Vampire's Kiss (35 page)

I couldn’t get him out of my mind. And believe me, I tried. But I was drawn to him, his touch, his eyes.
Those lips.

Kissing those lips, I’d tasted the vampire blood I’d been drinking since my arrival on the island. The difference was, from Carden, it hadn’t been some refrigerated dose in a shot glass. It was hot and pulsing from the source, ringing with his life essence.

A tug of desire pulsed at my core, as though he was summoning me.

I scrubbed my hands through my hair.
Must focus.
I would
not
think about Carden’s blood. His blood had done something to me, altered me in a way I didn’t understand.

Things I didn’t understand made me
intensely
uncomfortable. And this was one thing I couldn’t ask anyone about. Carden’s warning echoed loudly in my head. Nobody could know about our bond.

“Answer my question,” Tracer Judge said with a peculiar note in his voice. He sounded annoyed, testy. “Preferably sometime today.”

I gritted my teeth and brightened my smile. A
whoops-sorry-I-zoned-out
sort of smile. “It’s a compelling question, Tracer Judge. Perhaps you’ll rephrase it for me.”

Judge didn’t smirk, though. Normally he would’ve smirked. Tracers were hard-core enough, ruthless enough, to do what it took to find and retrieve girls like me to this bleak rock. Some of them were decent, though, deep down. And Tracer Judge fell into that category.

He often let me stay after class to do independent studies. He taught topics in science—infiltration, forensics, combat medicine, the cool stuff that I loved. He was okay, for a Tracer.

Except these days there was something fundamentally
not
okay about him. Not since his secret love, Proctor Amanda, had been killed.

Though
killed
was a pretty tame word for what had happened to her. Ronan had given me details I was certain I wasn’t supposed to know. She’d been tortured. Dismembered. Flung from a cliff.

I suspected that Master Alcántara had been responsible for Amanda’s death. On our mission, I’d gotten a peek into the Spanish vampire’s interrogation techniques. They weren’t pretty.

Amanda had been going to meet Judge so they could escape.
Together.
And I was
so
sure I wasn’t supposed to know
that
bit.

I have no idea what Judge would do if he found out I knew. Kill me? Who the hell could guess? I’d learned not to trust anyone on this island. People—and I used that term loosely—played for keeps around here.

I still didn’t understand why Ronan had confided in me.
For a Tracer who’d sneakily relied on his hypnotic, persuasive power of touch in order to get me here in the first place, he sure did act like a friend sometimes.

But as I was constantly reminded, friends were a bad idea. Friends could die.

Enemies, though…I had those crawling out my ears. There were any number of girls, Acari as well as the older Initiates and Guidons, who wanted to see my ass in a sling. Especially Masha and her pal Trinity—they were Annelise Drew Enemies numbers one and two.

Just the thought sent a chill creeping along my flesh.
I’d
wanted to escape. That could’ve been
me
—tortured, mangled, discarded.

When I’d taken the assignment to go off the island for a mission with Alcántara, I’d thought it would be my chance to make a break for it. To run as far away from
Eyja næturinnar
, this Isle of Night, as I could get.

Should I have tried to escape when I’d had the chance? There had been a moment on our mission when I could’ve fled. Would Carden have killed me if I’d tried?

Somehow I knew he wouldn’t have—in the same way I knew I couldn’t go far from his side even if I tried.

All I’d wanted was to free myself, yet I found myself more entangled than ever. What I felt for Carden, this sensation in my body, was beyond thirst. It was a yearning. An emptiness that only Carden could fill. And I didn’t want that
at all
.

Except part of me really did. Want it.

Want him.

“Earth to Drew.” It was my pal Yasuo, sitting next to me. A tall, cute vampire Trainee, he had the bluster that came with
growing up in L.A. and the sensitivity that came from watching his Japanese gangster dad murder his mother. He singsonged under his breath, “Drew and McCloud sitting in a tree…”

Yas could be such a
guy
sometimes. At the moment, his real damage was probably that he’d overheard Emma—his girlfriend and my
best
friend—mention how cute Carden was.

I stared ahead, hissing into my fist, “Shut up.” But I forgave him instantly. All I knew was that Yasuo had my back, and in a place like this, that was all that mattered.

Tracer Judge silenced both of us. “Is there a problem?” he said with uncharacteristic sternness.

“No,” I told Judge quietly. “There’s no problem.”

Ever since bonding with Carden, I’d been scattered. Fragmented. Unable to pay attention. Aware only of this itch I needed to scratch. It was like experiencing the surliness of PMS, a parched thirst, a fevered chill, and a deep-down wiggly boy-wanting feeling all at the same time.

I was
off
, and whenever I tuned in to the feeling, asking,
What is my deal?
, I’d remember: Carden.

Master Carden McCloud, ancient Scottish vampire, was my
deal
. I blamed
him
.

But I could never admit to that, so instead I lied. “It’s my fault, Tracer Judge. I let my focus wander for a moment. I apologize.”

My formality seemed to mollify him, and the glare in his tired eyes eased a bit. “I repeat: What is the basic difference between combat medicine and emergency medical technique?”

Inhaling deeply, I used my breath to sweep my mind clear
of Carden. Amanda and Ronan, any once and future roommates, every conceivable friend and enemy…I relegated them all to a tiny corner of my brain.

I sat straight in my chair, attentive Acari Drew once more. “The primary difference is that the EMT is the
first
responder, whereas, on a mission, if someone gets injured, the Watcher is the
only
respon—”

The door opened, cutting me off. I was ready to scowl—I’d assembled quite the pretty little answer in my head. But then I saw who stood in the doorway.

It was our headmaster. Silence smothered the room, sudden and complete.

Headmaster Fournier rarely made an appearance in the classroom. This was unprecedented. Unheard of.

He didn’t bother with niceties; he just dug right in. “A girl has been discovered,” he said, only a hint of his French accent detectable. “A
dead
girl.” His tone showed that he found such a thing distasteful. “Someone killed her, without permission.
Someone
on this island bled her dry.”

I had thought it was already quiet—until we all held our breath. This was shocking news.
Nobody
on this island acted—or killed—without it being somehow sanctioned by the vampires in charge.

Killing without permission…Did that mean someone had actually granted
permission
for Amanda’s death? I shuddered.

Sure, deaths happened all the time. In a combat ring. During hazing. At the hand of a bored vampire merely wanting to teach a lesson. But random, anonymous slaughter? There was no such thing.

Most of all, there were no abandoned bodies. Every corpse was repurposed for some other grisly means. Nobody killed and left the body to rot.

Nobody crossed the Directorate.

For Headmaster to stoop to a classroom visit meant this death had upset them. It meant this was a mystery. No surprise that vampires didn’t appreciate mysteries.

Headmaster Fournier’s shuttered expression made me nervous. But then he pinned that icy stare on me, and my nerves became nausea. “The question is: Who among us would want to see Guidon Trinity dead?”

Like her heroine,
Veronica Wolff
braved an all-girls school, traveled to faraway places, and studied lots of languages. She was not, however, ever trained as an assassin (or so she claims). In real life, she’s most often found on a beach or in the mountains of northern California, but you can always find her online at
veronicawolff.com
.