Page 33 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

This is definitely not the tender reunion I might secretly have hoped for, but at least that part feels a little more normal. It’s still an upgrade from no contact.

“It’s good to see you too,” I say. Pretty sharply for someone who definitely wasn’t crying a moment ago. “After all, the last time I saw you, you were wearing a tarp like a jacket.”

“You can’t be here,” he’s muttering, like I didn’t speak. Or like he’s hallucinating me. “How did this ...?”

Augie jerks his head around, peering down the long row of cells. Then he whips his head back at me, looking something like panicked.

I’m not afraid of getting into range of his hands through the bars. I’m not afraid of him . I never have been, even when he was at his most erratic and out of his mind. I would go and stand there, right in his face, and dare him to hurt me.

Gran used to warn me that just because he never did that didn’t mean he wouldn’t .

But I didn’t believe it then. I don’t believe it now.

I step closer, pushing myself up against the bars so that I can reach through and touch him, to make sure he’s real and this isn’t some vampire trick. I put my hand on his arm and he’s warm. Real. Alive.

Once again, I have to fight back the urge to cry. This time I succeed.

It’s not until this moment that I understand that I didn’t know which thing to be more terrified about.

That maybe they had already turned him into a vampire, and this is all a sick little game, so he would be cold.

Or maybe that this is some mask or something and he’ll still feel sickly and fragile, strung out and leathery like he used to.

But what he feels like is Augie.

I never thought I’d get to feel him like this again. The circumstances might not be ideal, sure, but he’s him . For this brief moment, anyway, he’s him and he’s here .

“Why do you seem normal ?” I demand, pitching my voice to stay lower than that moaning beetle thing.

“I’m not fucking normal ,” my twin tells me.

He’s blinking down at my hand on him as if he’s not sure how he feels about this either.

But I know him. So I know that what he’s feeling matches what I feel.

He’s just spent years doing his best not to feel anything at all.

“I’m chained to a floor, bare-ass naked in a vampire cell. In case you missed that.”

“An upsetting situation,” I agree, still with my hand on him, like he’s a battery and I need his energy. Oh, how I need it. “But also a bit of an upgrade from some of your previous circumstances. I’m just saying.”

I expect him to shake off my hand, but he doesn’t. He stares at it. Then lifts his gaze to mine again, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to yell. Tell me to fuck off, like he has a thousand times. Say hurtful, hateful things to drive me away.

I’ve heard them all.

I brace myself, but he doesn’t do it. Instead, he blows out a breath and then he moves closer, leaning his head against the bars.

I don’t think. I do the same thing. When our foreheads touch, I feel his free hand move to my other arm.

Once again, we are one.

And I never thought that I would feel this again. I never thought I’d find him. I never thought he’d live . I was sure that either the drugs or the monsters got him, and all I’ve wanted, all this time, was simply what peace there might be in knowing how he left us.

I have no place to put what’s happening now. His warm hand gripping me. Mine gripping him.

Our foreheads touching the way we used to do when we were little, to soothe each other.

“You can’t be here, Winter.” His voice is barely a whisper.

“We’re past that,” I tell him in the same voice. “Way past that. What I need to know is why you’re here. What they want.”

He pulls his head back, and again, he’s him. My beautiful, sensitive marvel of a twin brother. My best friend. My heart.

“You’re still wearing the medallion.” He reaches over and touches it. “That’s good. Don’t take it off.”

“If it’s some kind of talisman, maybe you should be wearing it.” I frown at him when he shakes his head. “You’re the one in vampire jail.”

“You have to know there’s almost no way you’re walking out of here.” He’s looking at me in a way I can read too easily. Greedy for the sight of his twin, but scared. Delighted to see me, but furious it’s here . “I don’t understand how you got in.”

“I don’t think you want to know.”

His eyes are indigo like mine and clearer than I’ve seen them in years. But wary now. “It’s not safe.”

“What is?” I counter.

“Take whatever you think is happening and amp it up by about a million,” he tells me, and his voice is as serious as his gaze now. “That’s what’s happening here, and believe me, you want no part of it. If you can leave, you need to leave.”

I drink him in. His face looks filled out again. His body isn’t too skinny and bruised everywhere. He doesn’t have that gaunt, haunted look about him. He’s not hunched over or twitching. He doesn’t look like he’s been living rough at all. Even naked in a cell, he looks bright , the way he used to.

I don’t know what to make of it.

“You look good,” I say, and I don’t do a good job of keeping the emotion out of my voice. I don’t really try. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you look like this again. Healthy, I mean.”

His hand snakes out and grabs my arm again. “I’m not healthy,” he grits out at me. “I’m very fucking far from healthy, do you get me? What I am, Winter—and I need you to hear me on this—is fucked.”

“Welcome to life in the Reveal.” I study his face. The one I know better than my own and always have. “What do we have to do to get you unfucked?”

He only shakes his head, something much too close to despair on his face for my liking.

For a moment, we just ... breathe together, and I almost think we’ll be okay. Almost.

I hear sounds from down the line of cells and I don’t turn, but he does. When he looks back at me, there’s nothing to see but panic. It’s all over his face.

“ You shouldn’t be here. ” He sounds anguished. “Winter, I wish ...”

But he stops, and he moves away from me, deeper into the cell. I move too, stepping back to press myself against the slimy wall that marks the end of this terrible corridor. Because at least that way nothing can come up behind me.

What’s coming toward my face, however, is not exactly great. I’d almost prefer to get jumped from behind so I’d have less time to contemplate the horror.

Vampires pour down into the dank little corridor we’re in. There appear to be hundreds of them, but that’s the hysteria and panic talking. There are at least ten, which is no small number of vampires in these tight and creepy quarters, but that’s not hundreds .

Small mercies, really. They’re all beautiful and terrible, not least because they look like they’re flooding into a club for a party.

It’s disconcerting. It makes my head hurt, like my brain can’t process what I’m seeing when I’m standing in an actual dungeon where my twin brother is in literal chains.

At first, I think they’re coming for me and I can’t believe that Ariel threw me to them like this, like table scraps out the back door to feed a little wildlife.

If I survive, I intend to excise that thing in me that apparently cares whether or not the scary vampire king who probably sees me as little more than a sex toy likes me —

I realize in the next heartbeat that they’re not here for me.

Or not all of them anyway.

One by one, they peel off to go into the cells along the way. Immediately, I hear various cries. Sounds I can’t quite make sense of, chains against stone, laughter.

So much laughter.

Until there are only two, the vampire bitch who brought me here and one of her buddies, this one an absurdly pretty man.

They stop at the cell before Augie’s. The male vampire flashes his fangs at me before he opens the cell, and then I see the woman inside.

A human woman, I think, until I see that her ears are pointed.

She sobs when she sees him, and I think he’s going to beat her, and I don’t know if I can stand here and watch a woman get beaten no matter if she’s not my species—

Instead, she crawls toward him, making sounds it takes me long moments of disbelief to understand are her begging .

The vampire laughs, because this is clearly high comedy for bloodsuckers, and then slices open his own arm with a fingernail. He stands over her, letting the blood swell up, pool, and then drip down into her face.

But she’s not lying there passively, letting him splash blood on her.

She’s writhing on the floor, her mouth wide open and desperate, whining a little as she tries to get each drop of blood into her mouth.

My stomach turns and I gag. I try to shrink into the wall, but my favorite vampire bitch is strolling toward me, a smirk on her face.

“Feeding time,” she purrs at me.

She opens the cell door with a wave of her hand, no keys required. Showy vampire tricks, but I have to admit they’re effective. My stomach twists again, but this time when I cramp up, it’s fear.

I expect my brother to do something when she saunters toward him, but he doesn’t. He looks at me with anguish all over his face—

But then he looks back at her.

And I understand, even though it makes me want to heave. Or scream. Or maybe sob.

She’s his fix.

Augie has never been able to turn down a fix.

“Kneel,” the woman orders him.

And he does. I can see by the set of his shoulders that he’s embarrassed, but that doesn’t stop him. He doesn’t look back at me, either.

She does.

Making sure I’m watching, she pulls up the skirt she’s wearing and slices a long, deep cut into her inner thigh.

There’s no way for me to not see what she’s doing. And better yet, how my brother tilts himself forward and eagerly begins lapping at the cut she made. I can hear the sounds he makes as he does it. I can see the way he grips her leg as if there’s nothing more precious on this earth.

I feel my own gorge rise like a battering ram.