Bloodworth yowled from the floor, pinned beneath Jin’s knees. Jin threw another punch and rose with the keys in his hand. Shouts echoed from afar.
“The moment the guards come in, Bloodworth will inform them that you’re not on their side anymore. We don’t have time.” And she didn’t need to worry about keeping Shaw safe too. “Leave.Now.”
With one last look at Jin, Shaw threw open the doors and disappeared down the hall.
Arthie turned back to find Jin rising with a bloody jaw, Matteo standing over his kill, and as Bloodworth groaned, the canister finally gave way. Glass and luminescent fluid crashed to the floor, the body of the altered vampire within slumping face-first with it.
For a moment, nothing happened. Shaw hadn’t told her what would happen if oxygen entered the canister, or in their case, if its contents met oxygen.
Jin stepped closer, hooking his umbrella around the Ripper vampire’s arm and rolling him onto his back with excessive effort.
“What have you done?” Bloodworth asked, horror in his voice. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled for the door. No one stopped him.
A harrowing feeling settled into Arthie’s bones.
And the vampire opened his eyes.
28JIN
Jin’s first thought when the Ripper vampire opened his eyes was relief that they hadn’t killed him. It was quickly replaced with panic when that fiend of a man Bloodworth staggered for the door, terror exuding from his every action. He ran without looking back.
“We ought to leave, don’t you think?” Jin said as indifferently and calmly as he could.
The Ripper vampire was slowly sitting up, squeezing his eyes closed and opening them again. Arthie was carefully stepping toward the door.
“I happen to agree,” Matteo said.
And the Ripper vampire stared straight at them. Jin shivered. His eyes were blue and might have made him good-looking at one point, but they were cold and cruel now.
“Run,” Arthie whispered.
They bolted into the hall on Bloodworth’s heels. Jin helped Arthie shut the doors, narrowly missing the Ripper’s nose. Matteo tossed over the fallen guard’s rifle and Jin shoved it beneath the handles, jumping away when the vampire rammed his weight against them.
Arthie was pulling out her pocket watch. “We’re cutting it close. Sora should be opening the cells now. The vampires are about to be free.”
Guards were shouting, footsteps thundering. The three of themdashed into the intersection between halls and stopped. The chandelier swayed above them.
This was where they were to reconvene with Jin’s parents and the fed and freed vampires. That was before the Ripper room, before bloody Bloodworth summoned his men, who were now streaming from the three surrounding halls, the overseer in front of them—or behind several of them, really, the coward.
Jin wanted to wipe the smug look off his face.
The men leveled their dart-loaded weapons at them. They were an unusual shape, in between a pistol and a rifle but taller, as if the darts were stacked rather than lined in a cylinder.
There were an awful lot of guards for three barely armed vampires.
“Arthie, darling?” Matteo said, taking her hand. “We’re surrounded.”
Jin saw her fingers tighten around his.
“Good, we can attack in the direction of our choosing, then,” she replied.
The ground began to rumble. Jin felt it in the soles of his shoes, the reverberation echoing up to his teeth. The guards glanced at one another, suddenly wary.
“The vampires,” Arthie whispered. “Right on time. Shaw and Sora did it.”
The coconut water worked. The vampires were awake. Matteo was grinning from ear to ear, even if that wariness was still in his eyes. As it should—there was still no telling if the vampires would side with them.
“Don’t move!” someone commanded. It was that wretched captain.
