Sod. That.
‘My name is Light.’
‘What was that, my pretty leech?’
This time I said a little louder, ‘My name is Light.’
I felt Sir go rigid.
Then I was tumbled to the cold ground, and he was standing tall above me, that other man fighting for control; I could see the war beneath Sir’s skin. ‘I’ve just told you, bitch, your name is shadow.’
‘My name is… Oomph,’ a boot to the bloody kidneys, ‘Light.’ Sir was undoing the heavy silver buckle of his belt, even as I started again, like an incantation, ‘My name,’ the belt was whipped out of Sir’s trousers, ‘is’, he wasn’t even pausing to double up the heavy black leather, as he raised the belt high above his nut, ‘Light’… Thwack… The belt curled around my chest and sides, stinging and welting. I barely drew breath to cry out, before I was hollering, ‘My name is Light. My name is Light. My name is…’
As the belt fell again and again, I never stopped asserting my Blood Lifer identity.
Not once.
MAY 20
You know what I figure? I really am one stupid leech not to have seen this coming. One daft mug to have trusted another First Lifer.
You reckon it’s easy to flay your Soul’s shameful violations to an enemy’s kin? To lay bare the tortures inflicted on your body?
Worse, your own black despair?
Yet not once had I thought you wouldn’t sodding believe me. That you’d interrogate me instead.
As if I wasn’t the victim.
Well, more fool me.
MAY 21
Tonight you said sorry.
I don’t know if a slave is required to forgive.
MAY 22
‘Again?’
‘Huh?’
‘An Alex Highbury-Lord dress again?’ I asked.
You wriggled into this bold check flare dress, like an oversized schoolgirl, pulling it down over your satin pants and bra, as if I wasn’t sprawled right there on your white bed. I know slaves don’t deserve the luxury of privacy, but I hadn’t realised it cut both ways.
Except it was more as if you’d grown so used to me being in the apartment I’d transformed into one of your designer pieces of furniture – or one of your junk shop finds.
You were faffing around with your hair in front of the full-length mirror. Still, I had some sympathy, having spent Christ knows how long getting my pompadour perfect, since the appearance of Brylcreem on my bedside table this morning – the Brylcreem fairy must’ve visited during the night.
I’d left a list of essentials hopefully stuck to the fridge last week on one of your Post-it notes: I guess black motorcycle boots don’t tick that box..? Maybe you don’t want to imply I’ll be going out of the apartment…because these white trainers? They’re too naff to be seen in anyway.
You stared at me. ‘Are you zoo’n’ on me?’
‘Just saying--’
‘It saves time, like, thinking.’ You spun round, wagging an explanatory finger at me. ‘Einstein--’
‘Einstein, is it?’ I took a drag on my e-cig.
‘Shut up.’
‘Did I say anything?’
‘Naw, you just do that…eyebrow thing. But I know what you’re thinking.’
I couldn’t help the grin. ‘I should’ve known a slave wasn’t allowed their own thoughts.’
You stepped closer to the bed.
I was suddenly aware how large the bed was. How tall you were. And how bloody scared I’d been for so long. I wanted to curl into a ball but instead I pushed myself up too, e-cig firmly lodged between my teeth.
‘Mouthy enough for a slave,’ I heard you mutter.
I should’ve let it go. You were right. Then again, I’ve never been able to keep my gob shut. ‘Not really a slave, sweetheart.’
You’d already been turning away, distracted by your plans for the day. Now, however, your steel grey peepers lazored back onto me. ‘Bought,’ you paused between each word, as if to ensure their weight sank in, ‘and paid for.’
We were standing dead close.
The fingers of my left hand were curling and uncurling, the e-cig crushed in my other. My skin was tingling, as my phantom fangs itched to descend. ‘Just because you kidnap a bloke,’ my voice sounded calm even to my lobes, when inside the Blood Lifer was roaring end of the world destruction and revenge, ‘take his clobber, starve him, duff him up and sell him to some bird, don’t make him no slave. It makes him unlucky.’
‘And that’s all you Blood Lifers are? Unlucky?’
I laughed…this furious laugh. For once, you backed up a step. ‘We’re many things: lovers, explorers, chancers and predators – but right now? We’re the poor bastards, who are being sold by your family as fucktoys and worse.’
I turned away, staring down at the white blankness of the bed.
Why was I risking being this open with a First Lifer? The truth doesn’t set you free: it gets you topped.
I’d trusted once before, allowing the truth about us Blood Lifers and my own life to rest in the hands of a human. With what you’ve promised me tonight, you’ve earned this memory.
My beautiful Kathy, who I’d hallucinated in Abona’s cell. She was the safe place, which my mind fled to because she’s the woman I love…loved…the woman I loved for fifty years. And now I’ve lost. Yet I trusted her, and you know what? She trusted me. We learnt together, when we met in 1960s London, that our two species could co-exist, without hunting or enslaving the other.
And now I wanted to trust you.
‘The Blood Club’s exclusive,’ you spoke quietly but distinctly. ‘Yah, it’s unorthodox. But that’s why it’s special. I’m still learning the--’
‘Dirty details? Truth behind the--’
‘Business.’
You pulled on your armadillo-embossed platform shoes – that was another inch on me - and marched, clack, clack, clack, to the sitting room.
I trailed after you, hands in pockets, before throwing myself down in the Fjord relax chair. I sank into the brown leather.
You glared at me for a moment - go on, demand I start the Post-it note chores, I dare you - but then didn’t say anything. Instead you pressed on several computer monitors, which were on a desk next to the wall.
The monitors blinked open on multiple windows, running programmes of complex numbers.
I sat upright. Reanimated.
Bonds, currencies and stock market indices. They whizzed past in choirs, dancing glorious shapes: U.S Treasury bonds, British pounds, Russian T-bills, light sweet crude, heating oil, soy-beans, copper, silver and gold.
They spoke in a language of numbers of a whole world, which was still out there and turning. It was so easy to forget that, when I was on my knees scouring.
My world had shrunk. But the real one? Outside the front door of this apartment? It was still vast, infuriating and sublime.
I had to get out. I was getting out.
You were as engrossed as me in the screens. You weren’t simply watching the markets: you were dipping your toe into the maelstrom and trading via an Internet brokerage site.
‘You’re a day trader then? Amateur speculator?’
‘There’s nothing amateur about my trading.’
There was a strange new companionship between us, which was built by the numbers. Foreign to most, yet translated by us both. First or Blood Lifer, numbers are a constant.
Like money.
As I watched you trade, I saw you were right: you were no amateur. You were a bloody genius.
At last, you swivelled on your chair, tilting your nut to assess me. ‘Come on,’ your smile was gentle, ‘wanna see?’ I hopped up, diving to your side. ‘This must be wicked boring for you.’ You waved your hand at the monitors, as if to dismiss them.
‘Not when it reminds me of the world. Look,’ I sidled closer, leaning against the cold oak desk; it felt good to have its solidity under me, whilst I looked down at you, conquering the Earth through your fingertips
, ‘you have that tracker, right? And I’ve been good; I told you everything you wanted to know. So it seems to me--’
‘What do you want?’
‘To go out.’
‘Of the apartment?’
‘One night, that’s all.’
You stared at me, like I’d demanded to gobble your firstborn (and believe me, that’s not my cup of tea). ‘Na-ah, not happening.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t trust you.’
Up front and to the point. I met your gaze full on. ‘I’ll earn it.’
First you looked shocked. Then…disgusted.
I simply gawped at you, before I cottoned on.
A bloke doesn’t like to think an offer of himself (even in misunderstanding), disgusts a bint. It bruises the ego. ‘I didn’t mean…’ I wondered whether you were imagining a certain Professor Alpha Geek, in his buttoned up checked shirt; how could a bad boy Rocker slave compete with that?
‘You’re not going out. End of.’
That’s what you think.
I relaxed back onto the desk. ‘So, this your idea of fun then?’
I swear you blushed. Score one to me… ‘I like playing with numbers. The risk. You wouldn’t get it.’
I grinned. ‘Want to bet on that?’
You blinked at me, as if you’d never seen me before. ‘London’s frickin’ perfect for currencies; I’m seeing consistent 35% returns. This year I’ve already made…’
You clicked a couple of keys, before pointing at a figure, which was so long it barely fitted on one line.
‘That’s not…in pounds, is it?’
You nodded.
‘Bugger me.’
‘It’s not, like, important,’ you shrugged, shrunk into yourself, child-like. ‘Daddy says I’ll be too busy for it soon on account of I’ll be working full time for him. But I’m good at this. It’s what I’d do if…’ You glanced away, your hands wringing the lap of your check dress. Bloody hell, were we having a moment? ‘If I had a choice,’ you finished.
Sod moments, when the dirty truth of this unequal world we labour in screams to be laid bare - I always was my own worst enemy. ‘You’re smart. Yet you’d choose to use that humungous brain of yours for nothing but spinning lolly from other virtual lolly..? Globalizing and capitalizing, ‘til the world’s reduced to a greedy baby bird’s mouth begging after investors’ gold..? I’ve seen this before in my first life, and if you think you’re exempt from the tempest, simply ‘cos you’re a Cain--’
You stared at me shrewdly. ‘Whoa there. I thought you wanted to go out sometime in your lifetime?’ Score two to you…
I caught myself, giving an apologetic shrug. ‘Right, sorry.’
‘So you know,’ did you really just stroke the back of my hand? ‘I majored in Mathematics. And what excites me? It’s not the gold. It’s the hunt. OK, I’m not a heart surgeon, Nobel Prize winner or researcher into tropical diseases. So sue me. This is what I’m wicked good at it. It’s me. What have you ever been?’
More than you can ever imagine.
That’s when I caught a glimpse of the Fiendish Sudoku on the edge of the coffee table. You’d been working on a page last night, hissing between your teeth in frustration. You were halfway through the book now, where the puzzles were graded 10 stars. It was taking you the better part of a day to complete one. What had I ever been? ‘A gambler.’
‘What?’
‘You like risks? So how about a little bet?’
‘Like?’
I swaggered to the Sudoku, snatching it up. ‘I manage one of these? Then you let me go outside.’
You smirked. ‘Trying to prove a point?’
‘I thought you liked the hunt – prey’s right here.’ I spun in a circle, my arms held wide at my sides.
You considered me. ‘If you complete a puzzle in less than an hour, then one night this week you can go out for an hour.’
‘And if I don’t?’
You frowned, as if you’d never considered a consequence for my inevitable failure. ‘You’re cooking tonight.’
At long sodding last.
I nodded, flicking the book open to the next puzzle. Then nonchalantly as I could, I offered, ‘Tell you what, how about we up the ante? If I finish it in less than half an hour, I get to go out alone for the whole night?’
You instantly shook your nut.
‘Please?’
‘Not happening.’
I raised my arm to hurl that bleeding Sudoku against your monitors, which were windows out to a world I couldn’t even touch, when something - as if a shard of the old me was fighting its way back (maybe because you’d caressed the back of my hand) - made me lower my arm again. ‘Bollocks.’
Defeated, I opened the book at the right page.
‘The whole evening,’ I heard you say quietly, ‘but with me.’
I glanced up, surprised. ‘I will earn your trust, you know.’
‘But do you trust me?’
‘Do you reckon I’d have told you…just…what I have, if I didn’t?’ Uncomfortable, you shifted, unable to meet my eye. ‘Anyway, it’s not like I’ve a choice, is it? You’ve got my life in your hands.’
You glanced down involuntarily at your hands, as if you expected to discover a doll-sized version of me balanced there. ‘If you don’t, you’re cooking for a week.’
‘Suits me.’
‘Get started, the clock has.’
28 minutes later…
You stood in the centre of the sitting room, underneath the bright light of the beachcomb chandelier, holding the Fiendish Sudoku, as if it might sink fangs into you.
You’d rigorously checked my solved puzzle seven times.
Your mouth hung open, as you gaped between it and me (who was lying full-length on the scarlet sofa, my legs crossed comfortably), like you’d just had the reality of the tooth fairy proven to you. ‘How..?’
‘I’m good with numbers too.’
I’d forgotten the pure joy of immersion in a puzzle: no room to think or remember beyond its matrix.
‘Na-ah, what the frig are you?’
I stiffened. Sticky labels and spectrums from normal to abnormal. You First Lifers are obsessed with rooting out the imperfect (as if perfection is even attainable).
What am I?
That’s the question, which has dogged me for over 150 years.
If you meant how had I completed the puzzle so fast..? I’m a savant, you’d call it now.
Everything I’ve ever seen in this long life I remember, stored like a computer database in my brain. Believe me, it’s not a blessing.
And numbers? There’s my talent. They’re like a landscape: undulating shapes, with their own colours and textures. Some are angelically beautiful. Others monstrous. Yet I’m drawn to the deformed, as much as to the heavenly.
When I was so young I couldn’t yet read, I’d hide in the dark underneath my bed because it felt safe, numbers sliding through my mind, like winding silk.
Sometimes I’d lie on the Oriental rug in papa’s study at his feet, papa with his clay pipe and crisp sheets of the Times, me with the photographic studio’s business books.
For years, I hid my secret talent, terrified I was destined for Bedlam. Or worse - that I was possessed. Evil. Different.
At night, I’d weep silent tears, as I’d send up prayers to God to take away this curse. He never answered. Yet one day when the truth was revealed, my papa didn’t condemn me, he celebrated, calling me his human camera.
Photography means writing in light in Greek. And so the nickname stuck – my papa’s Light.
Light’s not merely a name, which I took when I was rechristened into Blood Life: it’s the name my papa blessed me with before I died. The one that meant it was bloody all right to be different.
That’s what Sir ripped from me. That’s why I can’t bear to lose it again.
‘What am I?’ I forced myself to calmly reply. ‘One evening out with you better off, that’s what I am.’
You looked like you might argue. Then you deflated. ‘Later in the week, OK?’ At last, a smile spread across your mug, as you studied me with something akin to admiration. You wildly waved the Fiendish Sudoku. ‘This is wicked pissa! Less than half a frickin’ hour. I took, like, two days--’
‘Take a breath, darlin’.’
You chucked the book at my nut, and I ducked.
Then we both grinned.
Who cares who bloody scored? I was getting to go out; it was like the world had lightened.
That’s when the doorbell rang.
I dove into a ball in the corner of the sofa. No one ever came here. Billy no mates, remember?
You hunched, guiltily. ‘Stay there.’
Back to doggy commands then.
I listened, as you clacked your way to the front door, its click when it swung open, and then muted voices – definitely female. Next, two sets of footsteps coming down the hallway…
I tensed, weighing up my options, which were obeying you and remaining curled up on the sofa or making a dash for the relative safety of my cell.
As you and the strange woman strolled together towards the sitting room, I was frozen with the thought: you meant to sell me.
To some bint in bondage trousers and bullet belt, more zippers and chains than anything else and graded black hair, which was spiked crimson at the edges, like blood tipped spears.
She was just my type of bird. Except for the way she’d stopped in the doorway and was examining me, as a queen might a traitor, who she found both dishy and contemptible - in the moment before the axe fell. ‘It be wearing clothes? It be chug alright but it don’t need clothes, you feeling me?’
It?
You hovered behind the newcomer, as if uncertain of entering your own sitting room. I clutched onto my motorcycle jacket; no one was getting that off me without losing something they bloody cared about. ‘Marlane, sorry, I mean M.C., I just thought…it’s wick raw still and--’
‘So? And it be on da furniture..?’ I shot off the sofa, my back pressed against the fireplace. The punk smiled. ‘Good liccle leech. Dey have to learn dey not people, only property. Dat’s why we give dem a new name.’
Blood Shackles (Rebel Vampires Book 2) Page 8