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There was clearly something very, very wrong with him, and I needed to do something before he sank his teeth into me. I couldn’t turn and run—no matter how trembly he was, with those long legs, he’d beat me in a foot race. My only hope was to fight him off. Maybe talk him down enough to get some answers.
First step was getting away from his crazily windmilling limbs. I lunged and ducked under an arm, grabbing his coat and shoving him in front of me. He doubled over easily, and I hopped onto his back, snatching him into a basic choke hold, using both arms to trap his neck from behind.
He wriggled madly, clawing at my forearms, but my wool coat was too thick for him to get purchase. His moves were spazzy and weak. Had something happened to him? Was he sick? “Did someone attack you?”
He laughed, a disturbing cackle, and dropped to his knees. The hideous noise he was making faded, but not completely, and I realized he was muttering to himself, nonsensical sounds, with no real words coming out.
“You’re freaking me out. ” I released his neck and shoved him to the ground, quickly readjusting my pose, straddling him as he lay on his belly, and wrenching his arms up behind his back. I curled my full body weight over him and snarled in his ear, “Tell me. Just…dammit”—I struggled to keep hold, riding him like a bucking bronco—“tell me, Yas. What’s going on?”
He was shaking like mad now. I could feel the tremors reverberate up my body. “Do you think I’ll see her?” he said, and his cracking voice made him sound like a boy.
What the—?
I froze. “Emma? But she’s not alive. ” I told myself hope was dead, that he was just hallucinating.
“Stop,” he shrieked, turning his head, resting it on the ground. “Stop saying her name. Emma’s gone. So just…fucking…stop. ”
He snapped then, just lost it completely. His body gave up, and he became boneless beneath me. A horrible keening sound cut between us—and oh God, Yas was making that sound—as he began to cry great heaving sobs where he lay in the icy dirt.
It was like his mind snapped, too, and he began to babble again, but loudly this time, manic, scattered gibberish. About Emma. About the castle and vampires.
About her heart.
For the first time, I wondered if there’d been a bond between him and Emma. Could Trainees even bond? Surely they’d had some sort of connection. Would her sudden death cause a pain even deeper than grief? Would it be a pain great enough to drive a person to madness?
I shook him, pleading, “Why are you acting like this?”
I knew if a vampire left, it could be devastating to his bonded partner, but how did it feel for the vampire?
How had I never broached this with Carden?
Carden. Damn him. This latest attack only served to remind me of his absence. I blamed him for my vulnerability.
A long breath shuddered from Yasuo, and I actually had to pause and tune in to see if he was still even breathing. A thin rope of foamy spit dribbled from his mouth onto the dirt.
He was making some sort of transition, and it wasn’t a good one. Was he injured? Was this a broken bond? Merely grief? Something haunted Yasuo deeply, and it gave me a chill.
I slid from him and rubbed between his shoulder blades. He was limp as a rag, and I was confident—kind of—that his attack had paused for the moment. “Are you okay?” I asked quietly.
He hitched up to his elbows and stared at me.
It was then I noticed his eyes.
“Oh, Jesus, Yasuo. ” I sprang backward in the dirt, snatching my hands to my chest as though burned.
He dragged himself to his hands and knees and began to skitter away. Finally, finally, he uncurled his body and stood, loping into the night.
His eyes, they’d glowed red. Gone was the stillness and blankness of Vampire. When he’d looked at me, he’d looked like a rabid animal, lacking reason or focus.
He’d looked like a Draug.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It took me several minutes to calm down. My heart pounded, my hands shook, but still I managed to do a body check. Adrenaline could mask pain. I’d seen girls so involved in a fight, they were unaware they had a weapon sticking from them. But as I tugged my clothes back into place, I saw I was relatively unscathed—physically, at least. Emotionally, I was a wreck.
I was shocked. Shattered. Grieving. I was steeped in my grief—choked by it.
Yasuo was Draug.
