Page 71 of A Steeping of Blood
“A little over two. Time blurs,” she said with a scrape of her throat. “Look at our boy now.”
Her hands fluttered in her lap. She kept leaning forward ever so slightly and pulling back. As if she wanted to reach for Jin. Hold him. Hug him.
Jin stayed put.
They were talking about the beginning of their imprisonment. In the years since, Jin had found a sister, helped her steal an Ettenian artifact she carried with her every day, and opened a successful tearoom that doubled as a bloodhouse. He’d lived long enough to become a thorn in the Ram’s side and see Spindrift burned to the ground.
“And? Do you plan on accounting for the remaining eight years? What were you doing?”
His father gave a short laugh and seemed to age another decade inthat moment alone. He slumped back in his chair. “Slowing the Ram down, my boy.”
His mother’s response was a harsh whisper. “In any way we could.”
The words gave Jin pause. A flicker of hope ignited inside him, and despite the gusts of doubt, a part of him tried to keep it safe.
“We stopped being unwilling participants once we realized we could do more outside a prison than inside one. Once we committed to refining the formula, work for the Ram had just begun. This sanatorium needed to be built, the fort around it, the contraptions produced, mass amounts of liquid silver and other materials needed to be gathered. Kidnapping vampires off Ettenia was the final step in the procedure, the part we were dreading most, but at that point we had better ideas for double-crossing the Ram.”
“But the vampires—I saw your letter,” Jin said. “You wrote that you require more vampires to continue your testing. That doesn’t sound to me like double-crossing.”
“In Ettenia, the vampires are kidnapped and locked in coffins lined in barbed wire,” his father said. “Once they’re shipped here, we have some semblance of control. If they’re in our sanatorium, we can at least ensure they’re not being mistreated. We can care for them.”
“Care for them?” Jin asked.
“The long-lasting effects,” Jin’s father said haltingly, choosing his words carefully, “of the silver are… still unknown.”
Jin didn’t quite like his hesitation, and that flicker wavered. “They’re sent here to be starved.”
His father nodded. “But they need to beawaketo be starved. We created a serum that puts them to sleep, to prolong the process in which they’d be ready for the Ram’s needs. We’ve told the Ram that awakening them from the silver inoculation can take months, but really, we’re purposely keeping them asleep for as long as we can.”
“I heard noises on the way here,” Jin deadpanned. “They’re not all asleep.”
“Vampires are yet a vastly unstudied group of beings,” his father conceded. “Some don’t take to it, some do and don’t remain asleep for long. Sora and I visit each cell several times per week, administering…”
“Administering what?” Jin pushed. What was he hiding?
“The required necessities. The longer they remain unconscious, the safer they are. Asleep, vampires’ bodily functions are halted. They can survive. Awake, they deal with the results of the silver inoculation, and their starvation leads them to a crazed state, upon which they’ll be deployed to the Ram’s station of choice.”
“And have they? Been deployed?” Jin asked.
It felt, to him, that he was trying, struggling,fightingto keep that flame alive just then. He was asking questions in the hopes that he’d receive answers that were different, better, morally perfect. But the more he asked, the worse he heard. The more they appeared simply a level above the Ram—she wanted something vile? They’d find a way to make it less so.
His father tilted his head in question.
“Have they been deployed to the Ram’s stations of choice?” Jin asked again.
“No,” his mother proclaimed.
His father shook his head too, though he looked a little ashamed by the pride with which she answered. As if they didn’t deserve that pride. As if the good that they’d done was outweighed by the atrocious.
He turned his eyes from Jin to the floor, but not before Jin saw the look in them. His actions haunted him. There were those who did terrible things and regretted them later. Grew and bettered themselves after a time. Then there were others, like his parents, who did terrible things with or without regret, who knew they were wrong but didthem anyway. But there were spaces in between too, where people like Arthie and Jin lived, perfectly capable of doing terrible things to right wrongs. Out of retribution and vengeance, sometimes for a greater good.
“For our own sanity, we needed to strive for a single aim,” his father continued. “The Ram wanted the weaponization of vampires on the ground, and we needed to ensure it never happened. It’s horrible for the undead, of course, but it’s also horrible for the living soldiers on both sides of the battle. Even beyond that, if a vampire worked their way through those soldiers and fled the battleground, innocents would be placed in danger.”
Like the Wolf of White Roaring attack.
“The Ram’s wishes sound simple enough, but it has taken us a near decade to achieve what we have, and deliberately so. What would have taken six years to create, we stretched to eight, and so on,” his mother said, and Jin watched his father as she spoke. Did he agree with what she said? When he spoke, it was with dismay, a man disheartened. She spoke with more embellishment in comparison. At last, she reached forward and pressed her palm to Jin’s cheek.
He couldn’t help it; he leaned into her touch, and it felt as if no time had passed at all. As if he wasn’t a foot taller than her now. As if his voice hadn’t changed. As if he hadn’t gone from high society prig to undead criminal.
