by Claudia Gray
Kate jerked away from him, leaving Lucas to stumble back in confusion. Her hand went to her stake. “What did Bianca do to you?”
Lucas took a step toward her, eyes pleading. “It wasn’t Bianca. Mom, just listen.”
“Ask the others to leave,” I said. Maybe Kate had a chance to accept her son as whatever he had become, but I didn’t want to take my chances on the rest of the Black Cross hunters. “Let Lucas explain.”
“You’ve been killed.” Kate’s voice was almost a sob. “You’re a vampire.”
There was a ripple of gasps and whispered curses from the other hunters. Dana hid her face against Raquel’s arm for a moment. I glanced behind us at Balthazar, who remained behind the wheel with the car’s motor idling.
Lucas kept his eyes locked with his mother’s. “Yes. I am. It’s not like they told us, Mom; I’m different but I’m still me. At least, I think I’m still me. This is…weird and scary, and I need to find out if there’s any way for me to be the person I was before. Please help me do that.”
Kate straightened. She never looked away from him, her gaze as cool and hard as iron. “You’re the shell of what my son used to be. I loved him more than a monster like you can ever know—”
“Mom, no,” Lucas whispered.
She acted like she hadn’t heard. “And you can taunt me with his voice and his face only as long as I let you.” Though her voice trembled, Kate pulled out her stake, her grip sure. “All I can do for Lucas now is give him a decent burial. And that means ending you.”
“Lucas!” I grabbed his arm to pull him toward the car, but he twisted away from me, as if unable to believe that his mother could do this to him. Then she swung at him so fast that he stumbled as he dodged the blow.
Most of the other hunters began running toward us. Ranulf burst from Vic’s doorway, ax in hand, courageously jumping into the fray despite the likelihood that he’d be staked and beheaded. None of that scared me as much as what was happening to Lucas.
Wham! Kate’s fist hit his jaw, and his expression went blank.
Wham! Lucas blocked one of her blows, and he narrowed his eyes, baring his teeth in rage.
Wham! This time he hit her. His fangs extended. I knew then that the threat had pushed him over the edge. The blood madness gripped Lucas now. He was fighting to kill.
I pulled at the clasp of my coral bracelet, the one Lucas had given me for my birthday—and my tether to corporeal existence. When it fell onto Vic’s lawn, I felt myself become lighter, insubstantial.
One of the hunters came at me, swinging a stake. I simply turned to vapor, so that his hand passed right through me—a weird sensation, sort of like a stomach cramp. The hunter screamed, which would have been hilarious any other time.
Zooming above the fray, I tried to take in the scene. Ranulf single-handedly held off the three hunters closest to Vic’s house. Vic had run out onto the lawn, not to fight but apparently to yell at Raquel, which at least was keeping her out of the battle. Dana, too—she had remained by Raquel’s side, maybe to defend her, maybe because she couldn’t attack her best friend even if he’d become a vampire. Lucas and his mother stood in the heart of it, locked in combat. He answered every punch she landed and clawed at her every chance he got, while throwing off the two hunters trying to come to her aid. If he got the upper hand, I knew he would kill Kate. And if he did that, if he drank his own mother’s blood, there was no way Lucas would ever be able to forgive himself.
At first it looked like Balthazar was just going to sit in the car and watch, which infuriated me. Then the motor revved, and with the screech of burning rubber, Balthazar drove the car straight onto Vic’s lawn, making the hunters scatter. He didn’t hit anybody, but not for lack of trying.
I wanted to protect the people I could. Quickly I pulled myself together into a physical form on the ground, right by Raquel, Dana, and Vic. Though I remained half transparent, they were able to see me.
“What the hell?” Dana yelled, throwing her arms around Raquel like I was going to hurt her.
“Get out of here,” I said. “Dana, take Raquel and try to get the others to follow you. Please!”
“Do it.” Vic folded his arms. “You don’t know what kind of badass ghost mojo she’s capable of. Trust me, I’ve seen her in action. You don’t want to be around.”
“Ghost?” Raquel whispered. Her face went pale. “Bianca—you’re dead?”
“We’re leaving.” Dana dragged Raquel toward one of the trucks. Raquel’s eyes met mine for one tortured moment before she turned to follow.
“Um, Bianca?” Vic tried to tap my shoulder, but his hand went through. “Whoa. Okay, some of that badass ghost mojo wouldn’t be a bad idea right now.”
A couple of hunters ran toward us, but Balthazar tackled them, taking them both down with his outstretched arms. Ranulf held his own, but I wasn’t sure how much longer he could go. And two hunters already lay dazed on the ground near Lucas, who battled his mother in blind rage.
I did have ghostly powers that were useful in combat, but I’d only ever tried them on vampires. Would that kill a human? I wasn’t ready to do that, even if the humans in question seemed very ready to kill me.
“We don’t need powers,” I said quickly. “We need the police.”
“Police?”
“Vic, call 911! Tell them there’s a—like, a home invasion or an attempted robbery in progress, something!” Black Cross tried to steer clear of the law, because they wanted to stay off their radar. “When they hear the sirens, they’ll go.”
Vic took off for the house and his cell phone. I ran toward Lucas, not sure what I was going to do but desperate to keep him from either being killed or killing his mother.
Lucas’s wild-eyed gaze told me he was beyond reasoning with. So I cried, “Kate, don’t! You don’t want to do this!”
“Let me give my son some peace!” She never stopped circling her son; one of her eyes was already blackening from his fist. Lucas would never have done that to her, never, if anything of his spirit was in control.
I slipped between them—not like she could do anything to me, what with me being dead and everything. “You can’t kill him. You know you don’t want to.”
Her gaze went right through me, focusing only on the cloudy figure of her son behind my transparent form. “I can and I will.”
My desperation peaked. I looked at Kate, pleading with every part of my soul for her to stop and try to see that her son was still with her—to see him through my eyes—until it felt almost like my desperation had become a blade that could cut through her—
Then this bizarre tidal pull seized me, dragging me toward Kate in the blink of an eye. Before I could ask myself what was happening, I felt myself being drawn into her, absorbed by her. Everything went dark for an instant, and then when I could see again, I knew I was looking through Kate’s eyes. I could feel her body all around me, like a suit of armor, but one with warmth, breath, and a heartbeat.
Kate’s hand dropped the stake as her feet stumbled backward. The only thing I could think was, I’m possessing someone. I’ve possessed Kate. How did I do that? The sheer power of my desperation had acted almost like a battering ram, opening a portal into her very self. Could all wraiths do this? I had no idea. All that mattered was my ability to stop this fight.
Lucas charged at me, and I dodged him, but clumsily, because controlling Kate’s body was weird and unfamiliar, sort of like my first driving lesson. I shouted, “Everyone, let’s go!” Talking in Kate’s voice sounded odd, but I kept giving orders. “We’re getting out of here now!”
Then I felt an even stranger sensation—Kate’s spirit, struggling against me, trying to push me out. Could she do it? I decided to let her, if it was possible.
Instantly, I felt myself scattered and invisible, floating upward in a dreamlike haze. My reverie was broken when I heard Kate say, voice shaking with fear, “We have to leave.”
The hunters ran for their trucks and vans, responding
either to her first order or her last. Lucas sprang after her, but Balthazar shoved him aside and took him down, keeping him back.
As their taillights vanished down the road, Vic jogged out of his house, both hands in his sandy hair, like he was trying to hold his head together. “What, I just called the cops for nothing?”
“First be glad that Black Cross is gone,” Ranulf pointed out, brushing himself off and calm as ever.
“Well, the police are coming. So maybe get the car out of the yard.” Vic looked at the deep tire tracks in the grass and groaned. “There are not even words for how grounded I’m going to be. They’re gonna have to invent words for it. New words.”
I coalesced amid the guys. “Ranulf’s right, though. This could have been a lot worse.”
Lucas turned toward Vic. His eyes remained flat and blind, his fangs still extended. With horror I realized that Lucas hadn’t yet drunk blood—and the killing rage from the fight held him in its grasp.
He lunged at Vic. Ranulf managed to knock Vic out of the way, but Lucas tore at him with his whole strength, willing to shred Ranulf if that got him closer to the human, to the source of fresh blood.
Vic’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God,” he said, standing in place out of shock instead of running for his life. “This isn’t happening.”
“Vic, run!” Balthazar said, pulling Lucas off Ranulf. Vic took a couple of shuffling steps, then finally accepted what was going on and ran like crazy toward his front door. Lucas elbowed Balthazar sharply, but Balthazar was able, with difficulty, to maintain his grip. He said to Ranulf, “Get him into the wine cellar. Keep him there until we can get him some blood. After I move the car, I’ll come help you.”
“Lucas?” I pleaded. “Lucas, can you hear me?”
It was like I didn’t exist. Lucas only wanted blood, and he didn’t care if he had to kill Vic to do it.
Ranulf dragged Lucas backward, struggling with him the whole way. All I could do was open the wine cellar door for them. In the distance, sirens blared, coming closer.
“Let me go!” Lucas raged, clawing Ranulf viciously in the side. Ranulf grimaced but held on. “Let me go!”
“You have to calm down,” I said. “Please, Lucas, get ahold of yourself.”
“He cannot—hear you—” Ranulf managed to say as he wrestled Lucas toward a corner. “I remember the madness.”
Lucas roared, a terrifyingly animal sound. Every muscle of his body was flexed in his desperate need to escape, to kill and drink blood. Ranulf could hold him off, because of his great age and power, but after that battle, Ranulf’s strength had to be taxed to the limit. Seeing Lucas like this, reduced to an insane shell of himself, here in the little makeshift apartment where we had loved each other so much, nearly destroyed me.
The sirens got louder. Lucas roared again and smashed Ranulf backward against the wall with such force that the wine bottles rattled and Ranulf lost his grip. He leaped toward the door, and I started after him—but Balthazar came through.
Thank God, I thought. Balthazar can stop him, I know he can!
But then I cried out in horror as Balthazar brandished a stake and swung it, hard, so that it slammed deep into Lucas’s chest.
Excerpt from BALTHAZAR
Chapter One
The dead were watching.
Skye Tierney gripped her horse’s reins in her gloved hands as she shut her eyes tightly, willing the sensation to go away. It didn’t matter, though; whether or not she could see the actual images, she knew what was happening near her—the horror of it was as tangible, and real, as the gray winter sky looming overhead.
Not watching somehow made it worse. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Skye forced herself to open her eyes—to see the woman fleeing for her life.
She thought he wouldn’t follow her up here. He hasn’t been the same since his fall two months ago; it was as if the goodness in him left when his head was cut open, and something else—something darker—flew in. She’d thought he wasn’t paying attention, but he was. He is. He’s here now, his fingers digging into the skin of her arm as he talks about how she has to be stopped.
This is different from his other fits. He’s scaring her so badly that her throat goes dry and she wants to just fall on the ground, play dead like some kind of witless animal, so that perhaps he’ll walk away in one of his dazes. But she can’t pull away from him even to fall; he’s too large, too strong. Voice shaking, she tells him he’s not thinking clearly, that he’ll feel sorry for this when he comes to himself again. Her desperate lunge away from him makes his fingers sink so deeply into her flesh it seems as though her skin will tear. Her feet slide in the fall leaves as she hits at him with her one free hand.
He’s smiling as if he’d just seen something beautiful as he pulls her around in one long circle, just like a child twirling a friend, the way he twirled her when they were little together, except that he slings her over the side of the cliff and lets go.
She screams and screams, arms and legs kicking at the rushing air, all of it futile, and the fall lasts so long, so long, so fast—
Skye stumbled backward against Eb, her veins rushing with adrenaline and her throat tight. The image faded, but the horror didn’t.
“It’s still happening,” she whispered. Nobody to hear her but the horse, and yet Eb turned his massive black head toward her, something gentle in his gaze. Her parents always said she gave him credit for feelings he couldn’t have or understand. They didn’t know anything about horses.
Leaning her head against his thick neck, Skye tried to catch her breath. Despite the warm gray coat and thick teal sweater she wore, cold air cut through her skin to deepen her shivering. The wind caught at the locks of her auburn brown hair that hung from beneath her riding helmet, reminding her that soon night would fall and the wintry beauty of the riding trails on state land behind her house would turn to bitter, even savage, chill. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to move.
Their words to each other had been spoken in a language Skye didn’t speak, didn’t even think she’d heard before. Their clothing and hair made her think they must have been Native American. Was what she’d seen something from five or six hundred years in the past? Did the visions take her back as far as that? Further? It felt like there might be no end to them.
As impossible as it seemed, the visions of past deaths that had surrounded her for the last five weeks—ever since the fall of Evernight Academy—weren’t going away. She never doubted for a moment that the deaths she’d seen were real, no mere nightmares. This … psychic power, or whatever it was, had become a part of her.
It wasn’t as though she’d never believed in the supernatural before this winter; the home she’d grown up in had been haunted. The ghost in her attic had been as real to her as her big brother, Dakota, and about equally as likely to hide her favorite toys to tease her. She’d never been frightened of the girl-ghost upstairs—understanding, somehow, that it was playful and young. Its pranks were gentle and funny, things like taking her pink socks and putting them in Dakota’s dresser, or knocking on the bed frame just as Skye was drifting to sleep. Dakota had “known” the ghost first, and he was the one who had told her it was nothing to be scared of—that ghosts were probably as natural as rain or sunshine or anything else on earth. So she had never doubted that something existed beyond the world everyone could see.
Despite that, Skye had never suspected just how much closer, and more dangerous, the supernatural could get.
Since her sophomore year, she’d been a student at Evernight Academy—which, so far as she’d known, was an elite boarding school in the Massachusetts hills, like many others; sure, there were some odd rules, and some of the other students sometimes struck her as definitely older than their years, but that wasn’t so weird … she’d thought.
No, she hadn’t suspected anything out of the ordinary about Evernight. When her good friend Lucas told her it was dangerous—a school for vampires, no less—she’d assumed he was joking.<
br />
Until the freaking vampire war broke out.
Eb nudged her with his nose, as if willing her back to the here and now. Skye decided he was right. Nothing helped her as much as riding.
She steadied herself on the snowy ground before slinging one foot up into the saddle and hoisting herself into her seat. Eb remained motionless, waiting, ready for her. To think she had him because her twelve-year-old self had told her parents she only wanted a black horse with a white star on its forehead.
(That’s silly, Dakota had said. He was sixteen, maddeningly superior by then, and yet somehow still the person she wanted to impress more than any other. You don’t pick horses by colors. They’re not My Little Ponies. But he’d smiled as he said it, and she had forgiven him right away—
No. She wasn’t going to let herself think about Dakota.)
Well, okay, she had been silly. Back then she hadn’t known what to look for in a horse: sureness, steadiness, the ability to know the person on its back as surely as any other human being ever could or would. Eb had all that, and the star.
I should hurry home in case Mom and Dad check on me, she thought. Even in her mind, the words rang hollow. They would be in Albany, working hard. Supposedly this was because their jobs were so demanding—which they were. Skye knew that. But she also knew that the real reason they’d buried themselves even deeper in work during the past year was because they didn’t want to let themselves think about Dakota either. Skye hadn’t quite realized how far they’d taken it until she moved back from boarding school five weeks earlier. She also hadn’t realized how badly she’d wanted them to be home.
But they all had to deal with this in their own way. If that meant she had to deal on her own, okay.
Clicking her tongue and bringing in her heels, Skye got Eb moving, his hooves crunching through the snow. Only about six inches of it on the ground at the moment, which was as good as it got in upstate New York in early January. Soon it would be falling a foot or two at a time, maybe more. All around her, the stark branches of leafless trees stretched up to claw at the low gray sky.
