Balthazar stepped hard on the brakes, tires squealing, and shifted Craig’s car into park so fast he could feel the gears grinding. “If I go down, get the hell out of here. If they come after you, go however far you have to go to lose them. Out of town, out of state, whatever you have to do. Got it?” Quickly he popped the trunk.

Craig began, “Wait a second—” But Balthazar was already out of the car, slamming the door.

He went to the trunk of the car even as Redgrave said, “You again?”

Balthazar took out the crowbar he’d found there, marched toward Redgrave, and said, “Me again,” just before swinging the iron rod into Redgrave’s face.

They were all on him within seconds, but none of them was at their full strength, and he’d never been angrier or more vicious. More deadly. Balthazar pounded at their guts, their groins, their heads, swinging so savagely that none of them could even reach him. Nothing held him back now: not worrying about being seen by humans who would misunderstand, not fear of capture, not any sense of sentimentality, nothing. He might even have been able to hurt Charity, if she’d been with them. The monster within him had never been so free. Causing pain had never felt so good.

Redgrave staggered backward, falling to his knees. Through bloodied lips, he spat, “You know—this won’t—stop us. So why—do you bother?”

“It’ll slow you down enough,” Balthazar said, beating back one of the others. “And then I’m going to find out if it’s possible to behead you just by ripping your head off with my bare hands. Never tried that before. But you know what? I bet it works.”

Redgrave leaped up, but he was slower than a human now, and Balthazar threw him back like so many rags. As his sire fell in the snow, a pathetic wreck of his old self, Balthazar heard him say, “You’re killing Skye even now.”

Balthazar hit him again, so hard he heard the collarbone snap. As Redgrave doubled over in pain, Balthazar shouted, “Where is she?”

“She flung herself in the river,” Redgrave panted. “Better to freeze than to bleed, I suppose. Skye’s drowning or freezing to death right now … and you can’t be bothered to save her. This time, we both lose. Skye’s just like Charity—another pretty toy we broke between us.”

Once more, Balthazar smashed his crowbar into Redgrave, this time into the side of his head. His old foe went down, unconscious, and the other vampires weren’t trying to stop him; they were inching back, hoping that Balthazar would forget them.

He almost had. Without Redgrave, they were merely vermin. Let Black Cross handle them when they arrived in town. But it was Redgrave he had to kill, Redgrave he had to punish for everything he’d done—

—but every second he spent here was one he wasn’t using to help Skye.

As long as you wish to be human, you will never be able to defeat me, Redgrave had said. But keeping his soul human—human enough to love Skye and to save her—was more important than anything else. Even killing Redgrave.

Balthazar bolted for the car, leaving Redgrave behind. Craig and Britnee were still there, though both of them stared at him as if he’d grown another head. He slid into the driver’s seat, letting the crowbar fall to the floorboard, as he said, “Tell me the fastest way to get to the other side of this river. When we go over the bridge, you’ll have to hang on to the steering wheel.”

As he put the car in reverse and backed out, burning rubber, Britnee said, very quietly, “Mr. More? What’s going on?”

“We’re getting the hell out of here.” Balthazar put the car in drive as Craig mutely pointed forward. “And we’re going to save Skye.”

His anger had left him. He didn’t even glance backward at Redgrave. All Balthazar could think was, Please let me get there in time.

Chapter Twenty-eight

SKYE UNDERSTOOD NOW.

The visions weren’t merely visions. They weren’t some kind of cosmic punishment inflicted on her; they were signs showing her the path. Every death was a doorway.

“And you can walk through,” Dakota said. He sat next to her in the snow, his forearms resting on his bent knees. She still lay on the riverbank, shaking, but the cold and the pain were very distant. Her body might have been no more than an old nightgown she’d tossed aside.

Although she would have loved to embrace her brother, that was impossible the way they were now—spirits untethered to the physical world. It would have been beside the point, too. They were more fully together now—more fully aware of their love for each other—than they’d ever been before. “What—what is this?”

Dakota ran one hand through his scruffy hair; he still looked just as he had the last time she’d seen him, with his skater gear T-shirt and cargo shorts, braided necklace around his throat, and Teva sandals. “It’s only the gate. You go through, and you’re on the other side. Afterward it seems simple.”

Skye remembered the phone ringing late at night, and how she’d known, even before anybody answered, that it meant something horrible had happened. The sound of her mother sucking in a sharp breath as she heard, and the long silence that had followed before she could speak to tell them. The first time she’d seen Dad cry, and how old he looked, as if the tears had etched his wrinkles deeper. The funeral, with Dakota’s girlfriend Felicia trying to talk about how great a time he’d been having on the adventure that claimed his life. How Mom and Dad had buried themselves further in their work, hardly even acknowledging the other child they had, maybe because she reminded them too painfully of the one they’d lost.