The Keep: The Watchers (30 page)

He flung himself at me again, but again I managed to duck and spin out of the way.

“Get a grip, man.” Toby was bobbing on his toes, unsure how or if to get involved. Why didn’t he just leave? Was he looking out for me or for Yasuo?

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I pleaded.

“It does.” Yasuo was panting again, that madness once more descending like a film over his eyes. “Does.”

He attacked again, a broad swat at my head, then another. But his movements were erratic, and I evaded them easily. This wasn’t the old Yasuo—the old Yas had been eclipsed by a monster. This was a creature driven by fury but unable to strategize. Incapable of tactics. His weren’t maneuvers; they were motions, crude and predictable.

Maybe if I could stun him, make him stop for long enough, I could get away. The last thing I wanted was to fight him. When Yas leapt again, I deflected him, dropping and rolling to the ground, snatching the pitchfork from the dirt. “Please don’t make me do this.”

“You guys.” Toby tried to insert himself between us. “What the hell?”

Yas elbowed him with enough force to send the big, corn-fed boy reeling. “Don’t. Help. Her.” His voice had become an animal growl.

I tightened my grip on the tool. Even in my numbed hands, the wood was reassuring.

I thought of Sonja. Ruler of vampires. Had there truly been such a woman? Even if she hadn’t been strong enough to rule vampires in truth, then at least she’d had the guts to carve it into rock. Thinking of her words, imagining her, gave me courage. Sonja—if there was a woman who’d been that powerful, then I could be powerful, too.

I tossed the fork up and held it in my two hands like a fighting stick. No longer a farm tool, it was a javelin. A lance. A sword. A
weapon
.

Yas aimed a roundhouse kick at my head, and the stick deflected him easily. I jabbed his belly. I could’ve hurt him, but didn’t. Hurting my old friend was harder than I’d ever have believed. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

The Draug were really losing it now. Could that be
my
fear they smelled? And was it fear for myself or fear of what had become of my friend?

Rob took that opportunity to moan. He was fading in and out, his breathing a bloody gurgle. The Draug shrieked in response, rattling their iron bars in their hinges.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck.” Toby was really flipping out now.

“Just get out of here,” I shot at him.

But instead of fleeing, he squatted and scooped up a rock. A coldly self-preservational part of my brain noted how Trainees didn’t carry weapons. Did vampires not carry weapons, either? Were they that proud? That arrogant? Something to consider…if I survived this.

Toby hefted that rock, and for a chilling moment it was unclear
who it was for. Because, for a moment, his eyes were cold on me. Had he not wanted Yasuo to fight me because
he
didn’t want to fight me? Would one Trainee side with another, no matter what?

My musings were cut short when Yasuo swept a foot toward my ankle, but I managed to react in time, clocking his knee with my stick.

“Right wrongs,” he intoned.

I knew better than anyone how wronged we’d all been. But what if I were the one to set it all to right? This Sonja had become my heroine. My Wonder Woman. If Yasuo wanted wrongs righted, I’d be the one to do it. I parried him again. “Not if I right them first.”

He peeled his lips into a snarl. “Go to hell.”

“Oh, I’m there.” I jabbed him with the fork, but I hadn’t used enough force to budge through the thick wool of his coat. “Careful, or I might bring you with me.”

“There’s been a wrong,” Yasuo said.

“Not that again.” I jabbed again, and this time he took a step backward. I had the brief and disturbing thought that I might be able to herd him as the most mindless of Draug were herded.

“There has been a wrong, and I will right it.”

“You do that, Yas.”

He froze, staring at me as though trying to remember why he was there.

“What’s he doing?” Toby asked.

“Losing it.” I shot farm boy a look. What was he going to do with that rock?

“It’s your fault.” Yasuo addressed me, speaking in a wondering sort of voice.

“It’s nobody’s fault.” Toby inserted himself between us, his tone aggressively soothing, like he was trying to calm a crazy street person. “Let it go, man.” But he still gripped that stone, his eyes flicking back and forth, returning to me over and over like I was a bomb he might have to detonate. “We don’t have to fight her.”

My heartbeat amped up a notch, my body preparing for something my mind hadn’t yet grasped. “What do you mean,
We
?”

“Ignore her,” Yasuo shouted, ignited once more. He shouldered Toby aside, pinning me with a murderous glare. “She’s selfish. She’s a killer.”

“Fuck it,” Toby said. “It’s just a girl.”

Just a girl.

It’s
just a girl.

Yasuo lunged at me. Did Toby lunge, too? Later I told myself he did. Later, I told myself he hadn’t been flinging himself between us.

Because when I speared the pitchfork, I speared Toby.

There was a horrific moment. A sharp inhale. A gurgled exhale. His eyes met mine, confused. Bewildered. It was a weird look, like he’d asked me to prom and I’d surprised him by turning him down. It wasn’t the look you’d expect from a guy impaled on the business end of a dung fork.

He fell.

Yasuo laughed, a cackling, gleeful sound. “Told you. Killer.” He repeated it over and over, manic and high-pitched. “Killer. Killer.”

It hit close to home. Too close. I was a killer.

But I wouldn’t kill Yasuo. He might’ve been turning Draug, but he’d once been my friend. I wouldn’t attack him. Not like this. Not today.

I dug into my coat pocket. My fingers found my prized possession. Emma’s handkerchief.

I rubbed it between my fingers. It was a sacrifice. But a fitting one.

I pulled it out, holding it like a white flag in front of me. Yasuo recognized it at once, his eyes growing wide.

“That’s right,” I said. I waved it. I hadn’t washed it and wondered if it still bore some scent of hers. “You know this.”

He took a step forward.

“You want it?” I tied a couple of loose knots in the fabric. Just enough to give it some heft. I threw. “Then take it.”

Yasuo went for it.

I ran off. I ran like a crazy person. Leaving Rob and the body of Toby-the-Trainee dead and cooling by the paddock gate. Leaving my friend Yasuo behind, maybe forever. I ran until I realized my feet had carried me all the way to the water.

Screw it.

I’d end this now.

I loped up the beach, running until there was just a thin sliver of rocky sand, and when there was no beach left to run on, I sloshed through the breakers, lifting my knees high, trying to stay upright. Waves slapped at me, the freezing water sloshing over my boots, biting through the thick fabric of my catsuit, each swell rising in a moment of peace and then whooshing, back, trying to suck me out to sea. The waves came over and over, relentless, violent smacks against my thighs, trying to topple me.

But I refused to topple. I was seeing red. I’d lost everything and everyone. Would it kill me? Probably. But I’d see the secrets of this castle once and for all.

Finally, when the water was deep enough to buoy me, lifting
me with each swell of the tide to my tiptoes, I stopped. Looked up. The sea gate was overhead. Not as far a climb as I’d have guessed, concealed from above by a coarse shelf of brush.

I let the breakers sweep me closer and higher, grabbing ahold of the rocky cliff side, using hands and feet and knees to scramble up until I found a shelf wide enough to perch on. The tunnel’s stench reached me first, wet and sulfurous, like hot springs and rotting things. I looked back down from where I came, scanning the lay of the land, seeing just how well situated this spot was.

The wind was picking up, and I wasn’t in the mood to be blown off the cliff, so to be safe, I shuffled on hands and knees to get closer and assess the gate itself. Almost immediately, I cracked my kneecap hard against something. An explosion of pain like my bone had split in two felled me. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I curled onto my side, swallowing a cry of pain.

When I was able to breathe again, I saw what I’d run in to. Two large, rusted rings had been secured into the granite. Mooring for supply boats? Or did the boats come bearing victims? Who knew what evil visited these shores…? Either way, it was a good sign.
Somebody
used this entrance, which meant it led somewhere.

Resting against the bars with one arm, cradling my nose in the crook of my other, I peered inside. Up close like this, the thing looked more like a sewage runoff than ever. I whispered, “Here I come, boys,” and gave the gate a jiggle, but it was much more solid than the rusted iron would suggest. “No problem.” I turned my attention to the handle and froze, taken aback. “What the—?”

I’d expected a simple lock, maybe a sliding bolt or a padlock
hanging from a latch, but not this. Rather than a single gate, there were two, like French doors opening up the middle. I ran my fingers along the outer edges of the portal, feeling for hinges, but they weren’t visible from this side.

A lack of hinges wasn’t the strange part, though. Instead of a traditional lock, a circular medallion roughly the size of my palm connected the two doors in the very center. Tracing my finger, I could feel a seam between the doors, above and below the medallion, but the disc itself was a solid whole, not atop the metal, but a part of the iron itself.

How would I ever break into this? There was no keyhole. No lever or latch.

“Weird.” I sat back on my heels to regroup. Surely this was pickable. Every lock was pickable, right? Generally, I was a whiz with good old breaking and entering. I always kept random useful bits in my pockets—paper clips, safety pins, pop tops—enough to pick any lock…except this one.

I studied the medallion, utterly perplexed. A sideways figure eight, the symbol for infinity, was carved in the center. There were two triangles etched within that, one triangle in each half of the eight, so that they touched, their silhouette like a sideways letter
X
. The triangle on the right was indented, a little niche in the metal.

Was this the keyhole? I’d never seen such a thing.

My hand hovered over the medallion, and I realized I hadn’t yet touched it. Something about it radiated with power. Creeped me out. It was such a peculiar symbol, such a magical symbol. I had the eerie feeling that handling it might have horrific consequences. My hand hovered until my biceps began to tremble, and then I just felt stupid.

I was being weak. It was time to be brave. To be rational. Not to be freaked out by some stupid old lock. I had nothing to lose. I touched it to prove to myself I could.

Exploring it with my hands, I was no less perplexed. I tilted my head this way and that, wishing the ambient light might suddenly catch something I’d missed. But as far as I could tell, this was unpickable—not just hard to pick, but
unpickable
. Impossible. Cryptic. In all the books I’d read, I’d never encountered such a thing.

The metal was cool and damp with sea mist. A thin layer of corrosion felt like dirt under my fingertip. I wriggled my finger, using my nail to feel for some seam or edge, but there was
nothing.
Nothing to pry open, nothing to unfasten, unlock, or unlatch. There’d be no picking this thing. The triangle was hollow.

Not unlike my heart.

I
lingered in the dining hall, unable to make myself care enough to move. I’d failed. The more time that passed, the more deeply I doubted myself. The more profoundly I believed there might’ve been something I could’ve done differently. Better.

If I hadn’t been able to prevent Emma’s death, then at least I could’ve avenged it. But now I couldn’t even do that. My sole and final goal had been to break into that keep. There was an entire goddamned hole in the cliff leading inside the castle, but I couldn’t even find my way through
that
.

I sucked.

And then there was Alcántara. My defeat was his triumph. I couldn’t bear facing him, but I had no choice. Assassination class was next period. He’d know by now how I’d completed his assignment. I’d killed Toby, innocent farm boy. I’d gutted him on the end of a damned dung fork. I dreaded giving Alcántara the pleasure.

The worst part, though? It was the fear that I hadn’t needed to kill him. Not really. And yet, not only had I done it, but for an instant, I’d relished it. That was the part that really sickened me.

So I’d gotten Toby after all, and what did that make me? Maybe Yasuo had spoken truly. Maybe I
was
a killer.

Yasuo. He was out there somewhere. How much longer did he have walking among us before he appeared on the other side of those bars? He felt called to the Draug already—the other Trainees had had to go out there to retrieve him.

And what of Rob? Was he even still alive? His last words had been about the girls, how we fed the vampires. Was that why Yas attacked him? Had his comment evoked memories of Emma somehow? I didn’t want to contemplate what it said about me that I wished I could’ve been the one who’d gotten him in the end.