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His car was beyond driving, now or ever again. He’d have to run the rest of the way. But he was within a mile of her house—it wouldn’t take long. “Get out of my way,” he said.
“I think it’s past time for me to be in your way,” Constantia said.
Balthazar reached inside his jacket—no, he’d lost the stake at the Valentine’s Dance. So he’d have to improvise. He snapped a short branch off a nearby tree, never dropping eye contact with Constantia. “It’s past time for us to settle this.”
She laughed at him. “Think about it, would you? You’re so desperate to reach Skye in time. Well, it’s too late for that. Redgrave has her. What you need to know is what’s going to happen next. I’m willing to tell you.”
Did he believe her? To his horror, he did. At times like this, Constantia didn’t bluff. “Are you saying you’ll help me?”
“And all it will cost you is one drink.” She nodded toward the bar. “C’mon, Balthazar. For old times’ sake.”
As if the old times had been any better than these. But if Constantia was telling the truth—and he suspected she was—getting more information was probably the best thing he could do. “Five minutes,” he said. “Tops.”
“Ten minutes, and you buy the drinks.”
“If it’s ten minutes, you’re buying.”
“Fine.” Constantia laughed again. When she was happy, and thought herself in control, she could be such a beautiful woman. “Ten minutes and the booze is on me.”
The bar was even more decrepit on the inside. Avocado-green linoleum on the floor seemed to have been laid down in the 1970s, which Balthazar suspected was also the last time it had been mopped. Only a handful of other customers were in there, all men, all reeking of tobacco, alcohol, or other, more highly controlled, substances. Eighties heavy metal blared from the jukebox; no wonder nobody had heard the wreck. A few of the men gave Constantia hungry looks, but as soon as she looked back, they seemed to understand that it was time to turn their heads and study something else.
Constantia spoke to the bartender, ample br**sts snug on the bar, a bill folded between two of her fingers; all of this guaranteed his attention. “This guy usually prefers red wine, but here, I think he’d like … a scotch. Straight. I’ll have a shot of tequila.”
“You’ve changed your drink,” Balthazar said.
“Good absinthe’s not as easy to come by, these days. They finally sell it again, but they’ve stripped the hallucinogens out. So what’s the point?” Constantia smiled at him, warm and inviting, the same way she’d looked at him countless times in the centuries between them. Despite her cruelty and her petty need for vengeance, she was beautiful, vital, and witty. Had she not orchestrated his murder, and Charity’s, Balthazar might have truly cared for her.
As it was, he said only, “You never give up, do you?”
“On you? I’m glad to see you have enough ego to assume my only possible motivation could be jumping your bones again.” The bartender slid her shot in front of her, and she gulped it back in one smooth motion. “I’ve moved on to bigger game now.”
Balthazar was wild to reach Skye, to find out what was happening to her, but he knew the only way to get that information was to let Constantia play it her way. “And what’s that?”
Constantia leaned closer to him, and in the avid, hungry gleam of her eyes, he could see flickers of the Teutonic warrior-woman she’d been in the thirteenth century. “Redgrave. It’s time to finish him. My suggestion? We take Redgrave on together, like you suggested back in 1918. I knew you didn’t really mean it then, and that’s why I didn’t listen, but you were righter than either of us realized. That wasn’t the best opportunity, though. This is.”
It was only one of many shocks he’d received that day, but in some ways it was the greatest. Redgrave and Constantia had been together when he met them; their alliance had continued from centuries before Balthazar’s birth to now. Constantia turning on Redgrave was like the moon turning on the sun. “You can’t mean it.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“He’s right about Skye,” she said. “As soon as I tasted Lorenzo’s blood and knew what he’d experienced through her, I realized the potential. The vampires are already massing. They’ll do whatever they have to do just for a taste.”
“So how do we stop it?”
Constantia stared at him. “We don’t. We use it for ourselves.”
Incredulously, he stared at her for a long moment before he could speak. When the bartender put his scotch in front of him, Balthazar found his first words, “Give me the whole bottle.”
As it slid across the bar to him, Constantia said, “Don’t reject it out of hand.”
“If you think I’d ever put her through that—”
“What would you be putting her through, Balthazar? She adores you. Skye’s sweet teenage putty in your hands. Just get her to give a pint every six weeks. Standard blood donation. That would be more than enough for you and me to claim power over Redgrave. Over anyone. Skye won’t even mind, not if she’s doing it for you.” Constantia gave him a sidelong glance. “And I promise not to be jealous. Though maybe you’ll let me watch occasionally? For old times’ sake.”
He had to stretch this out a little longer. Besides, he truly wanted to know: “Why would you ever turn against Redgrave?”
“You’re not the only one who got murdered, you know.” Constantia stared into the distance for a moment before throwing back another swallow of her drink. “Did that ever sink into your self-absorbed mind? Some of us hide our resentment better than you do. You were always a guy who wore his heart on his sleeve, Balthazar. Me—I take my time. I choose my moment. And the moment is now. He’s never played for higher stakes; that means he’s never been more vulnerable.”
