Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (11 page)

‘Bastards.’

Alessandro’s arms burst into a frantic flapping. ‘Don’t. Be quiet. They’ll--’

‘Reckon I’m scared of those tossers?’

Alessandro studied me with serious peepers. ‘I don’t know. I am.’ Glancing down, he tore at the grey sheets. ‘Aralt freed me. Before him… I was put away. Forgotten. The doctor told my parents to leave me in an institution and get on with their lives. I believe he put it that they were still
young enough to have another baby
, who would be
normal this time
. I was in the room when he said it because no one considered I could hear or understand, since I couldn’t yet speak. It’s impossible to put into words what it was like to be taken there and left behind forever. You cannot understand what it’s like to lose your family in such a way.’ Alessandro stopped, his tiny fingers twisting at his bowtie.
But I could
,
I bloody well could
. ‘Then at last, someone came for me, just as I’d prayed every day they would. Aralt came for me. He was my saviour.’ Alessandro shifted on the bed and then his voice was strangely monotone, as he added, ‘My first kill was that doctor, who’d been too small minded to see my true hidden mind. With that kill, I slaughtered the label of
idiot
.’

‘And your parents?’
They always went after them
,
the kids did
.

Alessandro blinked. ‘I broke in one night and crept upstairs. But then in the dark I heard this babbling sound from my old nursery. They’d done it: what the doctor had suggested. There was my baby brother tucked up tight in my cot. The new heir. They’d moved on and I simply couldn’t…’ Alessandro wiped at the corners of his peepers. ‘I never saw them again. I’ve often wondered if anyone ever told them I went missing, or if they still think I’m shut away from the world.’ He gave a high laugh; Christ in heaven, it was unsettling. ‘Still am I guess, aren’t I? At least, from their world. But Aralt freed me, which means I owe him everything. To be alone and trapped, that’s worse than death.’

Abnormal, normal. See what I mean about sticky labels?

All right, so Alessandro had always been barmy in his own way. But so what? Who’d got the right to chuck him out with the rubbish and breed another kid in his place?

There’s nothing but snowflake patterns.

We’re all individuals, that’s the long and short of it: born alone, dying alone and grasping at each other as we fall.

And I should know.

6

JULY 1968 LONDON

Remember when there was only one correct way to act, decorate or dress? Paris and Milan, the trend setters?

Us Blood Lifers? Do me a favour. We take what we fancy and drop the rest. We’re not slaves to etiquette, dictates or form. We’re not tied to someone else’s apron strings.

But then something happened in those hot, spacey 1960s summers, as if a switch had clicked collectively in your brains. At last you could see through your brutish First Life enslavement, out to the untold combinations, possibilities and wildness beyond. Or a glimpse of it anyway. To the life around you, which sears with spark and Soul.

You grasped it all in a moment - at least in London. The rest of you? Well, you got there.

Sauntering down Carnaby Street in the early evening, the sun just set, was like bursting out onto a madman’s canvas.

There were myriad creations and not one the same: colours, prints, styles and no decorum because no one was waiting for some stuck up bint across the channel to tell them what fashion meant. Yeah, here’s the cool bit, they were going to invent it fresh, nicking whatever they liked from their ancestors: Art Nouveaux or my beloved Victoriana.

It was the age of freedom.

Even if you First Lifers will never taste
real
freedom, not like the burn of death and then election.

I’d slipped out, whilst Ruby was in another one of her sodding meetings in Aralt’s study, which I’d discovered I was shut out of. I was relegated instead to glorified bouncer at their club and babysitter for the child prodigy.

I’d pressed my cheek to the rosewood door before I’d left, deeply breathing in Ruby’s scent.

It was maddening.

I could almost taste her; my blood sang for her.

Yet she was with
him
now.

My jealousy bubbled; the pain was hot. My imagination went awandering about what was happening on the other side of that door…

So now I was exploring this brave new world of Carnaby Street - by myself - to keep from thinking of the study and my rage.

I wove beneath Union Jacks, which were strung across the narrow road between the taxis and parked vans, passing under a pale blue awning and then spying a boutique, where starkers mannequins with humongous knockers lounged in the windows. That made me stop and back up for a second look, I’ll admit.

There was this buzz: a heat of chatter, music and laughter. Donovan would’ve called it a
scene
but you know, that’s what it was.

The First Lifers’ threads were an eclectic vintage mix, which transformed the whole bleeding lot of them into Blood Lifers.

Apart from the scent and the blood, there was no way of figuring the difference, as one strutted towards me in the twilight with a swaying afro and an old regimental jacket and faded waistcoat.

Bloody hell
,
what was this
?

It brought me up short: me standing there, like a right berk, in the middle of the stream of humanity. Because all I could think, was that never had the divide between our species been so slight; I could sense it sticky on my skin.

Ruby would’ve choked me, if I’d ever said that out loud: I’d be blacked out for a week. Yet it was true. It was like First Lifers had jumped up several rungs of the evolutionary ladder, in one drug fuelled bonk fest of love.

This mutation (or whatever it was) meant I could see more of me in you, just as you saw more through our peepers.

That’s
when I started freaking out.

Because this was the bastard of it: now it wasn’t so easy to dismiss First Lifers as prey or hunt you down. Ruby’s justifying of your deaths, using our inherent superiority, began to feel like simply more of the black and white bollocks, which I didn’t go in for.

I was stiff with the shock of these new feelings. I wished I could go back to the old, safe certainty and be wrapped in its flames.

An idea once freed from its box, however, won’t let its wings be clipped twice.

I forced myself to be swept along with the night. I couldn’t go back to Ruby. Not whilst I was still thinking like this. Otherwise I might say something wild about these whirring ideas and I knew bloody better than that.

I found myself standing staring blankly into the window of the boutique “I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet”. As I slowly unthawed, I realised what I was looking at.

This was the
dog’s bollocks
: the source of those vintage jackets, which had been blowing my mind and sending me into poofy angst, as if an undead army had suddenly been resurrected. I grinned, studying the pairs of Union Jack trousers, which crowded the windows. They were sheer Donovan; I’d wager he already had a pair.

I edged round, jimmying a back door.

I had a tradition that on forays to new places, I brought something back for Ruby: some trinket, whiskey or a pretty little something to bite…

You’ve got to show your love somehow
,
right
?

Just because we were back with Ruby’s brothers, didn’t mean everything had to change. In fact, more reason for our traditions to continue. I needed to remind Ruby of what we had too, using our secret language, which was all our own.

I took a shufti around in the darkness, before spotting a Union Jack mug. I knocked it off quickly, before scarpering back out into the alleyway. My blood was up and pounding.

The night was fine and the world new in a way it hadn’t been for decades, with that added rush I always get from a lay – mug or bar of gold, it doesn’t make any difference. A lay’s a lay and a hell of a kick.

I was soaring in the sweating heat - not even thinking about the feeds I’d missed - when I bumped headlong into this posh suit.

He wasn’t looking where he was going either, whilst he lit up his cigar with this blinding gold lighter.

Then it hit me: the memory of every bastard I’d known in my First Life (and there’d been a sodding ton of those), who’d treated me like I was vermin.

In fact, with the same contempt as that wanker registered, when he recoiled, examining my leather jacket, like I was about to rob him.

The bloodlust engulfed me; I hungered to rip out his jugular.

Something, however, held me back.

I didn’t get it then - what it was. Not straightaway. Yet it was like that epiphany on Carnaby Street had infected me.

Still, the bloke reckoned dirt like me couldn’t do anything but rob?

I didn’t want to
disappoint the man
.

I snatched the lighter from him and legged it.

‘Hey, stop! Did you see..? He just stole my…’

The pigs joined in the chase; I heard their hollers and the
thud
of their boots.

This was it: the run, heat and the fear.

Laughing, I threaded through those throbbing streets, pushing the lighter into the pocket of my jeans: yeah, that was nifty. I clutched onto Ruby’s mug too because I had to keep that. I needed something to return us back to normal again.

I was back. Alive, fully and monumentally. Dashing through those night-time London streets, I was bloody alive.

The First Lifer’s pale pink nails scratched against the stove-painted, metal arm of the lamp. Her body, which was splayed over the elliptical conference table, jerked, twisting and rotating the lamp, which was clamped to its edge. Her crochet angel dress rode higher, until I could see her muff.

Aralt’s jacket was neatly hung over his desk chair, his sleeves rolled back; he was the sort of prat, who’d make sure he didn’t get a drop of blood on his threads.

They’re the ones you need to watch out for, who pretend they’re more civilised than the rest of us savages: the ones who take off their jackets before giving you a kicking.

Aralt was suckling at the bird’s throat.

Christ in heaven, Ruby was too, right on the other side of the neck. She was sharing blood, which was as intimate as communion, just like
we’d
done on the anniversaries of my election. A bond of love, which Ruby had withheld from me, apart from on the rarest of occasions because it was close to sacred.

But now Ruby was doing it with
Aralt
? Her own brother?

I could only see the curves of Ruby’s body, which had tortured me for decades and the scarlet sweep of her hair.
Creak
,
creak
,
creak
– the lamp’s swinging was a torment. The reek of blood like poison.

I must’ve backed up a step because Aralt glanced over the First Lifer then.

When Aralt saw me, his peepers sparkled. He drew back, with what I knew was a victor’s smile: an Alpha male marking his bloody territory.

Or that’s what
he
thought.

No man’s ever owned Ruby, not since she’d been elected into Blood Life. I couldn’t wait for Aralt’s slam to earth when he finally discovered that.

‘No one ever taught you it’s rude not to knock?’ Aralt challenged.

‘It’s nearly dawn and Ruby wasn’t--’

‘Ah, you hear that? Babby was missing his ma.’

Ruby lifted her nut, shuddering from the kill. She scrubbed the heel of her hand over her mush. She was tripping. Overloaded on the blood. Her eyelashes were fluttering. Only the whites of her peepers were showing.

This bird must’ve been the dessert at the end of a hell of a feast.

I didn’t reckon Ruby could even see me or knew I was there; she was too away with the faeries. She never let herself lose control. Not like this.

When Aralt trailed his long fingers down Ruby’s neck, I started into the room. ‘Is she..?’

And then I was up against the wall, my nut gashed against a framed photo of Apollo 5. Red trickled down my forehead.

Bloody hell
,
Aralt was faster than Ruby
.

‘Now listen here, you wee gobshite, the only reason you’re not a puddle in the sun is because Ruby’s grown sentimental in her old age. But me? I think I was right first time: you’re a chancer. A thick ride, who likes throwing shapes. I have no need for one of those. When it was just the two of you dossing around, you might have been the big man. But here?’ Aralt slapped me across the cheek lightly with a smile, before sauntering to Ruby, who was swaying now. Aralt hooked Ruby tight to him, before loosening his tie. ‘No windows,’ as Aralt glanced around the office, I realised he was right. ‘I’ve defeated dawn. You’re not the full shilling, are you?’ You know those bastards, who simultaneously make you feel the idiot and burn to clock them? Screw it, I wanted to feel Aralt’s heart stop bloody in my hands. ‘Run along to bed, like a good babby,’ Aralt licked the blood from Ruby’s lips, and she sighed, low and contented, ‘and I’ll take care of your Author.’