Dark Craving_A Watchers Novella

by Veronica Wolff

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Follow

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DARK CRAVING

  A WATCHERS

  NOVELLA

  BY

  VERONICA WOLFF

  Copyright © 2013 by Veronica Wolff.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Dark Craving/ Veronica Wolff. -- 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-941035-00-9

  DEDICATION

  For Sophie Littlefield and Rachael Herron,

  who shone the light at the end of my tunnel.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Twelve months ago

  “Tracer Ronan.” The vampire Hugo De Rosas Alcántara stared at me over steepled fingers. His face was unmarred by age, features smoothed by that utter stillness borne of immortality. To him, I was merely a man. Worse, a young man. And he was trying to make me squirm.

  He leaned closer, peering at me. Leather the color of ox’s blood creaked beneath him. The office decor, like his posturing, meant to menace. Alcántara was ancient, but more than that, he was a ruler. A creature of power among the most powerful.

  “Is this impatience I read on your face?” he asked finally.

  Just let me get on with it, I thought. I despised my job and wanted it done. It was a godforsaken place, this Eyja næturinnar. This Isle of Night. Nothing but gray cliffs, bleak skies, hostile seas. And vampires.

  “You young humans.” His lips pursed with contempt. “Always so anxious, racing to your own deaths.”

  Young, he called me. An irony seeing as Alcántara looked no older than my nineteen years. To him, I was weak. A bit of mortal ephemera. Flesh with an expiration date—one that he controlled.

  “Not at all,” I assured him. Mine was a game that went deeper than impatience and fear. The day would come when Alcántara learned how greatly he’d underestimated me. For now, though, I gave him a subservient nod. “I’m merely looking forward to getting on my way.”

  “On your way, is it?” He leaned back with a sneer. “You fashion yourself quite the lone wolf, don’t you? A ma-ver-ick.” He pronounced each syllable of the word slowly, disdainfully, his lips peeling back as he ended on the sharp, hard k sound, revealing a pair of long, gleaming fangs.

  “No, indeed, Master Alcántara,” I assured him in as formal a tone as I could manage. Let him think I was cowed.

  “Best to remember, rebels are not tolerated.” His mouth curved in a catlike smile. Lean and striking, sleek and dark, the Spanish vampire was a deadly panther in elegant human form. “You are merely a Tracer. My Tracer.”

  His Tracer. He believed this was all I might be. A human tool who brought unsuspecting adolescents to him—to their almost-certain deaths.

  “Naturally.” I thought I might’ve nodded in a gesture of respectful submission, but all I knew was the single thought driving me: One day this submission would end. One day I would destroy him. Slowly and with gusto.

  Alcántara had immortality, power, and sway—and it meant he had everything to lose. Not me, though. I’d already lost everything. There was nothing left for me to fear. A sense of belonging, of hope and attachment. All those things that’d made me vulnerable had transformed into vengefulness the day he took my sister from me. The only family I’ve known, my Charlotte.

  Gritting my teeth, I told him, “I have the names.”

  I despised the vampires—have always despised them—but I had to serve them. Each day Alcántara found me useful was another day I survived. Alive was good. I couldn’t take them down if I were dead.

  This mission would be like any other. The Vampire Directorate identified teenagers with the proper lineage, and it was up to me to assess them. For candidates to have even the slimmest chance of survival, they had to possess the correct blend of adverse emotion and experience. They had to be outsiders. Hostile. Neglected. There had to be resentment. Violence. And just the slightest glimmer of hope. I collected the teens who met these criteria and fetched them to this remote hell we called the Isle of Night. Here, the boys trained to be vampires and the girls to be Watchers—trained killers all of them, in the service of the Vampire Directorate. Few survived.

  I’d lost count of the children I’d taken. I hated myself for it. But a part of me had stopped caring when Charlotte was killed. There was no longer anyone alive whose opinion I cared about. And one day, when I inevitably reached my limits, there would be nobody alive who’d mourn me as deeply as I now mourned my sister. It was my one comfort.

  “Can you handle the assignment?” Alcántara asked. “I seem to recall your last mission ended with your charge floating facedown in the San Francisco Bay.”

  I bristled. He was referring to a male candidate—one of our Vampire Trainee recruits. I’d smuggled him out of juvie only to find he’d smuggled something out himself—a taste for meth and a homemade shiv he thought he’d use on me to get drugs. “He wasn’t up to our usual standards.”

  “But leaving the child bobbing like a rotted fish for all the world to see?”

  “I heard sirens,” I explained, holding myself still in my seat. Vampires prized discretion at all costs. Tracers who ended up in police custody had very short life spans. “The authorities were too close. I had to act.”

  He tsk-tsked. “We try to be more discreet with our refuse.”

  I thinned my lips in what I hoped approximated a penitent smile. “That won’t happen again, Master Alcántara.”

  “It’s the mistake of a young man. Perhaps you require more training to get your temper under control.”

  On the contrary, I prided myself on my control and professionalism, though I did let a little of it slip when I said, “Aye, I’m young, but I’m the best in the world at what I do.”

  I was his best, and he knew it. A well-trained Tracer could do a standard retrieval job in his sleep, and I was more than just a well-trained Tracer. I had a rare talent that made me more valuable than the others.

  “I suppose you are the best,” he admitted with a sigh. “For now. One day someone younger will come to take your place.”

  The threat wasn’t a vague one. The job of Tracer didn’t exactly come with a retirement package. I gathered my wits. “But I’m here now,” I said, surprised when he laughed in reply. A cat testing the limits of his toy.

  “You are here now,” he agreed, “but not for long. You’re off to gather two American girls. In Florida, is it?”

  “Aye, Miami.” Where the sun was so bright it bleached the sky to an intolerable glare and the air so thick with dampness it lingered in my sinuses and clung to my body like a mildewed cloak. “Bloody horrible place,” I muttered before I thought to stop myself.

  “I assure you,” he snapped, “
there is no need to be churlish. I can send Tracer Judge in your stead. A week chained in the caverns will give you plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of bloody horrible place.”

  “Apologies, Master Alcántara.” I burned to destroy him and everything about this sick island, but for now, I bowed my head, blanking my features. I couldn’t let him read treason on my face. “As ever, I appreciate your wise supervision.”

  “Indeed.” He tilted his head with predatory consideration. “I believe it’s precisely this guidance that’s shaped you into such an able instrument.”

  He was reminding me of my place, and I reeled from a fresh wave of loathing. I had to get out of there. No longer able to stop myself, I shot a quick glance at the clock.

  “You tire of our discussion?” Alcántara smiled, but I didn’t mistake it for friendliness. There was no such thing as friendliness on this island. Friends were quick to die. Suspecting everything about everyone was what’d kept me alive so long.

  “I don’t want to miss my ferry.” I resisted the urge to edge forward, to flee. “I leave for Oban at 18:30.”

  “A mere instant in time to we of the Vampire blood.” He kicked back, casually crossing his black-booted ankles. He might’ve been hundreds of years old, but Alcántara looked like he’d be more at home in a New York nightclub than medieval Spain.

  But then he froze. The door swung open, and his face hardened to marble.

  A powerful presence hit my back like an invisible pulse of electricity.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Alcántara demanded, his voice lethally sharp. Vampires prized things like order, custom, formality. Interruptions like this never happened.

  I held my breath—I didn’t dare turn to see who’d entered. Being challenged by a vampire was dangerous; watching one provoke another was surely a close second.

  The feel of a savage force rippled over me, making my skin crawl. “There has been a change of plans,” a ragged voice said, closing in.

  A hand seized my shoulder. It was Master Alrik Dagursson; I recognized his bony, tapered fingers, more ancient claw than hand. I suppressed a shiver.

  I angled my body to look up—it was unavoidable now—and was met by a pair of eerily pale eyes, grotesquely round and deeply sunken into his cadaverous features. “Master Dagursson,” I said in quiet, ceremonious greeting.

  His only reply was a bored hiss, the smell of his breath something past decay, like a corpse left rotting to dust.

  Long ago, vampires resolved to spend eternity surrounded by pretty things—young men and women, all of them clever, attractive, alluring—but Dagursson came from a generation before that. His was of a cruel time, one of Vikings and ice. An era before the affairs of the Vampire had evolved into remembrance and lore.

  His eyes cut, fast as a snake’s, from me to the Spaniard. “Hugo, I’ve added a third girl to the list.”

  “How peculiar”—the tension in Alcántara’s voice hummed like a tuning fork—“Seeing as the list is not of your jurisdiction.”

  Alcántara was right. Generally my orders came from him alone, in this office. Only rarely did Dagursson emerge from his dusty lair, where he surrounded himself with ancient manuscripts and esoteric objects from bygone eras.

  “I’m making it my jurisdiction,” he snarled.

  The temperature in the room dropped. Alcántara’s alabaster features grew even paler, shimmering like ice. “Go back to your books, Alrik,” he said, his words a cold, dangerously quiet whisper.

  Dagursson made a show of considering then dismissing this, and then he returned his attention to me, his talon fingers digging deeper into my skin. “You are leaving soon. Can I trust you not to fail this time? I understand you left a body behind on your last assignment.”

  “I didn’t fail,” I said. I quickly regretted the hint of defensiveness in my tone. “That is to say, the candidate was no good.”

  Dagursson’s pale eyes glimmered. “Self-justifying excuses are a failure for all of us.” He removed his hand from my shoulder, slicing me with a razor-sharp fingernail. “But I will allow you to prove yourself”—he dropped a file in my lap—“with this.”

  “Alrik,” Alcántara said in a low, level voice. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten: Tracers are my concern.”

  Dagursson’s withered features hardened into something even more grotesque. “You are the one who’s forgotten, Hugo. I am more senior than you.”

  I made my face utterly still so as not to betray my complete fascination. I’d never seen a vampire pissing contest before.

  Alcántara’s lips curled into a slow, considering smile. “You are older, it’s true,” he said in an oblique stab at the vampire’s looks. “But when it comes to the job of Tracer and Acari, I wonder if you are wiser. You see, Alrik, while you spend your time with your archaic investigations”—despite being a scholar in his own right, Alcántara waved his hand dismissively at this—“I am focused almost exclusively on cultivating what has grown into a magnificent student body. I would that you not doubt me, my recruits, or the instrument I’ve chosen to retrieve them.” He sat back then, feigning boredom. “Now perhaps you’ll leave me to return to these relevant day-to-day decisions, and you can go back to poring over all those old papers you so—”

  “I am the keeper of more than mere papers,” Dagursson snapped. He glided to Alcántara’s desk and unrolled a scroll. The crackle of paper as thin as onionskin spoke to how ancient it was. I caught a glimpse of handwriting, a blurred and cramped antique scrawl filling the page. There were lines branching into more lines—a family tree. He traced a finger down to a point then pinned the Spaniard with unwavering eyes. “It’s time for the girl.”

  Confusion dawned into angry realization on Alcántara’s face. “You wouldn’t,” he said sharply. “It’s too soon. She’s not ready.”

  “Or perhaps you’re the one who’s not ready.” Dagursson stared at him for a long moment, impatience and challenge on his wizened face. “In fact, I believe you’re dismissed.”

  “You can’t dismiss me from my own office,” Alcántara replied with quiet outrage.

  I would’ve said the same. I’d thought the two vampires were peers, but this interaction told a very different story.

  Alcántara scowled. Finally, in a voice like ice, he said, “As you wish, Alrik.” And then he excused himself. From his own office.

  In all my time, I’d never seen such a thing.

  Dagursson perched formally on the sofa where Alcántara had been lounging just a moment before. “You claim I can trust your competence, Tracer, but can you handle retrieving a third girl?”

  “Three isn’t a problem,” I said cautiously. It was an effort not to steal a glance at the door. I was still processing what’d just happened, wondering at the secret intrigue playing out before my eyes.

  “Is it something you do often?” He leaned in, peering closer. “Retrieve that many?”

  Does he really not know how this works?

  “I’ve collected as many as five at once.” I paused. There was a strange, taut feeling in the room, and it put me on guard. “Is there something more I should know?”

  He met my question with another question. “What if one in your charge was too strong for your powers?”

  An internal alarm went off, prickling the skin on the back of my neck. “That’s never happened. These are children we’re talking about.”

  The old Viking shrugged disdainfully. “You, too, are a child.”

  “I’m more powerful than that,” I said with quiet certainty. I stopped being a child the day I was abandoned on this rock at the age of twelve.

  “We’ll see. This third girl is immature yet, but her strength might be more impressive than the norm. We must be cautious—none of us would be here had we not heeded every concern.”

  We. The Directorate.

  “The file.” He motioned to the dossier in my lap. “Read it. I expect you to memorize it.” He gave me an impatient look. “Now, Tracer.”

&
nbsp; It began ordinarily enough:

  Annelise Regan Drew (age 17)

  Height: 5’2”

  Weight: 120 lbs. (est.)

  Hair: Blond

  Eyes: Blue

  State of residence: Florida

  Education: High School (graduated 3.5 years)

  Employment: tutor (various), entrepreneur (unauthorized sale of academic work), Fuddruckers restaurant franchise (cashier, prep, counter)

  A pert blonde appeared in my mind’s eye wearing a too-tight restaurant uniform, her skin taut and Florida-bronzed. “Americans,” I muttered, “and their fetish for the ridiculous.”

  “Beware your preconceptions.” Dagursson rose and walked to the fireplace, standing before it with the precise, erect posture that’d made him a shoo-in for the island’s protocol and propriety classes. “I believe you’ll find this candidate defies expectations.” There was a glimmer of fang, a quick flash, part smile, part predatory anticipation.

  Nodding, I turned my attention back to the file and reviewed details about her family—what few there were. “There are a lot of gaps,” I said, noting the extensive passages that’d been blacked out.

  Robert Buck “Bucky” Drew

  Relation: Father

  Priors: Two counts Misdemeanor Battery, Felony Battery [no conviction], Domestic Battery, Domestic Battery against a minor)

  Employment: Titan Parts (SSI Disability pending)

  It looked like her father had been a cruel drunk—it was a typical enough profile among our candidates—but her mother defied categorization. In fact, her description hadn’t been much more than thick black lines obscuring biographical details.

  {details redacted} Audunsson

  Relation: Mother

  {details redacted}

  Employment: {redacted}

  {redacted}

  “It’s…unusual.” Generally these things read like police rap sheets, and yet the only person with any criminal history here was her father. “This is the candidate you thought might be too strong for me?” I asked in disbelief.