vampire hunters. Don't worry; Bianca and Lucas are fine. But they wanted me to find out more about what was going on with you, and make sure you were okay. Instead you're being hunted by a vampire.”

Skye tucked a lock of her hair behind one ear, obviously trying hard to concentrate, though this had to be overwhelming for her. “Okay. Vampires are … everywhere, then. Not just at Evernight.”

“Not just at Evernight. A lot of us try hard to live normally and get by, but there are dangerous ones out there. And the one you ran into tonight, Lorenzo—he's bad news.”

Bad news
: What an understatement. But telling her the full truth right now was something Balthazar didn't want to do unless it was necessary—it would only panic her. Above all, he didn't want to get into the labyrinthine complications of his own long past.

“Will he come back?” she asked. “Or was that just … random?”

“I don't know.” And he didn't like not knowing. “I'm going to hang around for a few days and make sure he's cleared off. So don't worry too much. But no more riding alone in the woods at dusk, okay?”

“Don't worry. I'm not exactly in a rush to repeat the experience.” Her eyes met his, only for a moment, almost shyly. He didn't understand why; after all, they'd known each other for almost three years. Granted, they'd never shared more than a few words of conversation, and he'd borrowed her Twentieth-Century History notes once to get some modern perspective, but they weren't strangers. And she'd always struck him as outgoing, forthright … even bold.

Balthazar finally got it when she said, “All right, I know the answer to this question, but still, I have to ask. You're—you're a vampire. Right?”

“Right.” He studied her face carefully in search of her fear or revulsion, but she didn't turn away. “Does that bother you?”

“Not as much as it probably should.” She laughed at herself. “I mean, I already knew. Sort of. But I guess I needed to hear it from you.”

Perhaps Skye distrusted him now; he wouldn't blame her if she did. “I don't feed from humans. You're safe with me.”

“I know that. If I hadn't known it before today—I would now.”

“Anything you need to know about any of this, you can ask me. I might not know the answer, but if I do, I'll tell you. So you don't have to stay in the dark any longer.”

“Okay. Good to know.” As she ran one hand through her hair, Balthazar could see that she still trembled slightly. Despite the brave front she was putting up, Lorenzo's attack had shaken her.

Placing one broad hand on her shoulder, Balthazar said, “Listen. Go inside and warm up. Get some sleep if you can. I'll be outside all night, and we'll talk it over tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”
She grimaced. “It's the first day of school—I'd forgotten all about it. I mean, I was dreading it up until now. But the whole vampire-attack thing kind of put it all in perspective.”

“See, it won't be
that
bad. And I mean it—you don't have to be afraid tonight. He won't bother you again.”

“Do you want to come in? My parents won't get home for hours yet, so they won't know or care. And it's cold out here.”

“I can watch the house better from out here. Don't worry. Vampires don't feel the cold as badly as humans do.”

Skye looked up at him, and her face revealed more of her vulnerability, and her gratitude, than words could. For a moment, he felt a surge of protectiveness—and something else besides—

No humans
, he thought. It was an old rule of his.

“Thank you for rescuing me,” she said. “I ought to have told you before.”

“That's what I'm here for.” Balthazar meant it as a sort of joke, and yet it was a good way to think of himself. Better than most of the other reasons he had to exist, anyway.

He remained outside, watching the warm glow of the window that must have been her bedroom, for another hour. No sign of the parents—but, more to the point, there was no sign of Lorenzo, either.

They've hunted this area before
, Balthazar told himself, arms wrapped around himself, his black cloth coat poor protection against the deep chill of upstate New York in January.
Yeah, it was at least a century ago, but still—this is ground Lorenzo knows. So he could just as easily have come here alone. Skye might simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time
.

That was the explanation Balthazar liked best: It was the one that meant Skye was already safe. Lorenzo had been thwarted, and he knew Balthazar was around to interfere with his hunting plans. He'd move on somewhere else. She wouldn't be in danger again.

But it might not be that easy.

He looked up toward Skye's window, and for one moment he glimpsed her silhouette, graceful and quick. Even the fall of her thick hair over her shoulder was clear, and surprisingly tantalizing. Just as Balthazar began to feel guilty—as if this were spying rather than watching—she snapped off the lights.

Immediately he went on higher alert; if Lorenzo returned, this was when he would strike—when he thought he had her off guard. Balthazar circled the house, a large, modern structure apparently on the outskirts of town, and listened carefully, not only with his ears but with all his senses, including the ones that told a vampire when another was near. Nothing.

Finally, he decided he could risk getting himself something to eat. Though he would never have said this aloud to Skye—nor to almost anyone else, even other vampires—being near her while she was bleeding had sharpened his appetite.

How he hated that. Looking at a beautiful young girl, liking her, wanting to help her, and yet being unable to forget that one part of him saw her as prey.

Balthazar moved into the woods just off her home's property, sniffing the wintry air. Pine, dirt, any number of birds (mostly owls and sparrows, too hard to catch and not much to enjoy), the horse's sweat from earlier, a hint of Skye's delicate perfume, but something muskier, gamier—
there
. Deer. Close by, too.

Hunger whetted, he walked into the forest—then began to run, moving as silently as possible so as not to startle his prey. Already he could imagine the thick blood filling his mouth, heating his core, giving him again the shadow of life he wanted so badly—

But he couldn't smell the deer's blood within its body, and he should've been able to by now.

He came to a stop a few feet short of the deer, its still form all but invisible in the midnight blackness. It lay on the snow, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle. There was no heartbeat to be heard.

Despite his natural predator's disappointment at losing prey, Balthazar knelt by the dead deer to investigate. Its throat had been ripped open, probably hours ago; only the severe cold had kept decomposition slow enough that he hadn't yet been able to smell it. Every single drop of its blood had been drained.

As his hand ran over the deer's coat, he felt the bite marks: dozens of them. It had been devoured—by vampires, several of them. And the blood had been drunk through the bites. Ripping open the throat had been unnecessary. Just something the killer enjoyed. Something he'd done many times before.

Balthazar's hands clenched into fists as he thought of the vampire who had led this pack, whose signature he saw written before him in torn flesh:
Redgrave
.

He's here
.

AS USUAL, SKYE AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF HER phone's alarm chiming at her. Not at all as usual, just rolling over to swat the phone into silence made her whole body ache. At first her groggy mind only supplied,
I'm really sore
.

Then she remembered why, and she bolted upright in bed, clutching her white sheets to her chest.

Skye breathed in deeply in an effort to steady herself against the rush of adrenaline that flooded into her, the memory of the vampire's attack almost as unnerving as the attack itself. Could that really have happened? And was it possible that Balthazar More had showed up to rescue her? That seemed more like one of her old study-hall daydreams than reality.

But the scrapes along her arms and soreness of her muscles didn't lie.

She looked down at her phone to see that she had two new text threads. One was from her best friend from Evernight, Clementine Nichols, whom she'd messaged about the craziness last night. Her reply:

OMG r u serious? More vampires? In Darby Glen? R they everywhere? BE CAREFUL. Balty rescue sounds hot don't drool on him
.

Just like Clem to somehow combine dire warnings about staying safe and a joke about Skye's old crush on Balthazar.