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He could manage nothing louder than a whisper: “Charity.”
“Hello, dear brother.” Charity smiled at him, guileless and sweet—for only one instant. Then her face twisted into a grimace. “Still saving everybody’s life but mine.”
Guilt and shock froze him only for a moment, but it was a moment too long. Charity swung something into his head; he hadn’t even seen that she had something in her hand, but whatever it was, it was metal, heavy, and long. She swung again and again, stunning him further with each blow, and the more his head hurt, the harder it was to defend himself or even to think.
Once again she struck him, and he stumbled backward on ground that sloped sharply. Balthazar fell, rolling over and over, at first only grateful that for a moment Charity wasn’t beating the hell out of him.
Then he realized that the only ground sloping sharply beneath him was the riverbank.
If there was one thing vampires hated more than trying to cross running water—it was being submerged in running water.
Balthazar grabbed desperately for something to hang on to, anything, but it was too late. He fell from the riverbank, fell through the air for one terrible moment, and then plunged into the ice-cold rapids.
He sank like a stone.
Chapter Sixteen
SKYE RAN AS HARD AS SHE COULD. HER SIDE cramped and each breath was cold and ragged in her lungs, but she kept pushing. Eb stood not far away, quivering with fright, but if she could calm him enough to ride, she could take advantage of whatever insane vampire battle was going on to get out of here.
But where was Balthazar? She’d seen him just seconds ago, before Redgrave appeared, but not since. They couldn’t have hurt him, could they? Or would they have staked him, beheaded—
Her terror for Balthazar outweighed her fear for herself, and Skye turned to look for him. Within seconds, she sighted him—being beaten, brutally, by somebody who appeared to be a bedraggled middle-school girl but must have been another vampire. He fell backward onto the riverbank, sliding along the loose rocks and brush there, then tumbled into the water.
Could he swim? There was something about vampires and running water, something bad. Skye couldn’t remember; she couldn’t think straight with her heartbeat pounding and her whole body already aching. All she knew was that Balthazar wasn’t able to save her. Instead, she’d have to save him.
Skye ran the rest of the way to Eb, who stood still but remained jittery. Even amid her panic, she knew she had to make sure he was steady to ride; the only way to make her situation worse would be to wind up thrown or trampled by a frightened animal that weighed half a ton. “C’mon, boy,” she murmured as she ran her hands reassuringly along his side. “Good boy. You want to get out of here, don’t you? Let’s get out of here. Okay, Eb? That’s my boy.”
He seemed good—not great, but enough, she thought. Skye hooked her foot into the stirrup and got herself into the saddle. Eb stamped his feet a couple of times, but he remained steady. Grabbing the reins, she urged him forward so that they galloped downstream.
The tide pool, she thought. She and Dakota had played down there as children before their parents caught them at it and forbade it—after which they played down there only slightly less. They’d discovered that almost anything tossed into the river upstream (Frisbees, canteens, various Nerf sporting goods) eventually washed into the tide pool. If Balthazar couldn’t swim, or was too dazed to do so, he’d probably wind up there. Certainly it would be her best chance to retrieve him.
But then she heard the sound of someone—multiple someones—crashing through the trees behind her, and knew Redgrave hadn’t stopped all of her pursuers.
Skye spurred Eb harder, wishing she didn’t have to do it, and maybe she didn’t; her horse wanted out of there as badly as she did. As she steered Eb down the slope leading to the tide pool, Skye looked around desperately; almost right away, she saw what she’d sought. A tree nearby had lost a few branches during the last hard ice, and one hung amid the lower limbs, almost as thick around as her arm and twice as long. Skye tugged it free and clutched it close to her side, end out.
But then Lorenzo sprang out, running toward her at that blurry vampire speed. Almost without consciously deciding to do it, Skye drove Eb forward, toward Lorenzo rather than away, leaning forward with her makeshift weapon leading the way.
Maybe she’d meant to frighten the vampire; maybe she’d meant to knock him aside. Skye wasn’t certain. She didn’t mean for the branch to stab Lorenzo through the chest—but it did.
He just … fell. One moment he was an insane killer; the next he was a corpse, nothing more. The branch jerked out of her shaking arm as he tumbled limply to the ground.
For a moment she could only stare, and think, I needed that! But pulling the stake out was a bad idea; Balthazar said that would allow the vampire to awaken. Lorenzo was out of commission only as long as she left it in.
Skye wheeled Eb around, clucking reassuringly for him, to look for another branch. Her gaze swept across the tide pool, and she gasped as she saw something roll just beneath the surface—something that looked like a dead body—
Which is what Balthazar is, right now, and he’s going to stay that way if you don’t do something about it.
She dismounted and combed through the underbrush, looking for another branch; soon she found one less sturdy but perhaps long enough to work. Carefully she picked through the icy edges of the tide pool, her leather riding boots making only the slightest imprint in the frozen mud. As the ice cracked around her feet, she took a deep breath and leaned forward.
There, beneath the murky water, she could see Balthazar’s face. His features were still, his eyes open. Though she’d never seen a drowning victim, she knew now what one looked like, and it sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the bitter cold.
If he was conscious and could see her, he wasn’t able to act or even to give her a sign. Skye leaned forward and reached out with the branch to snag the shoulder of his long coat; it wasn’t nearly sturdy enough to drag him, but the tide pool’s current kept the water roiling. Maybe just getting him to drift closer would be enough.
It worked, or well enough. Balthazar floated closer to the edge, lying flat just beneath the surface, like a male version of that Ophelia painting. Skye hesitated only a second before ripping off her leather gloves and thick coat; they’d do her more good later if they weren’t wet.
Then she stooped down and plunged her hands through the thin ice, into the frigid water, to grab Balthazar.
But, oh, God, he was heavy. She hadn’t realized how heavy dead weight could be—and even if Balthazar had been in any shape to help her, he was at least six feet three and heavily muscled. Did he weigh two hundred pounds? More? Skye knew she had more upper-body strength than most women, thanks to her many years handling saddles, but it took all her might to tow him from the tide pool.
