I told myself this flirtation felt comfortable and good simply because I was talented at my job. It certainly wasn’t because I was enjoying myself.
By the time we reached the airstrip, I’d sufficiently gathered myself. I was back on my guard and acutely attuned to the doubt and disbelief on her face as she studied the small jet. She knew better than most young women how things that seemed too good to be true rarely were.
I was losing her.
This had never happened to me before—not at this stage in the game. There were two recruits waiting on the plane, and by the time they’d reached this point, they were practically clawing at each other to see who could board first.
I made it a rule never to touch the girls, but I had no choice now.
I extended my power, reaching out for her shoulder. My power had backfired before—what would happen now when I actually touched her?
Tentative, I let my hand alight on her shoulder. I felt the warmth of her body through her shirt—a vintage Pretenders concert tee—and memories swamped me in a flood so overpowering I almost broke the connection. Flashes of secret, stolen moments, of early missions that’d taken me to underground clubs, of brief sweet tastes of rebellion and freedom. Of a youth stolen from me.
Slowly, slowly, I slid my hand higher, wanting to feel her skin under my fingertips just once. Finally, I reached the nape of her neck. Hair so soft and fine brushed the back of my hand, sending a jolt up my arm.
It took supreme concentration to keep a hold on my power and not do something foolish. To remind myself I was a Tracer and not some normal guy parked in a car with a normal girl.
Power was vibrating back at me full force. My throat sounded rusty as I asked her, “Are you ready to embrace a whole new life?”
A part of me no longer knew what it was I referred to.
She shifted away from me, breaking the spell.
“Why me?” she asked, and the uncertainty was back, thick in her voice. Somehow my control had slipped again.
I shifted, too, closer to her. I was too near to my goal to lose her now. Dagursson would kill me for my failure. But, mostly, I found I was curious to see what she’d do next. How she’d act on the plane, with the other students, in her studies. How life on the Isle of Night would be with her on it.
“Why not you, Annelise?” I asked.
I was intrigued. Humbled. Because maybe Dagursson was right. Maybe this young woman was stronger than any of us imagined.
Did she have the potential to become even be more powerful than the vampires themselves? It was something to consider.
But then she flinched away, breaking contact. It was enough to remind me. She was just a child. A job to be done.
I eased back in my seat, surreptitiously checking my watch. I had ten minutes to get her on that plane before people started asking questions.
I forced myself back into autopilot.
Pretending incredulity, I asked, “Are you saying you don’t want to leave Florida? The Gulfstream IV can travel over 4,000 nautical miles.” In my experience, technical gibberish impressed vulnerable minds.
But Annelise’s mind was far from vulnerable. Her reply was quick. “Oh, well, that’s a relief,” she said. “Particularly as I generally calculate things in terms of nautical miles.”
This time, I had to bite my cheek not to laugh. All the better that my resulting expression was a silent glare.
She inhaled deeply, seeming to gather her thoughts.
I found I was curious to hear them.
“I mean, yes,” she said at last. “Of course. I long to leave Florida.” Her voice was so low I had to strain to hear. For the first time, she was being upfront with me rather than using humor as a shield. My reaction was mingled fear that she’d speak too intimately and pleasure that she might. “My life here…it’s been hard. I’ve always dreamt of leaving.”
Once again, her eyes darted from mine. She was vulnerable. An open wound.
What was I doing to this girl? She should’ve been somewhere else. Anywhere else. She deserved to be with people who loved her.
But such notions were dangerous.
The university parking lot seemed miles away now. There, I’d expected she’d eventually annoy me. Now I just wanted to hear what she’d say next.
I reached for her, touched her chin. Whatever I was doing, I couldn’t stop.
The bones of her face were so delicate, her cheeks dewy with the lingering dampness of sweat, or tears. Her jaw pulsed under my fingers, clenching and releasing, the movement as fragile and determined as a bird’s beating wings. She was so troubled.
I found I wanted to ease her mind. I turned her to face me. “I’ll take you someplace very far away,” I heard myself say, my voice a rasp in my throat. I told myself these intimate words were all a function of my master plan—nothing more. But a part of me allowed myself to pretend I meant more. “Far from your father. From the people who don’t understand you.”
In that moment, I believed what I was saying, even as I recognized the lies within. Because in that moment, I believed I knew her. Believed I understood.
There was such raw trust on her face as she asked, “Where are we going?”
I pulled away then, gripped the steering wheel. She’d believed my every word. I was about to sucker yet another child onto the Isle of Night. And now she’d asked where I was taking her. How could I lie?
Somehow I felt I owed her some bit of sincerity. I had to find a half-truth that wouldn’t send her screaming from the car. “Far away,” I finally said. “Life as you know it will change utterly.”
And so it was truth enough. I saw the light change in her eyes as she accepted my words, made her decision.
She trusted me. She’d get on the plane with me. And I’d take her to a place of savage cruelty. To her almost-certain death.
My family, I reminded myself. I was doing this to find my family.
This was just a girl. She was nobody to me. She could never be anybody to me.
In fact, prized as she was by the Directorate, she might only pose a danger to me. I’d believed she was different from the other kids, the gangbangers and juvie rejects, but maybe it was more than potential strength that set Annelise apart. Maybe her game was deeper and more sinister than I could fathom. For all I knew, she was playing me right now.
“Far away?” she repeated. “Are we going west?”
It seemed a childish thing to ask. Was the naïveté an act? Rarely did I feel this sort of uncertainty, and it shortened my temper. “No,” I said. “We’re leaving the country. For an island.”
She looked intrigued, as if I’d packed her a weekend bag and was sweeping her away to Hawaii for a quick getaway.
“Not that kind of island,” I said in a voice colder than I’d intended. “It’s far away,” I added, softening my tone. She wasn’t on the plane yet; I could still lose her. “Far north. North of Scotland. North of the Shetlands. It’s a dark place. A cold place.”
She shifted in her seat, hand poised on the door latch. She’d decided. The bait was taken. The open trust on her face floored me.
She wasn’t the one gaming me; it was I who’d betrayed her. Annelise was no schemer. She was just a girl who wanted to escape her pain. Little did she know, I was taking her to a place that’d invented the meaning of the word.
Part of me wished she’d back out. I had the strange sense that, in winning her consent, I’d somehow lost something else. I was just unable to put my finger on what.
“So what’s this island called?” she asked, and the lightness in her tone leached oxygen from the small space. Suddenly it was unbearably hot in that ridiculous sports car.
“Those who speak the old tongue call it Eyja næturinnar,” I told her. “The Isle of Night.”
The island had two names, as so many things in my world. Fitting, seeing as she used two names as well. She went by Drew, but I refused to call her this. It was the name of the man whose home she’d once lived in, not her
own.
From that day on, to me, she would always be Annelise.
CHAPTER THREE
Present day
“Stubborn, human boy,” Freya flings the words at me as though a foul taste needs to be spewed from her body. “You will not return to the Isle of Night. I forbid it.” The resonant hum of her voice ripples across my skin, filling the small cave. She is Vampire. The mere sound of her voice can stop a man’s heart in his chest.
“Listen to the lady,” Carden tells me. He’s gripping my arm, holding me back. He’s Vampire, too, and it makes him stronger than me—a fact I pretend not to hate. He’d been young, brawny, and well made as a human, which means he’s all the fiercer as one of the undead.
I stare down at his hand. I’d come merely to give my report, and now it seems they’re not going to let me leave. “Is this the only reason you’re here, McCloud? You’re an enforcer now?” Technically, Carden and I are allies, both serving Freya as double agents in the takedown of the Directorate. It doesn’t mean I trust him.
He laughs. “Someone’s got to mind the riffraff. Come, lad, why do you want to go back to a crap place like Eyja næturinnar anyway?”
Freya ignores Carden’s casual comments, but the half-circle of figures surrounding her—female vampires of varying ages—make their distaste clear.
“I’ve got a job to do,” I say simply.
Protect Annelise. It’s the drumbeat of my heart. Annelise.
She’s in everyone’s sights now. All semester, she fielded attacks from bloodthirsty Trainees. Eager for answers, she’s even become Alcántara’s assistant to spy on him. She’s closing in on the truth and needs an ally more than ever. More, she needs a friend. Carden comes and goes. He keeps his own schedule and has his own motivations, which means he’s not always around to watch her back.
“Your job there is done, Ronan.” Freya’s voice intensifies, an unearthly sound that prickles gooseflesh up my spine. “I need you here. Or have you forgotten? Here is where we wage war against the Directorate. Eilean Ban-Laoch is where you belong.”
Eilean Ban-Laoch, the island of warrior women. It’s also my secret home base. Here, the female vampires rule—older even than the Norsemen on the Isle of Night, they keep the ways of the ancient Celts, seeking a return to the old order. And Freya is the most ancient and unyielding of all.
“So I’m a prisoner in my own home?” I force a half-smile to downplay the tension in the small cavern. “I wouldn’t have returned if I’d known I wouldn’t be allowed to leave again.”
Freya’s pale eyes bore into me, her features gone utterly still. I’ve misstepped—it seems I don’t do casual as effortlessly as Carden.
“You’re no prisoner,” she says. “Unless you wish to be?” Power is vibrating from her now. It’s a tangible, foreign thing, like electricity, both alluring and repellent.
“No, indeed.” I give her a respectful half-bow. I’m used to dealing with male vampires—the same vampires who’d have everyone believe that men are the only ones capable of immortality—but it’s women who are the world’s creators, its givers of life, and so female vampires are the strongest of all. “It’s only that there’s one more thing I must do on the Isle of Night,” I explain. The sheer force of my will is what enables me to hold her gaze.
“A thing you must do.” She gives Carden a wicked look. “Perhaps he’s referring to a certain Acari named Annelise Drew?”
Carden jostles my arm. He laughs, and it has the ring of triumph to it. When it comes to Annelise, we are playing a game he thinks he’s won. I ignore him.
“It’s no secret I want to protect her,” I say.
At first, I watched over Annelise because Freya ordered it. That the Directorate also wanted her alive suggests she holds the mysterious key to their destruction. But one day I realized: Now I protect her because I want to.
Freya snaps, “Carden has sole charge of the girl’s well-being.”
“I’m taking care of our wee dove just fine,” he says. When I try to jerk my arm free, he sees something on my face—the tremendous desire to punch him perhaps—and he winks.
Freya’s sharp voice cuts between us. “Enough. Ronan, your role on Eyja næturinnar is over.”
Even though I feel her impatience pulsing over me, I bow my head lower to try again. I can’t abandon Annelise now. “I am merely eager to continue to act as your agent, keeping an eye on things in the field.”
Freya considers me. “You mean, ‘keep an eye on the girl.’” She clearly thinks my feelings begin and end on a part of my anatomy located somewhat south of my heart. “I believe this Annelise is your weakness.”
She’s wrong. Annelise is my strength.
But let Freya think what she will—I won’t sway. “I’m deeply entrenched in Alcántara’s world,” I explain, keeping to my original line of reason. “As his Tracer, I’m more well suited than anyone to remain an active agent.”
Carden’s low laugh bounces off the walls of the crude cavern, grating my nerves. “More well suited, is it? Unless you’re talking about that getup you wear to splash about in the waves, I can’t say I agree.” I jerk away from him, but he only grins, his hand wrapped around my arm like a manacle. “Fret not, pup. I’ve got things covered on the Isle.”
Things… He means Annelise.
“I’ve taken her as a mate,” he adds with a smile.
“By accident.” My retort is instant, my hostility foolish, but I can’t help myself. When she’d come back from that first mission bonded to Carden… My rage boils at the memory. I’d sensed my feelings for her before then, but the moment I knew I couldn’t have her? That was when I realized I couldn’t live without her. “She was the one who bonded the both of you,” I manage. “Unintentionally, as I recall.”
Such disrespect against any vampire other than the easygoing Carden would’ve meant my immediate death, but the Scotsman only grins and gives a playful slug to my arm. “I think our young Ronan is just sore I’ve got the better job.” The murder in my eyes grows as he broadens his smile. “I think the whelp would like to hit me.” He slings a rough arm around my shoulder then, speaking to me in a consoling tone that makes my jaw clench. “Don’t get yourself into a lather. You know I’ve a true affection for the chit.”
I give a sharp tug to my arm, breaking free at last from his grip. “What is this, the eighteenth century? Annelise isn’t a…what’d you call her…a chit?”
Finally, I see Carden’s eyes go cold. “Easy, boy,” he says, seizing my shoulder. “You’d do well to mind your affections. Aye, she’s no chit. Trust me, I know better than any how Annelise is a woman.”
His words tighten around my chest like a vise. I say through clenched teeth, “She thinks you love her.”
“And love her I do.” The coldness in Carden’s eyes has been replaced by something unreadable. “But I won’t let my feelings about her cloud our most important goal. We must triumph over the Directorate. Whatever the cost. Drew would be the first to agree.”
“You think? I’d have guessed you’d list her safety as the primary goal.”
“It’s called honor, boy. We learned it in forty-five.”
“The year 1745 was a long time ago, McCloud. Your Scottish honor has nothing to do with vampires.” I give him a peremptory smile. “We’re friends with the Brits now, you know.”
“I’ll tell you what I do know,” he says, and I can see the smirk in his eyes already, damn him. “I reckon you’ve got a puppy crush on a lass, and it’s got your knickers in a bunch. You young bucks are all the same.”
That’s where he’s wrong. I was raised in isolation, weaned on savagery. My body might be nineteen, but my soul is old as the cave we stand in. In my heart, I’m as ancient as any vampire.
“Older doesn’t always mean wiser,” I say, and before Carden can respond, I turn to Freya. I choke down my anger, forcing myself to remember why I’ve allied with one set of vampires to take down another. Carden might be a son of a bitch and Freya p
ower hungry, but Alcántara’s Directorate is an evil I could never destroy on my own. “I’m young, it’s true. But I’ve served you well.”
“Don’t speak to me of serving,” she snaps. “The time has come for you to obey.”
I don’t flinch because I know I obey nothing but my own heart. And my heart tells me nobody can protect Annelise like I will.
Freya’s eyes harden on me. “Perhaps you need a lesson. Shall I tell you of Sonja?” I recognize the name instantly, from the runes Annelise found carved into a cliffside. I don’t know much about the inner workings of the Directorate, but one more piece has fallen into place. “Must I tell you how Sonja, my…sister,” she spits, “my spoiled little sister, turned on us? She’s like a child playing at queen, and when she didn’t get her way, she took everything—our secrets, our treasures, our lore—and used it against us. Must I remind you how her perverse army of…of boys has nearly decimated us? It’s taken us centuries to rebuild the female vampire population. We can’t just run about biting girls, you know. Few survive the transformation. Those of the purest blood have the hardest time of all.”
I want to ask, what of the males? Sons are rare. We Tracers are few, all of us kept in ignorance. Are we also of this line? Am I? But I dare not ask such provocative questions—Freya has slaughtered people more valuable than me for less.
Carden grins and gives my arm a shake, as though he’s in a pub instead of this miserable, airless cave. “Buck up, lad. You’re just jealous that while you were off babysitting the others, I was bonding to our wee Annelise.”
I look away, unable to meet his eyes, lest he see the truth of his words there. “I helped Annelise long before you were in the picture.”
“But I’m in the picture now, aren’t I?” Carden tsks in that patronizing way of his, shaking his head at me. “Poor Ronan. Seems like you got the short end of the stick. I keep Drew close”—he emphasizes the word—“and you’ve only—”
I cut him off, defending myself to Freya. “Against all odds, I’ve helped keep Acari Drew alive for you.”
Dark Craving: A Watchers Novella Page 3
