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No, there were definite machinations. He was weighing what he was and wasn’t allowed to tell me, all the while wearing a pleasant expression that mirrored my own. Eventually, he said, “I guess they have to live somewhere. ”
I not only guessed. I knew. They lived north of here. I’d seen the settlement from the water, tiny white dots that had to be homes. But I didn’t share that much with Josh—it was too fun testing the boundaries of what he was willing to tell me. I decided to move down the map. “Have you ever been to the southern end of the island?” I asked innocently.
Finally something clicked in his expression, and I knew I was seeing the real Josh. “South?” He shivered. “There are all those Draug out that way. ”
His reaction made sense. The Draug would probably freak out any Trainee—the monsters would serve as a reminder of how it could all go very wrong on their own road to Vampire.
I knew I’d never be able to look at a Draug again without thinking of Yasuo.
Wait a minute.
I bit my lips, trying not to lose that pleasant face I’d been working hard to maintain. But my mind was whirring a mile a minute.
The Draug. There was my strategy. Or rather, the Draug keeper.
I let my chat with Josh peter out. He cracked some jokes about growing up in a village on this rock. I cracked some jokes about men with thick accents unburdened by a surplus of teeth.
I stood, brushing off. I needed to get rid of Josh, which meant it was time to bring this meeting in for a landing. There was another man I needed to be talking to right now: Tom, the guy who acted as a sort of shepherd of the Draug, keeping them in pens like livestock. He was older, quirky, and plainspoken—and not surprisingly, not a big fan of the Directorate. He’d helped me before, in a big way, and I was hoping he’d be inclined to help me again.
Tom would know secrets of village life. And I knew just where to find him.
Josh might’ve been scared of the southern end of the island, but I knew better. South didn’t scare me.
Well, not too, too much.
We said our good-byes, and I jogged inland, taking a short-cut—a dangerous shortcut—through Draug country. To say I needed to be careful would’ve been an understatement. They were terrifying, mindless creatures who rotted like corpses, but were cursed with the thirst, strength, and immortality of vampires. In ideal circumstances, the Draug might’ve behaved like livestock, but like l
ivestock, one or two sometimes slipped through for a little rampage, which was where the careful part came in.
I stayed on the path as long as I could, then swerved off in a dash, picking my way along the desolate landscape, going fast enough to make good time and avoid company, but not so fast that I broke an ankle. Random snippets of an old Beastie Boys song ran through my head, the same lyrics running on a loop…Listen all y’all it’s a sabotage. God, how I used to love music. What new songs were out there now? Which new bands? It’d once all been so important, and now it was so unreal. A universe away. I’d have given a week’s ration of blood to recall the full song, but I was left with the same few lines, and I chanted them over and over—I can’t stand it…I know you planned it—anything to push other thoughts from my head.
To push away the fear.
I couldn’t let myself be afraid. I couldn’t afford it. On this part of the island, fear smelled like dinner.
Tom had been the one who’d told me that, though the Draug fed on blood, it was fear that sustained them…the taste of it, the whiff of others’ terror, that was what they really craved.
I upped my pace, mouthing lyrics. Good thing it was Saturday—no classes. The island was small, but still, it’d take me a good forty-five minutes to find his cottage. If I hustled, I’d have time to find Tom and double back to the dining hall before it closed.
I stopped to check my watch—early afternoon yet. But this time of year, I was looking at three thirty twilight. Full dark by five o’clock. I grabbed my right foot and pulled it to my butt, stretching my quad. I looked to the horizon, scanned the terrain around me, gauging my location.
It meant I was distracted. Checking the time, the sky, the landscape, my leg muscles…I was minding everything else but what I should’ve been minding.
My back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Bitch. ” A pair of hands shoved me, hard.
No time to brace, I lost my footing and slammed face-first into the gravel, my right ribs and elbow taking the brunt.
“Goddammit. ” I instantly curled my legs, reaching for the stars in my boots, but before I could grab them and roll to standing, a large male body flung itself onto me. My lungs expelled a disturbing whump sound, and black spots swam before my eyes, resolving into snapshot images of lanky hands and dishwater brown hair.
Rob. Scrambling to pin me in a standard-issue wrestling hold.
I burst to action, squirming beneath him. “You gonna bite me?” I managed, wriggling into an angle that bought me more air. I coughed, gasped for breath, coughed again. “Oh, right. You can’t. ”
He sawed his arm, aimed at my neck. I tensed and tucked my chin down, but he managed to pry past my hunched shoulders, crushing my throat. “Go ahead and joke. Like a prisoner’s last meal. ”
