Page 139 of A Steeping of Blood
“There they are!”
A score of the Ram’s men stood between them and the tunnel.
“We don’t have time for a fight. Cover me!” Jin shouted.
Laith and Matteo leaped into action. Arthie gripped her knife tight. They dropped two men, squeezing a gap for Jin to get through. He dropped to his knees to line the dynamite.
“I think we’re past the need for subtlety,” Matteo said, pulling out the revolver Arthie had given him. He fired, hitting one of the men square in the chest. Laith ran forward and slashed his knife through another’s neck.
Arthie grabbed a bundle of dynamite and dropped to the other side to help. Laith and Matteo continued fighting, slowly retreating with Jin and Arthie to the tunnel entrance.
Screams rang out from deep within the bunker, the wet spattering of blood chilling Arthie’s bones.
“What is that?” Laith whispered.
“Ripper vampires,” Matteo breathed.
Arthie looked up from the middle of the tunnel. More than a dozen vampires were barreling toward them, teeth bared in angry snarls, eyes void of life.
Jin dropped to the floor to light the wick, but the fire didn’t take. “It’s too cold!”
“They’re getting closer,” Arthie warned, snatching the lighter from him.
The flame took. The wick hissed. She hurried from one to the next, lighting them as Matteo and Laith stopped their fighting—letting the Ram’s men act as a barrier between them and the Rippers. She lit the last wick and clicked the lighter off.
“Done. Let’s go!” she shouted. They rushed to the mouth of the tunnel, but the Rippers had already barreled through the Ram’s men. They were moving fast. The wicks were burning far too slowly.
The Rippers would escape the tunnel before the explosion could bury them.
Arthie wanted to laugh. She wanted to scream. Was it all for nothing? The journey to Ceylan, the fall of Spindrift, the death of the Siwangs and Penn and members of the press? For a moment, she and the others could only stare. What more could they do? The Rippers would tear through them, wreak havoc through the palace, and then what?
No one would be left to stand in the Ram’s way.
“Go,” Matteo said in their strangled silence. It was no more than an exhale. He cleared his throat and repeated himself. “Go! I’ll hold them off.”
Arthie wasn’t sure she heard him correctly.
“That—the dynamite will collapse the tunnel, Andoni,” Laith said.
Matteo nodded, avoiding eye contact. “I’m aware.”
“It will collapse on you too,” Jin said. “Unless the Rippers kill you first.”
Matteo nodded again. “That is the idea.”
The vampires were getting closer, shouting, snarling. Arthie didn’t hear them. She was in a glass case, where everything was muffled, even her emotions. She didn’t have Calibore to slow them down, nor the strength to fight. Jin’s pistol and pan would do little. Laith was human; he’d die in seconds.
“Please,” she whispered.
She could say nothing else. They were supposed to see this through together. It was supposed to be an eternity of him and her, dashing and deadly.
A new Spindrift. A new dawn. A new life.
“No,” Matteo said, hearing her every protest. His hands dropped to her shoulders as mayhem roared around them. He pressed a kiss to her brow, and the tenderness in his emerald eyes tore at her heart.
When had she begun to feel so much? He kissed her nose, then the side of her mouth, and Arthie tilted her chin to kiss him fully.
It didn’t flood her with heat. It didn’t fill her hope. It tasted of remorse and longing, sorrow, and farewells.
