Free Balthazar by Claudia Gray Page A

fashion—broad-skirted and bedecked with ruffles—and she’d even powdered her hair. In this modest inn, with its beaten wooden benches and plain stone hearth, she looked as out of place as an emerald amid riverbed stones. “Washington won’t move again so soon. I’m sure of it. We’ll have to travel farther afield if we want to keep feasting.”
    â€œReady to see a bit more of the world?” Redgrave crooned to Charity, who nodded obediently. Her stare was unfocused, and the sleeve of her dress had fallen off her shoulder.
    Lorenzo’s feral grin widened as the barmaid came in, carrying a tankard of ale for them. The barmaid was young and pretty—coal-black curls and plump, rosy cheeks—but no slattern meant to service the male guests upstairs for a few coins exchanged quietly on the back stair. Perhaps she was the innkeeper’s niece, or the daughter of a friend, Balthazar thought: a girl here to earn a bit of extra money for her family during a hard winter, pretty enough to cheer guests who otherwise might grumble about the cold rooms or poor food.
    But that meant she was pretty enough to tempt the cruel. Balthazar had seen that wild light in Lorenzo’s eyes before. It meant pain, and death, and the crumpled bodies of women thrown to the floor like rags.
    â€œWill you be wanting dinner?” the barmaid asked, acting more nervous than she ought to have been. She understood something was wrong about this group; she was more perceptive than most, Balthazar thought. This stirred in him nothing more than pity. It would have been better if she hadn’t known what was coming. The girl continued, “We’ve a fine stew tonight. Right filling.”
    Lorenzo ran one finger along her forearm as she poured him more ale. She jerked back, sloshing suds onto the floor and making the other vampires laugh. “We’ll eat our fill soon enough,” Lorenzo said, to even louder laughter. “You, my dear—I wish to write a poem about you.”
    Oh, God. The subjects of all his vile poems were his worst murders. Balthazar wished he hadn’t seen the vulnerability or innocence in the young barmaid’s face. Then he would not have pitied her. He tried to deaden himself to pity—it would make this bitter existence of his slightly less cruel—but he hadn’t succeeded, not yet.
    â€œWhat is your name?” Lorenzo asked. “I must know your name, you see. I must learn what rhymes.”
    The poor barmaid, obviously longing to escape but unable to, replied, “I’m called Martha, sir.”
    â€œMartha?” Lorenzo started cackling. “What in the world rhymes with Martha?” His Spanish accent hardened the th sound into a t .
    â€œThank you, sir. Good evening.” The barmaid dropped a quick curtsy and hurried out. No doubt she lived in a room on the premises. No doubt Lorenzo would find her.
    You could find her. You could warn her .
    Balthazar closed his eyes tightly, trying to silence the voice of compassion in his own heart.
    For the past 136 years, he’d drifted along in Redgrave’s wake. He’d never stooped to Redgrave’s level—murdering and drinking from innocent humans for sheer pleasure—but little remained of the proud Puritan boy he’d been in life. When he found humans worth the killing, whether they were brigands or mercenaries or rapists, Balthazar killed with all the righteous vengeance he could muster; he knew, however, that the pleasure he felt when he drank their blood was not righteous. It was purely carnal. During wartime, when they found the mortally wounded, he dispatched them quickly to the afterlife for what he tried to think of as their mutual benefit. When he could find no one wicked or dying, he ate animals, hunting deer in the forest just as Redgrave had taught him. This was as much virtue as he could claim—because he lived among murderers and did not move to stop