As I climbed back down, I called quietly for Mei. No answer. Hopefully she was back on campus by now, headed to her music class.
With that thought came strains of her flute, high and keening, echoing along the rocks, as though I’d summoned her. I stopped to listen. I was imagining things, surely.
But the sound came louder. And I detected another sound, too. Guttural moans.
I shivered. I’d found my stars and stakes, and hastily wiped them clean of sand and blood and holstered them. “Like nothing ever happened,” I muttered, then took off at a jog, headed for the sound of the flute, which, unfortunately, was coming back from the direction we’d come.
Alone, I moved quickly, mesmerized by the rhythm of my steps, a soothing drumbeat in my head. But then I saw them.
I skidded to a stop, my heart exploding double-time.
In an instant, my stars were in my hands. I’d thought I had nothing left, but there I was, squatted, poised, ready for another fight.
Draug. A whole slew of them.
Coming right for me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Options flew through my mind, scattershot, like a pinball in a machine. I could run. But if that were Mei-Ling’s flute, it meant she was out there, probably in danger. Was she playing to give me a message? Was it a call for help?
There’d be no running. I’d have to fight this one out, at least until I found her.
But how to fight a dozen Draug with only four throwing stars? They were moving slowly, like zombies. Maybe they’d just eaten. Maybe their bloodlust was temporarily dulled. Or maybe, like Tom had said, if I didn’t show fear, they’d not hunger for me.
Either way, fear was something I couldn’t afford. I put two stars in each hand and took off running, headed straight for them. “Best defense…good offense.”
I heard Mei-Ling scream and ran harder, but then I made sense of her words and skidded to a stop, close enough to the Draug to see the whites of their eyes.
“Stop, Drew,” she cried again. “Stop.”
She meant me. She wanted me to stop.
Her voice came from above, and I looked along the hilltop. She was walking, her flute in hand. Tom walked beside her, looking grumpy to be there.
“What the—?”
She half slid, half ran down the hill to me, a proud smile on her face. “I thought I’d bring backup.”
I had the oddest flicker of temper. I was slashed all over my body, and despite the rapid healing of my wounds, my shoulder still ached like crazy. I’d been freaking out with worry for her, fighting to protect her, and here she was, scampering toward me with a smile on her face. “What the hell are you doing?” I snapped.
She looked stung. Hurt. It made me feel like an ass. “I thought I’d help you,” she said quietly.
“Sorry. You’re right.” I sighed and looked toward the Draug, and it hit me what I was witnessing. They weren’t acting like zombies because they’d been fed. This was Mei-Ling’s doing. I looked back at her for confirmation.
She waved her flute. “Cool, huh?”
I stepped closer, fascinated to see the creatures up close. Their eyes were glazed, and they held themselves utterly still, like they were waiting for something. The stench was overpowering, but I couldn’t look away. Each face was so distinct, all in various states of decay.
My eyes went to a patch of brown curly hair, and I recognized one of the Trainees who’d been in my Phenomena class last term. I whirled and ran to the hillside, leaning on the rocks for support as I retched up every last bit of food in my system.
Tom’s voice sounded at my shoulder. “Get a hold, girl. Be calm, like your friend here.”
Astounded, I looked up, wiping my mouth, gathering myself. Sure enough, Mei-Ling did look calm. Composed. I remembered how she’d been through a crisis before, watching as her boyfriend was killed, but it hadn’t destroyed her. This time, when crisis struck, she’d had the wherewithal to use music to pacify the Draug. She’d needed me to protect her, but it appeared in this situation I’d needed her.
“Yeah, Drew,” she said with a teasing smile. “Be calm like me.”
I used my sleeve to wipe my mouth again. “Jeez, Mei. Your flute did this?”
She shrugged, looking pleased.
Tom, though, had that grumpy look again. “Her whistle shut them right up.”
I bumped up against her, giving her a half hug. “You’re like the pied piper.”
He scowled at my arm around Mei’s shoulders. “You girls done? We gotta get a move on. My Draug ain’t the only ones called by blood.”
That focused us quickly enough. There was a rogue vampire out there somewhere, who’d be called by the scent of blood in the air. It also reminded me how there were bodies—bodies that might easily be linked back to me. “There are three of them,” I said gravely. “They were Guidons.”
Tom sniffed and nodded up the beach. “I smell ’em, all right. This way?”
I nodded, nervous. How would we dispose of them? Even if I didn’t get in trouble for killing three Guidons, I knew I’d get it for going so far off campus. “What should I do?”“We’ll see,” he said mysteriously.
We reached Masha’s body, and the full impact of what I’d done hit me. Masha was dead.
I knelt to study the body. I’d killed a girl before, only to see her pop up on another island. I didn’t want another Lilac. I felt for her pulse, for her breath.
Really dead.
My eyes went to the injury on her arm, and ice filled my veins. I’d retrieved my shuriken, but that cut was short and razor-thin…like something a throwing star would leave. “My fingerprints are all over this.”
Tom spat in the sand, looking thoughtful. “Not for long.”
“What?” I didn’t understand what he was saying to me.
“You”—he waved at Mei-Ling’s instrument—“play that thing again.”
She pulled it out, and just holding it seemed to give her comfort. She began to play, and it wasn’t just the Draug who were affected.
My mind lulled, as though my brain got heavy, and those snapshot memories flickered on the edges of my consciousness again. She made me feel nostalgia.
Could she make me feel happy, too? Might her music have the power to make me no longer Acari? To make me, for just once, simply a teenager?
He shooed at me, startling me from my thoughts, and waved me away. “My boys got this. You don’t want to watch.”
He was right—I really, really didn’t.
For once, the sea called me, and I headed to the water, walking in the breakers, away from the body of the girl I’d killed. She’d washed onto shore, and the waves rolled over her, pushing her a little higher on the sand with each ebb and flow of the tide. I walked away, walked deeper, longing to feel the waves pound my legs. Maybe they would cleanse me.
I walked until the crash of the surf filled my head more loudly than the hideous gurgle and snarl of the Draug as they consumed the bodies.
When I returned, Tom was spattered with gore, looking like some sort of macabre butcher. Draug still crouched, sniffing around where Masha’s body had been. Through their huddled bodies, I spotted bones, tufts of black hair. I looked away, sickened to my soul.
“Nobody can pin this on you now,” Tom said.
I nodded, tried to say the words “Thank you.”
Mei looked as shaken as I felt, and I went to her, linking my arm in hers.
Tom began to walk up the beach, farther away from campus, beckoning us to follow. Even though it meant missing class, going way too much farther from the path and surely sealing some grim punishment for ourselves, we followed.
I dared not refuse him. I owed him.
I turned and looked back at the Draug. “What about them?”
He waved it off. “They’re more scared of this island than you are. They’ll go back to their pens now. They like it familiar.”
Apparently, at its heart, a Draug was no more than a frightened, feral child. The concept astounded me.
We walked for some time, and I guessed I was committed now. Far away and in deep—too far from the dungeons to help Carden. And now I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to help my own self, either.
To take my mind off my nerves, I asked, “Why’d you help us?”
“Help comes to them who help themselves.”
I frowned at him. The way he spoke in riddles confused me, and my patience was flagging as quickly as my courage. “What does that mean?”
“Maybe it’s that you’ve got a heart. Maybe I’m bored. Maybe you’re different.” He cackled and shook his head. “Or maybe I just helped because I like the look of you two.”
We grew quiet as the beach grew rockier and harder to traverse. Eventually we came to a small cove I’d never seen before.
Tom hiked away from the water toward the cliff wall and disappeared into a sea cave. “Come on then,” he shouted from inside. “Don’t got all day.”
We followed him in, and the stench was overpowering. I hid my nose in the crook of my elbow to dull the acrid tang of urine stinging my nostrils. I smelled dung, too, and over it all was the cloying sweet smell of hay. “What, is this like your barn annex or something?”
My eyes adjusted to the dimness, and I saw there was a boat pulled up onto the rocks. Bits of hay were strewn all along the cave floor. “Wait,” I said. “It smells like a barn because it is like a barn.”
“I got a boat, you see.” Tom gave a weighty nod toward it. Nodded back to us. “How do you think I get the goats here? We go through the things pretty quick.”
It was a flat-bottomed craft, maybe twice the size of Ronan’s rowboat, only this one had an ancient engine to propel it. Old boards walled off one end into a makeshift corral, piled with old hay.
Just right for a girl to escape.
I glanced back at Tom, and the smile in his eyes told me he’d thought the same thing.
This was my chance. It was my moment.