Vampire's Kiss (23 page)

But then he thumbed some foul sludge from my cheek and wiped it on his pants. I drooped. Of course. It
was
Ronan and me—Tracer and Acari. So much for our moment.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

I managed one step and then another. I hunched to the
right, curling into the pain, but I was mobile. “Yeah,” I said, a little surprised at myself. “I can.”

He nodded. “Lying down is more painful than walking.”

I frowned at that.

“Don’t worry,” he added, with a sarcastic gleam in his eye. “The worst is always the second day.”

Now I really frowned at him. “I think you’re happy I got hurt.”

He ignored that. For now. “You’ll need to massage the muscles to keep them from hardening up.”

He bent over the Draug’s body, retrieving our weapons and calmly pulling them out as if he were carving the Thanksgiving turkey. Black sludge had puddled around the monster’s head and oozed from the stake wound. “Others will come soon, drawn to the smell.”

Ronan’s jostling made more of that tarry crap seep from the body, and I held a hand over my nose and mouth. “The smell? They can probably smell this in Iceland.”

“A Draug is rotting. It carries diseases. How do you think it’d smell?” He grabbed a clump of coarse grass and cleaned my stars and his stake, then offered my weapons back. “They’ll need a more thorough cleaning when you get back.”

“Gross,” I murmured, although I was thrilled I wasn’t the one who’d done the initial scrub. The gore really was thick like tar, looking all gummy and bubbly.

“Now,” he said, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

I spun on my heel, gritting my teeth through the pain. “You don’t have to tell me twice.” I wasn’t eager to meet whatever creatures there were that’d actually be
drawn
to such a putrid thing.

With my injury to contend with, our progress was slow, but once we put some distance between us and the corpse, I began to talk. I had questions, yes. But mostly I was worried about whatever lecture Ronan was cooking up for me in his head. Wanting to distract him, I asked, “So there are other Draug on the island?”

He gave a tight nod.

Okay.
Apparently, he wasn’t going to be chatty. But then I began to wonder.…“Why do the Draug just roam around waiting to attack
us
? I mean, you’d think they’d just attack and eat
one
another
.”

“They long to eat, yes. They need blood to survive. But there’s another longing, too. To be near the living.”

“I don’t know if I needed to hear that.” I shook off the creepy, goose bumpy feel
that
thought had given me. I was glad Ronan had shown up when he had, or I wouldn’t have been among the living for much longer. “What was that weapon you used to kill it?”

“I keep these”—he slid the stake from his sleeve—“at all times.” He seemed to unclench at the topic of weaponry, and it was a relief.

My curiosity wasn’t exactly a stretch, either—his stakes might’ve been compact, but they were clearly lethal. Did other people have secret weapons stashed away that I didn’t know about? More important, did
I
need stakes?

“May I?” I held out a tentative hand and knew a thrilled shiver when, after a pause, he handed it to me. It was long and sharp, with a satisfying heft. I was surprised to realize it was carved of wood. “Cool.”

“So it is.”

“Did you make it yourself?”

He hesitated, then gave a sharp nod. “Aye. Though it’s not something I generally discuss.”

So they were
secret
stakes. And of course they would be. Vampires wouldn’t want to think about non-vampires roaming around bearing anti-vampire weaponry. The secrecy lit a fuse inside, and I was desperate to know everything. “Is it a special kind of wood? And where did you get it on
this
island, anyway?” With the isle’s scant, scrubby greenery, a stake chiseled from granite seemed a far easier thing to come by.

“There’s material to be found,” he said. “If you look.”

Questions flooded my mind, and I knew my eyes must’ve burnt bright with them. “Does it
have
to be wood?” I thought of all the old myths. “Like
Dracula
—a wooden stake in the heart?”

Reluctantly, he shook his head. “You’re right that only impaling and beheading destroy them for good. As for the material, anything works if the force behind it is great enough. Wood, steel, iron—whatever you have that can do the job.”

I hefted the stake in my hand. It definitely didn’t feel very substantial—it rather reminded me of an oversized pencil. “I’d think you’d have one in steel.”

“And where would I get steel, Annelise? The vampires don’t exactly
issue
such things.” He snatched it back and returned it up the sleeve of his sweater. “Besides, wood isn’t picked up by metal detectors.”

That shut me up. Why would he need to travel with stakes if the monsters were
here
? What would happen if a vampire discovered them? And, seriously, why did he need them,
really
? Had
he
ever considered escaping?

But I could never ask that—knowing Ronan, he’d see right through me to guess at my own objective. Instead, I chose the most banal of my questions. “Why wouldn’t the vamps want you to have it? Can’t you just say it’s to protect you from the Draug?”

“They believe the way for humans to stay safe is to remain under their purview.”

I watched avidly as he settled them back at his forearms, thinking of all the homegrown weaponry
I
could make. If I were really going to escape, chances were good I’d need more than just throwing stars and my wits to survive.

I’d be on the lookout for the right kind of wood. When the time came, I could borrow Emma’s Buck knife to shape and sharpen. “I’m totally going to whittle myself a stake.”

“You’ll
totally
do no such thing. And you won’t be speaking of it to anyone, either. If the vampires were to discover you bore a weapon that
they
didn’t give you, they’d turn and use it on you. You must promise me you’ll forget we had this conversation.”

I gave him a reluctant nod, though the seed had been planted.

His tone of voice had said he was done with
that
topic, but his frown told me he was working up to another. Not wanting the reprimand I knew he owed me, I shifted gears—fast.

“How do you know all that medical stuff?” I asked. “Like binding wounds. And checking breathing. And how you felt me…for broken ribs.” I’d meant it innocently, but stupid, hormonally challenged me stammered after the
felt me
part of that sentence.
Idiot.

But he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he answered in a flat tone, “You’ll get that in combat first aid, next semester.”

Ronan had grown tenser the closer we got to campus, his voice duller, and by the time we reached the quad, he was strung tight as a violin string. My lecture still hadn’t come, which was odd.

Something felt wrong, and then it struck me. More vampires than usual were milling around the quad. They glided down stairs, drifted from buildings, materialized from the trees, their elegant gait making it look as though they floated rather than walked.

“The blood,” Ronan murmured to me. “They scent your injury.”

Master Dagursson emerged from the Arts Pavilion as we passed. “Acari Drew. What has happened?” His faux concern didn’t fool me—I knew he’d slice and dice me for a midnight snack if but given the opportunity.

What I’d done struck me then, truly struck me. I’d gone off the path—way off the path. I’d followed a teacher without his knowledge. I’d traveled to a forbidden part of the island. I’d broken every rule in the book.

My stomach turned to ice as I realized maybe Master Dagursson might just get a chance at his midnight snack after all. Because surely I was in for some disciplining now.

How to begin to explain? My mind raced, trying to formulate my answer.

But Ronan spoke up before I had a chance to. “Sparring accident,” he said, his voice flatter and colder than I’d ever heard it. “I took Acari Drew to do some extra credit work. We
were practicing our throws, and she landed on a rock, hurting her back and slicing her arm.”

I shut my mouth not to gape. Ronan had lied. For
me
.

Which meant we shared a secret. Two secrets, if you counted knowledge of his hidden stakes. Which meant he trusted me.

It was a shift that implied other, more dire and complicated things. But what those things might be, I couldn’t fathom.

I
’d chosen the lawn in front of the gymnasium for shuriken practice. My run-in with the Draug had been a wake-up call—I needed to be as good and as prepared as I could be at all times. My rib had a hairline crack just to the right of my sternum, but this island was life or death, and injury was nothing more than an excuse. I had enemies, and apparently I had predators, too, and neither would be sympathetic, so despite the screaming pain, I kept at my workout.

The small, outdoor target area was best suited for my twofold purpose. Twofold because, yeah, I wanted to practice throwing my stars, but I also wanted to show off, just a little. I was known as the nerdy girl, and it never hurt to remind the Guidons I was as strong as I was smart.

Ronan emerged from the gym, toweling off his face and neck as he bounded down the stairs. Seeing me, he stopped
short. He was still panting from his workout, his cheeks red and clothes sweaty.

Something about this overt display of male vigor set me off kilter, and I babbled in lieu of a greeting. “I don’t know how you can bear wearing just a T-shirt in this weather. I mean, I know it’s summer and all, and I guess if you were born here—”

“You seem to be healing,” he said, cutting me off.

My babbling had sent a fresh spike of pain shooting through my chest, and I cradled my ribs, curling into my right side. “Actually, I feel like I’m dying. But thanks for asking.”

He looked around, then stepped closer. “You’ve recovered well enough to hear what I have to say. Tell me,
Acari Drew
, what part of
Don’t leave the path
is unclear?”

Here it came—my lecture. I’d thought I’d dodged that bullet. Silly me had expected the same tender, wound-binding, lie-telling Ronan, but I seemed to be about to enjoy furious-teacher Ronan, instead.

It put up my hackles. “I know the rules.”

“You’re forbidden from leaving the path.”

I was sick of being treated like a naive schoolgirl. I’d won last semester’s challenge—check that—I’d
kicked ass
in last semester’s challenge. I was cool, I was smart, I kept my friends’ secrets. Hadn’t I earned his respect?

I couldn’t help it. I looked around and said innocently, “I
am
on the path.”

He looked as if his head might explode. “You know what I mean.”

“Hey, I was just following
you
.” I wasn’t about to mention I’d spied him with the cloaked man—something told me I
should keep that little nugget to myself. “You left the path. Surely the vampires wouldn’t appreciate
you
wandering all over the place.”

The muscles in his jaw clenched tight. I’d hit on something. When Ronan had lied to Master Dagursson about my whereabouts, I’d thought it was because he trusted and wanted to protect me. But now I realized, maybe he’d been protecting himself, too.

“You’re a fool.” He spoke through gritted teeth, seething with disdain. “I don’t know why I expect more. You think you’re a maverick, Annelise. That you’re above it all. But it was just this sort of recklessness that killed my sister.” At the mention of his sister, the fury leached from his voice. “Impetuous, juvenile behavior killed Charlotte, and it’ll kill you, too.”

“I’m not your sister.” My voice was tight with exhaustion—physical
and
emotional. I was angry with him, and now I was sad, too, but it was the anger that won out. I limped to the target, retrieving my throwing stars. “I am
not
juvenile. I’ve taken care of myself my whole life. At least you had a family—I didn’t. You have no idea.”