Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (18 page)

Don’t be narked but that version of you, which you kept for private - behind closed doors - no glued on spider lashes or synthetic hair, was the lass I’d fought to burrow down to, ever since I’d first seen you. The humanity, which had beckoned to me, when I’d heard you on the radio in Alessandro’s room. That my Soul had twinned to. The chick shimmering in silver up on stage? She was Advance’s creation, and I was fast coming to realise that there was always something rotten inside one of those, no matter how pretty the trinket.

Earlier, we’d been to a late showing at the flicks to see
Barbarella
.

You’d picked the movie but still, the first virtually nude woman up on the big screen and whether it was set in the forty-first century or not, I’d offered to take you out of there. That was no way to court a bird; I was definite that couldn’t be one of those grey areas of convention, with which I was still struggling.

You’d simply laughed and called me a
prude
. Futuristic erotica was this new age’s mating ritual? All right then, so you’re out of the dating scene for a century, and all the rules of the game get bleeding changed on you.

When I’d settled back again, we’d watched this Barbarella chick rescuing her time, whilst giving us blokes plenty of flesh to wank over. It seemed like a fair exchange to me.

But the best part? The dead blinding part? The way your fingers had curled around mine, as your nut had nestled onto my shoulder, in silent intimacy in the dark; I’d hardly dared breath, in case I’d broken it.

Freak or not, I was yours now: you’d claimed me.

We could sit quietly together, just watching, as if I was no different to any other First Lifer, pulsing with blood in their seats around us.

Ruby would never believe that this new world imagined such fantasies. She refused to go to the flicks:
cold empty shadows
, that’s what she called them. She had no time for moving lights, false pictures with no blood in them; if you couldn’t bleed them, then they were beneath her notice. But me? Me, Ruby had started to notice again, just in small ways.

Ruby would search me out and make demands when I was least expecting it. Or she’d startle me awake. Then watch me through cool peepers.

I’d been a jammy bastard that she hadn’t already twigged something wasn’t pukkah about my blood abstinence. But now with you as well..? It was only a matter of time before Ruby smelt you. I could smell Aralt on
her
couldn’t I? Even on her glowing red hair.

Yet the difference was Ruby wasn’t even trying to hide it. It was as if she wanted me to know - rub the pup’s nose in it. Whereas me? I’d bathe, scrubbing my skin until it near bled, like that barmy bloke, who I’d been forced to shank during the Cuban Revolution.

Look, don’t get the hump. I wish I could’ve held onto every embrace. Your scent cocooning me. I still shared a bed with Ruby, however, and that devil could’ve plucked me apart.

Yet the greatest problem was that I still needed blood.

Without it we’re not alive, and to hell with it if I was dying twice.

Every day that went by, Ruby was catching on, glancing at the way my hands would betray me with their trembling.

Remember the berk spaced out on wacky backy in the latrines? I couldn’t rely on stumbling over flukes like that when I went for a jimmy, every time I needed a feed. All that mind over matter crap’s clap-trap because the strongest will in the world can only hold out so long, when it comes to the stuff of life.

So I got creative.

Right, so all the
nasties and wankery
? Don’t roll your eyes. I know you’re going to, however, because on the way to yours through Soho, there were all these sex shops. And one night I collected some cards for…

This skanky bint was off her nut. Her skin was crusted with pimples and her room stank of cum and vomit. But she was the one who said
yes
- for the right fee - and I was desperate.

Ruby always let me have money now, like I was her wife (or maybe her whore), so I could buy what I liked. Rather than nick it. I’d rejected it before but had started silently pocketing the money without a word, which meant I had enough to pay for the blood.

The First Lifer stuck this needle into her thin vein, selecting the one closest to her muff because the others were already collapsed. Despite everything, I started to salivate, as she drew out the blood. You know what blew my mind though? She watched, when I squirted the blood into my gob and then swallowed in my near starvation, as if it was the sweetest (rather than the rankest), blood I’d tasted in decades. Her expression, however, didn’t change: it was blank, like she’d seen it all before.

Maybe she bleeding had
.

She was still a teenager, yet even a freak drinking her blood from a needle didn’t surprise her.

I saw the bird once a week, taking just enough to keep the tremors at bay. I never asked her name; she never asked mine. And I never told you. In two lifetimes of bad choices and sodding carnage, that’s a lie, which never let my conscience rest. I let myself believe it was about survival because that’s the get out of gaol free card. Or so we tell ourselves. But never telling you? That was all on my head.

The soundscapes of Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced” soared, as we sprawled side by side on your bean bags.

‘Susan got it. The secretarial post.’

I grinned. ‘Blinding.’

You tore at the rough edge of the shagpile, dragging frayed edges out – hard - between your twisting fingers. ‘Would be if her new boss weren’t a right pig.’

Stiffening with that automatic tension when a predator’s close, yet a swirl of confusion too because this time the adrenaline surge wasn’t for me, but rather for a First Lifer. Everything I’d been taught told me that wasn’t right. But I still couldn’t stop myself. ‘What’s he..?’

‘Not like he’s any worse than the rest, I guess.’

‘Want me to..?’

‘What?’ You stopped worrying the carpet, trapping my fingers between yours instead. ‘You our white knight now?’

Mockery
.

You were always good at that, with an added hint of seduction, just the right side of annoying. You could play me so well, ensnaring me somewhere between rage and lust, which for a Blood Lifer is bloody heaven.

Let’s face it, neither you nor me would be content with boring, ordinary lives, whatever the hell they look like.

It’s not only us Blood Lifers, who walk and crave that thin line between pleasure and pain. I’m not simply talking about the kinky stuff either.

Do you remember the nights (and if you remember nothing else, Christ in heaven, you must remember those nights), when you’d keep me on the edge for hours because you said you loved to watch me stretched out, shuddering under you, in that hazy zone where pleasure and pain meld sublimely? What divides the screams and moans, which everyone the world over makes when they come, from the sounds of torture?

You did that to me with your words. I don’t know if you ever got that.

Disgruntled, I shrugged. ‘Armour wouldn’t suit me. I’ll stick to leathers.’ I kissed the tips of your fingers; they were soft, but your long nails grazed my lips. ‘You got a gig this weekend?’

You nodded. ‘Recording next month and likely…’ You stopped.

‘What?’

‘It’s nowt. But this - what I do - it burns me with exhilarating fear because I know I’m fair lucky. I don’t want it to end or… Not with everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve been through. It could be me in that office with a pig of a--’

‘Never you. That could never be you.’

You rolled off your beanbag onto me, your body hard against mine. Then we were snogging, lost somewhere in the wild roar of the music. My mind opened to this new age, the stars bursting and the rhythms beating through my blood in time with the power of the drums.

At last I knew what this
thing
was.

You’d possessed me, invading every bleeding inch of me, until all I breathed was you.

But now I knew its true name – this was
love
.

You snuggled closer onto my chest; your arms hugged tight around me, limpet-like. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go. Wish we could be here like this. Forever.’

What had you just said
?

I tried not to tense, as I stroked a dark curl back from your cheek. ‘Do you?’

‘What?’

‘Forever?’

You smiled. ‘What are you on about, freak?’

See that was the moment. Had it been like this for Ruby? A sudden awareness the time had come?

Yet Ruby hadn’t even known me, not like I knew you; she’d only tasted my Soul. That was enough, however, for most Blood Lifers. I’d tasted your Soul too; I’d been hollowed out by it and now I was filled up with something real. This…love.

Did you love me as well? Maybe. Dunno. But I did know how
I
felt and that was enough.

Election was meant to be for the cream of each generation. You had beauty, talent and ambition, with the streak of ruthlessness, which made a leader. You deserved Blood Life.

Then we’d be together fully and forever. Not in that fairy-tale bollocks way but as long as anyone could wish for on one planet. I’d always known something had been different - this call to you. Different to the taste of every other First Lifer.

The vistas stretched before me of the world I’d reveal to you, just as you’d introduced me to yours. I remembered the decades of exploration with Ruby and all the wonders she’d shown me. I shook with anticipation that I could be your Author, muse, liberator. And love.

I sat up, pulling you with me onto my lap. You stared at me, with a look of surprise. I tried to smile but I was too nervous. ‘If you could… If there was a way to live for centuries and--’

‘Like a vampire?’

I stiffened. ‘No, not like a sodding vampire.’

‘You want to go out somewhere tomorrow evening? Take the Mini and--’

‘So when you said you wished we could be like this forever..?’

You frowned. ‘I was just playing, ninny. You’re serious all of a sudden, what’s..? I’d rather live fully every second. Who’d want to go on and on with no end? Always out of step with the world? Sounds lonely to me.’

I hugged your small body closer; I found I couldn’t loosen my arms. ‘But if you were with someone else? Like, you’d found someone who… It was me and you, together..?’

‘The vampire and his bride?’

‘Not bloody vampires.’

Irritated now, you dragged my arms away from your middle and I let you, as you pushed off me. You swung to the record player, lifting the needle off the Hendrix LP. The sudden silence was like a bleeding black hole.

I stared at your tense back, when you didn’t turn round to me.

I’d done that all wrong, hadn’t I? How had I buggered it up so badly?

Ruby had opened my peepers to the splendours of Blood Life at my election. She’d exhilarated me with the glorious possibilities of my new world and the superiority of the species, into which I’d evolved. But daft berk that I was, all I’d been able to conjure up for you was shadow puppets of Halloween nasties.

I’d screwed up the moment - the
only
moment - and I knew it.

You’d never want to be elected into this Blood Life with me.

Yeah
,
it was lonely
.

At last, you twisted back to me. Your peepers were serious and dark. ‘But you wouldn’t be human, would you? I’d never want that. I could never love something that was… Isn’t this life enough for you?’

‘You are,’ I answered softly, ‘you are, luv.’

MAY 1866 LONDON

I checked the numbers again. There was no doubt: Overend, Gurney and Company, London’s wholesale discount bank - the banker’s bank - was about to collapse.

Junior clerk as I was, I could see the ripples from the rumbling earthquake in its wake spreading out with photographic clarity: the panic and run on banks spreading to Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Derby and Bristol, and then all the other companies failing, like dominoes in a row.

I’d written warnings to the directors, especially Mr John Wesley Erwood, ever since they’d employed me on the written recommendation and good word of my uncle. That, however, had nearly got me bloody fired.

Junior clerks weren’t meant to get above themselves; it was bleeding presumptuous and should’ve been already beaten out of me. I should’ve simply got on with my job, bowed and scraped -
yes sir
,
no sir
– and kept my peepers to the ground, rather than lifted to the lofty heights of high finance. But I’ve always been a curious bastard. Not one to stay in my place.

The one talent I had was for numbers.

Numbers had danced in my mind, in glimmering cascades, before I even had the words to describe them. And these ones at the bank? They’d never added up. Not when the bank had millions of pounds more liabilities than liquid assets, yet still couldn’t see the danger. Not when the stock and bond prices collapsed. Not when the Bank of England failed to play ball.