You stepped closer. “What’s your name?”
You hadn’t even bothered to ask before. Now the hunt was truly over. I smiled. “Light. My name’s Light.”
So, I took your photo and it was one of the best nights of my life. You wore a gold catsuit and that mask of make-up, which I craved to claw from your skin and find the woman underneath.
Flash, flash, flash…
You and I worked together on the photo shoot in an empty room at the back of the Heartbeat Club with your cousin and cigar-smoking agent hawk-like in the doorway, whilst you refused to say a single word.
Yet there was you, me, and my camera, intimate in a way that I’d never been with anyone but Ruby and never cared to be, not since I was elected to Blood Life.
This new need to be wanted messed with everything I knew. And everything that I reckoned I was.
Your smile lit your eyes as much as your mouth; even though something told me that it was a trick (and you couldn’t mean it), I still treasured it.
You glowed, the same as any Blood Lifer — bollocks, it was different. Because this was life — true life — in a way that I’d never stopped to scrutinize before, only drain. It was real and I could smell it: courage, imagination, and ambition.
Was this what it’d been like for Ruby, when she’d found me? Before she’d decided to elect?
Flash. The curve of your lips. The wisp of creativity.
Flash. Black curls caught behind your ear. The edge of ruthlessness.
Flash. Those blue eyes staring right down the lens, like a challenge. The scent of passion.
Flash, flash, flash.
I’d captured your Soul, forever mine, and you didn’t say a word.
How could I entrap the rest of you? Because you’d already entrapped me.
I’d spend hours sprawled on my back each night in Alessandro’s room, drinking in your record over and over, until the lyrics were branded onto my brain and then haunted my sleep.
Ruby would nudge me irritably when I’d start to hum the tune next to her in bed without realizing.
You were eating me whole. A delicious torture.
Whenever I was alone, I’d spread your photos out over the covers, pressing my fingers to your face and trying to taste your spark, as the memory shuddered through me of that night. Had you felt it too? This…thing? I didn’t have a name for it. No sticky label.
Ruby would’ve called it a perversion.
Ruby still came to my bed but she hadn’t touched me. Not like...that. It was as if she could sense that I was less than the Blood Lifer I’d once been. Bugger that, I was more, but Ruby couldn’t see it. She was too caught up in whatever dodgy business the twins had going and there was no place in her new family for me.
Did you lie awake thinking about me too? The dark things that you wanted to do to me? Were we lying there at the same time, whispering each other’s names?
Yeah, all right, I know the answer; I’m not deluded now. But then…that’s what I fantasized about, whilst this empty, bunched feeling, built twisted in my gut. I had to see you again, even if you called me freak or didn’t say a word and strolled on by like I didn’t even exist.
After all, I was used to that with Ruby.
The next Saturday, however, when I checked the lists at the club, you weren’t playing. I’d booted the sound system, sending the guitarists scattering. I could’ve ripped the joint to shreds. I needed a drink of blood so badly that I shook with it.
Ruby was noticing at last: the grimacing pain when I stood, the way I grasped onto edges of chairs to stop myself from blacking out, and the constant tremble, which I couldn’t hide any longer.
I stumbled to the toilets, kicking through into their muffled quiet. I sprayed freezing water onto my ashen cheeks.
A sudden low groan came from the corner of the latrines.
Bollocks.
Some berk tripping out on wacky backy had fallen, smashing his skull on the porcelain. I crouched closer, licking my lips. Blood was seeping from the wound in fat purple clots and trickling down between the bloke’s spaced out eyes.
I waved my hand in front of him: no response. Not a flicker. He was flying.
My whole body quivered… The smell… The intoxicating splendor of the blood burst like stars in showers around me; I could reach out and touch them, closer and closer…
Saliva dribbled, as my fangs shot out. I couldn’t retract them. This was happening.
Christ in heaven, it was happening…
I gripped the bloke’s shoulders, sliding out my tongue, further and further away from my teeth and deadly toxins. Then I was licking, drinking from the gash, as if I was a panther. The blood hit my anemic bloodstream like it was my very first kill. The whole world was alive, and I was resurrected.
I shook with the high of pot infused blood; the kid giggled, whilst I fed from him.
After, I wiped myself clean at the sinks, before staring down at the still quietly sniggering mess.
I shook my head, before swaggering back into the bar. The world was bright and small again in the brilliance of the blood’s light.
For tonight at least, I was full.
Abstinence had neutered me; Ruby was right about that at least: we had to feed. The two drives were tearing me in two; I was blood but did I have to be death?
All right then, so the jewelery heist is the most thrilling heist of them all. You’d have guessed that, right?
Look, any lay gets my blood humming. It’s never about the money with me or that diamond bollocks either because they’ll give you a whole new league of headache on the planning side; I’m more for the cut and thrust of a good caper, clean and fast.
So, jewelery: best payoff, minimum boredom. Not to mention that those glittery trinkets speak to the Soul, even though they’re nothing but pretty rocks strung on string.
That night, exploding with blood, I’d wandered the London streets searching for just the right hit because all I wanted was to share the moment with you. I knew, even then, lost as I was in the haze, that you weren’t thinking of me and maybe hadn’t since the day I’d photographed you. Yet still I couldn’t stop myself.
I was addicted and I thought maybe…just maybe…
Hope — that’s the true killer.
I had the idea that this was what you First Lifers did, wasn’t it? Courted with gifts? Or had the rituals changed so much since I’d been elected? I knew that a lad bound and wrapped in scarlet ribbons, or a horsehair whip, wouldn’t be your thing. Jewelery though, I’d always relied on that to make Ruby smile and I hungered to earn another smile from you.
Then there it was in the window, displayed on black velvet cloth: a silver choker with sapphire disc…for my Moon Girl.
That’s when the fun of the heist started.
Later, back in my room, I ran the choker gently through my fingers. I hadn’t seen Ruby all night, and it’d soon be dawn. I traced over the sapphire; its cold burnt.
Now I had your gift though, what the bloody hell did I do with it?
I paced up and down, glancing at your face smiling up at me, over and over, from the photos, which were strewn on the sheets.
What did people even say in this new age?
“I saw this and…” I held out the choker loosely at an invisible you. “Well, it’s…and you’re, well, you’re blinding and…” I shook my head in disgust as I paced away. “Look, I got you this, you fancy it, it’s yours, all right?” I booted the bed so hard that the pictures became a trembling sea. Then I closed my eyes, holding out the choker towards your photo. “Please accept this as a token of my highest regard… Laugh at me, will you?” I stared down at your face, annihilated by your imagined mockery and my own frustration. “Why don’t you just sod off?” I hurled the choker skittering down the length of the room. Immediately, I regretted it. I rushed to scoop up the choker, twisting it between my hands to check it over: it wasn’t broken. I breathed deeply, before holding it out again in front of me. “So, you like sapp
hires?”
What you don’t know, is what it took for me to find out where you were renting in Soho in order to risk breaking the divide between First and Blood Life.
See, behind every important man in those days was a secretary. Your agent’s was called Jane (this daft First Lifer with pasty legs), who spilled her boss’ secrets for a quick touch of my secret places. I hope that you don’t reckon she got the raw end of the deal: I whored myself for you. Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
Yeah, I’m the big romantic me. Have the hearts and cupid shown up yet?
I had this spiel all planned out, with the choker snug in my pocket, because no way was I going to look like a wanker in front of you again.
My heart was wild stallioning, as I dived between the shadows, passing sex shops and illegal gambling dens. The night was alive with car horns and riffs of jazz drifted from coffee houses.
This is how it would play out: I’d knock at your flat, you’d ask me in and I’d say…
Then all of a sudden you were there.
You were coming out of your flat in silver boots and a metal tunic, over a mini-skirt that transformed you into a futuristic Amazon queen. You slammed the door and marched straight towards me, before I even had time to think of a new plan.
This I hadn’t practiced, in fact, hadn’t even thought of in all my scenarios: yeah, I was a sodding genius.
You still hadn’t seen me though, so there might be time to get out of it. I hung back and nearly let you pass. My palm was tense around the choker like it was a relic.
Then came the fresh scent of you and it was too much: it overwhelmed me. I stepped out right in front of you, so close that our faces almost touched.
I hadn’t realized that you’d jump like that. Then you scowled.
“You.” You gripped your bag tighter. “What do you want? I’m late.”
It’d never started like this in my head. “Well, I…” I began to draw out the choker but then I frowned. “Don’t throw a wobbly, love; this was a public street the last time I looked.”
“Then you’re welcome to it.” You skirted around me.
For a moment, I listened to you march away.
“Hold up.” I dashed after you, but you kept on striding in those bloody high boots, towards the beat of the rock club on the corner and between the rush of the dirty traffic. “Come on, sorry, I was…”
“Are you following me?”
“No, I…” You stopped, raising your eyebrow. “Yeah, a bit. I just… Look, this is for you.” I pulled out the silver and sapphire choker, which rested on my palm. Looking down at it, I wished that I’d scrubbed my nails. Your eyes widened, but something was wrong because you weren’t taking the choker. Instead, you were simply standing there, under the off yellow of the streetlight, studying me with this look, which I didn’t understand. Was this what First Lifers did? It didn’t feel right; it was more…sickening. I gestured with the choker towards you, but you shrank away. Then I remembered something that I’d seen other First Lifers do. “Right, sorry, want me to put it on you?” I began to fumble with the clasp.
“No, don’t.” You hurriedly stilled my hand with gentle fingers; your unexpected touch was like a silver roar. “You can’t just… Something like this, it’s…too much. Don’t you…? I can’t accept it.”
The silver roar transformed into a howling blackness: the type that made me hunger to feast on the world because maybe that’d dim the pain. “Why?” I clutched the sapphire disc so tightly that it sliced into my palm; my blood melded with the rock, like a sacrifice.
Your voice was softer than I’d yet heard it. “You know nothing about me and if you did…maybe you wouldn’t want to.”
“What if I say I do?”
“Then you’d be a right fool.”
“That’s my choice.”
“No,” you pushed me back with a firm shake of your head, “it’s mine. Do you reckon this is a game? The little girl with a voice runs away to London for a record contract? Easy, is it? My life? What I want? I can’t have someone like you—”
“That right? Someone like me?” Anger flashed at last and it was laced with a raw, remembered bitterness. You never forget your First Life and you don’t forgive either. “I suppose you’d prefer a bank clerk?”
“I’d settle for someone who wasn’t a freak.” You bit your lip as soon as the words were out. I’ve always wondered if you regretted them, as much as they hurt me.
You immediately put your head down, avoiding my eye, as you strode deeper into the center of Soho.
You didn’t look back, and this time I didn’t follow.
The choker was buried in the flesh of my palm; blood poured down my wrist. I wrenched out the choker, gasping with pain. Tipping back my head, I hollered to the stars with the rage and humiliation.
Then drawing back my arm as far as I could, I chucked that sodding choker in front of the wheels of a double-decker bus. I watched as it was pulverized; I wanted it to be ground back into the earth, so that I’d never have to see it again. But you? I still yearned to see you and for the sweet torture to continue.
How can someone trap you with simply a smile?
8
You smiled at me in the early hours of this morning.
Will you ever understand what your smile means to me? Because for that moment, as we lay curled together under the warmth of the covers, you were with me again: you saw me.
When I held you soft in my arms, you were Kathy and you remembered.
Your blue eyes studied mine, as clear as ever, and then came that smile. The one that’s always caught me helpless on your lips.
And you know what?
For those few minutes before your gaze clouded, your smile wavered, and you were lost again — that was bloody hearts and cupid.
AUGUST 1968 LONDON
Another Saturday night in the buzz and din of the Heartbeat, slouched with a smoke and a pint, flicking through the psychedelic pages of an underground magazine. Bloody hell, these First Lifers weren’t as blinkered or dull as us Blood Lifers conned ourselves, at least not in the world of these mags that catered for the freaks out there.
They were as dangerous as us.
Still, free love and screwing the system right royally?
Just add blood and I was sold.
The more I wandered the First Lifer world without Ruby, however, the more I realized that my Author, muse, and liberator didn’t have a buggering clue about First Lifers.
And it terrified me.
Instead (for some reason that I didn’t understand), Ruby was too frightened of First Lifers, who were meant to be our prey, to dive headfirst into their world. Without the parent in the room, however, I’d been drowning in them. I luxuriated in the teeming, reeking humanity, with all its uncivilized barbarity. Sod that, because of it.
So, I’d died?
Yet I was still here, kicking the hell out of the world. I breathed the same air. Pissed and shagged, just the same as any First Lifer. Were we truly so different?
That’s why A Clockwork Orange blew my mind. Because there it was, in black and white screaming from the page at last: the self-awareness of this new age and the evolutionary jump to a subversion of everything that went before. It challenged all I knew about being one of the Lost.
I downed my pint. I was meant to be helping Alessandro after closing with Advance’s accounts. That was more of the twins’ dirt on my hands then. The more I dug into their business, the more I knew in my gut that something was off.
The money, power, and empire-building? It stank.
Was that the true Blood Life? Elected from death, simply to live through a rerun of First Life all over again but this time only as a shadow, or a pale imitation in the darkness because none of us were getting a bleeding suntan, were we?
This existence, which the twins were creating for us, seemed to me nothing but a sick charade of humanity, and greedy wanker that I was, I hungered for more than that: for s
omething better, bigger…different.
That was my own and that I’d chosen.
If I was finally outside the First Lifer shackles of school, work, and government, then I’d earned the freedom.
But Aralt’s little family? We had new chains.
I’d just slipped out a new ciggie and lit up, when it started: the music.
I didn’t turn around, move or even bloody breathe because I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.
…Everything’s changing, so we’ve gotta change too… It cut deep, bugger did you make me bleed… But I’m alive, we’re alive, so we’ve gotta live… And you were, like every one of the bopping Mods in the swarming club: sweating bags of skin, pounding with hearts, veins, and arteries, which coiled in blue and red, like the wax anatomical models under the glass cases in Florence.
Yet here I was, trembling with hunger and the agony of the constant fight to leash it inside, but not one of you even noticed me: the dead bloke sitting right in your midst.
What would you think if you knew? What would you do?
I flicked my lighter — on, off, on, off — staring into its flame, as your voice kept on singing. I wanted to turn around so badly but I bloody well wasn’t going to. It’s a myth that blokes think about sex every few seconds. Yet we’re still led by our cocks — that’s simply nature — and when we’re in love, it sodding burns.
It’s a type of madness.
I wanted the thought of you — that worm that squirmed deeper and deeper into my core, whilst you sang — incinerated.
I passed my hand over the lighter, holding its shimmering heat against my palm. And then again, lowering my hand…lower and lower.
The burn felt good. It was the first time in weeks that I’d had something to really concentrate on. When it became too white hot even for me to bear, I snatched it away. Then, however, I forced my palm over the fire again. This time I held it there.
The skin blistered, peeling in blackened strips. I shuddered but I didn’t pull back. Instead, I struggled to absorb the pain. This way I didn’t have to listen to your siren song; I could feel nothing but the fire.
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 11