Hourglass (11 page)

“We’re rare.” I blurted it out, too loudly, almost shouting. But I could at least speak for myself. “Maybe five are born in a century. That’s what I’ve always heard.”

There was a tangible sense of hesitation in the room. I could tell that they wanted to ask me further questions and learn more, but they didn’t want to talk to me—to treat me as a person.

That would make it harder for them to kill me.

Fear pooled in my belly, cold and heavy. It was so hard to stand when my legs wanted to give out from under me. Only Lucas’s presence at my side kept me steady. Desperately I wished for my mother and father, who would never know what had become of me. I wanted them to come save me. I wanted them to hug me one more time.

“We better find out what we can about them,” said Milos.

“Find out what their vulnerabilities are.” I twitched as I recognized
what he was holding: the neon-green water gun, no doubt loaded with holy water. They were going to start by burning my skin.
Be brave
, I thought. Would holy water burn me now? Consecrated ground and crosses had always been problems—so probably it would sear my flesh the way it did any other vampire’s.

I wouldn’t shrink away, wouldn’t even turn my head. They wanted to see me afraid, but I could at least deny them that.

“Don’t do that.” Lucas held up his hands, trying in vain to reason with them. “If you guys will just listen—dammit!”

Milos sprayed holy water at me, and Lucas stepped between me and the spray. I was so grateful to him—at least, in the split second before I realized he’d made the worst mistake of his life.

The holy water hit Lucas and began to smoke. He cried out as it burned his flesh, the same way that it would burn a vampire’s.

“What the hell?” Milos shouted, as people began to swear and freak out. I was nearly as shocked as they were, but only for an instant; Lucas had been gaining vampire powers and vulnerabilities ever since I first drank his blood. Now holy water was as dangerous to him as it was to me. Lucas winced in pain, but his expression soon shifted to one of horror. Our eyes met, and I could see that he knew: Now he would be only a monster to them, too.

Eliza stepped forward. There were no words to describe the depthless contempt in her voice as she said, “Lucas feeds it.”

The silence that fell was deadly. I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. Instead I took Lucas’s hand
and attempted to feel that, only that, just his fingers in mine. I wanted him to be the only thing in the world.

“Guys,” Lucas began, “listen to me.”

Milos held up the gun in a wordless warning to shut up. Lucas stopped talking.

Eliza said, “We need to get these two to one of the professors. Study them, figure out how they’ve changed and why. We need all the info we can get out of them.”

Before they die
went unsaid.

“Cuff ’em. Load them into one of the vans.” Her eyes were cold as she finished, “Get this trash out of here.”

They handcuffed our hands in front of us and walked us to one of the vans. To my shock, Dana sat in the driver’s seat, and she didn’t glance at me or Lucas as we were brought out. Was that guilt? Revulsion? Did she simply not care any longer?

Milos sat beside her, and he had holy water and stakes handy. Some of the others chained our handcuffs to metal bars soldered to the wall of the van; I’d always wondered why the vans had those. Well, now I knew. Dana came around briefly to double-check that we were securely bound. I stared at her with all the hatred in my heart—more hate than I’d known I could feel for a human being. She didn’t seem to notice the venom in my glare as she turned to check Lucas’s cuffs, too.

Then she returned to the driver’s seat, and we took off. I knew there were a couple of cars following us; the headlights shone through the back windows of the van.

“Bet you cash money they didn’t torch that other one,” Milos said to Dana. “We’re gonna have to go looking for pretty boy.”

Great. Now Balthazar’s doomed, too.

In despair, I glanced over at Lucas. He didn’t look nearly as upset as I did. Actually, he didn’t look that upset at all. He looked—
excited
.

Slowly he unfolded one of his fists to reveal handcuff keys in his palm.

How did he do that?
All I knew was that we could get our handcuffs open, and maybe we had a chance.

Dana turned on the van’s radio, and music flooded the space. Instantly Lucas went to work, fumbling with his own cuffs for just a second until they opened. I watched him flex his hands, testing his strength. Together we looked toward the front of the van, but neither Dana nor Milos was watching us. So he leaned forward, flash fast, and dropped the keys in my hand.

My clammy hands were slick, and I was scared I might drop the keys, but I didn’t. Instead I tried to work the key into the lock; it was harder than it looked and made my fingers cramp. I wondered what we’d do once we were free. Jump out the back and run for it? With the cars right behind us, that didn’t give us much hope—but it was better than nothing.

“Hey,” Milos said. “Stop at the yellow.”

“I can make it.” Dana nonchalantly drove on.

“Dammit.” Milos leaned to examine his passenger-side mirror. “The others got stuck behind the light. Cop’s right
there, so they can’t run it.”

“No big,” Dana said. “They know where we’re going.”

Lucas lunged forward, grabbing Dana across the neck. He snarled at Milos, “Get outta the van or I slash her throat.”

Dana screamed. My mind went blank with panic.

Where did Lucas get a knife?
With shaking hands, I kept working with the handcuff key, and finally the metal cuffs snapped open. Milos nodded once, at Dana, and she pulled the van over with a jerk.

Milos got out, but he said, “You aren’t getting far.”

“Wait and see,” Lucas said, leaning forward to pull the van’s door shut. Instantly Dana slammed onto the gas. The van’s tires squealed against the pavement. Lucas said, “You think they bought it?”

I wanted to ask what they were supposed to have bought, but it was Dana who answered. “Maybe. Maybe not. We gotta move.”

“What’s going on?” I demanded. The van bumped along the pavement, jarring us all.

Lucas gave me a quick hug. “Dana slipped me the handcuff keys. I knew how to play it from there. What I don’t know is whether she’s got any plan beyond this.”

“Nope,” Dana said. “This is pretty much it, plan-wise. Sorry, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time.”

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded. “Why turn us in and then get us out? Did your conscience finally get to you?”

There was a brief pause, during which all we heard was the
music on the radio. Dana finally said, “Bianca, I didn’t turn you in.”

Raquel.

Betrayal burned like fire. I should’ve felt angry, but I didn’t. All I could think about was the picnic we had on the Evernight grounds, the one Raquel had put together to cheer me up. We’d eaten sandwiches together on the grass and pointed out the new yellow starburst blooms of dandelions. It had been springtime. She had done that for me, and then in summer she’d given me up to die.

“Don’t be mad at her,” Dana said. “She’s new to all this. She got confused. I know she’s going to regret it.”

Lucas said, roughly, “Later. What are we doing now?”

“I’m dropping y’all around Grand Central,” Dana said. “From there you can catch a train to anywhere.”

“Not if we’re broke.” My voice sounded unbelievably harsh, even to me. “Did you think to bring money?”

Dana winced. “No. No time. This isn’t going in the Rescue Hall of Fame, is it?”

“You’re doing great,” Lucas said. “Just let us out and I can take it from there.”

She pulled over on a side street. Skyscrapers loomed here, their lights blazing even at this hour. It wasn’t yet dawn, but the sky had begun to lighten. Nobody much was on the roads, just a few taxis. To my surprise, Dana got out of the van when we did and walked around to us. She and Lucas faced each other squarely.

“You still don’t know what to think,” Lucas said. “Do you?”

She shook her head. “Nope. But, Lucas, you’re as close to a brother as I’m ever gonna have. I’d rather be wrong to set you free than be right to do you harm.”

Lucas made this weird choking sound in his throat, and then all of a sudden, he and Dana were hugging each other tightly. I saw a tear roll down Dana’s cheek.

When they let go, I wanted to say thank you, but I was still angry with her. The fact that I was wrong to be angry with Dana instead of Raquel didn’t seem to have much to do with anything. I managed to say, “What will you tell the others?”

“That Lucas took me hostage.”

“Will they believe that?” I said. Milos was already suspicious of Balthazar’s “death.”

“He will once Lucas makes it convincing,” Dana said, squaring her shoulders.

I didn’t get what was going on, but Lucas apparently did. He grimaced. “I really don’t want to.”

“Let me refresh your memory on how this works,” Dana said. “I save your butt, you save mine. Do it!”

Lucas punched her in the face so hard she slammed into the back of the van. I gasped. Although Dana staggered, she managed to stay on her feet. Lucas said, “You okay?”

“Will be,” she said thickly. Blood dripped from her lip onto the pavement. “Why do you have to be so good at your work?”

“Dana,” I began. “Are you sure—”

“Why are you still here?” she demanded.

Lucas grabbed my hand, and the two of us began to run. My breath caught in my throat, and the sidewalk jarred my feet, but I pushed myself to go faster and faster. All I could hear was Dana’s voice behind us, shouting, “Get out while you can!”

ALTHOUGH THERE SHOULD’VE BEEN AN AGENT IN the subway booth, it was empty; maybe somebody thought 4
A.M
. was as good a time as any to take a break. It gave us a chance to jump the turnstiles and wait for a train.

We sat together on one of the old wooden benches, which was layered thick with graffiti. Neither of us said anything at first. I felt like everything around me was very far away, and it was hard to remember that this wasn’t some bad dream or a terrible memory. It was like my brain wanted to trick me into thinking that it couldn’t be happening here or now.

The first thing that intruded into my consciousness sharply enough to goad me into speaking was the sign hanging overhead.

“‘Downtown,’” I read. “That’s the direction we want to go, right?”

“Don’t see what difference it makes.” Lucas leaned his head against the tiled wall. “As long as we’re putting some distance between us and them, it’s all good.”

All good
were not words I would’ve used to describe our situation. I thought I realized what he was trying to do. “I know you want to be strong for me,” I said softly, “but right now I think it’s more important that you be honest with me.”

“Strong.” Lucas closed his eyes tightly. “Is that what I’m being? Because it doesn’t feel like it.”

Black Cross was all he ever had in the world,
I told myself.
What I went through was horrible, but for Lucas, tonight was even worse. He lost his mother, his best friend—everything but me. Maybe it’s my turn to be the strong one for a while.

“We’ll be okay.” I took his arm in my hands and examined the burns from the holy water. They were thin pink stripes that looked like lines of very bad sunburn. “Wait and see.”

Just then a gust of wind blew through the tunnel, heralding the arrival of the train. I cast a worried glance behind us as we boarded, but nobody followed. Only one other person was on the car, a college-age guy who was asleep across the seats and smelled strongly of beer.

As the train rumbled into motion, I led Lucas toward a map of the subway system. “You know your way around New York better than I do,” I said. “So you can figure out if we’re going the right way.”

Lucas moved slowly, like a man walking through water. He focused on the map, clearly wanting to do something useful. “Like I said before, there’s no right way. Except, you know, farther from them.”

“Of course there’s a right way.” I was surprised Lucas hadn’t
seen it; the answer seemed so obvious, to me. “We need money and a safe place to hide for a little while. In other words, we need to find a friend.”

“Balthazar,” he said.

I nodded. “So, are we headed to Chinatown or not?”

Lucas put his hands on either side of the map. “Yeah. We’re going the right way.”

Although Lucas remembered the name of the street Balthazar had directed us to, at first neither of us could spot the correct store. It was too early for the shops to be open, so they all looked the same: identical storefronts shuttered tightly with metal grates. We had to wait.

Waiting around in the early morning hours when you have no money, not even a few dollars for coffee? There’s nothing to do,
nothing
, and time seems to stretch into infinity.

I can’t say it was boring, though. We knew that at any second a Black Cross patrol might sweep through and see us. That kept the adrenaline pumping.

“We should have stayed on the train,” I said wearily, after a couple hours of walking around the block. “We could’ve slept, like that drunk guy.”

“Could you sleep right now? Honestly?”

I sighed. “Probably not.”

Lucas cast a sidelong glance at me, and his mouth quirked in a half smile.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You’re not allowed to get mad.”

“It’s my hair, isn’t it?” I turned to see my reflection in the window of a nearby dry cleaners. Although my outline was a bit hazy because of the enforced diet I’d been on lately, I could see that, sure enough, my dark-red hair stuck up at weird angles. It was obvious that I’d been yanked out of bed and hadn’t had a chance to take care of it. Quickly I combed through it with my fingers, trying to restore some kind of neatness. “Oh, my God.”

“You look fine,” Lucas said. “Just silly, kind of.”

“Oh, yeah?” I gave him a mock-angry glare. “You’ve looked prettier, too, you know.”

He rubbed his chin, clearly feeling the stubble there. Between the five o’clock shadow, the rumpled clothes, and his wild bronze hair, Lucas came across as fairly disreputable. I almost liked that nobody but me could tell what kind of person he really was.

“Maybe we should make a trip to the beauty salon,” he said.

“Get his and hers manicures.”

I laughed. “You’d rather go back for the fall term at Evernight Academy.”

That made him grin, too. “Oh, I can just see that. ‘Hey, Mrs. Bethany, miss me?’”

The shared joke warmed us both and took the edge off our exhaustion and fear. We embraced, and it would’ve lasted a long time but for something sharp jabbing into my abdomen. “Ow. What the—”

I looked down to see my jet brooch, still pinned to the waistband of my jeans, where I’d put it the afternoon before. Tenderly
I touched the carved petals of the flowers there.

“You’ve still got it,” Lucas said. “If we could only bring one thing with us, I’m glad it was that. Of course, if we could’ve brought two things with us, my coffee can of money would’ve been the second choice.”

Although I hated to say it, I had to. “We could pawn the brooch again, like we did when we first ran away.”

Lucas shook his head and said, heavily, “I couldn’t get it back for you this time.”

After another hour or so, the shops finally opened. It was still hard to figure out which was the right one, because most of the stores seemed to stock a lot of the same merchandise: trinkets for tourists, mostly, like paper fans and parasols or polyester kimonos and slippers. Finally, I caught a glimpse of a woman behind a counter who looked familiar.

“Excuse me,” I said, as Lucas and I wove our way through the merchandise toward her. “I’m looking for Balthazar.”

She froze, and for a moment I thought she was scared of us. We did look pretty frightening. Then her face relaxed as she recognized me. She hurried to the back of the store, pulled back a bead curtain, and yelled something in Chinese. The old man I’d seen before appeared from behind the bead curtain; when he looked at Lucas, his eyes narrowed, but then he recognized me. He led us through the bead curtain and up two flights of rickety steps. Rapping twice on a door, he called to Balthazar, then motioned to us, like,
take it away
.

I opened the door. Inside was a small room with a sharply
slanted ceiling—an old storage room, or maybe an attic, that had been converted into a cramped bedroom. A double bed filled almost the entire room, and crates of paper parasols and fans filled most of the rest. The one lamp had an embroidered shade in brilliant orange and pink, which made the light unexpectedly warm and almost pretty. In the center of the bed, beneath a black silk coverlet emblazoned with a dragon, propped up on some pillows, lay Balthazar.

“Bianca?” He didn’t quite seem to believe his eyes. “Lucas?”

“You look better,” I said. He did, but that was a matter of degrees. Scars still marked his chin and cheeks. Balthazar wore no shirt, so I could see that in the center of his chest was a dark, angry star—where Lucas had staked him. None of that seemed to matter as much as the smile that spread across his face.

“It’s good of you both to come,” he said, “but it’s dangerous.”

“You’ve got it the wrong way around.” Lucas closed the door.

“We’re the ones on the run this time.”

“What?”

“I slipped up,” I confessed. “Raquel saw me drinking blood, and she—well, she turned me in. We only barely managed to escape.”

“Raquel—that’s impossible. She wouldn’t.” Then Balthazar thought it over, moving past his initial rejection of the idea. “I’m sorry.”

“We have to talk about something else,” I said quickly. “If I start crying today, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”

Balthazar winced as he pushed himself completely upright.
His voice was gentle as he said, “Sit down. Both of you.”

The only place to sit was the foot of his bed. As soon as I touched the mattress, I knew I wanted to lie down, so I stretched out across the end. Lucas sat next to me cross-legged and stroked my jeans-clad calves with one hand. The bed felt like the most comfortable place in the world; until that moment, I hadn’t realized it had been more than six weeks since I’d slept on a real mattress. I had almost forgotten anything could be so soft.

Balthazar said, “Tell me what you need.”

“Cash,” Lucas said bluntly. “If you’ve got any.”

Balthazar motioned toward the corner. “My wallet is in the pocket of those slacks. Grab it, will you?”

Lucas did so and tossed it to Balthazar. Then my eyes went wide as Balthazar pulled out seven hundred-dollar bills and slapped them into Lucas’s hand. “I’d give you more if I had it on me, but I don’t.”

“Whoa, whoa.” Lucas stared down at the money. “This is—well, it’s a lot.”

“You saved my life, Lucas,” Balthazar said. “I guess that means I owe you one.”

Shaking his head, Lucas replied, “You don’t have a life to save, buddy.”

“You know what I mean,” Balthazar said.

“Yeah, I guess I do. “Lucas was quiet for a few moments.

I protested, “Balthazar, we don’t want to take all your money.”

To my surprise, he laughed. “This is hardly all my money.” When I frowned in confusion, Balthazar leaned against the
headboard and smiled. “I invested in sugar in the eighteenth century. Coal in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, I bought some stock in Ford Motor Company. In the late twentieth century, I sold that stock and sank the proceeds into computers. Money is not one of my problems.” He sighed. “If you could remain in New York another week or so, by then I’d be able to go to the bank, get some real cash for you.”

“That’s okay, Moneybags,” Lucas said. “This will get us out of town.”

“If this is about pride, please, stop and think.” Balthazar looked stern. “Keeping Bianca safe matters more than scoring points.”

Lucas glared at him. “This doesn’t have jack to do with pride. We can’t even spend one more day in New York. They’ll be watching the train and bus stations by this afternoon if they aren’t already.”

Balthazar held up one hand. “No time even to rest, huh?”

“Guess not,” I said. Regretfully I pushed myself up from the soft bed. “Will we be able to reach you here?”

“It’s going to be another week or two before I’m back on my feet. I’ll be staying here.”

“But, later than that—could the people downstairs forward a letter to you? Or do they have a phone number we could use?” A lump had begun to form in my throat. “There has to be some way we can talk to you again someday. This can’t be good-bye forever. Right?”

Balthazar and Lucas shared a look. I knew they both thought
it would be safer if this really were good-bye forever. I also could tell that Balthazar didn’t want this to be the ending for us either, and that Lucas didn’t exactly approve. Looking Lucas very squarely in the eye, Balthazar said, “Take one of the cards at the cash register downstairs. That phone number will work for me while I’m here, and I will check in for messages every so often after that. You might ask them about transport out of town, too—there’s a way to get out of New York without coming near a bus or train station.” The pause was slightly awkward, so Balthazar quickly added, “And ask them for some blood before you go. They picked some up from the hospital for me yesterday, and you could probably do with a couple of pints.”

“There’s something else you have to know before we go.” I felt weird about discussing this with Balthazar, but I knew he’d probably find out sooner or later. He needed to be on his guard.

“Charity is in New York.”

“What?” Balthazar pushed himself upright in bed. “Is she trying to find me? Does she need my help?”

“She needs help,” Lucas deadpanned, “but not yours.”

I shot Lucas a glare. “Charity’s fine. She was worried about you, that’s all.” I wondered whether to tell him about her attack, but I decided against it. Balthazar was injured and in no shape to deal with that kind of news.

“One more thing,” Lucas interjected. At first I thought that he was going to talk about Charity’s attack, but he was thinking more constructively. “Black Cross suspects we might’ve let you go. They’ll be looking for you, too. So I wouldn’t hang out in
Manhattan any longer than you’ve got to.”

“I understand.”

I crawled forward and put my arms around Balthazar’s neck. Because of the wound on his chest, I couldn’t really hug him, not like I wanted to, but this would do. He rested his head against my shoulder. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“Thank
you
,” he said. “Both of you.” Now that I had stood in the center of a ring of Black Cross hunters and feared for my life, the same way Balthazar had, I could understand the depth of gratitude he felt.

Right when the embrace threatened to last too long, I let go and backed off the bed without another word. That was the end of our farewells, except for my smiling over my shoulder at Balthazar as we went out the door. He held up his hand in a wave, visible in the narrowing crack of the door as Lucas pulled it shut.

Lucas paused, the two of us standing together on the cramped stairwell, and said, his voice low, “If you want to stay here, tell me now.”

I kissed him, and it was all the answer he needed.