With disgust, Ruby led me around the exhibits. For a moment, I thought there were mutilated cadavers laid out in the glass cases and recoiled, but then I saw they were anatomical wax models, copied from real corpses. I panted, pressing my nails into my palms because that wasn’t much better; on every side were First Lifers with their guts out, their chests ripped back and lungs offered up, as if we were about to dig in, whilst twins curled around each other bonded in uterus. The skinned man was laid on his side, arching in agony.
When I paused at a man reduced to one large circulatory system, Ruby’s arms snaked around my waist. She rested her chin on my shoulder. Blue and red coils circled the corpse: First Lifer reduced to food and all it’d needed was a little flaying.
Here, laid bare, was the proof that man was created for our needs.
“They want to be feasted upon, even if they do not know it.” Ruby held me tighter. “A First Lifer is our prey. We grant the death that he seeks, so he no longer needs to fear it.”
I reckon Ruby experienced unexpected guilt for taking me to that place and scaring me.
No, all right then, not guilt: whatever was closest to that emotion, which she was still capable of feeling. She was tenderer than usual for the next few days.
At least, she tied me up less often.
I’d wake to Ruby just lying there, watching me. She’d kiss my lips lightly over and over, as if dispelling something.
Then Ruby bought me a whole new set of close-fitting clothes: a double-breasted reefer with military stand-up collar in indigo check and a velvet trimmed overcoat. She twirled me round and round, clapping her hands in delight. Then she promenaded with me all dolled up in front of the fancy ladies and gentlemen in the piazza d’Azeglio, who were spilling out of the light and buzz of theater performances into the quiet of the night.
They’d always felt off, however, those clothes. Maybe because Ruby had chosen them for me, as if I was her sodding Mary-Ann…her personal whore. So later, when we were caught up in France during the First of the two bloody wars, I nicked a British Officer’s Great Coat. He didn’t need it, since he’d been shot through the head (poor sod). The coat, however, was fine.
Ruby and I weren’t meant to even be there; we shouldn’t have been within a thousand miles of those killing fields and that madness, where I truly learned where the science I’d once worshiped could lead.
All the beauty and terrible splendor of this earth, yet First Lifers were racing to develop new ways to annihilate it?
Death, you see, that’s all right — natural — carnage raw in tooth and nail. But apocalyptic machines, which dealt it out with a twitch of a finger, chattering ack-ack-ack, whilst dying soldiers were entangled in aprons of barbed wire, like puppets shuddering on strings…? The whomp above your head, before the whole world dove for cover, and the earth shook to dust; metal beasts lumbering through the heat and churning the world to nothing but mud and sleet, nothing but sodding mud and sleet, whilst the neat white crosses were erected between blood-red poppies…?
And the boom of those guns…
If you haven’t heard those guns, you’re not haunted by them. But me...?
Ruby and I got trapped once for a full month between those lines of First Lifers. The blood of either side smelled exactly the same; the mound of rotting corpses, which we were forced to hide under, were just as putrid. Yet they were still trying to mechanize slaughter each other, as if they weren’t the same species.
And we’re the monsters?
Boom, boom, boom…
Those bloody guns bore into me, day and night. They drove Ruby half-crazed, buried as we were under the mud and the soft ooze of decaying soldiers, until she tore at herself with her nails. I had to hold onto her to stop her.
Then Ruby lashed out at me instead. Still, that was better because I could take a hiding but what I couldn’t bear was to see Ruby hurt herself.
Our extraordinary senses can be our weakness or our strength. Like all creatures, we have to adapt. The light shows in that war burnt my eyes. I can still see them.
Hell came to earth in those days and not in the form of us Blood Lifers. Humanity invented it for themselves.
All that said, I did get a blinding coat out of it.
After that, Ruby and I wandered the world seeking nothing but each other and solitude, which isn’t easy with my kind if you don’t play by the rules. I’d witnessed thousands of bodies heaped on the fiery furnaces of Flanders. It was a sense of connectedness to the earth itself, fresh and unsullied, for which I hungered.
It did fade, the shock or whatever, of it. Yet for years the sight of First Lifers triggered something sickening, jolting me back with flash shot clarity, to the boom and the lights. At those times, Ruby would sit with me as I shook, holding a woman’s neck pressed to my lips, so the blood would run in because I couldn’t hunt, more patient than I’d ever have guessed my lover could be.
Sometimes, Ruby would disappear for days, weeks, and even months…but she always came back. I reckoned that she simply needed to be alone: I sodding knew how that felt.
Ruby and I settled in Deadvlei — Death Valley — in Namibia, which in the twilight looks like a surrealist painting and in the dawn is otherworldly; withered trees are silhouetted against the highest sand dunes in the world. Where once there was a whole forest, now the encroaching desert had smothered all life.
Ruby and I felt at home there, like the sands and we were kin. We kept only the company of the black mambas, which coiled around us whilst we slept, as if we were no more alive than the branches of the murdered trees.
Years later, when I was much more myself again and my mind was in fewer fractured pieces and spent less time screaming, stuck in that hole in the Great War, Ruby and I were in Waitomo, New Zealand, as I prepared a special do to celebrate the day of my election into Blood Life.
Ruby and I hunted together through the undulating fields, then fed on the same farm girl, whose lips smelled of the lad that she’d been snogging, only moments before we’d snatched her in the dark.
We whooped through the ice waters of a waterfall in a rite of shared blood and bond of love.
I wanted to surprise Ruby, so I led her down into the limestone Glowworm caves. Thousands of tiny luminescent glowworms lit the ceiling of the grotto an eerie blue.
“My dearest prince has indeed been busy.” Ruby smiled.
“For you. Anything for you.”
I’d strewn furs over the cavern floor of the deepest level, along with a bottle of local gin, which I’d nicked (and might just blind us), and Ruby’s favorite toys: ropes, blindfolds, and leather braided and knotted floggers…
That’s when Ruby turned to me, serious all of a sudden and commanding as any aristocrat ever was. “I wish to go back to England,” she said, her brow furrowed. “We should go back.”
Bollocks.
We’d go, there was no doubting that. It also meant, however, that something was wrong — dead wrong — and for the first time Ruby wasn’t letting me in on it.
Where was my Author, muse, and liberator now? Where was my love, if secrets abided in Blood Life, just as much as in First?
Lost to me, that was where.
I could feel Ruby slipping into the dark.
4
“She looks worse today, doesn’t she?” Wednesday peered into your still face, her mouth pulled down at one side. “She had another accident earlier. They get like that at this stage, although I know it’s part of the job. Oh yes, I’ve seen a lot of clients go downhill fast when they’re close to—”
“Shut your bleeding mouth, all right?” I threw myself away from the wall and down onto my knees next to you, as you lay entombed under the sheets, as if I could protect you from the likes of Wednesday and every poisonous word that dripped from her venomous lips. I grasped your fingers between mine, stroking the backs of your hands in the way that you always loved. They were cold, but I knew you could feel me. I just sodding knew it, all right? Affronted, Wedn
esday raised her eyebrow. “Just…don’t yammer on like…not in front of her.”
“I see. You really think your…grandma, is it?” Wednesday inflected the word with cruel mockery. “That she can still hear us? She’s lost to the world. I’m putting a brew on.”
Wednesday bustled down the stairs, sniffing loudly. When I heard her banging the mugs about, I flinched.
What the bloody hell did any of it matter?
As soon as the lazy bitch had slurped her tea, her time would be up, and I could sign her timesheet. Then she’d leave for another night, and you and me would be alone together, like it’s always been — well, for you.
For me…? There was my First Life, followed by a century of Blood Life with Ruby. Yet it’s odd how alone I still was, until we…
I never knew it though or admitted it. We’re all practiced liars to ourselves. Funny thing, the lives that we paint in pretty pictures, drawing ourselves a world to trick our minds, hearts, and Souls that we’re part of something dead important.
Even a great love.
Love — yeah, I was always one for that.
MAY 1964 BRIGHTON, ENGLAND
“By heaven, look at these ruffianly roaring boys. This is it — your tonic — to get back into the fray. The blood and heat of it.” Ruby grinned.
I’d nicked a bright red Jaguar E-Type (beautiful little number), and Ruby and I had tonned it up to the coast for Whitsun Bank Holiday. Yet now we’d found ourselves caught in a war between two gangs.
A Mod in smart Italian suit and Parka sped past us on his Lambretta, only to be blocked by a wall of hard men Rockers in dirty motorcycle jackets, who were swinging bike chains. The poor git was dragged away by his lapels like a fancy sacrificial offering to the gods of leather.
“What do they want?” I leant against the wall with a shiver.
Ruby shrugged. “What do First Lifers ever want? The question is, what do we want?”
I hesitated, before smirking. “The Bedlam. To revel in the madness like we used to. I want—”
That’s when Ruby kissed me. She hauled me close, as her tongue thrust deep, like she’d only just discovered me again after a long absence: I realized that she only just had. When she drew back, we were both smiling. “To live in the world again?”
I nodded.
Screams? The shattering of glass? Curling smoke on the night air?
I was bloody alive once more.
Ruby and I swaggered through the shadowed streets towards the promenade and Palace Pier — her in crimson silk, me in military Great Coat — two creatures from another world and time, unnoticed by the First Lifers because we weren’t painted in the colors of their tribe. We twirled each other round, dancing in the carnage and the flames.
Mods fleeing, with gashes on their foreheads, their coats flapping behind them. Couples sprawled under the stars, on a beach where the pebbles met the sea, as turned on by the violence and danger as any Blood Lifer, pretending to be oblivious to a ring of Mods, who were kicking a curled fetus of a Rocker bloody with their sharp shoes. Deckchairs smoldering in bonfires, which lit a town prowled by leather clad kids on Triton motorbikes.
Flick-knives, coshes, and knuckle-dusters…
Here’s the thing, the deadliest weapon of all was this type of wild confusion, which was like a force of nature. The quick change from predator to prey and back again in the turn of a corner. It was glorious to watch: it fizzed. Ruby and I laughed at the brutality. It was a cosmic bloody joke, but I know that you won’t get the irony; First Lifers never sodding do.
It was powerful: the smell of all that free-flowing blood that surged with adrenaline.
Remember what I told you about Grace’s blood? Well, take that and amplify it tenfold, a hundredfold, sod it, a thousandfold. Bugger me, was it mind blowing. It had this added masculine, tooled up excitement; don’t tell me those blokes weren’t getting off on it because they were and without the excuse of blood drugging their veins. They were high on the fear and the fight and it was delicious to them and to me.
That’s what awakened me to the world again. Ruby had been right: all I’d needed had been a good fight.
As Ruby and I flitted towards the onion-domed Palace Pier, however, the night was quietening, as the police rounded up the thugs and battered them. Those who were left, had broken down into aimless wandering. Only the hard-core remained, still battling it out in the blackest corners, slashing and carving.
But do you know what I saw? Amidst a night of folk devils?
A hulking Rocker with skull and crossbones on the back of his leathers jumped off his motorbike to help an old lady safely up the steps of her Regency terrace.
Ruby and me exchanged a disgusted glance.
Bored, Ruby slipped her hand down towards my cock, but I caught her fingers between mine.
Swearing. Loud scuffles coming from the Palace Pier.
Ruby and I both turned to listen.
The pier was spooky in the evening light (and yeah, I can still find things spooky because we’re not the only things that go bump in the night). The lights were blazing down the pier’s ornate length, even though it was closed up. The funfair was shut too, which was a shame because I could’ve done with a game or two.
Ruby nodded. Then we swooped towards the pier with our hands entwined.
A Mod without a scratch on him and dead smart in a reversible jacket and polo shirt buttoned up to his pale neck was scrapping with a Rocker, who was twice his size (and twice his age as well). The strange thing was, there were bands of Mods and Rockers slouched around watching, smoking, and bantering, as if they were at a football match.
This wasn’t the white-hot rush of Bedlam: it was the cool truce of Christmas day in wartime.
Then I saw him: this wanker of a photographer. He was snapping away at his staged fight like a god, and I knew that I was going to taste him just to hear him pose for me, whilst he screamed.
“They came for a real fight, did they not?” Ruby’s mouth curved into a smile.
I hunched my shoulders as I pulled Ruby closer by her waist; I wanted to feel every inch of her. “Then how about we give them one?”
Ruby and I threw ourselves down the pier as one towards the make-believe. We, however, were real…too bloody real…and with fist and boot, like the Blue Fairy, we made the First Lifers into real little boys too, Mod and Rocker alike: bleeding little boys.
I launched myself at the photographer first. Just like I’d reckoned, he had no bottle for reality. He turned, running before I’d even hurt him.
That’s the best part, however, when the hunt begins: in and out of the closed stands, dodging the railings and kiosks.
I got to play after all.
The photographer’s panted terror was the beat I danced to; I extended the cat and mouse because we all deserve our fun, right?
He blubbered when I let myself catch him.
What type of bloke prefers to watch? Dodgy, that’s what that is: psycho written all over it. I did the world a favor. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
Plus, I nicked his camera: blinding little model.
When Ruby first leapt into the fight, those daft berks laughed. They weren’t laughing, however, when she broke their arms, noses, legs and less said about what she did to their bollocks the better because Ruby’s the Queen of Hurt (and I’d know).
Ruby and I did our bit for First Lifer peace, as Mod and Rocker united against us. The blood in me soared, whilst I picked them both off equally in the roar of battle. Mine was no pretence, you see, no peacock preening or romanticism of anti-authoritarian anarchy. It wasn’t a sham loner status, culled from the flicks or the clothes on my back. I was the true outsider, and these First Lifers were too busy playing at it to even notice.
In fact, you know what? You First Lifers still are.
I booted the last twitching body, trapping Ruby in my arms, before dragging her away, back to the seafront. I buzzed, shaking, nauseous now with the hunger for blood. Tonight h
adn’t been about feeding. Somehow Ruby seemed to always know just what I needed.
Yeah, you’re right: I was her good doggy on a leash.
The stars were bright, pulsating shards in the sky; the salty air was sharp. Ruby and I strolled arm in arm between the puddles of light from the lampposts, staring up together in silence.
It was beautiful.
“Want to go to the chippy tomorrow?” I asked.
Ruby only nodded towards a pale stuccoed hotel, through the railings of the promenade. A young Rocker with a dark pompadour was wearily knocking to wake up its owner. “Would you rather not feast tonight?”
What do you want to hear? Every crunch and bite? I bloody promised, didn’t I? Oh, sod it.
Ruby took the old landlady splayed over a counter in the kitchen, amidst the remains of her shattered 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 specialize 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 that 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.
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 5