He didn’t even tug on his coat until he had dashed halfway down the walk leading to the gorge. The cold didn’t matter; he didn’t care if he froze. But he needed his hands free to fight for her.
As he stood at the edge of the gorge, though, he realized that no other vampires were near; he hadn’t felt them. Then his sharp eyes picked out a patch of color amid the nearby snowdrifts—the sapphire blue of Skye’s winter coat.
Balthazar ran toward her, the scene unveiling slowly before him because of the snow: Skye lay unconscious (not dead, please not dead) just off the path in the hollow of the gorge. He saw no blood, nor any sign of a struggle. It was as if she’d simply fallen over—fainted dead away.
Someone must have died nearby, and died horribly enough for it to have overwhelmed her. Balthazar reached her, went on his knees, felt for her pulse at her throat. Skye was alive.
Relief washed over him, not enough to submerge his fear but enough to focus him again on action. Balthazar swept her up in his arms and ran with all his speed toward his car. He needed to keep her with him. To keep her safe.
Skye remained unconscious the whole way back, even after Balthazar had placed her on his bed and started the fire, but her breathing was deeper and more even. He thought now she was more asleep than knocked out, and that her body probably needed the rest.
After shaking off his snow-wet coat, Balthazar reclaimed his phone and called the person who had warned him that Skye was in danger.
“Balthazar?” Lucas sounded tense. “Did you find Skye?”
“Found her. She hadn’t been attacked; it was another of her visions, I think. Skye’s still unconscious, but I think she’ll be all right after she warms up and rests a little.” Balthazar breathed out heavily. The need to sigh didn’t go away with the need to breathe.
“You sound shaken up. Sure everything’s okay?”
“I’m not sure of anything. But—she took a risk today. Because of me, I think. If she’d gotten hurt today, or if she’d—if anything worse had happened, it would be my fault.”
“Mea maxima culpa, huh?”
Balthazar frowned. “Since when do you speak Latin?”
“I did go to Evernight for a while, remember?” Now Lucas sounded more amused than anything else. “It’s just interesting how much you’re beating yourself up about this.”
“I told you. It’s my fault.” He looked at Skye as he spoke, thin and pale on his bed, the firelight burnishing her dark brown hair.
“You seem worried about her. Real worried. Deeply concerned. Are things getting interesting for you two?” Lucas was downright smug by now. “If you keep it up, my girlfriend’s gonna get jealous.”
“I don’t get involved with humans,” Balthazar said.
“You sound pretty involved to me,” Lucas replied. “And why no humans? What’s wrong with us? On behalf of my species, I object.”
“It doesn’t end well.” He remembered Jane lying on the floor of his parents’ barn, a broken shell of the girl he had too briefly loved. “For a mortal, being with someone supernatural is dangerous. You ought to know.”
“Don’t remind me.” Lucas had already died and been resurrected once; he spoke from weary experience. “But speaking as a mere mortal—sometimes it’s worth it. Danger and all.”
Balthazar didn’t want to hear this. Shortly, he said, “The only thing that matters is keeping Skye safe. We need to figure out how to stop the visions.”
“Let her catch her breath first,” Lucas said. “Listen, I need to call Clementine back. She was half frantic when she called me to say Skye hadn’t checked in; by now she’s probably pulling her hair out. Keep us posted, okay?”
“Will do.”
“And Bianca says hi.”
“Oh, right. Hi.” Balthazar snapped off the call. Weird to think he’d forgotten to send a message to Bianca.
As he did, Skye stirred on the bed. He hurried to her side. “Hey. Don’t sit up too fast.”
“What the—where am I—oh.” Skye’s eyes widened as she took in her surroundings, and saw him. “What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. I found you out by the gorge, unconscious.”
“Oh, my God.” Memory had obviously just come flooding back. Skye grimaced as she put her fingers to her temple, then slowly pushed herself upright. “It was awful. Turns out they call it Battlefield Gorge for a reason.”
“You didn’t have to run out there like that,” Balthazar said. “Study hall—we would’ve been okay.”
It was as much of an opening to talk about their argument this morning as he could offer, but he thought it would be enough. To his surprise, though, Skye didn’t go there. “Hundreds of men died out there. It was like I was feeling them all at once—and sharper than before. I think my power must be getting stronger. Just walking by Ms. Loos’s room today was worse than being in it was before.”
“Maybe it’s getting stronger. It might just be the aftermath of … of the bite.” My bite. When I bit into you in your bed and drank the blood you gave me to save my life, and then yelled at you to leave me alone. Shamefaced, Balthazar continued, “After you’re bitten by a vampire, your senses are enhanced for a while. The powers become longer lasting, maybe permanent, with subsequent bites. It’s a small taste of what being a vampire is like all the time.”