With a strong thrust of my foot, I kicked the Bloodless in the head, causing him to lose balance and tumble down to the deck… Only to make way for the next one.

This one was stronger and had much faster reflexes. Horrifyingly fast. Before I could even plunge my sword into his body to create a distance between us, he’d leapt at me, his hands closing around my throat. His claws sank in, puncturing my flesh.

“No!” I let out a strangled scream.

Aisha swept down. Grabbing the sword from my hand, she plunged it into his neck—the force of the motion sending him reeling, and also, inevitably, losing his grip on me. He tumbled down to the deck with the others. Sliding one arm around my waist, the jinni jerked me upward. I whimpered as I clasped my hands around my neck. It was soaked with blood, and the wind stung like hell. However, I should’ve been grateful. His claws hadn’t dug into me nearly as deeply as I’d imagined. I guessed that he’d been saving that job for his fangs.

“Thank you,” I breathed, barely even aware of what I was saying. I was just so relieved to be carried away.

“Don’t thank me,” Aisha snapped. “I only saved you because you’re still of use to me.”

My heart hammered against my chest as she stopped ascending and hovered, still in one spot. She flashed her eyes at me, indicating that I take the sword. I took it from her cautiously, with half a mind to attempt to stab her in the gut and escape this nightmare. But I didn’t know if jinn could be killed by stabbing—they were ethereal creatures, after all—and I was too afraid to risk finding out.

“Let’s try again, shall we?” Aisha continued, her tone almost bored. “I think we’ve verified by now that it’s not possible to kill one of these things by stabbing them through the chest—or the neck, for that matter. This time, I want you to try chopping off a head.”

I choked as she lowered me back down again. This time, she didn’t even bother to take me to an empty part of the ship. She just dumped me down on the railing, right next to a crowd of Bloodless. Now I was sure that she intended to kill me. She was just having a little fun with me first. Curse the bitch.

They came rushing at me again, and, the hilt of the sword slippery in my sweaty hands, I lunged at a Bloodless’ head with all my strength. The edge of my sword sliced through flesh, but then it was met with a dull thud. Metal against bone. Tough bone. Very tough bone. I stared at the Bloodless’ wraithlike face. It barely even registered pain. Just hunger for my blood. The sword dislodged and clattered to the floorboards as he lunged at me. I thanked my stars that Aisha had planted me by the edge of the ship. Knowing that the jinni would have been observing my attempt closely, I leapt off the ship before the Bloodless could grab me.

Splashes came from behind me. During previous encounters with the Bloodless, I had noticed that they appeared to be somewhat averse to water, and so I’d hoped that they wouldn’t follow me. But it appeared that by now, Aisha and I had riled them up far too much for them to care.

“Help!” I screamed up at Aisha, who was still keeping track of me from above.

I didn’t have the nerve to stay above the surface and wait for her to descend. Taking a deep breath, I dipped under the waves and began to swim manically away. But it wasn’t long before the jinni’s warm hands closed around my calves.

“Trying to escape again, are we?” she drawled, hoisting me into the air.

“No!” I spluttered. “In case you didn’t notice, if I hadn’t jumped that Bloodless would have torn into my neck.”

“Oh, of course you aren’t,” Aisha replied, patronizingly, as if she were a teacher talking to a school child. “It would be rather stupid of you to try that again after the warning I gave you.”

As she was about to drag me yet again to the ship, I craned my neck up to meet her eyes and begged, “Aisha, I don’t think this is the best way to do this. I really don’t.” I gritted my teeth. I really, really don’t. “I couldn’t even cut through that monster’s neck with the blade. The bone was hard as a rock.”

“Perhaps all we need is a sharper blade,” Aisha said, almost nonchalantly.

“Maybe,” I said, trying to not spiral into a nervous breakdown at the thought of the jinni dropping me among the Bloodless yet again. “But we’re going into this blindly. These are clearly nothing like the vampires either of us know. We need to try to figure out what these things actually are before we have a chance of ending them…” I paused, drawing a rasping breath. “Look, I’m shaking and weak, and if you drop me down there again, I don’t think I’ll survive. I-I can’t handle it.”

Aisha paused mid-air. “Aww,” she crooned, the fakeness of her concern biting. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before volunteering to save the world?”

“Please! This isn’t working.”

The jinni’s expression turned stone cold. “And what do you propose exactly? That I just forget about what you did to Benjamin and let you go free?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head fiercely. “You may not believe me, but I meant it when I said that I want to help solve this.” My words were true. I wanted to solve this problem… just for a different reason than I’d revealed to Aisha. I didn’t want to slaughter them, at least, not Hans’ siblings. I needed to find a way to cure them, or find some way to get them back to a state where they were at least semi-recognizable. Hans was still trapped in that dark cave in Cruor, but if I could just figure out how to fix his siblings, it would be a step closer to reuniting with him again. The real him.