A Steeping of Blood, page 3
That was nowhere near how Arthie was turned into a half vampire herself.
“There have been other rampages, you know,” Matteo said. “Never to the same scale, never publicized and made into propaganda either. She turned me and dropped me in the middle of a busy street for her own selfish agenda.”
He sounded tired. He met her eyes, and the torment in his gaze was so great that if Arthie wasn’t as grounded as she was, she would have imagined she was there with him just now. Back in his past, reliving that haunted memory. Arthie knew it could not have been easy to tell her any of this.
“Why you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Matteo said. “Perhaps I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
No, there was more to it than that. Arthie knew how certain people worked, and as elusive and secretive as Lady Linden was, she was the sort of person who did nothing without a reason. There was always a why. She wouldn’t have decided to turn Matteo at random.
“And mind you, she wore that mask before she was even crowned. She was protecting her identity, playing this game of duality, before the Council gave her what she wanted. I just don’t know how she knew of vampires when very few did. I certainly didn’t. But turning me was a reckless, risky move, and she had to have had a good deal of vampire knowledge in order to do it.”
“We know that people in search of power and status will use anything to get what they want,” Arthie said. But why vampires when there were so many other ways to achieve what the Ram had? That, Arthie didn’t know.
Matteo scoffed. “She certainly found both.”
Every Ettenian, immigrant or otherwise, knew how the Ram rose to power, crowning herself as monarch shortly after the Wolf of White Roaring went on his rampage. The empire was in disarray and Ettenians were afraid. When the monarch at the time did nothing, she did. She placated the people, she promised restrictions, gave the public law and order where there was none. She had been prepared, speaking with a surety no other would, a surety that could only come from having a solid knowledge of vampires. She was Ettenia’s savior, and she was rewarded with the title of monarch because of it.
“That’s what the unrest out there reminds you of,” Arthie said as she realized. “The days after.” After your rampage, she wanted to say.
Matteo nodded, pursing his lips. There was a correlation there, Arthie knew. The turmoil might not have been part of the Ram’s original plan, but she was certainly making use of it.
“I tried going back to the facility with Penn later, but it was gone. Empty. As if I imagined it,” Matteo continued. “While she went ahead and knocked me down to climb to this empire’s highest position. I made her what she is today. And now I learn she’s Lady Linden? I painted for her.”
Arthie had never heard such anger in his voice, so much emotion quivering in his tone.
“At some point, I went home,” Matteo whispered, lost in a memory. “I killed my father. Not because I hated him, Arthie, but because he tried to hurt me. Then my mother. I couldn’t stop myself. I was so painfully hungry and angry at once. It wasn’t even a true hunger in the sense of the word. I never fed. Just craved. It was as if I was trapped inside my body—”
“Watching it happen with no control,” Arthie finished softly. “I know.”
“And you’re the only one I know who does,” he said with a small smile.
It should have stirred something positive in her. It should have deepened their companionship because someone else understood her. Instead, it unsettled her. Because you’ve never had anyone like that before.
“You see now, don’t you?” Matteo asked, pinning her with his emerald gaze. “She’s still our enemy.”
“I never said otherwise.”
“No, but you were allowing yourself to be distracted by our predicament. Blaming yourself when in truth she is wholly at fault.”
Arthie didn’t know how true that was, but she said nothing.
“We didn’t fail that night.”
Her eyes flicked up in surprise.
“I know that’s what you’re thinking,” Matteo said. “But you’re a new version of yourself. As are Flick and Jin. I’d wager even I am. As powerful as we might think Lady Linden is as both the Ram and head of the EJC, we’re ignoring how powerful we’ve become. We haven’t given ourselves the chance to unleash it.”
Arthie’s thoughts were typically separated into clear lines, each one connected to its pertinent information. They were buried beneath a fog now. She had indeed called the massacre and the days leading up to it a failure, but Matteo was right. They’d successfully infiltrated the Athereum, they’d learned the Ram’s true identity, they’d successfully retrieved the ledger, the Ram’s most incriminating possession. They hadn’t failed. Admitting defeat was exactly what the Ram would want.
But Arthie couldn’t shake the feeling that she had failed when it came to Penn and the members of the press who had died that night. She had failed when it came to Flick, when it came to Jin.
Matteo pulled open the drawer beside the bed and took out something shiny. Arthie’s heart lurched at the sight. Calibore.
“You found it,” she said, taking it from him. And cleaned it, she thought. There wasn’t a speck of blood on its grip, the silver as pristine as the etched black filigree.
“I couldn’t leave a part of you behind. Secondly, here. It’s dated more than a week ago, but we were busy.” Matteo handed her a newspaper and waited for her to read the headline.
LIFE WAS LIKE A CUP OF TEA: THE END WAS INEVITABLE.
It was about Spindrift. About the Casimirs who ran it, and what a shame it was that an unattended teapot had caused the fire that brought it tumbling down.
Arthie read it again. An unattended teapot. That was the story White Roaring would believe? That Arthie and her crew were reckless enough to let a teapot bubble over and burn down an establishment she had spent years nurturing? She read it a second time, each pass clearing the dust and grime to unearth the girl who she was on the date of the paper, rousing her anger and need for vengeance from a slumber until her mind was as clear as if she were a compass finally landing true.
“Inevitable,” she scoffed. If Arthie Casimir wrote for the press, she’d have fired herself for such a headline. One, it was a grotty way to speak of her prestigious tearoom. Two, this was White Roaring. The undead removed any such permanence from endings.
Spindrift would rise from the grave, just as everything the Ram stood for became buried in another. Arthie swore upon it. With a sigh, she tossed the newspaper aside, letting it seesaw to the rug knotted in varying shades of crimson.
It settled with a whisper of a rustle as resolution settled in her unbeating heart. If only she could show Jin, to grouse and mock it with him.
“Thirdly,” he said, and held out a glass. A flute, slender and crystal clear, filled to the brim with blood.
She looked away with a swallow. She hated that her stomach growled at the sight of it. She hated that she wanted it. Needed it.
“Drinking for your sustenance is not the same as what happened on that boat,” he said, because he understood. He knew.
It tasted the same. Arthie hadn’t drunk from any of the poor souls she had slaughtered, but their blood had spattered. It found its way into her mouth, coated her lips. Arthie knew it was sustenance; she knew it was as simple as needing to fuel herself, but she’d lost a part of herself that day—and after, in Penn’s own house. She’d committed acts that defied her own logic, that ignored her own wishes. She had not been in control during those moments, and Arthie loathed not being in control.
“You drank from me,” he added softly. “This is no different.”
“But it was, and you know that,” Arthie said, flicking her eyes to his. She drank in the heat of the moment, in the throes of death. She stared at his extended hand and the glistening glass. She spoke her next words with a promise. “One day.”
He nodded, setting the glass on the cart beside him. “I would offer you coconut water, but I have none.”
She would survive. She was in control now, and if she refused to drink blood, to cling desperately to the shriveling shreds of her humanity, then so be it.
Someone banged their fist on the door. “Andoni!”
With a miffed expression, Matteo rose and opened it. “What?”
Arthie could see the Athereum hall, the wallpaper and the lacquered wood. It was hard not to be reminded of Penn wherever she looked. Framed in the doorway was a vampire, silver-haired and tall.
Sidharth. One of Penn’s closest friends.
He stepped inside without invitation, his grin overshadowed by the havoc in his dark gaze. “Arthie Casimir, you live!”
“Did you expect otherwise?” Arthie asked.
Sidharth sank into the armchair with a sigh. “Never. We brown-skinned folk are a tough bunch.”
“Why are you here?” Matteo asked, offering no niceties of his own. “She’s still recovering.”
“I know,” Sidharth said, looking as though he’d missed several nights of sleep, and vampires didn’t even need sleep. “It’s wretched. The streets are full of Horned Guard. The riots started badly enough, now it looks like the entire city is out there, and we’ve just learned it’s not only because of the press massacre. Humans are turning up missing too.”
“I wish I could summon surprise,” Matteo said.
Sidharth nodded. “As of yesterday. Of all the years for Penn to die.”
He spoke the words callously, but Arthie caught the crack in his voice at the end.
Matteo walked to Sidharth’s side and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “He wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to take the mantle.”
“You’re head now?” Arthie asked.
Sidharth nodded wearily.
“Do we know who’s responsible for the disappearances?” Matteo asked.
“According to everyone out there, we are. There have been ‘clear indications’ a vampire stole them. Since when did vampires do that? I greatly doubt he put up a sign saying I STOLE A HUMAN, TA-RA! Oh, we’re also drinking their blood and killing them, I’ve been told. My vampires are barely leaving the premises because of the mayhem out there. Mind you, I don’t know who’s taking advantage of the chaos and kidnapping humans—”
“The Ram is,” Arthie said.
“Whatever for?” Sidharth asked almost hysterically.
Arthie picked up Calibore and gathered her sari. “You said the streets are full of Horned Guard. She’s on the lookout for us and her ledger, but is this no different than the aftermath of the Wolf of White Roaring?”
Sidharth’s silence was answer enough. She didn’t look at Matteo. She didn’t want to give anything away.
“That was twenty years ago. Ettenia’s fear of vampires hasn’t been as pressing as it was then. This is the perfect moment to ramp it up again and garner support. The more the masses fear, the more they turn to her.”
Fear was a weapon the powerful wielded time and time again with excellent results.
“And on the other side of it, she’s using the uproar to distract everyone, more importantly, us.”
Sidharth blinked at her. “I’m too tired to know what you mean there.”
“From the vampires she’s weaponizing.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Of everything we have going on, how can we be sure?”
The Ram might have killed scores of people that night and burned down Spindrift, but she did both in retaliation. She was hurting because she’d lost her ledger, that one book Arthie had risked their lives to retrieve from within these very walls.
The one book full of her secrets.
“Because that was the ledger’s biggest secret. And when I kept it instead of handing it back, she knew we’d joined Penn’s cause. We lost Spindrift because of it,” Arthie said. “Along with Penn himself, Jin, and the press who gathered that night.”
Outside, shouts rose like a rushing wave. A window shattered somewhere; people cheered.
Sidharth sighed. “If they’re blaming that night on vampires, I wouldn’t be surprised if you and your crew were named responsible too. Nevertheless, I know you were just dead, but have you a plan?”
“When have I not been a criminal?” Arthie asked. It was true, she was no stranger to being on the run and avoiding the Ram’s guard, but the danger was greater now, infinitely more acute. She hadn’t just snatched Calibore from White Roaring Square or decided to run a secret and illegal bloodhouse; she’d stolen something the Ram desperately needed. “But yes, I do.”
Because Jin had weighed heavily on her mind even through the torment of her recovery, and with this plan, not only would she throw sand in the gears of the Ram’s weaponization of vampires and expansion of Ettenia’s colonies, but she’d earn Jin’s forgiveness too.
“Penn said Jin’s parents created the silver inoculation the Ram’s using to weaponize vampires, right? We don’t know if they’re alive, but we—”
“They are,” Sidharth said.
Arthie paused, surprised he even knew anything about them. “Penn said it was uncertain.”
Sidharth nodded. “He and I were to have a discussion about them, but now we never will, eh? I’ll never know what he wanted to speak of, but my understanding was that he didn’t want the boy—Jin, is it?—going after them.”
Arthie furrowed her brow. That was an odd wish. What sort of reason did he have to keep Jin from seeking out his own parents?
Matteo wasn’t paying attention. “Find his parents, and we’ll get answers that’ll lead to the vampires. Find the vampires, and we’ll stop the operation entirely.”
“That’s the idea,” Arthie said.
But first, she needed the Ram’s ledger. For that, she needed Flick. And Jin too, if she was being honest.
“Whatever I can provide, let me know,” Sidharth said. “I won’t tell you to trust everyone here, but those of us you can trust will do what we can.”
Arthie’s circle had tightened even more now that Penn and Laith were gone. She didn’t plan on trusting Jin’s parents either. She might not know under what circumstances the Siwangs worked for the Ram, but Arthie wasn’t one to operate by giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.
“All right,” she said, and swung her feet to the floor, standing for the first time in days. Outside, the riots echoed like a heartbeat. “Can you take us out of here? Let’s please get our crew back together.”
2
JIN
Sweet Poppy’s Pastries was closed for the third day in a row, which didn’t do wonders for Jin’s already sour mood. He wanted to step through its doors and walk past the glass boxes filled with flaky, buttery goods, oozing jam and dusted in sugar and drizzled in chocolate. He knew he couldn’t taste any, but a feast could be had with more than just a tongue. Or so he told himself because he was hungry and hadn’t had a sip of blood since the evening he’d turned.
Like his life, White Roaring had changed. Where danger once lingered in the shadows and the shelter of night, it was now bold and loud, dealt by the hands of the angry and afraid. So many members of the press had died that night, but humans had begun disappearing off the streets too. Missing, gone, killed, the people were shouting. No one knew anything for certain, only that it was a vampire that had done it.
Jin could guess whether that was true.
Horned Guard were everywhere, but the Ram was letting it happen, letting anger fester. As if she wanted the people distracted, as if she couldn’t care less about what was happening in Ettenia anymore.
Places like the pastry shop were closed, windows shuttered as people either hid away or marched, fists waving for answers, armed with stakes and whatever makeshift weapons they could scrounge.
It was altogether ridiculous.
The Ettenians’ fear of vampires had amplified because of a falsehood: The Ram’s forces had taken the lives of those reporters, not the vampires of the Athereum where it had happened. It was the Ram who had waltzed through the Athereum’s doors and looked at Flick and all but said, Oh, and here’s yet another surprise: I’m your mother! moments before she put a bullet in Jin. And the theatrics didn’t end there. Miraculously, Arthie turned out to be a vampire and made him one too.
Jin scoffed. It sounded straight out of a novel, really.
Except, despite the winding, twisting, death-filled plot of this novel, the most gut-wrenching part of it was the fact that Arthie had lied to his face for the past ten years.
And he couldn’t stop being so damned angry about it.
Jin rolled the crick out of his neck and flipped a chair around. The four feet thudded in the quiet of the empty classroom, dust pluming gold in the dim light of the lantern on a desk. His bullet wound throbbed dully, an ache and reminder. He sat down, adjusted his legs. Rested his arms on the back of the chair.
He was taking his time.
There was another chair across from him, with a graceless middle-aged man in a uniform that was worn and streaked with more than one patch of dirt. Jin had lured him here with small talk that had transformed into tiny threats—shiny words that were once almost second nature but seemed to be extra demanding to draw out now that this anger was running rampant in his veins.
The longer Jin took, the louder the rough ricochet of the man’s breathing became and the more he strained against the ropes strapping him down. And Jin, being a vampire, could hear everything with infuriating clarity. There was much about being a vampire that Jin had not anticipated. It was known that vampires had heightened senses, but no one spoke of how overwhelming that could quickly become.
The man whimpered. Poor sod looked much like a puppy in a thunderstorm.
Jin smiled his cheeriest, kindest smile. Outside, the early winter wind slammed fists against the walls, and the unrest across White Roaring roared past.
He glanced down at the near-illegible note he’d gotten from the last bloke he’d met. Admittedly, he’d charmed the words out of that one, but his patience was wearing thin—as though he’d been at it for months and years, and not a handful of days since that night at the Athereum meeting hall.
