Dark Craving: A Watchers Novella (6 page)

The effort it takes to hide my pleasure is tremendous. Almost impossible. I grit my teeth and focus on the burning in my lungs instead. There’s the ghost of a stitch in my side. I embrace it.

I jerk my attention to the others. Only half a dozen Initiates are left in my class, and I watch them along the rocky shoreline as they poke at some poor creature washed ashore. “It’s time,” I call. Measuring my tone has made it overly harsh. I don’t care. On this island, shows of kindness are deadly. “Class. Now.”

As the Initiates stand and stalk up the beach toward me, the difference between them and their fallen classmates is clear. Lithe and catsuited, they have the grace of predators. They are savagery and hunger, weapons in female form. They are a sight to behold—and their attention is zeroed in on me.

There are men who’d envy my position. Those men are fools.

This time next year, there will be even fewer survivors from this class. While a small fraction of male students successfully transition from Trainees to Vampire, even fewer of the females endure the ascension from Acari to Initiate to Guidon to finally become the cream of the cream, the most elite, a Watcher.

Annelise could make it, I think, and as I do, I feel her appear by my side. “You’re back,” she says under her breath as we wait for the rest of the girls.

“Aye,” I manage. I want to turn, to stand closer, but force myself to ignore her.

I feel her smirk as she says, “You’re doing the secretive thing again.”

“Aye,” I repeat blandly, knowing it’ll coax a laugh from her. It’s unwise, like a stupid, sodding schoolboy, but her laugh warms me even more than her smile.

“Okay, be that way.” She pauses. “I worried you left me,” she says, her tone uneasy. Earlier this term, Carden left her for weeks. She must’ve thought it was my turn.

I let myself look at her, finally. “I’m here,” I say, infusing my voice with a gravity I hope she hears. “I’m not leaving.”

Something eases around her eyes, setting them alight, and I have to look away.

“Good,” she says, perky once more. “They had Otto subbing this Wilderness Workshop of yours”—she shoots me a challenging grin, unable to resist teasing the name of my class—“and it just wasn’t the same. He’s way too metrosexual to be teaching us how to, like, find and treat water. He strikes me as more a how-to-find-and-treat-your-espresso-while-in-Berlin kinda guy.”

I shoot her a scolding look. I didn’t time this right at all. I should’ve slowed my pace sooner than I did. This is way too much time alone with her. Way too much biting my cheek not to smile.

She sidles closer. “I need to talk to you.”

I stiffen. She’s too close. Her hair carries a sweet, clean scent, like pears, and it startles me.

I shift away, but we’ve moved at the same time, and her arm brushes mine. The warmth of her, so near to me, prickles my skin with goose bumps. My muscles seize, my back stiffening. I cup a hand around my mouth to yell down the beach. “Party’s over, ladies. Double time it. Let’s get to work.”

“Seriously, Ronan.” She sounds so urgent, so alone and needy.

I can’t resist it, can’t resist her.

“I heard you,” I say quietly. “Later. We’ll talk in the dining hall.”

“No, it needs to be private.” She edges closer. “Can we walk back together?”

Together.
How that would be…

I edge away. “That’s no good.” Too many eyes are watching us.

“Tonight?”

“There’s something I need to do tonight.” Stake out Dagursson. Maybe even
stake
Dagursson. I need to get this mission over with. I need to focus. Survive. Make sure I can stay here. Near her.

“Then when, Ronan?” The others are getting closer, and she’s spoken to me in a whisper, her husky voice a quiet murmur at my side. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Ten thousand scenarios shoot through my head, each one a fiery comet of possibility.

“Tomorrow.” My voice has grown cold, but I don’t know any other way. I don’t know how to do this. “Catch me after breakfast tomorrow.”

She shrugs. I feel how tense she is, how anxious and preoccupied, but I can’t let it get to me. Can’t let
her
get to me, not when I have this suicide mission ahead of me.

I dive into my lecture.

“Orienteering,” I say loudly. “Who knows what it is?” Annelise begins to speak, and I cut her off. “Someone else. Isabella?” I turn to the auburn-haired Initiate who’s been on my blacklist since she and her friend tried to drown Annelise in the surf.

The girl gapes at me with a look of profound boredom. “Isn’t that what you do, like, on the first day of something?”

“You can’t be serious,” Annelise mutters.

“You’re thinking of the word
orientation
,” I say quickly, before the two have a chance to get into it. “Technically, orienteering is a sport, though it began as a military exercise. Think of it as navigation. How to find your way through rough countryside quickly.”

I spent months turning Annelise into a strong swimmer. I taught her how to use a grappling hook, how to land a fall. I drilled her through one-armed push-ups, wind sprints, and endless kip-ups. And now, if she ever needs to make a quick escape off the island, I want to make sure she’ll know how to find her way.

“Can’t the vamps just give us a GPS like the rest of civilization?” someone asks.

“No GPS,” I say with exaggerated patience. “And what’s more, for our purposes, you won’t have a map or compass either.”

Annelise gives Isabella a broad smile. “Seeing as you have no moral compass, that shouldn’t be a stretch.”

“Acari Drew,” I snap. My affection for her runs deep, but in class I have to treat her as I would any other student…even if the joke was a good one. “I appreciate your wordplay, but please let me do the lecturing.”

She tips her head, hiding a grin. “Yes, Tracer Ronan.”

Isabella’s eyes narrow on us. The red-haired Acari isn’t exactly the vampires’ pet, but I have seen her chatty with one of Headmaster Fournier’s staff. It’d be the death of me and Annelise both if we presented anything other than the picture of propriety…and I fear we’re not succeeding.

I turn from Annelise. I need to get my head in the game. If I’m going to assassinate a member of the Directorate and live to see the next day, I need total focus.

Which means I need Annelise someplace where she can’t give me her smile.

A solution hits me. I tell the girls, “Tonight you’ll be driven to the far end of the island. You’ll navigate your way home using the stars.”

I feel Annelise’s reaction the instant the words are out of my mouth.
Bloody hell.
I catch her eye, sending her a flash of sympathy so brief only she’d notice. The assignment would rake up painful memories for her, being so similar to a punishment she’d endured when she’d first arrived on the island. It’d been the thing that bonded her to Emma, her best friend…Emma, whose death she blames on herself.

Our eyes meet, and she gives me the hint of a nod. She’s okay, and of course she is. She’s got a spine of steel. She is resolved. She’s a survivor. She’s my Ann.

I continue my lecture on autopilot. It’s one I’ve given before. And the discussion goes much as it has before. The same questions—some thoughtful, some inane. I can tell by a student’s question whether or not she’ll make it. Whether she’ll survive in a fundamental way. It takes more than savagery to be a skilled Watcher. A Watcher is clever and smart, cool under pressure. She can assemble a homemade weapon as easily as making an omelet. She knows what to say and how to say it—in a variety of languages.

“Take a heading,” I tell them.

“What’s a heading?”

“Find a distant spot in the landscape—a certain rock, there are all kinds of options on this island—and head toward it.”

“Why do you need a heading?”

“You might wander in circles without one.”

“How do you know what direction you’re going?”

“Look at the sun to orient yourself.” I find the sun in the sky and point to it. “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. People have used sundials for centuries. They work. Put a stake in the ground, and watch as the shadow falls in different spots as the sun moves through the sky. Actually, that’s your assignment for the afternoon. Make a sundial. See if you can tell me what time it is.”

There’s a round of moaning. One of them whines, “That sounds hard.”

I raise a brow. “Survival is hard, Acari.”

“I thought our assignment was to find our way across the island,” another says.

“That’s tonight.”

“How will we find our way without the sun?”

“Simple,” I tell them. “Find the North Star. It never moves.”

“Establish true north,” Annelise adds. She rolls her eyes, her way to say
duh
.

It was a meaningless aside, but for a moment, I’m gutted.
True north.
It’s what Annelise has become to me. I hadn’t known hope before I met her, not really. When I’m with her, I feel renewed. I have possibilities. I feel known.

“How do you find the North Star?” someone asks.

I can’t find my voice, but Ann answers for me, and it’s a mercy. “It’s at the very tip of the handle of the Little Dipper.” She’s dropped to her knees, already at work sketching out the face of her sundial. “It’s the bright one,” she adds dismissively, concentrating on drawing lines in the sand. “You can’t miss it.”

“Can’t you just find that, then?” another student asks.

My eyes keep returning to Annelise, mesmerized by her focused intent. She’s proud—she’ll want to be the first one to finish this assignment.

“Tracer Ronan?”

I shake the nonsense from my head. “You can’t always have your true north.” There’s a pathetic metaphor in there somewhere.

“Why not?”

I shrug, growing impatient, eyes once more landing on Annelise. She’s digging in the side of her boot to pull out a throwing star. She’ll use that instead of a stick to cast a shadow for her sundial. “Because something might get in the way,” I say distractedly. She’s so clever, working through the assignment—it’s like I can see the cogs spinning in her head. “Like a body of water, or…” I must focus on class but can’t look away. She’s planting the star in the sand. There’s a flash of blue-white glare as light catches the steel. “Or some other natural element, like a—” I spot a design etched along its face—the pattern of a bird’s wing. It’s the star Carden gave her. Jealousy stabs me.

“Like a…?” a female voice prompts.

Annelise tilts her face to me, giving me an inquisitive look.

“Or a”—I rack my brain, trying to remember what I was saying, remember how to breathe—“Like anything. You might walk into a crevasse. A lake. A monster. Enough talking,” I finish sharply. “Get to work.”

Carden’s gift to Annelise is a reminder: I have to stop gaping at her. There is only one thing I can afford to see, and that’s Dagursson, and the target I’ve put on his back.

CHAPTER FIVE

We tell students not to leave the path.
To beware the dark. I break both rules as I stand here in the shadows of the Arts Pavilion, prowling among the bushes like a burglar. I peer through the window into Dagursson’s office, seeking ideas, additional weapons, and the excuse that’ll get me close enough to kill him.

I need to get in, do the deed, and get out.

I’d failed Charlotte, but I won’t fail Annelise. If killing the old Viking is the only way to keep her alive, then that’s what I’ll do. Even though it might very well mean my own death.

I hold my breath, watching as he rises and walks to his bookshelves. But instead of selecting a book, he reaches his index finger high. Presses something. A panel pops open.

A secret hiding spot.

What does he keep in there? Is that where he’s tucked away the information about my family? If I could actually track them down… The possibilities make me reel. I could take Annelise to them. We could flee; they’d give us shelter. We could make a fresh start.

Discovering how to open it is suddenly in the top five on my life’s priority list. I wrench my neck, squinting, but can’t detect any levers or buttons in this darkness and inch to the side for a better angle. A branch snaps underfoot. I hold my breath.

But the old vampire continues in his own world. He hasn’t heard me—he wouldn’t. The thick masonry of the Arts building is as soundproof as a fortress. It’ll conceal my approach. Because I act tonight. No matter what.

I’d have liked more time to plan, but this is my only window when I’m certain to be alone. I dropped my students at various points along the western coast of the island. Annelise will be busy trekking across the island. Between the rocky terrain and the bloodthirsty Draug roaming the countryside, even someone as talented as she is will be occupied trying to make her way back.

I push thoughts of her from my head. Focus. Only focus will get me out of here alive. Only my focus will save her.

Carefully, I check the urumi wrapped around my waist. It’s the rarest of concealed weapons—one part coiling sword, one part whip—that I wear like a belt, hidden until the last moment. It’s the most dangerous blade ever created, as likely to kill me as it is to behead any vampire.