He crashed down, books and paper going everywhere, and everybody started laughing. Professor Raju crossed her arms. “Mr. Younger, you’ll never learn to balance equations if you can’t balance yourself.” Lame teacher humor, but people snickered anyway; Samuel looked furious but sullenly righted himself. I knew he Wouldn’t make fun of anybody else for at least a day or two.
Lucas didn’t join in the laughter. The hunger had taken him over, and I realized it was taking every bit of his focus and will to keep from attacking the girl two rows ahead.
When class was dismissed, Lucas got up so quickly that his desk scraped across the floor. Samuel and his creepy friend laughed, and Samuel said, “What’s the big hurry, Lucas? Cotta change a Tampax?”
A couple other vampires laughed, but Skye, who had been in the front row, whirled around. “Don’t you guys ever leave him alone?”
“What do you care if we don’t like this jerk?”
“I’m looking at the biggest jerk in the room, and it’s not Lucas.”
While Samuel and Skye had it out, Lucas grabbed his stuff and rushed out of the room. I followed him, and only my ability to travel above the crowds of students allowed me to keep up. Lucas shoved and pushed, going faster and faster, ignoring every annoyed look he received. He was focused on only one thing: getting out.
Lucas flung the great hall’s huge wooden doors open with both hands. Gold and tan leaves on the lawn crunched beneath his feet, and I could tell he was preparing to run. He’d vanish into the woods again, kill as many creatures as he could, beat himself into a pulp. Not again, I thought in despair. Please, not again!
At that moment, Balthazar appeared, like he’d materialized in front of Lucas. He must have called on his vampire speed to reach him. “Bad day?” he said.
“Get out of my way,” Lucas growled.
“No.” Balthazar grabbed Lucas’s arm and towed him back into the building. “You’re coming with me.”
“What are you doing?” I whispered furiously into Balthazar’s ear.
“Stopping him from tearing himself up.”
Which was what I’d wanted, too, but this would only make a bad situation worse. “He needs out of there. Away from the humans. Can’t you see that?”
Balthazar smiled grimly as we went through the hallways. It looked weird — him basically dragging Lucas along like that, Lucas almost out of it — but Balthazar didn’t seem to mind making it worse by talking to me out loud. “I know you don’t trust me anymore, but You’re just going to have to deal.”
Their destination turned out to be the fencing room. No lessons at this hour: It was deserted, the gear neatly stowed away. A few mats remained on the floor, but otherwise everything looked bare. “Okay,” I said after the door shut behind us, as I allowed myself to take visible form. “We’re out of the crowd. Is that enough?”
“It’s enough,” Lucas said. He looked like he wanted to double over. “Just leave me alone, okay? I can — just leave me alone.”
“No can do,” Balthazar said, right before he punched Lucas in the face.
I gasped. Lucas staggered back a step, one hand to his jaw. His eyes darkened, and I could see his self — control straining, stretching, right at the point of failure.
“You need to get it out.” Balthazar said. He pulled off his sweater so that he stood there in aT — shirt. “So let’s get it out.”
“I’m not fighting.” Lucas’s voice shook.
Balthazar grinned. “Then I guess I’II just have to beat the crap out of you.”
He swung at Lucas again, but Lucas’s fighting instincts took over. He blocked the blow and shoved Balthazar halfway across the room. In an instant, Balthazar returned, smashing his fist into Lucas’s gut. Lucas hit him back harder, snapping Balthazar’s head back.
“Guys, stop this!” I shouted, but Balthazar didn’t listen, and Lucas couldn’t hear. They were two vampires — two monsters — struggling for dominance, and nothing else in the world mattered.
Fists. Blood. Sweat. They tore at each other like animals. Freaked out, I tried to think of how best to stop this and decided, Right, time to ice the room. But even as I began, I realized what was happening.
The crazed look had left Lucas’s eyes. Instead, his gaze was sharp, directed, like he was on a Black Cross mission again. Every punch was focused; every move was tactical. Fighting like this, against an opponent just as strong as he was, had given him an outlet for the desperate energy building inside him.
What BaHhazar was getting out of this, I had no idea, but even when Lucas kicked him in the jaw, sending him sprawling across the floor, he had a lunatic grin on his face.
Balthazar laughed from his place on the ground, holding two fingers to his mouth and pulling them back to see the blood. “Only some Black Cross redneck would stoop to kicking a guy in the mouth.”
“Only some half — rotten corpse would let me.” Lucas sort of blinked, hke he couldn’t believe he’d make a joke. Like that, apparently, the fight was over.
Everything was quiet for a few seconds, until!said, Lucas, are you all right now?”
“Yeah.” He thought that over, his attention drifting from me to Balthazar. “Yeah. Thanks, man.”
Balthazar said, “If you get wound up like that again, and you need an outlet, just find me. We can spar. Fence. Whatever it takes to get it out. It helps; You’ll see.”
Lucas didn’t look like he entirely believed that, but he nodded. He held out a hand to help Balthazar from the floor. When Balthazar’s eyes met mine, he smiled, maddeningly smug. “What, you’re not going to thank me, too? Or would that mean admitting I was right about something?”
“You enjoyed it,” I retorted.
Balthazar shrugged, unable to deny it. He grabbed his sweater from the floor. “I’m going to shower before class. See you guys later.” Once we were alone, Lucas said, “Bianca, I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“Breaking down like that, in front of you.”
“You didn’tbreak down.” I insisted. “You were able to control it.”
“Balthazar was able to control it,” Lucas corrected me.
He had a point. but I knew we needed to focus on the positive. “You’re feeling better now. I can tell.” He looked better: in fact. with sweat glistening on his skin, his hair mussed and his uniform askew, he looked pretty amazingly hot.
If only we could touch each other without him feeling the urge to bite, I thought longingly. I know better ways for him to burn off that energy.
“I feel. . good.” Lucas stood a little straighter. “Calmer than I have in a long time. It’s like all this white noise in my head finally went quiet and I can actually think.”
I joked, “Maybe this would be a good time for you to work on your psych paper.”
“Actually, you know what?” Lucas stepped back and straightened his sweater. “This is as good a time as any to break into Mrs. Bethany’s carriage house.”
“Wait. What?”
“Mrs. Bethany’s hiding traps for wraiths around the school, right? We can’t protect you until we know more about where she’s putting them, and why.· He grinned, and for a moment he looked like his old self, when we first met — handsome, aggressive, and quite possibly up to no good. “Feel like a little breaking and entering?”
“We should wait until she’s off the school grounds sometime. Or at least in class. I don’t think she’s teaching this period. It’s dangerous,” I said, as Lucas kept going down the stairs.
“It’s always going to be dangerous. At least right now, I can focus on what I’m doing. That’s got to help our chances.”
I wasn’t wholly convinced, but Lucas did have a point — and besides, he seemed dead set on doing it now. ‘Til be your lookout. If she comes out there, I’ll throw pebbles against the window, something like that.”
“Sounds good.” Lucas grinned, and in that moment, it felt like we were on some great adventure together, like it had been back when we first 10o sneaked around to see each other. Apparently burglary could be very romantic under the right circumstances.
Nobody else seemed to be around on the school grounds; Lucas was currently cutting class. (Plenty of the vampire students did this — they were here less to learn the subjects than to learn how to fit in, which the teachers tacitly recognized — but when they skipped class. they usually did it for something more fun than lounging around outside.) At his nod, I darted forward to circle Mrs. Bethany’s carriage house. I peered through each window, slightly frosting a couple of the panes. She wasn’t inside. “The coast is clear.”
