Then Ruby bit and let in the toxin.
Ruby nodded at me, before glancing upstairs. I smiled because I knew that she had something planned.
I was more the fangs and fists type of bloke.
I dropped the wife to the rug, before creeping up the stairs to the top of the house and the attic rooms: servant quarters.
The cook and the housemaid had retired for the night.
So, honesty…
The housemaid was a regular stunner, even in her plain cotton nightdress; if she’d been a debutante she’d have had her card filled for every dance, instead of being on her knees each morning lighting fires.
Cinderella is nothing but a lie spun to kids, as an opiate against the pain of their inevitable future disappointments. Blood Lifers look beneath the surface. They taste the Soul, electing true beauties, thinkers, warriors and leaders. The mistress of this house might’ve ruled in First Life, but it was her maid, who would’ve been chosen for election.
But not tonight. Tonight, was for feasting, not authoring.
The maid screamed because a man in her rooms could only mean ruin. And it did, although not the sort that she’d fantasized about in the lonely hours before dawn. The First Lifer’s squawking was annoying me, so I snapped her neck — crack — pushing her black braid aside, before sinking in my fangs.
Blood.
I barely stopped to savor; the roar blasted through me. The world was undone and remade again in the moment. I was so lost in the sensation that I almost didn’t register the clang and sharp pain across the back of my head.
Reluctantly, I withdrew my fangs, before dropping the maid. I turned to face my attacker — a portly matron in a nightgown and cap, wielding a ceramic bedpan like a cudgel. The cook, I’d wager. Plucky old girl that she was, she still staggered back at the sight of my dripping fangs.
How much honesty can you handle? Put it this way: mutton didn’t taste as fine as lamb.
After, high on the blood and its intoxicating thrill, I took a look through the house, stumbling from their bathroom, which even had its own flushing toilet (no sewage in the drinking water for them), to their bedroom and discovered what had been keeping Ruby amused.
The bedroom was a grand room, as if it was a set in a play; it was rich and dark with heavy navy curtains, floral pink and blue wallpaper, and over-stuffed furniture.
I glanced at the bloke’s velvet trimmed overcoat, which had been discarded like a seal’s skin, on the rug.
It would really suit me when I nicked it.
Ruby, however, never did like that coat. It wasn’t until the Great War that I acquired another blinder. The next was… Well, you know the one. Leather motorcycle jacket with gold ace of spades on the back...? That was Brighton, May Bank Holiday, 1964. I got it off some Rocker who’d been so set on battling with the Mods, he hadn’t looked out for what was in the shadows — or his hotel room.
The couple’s bed was in the center of the room: the set piece. Ruby had arranged the naked husband and wife in a loving embrace, with one arm around each other, chaste-like. But the other...?
The husband’s hand rested on his wife’s right tit, whilst the wife’s hand wrapped around her husband’s cock. Their mouths were close, almost kissing but not quite. This intimacy was denied them (as it is for all whores). I could tell by the occasional twitch of their muscles that the venom had fully set in. But not death. They were aware but trapped in their bodies.
“What do you think of my dolls?” Ruby wound her fingers between mine, drawing me closer. “This wretched cur and his base bitch thought to make a spectacle of others. But now, by heaven, it is they who shall put on a show.”
Ruby pulled me towards the bed. She paused to lift the discarded gold and diamond bouquetier, which hung on a delicate chain, from the side table, where it lay amongst the wife’s sad array of beautiful things that would now never see the ball: a hand cooler of chilled glass, unsullied lace gloves, white satin shoes that looked like they’d never been worn before tonight and a headdress of roses, ivy, and lilies of the valley.
Ruby held the bouquetier up to her nose and sniffed. Then she sighed.
I was tripping on the blood. The blue and pink flowers were dripping from the walls and creeping from the rugs. I was drowning in them. I could even smell them on Ruby’s breath. “Roses, signifying love.” I plucked a rose from the headdress, slipping it into Ruby’s long hair.
Ruby startled, as if the tenderness was unexpected.
It was Ruby who liked to play rough: I’m all about the romance.
It was me, however, who was surprised a moment later, when Ruby pressed a sprig of ivy into my hair. “Ivy signifies faithfulness,” she whispered, before adding, “let us blood share tonight.”
Blood share?
That was…sacrosanct…holy to us, Ruby had said. It was a closeness that I’d only experienced once before and hadn’t thought I’d experience again. I didn’t know what I’d done to earn it, or if the couple that we’d stalked had brought it on. But whatever the reason, I launched myself at the bed.
Ruby had unwound the wife’s hair from its plaits, and it hung in a glossy blonde waterfall to her waist. It mingled with Ruby’s scarlet hair, like a meeting of seas, when Ruby leant over her.
The First Lifers watched us with petrified eyes, as we watched them. I wasn’t sure who was putting on a show for whom.
I clutched onto Ruby’s hand, when she twisted the wife’s neck, so that we could both latch onto it. Then came the moment when my fangs sank through the creamy skin.
It’s all about that moment…when you know you’re going to feed. You wait for it. It builds up, whilst your teeth descend. The sensation when the layers of skin break. Then you hit the artery, just before you start to suck, and the blood hits — bang.
Ask addicts in opium dens why they go back for more, or crackheads why they beg for the pipe, or…why bloody ciggies are so hard to kick.
To a Blood Lifer, take all that and multiply it by…ten, a hundred, a thousand…because there’s nothing — nothing — to compare to the hit of fresh human blood from the source.
That’s honesty for you.
Knowing Ruby was on the other side of the neck with the rose still in her hair, as the ivy was in mine, doubled the intensity. I could feel Ruby in the pull of the blood: my Author, muse, liberator, and love.
I was made to love Ruby, and in sharing blood, we were joined.
Crouching over the body of the First Lifer wife, whilst her husband impotently watched her being drained (all the time knowing that he was next), I near on climaxed.
Of course, that came later.
So, what if that’s not all that I am — the blood — if it’s not all I became?
You don’t get to wrest those precious memories from me. Violate those too.
Honesty: it’s a double-edged sword.
You lot are keen to believe me a thing deserving slavery. Now you have the ammunition: hate away.
Now you can hurt me like a true Cain.
Hate away, darling.
9
MAY 16
Look, that honesty claptrap?
It didn’t seem like such a good idea this morning when I woke up…and I wasn’t so keen on you hating me either.
But it was too late. I’d already stuffed my journal into your hands last night. No wonder you looked so startled.
So, I was lying in bed, pulling the covers up to my ears (like that’d save me), whilst I listened to the furious whirr of the blender.
I notice that you still haven’t got any coffee in but…
Yeah, more important things, right.
At last, I couldn’t put if off any longer. I built up the bottle to peer into the kitchen.
There you were: high Fendi heels, white frill shirt with black A-line skirt, and scarlet lipstick. Every inch the twenty-first century business woman.
Stuff it — here’s to facing the gallows.
I swaggered towards you. “Alright?�
��
You blinked at me, before turning away.
Nonplussed, I was expecting a bigger reaction. Yet now you were reaching for something dark, which was folded behind you on the marble side. I backed away, shuddering. When you swung to me, I jumped.
Then it was my turn to blink.
My motorcycle jacket.
Intact. Better than: cleaned and mended.
When I took the jacket from you, my hands shook. I turned it this way and that. Black and studded, gold ace of spades. It smelled the same — felt the same too. It took a moment to believe that it was real. Then I was excitedly dragging it on; it fitted like a flayed skin. I shrugged my shoulders, running my fingers along the studs.
I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply the scent of the leather, as I hugged my arms around myself. When I opened them again, I saw you watching me with an amused expression.
I attempted to calm myself, nonchalantly leaning against the counter. “The wankers told me that they’d burned it.”
You huffed. “They told me that too…until I said, in that case, they’d be next.”
I laughed, and then caught myself. “So, does this mean that I get to go out?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
I realized that for the first time, we were grinning at each other. “Cheers…I mean—”
You ran your finger across the counter, without meeting my gaze. “I’d have given it to you last night, if you hadn’t stormed in like…”
I flushed. “About that—”
You waved it away. “No time. Breakfast.” You turned back to the marble side and continued pressing kale.
I pulled a face as I settled on a stool. You’d left the Guardian newspaper neatly opened, and I considered snatching a nose.
The world outside, however, now seemed so distant and remote that I might as well be invisible, traveling in a tandem, parallel universe to every other First and Blood Lifer, who wasn’t part of the Blood Club.
I thrust the newspaper aside. Then I spied a book of Fiendish Sudoku underneath. I hadn’t figured you for a lover of numbers, which are my most constant mates. They sway, sing, and surge in multi-colored matrices in my mind. Just another pretty snowflake pattern of neurological difference that rainbow brightens this world.
I glanced at the blank squares in the well-ordered grid. “9,3,7,1,” I muttered, unthinkingly.
“What?” You asked, without looking round.
“Nothing.”
Then you turned and seeing the Sudoku book in front of me, slammed it shut. You shoved it to one side as you slipped a dinner plate under my nose instead. The plate was in blue-and-white Willow style but it’d been transformed: Oriental river scenes, bridges and pagodas on islands, and birds in flight. Yet each element was isolated from the other and rearranged on the bone china to create something new.
I tapped the plate with my nail. “My mama had some of this. You know the story, yeah?”
You shook your head, intent on your sodding avocado preparation.
“Two lovers were forbidden to be together, yet their love burnt so brightly… Anyway, on their deaths, their Souls finally came together as these two birds.”
I stroked the pad of my thumb over the two blue birds. I wished that I could believe in that fairy tale: our Souls finding each other after death.
But what’s the point in torturing myself? I don’t. We return to the dirt, and all I have are the pictures in my mind.
At last, you turned to study me uncertainly. “That’s wicked sad.”
“Yeah well, it’s only a story.” I pushed the grief down, plastering on a smile. You First Lifers aren’t the only ones who can dissemble. I’m done with the dangerous claptrap of honesty. You were flicking through your iPhone — swipe, swipe, swipe — as if you couldn’t make a culinary decision without it: rainbow chard beetroot, mangoes, and coconut oil. You were punishing yourself with perfect examples of food in its raw, plant-based, sugar-free, gluten-free, life-free glory. Food as the new measuring stick for success. #avotoast! Have a good day! I nodded my chin at the screen. “You don’t reckon those bints really eat that muck? Behind the snaps, I’d wager they’re guzzling any old crap. That’s the ugly behind the beauty; there’s always something beneath the surface.” When you spun around to me, depositing half the avocado on toasted sour dough bread from your Willow dinner plate to mine — breakfast is served — I snapped. “That’s it…I’m cooking tomorrow. I can order ingredients online and bloody delicious ones at that.”
You wriggled onto the stool next to me. “You can cook?”
“I’m over one hundred and fifty years old. Of course I can cook.”
You still seemed suspicious. “What sort of...?”
I grinned. “Meat, chocolate, beer...”
“Na-ah, no alcohol.”
I shrugged. “A bloke’s got to try.”
“I don’t think so.” I bit my tongue, trying to mask my disappointment, but you knew me well enough by now to recognize it. Your gaze softened. “How about you make breakfast for us? That’s enough. Now I’m going to be home today on account of I’ve got no tutorials. Are you going to be…?”
“A good boy?”
“I was going to say quiet.”
I mock bowed. “Your wish is my command.”
You snorted. “Since when?”
I’d expected my usual pink Post-it stuck to the fridge. Yet today there’d been nothing. I’d washed up the Willow plates anyway on autopilot, although I hadn’t worn Marigolds — sod it, bloody sue me. Then I wandered into the sitting room to find you.
You were perched on the edge of the scarlet leather sofa, your laptop, Blackberry, and a sea of documents spread out in front of you on the coffee table. You were tapping away like an angry woodpecker on your laptop — peck, peck, peck — each keystroke an attack. Your expression was so intense, I hesitated to interrupt you.
I shouldn’t have worried.
First your iPhone chirped… What’s doing? Uh-hu? Naw, leave it…
Then the Blackberry: repeat above but this time formal and stilted… Hello? Yah, this is… Yah, I know…I can do that…
You get the picture.
By the time I’d caught your attention, I’d been standing there twiddling my thumbs for too bloody long. Give me some credit though, I’d kept quiet.
At last, you deigned to glance up at me with a harassed frown. “Yah?”
“There’s no chores list,” I muttered.
Your frown cleared. I could’ve imagined it but I think your features gentled. “I reckoned that you could have the day off. If you want.”
You’d barely made the offer, before I’d thrown myself down on the Sponge chair, bouncing once or twice on the springy foam and hiding my smirk at your flinch. “I’d bite your arm off.” You looked horrified and paled, hugging your arms defensively across your chest. A sizzling shiver of pride tugged at me: I still had it. Then, reluctantly, I reassured you, “It just means that I wouldn’t say no.”
You scowled, making a show of uncurling your arms. “Whatever. But I need to—”
“Quiet, I get it.” I mimed zipping my lips. “Still…if this is your day off—”
“I didn’t say—”
“But you’re home? So, what happens when your mates come over? Here, you must try the Chablis…and don’t mind the sex slave kneeling in the corner…”
You rolled your eyes. “When do you kneel?”
“…I’ll just tell him to sod off to his cell, since his existence is meant to be a secret.”
You took a couple of deep breaths, before firmly clicking closed the laptop; I guess that I’m not good at keeping quiet after all. “It’s not a cell,” I hadn’t expected you to speak so gently, “and it’s not going to be a problem.”
“Why?” The idea that I’d conjured of you outside this apartment with friendships and freedom suddenly bit deep against my own captivity. Why were my eyes smarting with tears? “Because you’ll already have me locked away? Y
our dirty little secret? Gagged and hogtied?”
“On account of I don’t have any mates in London,” you growled. “Do you always indulge in such melodramatic fantasies?”
I shrugged, avoiding your gaze.
“Maybe,” you leant closer (and I didn’t miss the way that you licked your lips), “it’s you who are into these…kinks. I mean, if you want to...?”
That’s when I was saved by the bloody bell.
When you answered your mobile, I shot out of the chair and dove to the fireplace. You hadn’t meant that you were interested in using me…like I’d been idiot enough to fantasize? How I’d been trained…? Shaking, I held the back of my hand across my mouth, as my breathing became too rapid. I’d have legged it to my cell (and yeah, it is a bleeding cell), but that would’ve been a total retreat.
“What’s up, Fernando? It’s early for you over there, I must be on your mind… The OEB? That’s wicked! Hey, you deserve it… Skype me soon and don’t work too hard. I miss you, Prof.” My ears pricked up. Fernando? Prof? I had the flash shot memory of the wall of photos in your bedroom and a certain dark-haired Alpha Geek, who had his arms all over you, as if he was staking claim to a piece of bloody land. I don’t know why that made my hackles rise like a rabid mutt. When you ended the call, there was a sudden silence. You shifted, reddening. “Look, Light, I was only—”
“I reckon that your ring tone’s tattooed on the inside of my skull.” I forced my shaking hands into the pockets of my jeans. I couldn’t talk about it now: if you craved to use me…touch, taste, hurt me…like a slave, then at least have the decency to bleeding do it and not talk about it beforehand. Trapped here with you, I’d hoped that you were different but then I’ve always been a romantic fool for women: both in First and Blood Life. I couldn’t meet your gaze. “Don’t you have an office to go to?”
The sofa creaked as you settled back. “I don’t need one; we’re in the twenty-first century now.”
At last, I glanced up at you from underneath my eyelashes. “So, I’m behind the times because I died a Victorian?”
Your cool gaze seemed to be sussing me out. “You don’t look Victorian.”
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 29