Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (8 page)

Ruby took the old bird splayed over a counter in the kitchen, amidst the remains of her shattered Portmeirion coffee pot. Then we worked room by room, dividing up what we found on gut basis because blood calls to you, sometimes to one more strongly than another.

Here’s the thing, we can smell, long before we open a door, the First Lifer inside. Look, that’s important, because I don’t have a go at kids. That’s a line for me, especially as they smell…
unripe
. There’s no urge to touch or taste.
All the wankery
,
yeah
?

Some Blood Lifers specialise in the young, like a niche market. The same as veal. Every emotion amplified? You don’t need to think too hard to guess what dark corner Blood Life shone a light on there.

Most Blood Lifers are repulsed, but it’s the choice of the few, who justify it on taste grounds. They insist the blood’s sweeter on account of the innocence.

Bollocks to that
.

Kids aren’t innocent: being closer to birth, simply means being closer to animal instinct. Society artificially imposes civilization, as age teaches self-control. Kids are humanity at its rawest.

I imagine they taste nasty.

So we got to the last room and discovered the young Rocker.

Ruby and I were already throbbing, pulsing with the fresh blood ripping through us. We were tripping like we hadn’t in years. The world was detonating in colour and light; we were licking the walls and each other - tasting the universe.

We were laughing - I know that - giggling at sodding nothing.

The Rocker actually opened the door to us with this look of surprise, like we were interrupting his kip and he intended to tell us to keep it down. Then his expression changed to a sort of stupid incomprehension, when he saw the blood dribbled down our chins, since we were too bleeding gone to even wipe it off.

Before he could slam the door, we were in and like all the rest, we didn’t give him the chance to scream.

Ruby snapped the bloke’s neck before we drank. Our fangs sank in deep, as Ruby held the Rocker between us, like a fallen antelope. Then we let him drop to the orange shagpile.

I sighed as his blood mingled with the others’: the magical mix popping in my bloodstream. A blood rush overload.

When I swayed, Ruby steadied me. Her nut was on my chest, listening to the thundering beat of my heart.

I glanced around the Rocker’s room: at the combs, keys and Brylcreem on the dressing table and his clobber stuffed in a scruffy suitcase. I bagged his still smouldering fag from the glass ash tray, taking a deep drag. As I flicked the ash off the tip, I noticed a ten inch record sticking out underneath the Rocker’s twisted body.

When I disentangled myself from Ruby, I slipped the LP out. I wiped off the smears of blood with my fingertips; music should be treated with respect.

“The Sound of Fury” by Billy Fury and THE FOUR JAYS.

The bloke on the front was a dead cool Rocker with pompadour hair. I liked the look of him, so edging the LP out of its jacket, I dropped it onto a record player, which balanced next to the messy bed.

As soon as the needle touched the vinyl, Ruby and me were hit by a raw vocal and guitar, which only made the blood in us move the more, until we were ripping at each other’s threads. We tripped over the corpse, as we stumbled to the bed. Then we were rolling naked in its filth, lost in each other and the moment because that’s what it’s like: blood.

Real
blood. First Lifer.

It’s everything, and you’re everything but in that second only. So you’ve got to take it. Ride it. Live it…

The music built its rhythm - our bodies’ rhythms against and inside each other - spun a web for our world, where nothing else existed. Ruby threw me on my back, holding me down as she snogged me.

Bugger she was strong
.

I rolled onto her. Our thighs were hot, entangled. Then we were feasting on each other. First the sweet agony of Ruby’s bite on my chest, and then I suckled from her pure white throat.

Our venom, perfect design in all things, heightens the pleasure; when taken natural in small doses it isn’t toxic to our own.

Isn’t evolution a hell of a thing
?

And our blood? It makes yours seem as water is to wine. It’s like the world’s singing: a choir of dirty angels. To Ruby, it’s close to Sacrament. That’s why I didn’t get to taste often but when I did? I achieved the only true moments in a whole century of Blood Life, of total peace.

Why? Because it makes you complete.

Is that happiness?

I’ll tell you something, it’s not hell.

At last, Ruby pushed me away, lapping the last blood from my wounds, up my chest, to my neck and then my mouth.

Then it all started over again…

In the morning, as we lay sprawled starkers in the silent hotel, the curtains firmly closed, we heard the brawling start up again outside.

Bollocks vampire myth… What am I even up to now? Look, we can be awake in the daytime, we’re just knackered because we’ve been up the entire night.
You
can pull an all-nighter if you have to, can’t you? That’s classic vampire prejudice, seeped into public consciousness or culture, that’s what that is. I’d say Blood Lifer but then First Lifers don’t even know we exist because we’re camouflaged.

So between kips, we’d spent the day wandering the corridors of the now deserted hotel (
no vacancies
sign up, of course), whilst I messed around with my new camera, which really was a blinding little piece of equipment.

We’d been listening out for broadcasts on a transistor radio, which we’d discovered in the kitchen, once we’d stepped over the stiff corpse of the proprietor, about how the Mods and Rockers were still going at it, like a bad repeat. It was as if they hadn’t learnt a thing from yesterday.

Or maybe like it’d been as much of a game to them, as it’d been to us.

‘Naughty boys are foolish indeed to behave so,’ Ruby had held the radio close to her cheek, her nails clawing so tight around it, I thought she’d snap it. ‘See how lessons do not seed with First Lifers?’

Ruby would narrate stories to me, in those difficult years after the Great War, when I’d lie shuddering in the grip of night terrors (reliving the
boom
of the guns, flash of the lights and the stink of rot).

She’d tell me of how she remembered a time when armies would agree to fight well after breakfast, with the steady march of two battlelines towards each other. How both sides followed chivalrous and honourable rules. But the whole rulebook’s blown to pieces now, isn’t it?

After World War Two, it was nuked.

Look, First Lifers fight, get it? It’s what you do. Kill. Rape. Destroy. It’s worming in your nature. Every day you sit calmly at a desk and don’t rip out the heart of your piss annoying, bully of a boss, you’re simply supressing it. You know it, even if you won’t admit it.

First Lifers wail about butchering wars, rebellions or massacres half way around the globe. Yet you never stop to ask why they’re still happening. You just want them to stop.

Bloody genius
.

Want to know something?

They’re never going to stop
.

Not whilst you reckon you’re the apex predators, stomping around this planet, like the King of the Animals.

If your boys don’t have a war to be sent to die in, they’ll make one at home. If your Government acts like a pack of tossers (and that’s not much of a stretch of the imagination), then they’ll riot, burning their own streets to ashes, like bloody heroes. It’s skin deep, this twenty-first century lark.

Us Blood Lifers? We’re merely more honest about it.

In the afternoon we got some shut eye, curled hot in each other’s arms until sundown.

Whilst Ruby was dressing, I strolled naked to the mirror, grabbing the Brylcreem and comb as I passed; I shaped my hair up with them into a pompadour. I grinned, modelling my latest look for Ruby, like a mannequin.

‘My own Billy Fury,’ Ruby smiled, catching me close and hard against her, for one long moment.

I loved this new age, freedom, music, clobber…

Our weekend had resurrected me once more into Blood Life. I needed a fragment of it to wear as a second skin, in case I forgot who I was again.

I dragged out jeans and a black t-shirt from the dead bloke’s suitcase - just my size.

Ruby was watching me with narrowed peepers.

I wrenched the tall motorcycle boots off the Rocker, who’d started to soften down the path of decay; he’d already passed the rigor mortis, which had comically stiffened him all day – they’d do.

An arm at a time, I heaved off his motorcycle jacket, which was studded and decorated with a gold
Ace of Spades
on the back.

‘You’re a rebel now?’ Ruby assessed me, transformed into head-to-toe Rocker.

‘I was always a rebel,’ I lit up, striking the match against the wall with a smile, ‘just got me some new threads.’

Then I glanced down, noticing the motorbike keys on the dressing table:
a bloody
Triton
. I caught Ruby’s eye. She shook her nut, but I grabbed the keys anyway, before sauntering to the door.

I looked back at Ruby over my shoulder. ‘Wanna take a ride with me?’

‘Do you wish to take a ride with
me
?’ Ruby snatched the keys from my fingers. Then suddenly serious, she traced down my cheek. ‘I’m glad we came back. I’m glad
you
are back. Yet I sense something’s happening in the First Lifer world: a change I’ve seen before. But this time, we need to be ready to play our part.'

5

‘Change is always difficult for everyone involved. Sometimes, however, we need to have a long, hard think about what’s best and accept--’

‘I’m not sodding accepting nothing.’

Wednesday sighed, straightening out her uniform in quick, frustrated motions. ‘Try to be more open, yes? You need to seriously consider, well, what we talked about earlier.’

‘
You
talked. Did you hear me yammering on?’

I edged further away from the bedroom window, wincing as my back began to smoulder.

Wednesday had been late this morning - of course she had - because reducing stress for carers is so buggering important in our care plan. I know that because they’ve kindly written it down in black and white. If it’s on a piece of sodding paper, it’s got to be true, doesn’t it?

Black ice on the road
, Wednesday had moaned,
you’re so isolated here on the moors
.

Another complaint and mark against my name.

So now my best mate the sun was smoking over the horizon; slivers of light scorched around the corners of the blind.

One toasted Blood Lifer: not the best bloody start to my day. If I melted much more, I’d look bleeding dodgy. Still, Wednesday was ripe for a heart attack…

All right, I’m just pissing about here. I’m not that tosser anymore. Especially not when you were lying there off colour, your thin fingers clutching the bedclothes and then
tap
,
tap
,
tap,
like you were trying to pass on a message because you can’t talk to me. You can’t tell me what you really want to say. I scanned your mush desperate to understand but -
tap
,
tap
,
tap
-
I couldn’t. Not anymore.

Your mouth twisted in frustration.

‘They did leave the leaflets with you yesterday?’

‘Binned ‘em.’

‘No you didn’t,’ Wednesday smirked. ‘Read them.’

Tap
,
tap
,
tap
. That desperate wringing of the covers.
Tap
,
tap
,
tap
.

‘I don’t need to.’ I stormed towards the door, flinging it open. The band of light from the window scorched my cheek. But only for a moment.

When Wednesday grabbed my arm, I stared down at her wrinkled hand in surprise. ‘Whether you want to admit it or not, it
is
going to get to a stage when your…grandma needs a higher level of care than you can provide. Or than we can. The local care home’s excellent. They’re specialists with her type of--’

I shook Wednesday off my arm. ‘No one’s bloody taking her, got it?’

Wednesday’s gaze gave me the once over. Then she shrugged, as if having done her duty, she could now wash her hands of us.

‘Advance,’ you muttered between clenched teeth, as your back arched. ‘Advance.’ Your eyelids flickered.

I dropped to my knees beside you, stroking your candy floss white hair. But I knew I wasn’t there because you couldn’t see me. Worse, there was sod all I could do about it.