Donovan spun to his brother. “What’s he talking about?”
“Not now,” Aralt growled.
Donovan slammed Aralt against the wall, whilst his fangs shot out. “This was mine, you said. Promised. After everything, Advance was going to be my baby. What have you fecking done?”
Aralt squirmed. Bloody hell, it was blinding to see that. “Nothing. It’s…” Aralt cupped Donovan’s cheek. “You’re my brother.”
Donovan pushed himself off Aralt. “Am I now? I used to be.”
“Don’t…”
“I reckoned that you already knew,” I murmured, not looking up at them, “seeing as Kira was on board. Wasn’t she your Night Terror, Donovan?”
Bugger, did that hit the mark.
Donovan’s eyes widened; a twinge of regret shot through me at the way they gleamed with tears.
“You bastard.” Aralt stared at me, as if a kicked puppy had bitten his ankle.
“Boom, boom, boom…” I deadpanned.
Aralt’s jaw tensed. Before he could fly at me, however, I heard Donovan’s small question, which stopped him, “You used Kira?”
Aralt blinked, hunching his shoulders. “You don’t understand. This was important—”
Donovan yanked his brother back by the lapels of his expensive suit; Aralt grimaced as it creased. “She’s my elected. Still you ordered her to keep secrets from me?”
“I didn’t need to order.”
Donovan flinched. “We fought a war together, but now you’d have Kira tell your petty lies?”
“Petty?” Aralt flung his brother’s hands off him, shoving him back. “This is a war. Are you blind?”
Bewildered, Donovan stared at him. “Kira’s mine.”
“Yours?” Aralt snorted. “How could you ever have given Kira what she hungered for?”
I winced. Donovan stepped back in the silence, before stalking to the stairs. Ruby grabbed for the sleeve of his jacket, but he shook her off. He didn’t look round at Aralt again. “We stood side by side, even as our home burned and us with it. But whatever this is…? You kept me in the dark like I’m no more than a stranger.” Donovan dashed up the stairs, pausing at the top in the shadows. “We’re not blood brothers anymore. And that’s on you.”
Then he was gone.
Aralt dragged his fist back and slammed it into the wall. The plaster crumbled, but his knuckles were bloody; I hoped that they were broken.
I grinned because an enemy’s pain is the most delicious type there is; anyone who pretends different is a liar. Aralt had lost his brother, the same as he’d made me lose you. I don’t normally go in for all that eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth stuff. But right then it felt sodding smashing.
It felt slightly less smashing the next moment, when Aralt looked up from flexing his hand and caught my grin.
I read the murder in Aralt’s expression. He squared his shoulders, the head of the pride once more, before he prowled towards me.
Time for the heroics then.
I steadied myself, testing the handle and gripping it harder.
“Let me correct Light’s behavior,” Ruby pleaded. “I’m sure that he did not…”
Aralt didn’t even seem to have heard Ruby.
When I glanced at Ruby, her eyes still sparkled with defiance, rather than apology, yet also that glorious fire, which made me remember — in one flaming moment — every decade of cruel carnage and love.
And that was the moment that Aralt swung for me.
My lip split; I tasted the burst of my own blood on my tongue.
Alessandro slid to the floor, whining.
“Who told you?” Aralt’s voice was so soft that it sliced with danger.
I shrugged.
Another belt, this time to the kidneys. I needed Aralt closer and more off balance. If I could wear him out through giving me a hiding, it wouldn’t be long…
Aralt glared at me. “How did a gobshite like you…?”
“You must’ve underestimated me, mate.”
That earned me a kick in the balls.
One more step and…
“Me,” Alessandro wailed. “It was me.”
Bollocks.
Alessandro stared up at his Author with wide eyes; terror vibrated through him, until he quivered with it.
“It’s not true. Alessandro didn’t tell me anything.” I tried to grab at Aralt to distract him from Alessandro, but it was too late. The noble bugger had put himself in the firing line to save me, even though I’d risked everything to free him.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
“You told him?” Aralt asked shocked, as if he couldn’t compute that his tame Blood Lifer could ever have an independent thought; my rebel nature had rubbed off on Alessandro, even after Aralt’s training. “You fecking told him?”
“All this…was meant to be about Komodo you said…but it wasn’t.” Alessandro shook. “You lied.”
Lightning fast, Aralt hauled Alessandro’s small body up from the floor by the front of his vest, pinning him on his tiptoes. “That’s what grownups do when the babbies can’t be trusted.” Aralt traced his hand over the neat line of Alessandro’s hair. “Who’s he to you? I’m your Author. I saved you.”
Alessandro’s simple reply nearly broke my bloody heart, “He’s my friend.”
“You don’t even know what that means — an idiot like you.” I could’ve flung myself on Aralt and ripped the tongue from his cruel mouth. If every First and Blood Lifer hadn’t depended on me clinging onto that door handle, I’d have done just that. I wish that I hadn’t seen the look in Alessandro’s eyes. Aralt glanced at Ruby, who was standing very still on the stairs. “Just because some of us,” and then Aralt turned his attention to me, “don’t know how to deal with those who they elect…”
It was the way Aralt smiled at me — this thin smile, like from one predator to another — which meant that I knew…I bleeding knew…what he was going to do. But I couldn’t do anything about it fast enough, and Aralt realized that too, which was the sodding point.
With one efficient motion, Aralt snatched his fountain pen out of his pocket and rammed the entire length of it through Alessandro’s chest cavity, skewering his heart.
“Christ in heaven, no…” I gasped.
Red stained through Alessandro’s white shirt.
Blood gurgled in Alessandro’s throat. He whimpered — just once. His eyes widened with startled pain, before they emptied, with what I tell myself is freedom, rather than simply a blankness because that’s what I need to keep going every time I remember that moment.
All because I caught Alessandro up in my spy games, vendettas, and vengeance. Now instead of me, he’d been the one dying. And I couldn’t take it back…couldn’t ever take it back.
When Aralt let go of Alessandro, his body slid down like a broken doll; crimson trickled from the corner of his mouth.
How could you murder your elected, who was twinned to you by blood?
My friend.
The words swirled in my mind, heavier than any others. Neither in First or Blood Life had I ever had one of those before and Alessandro hadn’t either: sometimes it takes a loner to understand a loner.
But now Alessandro was gone.
Ruby was frozen, with an expression close to fear but more like the horror that I remembered from when we’d edged, hand in hand, through the macabre La Specola, with its wax men flayed and gutted and our ape cousins stuffed on the other side of the glass.
That was when Aralt did something, which blew what shreds remained of my reason, planning, and thought to pieces: he wiped his hands together fastidiously, as if disgusted to have been dirtied by Alessandro’s blood.
Then the blood in my own ears was roaring and I was roaring too. Nothing existed but that moment and that pain.
I was going to sodding kill the bastard.
I didn’t care if I went down with him because it was me who got Alessandro killed. Just as I’d sacrificial offered myself u
p for slaughter at Erwood’s hands.
My choices and decisions. And I bloody well knew it.
I hurled myself at Aralt, punching right at the throat. For a moment, he was caught off balance, struggling to breathe.
Shocked, Aralt stared at me but then he recovered, throwing me around and jabbing me in the ribs. I felt them break: one, two, three… I gritted my teeth, fighting through the agony. In the red blur of rage, nothing mattered anymore. Aralt grabbed hold of my arm, twisting it with a brawler’s dirty skill; he threw inverted punches with his palm on the weak underside, where the veins and arteries were. The wanker intended to enjoy this; he was making that clear.
Ruby grasped my shoulders, trying to drag me away from her brother. When that didn’t work, she pulled at Aralt, but he wasn’t planning to give up his prize.
“Stop this madness.” Ruby’s hair was soft against my cheeks, as she pressed herself between us. “Both of you desist. You men. Please, we can…”
Aralt backhanded Ruby hard enough to knock her away from us against the wall. I managed to turn my head to look at her, but Ruby was staring down at the ground; her cheek was red.
When had Ruby ever looked down?
When I turned back, Aralt noticed my expression and laughed.
And that laugh? That was the moment reason returned to me.
I was ready.
I might never be a bleeding hero but I could keep my promises. Christ, I hoped Alessandro was free now but it was time that I freed you, Susan, Ruby and sod it, myself as well. I’d shut down for good that vision of a future world of factory blood without joy or life. And yeah, to hell with it, pay Aralt back for every belting and taunt, for Alessandro’s blood on his hands, and for every tear that you’d shed.
I let the force of Aralt’s next clout into my bruised ribs slam me back against the front doors because then the handle was in my hand again. When Aralt advanced on me for the next swing, I hooked my other arm around his waist, dragging him in close. As he hit me across the chin, I turned the handle, letting the force of the blow knock us both out into the sunlight.
Ruby screamed.
Aralt scrambled for the building’s safety, but I linked my arms tighter around his waist as I grappled him further into the light, away from the line of shadow cast by the oaks along the pavement.
My retinas were already scorched; it was too bright. A world aflame. I could feel my skin crisping. I held Aralt on top of me like a shield.
Aralt’s howls were deafening. He tore at my hands to free himself but he was jerky in his agony and blinded.
Caught off guard, Aralt stumbled. I hurled him far out into the street under the hot sun and this world that he’d thirsted to conquer — let him have it.
I staggered back under the shade of the oaks.
Aralt was shrieking and giving these pathetic yelps. His eyeballs were scorched out of their sockets; he grasped the air with his fingers, as if he could somehow find a way out of the darkness. Then he collapsed to his knees, as the skin melted from his body like a candle’s wax, the same as the anatomical man in Florence with his inner workings on display bloody.
Finally, Aralt was nothing but a shuddering mess. There wasn’t even that pitiful yelping anymore because his tongue was puddled too. There was nothing but a pool of blood left, like that vast vat in the hold of Radio Komodo, sucking the life from comatose First Lifers. The same stink too.
It’s not often you see your own future so vividly illustrated right in front of you.
Then there was no time for thought because I was melting too: there’s only so much a few branches can do against a savage sun. The first scream was wrenched from my reluctant throat.
I told you that you never forget the stench of melted skin fused to leather.
I staggered back through the oak’s shade to Advance’s entrance, banging against the doors, but they wouldn’t open. I wrenched on the handle, increasingly frantic: Ruby had locked me out to face the sun with her brother.
Choices and decisions, you see?
It seemed that Ruby had made hers.
Ruby stepped closer to the door. She placed her hand to the glass. As our eyes met, I slowly raised my seared palm to hers.
That’s when I knew there was no way out of it: I was going to die. But you know what? It was better to be the flame that burns out bright and fast.
I turned and fought to hold onto enough of myself just for the final few moments, so that I’d go out as me. I didn’t want to die like Aralt had: reduced to animalistic terror. I swaggered towards the middle of the empty street, right under the rays of the sun and that pool of congealing blood.
It was agony — a pure and blinding burn — but I was calm and filled with a sense of completion.
With my first death, I’d botched the whole idealistic bollocks, leaving everything behind me in the same bloody mess. I’d lost my life in a stupid, meaningless way. Of course, that’s the way it goes down for many people. When you’re dead, however, it’s too late to obsess over it. But if you’re elected into Blood Life…? You try having centuries of something like that weighing on you.
This time, however, I’d taken Advance down with me. I’d saved the world. And the biggest surprise of all was that I actually gave a damn.
So, what if I fried? I’d got to see the sun for the first time in over a hundred years.
I stood with my arms held out, and my gaze turned towards the flaming face of the sun.
And I waited to be burned alive.
See, I still didn’t know you well enough, did I? Because then there you were, charging around the corner in your red Mini Cooper. You threw open the side door and grabbed me by the jacket, dragging me inside.
After everything, it turns out that it was you doing the saving.
You didn’t need rescuing: I did.
I don’t know what you must’ve thought about the thrashed state of me, the way I huddled instantly under my jacket away from the light, or dragged the picnic rug off the floor and over my head for protection. You’ve never told me.
You didn’t say anything at all, you simply drove.
It was only when we were out of central London, somewhere north, when city had transformed to suburbs and then fields, hedges, and the ridges of countryside, that you pulled off into a rutted lane and turned to me.
I dared to shift enough to peer out from my shielding (everything still blurry through my damaged eyes), and noticed your stuffed suitcases crammed onto the backseats: your whole life packed up because you’d known that I’d need you…yet also that it meant you couldn’t go back.
Because of me.
At last, I built up the bottle to break the final rule — the big one: I told you what I was.
I tore up the rule book into confetti pieces because I was never going to leave you again, which meant that you had to know the truth. I trusted you with my secret and my life.
You might’ve run from me, called me monster, or kicked me out to melt on the roadside. Yet if we were to spend our lives together, there could be no more masks.
After, I braced myself, my knuckles white around the rug. I had no right to expect anything but rejection.
You merely nodded, however, with a type of detached curiosity, like it was only one more freakish characteristic to add to my long list.
I smiled, studying your sexy scarf and new Twiggy cut, which I now appreciated lit up your eyes and lengthened your beautiful neck. “Have I told you that’s a blinding hair do?”
At last you grinned, stroking your bare neck, as if surprised by the feel of it. “I fancied a change.”
Then you leant over and kissed me dead gentle on my tender lips.
Christ, had I missed that.
“You and me both,” I murmured.
You revved the Mini Cooper. Then together we roared off into the light of day.
14
MAY 1855 WATFORD
You had to stand still for a bloody long time if you didn’t want the photograph to
come out blurred. If you moved, it’d look like you were a ghost. Sometimes whole families turned out that way but not often because papa was one of the best photographers.
Papa employed every trick of the trade: hidden props to tuck behind men’s necks or covers to stick over a mama’s head to render them invisible, whilst at the same time stopping their babies from wailing because they feared that they’d been abandoned.
If you know what you’re looking for, you can make out these spooks in the pictures.
Papa was always inventing some better process, lens, or plate. His excitement was like a little kid’s. It was bloody infectious. Mama would sigh and leave us to the dark room, my sisters clinging to her apron, because I was the same: there was nothing more blinding than this weird new science.
I was obsessed by the way you could capture one moment. I knew that it wasn’t forever; photographs faded. Yet it was still someone’s squirming Soul laid in the palm of your hand: power over the natural world without trickery or magic. Young as I was, papa respected me enough to share the voyage of discovery.
“Photography’s derived from the Greek for light and writing,” papa once told me. “We write with light.”
Mama and papa arrived in Watford along with the whistling squeal of the London and Birmingham Railway in 1837, as part of the influx from the inner city, which transformed the old shops with their tiny windows and dim interiors, into bright new stores — like papa’s photographic studio.
Where there’d been just one long street with foul alleyways rising from the River Colne to Cassiobury Park, it transformed around me as I grew too, into a new world of the printing industry and shops as good as any in the City (and that’s not simply my pride speaking). Then there was Cassiobury House: a gothic pile, to which posh ladies and famous gentlemen gallivanted back and forth from London…and had their portraits taken by papa.
Papa and I also returned to London on quests for supplies, equipment, or to hang out with other photographers in studios or coffeehouses. Bloody hell, the powerful aroma of coffee was like something exploding right on the back of my tongue. It was the smell of adventure. It always will be for me. Very quickly, I came to be viewed as papa’s partner in crime.
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 21