Vampire's Kiss (21 page)

It was really the Ronan/Amanda/Judge triumvirate that made the table hum with tension. It seemed to me they were making it uncomfortable for everyone. And to think it’d been so nice to see good old benign Tracer Judge.

Ronan blurted, “I have to go.” He stood and exchanged a weighty nod with Amanda.

Then Amanda stood, too—
surprise, surprise
. “So do I.”

I put my fork down, tired of all the secrets. Couldn’t people just say what was going on in their lives? Lately it felt as if my friends wouldn’t tell me anything if I didn’t drag the information out of them.

As Ronan and Amanda left, I decided to spy on them. I shoveled stew into my mouth, crammed a hard roll into my pocket, and wasn’t far behind them. Keeping a safe distance, I followed, certain I would catch them in the act.

Confronting Emma about her crush on Yasuo had taken a tremendous weight off my shoulders. It felt good to talk about things instead of being on the outside looking in. I’d find Ronan and Amanda and talk to them, too. They’d know that I knew about them, and maybe this tension would ease a little.

I trailed them as best I could, which was pretty well, if I said so myself. All that intense training was good for something—I was a regular James Bond.

But then something unexpected happened. I hid behind a hedge along the path, watching as they reached the Acari dorm. And then, without even a hug between them, they said good-bye, and Amanda went inside.

Had they fought? Were they just being discreet? They weren’t acting as I imagined lovers normally acted.

I jogged to catch up to Ronan as he picked up the trail to the coast. But why there? He didn’t have his surfboard or his wet suit, so he wasn’t going for a swim.

And why didn’t he just drive? He was one of the few people who had the use of the campus SUVs. Did it mean he went somewhere he didn’t want people to know about?

He walked, and I followed, and just as I was beginning to think it a fool’s errand—my luck he’d turn on me, shout,
Gotcha
, and make me do water drills—he walked right by the beach, taking a tiny path I’d never seen before.

And then he headed inland, toward the other side of the island.

I didn’t think twice. I followed.

A
nd then he left the trail, and I did think twice.

Don’t stray from the path
—it was one of the mainstays of the vampire rule book. Nerves tensed my muscles, tightening my stride. I’d become hardwired to follow the rules, because with them came survival.

Ronan had also warned me to stay away from the far side of the island. Could that be where he was headed? Was he going to see his family?

Maybe I was just desperately curious for a glimpse of the real Ronan. And maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind, I considered myself safe from trouble—that if it came down to it, I’d be protected by Alcántara. Whatever the reason, though it was stupid and reckless, I followed.

The farther inland we went, the trickier it got. I was able to see him from quite a distance—it was crazy, but this whole episode made me realize just how much my vision had improved
since drinking the blood. Even so, there were few trees and fewer rocks, and I was intermittently forced to let Ronan slip out of sight lest he spot me.

Finally, I had to put more distance between us. The landscape had become too barren, all gravel and flat plateaus as opposed to the crags and cliffs of the shoreline.

But Tracer Judge had covered rudimentary fieldcraft in last term’s phenomena class. I knew how to track, and how to avoid being tracked myself. Following Ronan thus far, I’d relied on some basic techniques. It was time to see just how much I’d learned.

I scanned the dirt for what Judge called a
track trap
—an area in the terrain that lent itself to marks. Marshy ground, mud—anything that held a footprint. In my case, it was gravel.

And there I saw it, up ahead, a particularly gritty spot. Ronan’s footprints were easy to detect. There were faint depressions in the terrain with hints of damp—dark streaks among light gray—representing bits of gravel recently displaced.

I squatted to study the prints. The wind was up, and these tracks would fade by the end of the day. If it’d been sunny, the telltale dark patches wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple hours.

I followed due northwest. Every once in a while I lost his trail but always managed to pick it up again. And then something changed. I squatted again, studying.

There was a new pattern, visible only in the deeper patches of grit. His toes were digging more sharply into the terrain, with halos of gravel exploding from the heel. Ronan had begun to jog.

I began to jog, too, tamping down a spurt of nerves. Why had he upped his pace? Did he sense someone was following him? Did he know it was me?

Or maybe he was just eager. He’d given Amanda a key. Maybe he was running to her, to their secret rendezvous.

The footprints changed again, deeper, cutting hard to the right. He’d changed direction, due northeast. Back to the water.

I dug my thumb in the soil to check the depth and dampness, to see if it was telling a true story. Because the tracks told me he was running now.

I ran eastward following him, and the landscape got hilly again, bringing more boulders and crags with it. Cold prickled the back of my neck. A sensation nagged me—I felt watched.

My imagination, I told myself. Refusing to bow to nerves, I looked around. Sure enough, I was alone. I felt silly that I’d even let my head go there.

And then I cursed myself. I’d lost his trail. I knew better than to let emotion or imagination overwhelm me. It’d been lesson number one: Don’t lose control.

Had I lost Ronan for good? Suddenly, I felt so alone, and with the solitude came a burst of irrational panic. There were aspects to tracking I hadn’t mastered, such as determining the age of a print. Maybe I’d been following a trail that was laid weeks ago. Maybe I’d never been following him in the first place.

The boulders were getting taller the closer I approached the northeastern edge of the island. It was a place I’d never seen before, far from campus, far from the southern edge where I’d spotted those houses from Ronan’s boat.

The path had grown so jagged, I didn’t know what lay around each bend. I was freaking and ran too recklessly, my eyes glued to the ground, scanning desperately for his trail. Before, I’d wanted to track him, but now I just didn’t want to be alone. When I looked up, I spotted him. Too close.

“Oh crap.” I skittered to a halt, dropping and rolling behind a low rock, my heart in my throat.

I peeked back around, but Ronan hadn’t seen me. Patches of scrubby grass grew in the shadow of the rocks, and it looked foreign amidst all the gray. Beyond, the ground seemed simply to end, a straight drop to the sea, which was a steely haze on the horizon. He’d slowed to a brisk walk, no longer running. And who wouldn’t, navigating along the edge of a cliff?

But then he disappeared over the ledge, and I gasped. I scuffled as close as I could, and I spotted him, picking his way down a hidden path, winding down the granite face.

My eyes were playing tricks on me. The skies of the Dimming lent an eerie sort of light, and I squinted to make sense of the ragged rocks, mud, and what tufts of greenery were tenacious enough to cling to the steep, windswept cliff face.

I couldn’t get any closer without being discovered, but I stared until the white and gray haze burnt into my vision. And then he simply vanished.

It was the only reason I saw the cave.

I scrambled to the edge on hands and knees. Scrubbing my hand over my eyes, I peered again. His trail had narrowed—by the cave mouth, it was no more than a ledge. The cave itself was no more than a black smudge on the rock face. Its height was hard to judge from this distance, and although it was obviously large enough to fit Ronan, he’d had to bend to enter.

He stayed in there forever.

The sky was unchanging, but the wind picked up, and my belly quickly leached its warmth into the cold, gritty ground. I rubbed my hands together, trying to chafe warmth into them.

I debated returning to campus, but curiosity won in the end, and I stayed. Besides, I was a little scared of whatever might be lying in wait out there—I didn’t want Ronan to discover me, but I didn’t want to stray too far from him, either. I focused only on the cave mouth, forcing my mind to go blank—if I treated this as a meditative exercise, maybe the cold wouldn’t be so numbing, my nerves so frayed, and my position so uncomfortable.

A lighter color emerged from the black. I thought my tired eyes might be playing tricks, so I blinked hard and squinted again. But it was Ronan, exiting the cave.

And he wasn’t alone. It wasn’t Amanda, either—I could tell by the height.

It was another man, hunched in the mouth of the cave. Wearing a long, hooded cloak, he looked like an apparition of death. A chill rippled my skin. That cloak whipped in the wind, the movement the only thing assuring me he wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. But then the figure vanished back into the rock face, leaving me wondering if I’d ever really seen him.

I needed to get up and go, to conceal myself so Ronan wouldn’t catch me. But I was frozen in place, deeply unsettled, and distracted.

It meant I didn’t hear the thing breathing behind me.

M
onths of grueling combat training kicked in, and the moment I heard rustling, I rolled. Something landed beside me with a thump, and I skittered sideways, spinning onto my knees to face it.

A Draug.

Panic hammered in my chest. I’d kept my distance from Ronan, but now all I wanted was for him to find me. I didn’t want to be alone.

I had been right. Something
had
been watching me. There were
things
hiding among the rocks—hungry things.

Like the Draug that’d attacked Emma and me, this creature had been human once, a man who hadn’t survived the vampiric process. It’d have the superhuman strength and speed of the undead but also the primal nature of a rabid animal.

But instead of emaciated, this Draug was swollen, like a drowned corpse. I could make out features amidst the greens
and blacks of rotted skin. There were tufts of matted red hair beneath layers of filth. It was the red hair that made me cry out, my tone sharp and keening. This had been a
person
.

It prowled toward me on all fours, and I inched away. The smell of it filled my head. It stank even worse than the last one. Fouler than the foulest primordial dung heap, it
stank
. My stomach convulsed, and I covered my mouth, choking back a gag.

I backed away some more, until I heard the distant clack of pebbles as my foot met open air. “No,” I cried out, my voice sharp and manic. If I slipped from the ledge, my body would tumble and bounce, crashing onto the rocky seashore, one hundred feet below.

The creature stopped. Studied me with a tilted head. Sniffed the air.

“Shit shit shit,” I whispered, watching as the thing sized me up.

I was trembling violently from the initial adrenaline dump, and I imagined my heart slowing, my breath elongating. I crept sideways, away from the edge and the creature.