The Keep: The Watchers

by Veronica Wolff

  “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 expe
ctant, 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.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It 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?

  Trembling now, I made my way to a seat, any seat, unable to meet anyone’s eye. But even as I steered myself, going on autopilot, lurching toward an empty spot, I knew. I’d do what I always did: I’d survive.

  And I’d uncover the truth of this hell.

  I crumpled into a desk, and it was a pretty ungraceful landing, the chair leg squealing along the floor the moment my butt hit the seat. Some girl behind me muttered something. The girl next to her tittered.

  I turned to see who they were. The mutterer was a silky-haired creature named Lissa whom I recognized from last year’s Phenomena class, and her tittering pal was a pert-nosed thing from my dorm floor whose name I never bothered to get.

  I had nothing to lose anymore, nobody to protect. I snapped, “Let me guess…. Is it my butt? My hair?” It was satisfying to give them a good, long, fearless glare. I’d been responsible for the death of my best friend. I was so beyond their meaningless middle school taunts. “Do you seriously think you’re going to take me down with…what? Your snarky little comments? If that’s how you roll, then you should probably give up now. I mean, how are you even alive?”

  God, was I losing it? I needed to get it together. Keep to myself. Fly under the radar. Follow all those personal rules I’d once clung to.

  “What the fuck?” Lissa muttered, and her friend added a whispered, “Freak.”

  But they’d averted their eyes. Two points to me.

  I couldn’t resist one last jab. “I’ll bet you both just ruled seventh grade, didn’t you?”

  “Children, children.” The sound of Alcántara’s patronizing tone galvanized my annoyance into anger. He was studying them, and I imagined he didn’t miss one little thing. He’d have noted who mocked whom, where they sat, and why.

  I felt his attention zeroing in on me. Maybe it was my imagination, but I felt an anticipatory energy radiate from him, rippling over me. Like he’d been saving the best for last.

  Hatred erupted from a place deep in my gut, churning through me with no place else to go. I had to look down, so strong was the bile burning my throat. I knew he kept his eyes on me, but I pretended not to notice and instead fumbled in my bag like I was looking for just the right pen.

  He paused, a heavy moment of quiet, then made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like amusement. “How I’ve missed your pretty faces.”

  The comment was aimed at me, and I felt it like a slapped cheek. He’d been staring at me, surely the only girl in the room who’d kept her pretty face averted. What I’d said to my classmates hadn’t been entirely true: Snarky little comments could take me down in a second…if they came from Alcántara.

  “I extend my greetings,” he continued, “and my congratulations. It is an elite group who survives their first year on Eyja næturinnar. You have been placed in Initiate-level Assassination and Elimination Techniques. Do you know what this means?”

  “It’s a survey of assassination theory and praxis?” Frost chimed from the front row. I hadn’t seen her when I’d come in, but now my eyes followed her voice, and sure enough, there she was, sitting ramrod straight, looking her most kiss-assy self. And, by the way, did she not understand the concept of rhetorical question?

  I scowled, th
en quickly smoothed my features before anyone saw. On this island, it was stupid to do anything other than play things close to the vest.

  Nothing got past Alcántara, though. He probably knew how much tension there was between us, and he probably also relished every strained bit of it. Vampires liked things hard and fraught and dramatic. To them, we were just pawns in some screwed-up deadly chess game. I was sure Frost’s and my mutual enmity was why we were placed together as roommates in the first place. Why we’d been put in so many classes together.

  He gave her a bland smile. If his obsession with me—not to mention his bond with Masha before me—was any indication, he preferred his girls with an edge. “That is one answer, yes. But not the answer I sought.”

  Snap. I was right. Blatant brown-nosing wasn’t Al’s thing. He preferred his girls hard to get. Hard to kill.

  He moved from behind the podium to glide around the room. “You are here, on this island, to recognize your potential, and the next phase of your journey begins in this very classroom. Assassination…elimination. You are here because soon you will be embarking on missions, and these are some of the skills you will require to stay alive.”

  More missions. I’d already had my first, rescuing Carden. I’d ended up with him as an ally—or was it boyfriend? I still couldn’t wrap my head around the word, so out of place in the context of my superfierce Scottish vampire. When you shared a blood bond with an ancient, terms like boyfriend seemed a bit watered down. Either way, I adored Carden and so couldn’t regret that particular mission.

  And yet that assignment—discovering an island of enemy vampires, getting embroiled in long-standing Directorate politics—had almost been the death of me. I wasn’t exactly anxious to set sail on another.

  “But I get ahead of myself,” Alcántara continued lightly, and instead of sounding frivolous, his silly-me tone made him seem all the more menacing. “We must begin at the beginning. With the basics.” He wandered back to the front of the class, leaning on the edge of his desk. “The concept of assassination is not a new one. Though generally an affair conducted in secret, do not be fooled. Assassinations have changed the course of history for millennia. Assassinations have made and broken kings. It is the purview of the mighty. Of those with influence. With power. And now, dear Initiates, it is your purview as well.”