Page 45 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)
JIN
Jin’s first thought when the Ripper vampire opened his eyes was relief that they hadn’t killed him. It was quickly replaced with panic when that fiend of a man Bloodworth staggered for the door, terror exuding from his every action. He ran without looking back.
“We ought to leave, don’t you think?” Jin said as indifferently and calmly as he could.
The Ripper vampire was slowly sitting up, squeezing his eyes closed and opening them again. Arthie was carefully stepping toward the door.
“I happen to agree,” Matteo said.
And the Ripper vampire stared straight at them. Jin shivered. His eyes were blue and might have made him good-looking at one point, but they were cold and cruel now.
“Run,” Arthie whispered.
They bolted into the hall on Bloodworth’s heels. Jin helped Arthie shut the doors, narrowly missing the Ripper’s nose. Matteo tossed over the fallen guard’s rifle and Jin shoved it beneath the handles, jumping away when the vampire rammed his weight against them.
Arthie was pulling out her pocket watch. “We’re cutting it close. Sora should be opening the cells now. The vampires are about to be free.”
Guards were shouting, footsteps thundering. The three of them dashed into the intersection between halls and stopped. The chandelier swayed above them.
This was where they were to reconvene with Jin’s parents and the fed and freed vampires. That was before the Ripper room, before bloody Bloodworth summoned his men, who were now streaming from the three surrounding halls, the overseer in front of them—or behind several of them, really, the coward.
Jin wanted to wipe the smug look off his face.
The men leveled their dart-loaded weapons at them. They were an unusual shape, in between a pistol and a rifle but taller, as if the darts were stacked rather than lined in a cylinder.
There were an awful lot of guards for three barely armed vampires.
“Arthie, darling?” Matteo said, taking her hand. “We’re surrounded.”
Jin saw her fingers tighten around his.
“Good, we can attack in the direction of our choosing, then,” she replied.
The ground began to rumble. Jin felt it in the soles of his shoes, the reverberation echoing up to his teeth. The guards glanced at one another, suddenly wary.
“The vampires,” Arthie whispered. “Right on time. Shaw and Sora did it.”
The coconut water worked. The vampires were awake. Matteo was grinning from ear to ear, even if that wariness was still in his eyes. As it should—there was still no telling if the vampires would side with them.
“Don’t move!” someone commanded. It was that wretched captain.
“That one’s mine,” Jin seethed.
Gradually, the guards in the hall across from them began to turn, their dart weapons facing the opposite way as the floor continued to rumble.
That was the direction of their exit. In the halls to Jin’s left and right, the guards mumbled in confusion, torn between keeping their eyes on the three of them or aiding their brethren.
Arthie seized the distraction. She was already running with a glance at the chandelier. “Cover me.”
I aim to make that chandelier a main attraction.
Jin and Matteo followed. They pulled out the revolvers Arthie had given them and squeezed out a round of shots as the guards moved to fire. Darts zipped past them.
One caught in Jin’s shoe; one whizzed through his hair.
Arthie dropped to her knees to avoid the guards’ line of fire and slid the rest of the way to the opposite hall, where she pulled out Calibore, swung a wide arc to intimidate the guards nearest her, cocked it, and fired straight at the ceiling. At the ornate chandelier.
“Arthie, it’s metal,” Jin shouted.
“And we’re on an island,” she replied.
The link crumbled at the impact, rusted just enough. The chain gave way, and the chandelier rattled to the floor where it crashed, glass exploding in every direction.
The destruction rang out, casting a deafening silence for one long, excruciating moment.
Matteo reached into the mess of it—the chandelier was almost as tall as he was—and ripped one of the arms free, giving himself a mangled semblance of a spear and running back amid a spray of darts.
In Arthie’s hand, Calibore became a spiked shield.
“Brilliant,” Matteo said.
Arthie picked up a fallen knife. “I would like to never hear that word again. Rush them. Our exit is at the other end of this hall, the vampires too.”
She charged forward, shoving her shield against the first line of guards.
They stumbled, firing their weapons as they fell on the men behind them.
The shield was barely wide enough for her, let alone three people, and Jin hissed when one of the darts caught on his sleeve, dampening it with the strange green serum.
“They’ll surround us, Arthie,” Matteo warned as he glanced back. Sure enough, guards were making their way past the fallen chandelier.
The ground rumbled louder. Shouts echoed not far from them.
Jin arced his umbrella, knocking the nearest guard’s weapon from his hand. Jin caught it before it fell and shoved the end against the guard’s nose. He stumbled before Jin kicked him square in the chest, knocking him into the man behind him and dropping them both.
Another guard went flying past and Matteo dove straight after him into the crowd, ramming the butt of his revolver into heads to knock them out of his way.
Shouts began anew, screams echoing from— behind them.
“It’s him,” Matteo said, breathless.
The Ripper vampire was thundering to the fallen chandelier.
Something told Jin that was a fight they could not win.
Panic spread like wildfire to the front of the guards.
Bloodworth’s tinny voice rose from the din, saying something Jin could not make out other than its terrified tone.
No one wanted to fight the vampire, and possibly, terribly worse was the realization that it seemed no one was equipped to fight him either.
“Arthie,” Jin warned.
“I know,” she replied, and pushed through. One moment, her spiked shield was up, the next, Calibore became a flail. Jin ducked out of her swing with a huff.
“A little warning would be appreciated next time.”
She swung it again, and Jin realized what she was doing: The guards were backing away.
Arthie was clearing a path. Jin pressed close at her heels, pulling Matteo behind him and swinging his umbrella, ramming it against skull and weapon alike, until he tripped, coming face-to-face with the barrel of one of the guns, the wretched captain’s face sneering behind it.
The rest of the world slowed and melted away. Jin acutely recalled this feeling before, when he was staring down the end of the Ram’s miniature revolver, suspended between life and death for an eternal, insubstantial moment.
He heard the captain’s finger fall to the trigger, heard the click of the metal as he pressed down on it, the compression of the springs coiling tight, the green dart readying to launch.
Not today. Not again.
He had far too much to live for. His parents, Arthie, Chester. Flick . He needed to return to her, and he knew he wouldn’t receive a second chance.
Because that was what Arthie had given him, despite his anger at her betrayal, despite his pain at her distrust: a second chance.
That decade he’d lived without his parents had been one of worry, always concerned someone would take away what was his yet again.
And they had, in the end: The Ram had burned Spindrift to ashes, but it was his own fault he hadn’t lived those ten years enjoying every second of it.
He was undead now, but he had every intention of living.
Jin completed the arc of his umbrella, swinging it forward, nudging the barrel out of his face as the captain fired.
The dart whizzed past Jin’s cheek, landing in the arm of an unsuspecting guard.
Jin straightened, pulled an ugly ornament from the wall, and slammed it against the back of the guard’s head.
“Now that’s what it’s really for,” Jin said, holding it at his side. The captain fell with a groan, and Jin felt no pity.
He didn’t know what possessed him to look back just then, but he almost wished he hadn’t.
The Ripper vampire was staring straight through the chaos at Jin.
Arthie locked her arm around his and pulled him out of the way of an arcing blade. She squeezed out a shot with Calibore the pistol. He was surprised to see that she wasn’t aiming or shooting to kill, only maim.
Together, they pushed their way through the guards until Jin fell, stumbling again headfirst toward the bare floor until someone caught him.
“I have you.”
Jin looked up at his father’s face. His parents were standing before him, an army of vampires behind them, each of them carrying a coconut. Some even hefted netted sacks of them over their shoulders. Behind them, the exit was still sealed.
“You’re alive,” his mother exclaimed.
“Not now, Sora. Jin, the keys!” his father said quickly.
Jin tossed his father the keys as the fight continued behind him.
He searched the vampires’ haggard faces.
They were pale, bruised, tired, but they didn’t look violent or crazed.
They looked as though they trusted his parents.
As though, despite their sedation, they knew the ones who had cared for them in their imprisonment.
There was a look in their eyes weighted with familiarity.
“Oliver?” Matteo asked from behind them as he dropped a guard. Jin hadn’t the faintest clue who Oliver was, but judging by the fair-haired man’s poise, he was an Athereum vampire.
“Andoni? They got you too, eh?” the man called Oliver shouted back amid the chaos. “One moment we’re paying top duvin for quality blood, the next you’re bleeding it out on a ship.”
Matteo pressed his lips thin as another guard swung a machete toward him. Jin leaped to his aid, but Arthie was there first, firing Calibore before whirling to the other side.