Dark Craving: A Watchers Novella (7 page)

And yet, in my pocket is something I’m banking Dagursson will find even more threatening: a simple plastic lighter. By the time he knows what’s happening, I’ll have my urumi wrapped around his throat and a flame threatening his scrolls. It’ll be enough, I hope, to make him tell me what he knows about my remaining family.

I take the handle of the urumi in my hand. It’s cold, and I grip harder, imagining my heart as cold as this steel. I flex my hand, pumping blood into my fingers.

I watch the vampire pull out a scroll. He shuts the panel again and walks slowly back to his desk. His feet find the way by rote, so completely immersed is he in his reading.

I will kill Dagursson. Preserve Annelise.

It’s all the courage I need. Slowly, I extract the coiled blade.

Guard Annelise. Behead Dagursson.

Forget subterfuge and strategy. I’ll storm in and surprise him, whipping my blade before he thinks to look up. Paper-thin steel will bite his flesh, bringing hundreds of years of walking this earth to a dead stop.

I stalk from the bushes. A shadow moves on the path. I freeze. I’d know the curve of those shoulders anywhere.

“Bloody hell.” I’ve only murmured under my breath, but I’m heard.

Annelise stops, turns, steps closer.

I tear into her the moment she’s within earshot and hiss into the darkness. “What are you doing here?”

Even in the shadows, I sense her recoil. “Hi to you, too, Ronan.”

I take my urumi into my left hand and grab her arm with my right, tugging her back onto the path. “How’d you get back so fast?” She shuffles close, her side bumping mine. I experience a stupid, pleased sensation and shove it away again. “You should be halfway across the island right about now.”

“Why, thank you, Ronan,” she says in a voice thick with sarcasm. “I think I did a great job, too. It’s all that stuff I learned about the Draug. They feed on fear, and seeing as I’m not scared of them anymore, they’re not hungry when I’m around.” She stops walking when I pause to wrap the urumi back around my waist. “I mean, except for that time I was covered in my own blood. Being covered in your own blood would make”—she stopped short, tuning into what I was doing—“what the
hell
is that?”

“It’s a weapon,” I say quietly.

“Thanks, Sherlock. I mean what kind?” She tentatively reaches out to touch the blade. Her fingers brush mine.

I clench my jaw. “Careful.”

“Does this…this”—she peers closer—“this
most awesome
object have anything to do with the fact that we’re whispering?” At that, she tilts her head up and pins me with her eyes. She’s closer to me than I realized.

I step away, beginning a brisk walk down the path. “Why are you here?”

She falls into step with a sigh. “I was looking for you.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Why?” I know I’m being harsher than is necessary, but I’m in uncharted depths.

“I told you before,” she says, frowning. “I have to talk to you.” A hint of vulnerability edges her voice—a needful thing suggesting she requires me and only me.

Or maybe that’s just my wishful thinking.

Either way, I have to stop short. Look down. Focus on getting the cursed urumi back in place without severing a finger.

She pauses beside me. “But it seems you have something to tell me first.”

My head shoots up. “Tell you?” Have I betrayed my feelings so quickly?

“Yes, you have
got
to tell me the name of your weapon. Are you”—she leans closer—“are you wearing it like a belt?” She’s gleeful and adorable, and for an agonizing moment I contemplate a world in which she’d get to be gleeful about normal things like new shoes and good movies. It’s a world I can’t even imagine.

“It’s called an urumi,” I say tightly.

“An oo-whatie?”

“Urumi.”

She shudders elaborately, an endearing pout wrinkling her face.

I know I’m supposed to be stern, but I decide not to fight my smile for her. “What’s with the look?”

“Whips.” She nods to the urumi. “They make me think of Masha,” she says, referring to her longtime enemy, now dead. “Yeesh.”

“Technically it’s not a whip. Think of it like a curling sword.” I pull it back out, offering it to her. “Go ahead. You can hold it. Be careful, though. People have been known to slice their noses off while swinging it.”

“Nice,” she says, hefting the weapon in her hands. “Where on earth did it come from?”

“India.”

She gives me that look I know so well. “No, dummy, I mean where did
you
get it?”

I pause. I could lie, but what would be the point? Annelise and I are way past lying.

I lead her to a bend in the path obscured by hedges. When I face her again, only the faintest starlight remains, glimmering along her cheekbone, casting her mouth in half light, half shadow.

“It was my sister’s weapon,” I say quietly. All Acari are assigned a weapon, something in tune with who they are. Annelise has her throwing stars. Masha had a whip. Charlotte got an urumi—though I never understood why. My wee sister with something so lethal never clicked for me.

Annelise gives my comment the weighty pause it deserves. Finally, she asks, “And you know how to use it?”

“Who do you think trained Masha?”

“Ronan. Well now.” The look she gives me is a considering once-over, an assessment, like a girl seeing a guy in a new light. “I had no idea.”

I stand taller. Because I’m a piteous idiot. “There’s much you don’t know.”

Like how I might be going off to my death in order to protect her.

I gird myself to meet her eyes again. She’s watching me pensively. She’s so much smaller than me, but she’s so close. It’d be so easy to lean down. To angle just so.

“I have a secret to tell you,” she says quietly.

Her words stab me. Sharp emotion hews me like a chisel through ice. Does she have the same thoughts I do? Thoughts of how all I want to is for us to touch. Not with my powers—just a normal touch, taking her hands in mine. How easy it would be to lean over, to close the gap between us. To bring my mouth to hers.

“A secret?” My voice is a harsh rasp. Might she be having thoughts like mine right now?

“Emma’s alive,” she says. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

CHAPTER SIX

“
What?” I turn and walk to a crook in the path where I stand and stare into the trees, hiding my face from her. I need a moment to make sense of her words. Her secret isn’t that she loves me. Of course it isn’t.
I’m a fool.

She follows, and so I busy myself with the urumi, taking it from her. I nick my palm getting it back around my waist. “This better not be any more of that nonsense about you breaking into the castle,” I say finally. “The vampires—”

“No, Ronan. Listen. I did it. I snuck inside the keep.”

My insides seize the moment the words come out of her mouth. Slowly, I meet her gaze. “What did you say?”

My expression must be dangerous because she recoils slightly. “It’s okay,” she says quickly. “I’m fine. It’s just…I did it. I snuck inside the keep.”

“How?” How could she have done such a thing and survived? Many girls went into that castle—and until now, none have come back out.

“I broke in.” She waves it away, her expression urgent, desperate with some other news. “That’s not the point. The point is, I think Emma is alive.”

I grow still, uncertain I’ve heard correctly. Emma was her best friend, and Annelise still blames herself for her death. “Did you see her?”

She shakes her head. “No, but—”

I interrupt at once. Hope is a dangerous thing on this island, cutting more deeply than any esoteric sword. I should know. “Emma is dead, Annelise.”

“No,” she says firmly, “just listen. That’s what I needed to tell you. I think she might be alive. There were other Acari there. They were drugged—at least, I think they were. They were shuffling around, all dead eyed, like Stepford girls or something. And Frost—oh God—my roommate Frost was there, too. On a
table
, Ronan. Laid out on a table. It was so creepy. She looked willing, as though it was some great honor. And then a woman came in—a
woman
, Ronan—a vampire woman. She took out this knife, and she… The boys they…” Her face cracks then, her knees beginning to fold beneath her.

I reach out and wrap one arm around her, then the other. Before I know it, I’ve tucked her close. She nestles perfectly into place. I shush her, murmuring, “It’s okay. I can imagine what they did. You don’t have to tell me.”

She pushes away. “No, Ronan. You
can’t
imagine. It’s horrific. There’s this ritual…where they…they…”

She’s shivering now, and I rub my hands along her arms. “Breathe, Ann. Remember our tactical breathing,” I coax, knowing the comment might interrupt her spiral. Tactical breathing: inhaling, holding, exhaling on a four count. She’d given me such grief about the absurd term, but it didn’t matter—tactical breathing was made for situations like this.

But apparently whatever the vampires did to Frost was too gruesome to recount, because once she gathers herself, she takes a different tack. “They have all the dead Acari’s weapons hanging on the walls,” she begins evenly. “But Frost was still alive, at least she was at first, and her weapon, that ridiculous ax, was lying on a table. And they had Emma’s Buck knife on the table, too. As though she was next or something. As though she’s still alive.”

She gives me a pleading look. I know that look. Every alarm in my head shrills to life.

“I have to save her,” she says. “Don’t you see? Emma is alive. She has to be.”

“Promise you won’t do anything without me.” What if I die trying to assassinate Dagursson, and she goes back into that keep alone to save her friend? My hands tighten around her arms. “Promise you won’t go it alone.”

“Who would help me? Who could I even trust? I mean, yeah, there’s you, and Carden—”

“Don’t tell him what you just told me,” I snap. Carden claims he loves her—and God help me, I believe him—but I also believe he loves his crusade at least as much. I fear the day will come when he places his own objectives before anything—or anyone—else. “Don’t confide in Carden. Not yet.”

“He’s not one of them,” she says instantly. “I know that.”

“But he’s a vampire. And that
I
know.”

Her face hardens as she processes something. “Well, then, how about the female vampire thing. Did you know that, too? You didn’t exactly flinch when I said it.”

That’s my Ann. Always knowing, always guessing. That’s how I know she’ll survive after I’m gone.

I’ve taken too long to answer her, and my silence betrays me.

“No way,” she practically shouts, then catches herself, continuing in an angry whisper. “You have got to be kidding me. Women can be vampires, and you knew, and you didn’t tell me?”

“The Vampire Directorate likes to keep it a secret,” I say.

“Secrets, secrets, so many secrets.”

I know there’s something I should say here, something she needs to hear, but I’m too blinded by my own questions. “Was it Sonja?”

“Wait, you even know her name?” She deflates at that. “Yes, the vampire’s name was Sonja. And doesn’t it just suck for me that the person I trust most didn’t even tell me something so ginormous?”

I’m the one she trusts the most? “I didn’t know she was on the island,” I manage, fighting the urge to pull her close.

She’s scowling hard now, and I can see it’s to quell some intense emotion. “So that leaves…let’s see…
nobody
. There’s nobody else I can trust. I’m alone. Everyone I trusted is dead.” A light enters her eye, and she meets my gaze in earnest. “Do you think I could trust Alcántara? He was in the keep, but it was weird, he—”

“Kenzie,” I blurt, grasping onto anything to interrupt that train of thought. “There’s always Kenzie,” I repeat, recalling her dorm Proctor. “On this island, having friends is dangerous. But allies, they’re a good thing. She could be your ally.”

She scowls. “Spare me the lecture.”

“Just listen.” I can’t have her thinking about Alcántara. “Kenzie is different from the others,” I insist. “I know. I was the one who brought her in.”

She jerks from me. “Why are you always going on about Kenzie?”

My hands are left cold and empty. I clench them into fists. “What?”

“
What
what? I mean,
what
is the big deal with Kenzie?”

I struggle to parse this sudden hostility. “It’s just a sense I get.”

“You’ve told me to trust her before. I don't see what makes you say it. Kenzie, Kenzie, Kenzie. What’s so special about her?”

I smile then, broadly. Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? Once more, I reach for her. She flinches at first, but I won’t be stopped. I cup her cheeks in my hands, making her face me. “Kenzie and I aren’t close like you and I are, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”