How could she simultaneously see how beautiful Balthazar was and not see that he was a person instead of a monster?
Maybe on some level Dana sensed how I felt, because she muttered, “I always hate this part.”
As I climbed into the shotgun seat of the van—old, cracked vinyl mended with duct tape—I’d never felt so dirty. It wasn’t the sweat and dust smeared thick on my skin; it was the fact that I was helping haul one of my best friends to what might be his death.
The new hideout was down by the river, on the other side of Manhattan. A loading dock was located nearby, and tugboats and barges stopped there to unload seemingly endless blue and green crates. I’d always thought of riverbanks as peaceful places, but this was all concrete and cables. The sounds of horn blasts and metal cranks drowned out the softer sounds of water.
I watched, Dana silent by my side, as Milos and a couple of the other hunters hauled an unconscious Balthazar into what looked like an abandoned harbor station. For a second I had the powerful urge to run far away and trust Lucas to find me. But that was the coward in me trying to take over. I’d let my fear control me long enough. I’d waited passively for things to change for too long. For Balthazar’s sake, and my own, it was time to be strong.
So I walked inside the building to see what we were dealing with. Dana didn’t follow. She remained behind, drumming her hands against the hood of the van, staring determinedly out at the water.
The building—a harbor station—seemed to be one room, fairly small, with a raised area closer to the water and a deeper hollow in the back that had obviously been used for storage. The walls and floors were concrete—the floor so old and heavily used that it was ragged and worn to a dull brown.
As Balthazar sagged to the floor, Milos worked with the chains around his wrists, and then his arms flopped free. For one second, I felt hopeful. After all, if they were going to kill him, wouldn’t they have done it already?
They could’ve killed Balthazar during the battle, and I’d never have known.
The terror of that thought washed over me, but it was instantly replaced by dread. Milos wasn’t making Balthazar more comfortable; he was latching handcuffs around one of his wrists. While I watched, aghast, he latched the other cuff around the metal railing that surrounded the storage area. He then did the same with the other arm, so that Balthazar was bound with his hands above his head. His head lolled forward, but his body twitched slightly.
“He’s waking up,” said one of the hunters.
Milos walked toward a nearby bucket, one that seemed to have been placed beneath a leak in the roof. Water rippled inside.
“How about we help him with that?” Then he tossed the water, hard, onto Balthazar.
The water hit him and the concrete with a loud, wet slap that made me jump. Balthazar jerked his head upright, gasping and disoriented. At his first glimpse of the hunters in front of him, he pulled backward—before realizing that he was bound. Trapped. His face shifted from surprise to anger.
“Don’t like it when the odds change, do you?” Milos jeered.
Balthazar’s voice was slurred as he said, “Go to hell.”
“I believe that’s your team’s stomping grounds,” Milos said, “not mine.”
Balthazar was still dazed from his injuries. Vampires healed faster than humans, but it took a while to recover from something serious. Balthazar struggled to hold his head upright, and though his dark eyes were unfocused he was clearly trying to get an idea of where he was, what chances he might have to escape.
His eyes sought the door, and he saw me.
The force of his gaze hit me hard. Gripping the doorframe so I wouldn’t fall, I hoped desperately that he would understand. I’m not helping them, I’ll try to get you out of this, you have to hang on, Balthazar, please—
Balthazar’s eyes drifted from me to Milos and the other hunters who surrounded him. Then he ducked his head, as if he didn’t even want to meet my eyes.
For one second, I thought he was angry, but then I realized the truth. Balthazar was trying to hide the fact that we knew each other. Had the Black Cross hunters understood that—understood that I was, like him, a vampire—they would’ve chained me up, too. While I had completely failed to protect him, he was doing the only thing within his power to protect me.
“He’s still out of it,” one of the hunters said. “I say we give him a while to think over the situation he’s in. Come back and talk to him later.”
“Sounds about right,” Milos said. “I’ll stand guard.”
Should I stand guard, too? Make sure that nobody lost his temper and did something stupid? No, I decided, because I didn’t actually have any idea how to stop the guards from hurting Balthazar.
What I needed to do was find the one person who might know how to get us all out of this situation before it was too late: Lucas.
As I mutely followed Dana and the others around during the next hour or so, helping make up pallets for people to rest upon later, I learned two important things.
First, about twenty of the Black Cross hunters would end up staying here in a few old storage vaults that turned out to lie in the basement of the harbor station. There was actually a lot of room down there, but mostly that was used for weapons storage. I felt confident that, if I only stayed put, Lucas would find me. Since the other hunters would be in other locations all around the city, I figured that improved our chances of being able to help Balthazar. Better two against twenty than two against two hundred, right?
Second, we had to move fast. Because I soon heard their plan for Balthazar, and it was worse than I’d ever dreamed.
“Did you put him someplace where he’ll be in the sun, come dawn?” Eliza said, talking about Balthazar. She had arrived here only a few minutes after the rest of us and was inspecting the new rooms, while I meekly unfolded scratchy blankets in the far corner. “That’ll make it worse.”
“Not if he’s had blood lately,” somebody said. “And how long do you think a strapping guy like that goes without blood? I’m guessing a day or two tops. Besides, it’s bad enough for him tied up like that, and we can make it a whole lot worse.” In the corner of the room, Dana paused in her work like she might object, but she didn’t.
Eliza shrugged. “We need him able to talk. We’ve got to find out why they chose to attack now.”
I already knew, but confessing that would have left me chained to the wall beside Balthazar.
Finally, around 3 A.M., the last hunters to remain with our group staggered in. Raquel came through the door first, and she bounded into Dana’s arms like they’d been together for years instead of a couple of weeks. The smile on Raquel’s face was so brilliant that I would’ve been happy for her, if I could’ve forgotten the danger Balthazar was in.
Lucas and Kate walked in last. The flickering light from the one bulb in the room painted strange shadows on their faces. Kate seemed to have aged ten years in the past day. Her dark-gold hair, usually slicked back, was disheveled, and her expression was empty. With his hand around her forearm, Lucas gently guided her to one of the pallets. His jeans and T-shirt were smeared with blood that I knew wasn’t his own.
When he saw me, he gratefully pulled me into his arms. I whispered into his ear, “Outside. Now.”
Though obviously exhausted, Lucas nodded. As we walked out through the separate door for the basement stairs, I expected someone to ask what we were doing, or why, but nobody did. They were too tired to care. Raquel was already stretched out on her pallet, and probably the whole group would be asleep within ten minutes.
“Okay,” he said, his voice ragged from weariness, once we had stepped outside. The lights across the river provided nearly the only light. “What’s up?”
“They’ve taken Balthazar prisoner.”
Instantly, Lucas was wide awake. “Hell.”
“They’ve got him chained up in there.” I pointed to the main room. “Lucas, I think they’re going to hurt him.”
I hoped Lucas would tell me I was being ridiculous, but he didn’t. “That happens sometimes,” he said, grimly. “Most people don’t like it, won’t do it. Eduardo—he felt different.” His gaze became distant, and I wondered what measure he was taking of Eduardo now; he’d been both Lucas’s fiercest enemy and the closest thing to a father he’d known since early childhood, and now he was gone.
Swallowing hard, I said, “Lucas, you didn’t—you would never—”
“I haven’t ever.” But Lucas didn’t sound like he felt good about that answer. “If you’d asked me two years ago if it was okay—roughing up a vampire to get some information—I’d have been all for it. Only reason I never got mixed up in a situation like that was because I was too young.”
“And now?”
“Now I know better, because you taught me.” He put his hand on my cheek, and despite everything, I smiled.
“We have to get him out of there. Is there any way to talk to Eliza—to explain that you knew him at Evernight? We can tell them that he doesn’t kill people. I could talk to her, too, and I bet Raquel would stand up for him.”
Lucas shook his head. “That’s not happening. Eliza’s not going to let any vampire go, not ever.”
“Then how do we keep them from hurting Balthazar?”
He was quiet for a few long seconds. When he spoke, his voice was almost too low to hear. “Bianca—the only way to do that might be to kill him.”
“What?”
“That is not something I want to do,” Lucas said, every word intent, “but if the choice is between a quick death or a slow one after being worked over by those guys for a week? I’d pick the quick death every time.”
“There has to be another way,” I insisted. The stakes were even higher than I’d feared.
“I’ll try to think of something.” But he didn’t sound hopeful, and my worry flared into anger.
“Do you really care so little about what happens to Balthazar? Or do you want him out of the way, just because he cares about me, and he and I almost—”
I cut myself off too late. From the glare Lucas gave me, I knew he understood what I’d been referring to: One night during the spring, after Lucas and I had broken up, the attraction between me and Balthazar had flared into passion. We had drunk each other’s blood and might have gone on to sleep together if we hadn’t been interrupted. When Lucas and I reunited, I’d confessed everything, and so far it hadn’t been an issue. Lucas knew that he was the one I truly loved.
So I shouldn’t have accused Lucas of being willing to watch Balthazar die merely out of jealousy. I knew it was false, and all I’d done was hurt Lucas by reminding him of how close Balthazar and I had become.
Lucas said only, “Low blow.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Tentatively, I brushed a lock of Lucas’s hair away from his face.
He didn’t push me away, but he didn’t relax into my touch, either. “This isn’t going to help us get him out, but—come on.”
Lucas led me into the station, where Milos and one other hunter stood guard. Balthazar, still sitting on the floor with his hands chained, didn’t look up. When the guards turned to us, Lucas said, “Hey, you guys take a break. We’ll watch him for a few.”
Milos shrugged. “Why would I do that?”
“Because this bloodsucker went after my girl.” Lucas pulled me against him possessively. Almost imperceptibly, Balthazar tensed. “And I’d like to…discuss that with him. In private.”
The other guard chuckled meanly, and Milos slowly rose, nodding. I didn’t like his smile. “Indulge yourself. For the next few minutes, I’m just outside getting a breath of air. Have at.”
Maybe on some level Dana sensed how I felt, because she muttered, “I always hate this part.”
As I climbed into the shotgun seat of the van—old, cracked vinyl mended with duct tape—I’d never felt so dirty. It wasn’t the sweat and dust smeared thick on my skin; it was the fact that I was helping haul one of my best friends to what might be his death.
The new hideout was down by the river, on the other side of Manhattan. A loading dock was located nearby, and tugboats and barges stopped there to unload seemingly endless blue and green crates. I’d always thought of riverbanks as peaceful places, but this was all concrete and cables. The sounds of horn blasts and metal cranks drowned out the softer sounds of water.
I watched, Dana silent by my side, as Milos and a couple of the other hunters hauled an unconscious Balthazar into what looked like an abandoned harbor station. For a second I had the powerful urge to run far away and trust Lucas to find me. But that was the coward in me trying to take over. I’d let my fear control me long enough. I’d waited passively for things to change for too long. For Balthazar’s sake, and my own, it was time to be strong.
So I walked inside the building to see what we were dealing with. Dana didn’t follow. She remained behind, drumming her hands against the hood of the van, staring determinedly out at the water.
The building—a harbor station—seemed to be one room, fairly small, with a raised area closer to the water and a deeper hollow in the back that had obviously been used for storage. The walls and floors were concrete—the floor so old and heavily used that it was ragged and worn to a dull brown.
As Balthazar sagged to the floor, Milos worked with the chains around his wrists, and then his arms flopped free. For one second, I felt hopeful. After all, if they were going to kill him, wouldn’t they have done it already?
They could’ve killed Balthazar during the battle, and I’d never have known.
The terror of that thought washed over me, but it was instantly replaced by dread. Milos wasn’t making Balthazar more comfortable; he was latching handcuffs around one of his wrists. While I watched, aghast, he latched the other cuff around the metal railing that surrounded the storage area. He then did the same with the other arm, so that Balthazar was bound with his hands above his head. His head lolled forward, but his body twitched slightly.
“He’s waking up,” said one of the hunters.
Milos walked toward a nearby bucket, one that seemed to have been placed beneath a leak in the roof. Water rippled inside.
“How about we help him with that?” Then he tossed the water, hard, onto Balthazar.
The water hit him and the concrete with a loud, wet slap that made me jump. Balthazar jerked his head upright, gasping and disoriented. At his first glimpse of the hunters in front of him, he pulled backward—before realizing that he was bound. Trapped. His face shifted from surprise to anger.
“Don’t like it when the odds change, do you?” Milos jeered.
Balthazar’s voice was slurred as he said, “Go to hell.”
“I believe that’s your team’s stomping grounds,” Milos said, “not mine.”
Balthazar was still dazed from his injuries. Vampires healed faster than humans, but it took a while to recover from something serious. Balthazar struggled to hold his head upright, and though his dark eyes were unfocused he was clearly trying to get an idea of where he was, what chances he might have to escape.
His eyes sought the door, and he saw me.
The force of his gaze hit me hard. Gripping the doorframe so I wouldn’t fall, I hoped desperately that he would understand. I’m not helping them, I’ll try to get you out of this, you have to hang on, Balthazar, please—
Balthazar’s eyes drifted from me to Milos and the other hunters who surrounded him. Then he ducked his head, as if he didn’t even want to meet my eyes.
For one second, I thought he was angry, but then I realized the truth. Balthazar was trying to hide the fact that we knew each other. Had the Black Cross hunters understood that—understood that I was, like him, a vampire—they would’ve chained me up, too. While I had completely failed to protect him, he was doing the only thing within his power to protect me.
“He’s still out of it,” one of the hunters said. “I say we give him a while to think over the situation he’s in. Come back and talk to him later.”
“Sounds about right,” Milos said. “I’ll stand guard.”
Should I stand guard, too? Make sure that nobody lost his temper and did something stupid? No, I decided, because I didn’t actually have any idea how to stop the guards from hurting Balthazar.
What I needed to do was find the one person who might know how to get us all out of this situation before it was too late: Lucas.
As I mutely followed Dana and the others around during the next hour or so, helping make up pallets for people to rest upon later, I learned two important things.
First, about twenty of the Black Cross hunters would end up staying here in a few old storage vaults that turned out to lie in the basement of the harbor station. There was actually a lot of room down there, but mostly that was used for weapons storage. I felt confident that, if I only stayed put, Lucas would find me. Since the other hunters would be in other locations all around the city, I figured that improved our chances of being able to help Balthazar. Better two against twenty than two against two hundred, right?
Second, we had to move fast. Because I soon heard their plan for Balthazar, and it was worse than I’d ever dreamed.
“Did you put him someplace where he’ll be in the sun, come dawn?” Eliza said, talking about Balthazar. She had arrived here only a few minutes after the rest of us and was inspecting the new rooms, while I meekly unfolded scratchy blankets in the far corner. “That’ll make it worse.”
“Not if he’s had blood lately,” somebody said. “And how long do you think a strapping guy like that goes without blood? I’m guessing a day or two tops. Besides, it’s bad enough for him tied up like that, and we can make it a whole lot worse.” In the corner of the room, Dana paused in her work like she might object, but she didn’t.
Eliza shrugged. “We need him able to talk. We’ve got to find out why they chose to attack now.”
I already knew, but confessing that would have left me chained to the wall beside Balthazar.
Finally, around 3 A.M., the last hunters to remain with our group staggered in. Raquel came through the door first, and she bounded into Dana’s arms like they’d been together for years instead of a couple of weeks. The smile on Raquel’s face was so brilliant that I would’ve been happy for her, if I could’ve forgotten the danger Balthazar was in.
Lucas and Kate walked in last. The flickering light from the one bulb in the room painted strange shadows on their faces. Kate seemed to have aged ten years in the past day. Her dark-gold hair, usually slicked back, was disheveled, and her expression was empty. With his hand around her forearm, Lucas gently guided her to one of the pallets. His jeans and T-shirt were smeared with blood that I knew wasn’t his own.
When he saw me, he gratefully pulled me into his arms. I whispered into his ear, “Outside. Now.”
Though obviously exhausted, Lucas nodded. As we walked out through the separate door for the basement stairs, I expected someone to ask what we were doing, or why, but nobody did. They were too tired to care. Raquel was already stretched out on her pallet, and probably the whole group would be asleep within ten minutes.
“Okay,” he said, his voice ragged from weariness, once we had stepped outside. The lights across the river provided nearly the only light. “What’s up?”
“They’ve taken Balthazar prisoner.”
Instantly, Lucas was wide awake. “Hell.”
“They’ve got him chained up in there.” I pointed to the main room. “Lucas, I think they’re going to hurt him.”
I hoped Lucas would tell me I was being ridiculous, but he didn’t. “That happens sometimes,” he said, grimly. “Most people don’t like it, won’t do it. Eduardo—he felt different.” His gaze became distant, and I wondered what measure he was taking of Eduardo now; he’d been both Lucas’s fiercest enemy and the closest thing to a father he’d known since early childhood, and now he was gone.
Swallowing hard, I said, “Lucas, you didn’t—you would never—”
“I haven’t ever.” But Lucas didn’t sound like he felt good about that answer. “If you’d asked me two years ago if it was okay—roughing up a vampire to get some information—I’d have been all for it. Only reason I never got mixed up in a situation like that was because I was too young.”
“And now?”
“Now I know better, because you taught me.” He put his hand on my cheek, and despite everything, I smiled.
“We have to get him out of there. Is there any way to talk to Eliza—to explain that you knew him at Evernight? We can tell them that he doesn’t kill people. I could talk to her, too, and I bet Raquel would stand up for him.”
Lucas shook his head. “That’s not happening. Eliza’s not going to let any vampire go, not ever.”
“Then how do we keep them from hurting Balthazar?”
He was quiet for a few long seconds. When he spoke, his voice was almost too low to hear. “Bianca—the only way to do that might be to kill him.”
“What?”
“That is not something I want to do,” Lucas said, every word intent, “but if the choice is between a quick death or a slow one after being worked over by those guys for a week? I’d pick the quick death every time.”
“There has to be another way,” I insisted. The stakes were even higher than I’d feared.
“I’ll try to think of something.” But he didn’t sound hopeful, and my worry flared into anger.
“Do you really care so little about what happens to Balthazar? Or do you want him out of the way, just because he cares about me, and he and I almost—”
I cut myself off too late. From the glare Lucas gave me, I knew he understood what I’d been referring to: One night during the spring, after Lucas and I had broken up, the attraction between me and Balthazar had flared into passion. We had drunk each other’s blood and might have gone on to sleep together if we hadn’t been interrupted. When Lucas and I reunited, I’d confessed everything, and so far it hadn’t been an issue. Lucas knew that he was the one I truly loved.
So I shouldn’t have accused Lucas of being willing to watch Balthazar die merely out of jealousy. I knew it was false, and all I’d done was hurt Lucas by reminding him of how close Balthazar and I had become.
Lucas said only, “Low blow.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Tentatively, I brushed a lock of Lucas’s hair away from his face.
He didn’t push me away, but he didn’t relax into my touch, either. “This isn’t going to help us get him out, but—come on.”
Lucas led me into the station, where Milos and one other hunter stood guard. Balthazar, still sitting on the floor with his hands chained, didn’t look up. When the guards turned to us, Lucas said, “Hey, you guys take a break. We’ll watch him for a few.”
Milos shrugged. “Why would I do that?”
“Because this bloodsucker went after my girl.” Lucas pulled me against him possessively. Almost imperceptibly, Balthazar tensed. “And I’d like to…discuss that with him. In private.”
The other guard chuckled meanly, and Milos slowly rose, nodding. I didn’t like his smile. “Indulge yourself. For the next few minutes, I’m just outside getting a breath of air. Have at.”
