‘May you what?’
Another test.
‘May your slave have permission to speak?’
‘What the frig is this?’ Bewildered, I couldn’t comprehend enough of Mistress’ question to risk answering, even though I knew that meant automatic punishment. Still Mistress’ fingers didn’t go to her belt. My panic was building. At last, Mistress sighed. I’d disappointed her again. My stomach twisted. If only she’d give me permission to recite the rules, I could show her I knew how to pass her test. ‘Yah, permission or whatever,’ Mistress said quietly.
‘Rule 9A: A slave will not wear clothes.’
There was a long silence. Then Mistress traced her thumb around the words on my collar - SHADOW: PROPERTY OF CAIN – and said brusquely, ‘Go to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow.’’
I had a careful shufti around the sitting room: red sofa, two armchairs, a glass coffee table and a log bench with chair backs - but no bed for me. I could sense Mistress’ rage, yet there’d been no order to move, and she hadn’t clicked on my leash. ‘Mistress, may I?’
‘Just frickin’ say it already.’
‘Please could you tell your stupid slave where its cage is, Mistress?’
‘Cage..?’
Then Mistress was clasping me around my neck and bawling.
Startled, I remained motionless, waiting for Mistress to calm.
At last, she hunkered down opposite me, gazing at me long and hard. ‘I’ll get you back, Light. I promise. Do you understand?’
‘No, Mistress.’
Mistress spluttered something, which was half-way between a laugh and a sob. ‘It doesn’t matter. I will.’ Then she straightened, as if composing herself. ‘Follow me.’ At last, a direct order. Proud to be able to obey, I crawled at Mistress’ heel. She faltered, staring down at me. I wondered if I’d got it wrong again. ‘It’s a rule that Blood Lifers can’t walk?’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
When Mistress marched on again, I crawled after her, sensing the vibrations of fury thrumming through her.
I thought for definite she was leading me to the training room. I was sad I’d earned it on my first night but knew I deserved it.
It was unexpected, therefore, when the door Mistress pushed open, led into a simple room with a single bed, a cube bedside table and a blind over the window, which shone neon blue.
‘This is your room,’ Mistress was watching me closely. ‘Do you remember it?’
As if a slave could possess furniture, let alone a room. ‘No, Mistress.’
That sigh again. More disapproval. I shrivelled inside.
Mistress pointed at the bed. ‘Lie down.’ So it was pleasure Mistress required..? At least it was a clear position. Relieved, I climbed onto the bed on my back. ‘Naw, I didn’t…I mean…I don’t…’ Mistress sounded horrified, before she legged it, leaving me frozen in position for the rest of the night.
Over the next days and nights, I came to realise what a bad slave I truly was. Maybe I always had been. That’s why Master had tried so hard to learn me. I was dead grateful to him now, regretting I hadn’t tried harder: maybe then I’d have been able to serve my new Mistress like she wanted.
I was soon restless and agitated. Addicted to both Master and human blood, I suffered from the loss of both. I missed the wild chases through the garlic-scented forests, in the close black of the night.
Now I had no release. Master. Or blood.
When Mistress brought pigs’ blood to me in a mug, I couldn’t even drink it as she wished, assessing it from kneel on the mahogany floor of the sitting room, as if a puzzle.
Where was my bottle?
I hazarded a guess at tipping back my chin and opening my gob. Mistress slammed the mug down onto the coffee table, spilling the blood in a scarlet tidal wave.
Wrong again. Bad slave.
I thought maybe if I was a good slave and stayed in position, still and silent, as Master had taught – no fidging – then I’d please my new Mistress. Yet on the first day I tried it, Mistress ignored me entirely, skirting around me as if I didn’t exist.
On the second day, Mistress started to scream strings of words, which I couldn’t understand, or didn’t make sense… You can touch, move, talk… You’re not a slave… Come back to me… Stop this, stop this, stop this…
Mistress was shaking me. I wanted to stop doing whatever was enraging her. But I didn’t know what this was.
Slap - Mistress clouted me, hard enough to knock me out of kneel. Then she clambered on top of me, pinning my wrists down. ‘Naw, don’t you frickin’ dare get on your knees again.’
Tears welled up, I couldn’t help it.
Master had never struck me: he laid out implements, showing them to me before he used them and warning me how many strokes. He never hit me in anger. But this was my Mistress now, and I was a bad slave.
From then on, I lived in continual fear of provoking Mistress because I was too stupid to understand how to serve and obey her. Her orders weren’t direct, she didn’t use the positions I’d been taught, punish me when I broke the rules or learn me my lessons. I never even saw the training room. There were also no rewards or approval. Mistress never once stroked my hair. I lay on my back on top of that bed every night, not understanding why Mistress never used me.
And I wished I was back with Master.
Yet the longer I was off human blood (and I guess, Master too), my mind began to slowly clear, like banks of a computer being turned back on. Flashes of another reality broke into my damaged brain. It hurt to even begin to imagine I could’ve been something else.
These sharp images flared jagged… A dark room, with floral wallpaper, me a savage predator with fangs latched into the throat of a First Life, a transcendent queen with a rose in her red hair savaging the human’s neck on the other side, and I could feel the tug of her in the bond of our sharing… A scarlet flash of motorbike, and me tonning it, in this jacket with a worn gold ace of spades on the back… A bird with blue peepers, holding my hand under the moon on the moors, whispering her love to me…
They couldn’t be real..? Memories? I couldn’t be an actual person, who was powerful, loved and possessed a life – an identity.
Because if that was true…what the bloody hell had I let happen to me?
I burned with shame, until I didn’t know whether it was worse to become the stranger, who was invading my brain. Or to stay safe as I was.
At least that way I wouldn’t hate myself.
I was kneeling on the sitting room floor next to Mistress. The room was littered with pink Post-it notes.
Mistress had ordered me to follow her around the apartment yesterday, as she’d written the name of each object – STOOL, SOFA, GLASS VASE (for some reason, that one had made her cry), until everywhere was a sea of pink. Then she’d calmly explained I could go on or touch anything, which had a Post-it attached. She’d even labelled the rooms, telling me that meant I could go into those without her permission.
I’d known it was a test but of course I’d simply replied, ‘Yes, Mistress.’
I hadn’t understood why she was so livid with me, when I’d continued to kneel at her side. I’d wished I was a better slave.
Mistress was working on her laptop. She often did – in silence - never reassuring me with a good boy, even though I kept as still as a statue. This evening though, she was distracted: her leg was jiggling up and down and she glanced at me every so often.
Finally, I thought, this was it: it was going to be one hell of a session. I clenched my hands and waited.
Mistress only, however, clicked something on the laptop. Then this music started up…
Mistress was examining me but I didn’t know why. I knew better than to move out of position.
When Mistress hissed in frustration, grabbing my hair and twisting me, so I was gazing into her flint peepers, I jolted.
…“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”…
You - I was twirling you around this sitting room and you were laughing.
I scrambled back, as memories, like layers of an onion stripped away, reformed; image upon image recreated 150 years in an agonising rush.
I wrapped my arms over my nut, feeling like I’d bloody explode. I heard you scarper from the room, and I was alone.
Christ in heaven, I couldn’t take it if…
Then you were there again, holding me. I could feel the wetness of your tears on my hair. You forced my hands away from my mush, pushing something into them.
Through the lightning crashes splitting my mind, I saw you’d stuck a Post-it note onto me, which was scrawled with one word: LIGHT.
When I met your intense gaze, you said, ‘You’re Light.’
I tried to rise out of the dark to you, to free my tongue from its shackles.
Light - I knew this word.
At last I recognised the man battling his way back into my head.
My name is Light.
‘No one’s born to be a slave,’ you hugged me. ‘I want you back. I need you back. And so do your family. We need you, Light.’
I blinked. I pulled away, before slowly raising my hand to touch your soft hair and the tears staining your cheek. ‘You’re real?’
You nodded.
‘You didn’t abandon me?’
You simply held me tighter.
And that was it. I couldn’t fight it any longer: the shame of what I’d allowed myself to become or the knowledge of what I’d once been.
We need you…
I was that predator, with his fangs in the First Lifer throat. Powerful. Loved.
My family needed me.
I couldn’t hide in the safety of the shadows any longer. I had to go back: to where I was loved. To where I belonged
You’re real.
SEPTEMBER 5
This is where it ends. Because of you.
When your dad and sister touched and broke me, they didn’t have a scooby what they were unleashing: in me or you.
I doubt you even guessed at it yourself.
But I’d glimpsed the darkness in your flint peepers: I should’ve known you’d make a better Blood Lifer than your sister. Sir had buggered up my senses, however, so it took us nearly losing each other, for me to taste your Soul.
Yet when I did, I understood what’d been freed in you - and what Ashanti had meant about the preciousness of a life born from your own fangs.
‘Oi…’ You’d chucked a freshly laundered t-shirt at my nut, as soon as I’d sauntered shirtless into the kitchen.
‘Get dressed, we’re wicked busy tonight.’
‘Alright, princess.’ I dragged on the black t-shirt, before shrugging myself onto the shovel-shaped stool.
I watched amused, as you dynamo impressionist rushed about: swiping and tapping, waiting for the ping of the microwave, slamming a warmed mug of blood down in front of me and then slurping… Buggering hell, was that black coffee..? No wonder your detoxified, gluten and caffeine free body was bouncing off the bloody walls. Although you still looked blinding in the leather jacket, which I’d nicked in Peckham. You’d taken to wearing it, as soon as you were you again, rather than Mistress.
I could tell you were planning something; I’d known for several days. Now, however, you turned to me over the lip of your coffee mug, with a wary anticipation. ‘Fernando’s calling any minute.’
Fernando – sodding perfect.
Away from the Estate and the psychological warfare, it was obvious you’d never have flown back to the Professor, leaving me to my fate.
We all have our hidden weaknesses, like the flaws in a diamond. Master and M.C. had merely exploited mine. I still couldn’t hear Fernando’s name, however, without wincing.
To be fair, you had been sending each other those messages…
I didn’t say anything; I just gave you that look.
You rolled your peepers. ‘I told you, he’s not a bad guy.’
‘And I agreed, decent bloke.’
We sat in silence; you with your black coffee and me with my blood. Then the trill of your mobile made you jump, before you raced to my side.
There was Alpha Geek on the screen, alone in the golden sunshine. An ivy-clad, red-brick building was fuzzy behind him.
Fernando wasn’t speaking; he was gawking at me. He was leaning as close to the screen as he could without touching, like I was already laid out in his lab awaiting dissection.
Uncomfortable, I shifted.
You sensed the tension. ‘You have news for us?’ Still Fernando was frozen, observing me. You glanced at me uneasily. ‘We’ve been working on a way to… Fernando’s been trying to crack the website on the Dark Web on account of we reckoned we’d upload the truth. And you finally did it. Right, Fernando?’
Fernando blinked. ‘What..? I mean… How..? Or what..?’
‘That’s right technical jargon for a poor bloke like me to understand, Professor. But how about we save the evolutionary biology until after we save my species?’
At last, Alpha Geek snapped out of it. ‘Aye, aye Captain.’ He saluted smartly. ‘So Gracie get you up to speed?’
‘That’d be a no.’
‘Let me put it this way then,’ Fernando grinned, ‘I control Cain Company’s site.’
‘That means we do,’ you nudged me, ‘you do.’
It was strange. All these months powerless and now I had the control. Cain Company was hostage to my whim. Except it wasn’t: it was testament to the deaths and suffering of my kind.
‘What do you want me to programme? These magic fingers are at your service.’
‘A memorial.’ I stared straight at Fernando - Blood Lifer to First, night to day - and right then it didn’t matter because we were united by the horror: that’s what I was willing him to understand. ‘I want every bastard who sees it to be so shocked they’ll never forget. I want printed over those disgusting photos white crosses for the dead.’ I tried to say Ashanti but I couldn’t. ‘I’ll get Grayse to send you some names,’ I mumbled instead. ‘I want stamps for some, like…a crucifix.’ I thought of Vesper. Her hopeful kill me, as her flayed fingers curled around mine. ‘And the words tortured…raped……starved for others.’…The sensory deprivation hood, sucking blood in desperation from Sir’s fingers, the white fire of the tracker, boiling water gargling down Hartford’s throat, the crack of the bullwhip and every sodding thing that’d happened to me during my month on the Estate… ‘I’ll write some details and the like for underneath. No one’ll be able to hide from the truth then.’
Fernando nodded. He was no longer puffed up with exultant pride. ‘It’s done. Later Miss Cain. And Light? We will have that chat about evolutionary biology.’
You dropped the mobile onto the counter. Then you were embracing me.
‘Cheers,’ I said softly, ‘knew you were up to something.’
‘The buck stops here.’
When I studied you, I noticed how pale you were. ‘Hey now, what’s this?’
‘You were right. I took the money but not the responsibility.’ You paused, before admitting in a rush, ‘Mummy always hated Mann, I remember that. The Estate. She missed her real home. Her parents. She wasn’t happy with… Never happy.’
‘And me? Am I still a parasite? No right to walk the same streets as you?’ I realised I was holding my breath.
‘All I know,’ you touched my cheek lightly with the back of your hand, ‘is you’re the man I love.’ It was smashing to hear that from your lips, after feeling so fractured. The cracks were still there, however, and I couldn’t help avoiding your gaze. Your peepers hardened. ‘I’ve read everything you’ve written. You blame yourself for breaking. But you did it: we can bring the whole thing down - go for the jugular - because of you.’
I frowned. ‘Sorry but I’m not following.’
‘The human camera? The layouts and security codes you memorised? The fact dad needs a confidence boost for the company?’
I began to throb with roaring anticipation, my blood humming with a hunter’s exhilaration. �
��What’s the caper?’
Your expression clouded. ‘You’d have to act the slave again.’
‘On the Estate?’
‘One more night. Ever. Then you’d never have to fear again. No Blood Lifer would.’
I laughed. ‘Don’t think you really get us Blood Lifers but point taken.’
Then you were steering me towards the hallway, back to my room and tossing my motorcycle jacket at me, before thrusting a white sliver of an iPhone into my hand. ‘Pack. Look, I’ll call you with the… But first you need to sort your business.’
I was beginning to suss the plan. Yet even with the rage Master had freed in you, I wasn’t sure you fully understood what this would mean.
I twisted you round to face me. ‘If we do this, then we won’t hold back.’
‘Does that mean you’ll introduce me to your family at last?’
I tried to smile. ‘You won’t miss them. But pissed off as you are right now, family is…family. And when we do this? Donovan and Hartford, they--’
‘Are my family now. Like you.’
SEPTEMBER 9
Donovan is insisting I bear witness. He says I’ve already written so much in this grotesque journal I mustn’t split ‘til the bloody end.
Yeah, I know he’s right.
I sodding hate that.
‘It’s a darling goog now; I learnt it myself,’ when Master proudly patted my rump, I fought not to flinch.
Starkers, wearing only slave ring, leather ankle and wrist cuffs and collar - SHADOW: PROPERTY OF CAIN – I was kneeling in kowtow. My arms were outstretched, with the palms down and crossed and my forehead resting on my forearms.
I was the sculptural centrepiece on the vast ebony table, which ran the length of the Estate’s neo-Palladian main reception. One hundred white and black candles (both the candles and their candleholders cast in wax), had been ranked with white on one side of my pale arched back and black on the other. Now it’d darkened outside, the dour-faced servants had lit the candles. They flamed and consumed themselves as they burned, like I was on a sacrificial pyre.
Blood Shackles (Rebel Vampires Book 2) Page 27