Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series

by Rosemary A Johns

  You glanced at me with a mixture of shy embarrassment and the same expression, which a kid wears when it’s about to produce a present. You rummaged in your suitcase, emerging with my Billy Fury and THE FOUR JAYS LP. I was flooded with an irrational joy because I told you what it’s like when the only things you possess are the clothes on your back and a motorbike.

  “Nice one!” I swung you around in my arms: you were a blur of blue eyes and laughter. I never wanted to let go. “For the first time in too bloody long, I’m going to dance.”

  When I placed the needle down, the vinyl crackled to life, and there was the rhythm, familiar as my own heartbeat, along with that fragile raw voice.

  I clasped you around the waist, curling so close that our bodies and breaths were one; our cheeks touched.

  We’d both slaughtered our families; we’d both be hunted. But we were also free now.

  So, we danced.

  Yeah, we bloody danced.

  15

  Lemon-scented fern: I spread the fronds in a vase by your bed this morning. You know, the one you haggled for, in the mountain village in Beirut, back in 1971? I picked the fern last night on my wanderings on the moor. At least then you can smell it, even though now you haven’t the strength to turn your head to see.

  I think you can still smell...

  I wish that you could tell me. I’ve heard it said, however, that it’s the last sense to go, when we fade. Ghosted. When you do, you’ll remember those nights that we’d lie cocooned in the lemon aroma, staring at the map of the sky and plotting our lives. When everything was still open to us, and we seemed to have such a long time together…

  The snows are melted now.

  Wednesday says that it’s officially spring because the flowers are pushing their heads up to the sun. It is warmer. The track’s not so impassable; the butcher’s getting the pigs’ blood through more easily, so I won’t have to get started on my First Lifers Who Deserve To Be Eaten list, you’ll be pleased to know: Wednesday’s safe a little longer.

  I don’t need the blankets anymore down in my hidey-hole in the garage either; I remember when you were always fussing over whether I was too cold.

  It’s been a long time, however, since anyone’s fussed over me. I’ll have to get used to that, won’t I?

  And you? Where are you? Every time I look at you in that white bed I…

  I’ve taken to sleeping with your scarf during the day when we’re apart, curling it close to my cheek, so that I can breathe in your scent.

  Wednesday pushed more leaflets under my nose again yesterday. This time there was a new one: Hospice. Then she patted me on the shoulder, giving this false sympathetic smile.

  The leaflets are binned.

  I’ll never leave you, right? I made that promise, and I won’t ever break it again.

  Not after what you gave up for me. Not after what you lost. And not when you saved me.

  I know I’m losing you, but you’ll never lose me.

  MARCH 1970 YORKSHIRE

  I’ve always needed something to drive the thrill, buzz, and the danger: to dive through the roaring fire.

  What? Did you reckon that I was castrated simply because I fell in love with a First Lifer? My bollocks sliced off neat? That the world sang quieter, my skin didn’t tingle like I was ready to combust, or the hunger pulsed less fiercely?

  Love might’ve led me by the cock but it didn’t control the rest of me. Loving doesn’t change who you are, only what you choose to do, and transformation isn’t fairy-dust quick; this is no Hollywood fairy-tale.

  I struggled, every minute of every day, trapped in that farmhouse. Strike that, every sodding second.

  I was a predator who caged myself for you. But I was still a predator.

  No matter the reasons behind my blood abstention, the impulses, and urges never quietened and the cost didn’t lessen. You never asked me how I managed it: maybe not knowing was the only way that you could love me back. On edge, I never forgot that we were outlaws in both our worlds.

  One night, I discovered these systems of caves, which were dark and cold, especially in high winds.

  Before I’d found the caves, I’d spend nights booting the energy out of me at the Twelve Apostles: the remains of a ring of engraved stones on the east of the moors. The stones had fallen amongst the heather; I reckon that they were once used for observing the moon. It made me feel closer to the night, jumping from stone to stone, kicking against the millstone grit, cracking my toes and howling at the black. Until you got cross at the state, in which I’d come home.

  Then I’d hike all the way to the moor’s precipitous north edge on the gritstone lip, staring out at the tiny lights of Ilkley and Lower Wharfedale like they were sodding Jerusalem because we were so remote and lonely.

  You never seemed to notice. After all, this is where you’d grown up: it was home.

  Yet I’d been birthed in the shadow of London and after my second birth, I’d roamed the delights of the world’s greatest cities. I’d known remote but that had been like a penance, following the horrors of the Great War.

  Then, of course, you had the day and the other First Lifers who inhabited it. You’d told them that your dad had gone to London to stay with your cousin, and they’d believed you.

  In fact, Susan was now safely lodging with her mates in Manchester and was the only soul you wrote to, whilst your dad rotted under the dark earth.

  The problem was that you and I hadn’t got the balance right; it wasn’t easy when only one of us was nocturnal and had been ripped from the Blood Lifer world. Two cultures — day and night — and somehow we were trying to force them together. I craved to claw at the world and tear it to shreds. Yet I couldn’t say a word to you because how would you’ve looked at me then?

  Even free from Ruby, the twins, Advance and every other Blood Lifer, I couldn’t be free from myself. There was no place for me in the First Lifer world; I was still one of the Lost. I itched for excitement, stimulation, something…

  Which is why I was so bloody relieved when I discovered those caves. Then it was like every night I found a new challenge to satisfy my Blood Lifer nature.

  At first, I climbed by hand alone, feeling for footholds and grips… Left, then right… I worked out routes dead quick as I hung there, fingers aching and biceps stretching. My fear of heights transmuted to thrill. The adrenaline rush, when I nearly wasn’t able to reach far enough and I felt myself slipping…before finally making it, was intoxicating.

  The next time I’d find a harder route, go higher and further. I soon became more adventurous.

  I sent you out with a shopping list, which you gawped at like I’d lost my mind. It took you weeks to find everything from specialist places, whilst I grew increasingly impatient and took greater risks by hand. I hungered to climb higher and higher, deeper and deeper into the caves.

  You laid out the equipment on our bed (yeah, it was our bed now, and it was blinding we were calling it that): sharp metal pitons, hammers to drive the spikes into cracks in the rock, carabiners to attach to the rings, and climbing ropes.

  You were suddenly all questions, whilst you bristled with excitement. You threaded the ropes through your fingers, like they were part of some type of elaborate foreplay, which shut me up for a moment because it got me imagining. You stared at me hopefully.

  I realized that you wanted to share the secret thrill of the night with me.

  Have you ever understood what it meant that you didn’t want to teach or mold me but instead you were simply happy to share in something that blazed me with passion? I hadn’t seen that before in you, and no one had shown it to me, in either First or Blood Life.

  That’s when I truly got what you meant by wanting us both to be free together.

  Yet the moors weren’t safe at night for you. All right then, they were safe enough for our little excursions together and shagging in the heather. But not to cross the whole thing, when you didn’t have my nocturnal vision. That’s why w
e worked out this trick, which became our treat to ourselves, where the caves transformed into our personal night-time playground.

  I’d get there just before dawn, descending deep enough that I wouldn’t melt. Then I’d spend the day setting up, before I’d settle back and sleep. I’d surprise the occasional climber, who’d shake me awake with comic urgency, terrified that I’d fallen. It was always fun to see their shock, when I’d give them the diver’s signal for A-ok as I’d settle back for a nap.

  When the sun had set, and the last of the climbers had found their way out of the caves, you’d drive down the road to the quarry. You’d wait until you were alone, before you’d tool up: ropes looped over your shoulder and a helmet with a lamp on your head.

  It wasn’t long before you were as good…buggering hell, all right…a better climber than me.

  We pushed onto harder routes, hammering pitons into new seams. We supported each other when it became tough and shagged each other on the cave floors when we got too turned on.

  It’s funny the burst of extra courage a bloke gets when his lover’s watching him. It’s even greater when his lover’s the one right behind him, shadowing his every move. I wasn’t going to back down from a cave wall. I was never closer to life, than when I was touching the face of death.

  One night, we descended from an exhilarating climb.

  You wrapped your arms around me, shivering in the cold at the cave’s entrance. Then you snogged me hard and long, before drawing back. “Are you ready to go? I’m fair starved.”

  I glanced back into the cave’s dark. “I want one more shot at it; I hate being beaten.” I ran my finger down your cheek. “Eat and get warm.”

  You smiled. “Don’t forget the dawn.”

  That’d become your singsong catchphrase every night, like I could ever bloody well forget the searing heat of the sun. Yet since I’d had to tell you what’d happened to Aralt… Only under duress, mind you. You’d forced it out of me, whilst I was still smoking in a scorched state on the seat of your car.

  Anyway, how I figure it, you deserved the truth, since you were the one who’d managed to scrub the melted skin from my leather jacket.

  It would’ve killed me to lose that coat.

  You’d been anxious since then, every time the sun first started to dye the horizon with light.

  Look, I don’t blame you. What happened was enough to give me sodding pause. So, you said, don’t forget the dawn.

  And I loved you even more for it.

  I watched you back out of the quarry in a trail of dust, before I ducked into the labyrinth of caverns.

  I’d taken my first grip on the rock face, when I knew something was wrong.

  That smell: Ruby’s smell. You never forget the call to blood.

  But it was too late. Even though every muscle tensed, as I swung my shoulders, the rock still connected with my temple, hard enough to force me stumbling to my knees.

  Black crashed over me like a curtain swishing shut at the flicks.

  Show over.

  As my eyes closed, I saw the sweep of red silk.

  At last, my eyes fluttered open again, blurred and confused.

  Christ, did my head hurt.

  Then panic, twisting into fear, because my wrists and ankles were bound tightly with my own climbing ropes.

  As I struggled, my skin crawled with cold and the dawning realization howled through my muddled brain that I was naked, stretched across a rock in the caves, like a sacrificial offering.

  Bollocks.

  I thrashed from side to side wildly — hollering — but the ropes only bit deeper. I could feel the dull, heavy throb of bruises and the sticky trickle of blood.

  “Prithee, peace. Be still.” When Ruby bent over me, her hair stroked my exposed skin. Her pendant rubbed against my lips, as if expecting a deferential kiss. “Your brazen-faced First Lifer has gone. We are alone.”

  “Why?” I tried to slow my heart and remember that I was the predator and not the prey.

  But this was Ruby: my Author, muse… Sod it, not my liberator. She’d never been that. Habits bred over a century, however, are difficult to break.

  Ruby slapped me hard across the cheek; her nails raked my flesh. “Why? You traitorous wretch. You murdered my brother.”

  “He murdered Alessandro.” I hissed. “He was going to murder the world.”

  When Ruby drew back, I saw the slightest shard of doubt in her troubled gaze. “We were going to build a new one.”

  “You mean Aralt was? One in his own image?”

  “He was a Plantagenet.” Ruby tilted up her chin. “A slave like you will not speak of him. Not when you left me for a First Lifer bawd.”

  She wrapped a rag around a thick stick, dipping it in something that stank of…paraffin.

  My tongue swiped at my lips. “And who even is the almighty Plantagenet?”

  Ruby didn’t look at me, but her hands were shaking. “Plantagenet was a bastard son, with no family in a time when that was shameful indeed. When his Author, one of the Magnificoes, elected him, all he wanted was to create a family. A family, which would be his legacy and blot out that beginning. His Author was…foolish, like you. He believed in a time of intolerance that some First Lifers could be trusted. Instead, they mistook him to be the devil. He could have saved himself but to hide the existence of Plantagenet and his family, he let himself burn.” I winced, paling: that was why she was so afraid… As she turned to me: her eyes were hollows. “We watched him scream and did nothing, as he blackened to ash. We are not one of us safe in this First Lifer world. Pray, do you believe that First Lifers would willingly share it with us? Love you, if they knew what you are…and what you’d truly done?” Flushing, my gaze slid away from her. This is what I hadn’t allowed myself to think. Couldn’t think. Because what if she was right? “As we hid in the shadows, watching the flames dance, the lesson seeded well.”

  “You’re wrong.” I blinked the tears from my eyes. “They can love us; Kathy loves me.”

  Ruby paced closer, holding up my gold lighter in her other hand. Then she smiled.

  When she flicked the lighter and it sparked, I recoiled in my bonds because I knew now what she was planning.

  Christ in heaven, those are the moments that you wish you were still in the dark.

  Ruby dipped the paraffin into the flame. The torch roared to life, casting grotesque shadows. I strained against the ropes, but they only cut my skin. “I could smell you.” Ruby trailed her hand down my stomach, before caressing the inside of my thighs and painting spirals with her nails. “I could taste your blood calling.”

  “And what was it saying?” I trapped Ruby’s gaze with mine. “Sod off?”

  Ruby’s hand paused mid-pattern. Then I was howling with pain, unable to move away — held down by the ropes — and absorbing every ounce of agony, as Ruby shoved the torch against my naked gut.

  At last she pulled away, leaving my skin seared and blistered.

  Ruby had her back to me now, as if she was watching the shadow puppets cast by the torch. “Do you remember this, darling Light? My little games?”

  “Your games. Not mine,” I snarled through the blur of tears.

  Ruby twisted back to me — blazing — the queen that she’d always been. She flew at me, burning my right shoulder this time, until it blackened.

  I screamed, not because I reckoned somebody would hear but because the pain had to go somewhere, or my head would explode with it. The reek of my own roasting coated my nostrils.

  I panted, as Ruby studied me, before gently wiping the tears from my cheek with her trembling finger. “Nay,” Ruby agreed softly, “you were all about the kill.”

  And Ruby was right.

  Who was I kidding? Like I was any better? Any different?

  Ruby and I had hunted the world together and drained it dry, so who knew me better than Ruby? I’d always be one of the Lost.

  I was a Plantagenet too.

  When Ruby leaned closer, I tens
ed. Ruby, however, merely kissed my cheek, like a mama would their own kid. It’d been so long since anyone had given me that little gesture: it broke something inside.

  I wanted to curl into Ruby again and lose myself in her deadly safety, as I had for so long. I craved to let her cradle me close and forget how she’d betrayed me for her addiction to blood lust and power. As our foreheads touched, I swore that I saw a glimmer of my old Ruby. The one from before the taint of Advance, which she’d kept just for me, when we were two flames free in the world to dance in its ashes.

  Then I remembered: The First Lifers strung on the walls of Radio Komodo, looped with tubes of blood and chemicals and the barren world that Ruby would’ve left as her legacy, out of love for a brother who’d hurt, controlled, and battered, until there’d been nothing good left.

  The fires were put out, and I was cold again.

  Ruby nuzzled my neck. “Dearest prince, why did you foreswear me?”

  My gaze was cold. “You left me for Aralt.”

  “You were jealous?” When Ruby sat up, gazing down at me steadily, I read the dancing joy in her eyes.

  I sobbed; my hands clenched. “It was a bloody game? You and Aralt…what you put me through?”

  Ruby laughed. “Why don’t you delight in such sport still? Love’s always a game.”

  I’d been flamed to a crisp but even that agony was washed out of my shuddering body by a wave of lava hot fury. Those long months of torture and loss, smelling Aralt on Ruby, watching her share blood, and everything that had happened since…all because Ruby had been pulling my strings in some twisted idea of romance, or adding spice, more out of skew with humanity even than my own obsessive love...?

  What must Ruby have been like in First Life? How screwed up by her dad and husband to play with a bloke like that?

  Yet even then I couldn’t hate my red-haired devil. That’s the thing with your Author: there’s a blood bond and our love had blazed through the decades and across continents.