I heard a whoop, and knew it must’ve been Emma cheering for me. Nobody else would have.
Claire’s face twitched. She was going to lose, and she didn’t like it. I glanced at the clock on the wall: 4:37. I wondered whether I could set a class record.
But in that moment, she plucked her dagger from its scabbard and leapt at me. Her erratic movements slid past my defenses, and she managed to connect with my hip, her blade slicing deep along my side, all the way down to my thigh.
I sucked in a breath—the pain was instant, extreme. A shock.
Claire had a real dagger. A razor-sharp one.
We stared at each other for a moment, our eyes wide. She’d been given a real blade with a real edge, and we both realized it at the same instant.
Emma screamed, “Stop the fight! She has a weapon.”
It didn’t matter. Rule number six: Only time elapsed, points earned, instant win, or unconsciousness may stop a challenge once begun.
I hopped back to the ropes, regrouping. There were 4:17 left on the clock. My hip throbbed and my thigh stung with each movement. She’d managed to slice down my whole left side.
She studied me, grim satisfaction lighting her eyes. Though blood wasn’t visible on the black uniform, the fabric clung to me, my flesh soaked with it.
I saw the moment Claire decided to kill me. I watched as her face hardened, resolve steeling her features. She gave me a smile. And then she leapt, this time slashing and yowling like a wildcat.
My back was already against the ropes and so I scooted sideways, ducking from her.
There was a cold gust of air. It sent a shiver up my injured leg, so wet with blood. I heard the heavy gym door slam shut. Someone had entered. I spared a glance.
I’d never seen them before, but I could tell at once they were vampires. They stood rigid, unmoving. Watching me with eagle eyes.
I knew instinctively: The scent of blood had called them. My blood. I sensed their hunger.
Peeling the uniform from my thigh, I bobbed around Claire, back toward the center of the ring. The blood was flowing now, and I gave up trying to staunch it with my hand.
Time had slowed. An interminable 4:02 was left on the clock.
I needed to keep calm. My sword was blunt, but I was smart and I was strong. I am roots in the earth. I am grounded.
I went on the offensive, and my abrupt attack momentarily startled Claire. I managed to get in a hit, slamming the flat of my blade against the side of her head. It made a dull slapping sound.
Clutching her head, she shrieked. Her eyes shrank to tiny, glittering stones. She came at me with renewed fury. Frantically, she sliced at the air, sloppy movements aiming for whichever part of me she could find.
I raised my sword, blocking her. I felt the gym door open and shut again. The Tracers would be gathering, preparing to roll my body in canvas and take me away.
I pushed it from my mind. I was pure focus. My feet felt glued to the mat beneath me. I was only the sword in my hand and the dagger flying at me. I parried her every strike.
I gripped my sword hilt in my right hand, bracing the blunt top half of the blade in my left. Holding my sword diagonally before me, I edged toward Claire.
She shifted, gripping her dagger with both hands, like a baseball bat. And then she swung, hitting the very center of my blade. The metal snapped, my blunt practice sword unable to withstand an assault from high-grade steel.
Jogging backward, I tossed the broken tip from the ring. I spun to face Claire, jabbing at her with the ragged tip of my blade. I parried her strikes with what was left of my sword. But my stubby, blunt-edged weapon was no match for hers.
She slashed wildly at me, catching me on my forearm. Pain sheared up my arm. My hand opened reflexively, and my shard of a blade slipped from my sweaty palm.
The cut felt like acid searing down to my bones. Tears threatened to blur my vision, but I blinked back hard.
Blood dribbled down my arm. Wiping it from the back of my hand, I snatched the dagger from the scabbard at my calf. I tested the edge with my thumb. Blunt.
The door opened again. I didn’t need to look. I could feel by the stillness in the room that vampires continued to gather. I wondered if Ronan was out there, too, witnessing my impromptu bloodletting.
I quickly shifted the practice dagger from one hand to the other, drying my sweaty palms along my uninjured thigh. I was just about done for, and I could see in Claire’s glittering eyes that she thought so, too.
I was settling the useless weapon in my palm when one last, desperate option came to me. Instead of grasping the hilt, I took the blade between my fingers, finding its balance. The steel was cool. I imagined myself just as cool.
I am water that flows.
With a deep inhale, I threw, imagining the dagger riding on a wave of fluid power. It struck Claire just above the sternum. But the dull blade didn’t penetrate.
Still, it had hit hard, and she rubbed her chest. She kicked the dagger away, and it careened off the mat to the floor below. She looked manic, half laughing, half snarling. “You’ll pay for what you did.”
I had to remain calm. I had no weapon. But I had my hands. There were 2:01 on the clock, and my life was in the balance.
Blood dripped down my leg, and I left smeary red footprints on the mat. The cut on my leg was deep. My hip and thigh were on fire.
Vampires swarmed the gym now. They looked like statuary posed along the periphery—a gallery of men carved from pale granite. My mind flashed to an image of them feeding on my lifeless body. It galvanized me.
I am grounded. I am Watcher.
I would survive. More than that, I would win.
No longer bothering to wipe the blood from my hands, I strode to Claire. I imagined myself powerful. I was powerful.
I flew at her, grabbing her blade arm with both hands. We grappled, kicking and kneeing and snarling. Claire wriggled in my grip, trying to point her knife toward me.
I wrenched her wrists back. Our legs tangled. I hooked my ankle under hers, thinking if I tripped her, maybe I could twist her arm enough to knock the dagger free.
She stumbled. My hands were slick with sweat and blood, and her arm slipped from my grasp. She fell.
But instead of hopping back up to continue the fight, she just lay there. I nudged her with my foot, half expecting a trick. She flopped onto her back.
I stared down at the body of Idaho Claire and the dagger that had caught in her throat.
Watcher Priti struck her gong. “Acari Drew scores a win.”
My second kill.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Several days later, Ronan found me in the phenom library. I’d curled into an oversized leather armchair and sat, staring out the window at the rainy day. My days blurred together, and I hadn’t seemed to be able to get back to normal. Accidentally killing your classmates had a way of doing that to a girl.
I idly rubbed my scars, concealed under the fabric of my leggings. They itched like mad, but that was okay—I imagined it a sort of penance for killing Idaho Claire.
My skin had knit together shockingly fast, a side benefit of drinking so much vampire blood. Amanda had seemed pleased, and more than a bit surprised, by how well and quickly I’d healed. I guess I vibed with the blood. Great. Did that mean I was no longer completely human, either?
I nestled deeper in the chair. More than ever, I wished I still had my iPod. I was in a classical-piano sort of a mood. That or Metallica.
“Where’ve you been? It’s time for swim.”
Ronan stood in the doorway. Not even the sight of his solid biceps peeking from the sleeves of a damp, clinging T-shirt cheered me. In fact, the effect was just the opposite. I needed to stop looking at him like that. I was terrified the day might come when Master Alcántara noticed me noticing.
I tore my eyes from his shirt. “Jeez, Ronan. Don’t you get cold?”
“It’s May.” He walked into the library, raking the wet hair from his face.
Enough time had passed since the incident with my iPod, and things were slowly getting back to normal—whatever that meant—between us. But life was cheap on this island, and I couldn’t let myself forget to maintain emotional distance. And that meant I really needed to stop ogling his clothes like I might develop X-ray vision. I turned my head, staring back out the window instead. “I think the hottest it’s been is forty-four degrees.”
The rain was coming down in buckets, as it had all week, and the bleak weather wasn’t helping my outlook. Though the sun was setting much later than when we’d arrived—nightly sunset was well after nine p.m. now—the sky never seemed to get bright. It just morphed through shades of white and gray. “If this is the Dimming you told me about, well, it sucks.”
Ronan ignored me, scanning the floor by my chair. There was nothing but my bag, a small stack of books, and my kickedoff boots. “Where’s your wet suit?”
“But it’s raining.”
“Good. Then the water won’t bother you so much.” He gathered books to reshelve them. “The final challenge is a week away, and you must be prepared.”
“Why do I need to practice anything?” I shifted to watch him, flopping my head against the back of the chair. “I seem toto have a knack for getting girls killed all by my lonesome.”
“You won,” he snarled, knowing what was on my mind. I’d been in a funk since Claire’s death, and I sensed Ronan was beginning to tire of my mood. “Would you rather you’d been the one to die?”
“Of course not.” I glared at him. “Forgive me if it takes a while to get used to the fact that killing my fellow students is part of the curriculum.”
“It is. Wake up to it.”
“But it was just sparring practice,” I protested, feeling myself getting riled again. “And somebody switched the blades. Shouldn’t there be an investigation or something? Some sort of consequences—detention, at least?”
Though I didn’t need to dust for prints when it was obvious who’d been the brains behind it. Lilac. My only surprise was that she’d allow someone else to take me down when she was so keen to.
Ronan shrugged. “Actually, the Initiates thought switching the practice blades was a clever bit of strategy.”
