Balthazar

by Claudia Gray

  He’s here.

  Chapter Three

  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.

  She didn’t recognize the phone number that had sent the other message, but her eyes widened as she read it:

  Skye, I did some investigating last night. The vampire presence in your town may be more dangerous than I previously thought. Don’t panic—there’s no reason they should be after you. But be cautious. I’ll be staying around a while looking into this. Stay safe, and good luck on the first day of school.

  Some interesting facts there:

  That was Balthazar’s number. (Add to contacts—clicked.)

  Balthazar was the kind of guy who used totally correct spelling and punctuation even when he was texting, which was sort of bizarrely hot. She was in serious trouble if commas could get her going.

  Not only had she not imagined the vampire attack, but she also apparently had to look out for a whole infestation in town or something like that. Not good.

  Balthazar was going to be sticking around, for reasons scary enough that she shouldn’t have felt a small thrill at the idea.

  Last and most depressing of all: She had to go to school.

  She started to rise, grabbing for the old clothes she kept nearby for her morning muck out of the stables—only to recall that she hadn’t put them out. Their neighbor Mrs. Lefler mucked the stables now, in exchange for ample riding time on Eb. They’d set up that arrangement last fall, when she made the heartbreaking choice to leave Eb at home instead of bringing him to the Evernight stables; at the time, she’d thought Mom and Dad might take some comfort from riding him.

  Well, that hadn’t worked at all, and now that one simple task—which, though gross and tiring, had anchored her world most mornings of her life since age twelve—was gone. And it was a really bad sign of how much fun you weren’t having when you actually missed shoveling horse poo.

  Skye groaned and covered her head with her pillow. Better to face a vampire attack than Darby Glen High.

  She’d thought the first day back at Darby Glen would be bad. It turned out she’d been too optimistic.

  Someone she’d barely known (Kristin? Kirsten?) back in middle school hardly glanced at Skye as she said, “Looks like someone got kicked out of her snob school. Back down with the little people? Must suck.”

  “My school … burned down,” Skye said, figuring that was as close as she could get to “it was destroyed in a ghost apocalypse” without sounding like a crazy person. But then she realized, too late, that correcting that assumption made the rest seem true—like she looked down on Darby Glen High and the kids who went there. Did everyone else think that? Probably.

  Every hallway was hung with composite portraits of different graduating classes, and she happened to glance up just as she went by Dakota’s senior year. There he was in his tux, grinning and unaware. He’d been the same age then that she was now. For the first time she realized that, eventually, she’d be older than Dakota had been when he died.

  (I’m catching up! she used to joke with him on her birthdays, when she was briefly three years younger than him instead of four. See, I’m getting closer! It wasn’t funny anymore.)

  Skye quickly looked away, pushing Dakota to the back of her mind.

  Then she had a bottom locker with a cranky lock. Just great. After struggling with it for what seemed like five straight minutes, she wrenched it open, piled in all her books except for her first two subjects, and stood up to see Craig Weathers.

  Her boyfriend for more than two years, until he’d dumped her three months ago.

  With his arm around his new girlfriend, Britnee Fong.

  The girl he’d dumped Skye for.

  Skye felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over her head—both shocked and humiliated, the two forces combining to freeze her in place. Craig looked amazing, as always: tall and slim, with full lips and gorgeous eyes, his dark skin warm against the white sweater he wore beneath his letter jacket. Every inch of him was familiar to her—too familiar. It was Britnee who surprised her, someone who’d moved here after Skye had gone to Evernight and whose Facebook profile photos were all, frustratingly, pictures of her cat.

  And Britnee was even cuter than she’d dreaded: stylish boho clothes, a pixie haircut that framed her face perfectly, and the same chunky-heeled boots Skye had been secretly coveting for weeks. She was a little heavier than Skye had imagined her being, but the pounds had gone to all the right places, boobs and butt—a girl might complain about the weight there, but a guy never would.

  It would’ve been bad enough even if she’d been able to duck away before they saw her, but she wasn’t. Craig stopped in his tracks, and Britnee looked up at him in confusion before staring at Skye and saying, “Ohhhh.” Like it hadn’t occurred to either of them that she’d be showing up today. The gossip mill in Darby Glen must have fallen down on the job for once.

  Craig smiled at her, a stiff imitation of his usual handsome grin. “Skye. Hey.”

  “Hey.” She shunted the books over to her hip and looked past him, down the hall, trying to make it clear that there was somewhere else she had to be. As in anywhere else that was not here.

  “Um, hi? I’m Britnee?” Just great. Britnee Fong was one of those girls who pronounced every single sentence like it was a question. Proof positive that she was both irritating and an airhead. “I’ve heard lots of awesome things about you?”

  Oh, so Craig made sure to compliment his ex-girlfriend to his new girlfriend. Super classy. “That’s nice. See you later.” Skye stalked past them toward her first class, or at least where she thought her first class was. The buzzing in her head that was half anger, half pain muted the noise in the hallway around her.

  At least you’re safe here, she told herself, thinking back to last night in the snow and the vampire’s strange smile as he’d watched her. It wasn’t exactly comforting.

  Her first class was the Colonial History Honors Seminar, which meant that would be her homeroom, too. She tried to orient herself within the school building, but the sheer boringness of it struck her all over again. After two and a half years at Evernight Academy—with its centuries-old stone building, stained-glass windows, carved wood banisters, and arched ceilings—Skye found Darby Glen High so ugly that she wondered if it had been built this way on purpose, as a kind of punishment for its students. Cinder block walls with murals that hadn’t been painted recently or well, lockers the color of asphalt that somehow looked like they belonged in a jail more than a school, drop ceilings and harsh fluorescent light: Every single bit of it was depressing.

  It hadn’t seemed that way to her back when she was at the middle school next door—an identical building. But after Evernight—

  After the school filled with ghosts? And vampires? Skye reminded herself. You should be grateful for a little normal, even if i
t’s dull. Maybe she’d find it a refreshing change … after a while.

  Finally, only a couple minutes before homeroom was supposed to start, Skye managed to find her classroom. Craig and Britnee were already in there, in the front row, side by side. Of course. She managed not to make eye contact again as she hurried to a desk in the back.

  A girl with long, curly red hair who sat in front of her turned and whispered, “Hey. What’s with the drama?”

  “I’m sorry?” Skye said.

  “You and Craig and Britnee? I saw that standoff in the hallway. It was like a shoot-out in a Western or something.”

  It wasn’t any of this girl’s business, but the description made Skye smile a little despite herself. She’d needed a smile today. “Craig and I used to go out. He dumped me for her. We just hadn’t seen each other since, is all.”

  “Oh, so you’re Skye.” The girl nodded, as if satisfied. Obviously the Darby Glen gossip mill wasn’t totally out of commission after all. “Well, I’m Madison Findley. We just moved here last summer. Listen, if you ever need anybody to run interference between you and your ex, or that fat cow he’s with, just let me know.”

  Britnee was no cow, but Madison was just trying to make her feel better, Skye figured—and she did, a little. “Thanks.”

  The chatter in the room stilled as their teacher came in—a man at least six and a half feet tall, and seemingly nearly as wide. His bristly beard created the illusion that his jaw jutted out like a bulldog’s. His dark eyes swept the room like a SWAT team member’s laser sight for a rifle.

  On the board, the teacher wrote his name: STERLING LOVEJOY.

  He was so intimidating that nobody laughed at that name. Nobody even smirked. This was not a guy you wanted to catch you in the act of texting.

  After that, the normal humdrum high school crap got started, and Skye felt herself relaxing a little bit, particularly when it turned out that she knew exactly nobody in her calculus class and could sit in the back, enjoying the relief of solitude.

  Okay, so, Craig and Britnee were in her homeroom. She didn’t have to sit near them or talk to them, and she already had a new friend to distract her, so that was all right. Maybe she’d get lucky and they wouldn’t be in any other classes with her. Some people had it in their heads that she was a snob, but they’d probably forget about that soon enough. Probably.

  Anyway, high school wouldn’t last forever. Sometimes it seemed like it would, but watching her first high school crumble into destruction had made it clear to Skye just how temporary all that stuff was. Five and a half months: She could do it.

  If she could just not be attacked by any more vampires.

  When the bell rang for third period, she checked her schedule to remind herself what came next: human anatomy/sex ed with Ms. Loos. Skye thought sourly that she’d already educated herself about sex, for all the good it did her, but whatever. Then she walked in to see that Craig and Britnee were both in this class, too.

  Fantastic. She’d have to listen to sex ed lectures while watching the only guy she’d ever had sex with flirt with the girl he was having sex with now.

  But only after class began did Skye realize the worst of it.

  “We’re moving into more sensitive subjects now,” Ms. Loos said. She was sort of attractive, at least for a teacher, with her blond hair and her leopard-print skirt, and she perched on the edge of her desk like she didn’t know it would make the guys stare at her legs. “I’ve had most of you all year, and I know you’re mature students. So I’m calling on all of you to be on your best behavior.”

  The janitor walks in, his face gray, his eyes unfocused. Something’s horribly wrong, but he doesn’t realize it yet. He only thinks he’s tired—tired of cleaning up after stupid kids, tired of pushing around that broom, tired down to his bones.

  Stop it, Skye told herself. It’s not real; you know it’s not real!

  But his death already surrounded her.

  Pain lashes through him, snaking out from his chest down his leg, along his arm. He opens his mouth to scream, but his lungs won’t take in air. Suffocation hurts. The blood vessels in his eyes are starting to burst.

  “You, in the back?” Ms. Loos stared at Skye, who realized the entire class was staring right along with her. She’d clutched the top of her desk as if it were a life preserver in a stormy sea, and the janitor’s dying agonies still washed over her. She could see him, crumpling to his knees behind Ms. Loos, there and yet not there. “Is there a problem?”

  Skye swallowed hard, attempting to keep her attention on the here and now. “No, ma’am.”

  Ms. Loos folded her arms, the hint of a smile around her dark-lined lips. “If you find the subject of sex distressing, come and talk with me later, mmm-kay?” A few people in the class giggled, and Skye turned red. She couldn’t help feeling like Ms. Loos was more interested in making a joke at her expense than offering help. Fabulous.

  She also couldn’t help noticing that Craig was now staring at the floor. Did he think he’d ruined her for having sex with anybody else?

  And did any of that matter while this man was dying, right there in the classroom?

  Skye closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again. The janitor had vanished. His death hadn’t lasted that long.

  But she was going to have to relive it every single time she came into this room, which was going to be every single morning.

  Five and a half months suddenly seemed longer than it ever had before.

  As Ms. Loos kept talking, Skye let her mind wander far away from school, all the way back home to her stable. She imagined the way Balthazar had looked in the lantern light, how he had been there to protect her when she needed him most. Then her imagination traveled even further back, to Evernight in the days when she thought it was more or less normal, and Balthazar was her favorite eye candy as he walked down the hall. In the days when she had this other, better life, and she was just another teenage girl.

  The days she’d never see again.

  When the school day was finally done, Skye decided to skip the bus home and walk. It was cold as hell—enough that her throat stung anytime she breathed through her mouth—but she didn’t care. Riding home on the bus would just make the school day seem longer. What she wanted now was to be alone.

  However, it crossed her mind that being alone was maybe the opposite of being careful in a town that might be infested with vampires. So instead of taking the quick way home—which led down a winding country road—she decided to go the long way on Garrett Boulevard. Traffic would be busy, and there would be the occasional cyclists and joggers around. She’d just be alone in spirit, but that was enough. She’d get home in plenty of time to spend a long, enjoyable evening with her head under a blanket, screaming in pent-up frustration and anxiety from one of the worst twenty-four-hour periods in her life.

  But the Garrett Boulevard path was longer than she’d counted on, and her cheeks and nose were frozen numb long before her home was in sight.

  Why didn’t I buy that car last summer? Skye thought as she trudged along the side of the road, hands jammed in the pockets of her long down coat. Her reasons had seemed good at the time—she could afford only a junker, she couldn’t have taken it to Evernight, and her parents had hinted that they’d buy her a nicer car as a graduation present. At that moment, though, with the temperature hovering around ten degrees, Skye would’ve given a lot for some old junker car with a working heater.

  Maybe I ought to have asked Balthazar for a ride home. But could vampires get driver’s licenses?

  Just as she was beginning to get lost in a stupid but delicious daydream of Balthazar sweeping up to her high school on Eb, wearing a long black cloak or something similarly Darcyesque and romantic, extending his hand to her in front of Craig, Britnee, and everybody, Skye glimpsed her first jogger—a diehard who was out despite the chill. She raised her hand in a wave—and then stopped.

  That wasn’t a jogger.

  Even at this distance
, she recognized it as Lorenzo.

  Chapter Four

  TRACKING A VAMPIRE WAS DIFFICULT WORK.

  Usually, Balthazar liked it that way, because that made it difficult for anybody to track him. Whether he was evading Black Cross or his own disturbed sister, Charity, he valued the ability to disappear if and when he wished.

  When he was the one doing the tracking, instead of the one being tracked—not so much fun.

  All day he’d worked his way through the woods, painstakingly searching for evidence of animal kills. A forest hid its secrets even at the best of times, and in such cold weather, with snow thick on the ground, the bodies were hard to find by either sight or scent. After long hours of combing through the underbrush and checking the trails, Balthazar had found only one other vampire kill. It, too, bore the vicious bite marks but not the throat gash that would’ve marked it as Redgrave’s; he thought the fox had died within the hour.

  Lorenzo is alone right now, Balthazar thought. Redgrave had been in this area with him earlier, though, and probably some others—his tribe waxed and waned over the years, sometimes as few as five or six, but sometimes as many as twenty-five. Whom might he meet with again? Constantia? Charity?

  Don’t think about it. Focus. Lorenzo was on his own for now, and that was all that mattered.

  Balthazar leaned down close to the carcass, breathing in deeply. Lorenzo’s scent lodged deeply within his predator’s mind. It felt good to have an excuse to be a hunter again, to let those powerful instincts claim him.

  He squinted at the ground; the snow cover was too patchy here for him to track Lorenzo by his footprints, but scent alone would do it. He began walking along the path, moving faster and faster as he became surer of his route. The path led up the hill, toward a public space of some kind—the rushing of cars came closer, became louder than the wind through the bare branches of trees.