Page 68 of A Steeping of Blood
He saw the shift in her eyes, the tilt of her chin as the memories resurfaced from that night.
“You are a naughty thing, aren’t you,” he whispered, brushing his fingers up to her shoulder and then lower, tracing her side, leaving a line of fire she wanted desperately to spread through every inch of her.
Arthie tracked his movement, relishing the heat of his eyes on her. He leaned closer, tilting his head to press a kiss to the side of her nose, another above her eyebrow, another at her temple. A shiver ran down her spine, and Arthie discovered that one of her favorite things was the feel of his smile curving against her skin.
She tilted her chin, meeting his lips with her own. It was a softerkiss, one laden with the weight of their surroundings, the anger and pain and hatred they shared.
“There you go,” he whispered, pulling away. In her lap, Calibore was a pistol again.
Oh.
Arthie paused, torn. She had never needed anyone before. For anything.Is it so bad to rely on others?She shifted Calibore from pistol to dagger, black filigree shifting to the hilt, blade bright in the darkness. Calibore could only shift into weapons, bladed hairpins included, and a dagger was the closest thing to a lockpick.
“I knew getting into a cell with you wasn’t a bad idea,” Matteo said with a grin, rising to his feet and helping her up beside him. Did a current zap through him, too, every time he touched her?
Arthie flicked a brow. “You’re so certain I won’t leave you behind, are you?”
Matteo sulked, and Arthie looked away from the perfect pout of his lips.
She finagled the dagger into the keyhole, pausing when she felt something else just inside the lock. A strange mechanism, different from any lock she’d seen before, more delicate. Arthie ran the pad of her finger up the tiny panel. Fine wires were bound and wrapped inside it.
She wriggled the tip of the dagger, trying to work the pins with at least half the expertise Jin used, but she heard the rough scrape of her dagger jumping off to the side more than once.
Shouts echoed from down the hall where they’d taken Jin. Time was running out.
22JIN
Jin hadn’t known Arthie and Matteo had slipped into the sanatorium until he heard them get caught. Then a cell door creaked shut as the guards locked them away, and that was that. Jin was on his own. Undeniably this time. He twisted his wrists ever so slightly, testing the captain’s claim. Sure enough, the more he moved, the farther a row of spikes ejected from the cuffs. He wasn’t ready to die just yet.
The guards dragged Jin the rest of the way, one on either side of him, their arms hooked under his until they dropped him unceremoniously on the floor of a room. He had never felt so directly disrespected in his life. He was yanked and prodded, voices muffled by the rough jute cloth around his head.
The cuffs fell away from his wrists, clamps quickly taking their place, securing him like a leash to the wall. He couldn’t move.
“Get this infernal sack off of me,” he snarled, refusing to let his voice betray how breathless he’d become.
And they obliged. They tore it from his head, and Jin screwed his eyes shut against the blast of sterile light. It smelled just as bleak—like a hospital.
Like a morgue.
“You said you wanted more vampires to test on, eh?” the captain was saying in that smug, punchable tone. The fool could have had two more vampires but didn’t even know it. He’d seen Jin’s fangs andassumed that was the only tell? “We found this one loitering by the gates. It’s all yours.”
Jin was going to rip out the man’s throat.
When his eyes adjusted at last, he pinned the captain with a glare. The room was large, as wide as a shipping warehouse, and there were various workbenches fitted with tools and machines and vials, as well as contraptions he’d never seen before, and inclined beds that looked as stifling as a rack used for torture.
The rest of the guards were already shuffling out the door, but the captain positioned a pair of them by the entrance before he left, casting Jin one last satisfied smirk.
Only then did Jin fully understand what the captain had said.
You said you wanted more vampires to test on, eh?
He had read those very words before, hadn’t he? In a letter. Written in his father’s hand. Ahead of him, two figures moved. He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed them before. Perhaps, in the way that a mind rarely takes note of things that are familiar, Jin had allowed himself to be distracted by everything that wasn’t.
He noticed now.
And that was when he saw them. A man and a woman he would have recognized blind, by sound alone.
His parents.
