The Keep: The Watchers (7 page)

I pushed my way through to stand by her, protecting her. I was shaking, but not because I was scared—mostly I was totally revolted by the smell of them.

Who were these strays anyway? Why were they even out here? Tom held them in a pen south of here. They were well fed. They had no need to wander.

But now, standing close to Regina, the answer became clear. She was soaked with blood—even I could smell it. It was her blood that’d called them.

“What happened to you?” Because it wasn’t the Draug that’d done this to her. She wouldn’t be standing if they had—once a Draug began to attack, it didn’t stop. Only staking or fire stopped these monsters once they began to feed, a horrific fact I knew from personal experience.

“It was one of the guys.” Her voice was slurry, her eyes blank, and I worried she might be going into shock.

I scanned the rest of her body, taking in the bloodied neck and collar. The knot of anger and resentment that’d permanently lodged in my chest cinched tighter. “What do you mean? Which guys?” But then the Draug moaned as one, jerking my attention back in time to see them take a few steps closer. “Oh shit.”

I stepped in front of her. I needed a plan, and now. Personal experience told me this train was leaving the station.

“What?” Regina stiffened—I’d mumbled the wrong thing. “What’s wrong? I thought you said it was okay. You told me not to run.”

This close, I spotted a fire shimmering to life in the Draugs’ eyes—it was hunger. Regina was getting hysterical, and the creatures were amping up right along with her.

“What are these things?” Her voice was tremulous, panicked.

“Draug.” I felt her edging away and shot an arm back to snag her coat with my hand. “Don’t move.”

“What’s a Draug?” she wailed, her voice cracking. “What should we do?”

“Relax. Lemme think.” I wore my gym sweats and sneakers, which meant my stars were stashed in my pack. I had them out in seconds, pinched between fingertips, poised for throwing. Shuriken weren’t stakes, but they’d create a decent distraction until I could figure something else out.

“What are those? What are you doing?” Terror washed off of her in waves, and it was whipping the Draug into a bloodthirsty frenzy.

“Hey, Curly.” I shot her a look over my shoulder. “Calm down.”

The Draug snarled and inched forward. She grabbed my shoulder and shrieked, “Throw them. You have to throw them.”

I’d turned my entire focus from Regina to the monsters and was startled when she reached around me and ripped two of the stars right from my fingertips and whipped them at the Draug.

They swatted them away. Instead of being injured, they were even more riled.

“Don’t you touch my stars. Ever.” I had no choice. I had to throw the other two. A quick
thunk-thunk
, and the stars struck flesh—the neck of one of the older Draug and the chest of the younger. They swatted my shuriken away like they were mosquitoes.

We couldn’t run, but I needed room to think. “Back up slowly.” I reached around and grabbed Regina’s wrist to hold her close as I edged us away. The only thing keeping away the Draug was my tenacious grip on my own courage.
Not scared. Not scared. Not scared.
I repeated the words in my head like a mantra. I tightened my fingers around Regina’s arm. “What’s your weapon?”

“My weapon?” Her other hand found me, fingers curling into my biceps. I doubted she’d really even heard me.

“Listen. Do you have your weapon?” I prayed it was something worthwhile, something
I
could use, unlike the flute that’d been given to Mei-Ling, my roommate of last semester.

“My weapon?”

“You know. Your
weapon
.” Jesus.
This girl.
How had she survived her first day? “You did get a weapon, right?” The Draug shifted from foot to foot now, edging closer, spreading out and hemming us in. I let go of her wrist and shoved it away. “Whatever it is, get it.”

“Weapon.” She dug frantically through her pack. “Weapon, weapon.”

“Not to stress you out or anything,” I whispered tersely, “because, please stay calm…but really, any freaking day now.”

“Got it.” She pulled her hand out and shoved it toward me, presenting what looked like some sort of esoteric kids’ toy.

I peered closer. Two wooden handles with a cord strung between them. I shot her an incredulous glance. “A garrote?”

She nodded, and the hopefulness in her eyes killed me. Because, really, what the hell good would that do? The garrote was a weapon of elegance and subtlety that made me think of tuxedo-wearing spies strangling their quarry silently and at close range. “What the hell are we supposed to do with this?”

She unwound the wire, her hands shaking. “It’s used to choke—”

“I know what it’s for.” Impatient now, I simply snatched her bag and dug through. “Not for these guys.”

“Why not?”

I ignored her. There was no time to explain. I was getting scared, and that was a very bad thing to do with Draug around.

“Ah,” I chirped as my hands met something cool and hard. I pulled out a glass bottle with a colorful
Irn-Bru
label. “Iron brew?” It was the toxic orange soda they served in the dining hall. “You drink this?”

The moment I’d taken to ask such a stupid question was one moment too long.

The rest happened fast.

Regina shrugged. The young Draug lunged. I acted instantly, instinctively smashing it on the head with the bottle.

Nothing. Just a dull clonking sound…The bottle didn’t break and the Draug didn’t blink.

All three of the monsters were facing me now. The young one lunged again, and I smashed again. The stupid glass still didn’t break.

“Dammit.” I planted myself more firmly in front of Regina. I wanted to protect her, but she was also a liability. She was small like me and scared out of her wits, whimpering again, making enough injured-puppy sounds to whip the Draug into madness. I elbowed her. “Seriously, shut up.”

She nestled against my back, clawing my arms like I was her life raft. “What are they doing?”

They were about to attack. But I didn’t tell her that.

She pressed closer, and as she did, I felt my bag dig into my
hip. I nudged backward into her. “My bag,” I said. “In my bag. Quick.”

“What?” My bag jostled against me as she took it in her quavering hands. “What should I get?”

“Something. Anything.” I spared a glance, pointing to my key chain. “That. My keys.”

There were just two keys on my ring, one for the dorm front door—which was never locked anyway—and the other for my room. Both were antique-looking things with long shafts. Taking the soda bottle in my other hand, I threaded them between my fingers so they poked out like spikes from my fist.

Something about my movement catalyzed them. The Draug snapped. Like a pack of rabid wolves, they lunged on us at once. One of the older, grizzled ones was the first in my line of sight, and as he pounced toward me, I punched hard. Metal ground between the tendons of my palm with the impact, then a crunch and give as the keys punctured his heart. I flung him away.

I kept Regina safely behind me, and she was shouting in my ear, mingled screams and bizarre hysterical laughter, but the noise came at me as though from a distance. My sole focus was on the remaining two creatures. As the pale, bloated one came at me, he did an awkward amble over the body of his fallen buddy, and I used the half second to strike my keys against the neck of the bottle, and hairline cracks appeared in the glass. I hoped it’d be enough. I slammed the bottle down, hitting the Draug on the temple as he lurched at me. It dazed him for only a moment, but the neck of the bottle finally snapped off. I immediately slashed again, slicing his throat with the jagged glass.

I knelt, scooped up one of my stars, and whipped around to face the final Draug, but stopped short, needing a moment to
understand what my eyes were seeing. A pencil stuck out of his chest—Curly had already dealt with him.

She gave me a weak smile. “Like a stake.”

“Nice,” I said, studying her in a new light. I realized she was trembling. I quickly gathered our stuff. “We need to get out of here.”

We’d sprinted almost all the way back to the quad when she finally slowed and said, “Thanks for coming to my rescue.”

I slowed to a jog then to a walk and looked back over my shoulder, still trying to make sense of the whole episode. “I don’t even know what they’re doing around here. The Draug, I mean. They never come this close to campus.”

She stopped short. “You’ve seen those things before?”

I nodded. “Long story.”

But I realized she was waiting, looking expectant, so I elaborated. “Yeah, I’ve seen them before. Well, maybe not those Draug in particular.”

“What are they?”

“Like…Trainees gone wrong. They’re attracted by the scent of blood.” My eyes went to her neck. In all the uproar, I’d forgotten about her injury. “The wind off the water must’ve hit you just right and they picked up the scent. What happened to you, anyway? You said you were attacked?” I prayed we didn’t have another rogue vampire on the loose.

Her face got pinched, and she turned from me and started to walk again. “Some guy jumped me.”

I did a quick step to catch up. “You mean a vampire jumped you?”

“No, one of the
boys
.”

“But Trainees don’t attack Acari.”

She shot me a look that could kill. “This one did.”

“A
Trainee
jumped you?” At her nod, I pressed. “One of the guys just jumped from out of the blue and
bit
you?”

She nodded frantically now, looking pale and trembly like she was either about to cry or faint. Her adrenaline rush had faded, and shock was setting in.

“We need to take care of you.” I slung my pack around to my chest, grabbed a towel, and held it out to her. First things first, we needed to staunch the blood flow. “Press this to your neck. When we get back, go straight to your dorm and clean it up as best you can.”

She pressed the towel on her wound. It soaked red instantly, and she pulled it away, folded it to a clean section, and pressed again.

“That is seriously screwed up,” I muttered, catching sight of the bite mark. “Like some Dracula shit.” Carden had fed on me, but it was nothing like this carnage. “I can’t imagine the vamps okayed this. You’d think they’d find it…I don’t know…vulgar.”

I needed to find out what those boys were up to. As if Emma’s fate weren’t mystery enough, now more than ever, I wanted to know what the hell went on in that castle.

She gave me an apologetic smile. “I’m really sorry about this.”

“Sorry?” I gave Regina a probing look, trying to figure her out—for me, dispersing a pack of bloodthirsty Draug was child’s play compared to the pain of bonding with strangers. “Why are you sorry?”

“Nothing like battling a couple of corpses to ruin your week.”

I laughed. Her sense of humor was unexpected—and so much like something I’d say. “Actually,” I found myself sharing, “it’s my birthday week.”

“That sucks.”

I remembered my drunken, no-good father. “Believe it or not, this is far from my worst birthday ever. Pathetic, huh?” But then my mind went to Emma. My friend would’ve done something silly to commemorate the day. She would’ve written me a note, or stolen me an extra bagel, or something.

Regina gave me a sympathetic look that said more than any words would. “Well, at least this’ll be the worst part of your week, right?”

“You’d be surprised.” I didn’t have a problem with optimism, but naïveté was a different story. I’d helped this girl a couple times now, and I was glad of it. But I had the dreadful suspicion I was wrong about one thing: Curly wasn’t entirely like me. She’d need to toughen up if she was to survive her first month.

I sighed as I checked my watch. My next class was with Master Alcántara.

Regina had no idea how bad things could get.

I
t took everything I had to walk into Assassination and Elimination Techniques class, Alcántara’s special Initiates-only seminar. I braced to find his cold, black eyes waiting for me as I entered the room—just like always. And like always, that stare unnerved me. Infuriated me. His creepy, unnatural interest in me had only intensified since Carden’s arrival on the island.

Buzzing filled my head. Seeing him, I could think only:

1. Alcántara killed Emma.

2. I despised Alcántara.

3. Alcántara was the enemy.

My
enemy.

Like downed power lines bucking and snapping inside my skull, my thoughts were wild, volatile, charged. Lethal. I would discover what he’d done to Emma. What
they’d
done to her. The decision was irrefutable. My goal, unignorable.

I glanced around, looking for a place to sit, but hostile faces
were all around me. Girls in variations of tough and pretty, every one of them waiting for the opportunity to plunge a knife in my back.

It was Alcántara’s fault I had no friends left. When Emma died, I’d also lost Yasuo. And if Master Al had his way, he’d take Carden from me, too.

It was unthinkable.

Memories flooded me. Unbearable memories. I flashed back to those days when I’d walk into a class to sit beside Emma or Yas. Our world had been fraught with terror, and yet who knew
those
had been my good old days?