Blood Fever_The watchers

by Veronica Wolff

  I darted my eyes away so she wouldn’t catch me staring. It was a shocker, that was for sure. Her device seemed too small for a phone, but who could guess? For all I knew, the vampires were more wired than Silicon Valley.

  I heard her speak to Carden behind my back. She’d pitched her voice low, but the wind carried it to me. “They’re coming.”

  It was a long, slow walk back to where we’d begun. What had Kate seen? What would Carden have done to her if she’d made it back down alive? Or had he known she wouldn’t? There was still more than an hour left in class. I wondered just what this demonstration of his would entail.

  He walked us all the way down to the surf. Foamy water rushed up to us, then back again, leaving the sand glassy in its wake. I hated swimming, but for once I wanted to slip off my shoes and feel the frigid water roll over my feet. Maybe the cold would shock my body out of this numbness.

  “Acari Kate’s foolishness teaches a valuable lesson.” Carden’s voice was hard. Whatever sentiment I thought I’d seen earlier was gone. He was pure Vampire once more. “Only when you master your emotions, will you master your surroundings. Today I will prove this by climbing”—he pointed to the sea stack far offshore—“that.”

  “Will we need to climb that?” Some panicked Acari had spoken without thinking. Had she learned nothing from watching Kate plunge to her death?

  “No,” he told her. “Not today. But perhaps someday. Someday you’ll face your biggest fear.”

  I chafed my arms. I had a feeling there were fears that would dwarf even that giant chimney rock.

  Carden stepped into the water. It swirled around his calves, the deadly riptide sucking at his feet already. He looked blasé about the whole thing. “The average temperature of the North Sea in winter is six degrees Celsius. That’s forty-three degrees Fahrenheit.” He paused. “It is not yet winter.”

  Easy for him to say—he was a vampire. Surely he didn’t feel a thing. An Acari I recognized from my dorm put words to my thoughts. “But we’re human. We’d freeze in that.”

  He crossed his arms at his chest. “A normal human can survive this temperature for thirty to sixty minutes before reaching exhaustion or unconsciousness. You are not normal humans. A normal human could stay alive up to three hours in this water. You have been consuming vampire blood since your arrival. You are not normal. So stop thinking you are.”

  He stepped deeper. “In a real situation, you won’t have a wet suit. You’ll be wearing clothing, and it will be heavy and cold. You must learn to manage the pain. The panic.” The water soaked his jeans, the denim dark and clinging to his thighs. It mesmerized me.

  “Situations have a way of taking us by surprise. There will come a day when you’ll need to climb and you won’t have gear. You won’t have a climbing kit or rope. You won’t be able to hook in or rappel back down. I’m here to show you that it’s possible. Because until you believe it, you won’t be able to do it.”

  And then Carden simply turned and dove into an oncoming wave.

  Priti chattered at us, droning on about the sea cliffs and stacks. About climbing kits. Free climbing. Bouldering. But I tuned her out, unable to do anything but watch his powerful strokes cutting through the water.

  He disappeared under the surface, and concern nagged at me. I sent feelers out into the universe, trying to sense if he was safe. Somehow I knew he was. Somehow I knew I’d be able to tell if he were in danger.

  “They call it the Needle,” Priti said. Water churned violently at its base, and Carden burst from the surface, riding the crest of a swell. It tossed him a few feet above the water, and he found his grip with ease. He began to climb at once. “McCloud is a local. It’s a particular favorite of his.”

  I detected the hint of a smile on her face, and I wanted to smack her. I chafed my arms, trying to get a handle on these crazy thoughts. Was this jealousy? That she’d known something about him that I hadn’t? I was getting cold just standing there, and I hunched into myself, making myself watch instead of think.

  The Needle dwarfed Carden, but his small figure clambered up until he reached a point where the rock forked into two. He swung like a monkey to the center and slipped between the cracks. The space was much larger than it seemed from afar, and he wedged himself in and began to hobble up, one foot braced on either side.

  Near the top, he edged onto an outcropping. The glare off the water had a way of distorting scale and distance, and I hadn’t seen it before. He stood, and I saw that, sure enough, a table of rock protruded from the side.

  He walked to the edge. A collective breath sucked in, as loud as the ebbing tides. Then Carden dove off.

  He swam back to shore. I’d expected to see giddiness on his face as he emerged, but he was grim. Sober. His white T-shirt clung to him, and I stared unabashedly. I didn’t care anymore—I couldn’t peel my eyes from him. He was magnificent.

  Who was Carden McCloud, really?

  Once more, the water churned and pulled at him as he returned to us, only now my heart felt as tossed as the seas.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I stayed after, sitting on the cold, damp sand, contemplating the Needle, reeling from what I’d just seen. Would I have been strong enough to complete Kate’s climb? Would I have been brave enough to hold fast, seeing something so unsettling it’d made another girl lose her grip and fall to her death?

  I’d thought I was alone with these thoughts, but then a heavy body plopped on the sand next to me, casting me in shadow. I knew at once who it was—his identity practically vibrated to me, echoing through my body with a pull stronger than the tides.

  He’d said we needed to keep our distance, but Carden had sensed my distress before. Maybe he sensed my turmoil now, my need for answers.

  I didn’t even look at him. I just said, “The girl who died climbing. Acari Kate. Why did she fall?”

  “Pride goeth before a fall.”

  “Please, Carden. I need to know—in English.” His nonanswer gave me the mental strength to angle my body to look at him, and I wished I hadn’t. He’d wrapped his arms around his bent legs, and his shirt tugged against his body, outlining ropes of lean muscle. I looked down the beach, back to the scene of the accident. “She climbed to the top and saw something. It scared her enough to make her fall. What did she see?”

  “Only Acari Kate knows what awaited her at the top.” At my impatient look, he chuckled, but he continued. “You’ve seen the mysteries this island hides. What monsters lie in wait. Not all are as brave as you in the face of danger.”

  Had she seen a Draug? A vampire? How many creatures were hiding out there, lying in wait?

  He added nonchalantly, “I believe Acari Kate must have bonded with someone.”

  My eyes bugged open. “Seriously?”

  He shrugged. “It would explain much.”

  “With who?” I ran a mental catalog of all the vampires I’d seen on the island—the possibilities were endless.

  “That, I do not know.”

  I remembered her mania, her recklessness. “Was that why she was acting nuts? Is that going to happen to me?”

  “You’re strong in mind and body. This island has made you forget, but it is time for you to remember: Your fate is not beyond your control.”

  I flopped back on my hands, stretching my legs before me on the sand. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “You must credit yourself. This leg, for instance.” He smoothed his hand along my thigh. “You’ve worked hard to carve muscle where once there was none.”

  My flesh grew hot, buzzing where he touched me. “I…I thought we were supposed to stay away from each other.”

  “Ah.” He pulled his hand back. “How quickly I forget. You are still anxious to break the bond.”

  “I am,” I said, sounding more sure than I felt. “It is possible, right? To become unbonded.”

  “Aye,” he said. “It’s possible. Difficult, but possible.”

  “And you think Acari Kate had bonded with
a vampire?”

  He shrugged. “It would explain such rash behavior. It’s the blood fever. Some who’ve bonded feel as beyond the reach of death as their vampire mates. Others bond, and when they cannot feed again, they grow mad with their need.”

  Mad with need. I had some experience with that. I remembered Kate’s restless, fevered eyes. Was that how I appeared?

  Clouds scudded overhead, stealing light from the sky and warmth from my skin. “You’re saying my options are to stay bonded, be reckless, or go insane.”

  He gave me a sidewise look. “I don’t recall saying any of those things.”

  “You’re giving me more nonanswers.”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I’ve been more honest and more forthcoming than anyone.”

  Even though the wind had whipped his words from me, they reverberated in my head. Carden was right—he had been honest with me, from the moment I’d met him in that dungeon.

  I had to ask another question and I feared the answer. “Will I become reckless?”

  “Is that a bad thing?” he asked in a musing tone. “There are two sorts of reckless, are there not? There is impulsive and there is brave—you must decide which you will be.”

  “Strong and brave,” I whispered into the wind. He’d told me I could be these things.

  Then it hit me. I didn’t need some vampire to tell me—I knew in my heart already that I was these things. Strength and guts—it was how I’d survived my childhood.

  I became aware again of his body next to mine. There was another sort of reckless, and the blood pounded beneath my skin to consider it. Could I be the sort of woman who was strong enough to stay bonded with a vampire and remain sane? To be brave enough to lean over and kiss her bonded vampire? “So I can be whomever I want to be?”

  “Are you so quick to think yourself incapable? Do you accept Vampire superiority so willingly?”

  “No,” I answered at once.

  He gave me a thoughtful look. “Then why are you quick to doubt yourself? Perhaps you are in control. Maybe you have only to realize this.”

  How much was in my control? The longer I stayed on this island, the more mysterious it became. “The vampires have told us why they want us here. But why might they need us?”

  Carden smiled. “You ask a good question, pretty one. You are strong, and the vampires recognize this strength. Now you must recognize it, too.” He put a fingertip beneath my chin, ensuring I wouldn’t turn away. “You must recognize your power.”

  Why was he telling me this? “You’re a vampire. Why help me? Why be honest?”

  “I was once a man. As not all men are good, not all vampires are evil.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I was in control. I was powerful.

  I was also very, very stupid. I was heading back to Crispin’s Cove. I’d need to do some climbing, and yet there remained just one tiny problem: I still didn’t know how.

  But ideas had woken me in the night, implanting themselves and not letting go. What if Trinity hadn’t been attacked from behind? What if the killer had climbed up the rock face, surprising her from below? What if there was evidence lodged somewhere on the bluffs, waiting to be discovered? Or what if she’d wrested something from her attacker? A tuft of hair gripped in her hand, a bit of fabric torn free, someone’s dropped knife. She’d put up a fierce fight; maybe something had tumbled down with her.

  It was a long shot, but one I had to take.

  Unfortunately, I was taking that shot before I’d had a chance at more of Priti’s climbing instruction. But I had to act now—soon the infamous island wind would scour the rocks clean. And besides, I did have that one climbing class under my belt, and thanks to Acari Kate’s little exhibition, I’d learned two things:

  I didn’t need ropes and carabiners to scale rocks. (Good, because I didn’t know the first thing about that kind of gear anyway.)

  Ropes and carabiners helped you not die. (Bad, in that a plummet to my death wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.)

  I assured myself that this’d be different from Acari Kate’s ascent. I’d be going down—surely that was easier, right? And besides, I wouldn’t really be rock climbing anyhow. More like bouldering. Hiking, even.

  Really, really steep hiking.

  I headed straight to the ledge—it’d do no good to chicken out now—and tightened the straps of my bag. The thing had been thump-thumping across my back as I’d jogged along the coast, but I decided to keep it just in case I found something I needed to tuck away. And hey, maybe it’d provide padding in the event of a freak accident.

  I edged closer, and the height gave me a moment’s vertigo, sending a wiggly sensation crawling up the backs of my legs. “A puzzle,” I muttered, parroting Priti’s words. While Carden had been climbing the Needle, she’d lectured. I’d tuned her out but had tuned back in when she’d likened climbing to mathematics, speaking about angles, degrees, ratios. “Just a problem to be solved.”

  I squatted now, trying to decipher that puzzle and detect a possible path. It wasn’t a sheer drop here at the top. Instead, the upper ridge was graded, forming steep, mossy tiers.

  I craned my neck to see. There was an outcropping roughly fifteen feet down and a few feet over. It angled away, not readily visible from above. If I could make it down there, it’d be a good vantage point from which to scan for some clue that might’ve lodged in the rocks and brush.

  I sat on my butt, scootching past the spot marking Trinity’s final footprint. What lay between me and that plateau couldn’t have been called a trail, but it was horizontal enough to shimmy and slide down if I used the rocks and roots as handholds. I inched some more, tentatively scrabbling down like a crab—a lame, clumsy crab.

  My boots met flat rock, and I pushed with my legs, testing the support. It was solid. It gave me a spurt of confidence. I inched to the left, over to where I thought I’d spotted the rock shelf below.

  “Here goes nothing,” I muttered as I eased onto my side. I had the sensation of being almost vertical now, and it felt more secure to have so much of my body pressed against the granite. I guess somewhere in my reptilian brain I also figured that if I started to slide, maybe I’d be able to stop myself using hands and legs and belly.

  It took me about thirty seconds to realize my reptilian brain was a total idiot.

  Getting down to the next tier was less a thoughtful descent than it was a controlled fall. I slid, and rocks scattered loose, clacking down the side of the cliff in a shower of gravel.

  “Crap.” I picked up speed and careened past the next tier without stopping. Rocks cut into my belly and punched hard along my rib cage as I bounced and slid down the face. “Ohhhh crap.”

  Panic choked me as the mottled brown, gray, and green of the cliff angled steeper, rolled by faster. I grabbed for all of it. Flailing now, I swatted for rocks, dirt, the tufts of grass that poked from between the cracks.

  My feet slammed into something, and the impact reverberated up my body. The plateau. Relief.

  But I’d hit it too hard. Time slowed as I felt my body propelling forward, like I was about to swan dive from a platform.

  Carden appeared in my mind’s eye, a vision of him diving from the Needle, all power and grace.

  Power and grace. I could be that, too.

  I refused to die this way. I’d see this through. I’d see him again.

  I made a split-second decision. It was me or my knees.

  It took a conscious effort to let go, to render myself limp as a rag doll, but I did, forcibly turning my legs to jelly beneath me. They buckled and I slammed hard onto my knees. I gripped the ledge, stopping myself before I tumbled from the outcropping.

  I winced, immediately flopping back onto my butt, half cradling my bruised legs while skittering away from the ledge at the same time. Made it. And I refused to think on why, in my moment of near death, my mind had gone to Carden.

  I dusted off my legs. I was here to investigate, to get my mind off the bond. I s
at all the way up, and punishing wind instantly whipped the hair into my face, bringing tears to my eyes.

  I squinted. Looking around, I saw how it wasn’t just a shelf I’d landed on, but there was a little niche, too. Not big enough to be called a cave, but deep enough to shelter me from the wind howling off the sea, lashing the rock face. I pressed my body into it, feeling like a creature in a seashell, and let myself take a moment to gather my wits and pick the bloody bits of grit and rock from my tattered palms.

  I was busily panting and catching my breath, so I didn’t hear it at first. But as my heart slowed, I began to discern an alarming sound from above: men’s voices. Two of them.

  I mouthed a curse, instantly pressing as far into my little shelter as I could. Had the killer—or killers?—returned to the scene of the crime?

  I curled in more tightly. If I was discovered, I’d be dead meat. Literally.

  I tucked my legs, grimacing through the pain as I bent them. I quickly reeled my bag in, too, and clutched it close to my side, grateful that I hadn’t stowed it at the top or anything stupid like that.

  My sweaty undershirt clung to me, and I became instantly chilled leaning against the damp, hard rock. But I hunched closer, turning my back to the voices, praying that, if they happened to walk to the edge and look down, the gray of my Acari uniform would act as camouflage.

  I huddled and stared at the rock wall, and that was when I saw it. Simple carvings. Old runes, like graffiti.

  The sight made me smile despite myself. Viking carvings could be found all over the islands in the North Sea. It was amazing—the graffiti was thousands of years old and yet it was as unremarkable as the stuff you’d find in the bathroom stall at Applebee’s. Magnus red-legs was here, that sort of thing.

  I used my thumbnail to scrape away the fine layer of moss, peering at the letters.

  I imagined it was Icelandic, or Old Norse maybe. I could stare till I went blind and it still wouldn’t make any sense. But it cheered me just a little. It was such a peculiar reminder of my humanity.