Jin and Arthie both jumped when a hand thumped on the carriage doors. This was not going to plan. Arthie hid Calibore. Jin folded his bullet belt under the waistband of his trousers.
The doors flung open to a slew of guards, and Arthie squeezed Jin’s hand before they were dragged outside without warning. He didn’t have time to grab his hat. Arthie was pulled from the other side and thrown at him. She stumbled, Matteo grabbing her before she could fall.
Well, they had made it inside the fort at least.
The stone walls rose around them. There were no shops or houses here. It was a compound, full of Ettenians and Ceylani walking to and fro, either in the uniform of a guard or a worker, accepting packages or running duties or loading weaponry. Women in saris carried baskets overhead, delivering food. Coconut palms fanned the dusty ground with their leaves, and horses loitered with oxen.
Here, under the archway that seemed to run along the fort’s perimeter, Jin gripped his umbrella tight, ready for a fight, but the guards had surrounded them. Even if the three of them managed to overcome this cluster, they were inside and the gate was shut. Guards were everywhere.
They couldn’t fight their way out of this.
One of the guards snapped his fingers in front of Jin’s face.
“Care to tell us why you stole my colleague’s cab?” he asked. He was dressed in the same-colored uniform as the captain they’d apprehended. That was likely why he was looking at Matteo with an extra level of disgust.
“Can they understand us?” another guard murmured.
“Is it stolen if it’s in front of you?” Arthie replied in perfect Ettenian. A number of the men looked surprised.
“And yes, we understand ruffian quite well,” Jin said, and when the rest of the guards turned their attention to the captain for his response, two of the younger guards remained staring at Jin.
The captain gave them a mirthless smile. “Ah, we have ourselves some Ettenian jokesters.”
The pair of younger guards continued staring at him, murmuring to each other, studying Jin like a bug under a glass. He tried to catch what they were saying, but not even his vampire hearing was of any help. There was too much else happening at once, including a roaring in his ears, worsening his disquiet. He opened his mouth to snap at them, but when he did, one of them dropped his gaze to Jin’s mouth with a gasp, as if his suspicions were confirmed.
Jin’s fangs.
“Vampire!” the guard shouted, pulling out his weapon and aiming it at Jin. In seconds, the entire platoon of guards had followed suit.
Jin froze. Fear dragged a finger down his spine. As the guards circled tighter around him, Arthie and Matteo were forgotten. He couldn’t see them, couldn’t sense them nearby. Had they snuck away? That was a good thing, he told himself, even if it didn’t feel like it.
“Do we shoot?” the guard asked, as if their guns could hurt him. They were acting like he was a rabid animal. Like he was standing here, baring his teeth.
Jin took a slight step backward. The guards followed, the circle tightening.
Only then did he notice their weapons: They weren’t regular rifles. They were loaded with a strange kind of dart that was filled with a luminescent green serum. Jin didn’t know how much damage it would do to a vampire, but he wasn’t particularly ready to test it out.
He remembered distinctly, after he had been turned, trying to find the benefits of being a vampire.At least I won’t have to worry about dying.And then he’d gone and journeyed to a place where they were weakening and weaponizing vampires, and now threatening to kill one.
“No,” the captain said, stepping closer. Jin weighed the advantage of pulling out his revolver and shooting him. He found none. “It’s useless dead.”
It?Jin snarled.
“We’ve got a better use.” The captain nodded to a guard, and then his hands were pulled behind him and clamped in cuffs before he could react. His umbrella clattered to the ground, a piece of his heart being flayed and flung away.
“Move, and spikes will deploy,” the captain warned him. He turned his head. “Get this thing inside.”
Before Jin could react, the guards began pulling a sack over his head, and it took every ounce of effort not to search for Arthie in the shadows. Days ago, Jin had been ready to leave Arthie in the dust. He had been ready to leave her behind in Ettenia and sail to Ceylan himself. But he wasn’t a child; he wasn’t silly. He needed her, and she needed him. He was half her brain. He couldn’t help her if they were separated.
“What about the other two? Where’d they go?” one of the guards asked. The captain ignored him, and another guard gestured to him to be quiet and pulled him along.
Jin stomped his feet, trying to draw their attention. It worked. Several of the guards shouted. He was whipped around, and that was when he caught one last glimpse of her under the cover of a stack of trunks.
We were made for trouble, you and me, he tried to convey with his eyes before the darkness swallowed him whole and he was dragged away.
21ARTHIE
Arthie didn’t wait for the guards’ shock to wear off and remember her and Matteo—she grabbed his arm and tugged him into one of the pockets of shadow between the columns holding up the fortress’s archway. There was no shortage of guards throughout the fort, and as the men shoved Jin away, Matteo choked another, smaller guard unconscious with an arm around his neck and undressed him with haste, giving the uniform to Arthie to button up over her clothes.
