“We’ll drink her dry,” Lorenzo said, and it wasn’t mere taunting anymore; his words sounded more like a promise to himself. “Nothing’s going to stop me from tasting her again.”
One booted foot through the freezer door made the glass shatter. Balthazar went for the largest section, which was still connected to the metal frame—that made a sort of ax, if he could pry it loose—
“Balthazar!” Skye came running back in with a jingling of bells, and how could she be so stupid as to run back into a fight between two vampires?
Then he saw the three other vampires just behind her. Two were unknown to him—disheveled, young, vicious, the usual—but the tallest of them, in the back, looked tantalizingly familiar…
Lorenzo leaped at him, but Balthazar dodged, pulling his makeshift ax free and running toward Skye. The first of the other vampires came in through the door just in time for Balthazar to slash at his neck with the glass for a swift beheading. Skye screamed—yeah, it was messy, and the vampire was new enough that it fell like a dead body to the floor—but the bigger problem was that the glass dislodged from the metal frame and shattered against the floor. No more ax.
As the other vampires came in, bells on the handle jingling, Skye pulled Balthazar backward; almost before he’d realized what she was up to, they were through the door that led to the gas station attendant’s booth. She slammed it shut and locked the door—a pitiful knob-only lock that wouldn’t hold for long, but it was better than nothing. They were pinned together in a space hardly big enough for one person to stand in, much less two. He could feel the fast rise and fall of Skye’s frightened breathing against his chest.
One of the vampires slammed against the glass wall of the booth, realizing too late that it was bulletproof. Balthazar put one hand against the far wall and tried to think of what to do; the building was so old, so run-down, that the wall felt almost soft against his hand. And there was a cold draft coming in, too.
The tallest vampire stepped closer, and for a moment, Balthazar’s mind froze. Almost without his realizing, he whispered, “Constantia.”
“Hello, darling. Long time no see.” Constantia smiled the same possessive, arrogant smile she’d always had for him. Her burnished gold hair hung long and straight as ever, and he had somehow managed to forget how tall she was—at least a couple inches taller than him. Even in the plain gray coat she wore, Constantia was a striking figure: like a statue of some avenging Teutonic goddess, beautiful beyond belief but hard as stone. “You ran far and fast last time, Balthazar. But now you’ve run in front of something we want.”
“Are we trapped?” Skye whispered. “I trapped us, didn’t I?”
“You bought us time,” he said to her, refusing to answer Constantia. Long-ago memories of the 1950s came back to him—he’d worked at a service station in Montana for a while, fixing up cars mostly, but occasionally pumping gas. This station had used the old-fashioned pumps; the switches were still on the wall. Because they were manual, not computerized, they probably still worked.
Would any gas fumes still be lingering in the tanks all these years later? They might have to find out. He snapped the switches to on with one swipe of his hand.Constantia slammed her foot into the door; the old wood bowed and splintered immediately. Two more kicks and she’d be in.
Balthazar said, “Cover your face. I’m going to break through the external wall.”
“With what?” Skye looked around, and he couldn’t resist a smile.
“With me.”
No cinder blocks, please no cinder blocks—
With all his vampire strength, he threw himself at the rotten, drafty section of the wall, which thank God was not reinforced with cinder blocks, and broke through. It hurt like hell, but Balthazar was able to stumble free of the jagged gap; Skye followed him instantly, grabbing his arm as he staggered to walk off the blow. “They’re coming,” she said as he dragged her toward the front of the station and, behind them, the bells on the gas station’s door jingled again.
“I know. Come on.”
As they ran toward the pumps, a car pulled in—long and silvery, with the weight and gleam of expense. A Bentley, maybe. Balthazar knew many vampires with a taste for luxury like that, but he also knew which of them was going to step out even before he did.
Redgrave stood up. His dark gold hair was slicked back, almost the same color as his perfectly tanned skin. The camel-colored coat he wore was tailored perfectly to his lean, angular form, and a heavy golden watch shone on one wrist. As he saw Balthazar, his hazel eyes glinted, avaricious and cruel, much as they’d been the first day they ever met—one of the last days Balthazar would ever be alive—
Skye pulled them ahead faster; at least one of them wasn’t so easily distracted, Balthazar thought. He grabbed his old lighter from his pocket, snapped it into flame, and dropped it into the pile of papers and debris in front of the old station just before pulling loose one of the pumps and turning it on.
“What are you doing?” Skye cried. “We have to move!”
“We do now.” Balthazar grabbed her hand again and ran almost as fast as he could, towing her after him though he knew it had to almost hurt her to be dragged along at this speed. But they got to the very edge of the road before the pumps blew.
The explosion slammed into them, a wave of heat as solid as rock, shoving them both off their feet and into the snowy drifts at the side of the road. Balthazar saw the wall of flame blazing up brightly and felt a deep, irresistible terror well inside him. Fire—fatal to vampires, one of the only things that ever could destroy him completely—