Balthazar (27 page)

She said, “I mean it. The trick is—the trick is giving in.”

“Giving in?”

“Surrendering to the death.”

Balthazar scowled, his heavy brow furrowing. “Surrendering to death sounds like a bad idea. In any situation, but especially this one.”

“I know how it sounds. But somehow—somehow it was the right thing to do.” Skye braced herself against one of the desks as she shakily got to her feet. “I'll know better what to do next time. It won't destroy me.”

“I don't like the sound of this.”

Skye shrugged. “It's not your choice to like or dislike.”

“Skye—do we have to be like—”

“We're okay,” she said, and tried to mean it. Her feelings were too raw for that, really, but she didn't want to turn into a teary mess with two guys in the same day. “Just take me home, all right?”

He took her home.

The drive to her place went even slower than the journey there. The snow had finally outstripped the plows' ability to keep up with it, and the scant few cars still on the road were creeping along. Balthazar's car was no four-wheel drive, but he kept it steady anyway. He was as good with automobiles as he was with horses.

“I should call Mom and Dad,” she said, just to break the silence in the car. “They won't be able to make it back tonight. Their organization usually springs for a hotel room in Albany when that happens.”

Balthazar said, “I'm sorry if I hurt you this morning.”

Skye stared over at him. “That's not what we were talking about.”

“It's just a relief to have you talking to me,” he admitted. “I mean it. I shouldn't have been as—rough on you. Or as rude. And I shouldn't have bitten you.”

He didn't regret walking away from her, Skye decided. He only regretted letting her get close at all.

She said only, “You're here to protect me. That's it. I understand now.”

“All right.” He sounded as if he didn't entirely believe her. Fair enough, she figured; she didn't entirely believe herself. “Hopefully we can still hang around—”

“I don't think so.” Riding together in the snow. Sparring in her basement, flushed and sweaty and enjoying every touch. Texting each other throughout study hall. Did she have to give it all up? Yes. Skye knew she had to be ruthless for her own sake. “You're still here, and I appreciate that—you'll never know how—anyway. But we should move on.”

“Move on,” Balthazar repeated, as he finally steered the car into her driveway.

“You'll do—whatever you'd do otherwise. I'll hang out with Madison more. Study at home, even. It's not like it would kill me. I'm even going to the Valentine's Dance with Keith Kramer. So—yeah. Moving on.”

He gave her a look—oh, God, why did he look his absolute hottest when he was crazy jealous? The absurdity of any guy as amazing as Balthazar being jealous of cardboard-cutout Keith would've been hilarious at any other time. As it was, it stung almost as badly as his rejection had that morning.

“Thanks again,” Skye said as she got out of the car. “Good night.” She walked inside and shut the door behind her without a backward glance.

Moving on
, she repeated to herself, meaning it.
That means you don't get to think about the fact that you've made Balthazar jealous. That can't be why you go to the dance
.

Though I guess you can enjoy it a
little
bit
.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

October 1918

FOR A VAMPIRE, ONLY ONE CALAMITY PROVIDED more abundant feeding grounds than wartime: plague.

That made 1918 a very good year for the undead.

Although the war had not yet ended, it was clearly in its last gasps; armistice was expected any day. With the conclusion of the bloodiest conflict in history near, Philadelphia ought to have been cheerful and bustling with activity. Instead, Balthazar found himself walking along deserted streets.

In the past few weeks, a deadly wave of the Spanish flu had swept through the city with the same virulence with which it had killed millions from the Arctic Circle to South Africa. Victims—oddly, usually the youngest and strongest—began coughing and complaining of earaches or headaches. Then came the fevers, scorching hot. The pulses of the sick quickened so that Balthazar could hear them, fast and tremulous as the hearts of rabbits before the kill, from far away. Death seized them through the lungs, infecting and swelling them so that air could no longer course through the body. The sufferers turned blue-black with suffocation before their terrible deaths.

Sometimes he could spare them that. Their blood tasted foul to him; viruses could not poison vampires, but this one was so wretched that it spoiled even the pleasure of drinking from humans without guilt. But if providing a merciful death for a few sick people was the lone service he could provide for humanity, then he would provide it.

In Philadelphia, the Spanish flu epidemic was so severe that city officials had ordered trenches dug for mass graves. Some undertakers, taking opportunity of rising demand, had raised their fees; others told survivors they'd have to dig loved ones' graves themselves. Doctors and nurses were in desperately short supply.

Which was why a suspiciously young-looking man could describe himself as a medical student from “out west” and get away with it.

Balthazar wore a cloth mask over his face as he walked along the street making his “rounds.” Although he of course could not contract the flu—death provided the only absolute immunity—he would have attracted too much notice by not wearing it. Everyone wore the masks now in a futile effort to keep the epidemic at bay. Now he looked the part in his dark brown suit, high-collared shirt, and low-brimmed hat; a long coat and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses allowed him to look a few years older than he was. A police paddy wagon farther down the road took a small bundle wrapped in a sheet and tossed it unceremoniously in the back; that would be a young child, dead in a city that no longer had the wood for coffins.

Witnessing the devastation of the influenza had made Balthazar wish desperately that he could do something beyond providing a merciful death for the sickest among them. When he'd been alive, medicine had been little more than guesswork; anything approaching an actual drug had been condemned as witchcraft. But in the twentieth century, maybe he'd have the opportunity to learn more. Maybe someday he could be a healer instead of a bringer of death.

For now, though, death was his only gift.

As he approached the house he sought, he saw a young nurse walking along, white headdress falling past her cheeks, a basket of food for the sick clutched in her hands. She was the first legitimate medical professional he'd seen in days; the few who weren't ill were too busy to leave the clinics. Balthazar raised a hand to her in greeting, but she stopped in her tracks as if startled.

Above her mask, he recognized Charity's eyes.

The first words Balthazar could find were: “Where's Redgrave?”

“France.” She said this in her tiniest, most childlike voice.

Of course he would still be on the battlefields. Balthazar relished the spoils of war, the way any vampire had to, but crossing the ocean merely to feast on the dying was too much for him. Not for Redgrave. “Are you alone in Philadelphia?”

Charity shook her head. “Constantia's here, too. The others stayed with Redgrave.”

Disappointing that she wasn't entirely alone, but not surprising: Balthazar could tell just from the cleanliness and appropriateness of Charity's disguise that someone had helped her with it. Still, this was the closest to freedom Charity had come since the day of her death—and Balthazar's best chance to help her.

She hadn't attacked him. Hadn't turned away in anger. Was it possible his sister was finally ready to be helped?

“Let's go,” he said. “You and me. Come with me now. Right away.”

“Go where?”

“New York. Toronto. San Francisco. It doesn't matter. Someplace far from here, where Redgrave can't find us.”

Balthazar reached his arm out, meaning to stretch it across her shoulders and lead her off, but Charity shrank back as if he were going to strike her. The old fear still lingered inside her, and Balthazar knew that was his own fault. “I can't,” she whispered. “He'll find out. He'll find me. He always does; you know that.”

So she had tried to run away before, and failed. His heart ached at the thought of his little sister's long captivity—and his own wretched inability to protect her. Now, though, things could be different. He had to make her see that. “Look around you,” Balthazar said, gesturing at the deserted streets. “Nobody will stop us.”

“Constantia would.”

“She's not Redgrave.”

“She's just as bad. Worse, maybe. You've never seen that, but I have.”

Charity was talking nonsense—who knew Constantia Gabrielis's bag of tricks better than he did?—but Balthazar persisted. “Where is Constantia now?” With his luck, she'd come storming out of the nearest house, stake in hand.

“She's at the house up the hill, the one we took. Everyone inside was sick, so they couldn't fight us off. Well, the old man wasn't sick, but he couldn't fight us off either.” Charity's pink tongue darted to the corner of her mouth, as if she were licking her chops at the memory. “I don't like this flu. It makes everyone taste funny.”

“Charity, concentrate. If Constantia isn't here, then she can't stop us from going.” Could it really be as easy as this? It seemed impossible, and yet nothing stood in their way. Wild hope Balthazar had thought long dead sprang up inside him. They might flee this ghost town and start over somewhere. He could show her how to exist among humans without causing harm. How there were a few friendships to be had, a few deeds worth doing. That sometimes, just sometimes, their time on earth could feel like it mattered.

His sister furrowed her brow, deep in thought; it was the first time he'd seen her so focused on anything since well before her death. “She'll know. She'll figure it out.”

“Only that you're gone!”

“We can't leave her behind to tattle.” Charity's dark eyes lit up with glee. “We'll have to finish her off.”

Balthazar had never slain a vampire before—though not because he hadn't wanted to. There had been nights he'd been unable to sleep because his thoughts were too full of what he could do to Redgrave: beating his smug, porcelain face until it cracked. Slicing through his neck and watching him turn to bones. Setting him on fire and lingering long enough to hear him scream. Before Redgrave, Balthazar hadn't even known it was possible to hate that much.

Constantia … he hated her, but not like that. Not enough to enjoy killing her.

But he would do what he had to do.

The plan was mostly his, in the end; Charity could hardly focus on anything past telling him where the house was and what time to come. Just at sunset, she said: Constantia liked the anonymity of the streets after dark and would often go out prowling. During the day, she'd almost certainly be sleeping.

That seemed unlike the Constantia he remembered—Balthazar recalled her minding sunlight less than any other vampire he'd ever encountered—but he hadn't shared her bed for 140 years or so. Habits could change.

Wasn't he proof enough of that?

He dressed as if for a fancy party; she'd see it as a compliment. Then he went to the address Charity had given. Evening shadows falling across the stricken, eerily silent city, Balthazar made his way up the steps and simply rang the doorbell.

It took a long time for anyone to approach. His sensitive ears picked up the swishing of skirts, the click of her boots against wood. Balthazar leaned close to the door. If Constantia breathed in deeply, she would recognize even his scent. Already he recognized her. For a few moments, he simply remained there motionless while she did as well; he knew they were aware of each other, poised only inches apart, at the intersection of wrath and desire.

Finally Constantia opened the door. She stood there, blond hair down and loose as if she'd just risen from her bed. “Balthazar,” she said. “My God. Charity told the truth. With her, you never know.”

He'd told Charity to inform Constantia that he was in town. That he was lonely, regretting his isolation from other vampires. That he'd been excited to learn they were without Redgrave. Lies were always strongest when mixed with the truth: Redgrave had taught him this much.

“Constantia.” He managed a smile for her; it was bent and uncertain, but that was all right. She wouldn't have believed an overly enthusiastic welcome. “May I come in?”

Instead of welcoming him, Constantia merely stepped backward. Balthazar walked into that space and shut the door behind him. They stood very close. She was the only woman he'd ever known tall enough to look him in the eyes.

“Where's Charity?” he asked, as if he didn't know.