At last, I wrenched back my hand; beads of sweat trickled down my forehead. Then I shifted my lighter over again but this time onto another spot.
It took me a couple more moments to notice that you’d stopped singing, maybe you had a while ago, but I’d been too lost to the world, submerged under waves of pain. Breathing out with relief, I glanced over my shoulder, and there you were — my Moon Girl — dolled up and blinding as always.
Our eyes met. You were staring at me from across the dance floor in shock.
Buggering hell.
I snatched my hand away from the lighter, but it was too late…you’d seen.
Bloody hell, what type of freak did you think I was now?
I started off the stool, but you’d already dived for the door and were gone, before I’d been able to slip the lighter into my pocket (my scorched hand now making its protest known), and fight my way through the scrum.
The hunt was on.
I darted after you through the night-time streets. I didn’t even know what I’d say when I caught you. It wasn’t like I could tell you that I was burning myself because it hurt too much to listen to your voice, when I couldn’t have you…
That sort of thing would’ve been romantic to Ruby.
I was beginning to realize, however, that you First Lifers weren’t so obsessive. Every emotion amplified, right? Love twinned with hate. Pain to passion.
When I glimpsed the flash of your ankle boot turning down a side street, I prowled after you, hunched against the light summer rain. My blood sang.
All right, cards on the table, I had my first stiffy in weeks, which hadn’t needed my own vigorous help getting there. Pursuing you pushed every one of my buttons. I was complete, exhilarated, and alive in a new and yeah, sexual way.
Two First Lifer girls in trucker jackets fell out of the doorway to a coffeehouse, which swung to the rhythm of jazz, jamming over a beat poet’s declaration of war on his parents’ generation. Drunk, they hung onto my arm to steady themselves; they stank of light ale. I shook them off, weaving on down the side street after you. I could scarcely see you now; the waves of your hair bobbed in and out, bleeding into the crowds.
That’s when I heard the muffled scream and scuffle. It was unmistakable to us Blood Lifers: a kill in an urban area.
Of course, we all have our signature styles or quirks.
I once met this Blood Lifer in Berlin, who had a fixation with strangling his kills, not enough to stop the heart but just enough to silence them. I don’t know if that made him mad or highly efficient.
So, I heard this sound down a narrow alley and out of curiosity, I glanced down it as I passed, in case it was Ruby or one of the other wankers from Advance, catching a bite to eat on their night-time wanderings.
Instead, it wasn’t any Blood Lifer I knew but a dandy, all white cravat and tight trousers, as if he was auditioning for the role of vampire in some cheap flick. It definitely looked like I needed to run through the list of bollocks myths with him.
Then I saw who the dandy’s kill was: your cousin, the bird with the Beatles mop. She was trapped trembling up against the wall and a rotting poster for a long-ago jazz show. The Blood Lifer’s hand was slammed against her mouth.
I scanned her neck for bloody marks: no puncture wounds, so she wasn’t dead.
Yet.
The dandy must be still at the playing stage. His hand crawled down from your cousin’s waist, lifting up her mini-skirt, before circling towards her muff.
I started towards them but then I stopped myself. Confused by the conflict, which I’d never had to war with before in Blood Life, I backed away towards the main road again.
Who the hell was I to interrupt someone else’s dinner?
Me turning round, right?
I wish that I could mold myself into more of a hero for you. It was easy to let you believe that this played out like I had Soul of gold but at that moment, it hung in tarnished tatters: I was no bleeding knight.
I backed off, as your cousin began to weep.
Look, there’s a code of sorts: never interrupt someone else’s kill and never steal it, like in a lion pride. If you do, you’d better be prepared for a fight or to die.
I turned away.
Then I thought of you and how you’d feel when you discovered one of your family had died. The grief. Funeral. Your loneliness. The same pain, which I now felt and the same as I’d experienced in my First Life.
Unexpectedly, for a fleeting moment, it was joy tingling through me. I thought good, I bloody well hope you feel it.
Just as fast, it was replaced by…well, it wasn’t guilt, rather a chilling devastation that you could ever experience the same anguish as I had. Then a desperation to protect you and ensure that you never did.
I’d never suffered such a bewildering see-saw of emotions.
That’s when I couldn’t go through with it. For the first time ever, I couldn’t leave another Blood Lifer to their kill.
I squared my shoulders, before I stalked down the alley. When I stopped behind the dandy, he ignored me. “I want a quiet word.”
The dandy glared around at me in astonishment. He examined my leathers, as if I was a stinking specimen of beetle. He knew what I was though because a Blood Lifer always knows another Blood Lifer. It’s in the scent: death can’t mask itself.
Your cousin must’ve recognized me because her teary eyes widened and she started to struggle.
The dandy leaned on her more heavily. “You’re young,” even his voice lisped, “so I will forgive you this slip of etiquette. Pray leave now, there’s a good fellow.”
I shook my head.
The Blood Lifer sighed, adjusting his cravat. “What? Busy here.”
“She’s not yours, mate.” I glanced at your cousin, who was shaking like a rabbit in an eagle’s claws. “I can’t let you, all right? Clear off.”
The dandy chuckled. “Now I really have heard everything. She’s your pet?”
I shrugged.
His gaze hardened. “So sorry, but I’m famished.”
The dandy twisted back to your cousin, with one hand at her throat now; his fingers bit hard enough to bruise. He leant closer. His fangs would be shooting from his teeth at any moment…
I hurled myself at the dandy, knocking him off your cousin and flinging him rolling, with a clang, over a metal dustbin.
As he scrambled up, he snarled with rage and frustration at the loss of blood. The hunger would drive his fight: his fists, boots, and bite. His fangs sank so deeply into my arm that they went clean through my leathers and skin to the blood.
I hollered, kicking him off.
Then the git had me around the waist.
I glimpsed your cousin’s terrified face, from where she was huddled behind a dustbin. “It’s all right, love, just hold on a tick…”
I was hauled back by the dandy, as I desperately tried to wrestle his arms from around my chest. He was squeezing the life from me — bloody hell — he was stronger than he looked.
But he had no street smarts.
I nutted him, hearing the satisfying crunch as his nose broke. He roared, and then we were rumbling in earnest with elbows and knees, punching at joints and throats and every other point of weakness. He clouted me a good shiner; my eye purpled and swelled, as he laid into every inch of me.
But this? Everyone’s got to have a talent. Ruby had taught me well how to embrace pain, as just part of the cut and thrust. Now I could turn that to my advantage.
I grinned as I grabbed the dandy, chucking him against the bricks and pummeling — bam, bam, bam — until my knuckles bled. Then the dandy let out a snarl. He belted me back — snap — breaking my ribs.
Suddenly, the ludicrousness of two Blood Lifers, elected into this…whatever it was…but centuries old and so very beyond First Life, standing in the street and giving each other a hiding in front of some little groupie, gripped me and I doubled up with painful laughter.
The dandy stared at me
like I was mad. He panted, wiping the blood from his nose.
After a moment, I got a grip of myself. I sighed. “Oh, just sod off, will you?”
The dandy hesitated, before he straightened his now crimson spattered cravat and limped away down the alley. Then he turned back, pointing at me with a shaking finger. I was right: he was a thwarted bloody Laurence Olivier. “You, sir, are no Blood Lifer.”
I flipped the two-fingered salute at him. He drew himself up to his full height in disdain, before sweeping off into the night and his own fantasy of what Blood Life meant.
I really should’ve told him about the bollocks myths.
“Thanks,” your cousin whispered.
Surprised, I glanced down at your cousin. I’d forgotten about her. She crawled to her feet, still shivering, whilst tugging down her mini-skirt like that would wipe clean what I’d seen.
Yeah, like I could wipe clean what I’d done? I’d already broken too many rules: leaving witnesses alive, rescuing First Lifers, and interrupting kills.
What the hell would happen to me if Ruby…or Aralt…found out…?
But then, when did I give a damn about rules? I cut them up into pretty pieces and let them blow away on the wind.
What had your cousin actually seen, when it came down to it? A bastard who’d assaulted her and two blokes fighting. Why would she reckon that we weren’t human?
I slumped against the damp wall.
The rain was heavier now. Warm drops dripped down my neck and washed away the congealing blood. Once the heat was off the battle, the pain was kicking in; it jolted electricity up my nerves, straight to my brain. Buggering hell, this was the part that I always forgot, or else nothing could brand it deep enough to curb the impulses that came first.
I fought it down, running a bloodied hand through my sweep of hair. “I reckon that bloke was off his nut or something. You all right?”
Your cousin nodded. “Are you?”
That was the first time someone had bothered to ask me that, maybe since my papa was alive. I shook away the thought. I must’ve looked a right mess then. “Yeah, tickety-boo.”
“That’s a load of rubbish. You’re coming with me.” Before I knew what was happening, your cousin had slipped her arm around my shoulders and was leading me out of the alleyway.
I stumbled, leaning on her for support. It was humiliating: I’d never needed help from a First Lifer before. Yet your cousin didn’t comment or laugh, like I’d expected. Instead, she kept on holding me, whilst I hobbled next to her.
“You’re Kathy’s cousin?” I asked.
“I have got a name, you know. It’s not like I’m her dog.”
Despite myself, I smiled. “Sorry. So?”
“It’s Susan. And I know who you are.” She didn’t say it like that was a good thing. I hadn’t reckoned that she would.
I’d buggered up this courting thing; there were too many steps that I no longer knew. All right, I’d never known them to begin with.
As we walked, I noticed that Susan was taking me into Soho. Your scent was growing stronger.
Your apartment.
Susan had brought me to the one place, where I knew that I wouldn’t be welcome.
I drew back, resisting. Look, what man wants the woman that they — dream about, toss off over, and obsess on — to see them battered and hardly able to stand, especially as you’d already made it clear as day you reckoned that I was a freak?
Yet the pull and the fast beat of my heart, told me that I didn’t care if you saw me carved to shreds at your feet because you’d still see me and I’d still see you.
Watching you only from the shadows? I was so done with that.
When we reached your front door, I asked Susan, trying to sound nonchalant, “You live with Kathy?”
Susan nodded, looking like she wanted to ask something herself. But she didn’t. When she struggled to both support me and turn her key in the lock, she knocked.
Those moments before you swung the door open nearly did me in. Then you were there, my Moon Girl: no makeup, simply that beautiful face, just like I’d always desired to see it; you shone.
I straightened, trying not to let the hurt show.
When you saw me, however, your expression hardened. You slammed your arm across the doorway, blocking it. “He’s not coming in. I don’t care what’s happened to him. Hasn’t he got a home to go to?”
Yeah, you were sugar and spice.
Susan frowned. “Don’t be such a nitwit. He saved me. He’s a hero.”
I registered the surprise and doubt in your eyes. I kept my own gaze fixed on the floor because I didn’t want you to read anything different to the hero lie in mine. You lowered your arm, however, before you nodded.
When Susan helped me into the hall, you shifted your weight to round my waist; your gaze softened, as I flinched. Your touch was intimate and unexpected; it made every clout a thousand times worth it.
As Susan clicked the door closed behind me, I knew at last that I’d found my way in to both the First Lifer and your world.
Yet for my freedom to choose you…and First Lifers…I’d broken Blood Lifer rules. If my rebellion was discovered, I shuddered at how I’d be punished.
9
Do you remember that Victorian blanket box, which you bought from a junk shop in Ilkley in 1969 and then stripped of its varnish, before painting it kaleidoscopic?
Well, I dragged it out of the back of the garage last night to use it as a rummage box for you out of your ivory scarf, photos, your LP, chainmail bag and Jimi Hendrix poster. I figure it’ll help you remember longer: who you are and who I am.
Our life.
That way, I’ll hold onto this — different life — by my fingertips a bit longer too.
I’m slipping here without you, I can admit that now and I know where the darkness leads; I lived it long enough, didn’t I? I don’t want to go back there, even though it’d be just like going home.
Funny thing, memory.
First Lifers lose it like a fading photograph. Yet every moment of my Blood Life has remained as crystal clear as the second that I lived it. That’s not cool: it’s a curse to have all those memories bobbing around in my brain, like a sodding computer, waiting to be processed.
They’re only what I remember. They’re not the truth. Just one man’s witness.
Lately, I’ve felt like there are too many memories pressing in my skull. I wonder if this is what happens to Blood Lifers when they live long enough. They’re not mad but rather they remember too much: every face, scent, and taste. I wish that I could black them out, the bad ones at least.
But be careful what you wish for, right? Yeah, every time I look at you, I…
Be careful what you wish for.
SEPTEMBER 1968 LONDON
The acid face of Hendrix stared down from the walls of your flat, like a prophetic god, in the yellow light thrown by your mushroom lights, as you and I sprawled on beanbags and “Are You Experienced” span on your record player. The sonic, breath-taking guitar battled in psychedelic rock’n’roll with drums, howling into birth a new world of freedom and danger.
We were drowning in it.
Our hands were clasped. Our feet were tapping. Our faces were plastered in daft grins.
And this? Yeah, this was happiness.
You weren’t my Moon Girl anymore, in fact, you hadn’t been for weeks. You were dressed dead casual in jeans and hippy drawstring top, with an ivory scarf knotted snug at your neck: your sexy little thing, I called it. You didn’t know it then, of course, but it drove me wild, the way that it drew the eye to the jugular, yet coyly hid it at the same time. I’d kiss up and down your neck, light and hot, sliding my fingers under that sexy little thing. And the sensation when it tightened…
I’ve got a stiffy just writing it; look at the effect you have on me, Christ in heaven, even now.
That version of you, which you kept for private — behind closed doors — no glued-on spider lashes or synthe
tic hair, was the woman who I’d fought to burrow down to, ever since I’d first seen you. The humanity, which had beckoned to me, when I’d heard you on the radio in Alessandro’s room and my Soul had twinned to.
The diva shimmering up on stage…? She was Advance’s creation, and I was fast coming to realize that there was always something rotten inside one of those, no matter how pretty the trinket.
Earlier, we’d been to a late showing at the flicks to see Barbarella.
You’d picked the movie but still, the first virtually naked woman up on the big screen and whether it was set in the forty-first century or not, I’d offered to take you out of there. That was no way to court a woman; I was definite that couldn’t be one of those gray areas of First Lifer convention, with which I was still struggling.
You’d simply laughed and called me a prude.
Futuristic erotica was this new age’s mating ritual…? All right then, so you’re out of the dating scene for a century, and all the rules of the game get changed on you.
When I’d settled back again, we’d watched this Barbarella chick rescuing her time, whilst giving us blokes plenty of flesh to wank over. But the best part? It was the way your fingers had curled around mine, as your head had nestled onto my shoulder, in silent intimacy in the dark; I’d hardly dared breathe, in case I’d broken it.
Freak or not, I was yours now: you’d claimed me.
We could sit quietly together, just watching, as if I was no different to any other First Lifer, pulsing with blood in their seats around us.
Ruby would never believe that this new world imagined such fantasies. She refused to go to the flicks: cold empty shadows, that’s what she called them. She had no time for moving lights, false pictures with no blood in them; if you couldn’t bleed them, then they were beneath her notice.
But me? Me, Ruby had started to notice again, in small ways.
Ruby would search me out and make demands when I was least expecting it, or she’d startle me awake and then watch me through cool eyes. I’d been lucky that she hadn’t already worked out about my blood abstinence or punished me for it. But now with you as well...? It was only a matter of time before Ruby smelled you. I could smell Aralt on her, couldn’t I? Even on her glowing red hair.
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