Balthazar

by Claudia Gray

  Then he rounded the hill, saw what lay past it, and breathed in sharply: a school. The sign at the front of the drive proclaimed it DARBY GLEN HIGH SCHOOL.

  Skye’s school. Lorenzo was pursuing her after all.

  Balthazar began running as fast as he could—faster than most humans would be able to match, but if he was seen, to hell with it. Skye was in danger, and it was late enough in the afternoon that she’d almost certainly have left school by now.

  Was it possible she’d taken the bus, as she had this morning while he watched from a distance? He hoped so. For now he kept running, kept following Lorenzo’s scent along what appeared to be a main road, busy with traffic. Even if Lorenzo had been unable to find Skye, Balthazar was dead set on capturing him now.

  But as he ran, he began to detect Skye’s scent as well.

  Balthazar had a sudden vision of Skye crumpled and bloody like the fox he’d found in the snow, and the mere image sickened him. His inhuman speed wasn’t fast enough.

  Lorenzo’s path took him off the main road, away from Skye, which didn’t encourage Balthazar at all. Lorenzo would have quit following Skye only to get ahead of her, to stand between her and the safety of home. Balthazar hesitated for only a moment, deciding—then followed Skye’s path. As badly as he wanted to catch Lorenzo, Skye’s safety was more important.

  Finally, as Balthazar ran around another curve of the road he saw her—alive, well, upright—but staring ahead, at Lorenzo, who stood in her path and closer to her than Balthazar was to either of them.

  “Skye!” he shouted, but an eighteen-wheeler roared by at that moment, its engine drowning out his voice. Skye started running, not into the road or back toward Balthazar, but slightly up the hill toward a building, a gas station from the looks of it—

  —but one that looked long deserted, with a dusty, faded sign that proclaimed gasoline was for sale at ninety-seven cents a gallon. Not good. A public space would’ve given her some protection, but an abandoned building wasn’t shelter. It was a trap.

  Lorenzo dashed after her, his eyes only for his prey. Balthazar pursued them both, anger and battle heat flooding through him. He gave way to those emotions so seldom, and yet they felt almost as hot and real as being alive.

  The door had probably been pried open by vandals years ago. Balthazar ran inside just after them; old, rusty bells on the handle jingled. Skye, against the back wall with nowhere else to run, saw him and shouted, “Balthazar!”

  Whirling around, Lorenzo saw him; his smile had a curiously glazed quality, as though he were drunk or drugged. “You’re still protecting her,” he said. “You can’t for long.”

  “Won’t have to for long.” Balthazar grabbed the nearest thing at hand—the end of some abandoned metal shelves, where snacks or motor oil had once been—and shoved it forward hard. The other end of the shelf slammed into Lorenzo’s side, sending the vampire staggering back.

  Skye turned toward Balthazar, but he gestured toward the door. “Get out of this place! Get back out to the road!”

  She didn’t argue, didn’t hesitate, just ran through the door like he’d said. Thank God she had some sense.

  Balthazar rushed toward Lorenzo, but he was already up, and the punch he aimed at the guy’s face only swung through air. Lorenzo shoved him back, growling, “You do want to keep her for yourself. Admit it.”

  That didn’t merit an answer. Balthazar glanced around the old gas station, with its moldy drop ceiling and dusty walls. There were few potential weapons, and no wood to fashion a stake. The old freezer doors still had their glass, though, and while it would make for a messy beheading, he’d done worse.

  “We’ll drink her dry,” Lorenzo said, and it wasn’t mere taunting anymore; his words sounded more like a promise to himself. “Nothing’s going to stop me from tasting her again.”

  One booted foot through the freezer door made the glass shatter. Balthazar went for the largest section, which was still connected to the metal frame—that made a sort of ax, if he could pry it loose—

  “Balthazar!” Skye came running back in with a jingling of bells, and how could she be so stupid as to run back into a fight between two vampires?

  Then he saw the three other vampires just behind her. Two were unknown to him—disheveled, young, vicious, the usual—but the tallest of them, in the back, looked tantalizingly familiar…

  Lorenzo leaped at him, but Balthazar dodged, pulling his makeshift ax free and running toward Skye. The first of the other vampires came in through the door just in time for Balthazar to slash at his neck with the glass for a swift beheading. Skye screamed—yeah, it was messy, and the vampire was new enough that it fell like a dead body to the floor—but the bigger problem was that the glass dislodged from the metal frame and shattered against the floor. No more ax.

  As the other vampires came in, bells on the handle jingling, Skye pulled Balthazar backward; almost before he’d realized what she was up to, they were through the door that led to the gas station attendant’s booth. She slammed it shut and locked the door—a pitiful knob-only lock that wouldn’t hold for long, but it was better than nothing. They were pinned together in a space hardly big enough for one person to stand in, much less two. He could feel the fast rise and fall of Skye’s frightened breathing against his chest.

  One of the vampires slammed against the glass wall of the booth, realizing too late that it was bulletproof. Balthazar put one hand against the far wall and tried to think of what to do; the building was so old, so run-down, that the wall felt almost soft against his hand. And there was a cold draft coming in, too.

  The tallest vampire stepped closer, and for a moment, Balthazar’s mind froze. Almost without his realizing, he whispered, “Constantia.”

  “Hello, darling. Long time no see.” Constantia smiled the same possessive, arrogant smile she’d always had for him. Her burnished gold hair hung long and straight as ever, and he had somehow managed to forget how tall she was—at least a couple inches taller than him. Even in the plain gray coat she wore, Constantia was a striking figure: like a statue of some avenging Teutonic goddess, beautiful beyond belief but hard as stone. “You ran far and fast last time, Balthazar. But now you’ve run in front of something we want.”

  “Are we trapped?” Skye whispered. “I trapped us, didn’t I?”

  “You bought us time,” he said to her, refusing to answer Constantia. Long-ago memories of the 1950s came back to him—he’d worked at a service station in Montana for a while, fixing up cars mostly, but occasionally pumping gas. This station had used the old-fashioned pumps; the switches were still on the wall. Because they were manual, not computerized, they probably still worked.

  Would any gas fumes still be lingering in the tanks all these years later? They might have to find out. He snapped the switches to on with one swipe of his hand.

  Constantia slammed her foot into the door; the old wood bowed and splintered immediately. Two more kicks and she’d be in.

  Balthazar said, “Cover your face. I’m going to break through the external wall.”

  “With what?” Skye looked around, and he couldn’t resist a smile.

  “With me.”

  No cinder blocks, please no cinder blocks—

  With all his vampire strength, he threw himself at the rotten, drafty section of the wall, which thank God was not reinforced with cinder blocks, and broke through. It hurt like hell, but Balthazar was able to stumble free of the jagged gap; Skye followed him instantly, grabbing his arm as he staggered to walk off the blow. “They’re coming,” she said as he dragged her toward the front of the station and, behind them, the bells on the gas station’s door jingled again.

  “I know. Come on.”

  As they ran toward the pumps, a car pulled in—long and silvery, with the weight and gleam of expense. A Bentley, maybe. Balthazar knew many vampires with a taste for luxury like that, but he also knew which of them was going to step out even before he did.

  Redgrave stood up. His dar
k gold hair was slicked back, almost the same color as his perfectly tanned skin. The camel-colored coat he wore was tailored perfectly to his lean, angular form, and a heavy golden watch shone on one wrist. As he saw Balthazar, his hazel eyes glinted, avaricious and cruel, much as they’d been the first day they ever met—one of the last days Balthazar would ever be alive—

  Skye pulled them ahead faster; at least one of them wasn’t so easily distracted, Balthazar thought. He grabbed his old lighter from his pocket, snapped it into flame, and dropped it into the pile of papers and debris in front of the old station just before pulling loose one of the pumps and turning it on.

  “What are you doing?” Skye cried. “We have to move!”

  “We do now.” Balthazar grabbed her hand again and ran almost as fast as he could, towing her after him though he knew it had to almost hurt her to be dragged along at this speed. But they got to the very edge of the road before the pumps blew.

  The explosion slammed into them, a wave of heat as solid as rock, shoving them both off their feet and into the snowy drifts at the side of the road. Balthazar saw the wall of flame blazing up brightly and felt a deep, irresistible terror well inside him. Fire—fatal to vampires, one of the only things that ever could destroy him completely—

  Get over it. You’re in a snowbank. The only vampires burning alive right now are the ones who killed you.

  Tires screeched, and Skye flung herself against his side as a car on the nearby road—its driver apparently startled by the explosion—ran off the pavement into the ditch so hard that the entire hood crumpled. For one moment Balthazar looked up at the gas station, just in time to see Redgrave’s car speeding past them, back on the highway.

  Well, he hadn’t finished off the bastard, but at least he knew the old crew remained as afraid of fire as he was. And Skye was safe from further vampire attacks … for the moment.

  “Are you okay?” Skye called toward the driver of the wrecked car as she stumbled through the snow. “Hello?”

  Balthazar pushed himself up to follow her. The driver of the car looked dazed, and on his forehead—

  Blood. Lots of it. He stopped in place, not trusting himself near such weak prey at such a moment; it was too soon after the fight, too soon after he’d let himself be a hunter again.

  “Mr. Lovejoy!” Skye got the car’s door open to lay one hand on the injured man’s shoulder. He was apparently too weak to answer her. “It’s okay, Mr. Lovejoy. I’m calling nine one one right now.” As she pulled out her cell phone, she said to Balthazar, “It’s my history teacher. He’s hurt. Are you all right?”

  Desperate for blood. Bound to protect her from a danger he didn’t understand.

  “Yeah,” Balthazar said. “I’m fine.”

  Weary, dizzy, he knelt in the snow and lowered his head, thinking only to collect himself. But on the snow was a small cluster of blood droplets—those of the man from the crash. Mr. Lovejoy. Or Skye’s cut hand. Maybe even his own, if he’d gotten banged up worse than he realized.

  But Balthazar soon lost the capacity to think about them in any rational way. His mind focused on only one thing: blood.

  Just a taste, one taste, you’ll get your strength back—

  He dipped his fingers into the stains on the snow. The blood had already chilled. But he slid his fingers between his lips—even cold blood would be glorious to him right now—

  And then the world went away.

  Replaced by a better one.

  Chapter Five

  Massachusetts, 1640

  BALTHAZAR BREATHED IN DEEPLY. IT HAD seemed to him, for a moment, that there was something strange about the fact that he needed to draw breath—but why should that be? They had just walked up a steep hill, which was enough to make anyone pant.

  That brief oddness was quickly forgotten, replaced by a rare, deep satisfaction. According to his parents, and to the rest of their community, one’s best was never good enough—no life was industrious enough, virtuous enough, ever. But right now he was alone, save for his sister and his dog, neither of whom judged him. At market in Boston, he had sold the cow for fifteen strands of wampum, three more than his father had expected him to get, which would surely make his parents happy. Goodman Cash had even given each of the Mores an apple—a rare treat, for free, out of nothing but kindness.

  As Fido bounded ahead in the high grasses, Charity leaped after him. Her natural exuberance was too great for the strict rules under which they lived, but try as he might, Balthazar could see nothing sinful in it. Perhaps it was not prudent for a young girl to dance around in the sunshine in front of others—that could be seen as immodest, he guessed, though he understood Charity had no such intention. Here and now, though, with nobody else to watch, his little sister could be free, and she knew it.

  “Why can’t every day be market day?” Charity said, holding out her hands as if she wanted to catch the sunlight in her palms.

  “Because we don’t have something to sell every day, just as nobody needs to buy something every day.”

  “I wish we could.”

  Balthazar had a flicker of a thought about markets that really were open all the time—even at night—but the peculiar daydream faded in an instant.

  “If it were market day every day, then we could have jugglers and singers every day, too.”

  “You’ve never even seen a juggler in your life.”

  “Mama told us, and she even tried to show us with the potatoes before Papa came in that time. I think it would be fun.”

  Their mother made life back in England sound much more enjoyable than life in Massachusetts Bay Colony, Balthazar thought. Their father often reminded them that they were building a city greater than London could ever be—the city of God on earth—but that was poor comfort in winter when the snow piled high, the wind whipped through the crevices at the corners of their two-room house, and there’d been nothing to eat for days but deer jerky and root vegetables. Then their mother’s stories of London—with shops that sold a fragrant hot drink called “coffee” every day and singers that performed in the marketplace for anyone to hear—well, it sounded closer to heaven than Massachusetts Bay Colony was likely to get.

  “You like market day, too,” Charity said. “Because you get to see Jane.”

  In front of his parents, Balthazar would have denied it; for his sister, he had only a smile. “She looked well today, didn’t she?”

  “A green dress. Green!” Charity—who had never worn any color dress but black or brown, and was surrounded by women who considered colorful clothing a sign of pro-England sympathies at best, immodesty at worst—couldn’t get over it. Truth be told, Balthazar himself had understood for the first time just how bright colors could inspire lustful thoughts.

  Or maybe that was just Jane. Her sweet face, heart-shaped because of the widow’s peak to her lustrous dark hair, the deep shade of her skin, the lines of her slim waist sheathed in that beautiful green, the way she smiled at him—above all, the way she smiled at him—

  Don’t think of it, he told himself. It can never be.

  Jane was not from a family among the Godly, the only group with whom Balthazar’s father wanted him to associate. Though they were not currently members in good standing with the church, due to his mother’s dangerous flirtation with the heresies of Anne Hutchinson, his father knew they could regain that acceptance and respectability. Jane never would. She traveled about with her father, an itinerant merchant who peddled his wares up and down the coasts of the colonies. They certainly were not members of the church, and only a special act by the governor allowed them and their kind to be in Massachusetts at all.

  Rumor had it they were papists. Among the Puritans, this was beyond redemption—far worse than the heathenism of the Natives who dwelled nearby.

  But Balthazar could not see sin embodied in anyone as good as Jane. Though they had only ever spoken at market days, he knew that he cared for her, and that she thought well of him, too. The way her eyes lit up
whenever she saw him made the whole world seem to melt—

  It can never be, he reminded himself.

  “When I grow up, and Mama doesn’t make my dresses any longer, I’ll wear green, too,” Charity said. “Green dresses, green caps, green aprons, even green shoes. Every day.”

  “You’d look like an asparagus.”

  His little sister stuck out her tongue. “A beautiful asparagus.” He jokingly swatted at her, so she dashed ahead, beyond his reach.

  Charity might have fared better in London, Balthazar thought. There her dreamy, unfocused temperament might have been seen merely as eccentricity, or even creativity. Their mother’s family, a warmhearted, friendly group to judge by their annual letters, might have shown her more acceptance, and that might have made Mama strong enough to stand up to Papa on her daughter’s behalf.

  Instead, here she was looked at as peculiar at best, wicked at worst. He’d heard the occasional ominous whisper—witch—but he suspected her troubles would be far more ordinary than any trial for consorting with Satan. Though only fourteen years old, Charity was already widely considered unmarriageable, even in a country where men outnumbered women. The few talents allowed to ladies—cooking and sewing—were too meticulous for her, with her wandering attention, to master. Nobody else saw her as she was now: bounding through the grass, sun painting her fair curls with light as she whipped off her cap, beautiful not in spite of her strangeness but because of it.

  I will always have to look out for her, Balthazar thought. It wasn’t a new realization, but the weight of it felt heavier somehow.

  As Charity rounded the hill, skipping down faster ahead of him, he stooped to pet his dog. He noticed again the cracking in the leather of his boots; they were worn thin, and really they’d been made for him too early—he’d still had a little growing to do, and so the toes of the boots were too tight. Might his father consider using the extra wampum to buy him some new ones before winter? Unlikely, but it was worth asking.

  He heard Charity laughing and saying something—it wasn’t unusual for her to talk to herself.