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CHAPTER THIRTY
I awoke feeling heat. Vague images of Carden shimmered on the edges of my mind, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t grasp them. I couldn’t remember my dream.
It angered me. Focused me. Intensified my urgency.
I wouldn’t lose him. I would have that heat. I would make it real, experience it live and in person, and not just as a stolen moment in a pitch-black dungeon, either.
The thought shot my eyes open. “Rise and shine,” I croaked to Mei, still asleep in her bed.
I hopped up to peek out the blinds. Warmth still pulsed through my body, enough that part of me could almost believe we’d woken to a warm day.
Mei rolled to her side, watching as I pulled aside the blinds. “Well?”
I scowled. “It’s as gray and bleak as ever. ”
“Of course it is,” she said, throwing off her blankets.
I fumbled into my uniform as quickly as I could, the brisk morning air a shock. “You ready to play that flute later?”
“Always,” she said, sounding slightly shivery as she pulled on her own clothes. “But are you ready to be attacked by the weird Draug guy? Wait”—she stopped and held up a hand—“don’t tell me. You were born ready, right?”
It elicited a much-needed smile from me. “Right. ”
The day took forever. We had only three hours between the time her Phenomena class ended and my Medieval Musicianship class began. It’d have to be enough for us to sneak away and find the Draug keeper.
“We need to go as fast as we can,” I told her, breaking into a jog. “You up for it?”
She nodded, falling into my rhythm. “What should we do if we’re spotted?”
“If anyone sees us, we’ll tell them we’re just out for a run. ”
“All the way out here?” She shot me a look. “This is way off the path. ”
“The vamps don’t tend to roam around this time of day,” I said, hoping I was right. “Nobody will see us. ” But I upped my pace all the same.
I knew to keep to the hilltops, and as we neared the spot, I got onto my belly to scoot to the edge, gesturing for Mei-Ling to do the same. We studied the valley below. When I’d last spied the keeper, it had been nighttime, but the sun was up now, and the place didn’t exactly sparkle in the light of day.
“Creepy,” Mei whispered.
“Totally creepy,” I agreed in what was the understatement of the year.
“It’s like a horror movie down there,” Mei said.
I’d seen the cages glimmering in the dark, and I saw them clearly now, a row of steel pens, holding Draug in various states of decay and derangement. Some rattled cage bars, some snapped and snarled at each other, and every one of them looked feral and very rabidly hungry.
“Is that where he lives, you think?” Mei pointed to a small, one-story building set off from the pens. Thick, sloppy coats of graying whitewash couldn’t conceal its crumbling stone walls. At my shrug, she said, “Maybe he is the killer. ”
“Sure seems like a decent candidate. ” Creaking caught my attention. The body of a goat hung from a nearby tree, spinning and swaying slightly in the breeze, blood dripping from its slashed throat into a bucket underneath. “Looks like he’s familiar with the concept of exsanguination. ”
Mei put a hand to her mouth, looking ill. “I’ll bet he drains his victims to feed to the Draug. ”
“We’ll see soon enough,” I said, trying to keep a level head. “You stay here. ”
Mei put a hand on my arm. “Are you sure about this?” She looked pale, and I imagined I probably did, too.
“I’m sure. You stay on higher ground. Just keep that flute handy. ”
“The stakes, too?”
