Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (12 page)

Alessandro examined the thin cut, which was rapidly healing up into a white line, with tentative fingers. ‘Still not scared of Aralt?’

I shoved away from Alessandro with a shrug. ‘Kids play. Saturday night in with Ruby.’

We were sprawled together on Alessandro’s wooden floor, in a glorious chaos of singles and LPs, as if a tornado had hit, and we were in the eye.

I’d found them, one after the other, ranked in bright orange paper record racks, alphabetically listed. Alessandro had given this vole-like squeal, each time I’d wrenched one out, devoured its cover and tossed it aside.

I drew out the psychedelic cover of The Stone’s “Their Satanic Majesties Request”. I turned it over reverentially in my hands. ‘You’re a dark horse. Because for a square? You’ve got cool taste.’

Alessandro fidgeted. ‘Another one of my…you know? You hear an awful lot of this modern stuff working at Advance. They even let me name the radio station.’

‘We have a radio station?’

The rot had set in already –
we
? I should’ve cut out my bloody conforming tongue. Society creeps up on you; it catches you by the balls, taming you until you’re leashed.

See here’s the thing, we’re all bound by our family, friends, jobs and love… But love doesn’t need to be bound or to bind - it can be free.

Society’s the prison we volunteer to lock ourselves in, hiding behind its bars without the need for guards because it’s comfy, safe and as predictable as you First Lifers crave. Yet it’s a fantasy because it’s built everyday on lies: from the laws you follow gormlessly unquestioning, to the roles you mould yourselves into, so you can fit square pegs into round. That’s what you’re conditioned for, cradle to the grave.

Here in our Blood Life, I’d thought we were beyond that. At Advance, however, I was being exposed to a whole new society; it made me feel like I was being castrated all over again.

Alessandro nodded. ‘A pirate radio station. You haven’t heard it?’ His arms started to flap. ‘Goodness, you must.’ He dived under the bed, so far I could only see his pale white feet sticking out. When he wriggled free again, he was clutching this bloody great box of transistor radios and beaming, like he was about to present his first born. ‘My collection. Donovan finds them for me because he knows I… Well, see..?’ Alessandro passed them over to me one at a time. Tiny pocket transistors. A real mink RL200 radio. And portable radios shaped like lipsticks, Batchelors tins or cups and saucers. He raised a red pop-art radio to his ear, twiddling with the tuning. ‘Guess what I named it?’

I craned my hands behind my nut. ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

Alessandro grinned, the static clearing as he found the frequency.

…
And now on Radio Komodo we have another groovy record for all you hip listeners out there
…

‘Komodo?’ I kicked at Alessandro with my boot. ‘Nice one.’

All right then, so this is the moment…the one I’ve never told you about…I don’t know why.

Sod it, yeah I do.
Honesty
, right?

I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to feel like just another groupie, or any more of a sad git than I already did when we first met.

How’s that for a superior species?

But now’s my chance. My turning round.

So, this was our first true meeting. Only you never knew it until now.

This song started up on the radio. Then this singer and the voice… It was sultry but fragile, with a northern edge and a hint of Marianne Faithfull. Yet it was rock, rather than folk, through to its core. It belted me in the sodding gut because it was like everything I’d tasted on my trip down Carnaby Street - this new world blossoming from the earth, which made me feel old for the first time: dusty and
dead
. I craved another shot of this vibrant vitality and to suck the Soul from that voice –
you
- directly into my veins.

I’d wager it was your humanity, which we stripped away with every kill, rejoicing in each sacrificial hunt, that drew me to you.

For the first time in a century, I missed the heat of the sun.

I tried not to point too wildly at the radio. ‘Who’s this?’

Alessandro flushed.
Interesting
. ‘One of ours. She sings at The Heartbeat Club, so I hear.’

‘You’ve gone a little red there.’

Alessandro pressed his palms hard against his lugs, rocking backwards and forwards for a moment. Then he wrapped his arms around his middle. ‘Kathy’s…dishy…’

‘That right? Listen,’ I edged closer, ‘the twins, what’s up with them? All this record company bollocks? I’ll be buggered if all they’re building is a music empire. Are they like the Kray twins or something?’

Alessandro sharply twisted off the radio. Your voice and world was lost to me again, leaving me with only the aluminium starkness of neat corners and the festering mouths of Komodo.

‘Or something.’

‘They’re Irish,’ I began thoughtfully, ‘elected after me. They’re brutal, ruthless but dedicated leaders. Taking a wild guess, they’re IRA?’

Alessandro clutched my arm, his small fingers digging in hard enough to hurt, as he dragged my forehead close, until it was touching his. ‘Members of the original Irish Volunteers; they were involved in the Easter Rising and the later fight for freedom against England. Aralt told me it was all right though - what they did - because Ireland was in a state of guerrilla war. They’re not terrorists or… The struggles made them officers in Ireland’s army. I don’t know if I…but that’s what he said. They were special too. Members of the Twelve Apostles. Assassins.’

‘Yeah, blokes who murdered their Old Bill, right?’

‘British troops too. It was
war
Aralt said. And in war people do things, which are… But please, you can’t… He only told me because he’s my Author. He’s private like that. About his past--’

‘You could knock me down with a feather. And? How were the twins elected?’

‘Black and Tans hated men like Aralt and Donovan. They burnt down their home one night. With the twins in it. Lucky for the twins, however,
he’d
already been watching and following their impressive exploits.’

‘Who?’

Alessandro rocked back on his heels. ‘Ruby’s Author, of course. Plantagenet.’ Alessandro looked confused at my blank expression; even he couldn’t misread that obvious a reaction. ‘She didn’t tell you? How she was elected? About Plantagenet?’

‘Doesn’t look like she told me sod all, does it?’

You know when you die and are elected into Blood Life, the one thing you reckon you won’t bleeding have to do any more is go to lame parties with limp, wilting grub and warm beer and make nice with the natives.

Do you reckon it’s a pass to some glamourous VIP lounge?

Yeah, that’ll be right, well, maybe when it was just me and Ruby and I let myself dream, like some doe-eyed berk, that we were set apart, alone and united in blood and love and bollocks to the rest.

But that was the lie.

Now I was finally waking up to the fact that this Blood Life was no dark fairy-tale: it was hard science. Ruby had warned me, hadn’t she?

Pissing evolution
.

There are some amongst us, who claim there’s no difference between magic and science.

But I’ve seen the numbers streaming in my head. I’ve witnessed words whispering from across the globe and tiny bastards trapped in TVs for our entertainment.

And in the 1960s? I even heard First Lifers boast, like a declaration of war, that they’d walk on the moon and at its tail end, I saw them take the very first step. You can’t experience wonders like that and not reckon them beyond magic.

We’re all creatures of the earth; it’s simply nature. And we all want to survive - even you.

That’s
why you should fear us.

Gammon, pork pies, cheese straws, scotch eggs, sausage rolls and crisps: ready salted, cheese and onion, smoky bacon and roast chicken. Like an alien hedgehog, a halved grapefruit in foil, stuck with pineapple on cocktail sticks, acted as a centrepiece on the plastic table. To the side were stacked crates of brown ale and tall bottles of wine.

See here’s how it stacks up: one pint of your blood (which is what we generally speaking drain), that’s only 500 calories. You reckon we could subsist on that, even if we killed once every twenty-four hours?

Man would die of bloody hunger.

We’d need to guzzle four First Lifers a night, if we didn’t eat up our meat and five a day.

Still, there are some Blood Lifers who rise to the challenge. It burns them out quickly, however, so they don’t tend to last long.

Since our senses are enhanced, I think about food almost as much as I obsess about blood and sex because we still dig the flavours, the same way as you crave chocolate or that third cocktail. It’s about indulgence, revelling in the moment because who knows, tomorrow you may die, right?

They’d pulled out all the stops for Ruby’s
welcome home
party in the cavernous dining hall, which I reckoned, with the sticky party food, banners and glitter was Donovan’s, rather than Aralt’s, do. Of course, like a piece of battered luggage, I didn’t figure.

Yet when I’d tried to skulk up to our room rather than play nice, Ruby had grabbed my wrist and dragged me down after her with a smile that melted, as much as her nails sliced.

Ruby was stronger now than she’d ever been. It was because she was flooded with so much blood.

She was also lost in it too, or from me anyway. Whatever she did at night knackered her. Yet after the last time I’d gone searching for her - finding her tripping and blood sharing with Aralt - I wasn’t going investigating again.

Instead, I got used to being on my own.

Ruby was worn out, when I woke in the day and lay next to her, stroking the soft hair from her cheek. They were the only moments of quiet we had together, but she always slept through them now; her peepers didn’t flicker open for a moment.

I wondered whether Ruby saw me, even when she looked at me.

“All or Nothing” by The Small Faces - the Mod band to end all Mod bands - buzzed from the hi-fi, as Donovan strutted his stuff by himself, where the chairs had been pushed back to create a dance floor. He used a weird combination of those dances with animal names, swinging his arms round in joyful communion with his Mod god.

A bird, who I hadn’t yet met, was watching Donovan, like she was his bodyguard. Her brunette hair was scraped back dead tight and she was wearing - over a pair of pressed jeans - this blinding pilot’s jacket; I reckoned it was Second World War. But it wasn’t British… Nazi maybe? She didn’t look German, but then I’ve come to know there’s no
look
about it. Not for any of us.

Aralt and Ruby were pressed close together by the drinks, yakking away. I couldn’t hear a single word over the music, although I was straining to. Of course the fact I knew I wasn’t meant to hear, was even more infuriating.

I could see it played out, however, like a silent movie: Aralt’s fingers massaging the small of Ruby’s back. I could’ve broken every bone in his hand -
crunch
,
crunch
,
crunch
.

Alessandro was crouched in a shadowed corner, his knees drawn up to his chest. His hands would flutter in front of his peepers and then clutch to his lugs. I dived to the crate, pouring out a beer. ‘Here, wet your whistle.’

Alessandro took the drink from me with shaking hands and a look of surprise. ‘Thanks.’

‘Not your scene?’

‘Too many…you know.’

‘Yeah mate, for me ‘an all.’

I glanced over at Ruby, bloody moth to flame. Aralt’s hand was on her neck now, playing with that delicate place where it meets collarbone and then tracing down to her blood-red pendant. Just like she’d beg
me
to when we’d lie naked, wrapped in each other’s arms. And that was it - right there:
that was the line
.

A bloke can only take so much.

I hunched my shoulders, as I swaggered towards them.

Bollocks to it
: Advance, the twins, whatever screwed up game they were playing and this whole crazy set up – I was out.

I grabbed Ruby by the shoulder, swinging her round. I loved the shock in her peepers. I used to delight in that; we’d cross continents to do no more than jolt each other with some new wonder or horror.

‘You’re interrupting,’ Aralt’s voice was low and dangerous.

‘Sorry,’ I ran my hand down the crease of Ruby’s neck, which Aralt’s fingers had desecrated a moment before, caressing the pale, sensitive skin beneath her ruby pendant. I grinned when she groaned. ‘But I was here first.’

I saw Aralt’s gaze dart around the dining room; we were now the live act. ‘Throwing shapes? Ma not giving you enough attention?’

‘She’s my Author, muse, liberator and my
lover
. She’s not my ma.’