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He combed his fingers through my hair, then hugged me once more and turned back toward the shed where Kate was. As I stood there, Raquel came up to me. “You made it.”
“You, too.” I winced as I looked at her face. “You’re getting a black eye.”
“I really fought this time,” Raquel said. Despite the depression of nearly everyone around us, there was a wild sort of energy in her eyes. “I struck back. It felt—amazing.”
“I’m glad.”
“And you don’t look so pretty yourself, you know.”
I must have been covered in dust from head to toe. Not that it mattered. “Dana must be okay, too, right?”
“Yeah. She’s with some of the others, helping bring in the prisoner.”
“Prisoner?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
Just then one of the Black Cross vans came roaring up to us, headlights almost blindingly bright. Raquel and I both held up our hands to shield our eyes. I muttered, “I guess the parking garage didn’t get hit.”
Dana hung her head out of the back of the van. “Where are we going to take him?”
“Better ask Eliza,” Raquel said, before running off to do just that.
I walked toward Dana. “You mean—you’ve got the prisoner?”
“Yeah, I’m the long arm of the law today.” She tried to smile, but there was no spirit in it. I thought Dana felt as weird about the captive vampire as I did. “He’s out cold right now, but when he wakes up, he’s got a big surprise in store.”
She half turned to the side, so I could look. My eyes went wide. The crumpled figure of a man on the floor of the van, his hands bound tightly behind his back, was too familiar. I leaned closer, and horror washed over me as I recognized him.
Balthazar.
Chapter Eight
BALTHAZAR—MY DATE FOR THE AUTUMN BALL, the guy who had driven me to see Lucas countless times, my friend and very nearly my lover—lay unconscious, a captive of Black Cross. Chains bound his feet and wrists. Even his vampire’s strength wouldn’t allow him to escape, not wounded and exhausted as he was. I doubted Black Cross would give him any chance to recuperate. He was at their mercy.
Sometimes, over the past month, I’d thought of myself as a prisoner, but only now did I see how much worse it could get.
“Where—” My voice cracked. “Where are you taking him?”
“Milos says they’ve got some spaces in town they can use for backup. We’ll haul him off to one of them.” A crescent-shaped cut near the center of Dana’s forehead testified to the fact that she’d just fought for her life. “The group’s going to have to splinter up for a while—no other place for us all to stay together. The bloodsuckers didn’t kill that many of us, but they made damn sure we’d be spread thin for a while.”
“I’ll come along,” I said. I didn’t know what else to do. I desperately wanted to consult Lucas, but I couldn’t interrupt him and Kate now. At least if I made sure that we ended up in the same space that Balthazar would be kept, we’d have a chance to take action later.
Dana nodded. “Suit yourself. Normally I’d want stronger backup for vampire transport. No offense, Bianca, you know you’re still a newbie—”
“No arguments here.”
“—but pretty boy here looks like he’s asleep for a while.”
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.
