Reckoning (The Watchers Book 5) by Verónica Wolff

took my hand and guided me off the table. “I’m getting you out of here dead.”
    Every part of me shot to high alert. The misericordia was burning a hole in my boot, but with one hand in Alcántara’s, I wouldn’t be able to reach it quickly enough. “Uh…dead? I’m not really ready for dead.”
    Why wasn’t he making any moves? I needed him to be the one to attack first. He’d see me coming a mile away—when it came to speed, I’d never beat him.
    And then it hit me… oh, crap… he was going to make me a vampire.
    I studied his face, trying to decipher his intent, but he’d used his free hand to slide a device from his pocket—I’d once seen Watcher Priti with the same thing—and was focused on his thumb as it danced over the surface.
    Was Alcántara texting someone?
    “So, about this get-me-out-dead thing…” I tried to tug my hand free, but he wouldn’t let me go.
    Instead, he squeezed my fingers, his eyes meeting mine. “I sense your fear as it thrums with every beat of your heart. But there is no need to be afraid.” He slid his hand from mine and knelt beside the Trainee sprawled dead on the floor. “Shall I explain?”
    A small curved blade appeared in his fingers, and when he spoke again, it was over the crackle of fabric as he sawed down the center of Rob’s sweater. “Nature has many lessons to teach us. For example, some animals feign death to avoid predators.”
    Feigning death? Some of the tension between my shoulders relaxed. “So…you don’t want me dead-dead?”
    “ Por supuesto que no, cariño . You will merely feign death to escape the keep.” With a flick of his wrist, he sliced the Trainee’s carotid artery on the side of his neck. “But we must make it realistic. We must camouflage you. And there is nothing more repellant to a vampire than the scent of half-turned blood.”
    “How are you going to—?” And then I smelled it—I smelled the blood before I saw it—a blast hitting me like the stench of rotten things left too long under a hot sun. “Oh.” Thicker and darker than normal human blood, it flowed sluggishly, forming a shining black moon on the floor. “Ew.”
    He began to make other, deeper cuts along the Trainee’s body.
    I couldn’t suppress a shudder. “Isn’t that enough?”
    “You hope it will be. My plan is audacious, but it is not foolproof. It requires much gore. Under which you will need to lie utterly still.”
    I glanced from Alcántara to the body and back again. “You want me to be in all that?”
    At his nod, my stomach pulsed and spit filled my mouth with the urge to retch. I buried my nose in the crook of my elbow. “Can’t.”
    “You can, querida .” He rose, and it was amazing how, after all that, his clothes were completely spotless. “And you will. I risk much to help you. Even now the gravedigger comes for you. We shall wrap you up and he will cart you away from here like so much carnage.”
    A rap on the door a moment later brought a tall figure in a long black cloak, his face hidden under a deep hood.
    I took a step back, feeling all kinds of trepidation. Why should I suddenly start to trust Alcántara? “Gravedigger or grim reaper?”
    His body was crooked, leaning over an old wheelbarrow. Silently, he pulled aside a musty swath of burlap.
    I peered at the dinged metal. “Is that rust or old blood?” My question was met by silence, and I looked up, trying to discern the gravedigger’s face. “You want me to climb into that?”
    But even as I said it, I knew. Either I seized this maybe-shot at freedom, or it’d be Fournier and his army of Trainee pinheads for me.
    Alcántara glared impatiently. “We do not have much time.”
    “I’m in, I’m in.” I clambered into the wheelbarrow and curled into a ball.
    They draped the burlap over me, and the fabric was heavy with the smell of cheese and sweat and decay. I covered my face with my hands, curling tighter, pinching off the sneezing fit I was desperate to let