“The twins went to the Komodo Islands but they wouldn’t, you know… Aralt said it was private…”
“Bastards,” I growled.
Alessandro’s arms burst into a frantic flapping. “Don’t. Be quiet. They’ll—”
“Reckon I’m scared of those tossers?”
Alessandro studied me with serious eyes. “I don’t know. I am.” Glancing down, he tore at the sheets. “Aralt freed me. Before him… I was put away. Forgotten. The doctor told my parents to leave me in an institution and get on with their lives. I believe he put it that they were still young enough to have another baby, who would be normal this time. I was in the room when he said it because no one considered I could hear or understand, since I couldn’t yet speak. It’s impossible to put into words what it was like to be taken there and left behind forever. You cannot understand what it’s like to lose your family in such a way.” Alessandro hesitated; his tiny fingers twisted at his bowtie. But I could, I bloody well could. “Then at last, someone came for me, just as I’d prayed every day that they would. Aralt came for me. He’s my savior.” Alessandro shifted on the bed and then his voice was strangely monotone, as he added, “My first kill was that doctor, who’d been too small minded to see my true hidden mind. With that kill, I slaughtered the label of idiot.”
“And your parents?” They always went after them, the kids did.
Alessandro blinked. “I broke in one night and crept upstairs. But then in the dark I heard this babbling sound from my old nursery. They’d done it: what the doctor had suggested. There was my baby brother tucked up tight in my cot. The new heir. They’d moved on and I simply couldn’t…” Alessandro wiped at the corners of his eyes, as if he could hide his tears. “I never saw them again. I’ve often wondered if anyone ever told them that I went missing, or if they still think I’m shut away from the world.” He gave a high laugh; Christ in heaven, it was unsettling. “I still am, aren’t I? At least, from their world. But Aralt freed me, which means that I owe him everything. To be alone and trapped, that’s worse than death.”
Abnormal, normal. See what I mean about sticky labels?
All right, so Alessandro had always been different in his own way. But so what? Who’d got the right to chuck him out with the rubbish and breed another kid in his place?
There’s nothing but snowflake patterns.
We’re all individuals, that’s the long and short of it: born alone, dying alone, and grasping at each other as we fall.
6
JULY 1968 LONDON
Remember when there was only one correct way to act, decorate, or dress? Following Paris and Milan, the trend setters? Us Blood Lifers, on the other hand…? Do me a favor. We take what we fancy and drop the rest. We’re not slaves to etiquette, dictates, or form. But then something happened in the hot, spacey 1960s summers, as if a switch had clicked collectively in First Lifer brains. At last you could see through your brutish First Life enslavement, out to the untold combinations, possibilities, and wildness beyond…to the life around you, which sears with spark and Soul.
You grasped it all in a moment, at least in London. The rest of you? Well, you got there.
Sauntering down Carnaby Street in the early evening, the sun just set, was like bursting out onto a madman’s canvas. There were myriad creations and not one the same: colors, prints, styles and no decorum because no one was waiting for some stuck up First Lifer across the channel to tell them what fashion meant. Yeah, here’s the cool bit, they were going to invent it fresh, nicking whatever they liked from their ancestors: Art Nouveaux or my beloved Victoriana.
It was the age of freedom.
Even if you First Lifers will never taste real freedom, not like the burn of death and then election.
I’d slipped out, whilst Ruby was in another one of her meetings in Aralt’s study. I’d discovered that I was shut out of their grownup meetings, relegated instead to glorified bouncer at their club and babysitter for the child prodigy.
I’d pressed my cheek to the rosewood door before I’d left, deeply breathing in Ruby’s scent. It’d been maddening. I’d almost been able to taste her; my blood had sung for her.
Yet she’d been with him now.
My jealousy had bubbled, as my imagination had wandered to what had been happening on the other side of that door…
So, now I was exploring this brave new world of Carnaby Street — by myself — to keep from thinking of the study and my rage.
I wove beneath Union Jacks, which were strung across the road between the taxis and parked vans, passing under a pale blue awning, and then spying a boutique, where naked mannequins with huge tits lounged in the windows. That made me stop and back up for a second look, I’ll admit.
There was this buzz: a heat of chatter, music, and laughter. Donovan would’ve called it a scene but you know, that’s what it was.
The First Lifers’ clothes were a vintage mix, which transformed the whole bleeding lot of them into Blood Lifers. Apart from the scent and the blood, there was no way of figuring the difference, as one strutted towards me in the twilight with a swaying afro and an old regimental jacket and faded waistcoat.
Bloody hell, what was this?
It brought me up short: me standing there, like a right berk, in the middle of the stream of humanity. Because all I could think, was that never had the divide between our species been so slight; I could sense it sticky on my skin.
Ruby would’ve choked me, if I’d ever said that out loud: I’d be blacked out for a week. Yet it was true. It was like First Lifers had jumped up several rungs of the evolutionary ladder in one drug fueled shag fest of love.
This mutation (or whatever it was) meant that I could see more of me in you, just as you saw more through our Blood Lifer eyes.
That’s when I started freaking out.
Because now it wasn’t so easy to dismiss First Lifers as prey or hunt you down. Ruby’s justifying of your deaths, using our inherent superiority, began to feel like simply more of the black and white bollocks that I’d never believed. I was stiff with the shock of these new feelings. I wished that I could go back to the old, safe certainty and be wrapped in its flames.
An idea once freed from its box, however, won’t let its wings be clipped twice.
I forced myself to be swept along with the night. I couldn’t go back to Ruby. Not whilst I was still thinking like this. Otherwise I might say something wild about these whirring ideas and I knew bloody better than that.
I found myself standing staring blankly into the window of the boutique “I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet”. As I slowly unthawed, I realized what I was looking at.
This was the dog’s bollocks: the source of the vintage jackets that had been blowing my mind and sending me into tempest angst, as if an undead army had suddenly been resurrected. I grinned, studying the pairs of Union Jack trousers, which crowded the windows. They were sheer Donovan; I’d wager that he already had a pair.
I edged around, jimmying a back door.
I had a tradition that on forays to new places, I brought something back for Ruby: some trinket, whiskey, or a pretty little something to bite…
You’ve got to show your love somehow, right?
Just because we were back with Ruby’s brothers, didn’t mean everything had to change. In fact, more reason for our traditions to continue. I needed to remind Ruby of what we had too, using our secret language that was all our own.
I took a look around in the darkness, before spotting a Union Jack mug. I hurriedly nicked it, before darting into the alleyway. My blood was up and pounding. The night was fine and the world new in a way that it hadn’t been for decades, with that added rush that I always got from a lay. It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s a mug or a bar of gold. A lay’s a lay and a hell of a kick.
I was soaring in the sweating heat — not even thinking about my hunger and the feeds that I’d missed — when I bumped headlong into this posh bloke.
He wasn’t looking wh
ere he was going either, whilst he lit up his cigar with this blinding gold lighter.
Then it hit me: the memory of every bastard that I’d known in my First Life (and there’d been a sodding ton of those), who’d treated me like I was vermin. In fact, with the same contempt as that posh bloke as he recoiled, examining my leather jacket like I was about to rob him.
The blood lust engulfed me; I hungered to rip out his jugular.
Something, however, held me back.
I didn’t get it then — what it was. Not straightaway. Yet it was like that epiphany on Carnaby Street had infected me.
Still, the bloke reckoned that dirt like me could only rob?
I didn’t want to disappoint the man.
I snatched the lighter from him and legged it.
The posh bloke spluttered in outrage. “Hey, stop! Did you see...? He just stole my…”
The police joined in the chase; I heard their hollers behind me and the thud of their boots.
This was it: the run, heat, and the fear.
Laughing, I threaded through the throbbing streets, pushing the lighter into the pocket of my jeans. I clutched onto Ruby’s mug too because I had to keep that. I needed something to return us to normal again.
I was back. Alive, fully and monumentally. Dashing through those night-time London streets, I was bloody alive.
The First Lifer’s pink nails scratched against the stove-painted metal arm of the lamp. Her body, which was splayed over the conference table, jerked, twisting and rotating the lamp, which was clamped to its edge. Her crochet angel dress rode higher, until I could see her muff.
Aralt’s jacket was neatly hung over his desk chair, his sleeves rolled back; he was the sort of prat, who’d make sure that he didn’t get a drop of blood on his suit. They’re the ones you need to watch out for, who pretend they’re more civilized than the rest of us savages: the ones who take off their jackets before giving you a kicking.
Aralt was suckling at the First Lifer’s throat.
Christ in heaven, Ruby was too, right on the other side of the neck. She was sharing blood, which was as intimate as communion, just like we’d done on the anniversaries of my election. A bond of love, which Ruby had withheld from me, apart from on the rarest of occasions because it was close to sacred.
But now Ruby was doing it with Aralt? Her own brother?
I could only see the curves of Ruby’s body, which had tortured me for decades and the scarlet sweep of her hair.
Creak, creak, creak — the lamp’s swinging was a torment. The reek of blood like poison.
I must’ve backed up a step because Aralt glanced over the First Lifer then. When Aralt saw me, his eyes sparkled. He drew back with a victor’s smile: An Alpha male marking his bloody territory.
Or that’s what he thought.
No man’s ever owned Ruby, not since she’d been elected into Blood Life. I couldn’t wait for Aralt’s slam to earth when he finally discovered that.
“Did no one ever teach you that it’s rude not to knock?” Aralt challenged.
“It’s nearly dawn, and Ruby wasn’t—”
“Ah, you hear that? Babby was missing his ma.”
Ruby lifted her head, shuddering from the kill. She scrubbed the heel of her hand over her cheek. She was tripping, overloaded on the blood. Her eyelashes fluttered; only the whites of her eyes were showing.
This First Lifer must’ve been the dessert at the end of a hell of a feast.
I didn’t reckon that Ruby could even see me or knew that I was there; she was too away with the faeries. She never let herself lose control…not like this.
When Aralt trailed his fingers down Ruby’s neck, I started into the room. “Is she...?”
And then I was up against the wall with my head gashed against a framed photo of Apollo 5.
Bloody hell, Aralt was faster than Ruby.
“Now listen here, you wee gobshite, the only reason that you’re not a puddle in the sun is because Ruby’s grown sentimental in her old age. But me? I think that I was right first time: you’re a chancer who likes throwing shapes. When it was just Ruby and you, you might’ve been the big man. But here?” Aralt hauled me back from the wall and slapped me across the cheek lightly with a smile, before sauntering to Ruby, who was swaying. Aralt hooked Ruby tight to him, before loosening his tie. “No windows.” As Aralt glanced around the office, I realized that he was right. “I’ve defeated dawn. You’re not the full shilling, are you?” You know those bastards, who simultaneously make you feel the idiot and burn to clout them? Screw it, I wanted to feel Aralt’s heart stop bloody in my hands. “Run along to bed, like a good babby,” Aralt licked the blood from Ruby’s lips, and she sighed, low and contented, “and I’ll take care of your Author.”
Alessandro examined the thin cut, which was rapidly healing into a white line, with tentative fingers. “Are you still not scared of Aralt?”
I shoved away from Alessandro with a shrug. “Kids play. Saturday night in with Ruby.”
Alessandro and I were sprawled together on Alessandro’s floor, in a glorious chaos of singles and LPs; I’d found them, one after the other, ranked in paper record racks, alphabetically listed. Alessandro had given a vole-like squeal, each time I’d wrenched one out, devoured its cover and tossed it aside.
I drew out the psychedelic cover of The Stone’s “Their Satanic Majesties Request”. I turned it over reverentially in my hands. “You’re a dark horse. Because for a square you’ve got cool taste.”
Alessandro fidgeted. “Another one of my…you know? You hear an awful lot of this modern stuff working at Advance. They even let me name the radio station.”
“We have a radio station?”
The rot had set in already — we? I should’ve cut out my bloody conforming tongue. Society creeps up on you; it catches you by the balls, taming you until you’re leashed.
We’re all bound by our family, friends, jobs, and love… But love doesn’t need to be bound or to bind: it can be free.
Society’s the prison that we volunteer to lock ourselves in, hiding behind its bars without the need for guards because it’s comfy, safe, and as predictable as you First Lifers crave. Yet it’s a fantasy because it’s built every day on lies: from the laws that you follow unquestioningly, to the roles you mold yourselves into, so that you can fit square pegs into round. That’s what you’re conditioned for, cradle to the grave. Here in our Blood Life, I’d thought that we were beyond that. At Advance, however, I was being exposed to a whole new society; it made me feel like I was being castrated all over again.
Alessandro nodded. “A pirate radio station. You haven’t heard it?” His arms flapped. “Goodness, you must.” He dived under the bed, so far that I could only see his pale feet sticking out. When he wriggled free again, he was clutching this bloody great box of transistor radios and beaming, like he was about to present his first born. “My collection. Donovan finds them for me because he knows I… Well, see...?” Alessandro passed them to me one at a time. Tiny pocket transistors, a real mink RL200 radio, and portable radios shaped like lipsticks, Batchelors tins, or cups and saucers. He raised a pop-art radio to his ear, twiddling with the tuning. “Guess what I named it?”
I craned my hands behind my head. “I haven’t the foggiest.”
Alessandro grinned; the static cleared, as he found the frequency.
…And now on Radio Komodo we have another groovy record for all you hip listeners out there…
“Komodo?” I kicked at Alessandro with my boot. “Nice one.”
All right then, so this is the moment…the one that I’ve never told you about…I don’t know why.
Sod it, yeah I do. Honesty, right?
I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to feel like just another groupie, or any more of a sad git than I already did when we first met.
How’s that for a superior species?
But now’s my chance: my turning round. So, this was our first true meeting. Only you never knew it u
ntil now.
This song started up on the radio, with this singer and her voice… It was sultry but fragile, with a northern edge and a hint of Marianne Faithfull. Yet it was rock, rather than folk, through to its core. It belted me in the gut because it was like everything I’d tasted on my trip down Carnaby Street: a new world blossoming from the earth. It made me feel old for the first time: dusty and dead.
I craved another shot of its vibrant vitality and to suck the Soul from that voice — you — directly into my veins. I’d wager that it was your humanity, which we stripped away with every kill, rejoicing in each sacrificial hunt, that drew me to you.
For the first time in a century, I missed the heat of the sun.
I tried not to point too wildly at the radio. “Who’s this?”
Alessandro flushed. Interesting. “One of ours. She sings at The Heartbeat Club, so I hear.”
“You’ve gone a little red there.”
Alessandro pressed his palms hard against his ears, rocking backwards and forwards. Then he wrapped his arms around his middle. “Kathy’s…pretty…”
“That right? Listen,” I edged closer, “the twins, what’s up with them? All this record company bollocks? I’ll be buggered if all they’re building is a music empire. Are they like the Kray twins or something?”
Alessandro sharply twisted off the radio. Your voice and world were lost to me again, leaving me with only the starkness of neat corners and the festering mouths of Komodo.
“Or something.”
“They’re Irish,” I began thoughtfully, “elected after me. They’re brutal, ruthless but dedicated leaders. Taking a wild guess, they’re IRA…?”
Alessandro clutched my arm, his small fingers digging in hard enough to hurt, as he dragged my forehead close, until it was touching his. “Members of the original Irish Volunteers; they were involved in the Easter Rising and the later fight for freedom against England. Aralt told me that it was all right though…what they did…because Ireland was in a state of guerrilla war. They’re not terrorists or… The struggles made them officers in Ireland’s army. I don’t know if I…but that’s what he said. They were special too. Members of the Twelve Apostles. Assassins.”
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 8