Balthazar

by Claudia Gray

  “Let her catch her breath first,” Lucas said. “Listen, I need to call Clementine back. She was half frantic when she called me to say Skye hadn’t checked in; by now she’s probably pulling her hair out. Keep us posted, okay?”

  “Will do.”

  “And Bianca says hi.”

  “Oh, right. Hi.” Balthazar snapped off the call. Weird to think he’d forgotten to send a message to Bianca.

  As he did, Skye stirred on the bed. He hurried to her side. “Hey. Don’t sit up too fast.”

  “What the—where am I—oh.” Skye’s eyes widened as she took in her surroundings, and saw him. “What happened?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. I found you out by the gorge, unconscious.”

  “Oh, my God.” Memory had obviously just come flooding back. Skye grimaced as she put her fingers to her temple, then slowly pushed herself upright. “It was awful. Turns out they call it Battlefield Gorge for a reason.”

  “You didn’t have to run out there like that,” Balthazar said. “Study hall—we would’ve been okay.”

  It was as much of an opening to talk about their argument this morning as he could offer, but he thought it would be enough. To his surprise, though, Skye didn’t go there. “Hundreds of men died out there. It was like I was feeling them all at once—and sharper than before. I think my power must be getting stronger. Just walking by Ms. Loos’s room today was worse than being in it was before.”

  “Maybe it’s getting stronger. It might just be the aftermath of … of the bite.” My bite. When I bit into you in your bed and drank the blood you gave me to save my life, and then yelled at you to leave me alone. Shamefaced, Balthazar continued, “After you’re bitten by a vampire, your senses are enhanced for a while. The powers become longer lasting, maybe permanent, with subsequent bites. It’s a small taste of what being a vampire is like all the time.”

  “I’ll pass, thanks.” She didn’t even look directly at him; instead she gazed into the firelight. “That was too close, this afternoon.”

  When he’d told her that his decision not to be with her was final, she’d accepted it. Balthazar hadn’t realized until now that he was counting on her to push back—to tempt him, to keep inviting him places. To offer all the pleasures of her company and her adoration, without being able to expect anything from him in return. Was he really that selfish? That stupid about his own desires?

  He said the first thing that came to mind: “How does Clementine have Lucas’s number, anyway?”

  “They used to sit next to each other in English,” Skye said absently. Then she sat up straighter, as if newly resolved. “We have to go back.”

  “Back—where? You can’t mean the gorge.”

  She shuddered. “No. I can’t face that again. Not ever, I don’t think. It’s too much. I—I’m glad you found me.” For one moment, her eyes met his, and against his will, Balthazar found himself remembering the moment he’d awakened with her in his arms, and how warm she’d felt, how her legs had brushed against his.

  “Don’t run off like that again.” His voice sounded rough and unsteady, even to him. “No matter—no matter how badly I screw up.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” Skye looked away from him again. “So come with me now.”

  “Of course. You must want to get home.”

  “No. I’m going back to school.”

  “It’s—” Balthazar glanced over at the old-fashioned brass clock on the mantel. “After four thirty. Nobody’s going to be there now.”

  “Which is the whole point.” Cautiously she stood, tested her steadiness, then took her coat from the chair where he’d dumped it and began shrugging it back on. “I’ve run from these ‘death visions’ every time I’ve encountered them. And I haven’t learned anything that way. It’s past time to face them down. You’ve got a key, right?”

  “Yeah, but—Skye, that’s incredibly dangerous for you. You’ve nearly died before.”

  “I’ve felt like I nearly died. It’s time to find out exactly what happens to me afterward. I know it’s risky, but that’s why you’re coming along.” She tossed him a challenging glance over her shoulder as she headed for the door. “You are coming along, right?”

  “Right.” He had no choice now but to follow where she led.

  Chapter Twenty

  SKYE WRAPPED HER COAT MORE WARMLY around herself as Balthazar drove through the winter storm on their way back to Darby Glen High. The snowfall had, if anything, only increased; the true winter of upstate New York was now well under way. All around them cars crawled along, cautious on slush-slick roads.

  “Are you sure about this?” Balthazar said. His handsome face looked almost brutish in the harsh dashboard lights of his old beater car. “We could try later. Another day, maybe, when you haven’t had such a rough time.”

  “If I wait, I’ll chicken out. Let’s just do this.” Skye tucked a lock of her hair behind one ear. On the radio, some guy sang about sadness and loss, and how they kept you up at night. “I’m not feeling the … enhanced senses, or whatever they are, so much anymore. So it probably won’t get to me until I’m in Ms. Loos’s room.”

  “Wait—that’s right. You said that today, you could sense it even outside her room. It enhanced your psychic senses, too?”

  It. The bite. The moment he’d pulled her close in her bed, and she’d felt herself surrendering completely. They were just going to call the bite “it” from now on. Fine. “I guess so. It made me a little crazy—went running off through the hallways, and evil Coach Haladki was screeching at me—”

  “Nola’s not that bad. Just cranky.”

  “I knocked Britnee Fong down in the hallway, which led to a whole screaming match between me and Craig. Today’s been awesome all over.”

  Balthazar hesitated before saying, “Screaming match?”

  “Well. Not screaming. Neither of us wanted the entire school to hear. But we had it out about our breakup.” The taste of it was still sour. “It was a good thing, I guess. We talked about how weird things got after Dakota died, and how we—” Did she want to say this out loud to Balthazar? What the hell, she decided. After a guy had bitten you while naked in your bed, privacy pretty much flew out the window. “How we never should have slept together. We weren’t going to be together long. Craig already knew it, and I… I guess I should’ve known, too.”

  Even Craig admitted it was his mistake. That ought to have helped her more than it did. Maybe it would in time.

  “You couldn’t have been thinking clearly that soon after your brother’s death,” Balthazar said. “He shouldn’t have done that to you.” She could see him clenching and unclenching his jaw in the dim light, as if he were biting back something else to say. Her face flushed warm as she realized that he was jealous—that the thought of her with Craig got under his skin.

  Even one day ago, that jealousy would’ve made her incredibly happy. Now, however, Skye didn’t see how it mattered. So what if Balthazar wanted to be with her, if he refused to do anything about it?

  Slowly she said, “If a guy wants to be with you, he should be. If he doesn’t, he should keep his distance.”

  A pause followed before Balthazar said, “I guess maybe he had his reasons.”

  “Or maybe he was too chicken to face the truth.” Skye turned the volume up on the radio, so that the sad song was even louder. For the rest of the ride, it was the only sound in the car besides the slap-slap of the windshield wipers pushing away the snow.

  Darby Glen High became a lot creepier after dark.

  Skye had been here at nighttime before, of course, but always for a dance, ball game, or recital, which meant that the parking lots were filled with cars and a few people were always milling around. Now the place was deserted, so eerily silent that she could hear the echo of their footsteps on the tile and Balthazar’s keys jangling in his pocket. The flashlight Balthazar held provided their only illumination.

  They reached the door of Ms. Loos’s room and stopped
. Neither made a move. Skye breathed in and out, keeping the rhythm regular and slow.

  “Is it getting to you already?” Balthazar stepped closer to her. Once again she remembered how much bigger he was than her, with his dark outline looming overhead. “We should go back.”

  “No. I don’t sense anything, I’m just—”

  “I know.” His hand hovered next to her shoulder for a moment before he dropped it again, denying them both the touch.

  After one more deep breath, Skye put her hand on the doorknob and turned.

  When she first walked in, the room looked like any other classroom. Written on the dry-erase board in all caps were the words UTERINE CYCLE, which made her profoundly glad she’d dropped out of Ms. Loos’s class when she did.

  “Anything?” Balthazar kept glancing around the room, like he expected a ghost or vampire to appear at any second. At least they would have known how to fight those.

  “It usually takes a few minutes.” Skye sat on the edge of one of the desks—the one where Britnee Fong used to sit. She hadn’t really thought about Britnee since her fight with Craig; she’d hardly had a chance. Now, though, she realized that if Craig was telling the truth, Britnee wasn’t the schemer Skye had believed her to be. Craig wasn’t off the hook with Skye yet—not by a long shot—but maybe she’d try being more polite to Britnee in the future. Or at least get Madison to quit snarking on her so much.

  Then she saw him: the janitor, always unaware, always defeated looking, as he wheeled his trash can into the room again. “Here we go,” she said, stepping backward until she half sat, half fell into the chair. Balthazar came nearer, but already it was harder for her to see him. The world was taking shape in a new way. She was seeing through a dead man’s eyes.

  Pain curls up his arm, lances into his heart. It shallows his lungs, blurs his vision. For one moment he can taste metal, as if he were about to be struck by lightning. His heart, he thinks, and there’s nothing scarier than the feeling that a time bomb is ticking in his chest, and someone’s just pressed the detonator.

  “Skye!” Balthazar had seized her shoulders and was trying to shake her out of it. But this time she didn’t let him. Instead of struggling against the visions—which she’d always tried to do before—Skye exhaled and let go completely. It was like swimming in the river and allowing the current to take you under. Like giving in.

  The pain clamps around him, a vise squeezing tighter and tighter. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, his eyes too large for their sockets. There’s no pain worse than this. There can’t be. This is every cell in the body screaming for air, devouring itself, total immolation inside and out.

  She was vaguely aware that she’d collapsed, that Balthazar had her leaned against his chest and was saying something—pleading with her—but that was too far away to pay attention to any longer.

  The pain builds, and builds, beyond any endurance, beyond any imagining—

  Until it turns inside out.

  The cells stop screaming. There’s no need for air anymore, or for blood. No need for anything. He’s complete as he is. He let go so the pain could stop, and there’s nothing more joyous than that surrender. The contentment he feels in the death of his human body is the same he might feel when cuddled within a very snug blanket—warm and enveloping, but not any part of him, really.

  That makes it easy to throw the blanket aside.

  Skye opened her eyes. She sat on the floor, legs twisted up, leaning against Balthazar. He kept saying, “Stay with me, stay with me, stay—Skye?”

  “Yeah.” She breathed in, and the mere movement of air in her lungs was inexpressibly sweet. Life is irreplaceable, Balthazar had said, and now she thought she understood some fraction of what he’d meant.

  “We have to get you out of here. It’s too much for you.”

  “It’s over.” Shakily she coughed once—how did even that feel good? Her pulse seemed to hum throughout her body. The high, silvery sound of her nervous system chimed like a rolling cymbal. “I’ll be okay now.”

  And from now on, she thought. Although she knew that there was no telling what other deaths might do to her—she couldn’t begin to imagine facing Battlefield Gorge again—she understood instinctively that this death, in this room, wouldn’t overcome her in the same way if she ever returned.

  “You weren’t okay a minute ago,” Balthazar insisted. Still he held her close, and she realized one of his hands was stroking her hair.

  Skye jerked back from him. The fast movement dizzied her, but only for a moment. Balthazar seemed to realize what he’d been doing, and he pulled back, scooting farther away on the floor.

  She said, “I mean it. The trick is—the trick is giving in.”

  “Giving in?”

  “Surrendering to the death.”

  Balthazar scowled, his heavy brow furrowing. “Surrendering to death sounds like a bad idea. In any situation, but especially this one.”

  “I know how it sounds. But somehow—somehow it was the right thing to do.” Skye braced herself against one of the desks as she shakily got to her feet. “I’ll know better what to do next time. It won’t destroy me.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  Skye shrugged. “It’s not your choice to like or dislike.”

  “Skye—do we have to be like—”

  “We’re okay,” she said, and tried to mean it. Her feelings were too raw for that, really, but she didn’t want to turn into a teary mess with two guys in the same day. “Just take me home, all right?”

  He took her home.

  The drive to her place went even slower than the journey there. The snow had finally outstripped the plows’ ability to keep up with it, and the scant few cars still on the road were creeping along. Balthazar’s car was no four-wheel drive, but he kept it steady anyway. He was as good with automobiles as he was with horses.

  “I should call Mom and Dad,” she said, just to break the silence in the car. “They won’t be able to make it back tonight. Their organization usually springs for a hotel room in Albany when that happens.”

  Balthazar said, “I’m sorry if I hurt you this morning.”

  Skye stared over at him. “That’s not what we were talking about.”

  “It’s just a relief to have you talking to me,” he admitted. “I mean it. I shouldn’t have been as—rough on you. Or as rude. And I shouldn’t have bitten you.”

  He didn’t regret walking away from her, Skye decided. He only regretted letting her get close at all.

  She said only, “You’re here to protect me. That’s it. I understand now.”

  “All right.” He sounded as if he didn’t entirely believe her. Fair enough, she figured; she didn’t entirely believe herself. “Hopefully we can still hang around—”

  “I don’t think so.” Riding together in the snow. Sparring in her basement, flushed and sweaty and enjoying every touch. Texting each other throughout study hall. Did she have to give it all up? Yes. Skye knew she had to be ruthless for her own sake. “You’re still here, and I appreciate that—you’ll never know how—anyway. But we should move on.”

  “Move on,” Balthazar repeated, as he finally steered the car into her driveway.

  “You’ll do—whatever you’d do otherwise. I’ll hang out with Madison more. Study at home, even. It’s not like it would kill me. I’m even going to the Valentine’s Dance with Keith Kramer. So—yeah. Moving on.”

  He gave her a look—oh, God, why did he look his absolute hottest when he was crazy jealous? The absurdity of any guy as amazing as Balthazar being jealous of cardboard-cutout Keith would’ve been hilarious at any other time. As it was, it stung almost as badly as his rejection had that morning.

  “Thanks again,” Skye said as she got out of the car. “Good night.” She walked inside and shut the door behind her without a backward glance.

  Moving on, she repeated to herself, meaning it. That means you don’t get to think about the fact that you’ve made Balthazar jealo
us. That can’t be why you go to the dance.

  Though I guess you can enjoy it a little bit.

  The Time Between: Interlude Three

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  October 1918

  FOR A VAMPIRE, ONLY ONE CALAMITY PROVIDED more abundant feeding grounds than wartime: plague.

  That made 1918 a very good year for the undead.

  Although the war had not yet ended, it was clearly in its last gasps; armistice was expected any day. With the conclusion of the bloodiest conflict in history near, Philadelphia ought to have been cheerful and bustling with activity. Instead, Balthazar found himself walking along deserted streets.

  In the past few weeks, a deadly wave of the Spanish flu had swept through the city with the same virulence with which it had killed millions from the Arctic Circle to South Africa. Victims—oddly, usually the youngest and strongest—began coughing and complaining of earaches or headaches. Then came the fevers, scorching hot. The pulses of the sick quickened so that Balthazar could hear them, fast and tremulous as the hearts of rabbits before the kill, from far away. Death seized them through the lungs, infecting and swelling them so that air could no longer course through the body. The sufferers turned blue-black with suffocation before their terrible deaths.

  Sometimes he could spare them that. Their blood tasted foul to him; viruses could not poison vampires, but this one was so wretched that it spoiled even the pleasure of drinking from humans without guilt. But if providing a merciful death for a few sick people was the lone service he could provide for humanity, then he would provide it.

  In Philadelphia, the Spanish flu epidemic was so severe that city officials had ordered trenches dug for mass graves. Some undertakers, taking opportunity of rising demand, had raised their fees; others told survivors they’d have to dig loved ones’ graves themselves. Doctors and nurses were in desperately short supply.

  Which was why a suspiciously young-looking man could describe himself as a medical student from “out west” and get away with it.