Balthazar

by Claudia Gray

  Her face white, Skye nodded. “I don’t trust him. I never will. But—he still knows something about me that we don’t.”

  “We’ll find out for ourselves.”

  It was an automatic response; anything was better than turning to Redgrave and expecting answers. So it surprised Balthazar when Skye rose and went to the medicine cabinet. “Okay, then. Let’s start.”

  When she turned back toward him, she held an empty plastic syringe, and he realized what she meant to do. “This is a bad idea.”

  Skye shook her head. Though she was obviously still weakened from her ordeal, having a goal made her focus on that and nothing else. “The only way we’re going to understand what my blood does is for a vampire to drink it.”

  “I may have already done that.”

  “Wait—what?”

  “After all that insanity at the gas station—right after Mr. Lovejoy crashed his car, I tasted a few drops of blood that were on the ground. I thought it might have been his, but… I felt strange afterward. So the blood must have been yours.” Shameful to admit how much he had wanted that brief taste of human blood, but it had become too important not to talk about. But the intense hallucinatory experience that had followed—the almost total immersion in his own past—that couldn’t be only about her blood. It was impossible. Or was it? “I can’t be sure.”

  “You can be sure if you try it again, and you drink more this time.”

  “It’s a bad idea.” Getting used to the taste of her blood—it was so insanely tempting that Balthazar thought it would be better if he never, ever knew.

  The desire to drink living human blood was the most inescapable part of being a vampire … more inescapable even than death. Living off animals was possible—Balthazar had proved that—but their blood lacked the full lifeforce that vampires craved past the point of reason. In the past century, the practice of blood donation had created ways to get even human blood without hurting people, but only a few hours outside the body robbed the blood of its most precious qualities.

  Drinking human blood allowed vampires to continue to look human, to continue to use reason. Animal blood would hold the monster within at bay, too, but not for nearly as long. Trying to withstand temptation only led to madness—only brought the monster closer to the surface. To resist becoming nothing but a homicidal predator, Balthazar had to drink human blood from time to time. It was the governing irony of vampiric existence.

  But to get hooked on the blood of one human in particular—that was far more dangerous than not drinking blood at all.

  Her expression only became more stubborn. “It’s the only way to find out what they’re after, so we’re doing it.” Skye hesitated as she looked down at the needle. “I never actually did this before, but it looks easy enough on TV.”

  “So does flipping over your car at a hundred miles per hour and not dying.” Balthazar took the syringe from her. “I did some medic duty during the Korean conflict. I can handle this.”

  She was right, of course. They had to investigate, and there was no other place to begin than with testing her blood’s true power.

  But as Balthazar looked at Skye, he knew they courted danger. The vision he’d had before had been overwhelming; so real, he’d lost all control over the here and now. Bad enough at any time, but here—where he was being offered the blood of a living person, the human blood he so desperately missed and craved—in this small, private, closed-in room with a girl who drew him even more strongly than blood—

  He slid the soft, plum-colored sleeve of her sweater up her arm. Her human skin was warm and silky against his. There was nothing handy for a tourniquet, so Balthazar simply clenched his fist tightly just above her elbow. A shiver ran along his body as she whimpered so softly he could barely hear, and the pale, fragile skin at the inside of her elbow seemed to streak with the blue of her veins, with the darkness of her blood.

  The predator within him wanted to throw away the needle, lower his mouth to her skin, bite in deep. His fangs burned within his jaw, eager for release.

  Slowly, deliberately, he slid the needle into her arm, then pulled back the depressor. Brilliant red liquid filled the syringe. That shade of red had, as always, a hypnotic effect on him, and it was all he could do to keep going, to pull the needle out at the right moment and then bend her arm.

  “You’re good at that,” Skye said. “It didn’t hurt at all.”

  Balthazar couldn’t look away from the syringe. He could feel the heat of her blood through the plastic. “I’m going to drink this now. If I act strangely—especially if I make a move toward you—get the hell out of here. Immediately.”

  Skye held her bent arm against her chest as if it might provide some protection, but said nothing. Balthazar angled the tip of the syringe into his mouth, pressed down, tasted warm, real, true human blood—

  —and he was gone.

  Massachusetts, 1640

  “YOU CAN’T CATCH ME.”

  Though he couldn’t see Jane, he could hear her giggling. Balthazar looked for her, but in the thickly wooded glade, with the still-thick leaves only just starting to turn to gold, she was just one of the many shadows.

  Grinning, he said, “I can try.”

  He dashed in the direction of her voice and was rewarded with a cry of laughter and a glimpse of her. Jane’s favorite green dress would have made her invisible in the summertime, but now she was vivid against the gold, the one thing still living in a forest on the verge of its long sleep.

  Although he could have caught her almost right away, Balthazar prolonged the chase as long as he could. It was wonderful to hear her laughter, to not worry about anyone overhearing or judging them, to just be in the moment—

  —but even better to catch her.

  His hands slid around her waist, and she pretended to push against his chest to escape, but she didn’t push very hard. After one moment’s hesitation, one moment where he wasn’t sure he dared, Balthazar bent down and softly kissed her … hardly for a second. He’d never kissed anyone before.

  Nor had she. He knew that when she pulled back and put her hand to her lips. Yet he could tell she was as delighted as he was.

  “You shouldn’t,” Jane whispered, trying to sound scandalized. “What would the elders say?”

  “The elders aren’t here.” If they were, Balthazar thought, they might order him put in the stocks for immorality, so people could throw rotten cabbages at his head. He imagined getting out of it by offering to marry Jane to preserve her honor. If the church elders agreed to that, his father couldn’t stand in the way any longer, and he could have his own home with her.

  A cool breeze rustled through the trees around them, and a fall of golden leaves showered down. Jane flung her arms wide and spun beneath them, her face turned up to the sky. “Oh, right now I feel like I could fly. Just like a bird.”

  “Come here, and we can both feel that way again.” Balthazar caught one of her arms and pulled her close.

  This time, the kiss lasted much longer, and by the end wasn’t nearly as soft.

  When they pulled apart, Balthazar combed his fingers through Jane’s dark hair and smiled down at her—only to see her own expression crumpling, as if she was about to cry. “What’s wrong?”

  “We’re wrong,” she said. “Or so everyone around us believes.”

  “They’re the ones who are wrong.”

  “We are Catholics.” Jane spoke the words as though she had been over them in her mind many times before. “Your family are heretics.”

  “You know I care little for the church—”

  “The churches care for us whether we like it or not. Where would we live?”

  Balthazar fell silent. Throughout the colonies, a patchwork of religious beliefs and rules governed each settlement; the only true faith in one colony was forbidden and outlawed in another. Though the rules governing marriage were secular—at least, here in Massachusetts—nobody would allow either of them to remain here married to the other.


  I could convert, he wanted to say, but the words died in his throat. To become a Papist would be to cast his parents, and Charity, out of his life forever; they would never even acknowledge him after that, and he could never reside permanently in Massachusetts again. He, like Jane and her father, would require special permission even to visit. Could he bear it? Yes, he could leave his parents—but not Charity. His dreamy little sister had no one else to understand her.

  More than that, he’d heard sermons his whole life about the evils of the Roman Catholic Church. Although he could think for himself enough to judge Jane and her father as he found them, he knew he could never, in honesty, claim the Catholic faith as the truth of his heart. Without that, any conversion would be empty, and Jane would know it.

  Jane stepped away from him, her earlier joy faded and blown away like the first fall leaves. “We shouldn’t have come here today.”

  “Jane, don’t. Let’s enjoy what time we can.”

  “It will only make parting more difficult.” He held out his hand to stop her, but Jane dodged him. “Let me go. Please. I can’t think on this any longer now.”

  The gentle, mournful quality of her expression then stirred a memory in him of another girl—someone who reminded him of her. The name Bianca flickered in his mind, and it seemed to him it was important, but he couldn’t hold on to it for long.

  Jane hurried away, and Balthazar simply stood and watched her. The dreamlike quality of it all made him wonder if this could be really happening, but he found he didn’t care. If it were a dream, let him get lost in it and go on dreaming, as long as he was able to keep looking after Jane, to keep her in his sights. That was worth anything.

  “A pity, to see two young lovers parted,” Redgrave said.

  Balthazar startled; he hadn’t heard Redgrave’s approach. His cheeks burned as he thought of the private moment this peculiar man might have seen. “Sir, you should have made your presence known.”

  “As indeed I just have.” Redgrave leaned against a nearby tree. He seemed a part of the golden grove around them—primeval, in some unfathomable sense—and yet unnatural, too. “Will you let her go so easily?”

  “I’ll see her again soon.” Though, Balthazar thought with a pang, not for long: Within the month, they would return to Rhode Island, where Catholics, Anabaptists, and all sorts of freethinkers were tolerated.

  “Yet the two of you think a parting is inevitable. That you could never marry, and of course you think marriage is the only way to truly be together.”

  The man presumed too much. Balthazar had tried to be friendly to these strangers for his sister’s sake—she liked their eccentricities, and for their part they seemed to accept her—but something about the Redgraves had always unnerved him. Their money, which they blithely said came from “trading,” seemed to outstrip even that of Governor Winthrop; Redgrave’s ability to stare down the church elders and flout all kinds of rules was less inspiring, more unnerving. If Balthazar were to speak of such private matters with anybody, John Redgrave was the last candidate Balthazar would ever have chosen. “I can’t see how it concerns you. It’s improper to discuss it.”

  “Proper! You want to speak of propriety after such a passionate scene.” Redgrave laughed. Balthazar, who had never glimpsed even the knees or shoulders of a woman not his mother or sister, felt grossly violated by having been seen at such an intensely intimate moment—and Redgrave was vulgar enough to laugh about it. Just as Balthazar was ready to walk off without another word, Redgrave continued: “What if I told you there was a way to escape all the ties that bind you?”

  To escape being a son? A brother? A citizen of Massachusetts Bay Colony? “Impossible.”

  “Very possible.” Redgrave leaned closer, so close that Balthazar felt uneasier than before. “What would you be willing to do if it meant you could be with the woman you love?”

  Balthazar considered the answer carefully before answering, “Anything but your bidding.”

  Redgrave didn’t like that. The angry flash in his eyes threatened to shake his composure for the first time, and Balthazar felt a small thrill of triumph. How good it felt to deny this man his arrogance.

  But Redgrave said only, “We’ll see what you’ll do. And I tell you now, Balthazar—you may be surprised.”

  Ropes around his wrists, blood trickling down his arms, Balthazar gasping helplessly as he looked at the knots holding him to the beam overhead as Redgrave whispered in his ear, “Are you ready to do my bidding yet?”

  No, Balthazar thought, but already the world was slipping away.

  Chapter Twelve

  “HEY.” SKYE SHOOK BALTHAZAR BY THE SHOULDERS as her mood shifted from merely concerned to deeply freaked out. His eyes were all but shut, his face still, and he swayed on his feet like a man in a trance. “Hey, come back. Come back. Balthazar!”

  She slapped her hand across his face, hard, and instantly his fingers clamped around her wrist. His eyes opened wide, but it still took him a moment to speak. “Skye.”

  “Yes. It’s me. Where did you go?”

  Balthazar slumped back, so unsteady that she wondered if he was dizzy or ill. Was her blood some kind of poison? Skye braced his shoulders in her hands, and that seemed to rouse him. Haltingly, he said, “It was as if—it was like I was reliving my own past.”

  “Just memories?” Skye frowned; she didn’t know what she had been expecting, but not that.

  “Not just memories. It’s as if I’m really there. Every sensation, every sound—they’re all perfect.” As he spoke, he smiled, but uncertainly, as if he were saying words he didn’t dare believe. “And not just any memories, either. Skye, your blood takes vampires back to when they were alive.”

  She wasn’t seeing any difference here. Why would vampires be mad to kill her merely to do the equivalent of looking through old photos? “So—just memories.”

  “You don’t understand.” Balthazar shook his head, impatient but not unkind. He took her arms from his shoulders and held her hands in his—only a gesture, she thought, but the touch still made this cold, sterile room feel as if it glowed with warmth. “Life has power, Skye. It has a … grace, and beauty, and vitality that nothing after death can match. Despite all our abilities and immortality, every single vampire longs, down deep, to feel the experience of life again. Some of us deny it, but each of us knows it. Life is irreplaceable.”

  “Except they can replace it through me.” The impact finally sank in, and Skye felt a little dizzy. “Or are there other ways?”

  “Your blood is the only thing I’ve ever heard of that would allow a vampire to truly feel alive again without surrendering our powers.”

  “Which means they want my blood really, really badly.”

  “Yeah.” Balthazar breathed out, half elation, half frustration. “Skye, your blood is like a drug for us. The ultimate high.”

  “That’s not good.” Skye wrested her hands free from Balthazar’s and began pacing the nurse’s station; though she still felt shaken from the tumult earlier in the evening, she couldn’t let the tension boil inside her. She needed to walk it out. “Is there anyplace in the world vampires don’t go? Anyplace I can go?”

  Grimly, Balthazar shook his head. “There aren’t that many of us, but we’re spread out. Besides, if Redgrave knows what you really are—and he does—he’ll chase you as far as he has to. Even to the ends of the earth.” He spoke as though from experience.

  She put her hands against the wall, as if she could push her way through to escape. Only hours ago, Redgrave had stood by her side, polite and patient, while she composed a poem. “He said—he said he wouldn’t kill me. Because they need my blood. So they won’t murder me, won’t even try—”

  “That’s not good news.” He stepped closer to her, more fully present than he’d been since drinking that sip of her blood, every word urgent. “You have to trust me on this—there are fates worse than death. I’ve suffered some of them.” Balthazar’s broad hand closed
around her shoulder. “You don’t want to know what Redgrave would do to you, body and soul, to keep you captive.”

  Skye wanted to scream. She wanted to hit someone, but what was the point? That fury and fear had no place to go.

  “Home,” she whispered. “I want to go home.” It was the only place Redgrave wouldn’t come for her, she knew, but that wasn’t as important as climbing into her own bed, pulling the covers tight, and hiding from the whole world.

  From the way Balthazar squeezed her arm, she thought he understood. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  As it turned out, escorting a sick student home was just the kind of thing teachers were on basketball duty for, and Coach Haladki waved Balthazar off without even needing much of an explanation. Within ten minutes, they were sitting together on the crosstown bus, in the very back; the only other passenger was a man dozing in the front near the driver. Though there were lights within the bus, they weren’t bright, and the road outside wasn’t well lit or heavily traveled at this hour. Skye felt as if they were in a tiny shell of illumination and warmth, surrounded on all sides by endless cold and night.

  Balthazar kept his arm around her shoulders, bracing her. Though his body didn’t warm her the way another human’s would have, the contact kept her own warmth close; it was like being wrapped in a blanket.

  “I’ll have to get a car,” he said. “We can’t rely on this.”

  “You don’t have one?”

  “I haven’t owned one in a while. The past few years, I didn’t bother; I was living at Evernight, so I couldn’t have kept a car with me anyway. Time to remedy that.”

  “I should’ve bought one last summer. I’d saved up the money.” All that lifeguarding at the pool. She’d earned enough for a clunker. “But I couldn’t take it to Evernight, and Mom and Dad said they’d chip in so I could get something nicer if I waited until I was headed to college. I’ll start looking for one right away.”