Balthazar
Page 22
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said as they looked down on the valley, with the bare-branched trees silvered with frost. “I love cars. I bought my first one in 1912. But I miss horses, sometimes.”
She appreciated his willingness to change the subject. “Did you ride a lot when you were—well, when you were alive?”
“Sometimes. Usually we used him to pull the wagon, though.” Balthazar stared out at the horizon and the small bit of town visible from here, no more than a few houses and one church steeple. “But I had a horse purely for riding by the eighteenth century. Bucephalus. He looked like a wreck—bony no matter how much you fed him—but that horse could run.”
“Why did you call him something crazy like Bucephalus?”
“That was the name of Alexander the Great’s horse,” he said, as if that were a logical reason. “Which was kind of a joke, based on how scruffy he looked, but how did you come up with Eb’s name? It’s unusual.”
“Oh.” This was embarrassing. “Well, I got him when I was twelve. And back then I thought it would be cool and romantic to call a horse … um…. Ebony Wind.”
Balthazar didn’t laugh. “Why not?”
“It sounds a little silly now. Besides, even within the first week or so, I was already calling him Eb.”
“So you knew his name from the start.”
Balthazar’s smile made Skye feel as though something within her was melting, going deliciously liquid and soft. She could have leaned over to him—their horses were that close—could have kissed him, right then, and she knew if she did, he would respond.
But she didn’t. The next time they kissed, Balthazar was going to have to be the one who made the move; Skye was determined on that point. Though it was hard to remain firm. Why did he have to possess so much willpower?
He said, “It’s good of you to come to the basketball games, but you really don’t have to. Even with me there, going home is safer for you.”
“Also more boring for me.”
“Yeah, but—I know it’s tough for you.” Balthazar shifted in his saddle, slightly awkward in the way he was when he thought he had to do something for someone’s own good. “With Craig being there. Britnee, too.”
Skye shrugged. The cold wind whipped past them, stinging her cheeks and making her tuck her scarf in more snugly around her neck. “It’s not as hard seeing them together as it used to be. I mean, I’m still angry. But… I don’t want to be with Craig anymore. I guess I’ve moved on.”
“Ah.” That was all Balthazar said, but Skye knew he was happy to hear it.
Because she believed that someday, probably soon, Redgrave would be back, Skye also used that time to learn how to defend herself.
She learned from the ideal teacher, of course.
“Okay, keep a wider stance.” Balthazar wore ordinary street clothes; Skye wore yoga pants and a camisole. They were in the basement of her house, an unused “family room,” which was almost bare of furniture and thickly carpeted and thus ideal for use as a sparring ring. “A wider stance is a steadier stance.”
Skye planted her feet farther apart. “Now what?”
“You want to protect your throat. Technically a vampire could bite you anywhere, but we tend to go for the throat—for the jugular or the carotid. It’s a powerful instinct.” Balthazar’s eyes were locked on her bare neck, which Skye figured she should have found unnerving, but didn’t. His black T-shirt fitted his broad chest and taut abdominal muscles like so much body paint.
“And how do I do that?” As Balthazar began lifting his hands, apparently in demonstration, Skye shook her head. “Don’t show me. Make me do it. That’s the only way I’m going to learn.”
“You mean—”
“Yeah.” Skye tossed her hair as she met his eyes. “Attack me. Don’t hold back.”
Faster than she could see, almost faster than she could think, Balthazar pounced on her, his body slamming against hers so hard that it took them both to the ground. Skye flung her arms up to block her throat in the instant before he brought his mouth to her neck.
For a long moment, they paused there, motionless. Balthazar’s lips were only inches from her hands—his legs straddling hers, his enormous body blocking her on every side. “Good,” he said, his voice low. “That’s good.”
“But not enough.” Skye tried to keep her voice from shaking and her mind from wandering. This was vitally important. “If Redgrave did this to me, he wouldn’t stop here. What would I do next? What are a vampire’s—I don’t know, vulnerable spots?”
Balthazar remained above her, his arms framing her shoulders. He never took his eyes from hers. “There are only two ways to kill a vampire,” he said. “Fire or beheading. It’s possible that a blade dipped in holy water might do it, but I’m not sure about that, so it’s not worth risking your life to try.”
Fire or beheading. Check. Horror-movie details swam in her mind again, and she had to ask: “What about a stake through the heart?”
“A stake can paralyze, but not kill. In a situation like this one, it’s fine to settle for staking. You might have a chance to come back and burn or behead the vampire later; even if not, you’ll definitely have a chance to get away. Anything wood will do, but it has to pierce the heart.”
Skye nodded slowly. “What if we’re—if I’m like this, and I can’t grab something to use as a stake?”
“Then a vampire’s vulnerable spots are the same as a human being’s, more or less. The windpipe is useless—we only breathe from habit—but a blow there hurts. You can always try to go for the eyes.” Balthazar then looked slightly sheepish. “With a guy vampire—well, strike at the obvious.”
She jerked her knee up between his legs, stopping just short of hitting him someplace that would’ve hurt a human male a lot. “Like this?”
Eyes wide, he said, “You’ve got the idea.”
The final element of her daily routine was the end of the day, when Balthazar left her. Although Skye knew he entirely trusted Redgrave’s fear of the wraiths to protect her—and she trusted it in return—she sensed that he would have preferred to remain in her home to protect her. But, he said, they never knew when her parents would start spending more time at home, and they had to keep up the student/teacher facade.
My parents will start hanging out at home exactly never, Skye could have told him, but she knew that wasn’t his real reason.
The reason he left every evening was the same reason she didn’t want him to leave. Because if he lingered in her house late at night—in her room—the tension simmering between them would finally boil over.
As much as she wanted that, Skye knew it would only lead to heartbreak. If Balthazar kissed her only when he was carried away, he would eventually take it back. That had hurt too much last time; she was in no hurry to go there again.
No, the next time they kissed—she wanted it to be their choice. Their decision. Something neither of them would ever take back.
Not everyone agreed with this point of view.
“You sound better,” Clementine said.
Skye stretched across her bed, propping her ankles up on the footboard as she adjusted her phone’s headset. “Not being repeatedly attacked by vampires really helps your mood.”
“Well, yeah. I still can’t get over that. I mean, we were surrounded by vampires all the time at Evernight, and none of them ever tried to hurt us. Except that one time you and Courtney Briganti wore the same dress to the Autumn Ball.”
“Do you think Courtney was a vampire?” After she thought that over for a second, Skye finished, “No, wait, of course she was.”
Clem continued, “Anyway, as soon as we found out vampires were real—I don’t know about you, but I figured they weren’t all bad.”
“Some of them aren’t.” Skye sighed heavily as she glanced at her most recent packet of history readings. “But some of them definitely are.”
“Speaking of the ones who aren’t—when I said you sounded better, I didn’t just mean, you know, not freaking out all the time.” By now Clem sounded almost smug; it was as if her satisfied smile could shine across the cellular connection. “I mean, you sound happy. Especially when you talk about Balthazar.”
“Nothing else has happened.”
“He kissed you!”
“Once. And I kissed him once. That’s it.”
“You need to jump his bones.”
“Clementine!”
“You know you do!”
“No,” Skye said, trying to sound more firm than she felt. “Chasing a guy like that only gets you hurt. Any guy who really cares about you should want to be with you. Once he knows how you feel, he should step up.”
“And you feel like Balthazar’s not stepping up?”
Skye pushed herself up onto her pillows, trying to think about how best to say what she really meant. “He looks out for me every single day. He’s my protector. He’s my friend. So it’s not like he’s treating me badly, you know? Nobody’s ever treated me like this. Like I … mattered more than anything. Not since Craig when we first got together, and even then, it wasn’t like the way Balthazar treats me.”
“… but…” Even that one word was enough to make Skye envision her friend’s teasing face at that moment.
“But he won’t make a move. I guess he has his reasons.” Breathing out in frustration, Skye said, “I hate his reasons.”
“I say jump him now and ask his reasons later.”
Skye would have told Clem to shut up about jumping Balthazar if she hadn’t been laughing too hard to get the words out.
She was still thinking about Clementine’s advice the next Saturday, when she and Balthazar went riding again.
“The sky looks like snow.” Balthazar stared out toward the horizon, where the clouds were a low, even, pale gray. “Good thing we’re riding today. It’ll be a week or two before we could take the horses out again.”
“You’ve gotten to like this as much as I do.” Skye could tell by the lift of his chin, the way a smile played on his face, just beneath the surface.
He patted Peppermint’s neck. “You’re right. Riding out here—it’s reminded me of so many things. Moments I’d let myself get too far away from.”
“You mean, memories of your life?” That short time was all the life he’d had … only one year more than her. Everything else, all the centuries in between—whatever they were, they weren’t living.
“That’s part of what I mean,” Balthazar said. Then he hesitated, as he if he knew he shouldn’t say any more.
Skye thought of everything else he might mean—what else he might have gotten too far away from in all those years alone, and the pleasure they took in riding together—and suddenly it was hard not to shyly look away.
But she didn’t. She kept her eyes on Balthazar’s face, and she could see the struggle inside him, though she couldn’t tell whether he was fighting to speak or to stay silent. The cold wind picked up, whipping past so briskly that her cheeks stung and her ears felt numb. Skye would have remained there all day, though, if it meant that Balthazar might finally take a stand for her—
—until Eb suddenly reared back, dumping her off her saddle.
“Skye!” Balthazar reined in his horse, which was also shifting unevenly, then swiftly dismounted. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She adjusted her helmet, more embarrassed than anything else. Though she’d landed hard on her butt, that was a pretty standard risk when riding horses. “Eb, what got into you? That’s not like you.”
She appreciated his willingness to change the subject. “Did you ride a lot when you were—well, when you were alive?”
“Sometimes. Usually we used him to pull the wagon, though.” Balthazar stared out at the horizon and the small bit of town visible from here, no more than a few houses and one church steeple. “But I had a horse purely for riding by the eighteenth century. Bucephalus. He looked like a wreck—bony no matter how much you fed him—but that horse could run.”
“Why did you call him something crazy like Bucephalus?”
“That was the name of Alexander the Great’s horse,” he said, as if that were a logical reason. “Which was kind of a joke, based on how scruffy he looked, but how did you come up with Eb’s name? It’s unusual.”
“Oh.” This was embarrassing. “Well, I got him when I was twelve. And back then I thought it would be cool and romantic to call a horse … um…. Ebony Wind.”
Balthazar didn’t laugh. “Why not?”
“It sounds a little silly now. Besides, even within the first week or so, I was already calling him Eb.”
“So you knew his name from the start.”
Balthazar’s smile made Skye feel as though something within her was melting, going deliciously liquid and soft. She could have leaned over to him—their horses were that close—could have kissed him, right then, and she knew if she did, he would respond.
But she didn’t. The next time they kissed, Balthazar was going to have to be the one who made the move; Skye was determined on that point. Though it was hard to remain firm. Why did he have to possess so much willpower?
He said, “It’s good of you to come to the basketball games, but you really don’t have to. Even with me there, going home is safer for you.”
“Also more boring for me.”
“Yeah, but—I know it’s tough for you.” Balthazar shifted in his saddle, slightly awkward in the way he was when he thought he had to do something for someone’s own good. “With Craig being there. Britnee, too.”
Skye shrugged. The cold wind whipped past them, stinging her cheeks and making her tuck her scarf in more snugly around her neck. “It’s not as hard seeing them together as it used to be. I mean, I’m still angry. But… I don’t want to be with Craig anymore. I guess I’ve moved on.”
“Ah.” That was all Balthazar said, but Skye knew he was happy to hear it.
Because she believed that someday, probably soon, Redgrave would be back, Skye also used that time to learn how to defend herself.
She learned from the ideal teacher, of course.
“Okay, keep a wider stance.” Balthazar wore ordinary street clothes; Skye wore yoga pants and a camisole. They were in the basement of her house, an unused “family room,” which was almost bare of furniture and thickly carpeted and thus ideal for use as a sparring ring. “A wider stance is a steadier stance.”
Skye planted her feet farther apart. “Now what?”
“You want to protect your throat. Technically a vampire could bite you anywhere, but we tend to go for the throat—for the jugular or the carotid. It’s a powerful instinct.” Balthazar’s eyes were locked on her bare neck, which Skye figured she should have found unnerving, but didn’t. His black T-shirt fitted his broad chest and taut abdominal muscles like so much body paint.
“And how do I do that?” As Balthazar began lifting his hands, apparently in demonstration, Skye shook her head. “Don’t show me. Make me do it. That’s the only way I’m going to learn.”
“You mean—”
“Yeah.” Skye tossed her hair as she met his eyes. “Attack me. Don’t hold back.”
Faster than she could see, almost faster than she could think, Balthazar pounced on her, his body slamming against hers so hard that it took them both to the ground. Skye flung her arms up to block her throat in the instant before he brought his mouth to her neck.
For a long moment, they paused there, motionless. Balthazar’s lips were only inches from her hands—his legs straddling hers, his enormous body blocking her on every side. “Good,” he said, his voice low. “That’s good.”
“But not enough.” Skye tried to keep her voice from shaking and her mind from wandering. This was vitally important. “If Redgrave did this to me, he wouldn’t stop here. What would I do next? What are a vampire’s—I don’t know, vulnerable spots?”
Balthazar remained above her, his arms framing her shoulders. He never took his eyes from hers. “There are only two ways to kill a vampire,” he said. “Fire or beheading. It’s possible that a blade dipped in holy water might do it, but I’m not sure about that, so it’s not worth risking your life to try.”
Fire or beheading. Check. Horror-movie details swam in her mind again, and she had to ask: “What about a stake through the heart?”
“A stake can paralyze, but not kill. In a situation like this one, it’s fine to settle for staking. You might have a chance to come back and burn or behead the vampire later; even if not, you’ll definitely have a chance to get away. Anything wood will do, but it has to pierce the heart.”
Skye nodded slowly. “What if we’re—if I’m like this, and I can’t grab something to use as a stake?”
“Then a vampire’s vulnerable spots are the same as a human being’s, more or less. The windpipe is useless—we only breathe from habit—but a blow there hurts. You can always try to go for the eyes.” Balthazar then looked slightly sheepish. “With a guy vampire—well, strike at the obvious.”
She jerked her knee up between his legs, stopping just short of hitting him someplace that would’ve hurt a human male a lot. “Like this?”
Eyes wide, he said, “You’ve got the idea.”
The final element of her daily routine was the end of the day, when Balthazar left her. Although Skye knew he entirely trusted Redgrave’s fear of the wraiths to protect her—and she trusted it in return—she sensed that he would have preferred to remain in her home to protect her. But, he said, they never knew when her parents would start spending more time at home, and they had to keep up the student/teacher facade.
My parents will start hanging out at home exactly never, Skye could have told him, but she knew that wasn’t his real reason.
The reason he left every evening was the same reason she didn’t want him to leave. Because if he lingered in her house late at night—in her room—the tension simmering between them would finally boil over.
As much as she wanted that, Skye knew it would only lead to heartbreak. If Balthazar kissed her only when he was carried away, he would eventually take it back. That had hurt too much last time; she was in no hurry to go there again.
No, the next time they kissed—she wanted it to be their choice. Their decision. Something neither of them would ever take back.
Not everyone agreed with this point of view.
“You sound better,” Clementine said.
Skye stretched across her bed, propping her ankles up on the footboard as she adjusted her phone’s headset. “Not being repeatedly attacked by vampires really helps your mood.”
“Well, yeah. I still can’t get over that. I mean, we were surrounded by vampires all the time at Evernight, and none of them ever tried to hurt us. Except that one time you and Courtney Briganti wore the same dress to the Autumn Ball.”
“Do you think Courtney was a vampire?” After she thought that over for a second, Skye finished, “No, wait, of course she was.”
Clem continued, “Anyway, as soon as we found out vampires were real—I don’t know about you, but I figured they weren’t all bad.”
“Some of them aren’t.” Skye sighed heavily as she glanced at her most recent packet of history readings. “But some of them definitely are.”
“Speaking of the ones who aren’t—when I said you sounded better, I didn’t just mean, you know, not freaking out all the time.” By now Clem sounded almost smug; it was as if her satisfied smile could shine across the cellular connection. “I mean, you sound happy. Especially when you talk about Balthazar.”
“Nothing else has happened.”
“He kissed you!”
“Once. And I kissed him once. That’s it.”
“You need to jump his bones.”
“Clementine!”
“You know you do!”
“No,” Skye said, trying to sound more firm than she felt. “Chasing a guy like that only gets you hurt. Any guy who really cares about you should want to be with you. Once he knows how you feel, he should step up.”
“And you feel like Balthazar’s not stepping up?”
Skye pushed herself up onto her pillows, trying to think about how best to say what she really meant. “He looks out for me every single day. He’s my protector. He’s my friend. So it’s not like he’s treating me badly, you know? Nobody’s ever treated me like this. Like I … mattered more than anything. Not since Craig when we first got together, and even then, it wasn’t like the way Balthazar treats me.”
“… but…” Even that one word was enough to make Skye envision her friend’s teasing face at that moment.
“But he won’t make a move. I guess he has his reasons.” Breathing out in frustration, Skye said, “I hate his reasons.”
“I say jump him now and ask his reasons later.”
Skye would have told Clem to shut up about jumping Balthazar if she hadn’t been laughing too hard to get the words out.
She was still thinking about Clementine’s advice the next Saturday, when she and Balthazar went riding again.
“The sky looks like snow.” Balthazar stared out toward the horizon, where the clouds were a low, even, pale gray. “Good thing we’re riding today. It’ll be a week or two before we could take the horses out again.”
“You’ve gotten to like this as much as I do.” Skye could tell by the lift of his chin, the way a smile played on his face, just beneath the surface.
He patted Peppermint’s neck. “You’re right. Riding out here—it’s reminded me of so many things. Moments I’d let myself get too far away from.”
“You mean, memories of your life?” That short time was all the life he’d had … only one year more than her. Everything else, all the centuries in between—whatever they were, they weren’t living.
“That’s part of what I mean,” Balthazar said. Then he hesitated, as he if he knew he shouldn’t say any more.
Skye thought of everything else he might mean—what else he might have gotten too far away from in all those years alone, and the pleasure they took in riding together—and suddenly it was hard not to shyly look away.
But she didn’t. She kept her eyes on Balthazar’s face, and she could see the struggle inside him, though she couldn’t tell whether he was fighting to speak or to stay silent. The cold wind picked up, whipping past so briskly that her cheeks stung and her ears felt numb. Skye would have remained there all day, though, if it meant that Balthazar might finally take a stand for her—
—until Eb suddenly reared back, dumping her off her saddle.
“Skye!” Balthazar reined in his horse, which was also shifting unevenly, then swiftly dismounted. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She adjusted her helmet, more embarrassed than anything else. Though she’d landed hard on her butt, that was a pretty standard risk when riding horses. “Eb, what got into you? That’s not like you.”
