The Keep (The Watchers 4)

And then I giggled. Putting a hand to my pounding chest, I peered closer. “Holy crap. ” I’d done it. The outer casing had been spring-loaded, and when I pounded the stake, the infinity had split in two, popping open and revealing the inner workings of the lock.

Tentatively, I tried twisting the stake again, and this time the triangle turned easily. The ancient tumbler clicked. The gate cracked open.

I sat for a shocked moment, listening to the crashing of the waves and the silence of the beckoning tunnel. I smiled. And then I scrambled in.

The tunnel was dank, like something that’d been chiseled through the mountain centuries ago. The sulfurous smell was even stronger inside. I’d smelled it once before, fighting Lilac beside a hot spring deep underground. How extensive were these caverns? It was a disturbing thought.

I resheathed my stakes and scrabbled forward. Soon the tunnel expanded into something tall enough to stand in hunched over, then eventually to stand up straight.

I slipped on my cloak, shoving two of the stakes in the pockets, just in case. I readjusted the wetsuit underneath, tugging the legs back into place. The outfit might’ve been ideal for climbing in the freezing wind, but it was starting to bum me out now. Even so, it remained the best choice. I’d nabbed an extra shooter of blood at lunch and had rubbed some on my body in hopes of masking my scent, and what the blood didn’t mask, I hoped this pesky wetsuit would. Months of salt water had given it a briny odor—enough, I hoped, to hide what I was certain was the unmistakable smell of girl.

Because surely we had scents, right? After all, the vampires were predators, and we girls their prey. The not knowing lodged a spike of resentment in my heart. Why hadn’t Carden explained such things to me? Why wasn’t he here now? I’d once come to his aid, in a dank tunnel not unlike this one.

Then it struck me—that other tunnel had been unlike this in a very fundamental way: This tunnel wasn’t pitch black.

Crap. I immediately darted to the side, clinging against the cold stone. I’d been so focused on my stupid clothes, and the difference between starlight and this ambient light was so subtle, I hadn’t considered it. But ambient light meant there was electricity, or at least torches, somewhere nearby.

Light meant people.

I edged forward, every sense so attuned to my surroundings, I began to imagine sights and sounds that weren’t there. I gave my head a shake. Can’t lose my grip now.

Soon the torches appeared, hung in occasional sconces along the tunnel walls. Just as it got too dark to see, the flickering halo of a distant torch would become visible.

The first time a tunnel branched off the main one, it gave me pause, but in my gut I had the sense of the castle’s location and I followed its pull. Was it the vampires calling me? The thought was too disturbing to entertain for long.

As I progressed, more and more smaller tunnels branched off the main one, and the maze of passages was getting complicated. I hid in dark crevices as I went, stopping frequently to make sure I had my bearings and that nobody was around.

I also tried desperately not to think of Carden. In these, what felt like my final moments, all my anger and resentment dissolved, and I just felt sad and alone. I really, really missed him. I wished I could’ve seen him one last time. I wished I could’ve known where he’d gone. Why.

The curve of the tunnel ahead threw sound at me, and I heard footsteps and the whip-whip of torches. A solemn procession walked by. Terrified, I held my breath and waited till they were well past to exhale. I sucked in a breath and something twinged at my nose. Incense. I waited a full minute after they’d passed before I followed.

But then voices echoed to me, coming from another tunnel. I froze. More people. They might’ve been rounding the next corner or hundreds of yards away. The sound bounced off the rock, impossible to tell how close.

I strained my ears, making sense of individual speakers. Individual words. I placed one of the voices. It was so familiar to me, as familiar as any other on this rock.

It was Alcántara.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Alcántara was speaking with someone. Slowly, I slid a stake into my hand. I parted my feet, imagining myself connected to the tunnel. I was a part of this mountain. A creature of the dark. I was the mountain. I relaxed my legs, felt the bounce in my knees. I was power and strength. I’d been born for this moment.

Could it be this easy? Might I take him unaware? I’d kill Alcántara, and though his companion might turn around and kill me, he’d be destroyed.

I’d have avenged Emma. Avenged Yasuo.

I strained to make sense of the conversation. The volume didn’t vary, so I took the risk that they’d stopped moving. I edged closer, to the lip of a branching tunnel. And then I halted, my every muscle seizing in place.

Alcántara was speaking with a woman.

I strained further, expecting to make out the familiar voice of a Guidon or a Watcher I might know, but what I heard instead shocked me. It was deference…in Alcántara’s voice. He was speaking with a woman he feared.

There was talk of the list. Of the arrivals. It was hard to understand. They spoke English, but hers was heavily accented.

I braved a few steps closer. My knuckles hurt from the grip on my stake.

One of them shifted, and her voice suddenly bounced off the rocks, thrown to me as though aimed directly at my ears.

“You failed me, Hugo. ”