Balthazar
Page 28
The bullet through his head feels like a blow—like his mother boxing his ears—but he doesn’t die right away. He has time to put one hand to the side of his head, or where the side of his head used to be, before the real pain begins and turns the world black.
Skye staggered back, assaulted on every side by the visions of soldiers (in red coats, in blue, some Native Americans in homespun) shooting, being shot, knifing, being knifed, screaming in pain that shot through her in waves.
Battlefield Gorge, she thought. She’d known it her whole life and never thought about it twice. Never once had she wondered how it got that name.
The paths of the bullets through her body were bright, hot lines of pain. The terror and fury and agony of the dying rose up inside her, a thousand times worse than anything else her powers had ever shown her.
Skye couldn’t see, couldn’t think. She was neither conscious nor unconscious; her mind no longer belonged to her. She didn’t even have the strength to keep herself from toppling over into the thick snow. The flakes fell faster, it seemed, the better to cover her forever.
Chapter Nineteen
“YOU OWE ME ONE FOR THIS, MISTER,” RICK BOLlINGER said as he took over study hall from Balthazar.
“Name your price.” Balthazar kept a smile on his face, but all he could think of was how badly he needed to get out of this school now, right now.
“How about, oh—hmmm—chaperoning the Valentine’s Dance?” Rick suggested, mock innocently.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“That’s me. The consigliere of Darby Glen High.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. Thanks again.” Balthazar managed to leave the library and let the door shut behind him before he broke into a run.
The shortcut, the shortcut—that had to be the gorge. None of the kids went that way because it wasn’t cool or something like that. That meant nobody would be there to help Skye, as if they even could. It was up to him.
He didn’t even tug on his coat until he had dashed halfway down the walk leading to the gorge. The cold didn’t matter; he didn’t care if he froze. But he needed his hands free to fight for her.
As he stood at the edge of the gorge, though, he realized that no other vampires were near; he hadn’t felt them. Then his sharp eyes picked out a patch of color amid the nearby snowdrifts—the sapphire blue of Skye’s winter coat.
Balthazar ran toward her, the scene unveiling slowly before him because of the snow: Skye lay unconscious (not dead, please not dead) just off the path in the hollow of the gorge. He saw no blood, nor any sign of a struggle. It was as if she’d simply fallen over—fainted dead away.
Someone must have died nearby, and died horribly enough for it to have overwhelmed her. Balthazar reached her, went on his knees, felt for her pulse at her throat. Skye was alive.
Relief washed over him, not enough to submerge his fear but enough to focus him again on action. Balthazar swept her up in his arms and ran with all his speed toward his car. He needed to keep her with him. To keep her safe.
Skye remained unconscious the whole way back, even after Balthazar had placed her on his bed and started the fire, but her breathing was deeper and more even. He thought now she was more asleep than knocked out, and that her body probably needed the rest.
After shaking off his snow-wet coat, Balthazar reclaimed his phone and called the person who had warned him that Skye was in danger.
“Balthazar?” Lucas sounded tense. “Did you find Skye?”
“Found her. She hadn’t been attacked; it was another of her visions, I think. Skye’s still unconscious, but I think she’ll be all right after she warms up and rests a little.” Balthazar breathed out heavily. The need to sigh didn’t go away with the need to breathe.
“You sound shaken up. Sure everything’s okay?”
“I’m not sure of anything. But—she took a risk today. Because of me, I think. If she’d gotten hurt today, or if she’d—if anything worse had happened, it would be my fault.”
“Mea maxima culpa, huh?”
Balthazar frowned. “Since when do you speak Latin?”
“I did go to Evernight for a while, remember?” Now Lucas sounded more amused than anything else. “It’s just interesting how much you’re beating yourself up about this.”
“I told you. It’s my fault.” He looked at Skye as he spoke, thin and pale on his bed, the firelight burnishing her dark brown hair.
“You seem worried about her. Real worried. Deeply concerned. Are things getting interesting for you two?” Lucas was downright smug by now. “If you keep it up, my girlfriend’s gonna get jealous.”
“I don’t get involved with humans,” Balthazar said.
“You sound pretty involved to me,” Lucas replied. “And why no humans? What’s wrong with us? On behalf of my species, I object.”
“It doesn’t end well.” He remembered Jane lying on the floor of his parents’ barn, a broken shell of the girl he had too briefly loved. “For a mortal, being with someone supernatural is dangerous. You ought to know.”
“Don’t remind me.” Lucas had already died and been resurrected once; he spoke from weary experience. “But speaking as a mere mortal—sometimes it’s worth it. Danger and all.”
Balthazar didn’t want to hear this. Shortly, he said, “The only thing that matters is keeping Skye safe. We need to figure out how to stop the visions.”
“Let her catch her breath first,” Lucas said. “Listen, I need to call Clementine back. She was half frantic when she called me to say Skye hadn’t checked in; by now she’s probably pulling her hair out. Keep us posted, okay?”
“Will do.”
“And Bianca says hi.”
“Oh, right. Hi.” Balthazar snapped off the call. Weird to think he’d forgotten to send a message to Bianca.
As he did, Skye stirred on the bed. He hurried to her side. “Hey. Don’t sit up too fast.”
“What the—where am I—oh.” Skye’s eyes widened as she took in her surroundings, and saw him. “What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. I found you out by the gorge, unconscious.”
“Oh, my God.” Memory had obviously just come flooding back. Skye grimaced as she put her fingers to her temple, then slowly pushed herself upright. “It was awful. Turns out they call it Battlefield Gorge for a reason.”
“You didn’t have to run out there like that,” Balthazar said. “Study hall—we would’ve been okay.”
It was as much of an opening to talk about their argument this morning as he could offer, but he thought it would be enough. To his surprise, though, Skye didn’t go there. “Hundreds of men died out there. It was like I was feeling them all at once—and sharper than before. I think my power must be getting stronger. Just walking by Ms. Loos’s room today was worse than being in it was before.”
“Maybe it’s getting stronger. It might just be the aftermath of … of the bite.” My bite. When I bit into you in your bed and drank the blood you gave me to save my life, and then yelled at you to leave me alone. Shamefaced, Balthazar continued, “After you’re bitten by a vampire, your senses are enhanced for a while. The powers become longer lasting, maybe permanent, with subsequent bites. It’s a small taste of what being a vampire is like all the time.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.” She didn’t even look directly at him; instead she gazed into the firelight. “That was too close, this afternoon.”
When he’d told her that his decision not to be with her was final, she’d accepted it. Balthazar hadn’t realized until now that he was counting on her to push back—to tempt him, to keep inviting him places. To offer all the pleasures of her company and her adoration, without being able to expect anything from him in return. Was he really that selfish? That stupid about his own desires?
He said the first thing that came to mind: “How does Clementine have Lucas’s number, anyway?”
“They used to sit next to each other in English,” Skye said absently. Then she sat up straighter, as if newly resolved. “We have to go back.”
“Back—where? You can’t mean the gorge.”
She shuddered. “No. I can’t face that again. Not ever, I don’t think. It’s too much. I—I’m glad you found me.” For one moment, her eyes met his, and against his will, Balthazar found himself remembering the moment he’d awakened with her in his arms, and how warm she’d felt, how her legs had brushed against his.
“Don’t run off like that again.” His voice sounded rough and unsteady, even to him. “No matter—no matter how badly I screw up.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Skye looked away from him again. “So come with me now.”
“Of course. You must want to get home.”
“No. I’m going back to school.”
“It’s—” Balthazar glanced over at the old-fashioned brass clock on the mantel. “After four thirty. Nobody’s going to be there now.”
“Which is the whole point.” Cautiously she stood, tested her steadiness, then took her coat from the chair where he’d dumped it and began shrugging it back on. “I’ve run from these ‘death visions’ every time I’ve encountered them. And I haven’t learned anything that way. It’s past time to face them down. You’ve got a key, right?”
“Yeah, but—Skye, that’s incredibly dangerous for you. You’ve nearly died before.”
“I’ve felt like I nearly died. It’s time to find out exactly what happens to me afterward. I know it’s risky, but that’s why you’re coming along.” She tossed him a challenging glance over her shoulder as she headed for the door. “You are coming along, right?”
“Right.” He had no choice now but to follow where she led.
Chapter Twenty
SKYE WRAPPED HER COAT MORE WARMLY around herself as Balthazar drove through the winter storm on their way back to Darby Glen High. The snowfall had, if anything, only increased; the true winter of upstate New York was now well under way. All around them cars crawled along, cautious on slush-slick roads.
“Are you sure about this?” Balthazar said. His handsome face looked almost brutish in the harsh dashboard lights of his old beater car. “We could try later. Another day, maybe, when you haven’t had such a rough time.”
“If I wait, I’ll chicken out. Let’s just do this.” Skye tucked a lock of her hair behind one ear. On the radio, some guy sang about sadness and loss, and how they kept you up at night. “I’m not feeling the … enhanced senses, or whatever they are, so much anymore. So it probably won’t get to me until I’m in Ms. Loos’s room.”
“Wait—that’s right. You said that today, you could sense it even outside her room. It enhanced your psychic senses, too?”
It. The bite. The moment he’d pulled her close in her bed, and she’d felt herself surrendering completely. They were just going to call the bite “it” from now on. Fine. “I guess so. It made me a little crazy—went running off through the hallways, and evil Coach Haladki was screeching at me—”
“Nola’s not that bad. Just cranky.”
“I knocked Britnee Fong down in the hallway, which led to a whole screaming match between me and Craig. Today’s been awesome all over.”
Balthazar hesitated before saying, “Screaming match?”
“Well. Not screaming. Neither of us wanted the entire school to hear. But we had it out about our breakup.” The taste of it was still sour. “It was a good thing, I guess. We talked about how weird things got after Dakota died, and how we—” Did she want to say this out loud to Balthazar? What the hell, she decided. After a guy had bitten you while na**d in your bed, privacy pretty much flew out the window. “How we never should have slept together. We weren’t going to be together long. Craig already knew it, and I… I guess I should’ve known, too.”
Skye staggered back, assaulted on every side by the visions of soldiers (in red coats, in blue, some Native Americans in homespun) shooting, being shot, knifing, being knifed, screaming in pain that shot through her in waves.
Battlefield Gorge, she thought. She’d known it her whole life and never thought about it twice. Never once had she wondered how it got that name.
The paths of the bullets through her body were bright, hot lines of pain. The terror and fury and agony of the dying rose up inside her, a thousand times worse than anything else her powers had ever shown her.
Skye couldn’t see, couldn’t think. She was neither conscious nor unconscious; her mind no longer belonged to her. She didn’t even have the strength to keep herself from toppling over into the thick snow. The flakes fell faster, it seemed, the better to cover her forever.
Chapter Nineteen
“YOU OWE ME ONE FOR THIS, MISTER,” RICK BOLlINGER said as he took over study hall from Balthazar.
“Name your price.” Balthazar kept a smile on his face, but all he could think of was how badly he needed to get out of this school now, right now.
“How about, oh—hmmm—chaperoning the Valentine’s Dance?” Rick suggested, mock innocently.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“That’s me. The consigliere of Darby Glen High.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. Thanks again.” Balthazar managed to leave the library and let the door shut behind him before he broke into a run.
The shortcut, the shortcut—that had to be the gorge. None of the kids went that way because it wasn’t cool or something like that. That meant nobody would be there to help Skye, as if they even could. It was up to him.
He didn’t even tug on his coat until he had dashed halfway down the walk leading to the gorge. The cold didn’t matter; he didn’t care if he froze. But he needed his hands free to fight for her.
As he stood at the edge of the gorge, though, he realized that no other vampires were near; he hadn’t felt them. Then his sharp eyes picked out a patch of color amid the nearby snowdrifts—the sapphire blue of Skye’s winter coat.
Balthazar ran toward her, the scene unveiling slowly before him because of the snow: Skye lay unconscious (not dead, please not dead) just off the path in the hollow of the gorge. He saw no blood, nor any sign of a struggle. It was as if she’d simply fallen over—fainted dead away.
Someone must have died nearby, and died horribly enough for it to have overwhelmed her. Balthazar reached her, went on his knees, felt for her pulse at her throat. Skye was alive.
Relief washed over him, not enough to submerge his fear but enough to focus him again on action. Balthazar swept her up in his arms and ran with all his speed toward his car. He needed to keep her with him. To keep her safe.
Skye remained unconscious the whole way back, even after Balthazar had placed her on his bed and started the fire, but her breathing was deeper and more even. He thought now she was more asleep than knocked out, and that her body probably needed the rest.
After shaking off his snow-wet coat, Balthazar reclaimed his phone and called the person who had warned him that Skye was in danger.
“Balthazar?” Lucas sounded tense. “Did you find Skye?”
“Found her. She hadn’t been attacked; it was another of her visions, I think. Skye’s still unconscious, but I think she’ll be all right after she warms up and rests a little.” Balthazar breathed out heavily. The need to sigh didn’t go away with the need to breathe.
“You sound shaken up. Sure everything’s okay?”
“I’m not sure of anything. But—she took a risk today. Because of me, I think. If she’d gotten hurt today, or if she’d—if anything worse had happened, it would be my fault.”
“Mea maxima culpa, huh?”
Balthazar frowned. “Since when do you speak Latin?”
“I did go to Evernight for a while, remember?” Now Lucas sounded more amused than anything else. “It’s just interesting how much you’re beating yourself up about this.”
“I told you. It’s my fault.” He looked at Skye as he spoke, thin and pale on his bed, the firelight burnishing her dark brown hair.
“You seem worried about her. Real worried. Deeply concerned. Are things getting interesting for you two?” Lucas was downright smug by now. “If you keep it up, my girlfriend’s gonna get jealous.”
“I don’t get involved with humans,” Balthazar said.
“You sound pretty involved to me,” Lucas replied. “And why no humans? What’s wrong with us? On behalf of my species, I object.”
“It doesn’t end well.” He remembered Jane lying on the floor of his parents’ barn, a broken shell of the girl he had too briefly loved. “For a mortal, being with someone supernatural is dangerous. You ought to know.”
“Don’t remind me.” Lucas had already died and been resurrected once; he spoke from weary experience. “But speaking as a mere mortal—sometimes it’s worth it. Danger and all.”
Balthazar didn’t want to hear this. Shortly, he said, “The only thing that matters is keeping Skye safe. We need to figure out how to stop the visions.”
“Let her catch her breath first,” Lucas said. “Listen, I need to call Clementine back. She was half frantic when she called me to say Skye hadn’t checked in; by now she’s probably pulling her hair out. Keep us posted, okay?”
“Will do.”
“And Bianca says hi.”
“Oh, right. Hi.” Balthazar snapped off the call. Weird to think he’d forgotten to send a message to Bianca.
As he did, Skye stirred on the bed. He hurried to her side. “Hey. Don’t sit up too fast.”
“What the—where am I—oh.” Skye’s eyes widened as she took in her surroundings, and saw him. “What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. I found you out by the gorge, unconscious.”
“Oh, my God.” Memory had obviously just come flooding back. Skye grimaced as she put her fingers to her temple, then slowly pushed herself upright. “It was awful. Turns out they call it Battlefield Gorge for a reason.”
“You didn’t have to run out there like that,” Balthazar said. “Study hall—we would’ve been okay.”
It was as much of an opening to talk about their argument this morning as he could offer, but he thought it would be enough. To his surprise, though, Skye didn’t go there. “Hundreds of men died out there. It was like I was feeling them all at once—and sharper than before. I think my power must be getting stronger. Just walking by Ms. Loos’s room today was worse than being in it was before.”
“Maybe it’s getting stronger. It might just be the aftermath of … of the bite.” My bite. When I bit into you in your bed and drank the blood you gave me to save my life, and then yelled at you to leave me alone. Shamefaced, Balthazar continued, “After you’re bitten by a vampire, your senses are enhanced for a while. The powers become longer lasting, maybe permanent, with subsequent bites. It’s a small taste of what being a vampire is like all the time.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.” She didn’t even look directly at him; instead she gazed into the firelight. “That was too close, this afternoon.”
When he’d told her that his decision not to be with her was final, she’d accepted it. Balthazar hadn’t realized until now that he was counting on her to push back—to tempt him, to keep inviting him places. To offer all the pleasures of her company and her adoration, without being able to expect anything from him in return. Was he really that selfish? That stupid about his own desires?
He said the first thing that came to mind: “How does Clementine have Lucas’s number, anyway?”
“They used to sit next to each other in English,” Skye said absently. Then she sat up straighter, as if newly resolved. “We have to go back.”
“Back—where? You can’t mean the gorge.”
She shuddered. “No. I can’t face that again. Not ever, I don’t think. It’s too much. I—I’m glad you found me.” For one moment, her eyes met his, and against his will, Balthazar found himself remembering the moment he’d awakened with her in his arms, and how warm she’d felt, how her legs had brushed against his.
“Don’t run off like that again.” His voice sounded rough and unsteady, even to him. “No matter—no matter how badly I screw up.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Skye looked away from him again. “So come with me now.”
“Of course. You must want to get home.”
“No. I’m going back to school.”
“It’s—” Balthazar glanced over at the old-fashioned brass clock on the mantel. “After four thirty. Nobody’s going to be there now.”
“Which is the whole point.” Cautiously she stood, tested her steadiness, then took her coat from the chair where he’d dumped it and began shrugging it back on. “I’ve run from these ‘death visions’ every time I’ve encountered them. And I haven’t learned anything that way. It’s past time to face them down. You’ve got a key, right?”
“Yeah, but—Skye, that’s incredibly dangerous for you. You’ve nearly died before.”
“I’ve felt like I nearly died. It’s time to find out exactly what happens to me afterward. I know it’s risky, but that’s why you’re coming along.” She tossed him a challenging glance over her shoulder as she headed for the door. “You are coming along, right?”
“Right.” He had no choice now but to follow where she led.
Chapter Twenty
SKYE WRAPPED HER COAT MORE WARMLY around herself as Balthazar drove through the winter storm on their way back to Darby Glen High. The snowfall had, if anything, only increased; the true winter of upstate New York was now well under way. All around them cars crawled along, cautious on slush-slick roads.
“Are you sure about this?” Balthazar said. His handsome face looked almost brutish in the harsh dashboard lights of his old beater car. “We could try later. Another day, maybe, when you haven’t had such a rough time.”
“If I wait, I’ll chicken out. Let’s just do this.” Skye tucked a lock of her hair behind one ear. On the radio, some guy sang about sadness and loss, and how they kept you up at night. “I’m not feeling the … enhanced senses, or whatever they are, so much anymore. So it probably won’t get to me until I’m in Ms. Loos’s room.”
“Wait—that’s right. You said that today, you could sense it even outside her room. It enhanced your psychic senses, too?”
It. The bite. The moment he’d pulled her close in her bed, and she’d felt herself surrendering completely. They were just going to call the bite “it” from now on. Fine. “I guess so. It made me a little crazy—went running off through the hallways, and evil Coach Haladki was screeching at me—”
“Nola’s not that bad. Just cranky.”
“I knocked Britnee Fong down in the hallway, which led to a whole screaming match between me and Craig. Today’s been awesome all over.”
Balthazar hesitated before saying, “Screaming match?”
“Well. Not screaming. Neither of us wanted the entire school to hear. But we had it out about our breakup.” The taste of it was still sour. “It was a good thing, I guess. We talked about how weird things got after Dakota died, and how we—” Did she want to say this out loud to Balthazar? What the hell, she decided. After a guy had bitten you while na**d in your bed, privacy pretty much flew out the window. “How we never should have slept together. We weren’t going to be together long. Craig already knew it, and I… I guess I should’ve known, too.”
