I’m sorry love, I never wanted to tell you before, although I’m certain that you guessed it. But this is me turning round, so there’s no hiding it, even after all these years. Christ, you deserved so much better with that voice of yours.
I wish that I’d been the one to give it to you.
The numbers whispered to me that although Advance was there to make cash (and it did), it was also a money laundering scheme. It was hidden in plain sight but also had gaping bloody holes in its finances, which gave Alessandro nightmares each night because he was too honest to understand that his Author had to know that they were there. I’d partly worked out where the money was being siphoned to, and that’s what was giving me nightmares.
When I glanced around for Alessandro, I saw his legs in tweed trousers, poking out from behind the bed. He was crouched in the tiny space against the wall, rocking backwards and forwards. He was muttering something under his breath over and over. I sighed.
Alessandro was one of the snowflake patterns and not one the same. Now with you, however, I’ve grown intimate with that rocking and muttering, haven’t I? Sometimes it feels like it’s all I’ve got left of you because when you stop, you lie so still that I’d give anything for you to start up again.
What are you thinking about when you rock?
Come back to me.
I’m here. Keep listening to my voice. And come back to me.
Alessandro was curled fetal. When I slipped down next to him, he flinched. We sat in silence like that for nearly half an hour, until slowly Alessandro unfurled. He glanced out of the corners of his eyes at me.
“It’s too much,” Alessandro murmured, “too much.” Then his pale cheeks pinked, as if suddenly becoming aware of what he’d been doing in an awful moment of lucidity. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “It’s all right. I’m bloody with you on that, mate.” I flashed him a grin. Alessandro stared at me and then he grinned too. “Come on.” I dragged him up, before we clambered over the bed. “Let’s stick something on.”
“Kathy again?” Alessandro suggested with a furtive glance, diving for his paper record racks. The racks were now permanently ranked around his walls, transforming his dormitory into a proper bloke’s room for the first time. It was a small change but it’d made me smile when I’d seen it.
You can liberate someone’s body from the prison of First Life, but it takes a hell of a lot more to free their mind.
When Alessandro began to flip through to find your record, I hurriedly shook my head. The image of Ruby’s devastated expression was still too raw.
Alessandro glanced at me, surprised, before shuffling to the lipstick transistor and twisting it on instead to Radio Komodo.
The Kink’s “Really Got me Going’s” gritty, distorted guitar blasted out, loud enough to hide what I had to say. It was time to dig below Advance’s glossy red surface to the rottenness underneath; I wanted to know where that money was disappearing. If the Plantagenet siblings intended to make me a part of…whatever this was…then I wouldn’t be a mindless puppet.
I edged closer to Alessandro. “When I was coming here, I saw an older bloke up in our private area. He was marching around like he owned it, wearing this…you know…white coat…scientist type…”
“Silverman.”
“Right, so what’s he then?” Alessandro shifted from foot to foot, tapping his fingers up and down on the chair. “Come on, this is me here. I’m Ruby’s, just like you’re Aralt’s, and that makes us family. You can tell me.”
Alessandro nodded. “I know. But Aralt’s rules state—”
“Sod the rules. I’ve told you before, we’re the Lost: we take what we like and we do what we want. At least…” I hesitated. “That’s how it should be. Or are you still locked up in an institution? Did you never bloody escape?”
Alessandro’s breathing became ragged. His eyes were glazed, like he was imagining being back in the institution, abandoned by everyone he loved, with the label of idiot around his neck.
And I’d caused that, bastard that I was.
But the danger was too high for me not to push. Plus, it was for the lad’s own good: no one else was volunteering to show Alessandro the reality of Blood Life.
At least, that’s how I justified it, even with everything that happened after. We all make our choices: I reckoned that I was doing the right thing. What that meant, however, got screwed up, even before I was elected into Blood Life.
I gripped Alessandro’s shoulders. “Who’s Silverman?”
“A biologist. He’s a specialist.”
“In what?” I caught a flash of ugly lizard, leering from the walls, whilst its mouth salivated blood, and I knew, clear as day: Alessandro’s obsession…and Aralt’s. “Komodo?”
Alessandro nodded, running his hand through his hair. His glance darted to the door, as if Aralt would sweep down on us in bloody vengeance.
Earlier, when I’d stormed away from Ruby, I’d been blinded at first with grief and rage at the death of our love but then I’d spotted this bloke who was out of place in scientist gear. He’d also been slinking where he shouldn’t have been.
It’d struck me that this scientist had lurked in the shadows for weeks now without it sinking into my consciousness. I’d caught glimpses of him out of the corner of my eye, down corridors or coming out of meetings with Aralt. You know the way you miss the most important things because they’re hidden under the everyday? Now my emotions had been heightened by my pain, until every detail shone out to pinpoint clarity, I’d noticed: the way the scientist had crept silently along the edge of the corridor, his graying head down, as if deliberately trying not to draw attention.
What record company needed to research anything, let alone in secret?
I’d followed the scientist down a warren of hallways to a section of Advance that I’d never explored before. When the bloke had opened a locked door and edged inside, I’d caught a whiff of pungent chemicals. I’d dashed closer. Just before the door had slammed closed, I’d seen a sliver of what was inside: a white room, which was decked out like a laboratory. Needles. Vast crimson vats that I’d been able to taste — even from that distance — fizzing on my tongue. And what had the bastard had strapped down to a steel table…?
A naked First Lifer, shackled at wrists and ankles.
“Tell me about the experiments,” I ordered Alessandro.
Alessandro started forward, his small fingers gripping my arms. “Aralt expressly told me not to…”
“Ask him myself, shall I?”
“No, no, no.” Alessandro dragged me back. “It was the Komodo. That’s what the whole thing has been for. The venom. Of course, then they started to bring in these First Lifers and…” He wrung his hands miserably.
“Told you I’d be a Dutchman, didn’t I? So, what’s it really all about?”
Alessandro collapsed onto the bed. “Our venom. How to split it: the part that paralyzes and that which kills. Truly, though, I don’t know why, cross my heart and hope to die.”
My gaze hardened. “But you will know because you’re going to find out.”
Alessandro jolted off the bed. “Can’t, please, can’t.”
I placed my hands on his shoulders again. “You told me that to be alone and trapped was worse than death. But what I can’t figure out is how this,” I gestured around at Alessandro’s room (improved though it was), “your life, such as it is here with Aralt, is any better? You don’t owe that tosser anything. And I promise, if you help me, I’ll take care of him. I’ll free you, good and proper. Then, if I’m still breathing, I’ll show you the world, as you should always have been shown it. Understand?”
“But how…?”
I bit my lip. “Let me worry about that. For now, you figure out a way to hold up your end.”
Yet by promising to free Alessandro by ridding him of Aralt, I’d first need to discover the truth behind Advance. I was alone now against the twins because I’d broken away from Ruby’s toxic l
ove; there was no one to protect me if I was caught. I’d thought myself beyond the fears of First Lifers and yet I was as trapped in the tyranny of my Blood Life family as Alessandro.
I’d died once for the truth. Would it hurt as much to die a second time?
I skulked down the corridor towards Aralt’s study, like bloody history repeating itself, to sneak into the lions’ den and unearth into the light whatever secrets were festering in Advance’s dirty heart.
All right, so last time I’d played at heroics like this, I’d been murdered by Erwood.
I was learning that Blood Life, however, wasn’t so different to First. You could fight against it, run or hide, yet in the end the same Soul still clung to you and babbled in your ear, until you sodding well listened.
This was who I’d been and who I was: a daft berk with a death wish.
When I passed Donovan’s quarters, the buzz of the Small Faces’ guitars bled through; his rosewood doors swung wide, and I was hit by the full blast of the music. Then I was grabbed by my jacket and hauled inside.
“Hey man, where are you going? Stick around, it’s really happening in here.” Donovan slammed me against the wall with a shrill laugh.
Donovan was tripping. He clutched a thick joint; I choked on the sweet fug. Donovan took a drag, before offering the joint to me.
I shook my head. I didn’t need to add being stoned to this night’s heady mix of danger. See one lesson had seeded from first time around at least: I wouldn’t allow myself to be sucked in by the world’s temptations.
Donovan shrugged, slipping his arm around my shoulders. He pulled me further into his suite of rooms, which were an explosion of color and life, as much as Aralt’s were a paean to the cold space age: a rainbow of pop artist posters and black and white portraits of celebrities. Donovan seemed as in love with this age, as I’d fallen tackle deep.
Donovan caught me staring at the posters. He puffed on his joint with a grin, which turned his mouth up wide around his canines.
“Man, does all this bug my bro.” Donovan gestured at his room. “But you know what I say?” Donovan threw himself down on an inflatable chair, which was cast in sickly orange by the Lava Lamp next to it. His pupils were dilated: he was so sodding gone. “We take our poses on the stage. Dress up. Choose our props, set, lighting and music. First Life’s just the opening act. But us? We get to live the grand finale. And how I see it? Why not go out with a freaking bang?” He stroked his fingers down the Lava Lamp, tracing the bubbles. “Try watching this when you’ve taken something to expand your mind…it’s far out…”
I eyed the door. How many hours were left before dawn? Before Aralt came home? I took a step backwards. “I need to—”
“Sit down.” A sudden steel, as Donovan fixed me with a gaze, which said no bleeding way was I getting out of that door anytime soon.
Here I was meant to be redeeming myself for a former life’s mistakes and instead I was trapped with Donovan and his mind altered wanderings.
I glanced around but I couldn’t see another seat; I wouldn’t put it past these wankers to make everyone kneel at their feet. Sighing, I began to crouch down.
“Watch this, it’ll blow your mind.” Donovan staggered up to an abstract sculpture, which was pushed against the wall like a giant brown puzzle. Then he hauled it apart with quick motions, chucking the foam pieces down into bizarre seats.
You First Lifers never stop amazing me with the different ways you invent to conceal the truth: seating as art, radios as lipsticks, false hair, eyelashes, and bodies…
You’re so frightened of this world and the one fundamental truth of all — you’re born, you live, and then you bloody die — that everything in-between you hide, mask, and transform, as if that makes it easier. It sodding doesn’t, you know. Only when you stare at what lies beneath, can you face living…and dying too. That’s what I’m doing right now, even though this hurts, every bleeding word that I write. Hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt. I’ve got to face it though because you deserve that.
Can you still hear me? Hold on, love. Just hold on a little more for me.
“Chairs are so bourgeois,” Donovan shrugged. “Everything should either be art or throwaway.” I perched on one end of the sphere, and Donovan draped himself on the other as he swayed to the music. “You’re going to love the gigs that I booked for Saturday. Are you having a cool time in that crazy scene?”
“It beats a pointy stick.”
Donovan flashed me that smile of his, which was predatory in all the wrong places. It made me itch to bolt again. I held myself still, however, with a struggle.
“My brother’s the money man. That’s why I leave him to his numbers. But me? I’m the creative.” Donovan leant closer, his fingers trailing over the back of my hand. “The music’s my lifeblood. The most righteous thing about this backward country. In Ireland I was into the bloodshed. The rush and the roar. But Aralt…? He was freaking cold heart, mind, and Soul to the cause: a scientist of death. I was just along for the thrill. Having a blast, man. But I’m his bro, so where else would I’ve been? Here,” he stabbed his joint at me, “what’s family for, if we don’t share?”
I risked another small shake of my head.
“No?” Donovan stared down at the stub, which was rimmed with a lipstick ghost, like he was accusing it of something, before tossing it away over his shoulder.
Then Donovan’s hand caressed up my arm, as he slid closer along the sphere, until our groins were touching. I started up, but his fingers stiffened around my arm.
I suddenly remembered your cousin in the damp alleyway, trapped under the dandy, who had one hand clamped over her mouth and the other crawling down her waist…and how I’d hesitated to help her.
It was strange this conscience bollocks. Things had been so much simpler with Ruby: slash and burn the world and dance in the flames.
“I’m sorry but I’m already claimed.” I kept my voice low and level.
I tried to stand again, but Donovan dragged me down closer. “Hey, calm down. You know that we’re truly both alone now… Be honest, Ruby’s not yours anymore but…you could be mine.”
Then Donovan snogged me, forcing his tongue deep into my mouth, until I tasted his bitter lipstick.
Even in the moment, there was still a part of me detached enough to recognize the way that Donovan kissed, like a touch memory. After a century with Ruby, I knew every variation of her and here it was, like they’d been swapping notes.
Or learned from the same lover.
Then there was no time, however, even for those thoughts because Donovan pinned me back onto the sphere; my legs were pushed out either side and my arms were dragged above my head.
Those Plantagenets were something else: stronger, faster (Ruby would’ve said purer Blood Lifers), but worse, that’s what I’m looking for.
Donovan’s fingers wormed down the waistband of my jeans, and then I felt them dexterously undo them, as he edged inside the denim towards my…
That’s when Donovan pushed himself off me, like we’d just been having a casual chat and announced, “Snack time.”
Donovan wandered to his desk, before glancing back at me with a smile, as if I was going to thank him for the treat.
I wouldn’t have let any of the others see how badly my fingers shook as I did up my jeans, as soon as Donovan turned away from me again and leant over the desk. Then Donovan yanked something — someone — over the top by their short, straw-coloured hair. Donovan dangled the limp body of a bound and gagged First Lifer, who’d been stripped to only his underwear. Bleeding hell, the poor sod wasn’t moving. Yet he hadn’t even been bitten yet, rather it was like he’d been sedated.
I jumped up, glancing once again at the door. Could I make it before Donovan stopped me? Maybe whilst he was distracted by his new toy…
“Want a bite?” Donovan offered the First Lifer’s pale jugular.
I saw the slow throb of the First Lifer’s arteries and felt the painf
ul pull of his blood. I wet my lips. I wondered if Ruby knew that her brother was offering to blood share with the man who she’d elected.
And what she’d do to me if I accepted.
I scrunched my nose. “I prefer to hunt, mate.”
Donovan wagged his finger at me. “You’re the type. Me? Delivery and convenience every time.”
When Donovan sank his fangs into the First Lifer’s throat, I watched the movement in his own, as Donovan swallowed down the blood in deep sucks. I shuddered, hungering to dive to him and savage the other side. To taste blood like it should be tasted: from warm skin, rather than dirty needle.
Nothing’ll ever be the same as a kill. The death drives the desire; you can’t have the one without the other.
First Lifers are no different: pain and death excite passion because they remind you that you’re always going to experience both. If not today, then someday. For us Blood Lifers it’s even more intimate because we already have. We’ve died once (and that’s not something you bloody forget). It covers you like a second skin, and you wear it every moment, until the instant of your second death.
When I sidled towards the door, Donovan didn’t look up. He was too lost in the blood. I should’ve slipped away there and then.
Yet something about what he’d said got to me: delivery? Add to that the way the lad had lain there, like he was awaiting an operation, reeked of Silverman and the white room with its needles.
When Donovan finally raised his head, his mouth was sticky with scarlet.
I asked, with an effort to sound casual, “How’d you get it delivered then, you lucky git?”
“Secret,” Donovan whispered with a giggle.
Blood pounded through Donovan, mingling with the wacky backy in a tripper’s heaven. He was in the perfect vulnerable state to work for information, even if it was like tugging on a shark’s tail. “Aralt arranges it, right?”
“Yeah, how’d you know...? They’re groupies.” Donovan sniggered as he swayed, steadying himself with one hand on the desk. “It was Aralt’s idea for our Blood Lifer bands to pick out the tastiest, slip something fun in their drinks and then send them back to us. Perks of being the boss.”
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 15