The Keep

“Screw this. I’m gone.” Danny hopped to his feet and burst into a jog. He called out a final, “Enjoy, mates,” before running off.

At least I heard him run off. I didn’t take my eyes from Yasuo, who was now staring like a statue. It was a terrible sight, that stillness. It was menace and hatred, frozen as marble. And it was all aimed at me.

Toby—good old Toby—must’ve sensed it, because he said, “Dude, let’s just talk about this.” He sounded as uneasy as I felt.

I sidled closer, telling him in a low voice, “You should follow Danny.” Yasuo was spiraling, and it was obvious he was all too happy to take Trainees down with him. Besides, the farm boy was a distraction. I desperately hoped the old Yas was still there, buried deep in that glaring creature, and this might’ve been my last chance to summon him. “Really, I’ve got this.”

“All you’ve got is the kiss of death,” Yasuo hissed.

“There’s death all around this island. Don’t pin it on me.” I edged sideways, but there was no escaping that stare. He was laser focused on me and yet completely oblivious to my words, my emotions. “Come on, Yas. Try to remember how we used to be.”

“Kiss of death. The sure thing.”

I put my hands up, taking a few steps back, thinking maybe I preferred crazy-unhinged Yasuo to this cold, calculated-fury Yasuo. “I heard you the first time.”

“People around you don’t die in normal ways. They meet grisly, fucked-up ends.”

“Take it easy.”

“It will be easy.” He lunged at me, and I darted aside.

“Don’t do this.” I’d been avoiding another confrontation with my old friend, but I was in survival mode. If he attacked, I’d fight. And I didn’t want to fight.

He flung himself at me again, but again I managed to duck and spin out of the way.

“Get a grip, man.” Toby was bobbing on his toes, unsure how or if to get involved. Why didn’t he just leave? Was he looking out for me or for Yasuo?

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I pleaded.

“It does.” Yasuo was panting again, that madness once more descending like a film over his eyes. “Does.”

He attacked again, a broad swat at my head, then another. But his movements were erratic, and I evaded them easily. This wasn’t the old Yasuo—the old Yas had been eclipsed by a monster. This was a creature driven by fury but unable to strategize. Incapable of tactics. His weren’t maneuvers; they were motions, crude and predictable.

Maybe if I could stun him, make him stop for long enough, I could get away. The last thing I wanted was to fight him. When Yas leapt again, I deflected him, dropping and rolling to the ground, snatching the pitchfork from the dirt. “Please don’t make me do this.”

“You guys.” Toby tried to insert himself between us. “What the hell?”

Yas elbowed him with enough force to send the big, corn-fed boy reeling. “Don’t. Help. Her.” His voice had become an animal growl.

I tightened my grip on the tool. Even in my numbed hands, the wood was reassuring.

I thought of Sonja. Ruler of vampires. Had there truly been such a woman? Even if she hadn’t been strong enough to rule vampires in truth, then at least she’d had the guts to carve it into rock. Thinking of her words, imagining her, gave me courage. Sonja—if there was a woman who’d been that powerful, then I could be powerful, too.

I tossed the fork up and held it in my two hands like a fighting stick. No longer a farm tool, it was a javelin. A lance. A sword. A weapon.

Yas aimed a roundhouse kick at my head, and the stick deflected him easily. I jabbed his belly. I could’ve hurt him, but didn’t. Hurting my old friend was harder than I’d ever have believed. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

The Draug were really losing it now. Could that be my fear they smelled? And was it fear for myself or fear of what had become of my friend?

Rob took that opportunity to moan. He was fading in and out, his breathing a bloody gurgle. The Draug shrieked in response, rattling their iron bars in their hinges.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck.” Toby was really flipping out now.

“Just get out of here,” I shot at him.

But instead of fleeing, he squatted and scooped up a rock. A coldly self-preservational part of my brain noted how Trainees didn’t carry weapons. Did vampires not carry weapons, either? Were they that proud? That arrogant? Something to consider…if I survived this.

Toby hefted that rock, and for a chilling moment it was unclear who it was for. Because, for a moment, his eyes were cold on me. Had he not wanted Yasuo to fight me because he didn’t want to fight me? Would one Trainee side with another, no matter what?

My musings were cut short when Yasuo swept a foot toward my ankle, but I managed to react in time, clocking his knee with my stick.

“Right wrongs,” he intoned.

I knew better than anyone how wronged we’d all been. But what if I were the one to set it all to right? This Sonja had become my heroine. My Wonder Woman. If Yasuo wanted wrongs righted, I’d be the one to do it. I parried him again. “Not if I right them first.”

He peeled his lips into a snarl. “Go to hell.”

“Oh, I’m there.” I jabbed him with the fork, but I hadn’t used enough force to budge through the thick wool of his coat. “Careful, or I might bring you with me.”

“There’s been a wrong,” Yasuo said.

“Not that again.” I jabbed again, and this time he took a step backward. I had the brief and disturbing thought that I might be able to herd him as the most mindless of Draug were herded.

“There has been a wrong, and I will right it.”

“You do that, Yas.”

He froze, staring at me as though trying to remember why he was there.

“What’s he doing?” Toby asked.

“Losing it.” I shot farm boy a look. What was he going to do with that rock?

“It’s your fault.” Yasuo addressed me, speaking in a wondering sort of voice.

“It’s nobody’s fault.” Toby inserted himself between us, his tone aggressively soothing, like he was trying to calm a crazy street person. “Let it go, man.” But he still gripped that stone, his eyes flicking back and forth, returning to me over and over like I was a bomb he might have to detonate. “We don’t have to fight her.”

My heartbeat amped up a notch, my body preparing for something my mind hadn’t yet grasped. “What do you mean, We?”

“Ignore her,” Yasuo shouted, ignited once more. He shouldered Toby aside, pinning me with a murderous glare. “She’s selfish. She’s a killer.”

“Fuck it,” Toby said. “It’s just a girl.”

Just a girl.

It’s just a girl.

Yasuo lunged at me. Did Toby lunge, too? Later I told myself he did. Later, I told myself he hadn’t been flinging himself between us.

Because when I speared the pitchfork, I speared Toby.

There was a horrific moment. A sharp inhale. A gurgled exhale. His eyes met mine, confused. Bewildered. It was a weird look, like he’d asked me to prom and I’d surprised him by turning him down. It wasn’t the look you’d expect from a guy impaled on the business end of a dung fork.

He fell.

Yasuo laughed, a cackling, gleeful sound. “Told you. Killer.” He repeated it over and over, manic and high-pitched. “Killer. Killer.”

It hit close to home. Too close. I was a killer.

But I wouldn’t kill Yasuo. He might’ve been turning Draug, but he’d once been my friend. I wouldn’t attack him. Not like this. Not today.

I dug into my coat pocket. My fingers found my prized possession. Emma’s handkerchief.

I rubbed it between my fingers. It was a sacrifice. But a fitting one.

I pulled it out, holding it like a white flag in front of me. Yasuo recognized it at once, his eyes growing wide.

“That’s right,” I said. I waved it. I hadn’t washed it and wondered if it still bore some scent of hers. “You know this.”

He took a step forward.

“You want it?” I tied a couple of loose knots in the fabric. Just enough to give it some heft. I threw. “Then take it.”

Yasuo went for it.

I ran off. I ran like a crazy person. Leaving Rob and the body of Toby-the-Trainee dead and cooling by the paddock gate. Leaving my friend Yasuo behind, maybe forever. I ran until I realized my feet had carried me all the way to the water.

Screw it.

I’d end this now.

I loped up the beach, running until there was just a thin sliver of rocky sand, and when there was no beach left to run on, I sloshed through the breakers, lifting my knees high, trying to stay upright. Waves slapped at me, the freezing water sloshing over my boots, biting through the thick fabric of my catsuit, each swell rising in a moment of peace and then whooshing, back, trying to suck me out to sea. The waves came over and over, relentless, violent smacks against my thighs, trying to topple me.

But I refused to topple. I was seeing red. I’d lost everything and everyone. Would it kill me? Probably. But I’d see the secrets of this castle once and for all.

Finally, when the water was deep enough to buoy me, lifting me with each swell of the tide to my tiptoes, I stopped. Looked up. The sea gate was overhead. Not as far a climb as I’d have guessed, concealed from above by a coarse shelf of brush.

I let the breakers sweep me closer and higher, grabbing ahold of the rocky cliff side, using hands and feet and knees to scramble up until I found a shelf wide enough to perch on. The tunnel’s stench reached me first, wet and sulfurous, like hot springs and rotting things. I looked back down from where I came, scanning the lay of the land, seeing just how well situated this spot was.

The wind was picking up, and I wasn’t in the mood to be blown off the cliff, so to be safe, I shuffled on hands and knees to get closer and assess the gate itself. Almost immediately, I cracked my kneecap hard against something. An explosion of pain like my bone had split in two felled me. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I curled onto my side, swallowing a cry of pain.