Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series

by Rosemary A Johns

  Christ, it was difficult to be close to you.

  The water’s muddied now, don’t even try and act like it’s not.

  At last, you let go of me, smoothing down my suit and taking steadying breaths, before we battled through the raging, nihilistic explosion of alienation, into the vast open plan but scruffy apartment. Its walls were unfinished brick, which were still tagged here and there with graffiti, and the floors were raw cast concrete. Yet there were goat skin rugs, chandeliers dripping crystals, and a drinks bar carved out of stone, which was stocked with glistening bottles of booze.

  The warehouse had been bisected by an immense white cloud, which was pierced with holes, as if the daytime sky had rebelled and invaded the inside. There were also the same art pieces, mixed in with the second-hand, as you had in your apartment. Except, there was a darkness in these, which wasn’t there in yours. A baroque chair looked like it’d been singed with a blowtorch. It was beautiful in its destruction.

  When I rounded a corner of the cloud divider, there was M.C.: she was sprawled on a blackened chaise longue, in all her tartan miniskirt, fishnets, ripped and safety pinned t-shirt with decorative bloodstains, glory.

  “Alright, sis?” M.C. tossed the glossy photos, which she’d been perusing, like she was an editor at a fashion mag, onto a Japanese coffee table. Strike that, like a porn director, deciding on her next casting.

  Close-ups of naked Blood Lifers spilled over the coffee table.

  Please let there not be one of me…

  You nodded over the clash of the music, with a wince.

  M.C. stretched, before strolling to her sound system to press it off. The silence seemed suddenly louder. “You brought it then?”

  Your lips thinned. “He’ll behave.”

  I put on my most angelic expression.

  M.C. snorted. “You be crazy if you believe it can behave.” When M.C. prowled closer, I tensed. She met my gaze shrewdly. “You be in my manor now, little leech, you get me?”

  “Yeah,” straight face, straight face, “I get you.”

  Your arm was already around my shoulders, tugging me away. “He knows what’s expected. Have you set up the table?”

  You two First Lifers settled opposite each other across a bone-white table on spindly skeletal chairs, whilst I — the Blood Lifer — stood behind you, with my hands clasped behind my back. I was the eternal servant: although in my Savile Row suit, I was a bleeding overdressed one.

  There was a life-size replica of a M16 behind M.C., as if that was what served her.

  Suddenly, the surface of the albino table shifted, like a million particles of sand. It reshaped into a 3D projection of the globe. Glowing lights were dotted across its surface, connected by a spider web of threads and photos of Blood Lifers. All projected in a moving display from within.

  I blinked. “Bugger me.”

  You glanced back at me warningly.

  M.C. smirked. “It be still bad; I told you.”

  “He’ll behave,” you repeated, like a ward against evil.

  As you and M.C. leant across the table, which was shifting with statistics and the haunting images of the enslaved, I let my mind drift.

  I stood ramrod straight, with my chin up, and eyes down: the statue that you First Lifers wanted. Yet it niggled — the thought of that miniature globe — as if you truly did have the world in your hands. Those dots could only be other Blood Lifers like me. My own kind, pet slaves now in rich humans’ homes or else earmarked for capture.

  When I listened in to the meeting, it was as if you were chatting about any corporate product on sale globally, using sanitized business buzzwords to mask the horror, compartmentalizing Accounts from Retrieval and Acquisitions, so your hands wouldn’t be dirtied.

  M.C. was fudging and hedging, side-lining you when you questioned her. You were clearly being trained to be the money woman, whilst M.C. was the bitch with the blood on her hands, so that you didn’t have to be.

  What are big sisters for?

  ‘£2, 633714327332.34127,’ I said absentmindedly, ‘you forgot the £3, 327432.34127 at the end.’

  Both women were staring at me.

  Bollocks.

  You’d been working on the numbers for bloody hours, and I’d been shifting about to keep my legs from going numb, daydreaming.

  There was a stylized Manx illustrated across the brick wall in creepy graffiti, and I was imagining that I was back with my Manx cats. Except, in the background was the annoying buzz of you and M.C. working on an accounts problem: I didn’t even realize that I’d solved it out loud.

  M.C. sprang up. “I thought that you said you got me, leech?”

  “Before you take him down…” You tapped on the table, as if it was a laptop. A figure spread across the surface in tiny black pixels: £2, 633714327332.34127.

  “How you do that?” M.C. was still poised to pounce.

  “I worked in a bank?” I offered weakly.

  You laughed.

  After a moment, so did M.C., but there was a nastier edge to it, as she sank back into her chair. “Well done, sis; only you could buy a blow-up doll and end up with a geek instead.”

  I wasn’t sure which half of that sentence hurt more.

  Your expression stilled. “Sit down, Light.” You dragged back the skeletal chair next to yours. “Let’s see what you reckon to these figures.” I didn’t move. You repeated more slowly, “Sit. Down.”

  Finally, what you were offering filtered through to my shell-shocked brain. M.C. looked as amazed as I felt.

  I plonked myself down, linking my hands behind my head and grinned. “Alright.”

  I felt the most like…a man…Blood or First Lifer….that I’d felt in a long time, sitting there with you at your work. Almost like…an equal.

  I should’ve known that it wouldn’t last.

  When the accounts were finally swiped to one side and a — disgusting — catalog of Blood Lifers was brought up for your viewing pleasure, I noticed the small Manx tattoo on the inside of M.C.’s wrist, which matched yours, as she leant forward.

  The mark of Cain.

  I also didn’t miss how you cringed at the photo show, or how M.C. lingered over several of the Blood Lifers, as if reminiscing or…anticipating...?

  When M.C. paused on my cousin Donovan, whose dark mop of hair was pushed back, whilst he posed naked against a gray wall at Abona, I swear that she glanced at me. I bit hard into my tongue, tasting my own tangy blood; my leg jigged up and down, no matter how I tried to control it, like the blankness in my eyes. Because if I reacted now, it’d be Donovan who was punished.

  “The product,” M.C. tapped the table, enlarging Donovan’s image. You squirmed, glancing away. M.C. knew — she bloody knew — that he was my cousin. “The thing about the leech be it’s unique. Secret to most. And that be its value. All around the world’s after unique. In Afghanistan beardless young boys be sold for bacha bazi: fucking and dancing, innit? In India, they’re after fair Nepalese girls: only virgins. But a virgin can only be deflowered once. A boy grows up, sprouts hair and becomes a man. A leech? They stay a leech always. If they’re a virgin, they heal: A Blood Clubber can deflower them every night for the rest of their lives, you get me? No growing up. No changing. What you see, be what you get — forever. Unique. Like your boy there, when the bitch be trained.”

  Your eyes had widened, and you’d paled, even more than me. You were rapping your pen against the underside of the table, as if that could erase your sister’s words.

  That’s when you said something, which knocked me for six, even though it was so quiet that I almost missed it, “When’s daddy getting here?”

  M.C. pressed off the catalog, and you slumped with relief, as if not being able to see it meant that it wasn’t real. “Any time, little sis. What’s wrong?” M.C.’s lips curled into a sneer. “Missing him?”

  If I hadn’t been frozen in terror (my hands gripping my seat so tightly that I was close to snapping it), by the imminent arrival
of Master to the party, I’d have analyzed the gleam in your sister’s eye.

  Suddenly, I remembered that I was meant to meet another Blood Lifer tonight, like two mutts playing together at the park. My heart fell. The poor bastard must be from the Estate.

  The word at Abona was Master trained slaves one-to-one for the super-rich, who preferred their toys to be thoroughly housebroken. Maybe the point of this whole exercise was to show me how a proper slave behaved.

  Bugger. That.

  I was surprised when under the table, your fingers soothed over mine, slipping them out of their death grip.

  Or maybe you were just worried about the survival of the chair.

  The last time that I saw Master… Let’s say it dispelled my sentimental notions of coexistence. I reached out to him for help, but instead was slapped down so hard that I finally learned the lesson that times had changed. And you were missing him…? Frightened by your sister’s brutal honesty about your trade, calling out for your daddy to make the nightmares go away?

  But your daddy is the nightmare, and I’m a product now: that’s my value and my life sentence. I’m the hunted. The slave in the new world of the Blood Club.

  Unless I find a way to fight back.

  You two Cains were chatting away again in low voices: balances, assets, and costings.

  I’d gone to that happy place of denial, where I was still with Kathy out on the moor by the Twelve Apostles; there were sprigs of bracken in Kathy’s pixie cut, so that she looked like one of the fairy folk and her blue eyes…

  He was there. Finlo Cain. Your daddy. Master.

  My nightmare.

  Master stood by the daytime inside the night cloud, which separated this section of the apartment off, like being in the center of a honeycomb. I could see him over M.C.’s shoulder.

  Your head, however, was low over your work, and you didn’t notice.

  Master had seemed like a giant in Abona, when he’d been behind me, and I’d been overloaded with fear. Yet now I could see that he was short but burly — gruff looking — with coarse gray hair and a full beard. Like your sister, he hadn’t got the memo about it being a business meeting: he wore faded jeans, a tatty sweater, and a thick belt.

  He wasn’t what I was expecting as CEO of Cain Company.

  But then, when are folks ever what they appear?

  Master was silently examining his daughters, as if for flaws. His flint eyes — the same as yours — softened when they scrutinized you. Master passed over me, like I was merely another piece of furniture.

  I worried at the horn buttons of my suit jacket.

  “Well,” Master’s expression remained hard and impassive, “what’s strange with you two today?”

  “Daddy!” Shocked, I watched as you tore out of your seat, knocking it backwards. You flung yourself into Master’s arms: your hero. When you clung to him, he patted you awkwardly on the back. M.C. sprawled further down on her seat, as her and Master exchanged a glance, before M.C. shrugged. At last, Master prised you away. “You…?”

  “Middling.” I cringed back, trying to avoid notice. “How’s your boy working out?” No such sodding luck then. “I reckoned it not fit. In fact, I thought I may learn this one at the Estate.”

  I gasped, whilst my pulse pounded.

  Say something. Please, please, please…

  “Naw, he’s mint.” Your gaze softened. “You were right. He’s just what I need to learn about the business, like, hands on.”

  M.C. snorted.

  Master frowned. “But a suit? Sitting on a chair?” I leapt up. I might be many things but I wasn’t a bloody pillock when it came to recognizing other predators. And right then…? I had a hunter’s shotgun pointed at my bollocks. “Care you don’t spoil it. I admire you,” Master smiled at you, almost tenderly, “what with all these…degrees and the like. But you’re new to my world; I’m putting my trust in you.” You flushed, girlish. I gritted my teeth: you had a bloke in your life already and his name was Daddy. Now I understood who you were both exhausting yourself for and stamping on your half-formed morals to impress. Who my true rival was. And it wasn’t Fernando. “Trouble maker that Blood Lifer of yours was, oh the neck of him! Do you want to return him and choose again?”

  I nearly forgot that I wasn’t truly dead and had to bloody breathe.

  Thank Christ, your face fell as you shook your head.

  “No need to make a great fuss, girl.” Master chuckled. “It’s your goog; I won’t take away your plaything. I know you’ll train him into a darling slave. You never disappoint me.” Master’s smile widened, but you avoided his gaze, tearing at your nails.

  “What about me?” M.C. demanded, crossing her arms. “What if I want a goog?”

  Master’s smile died in the instant. Note to self: never be on the receiving end of that look. “You’ve already got too much of a feel for the business,” he told M.C. darkly. “You’d never get a stitch of work done with such a distraction.”

  “Where’s Captain?” You asked, before M.C. could protest.

  Master glanced at his watch. “The boy has the codes. He’ll join us soon.” Surprised, I glanced between you. Master allowed his slaves such freedom? When you sat back down, Master planted himself at the head of the table. He swiped until the spiderwebbed globe glowed ghostly with the demise of my species’ freedom, whilst I stood there bloody impotent. “How did the latest retrieval go?”

  M.C. shrugged, drumming her fingernails on the projected world. “No problems. The product be at Abona now.”

  Master nodded.

  The way they worked? It was slick. Practiced. Informal. I wondered how many years it’d been in the making. But you in your business suit, all bright-eyed, looked like you were striving to be initiated into a multinational on Canary Wharf, rather than a Blood Lifer trafficking and slavery ring.

  You didn’t fit here: please let you see it, before this world destroyed you.

  “You still hear from that feller?” Master glanced at you, rubbing his hand across the bristles on his chin, as if it was a casual question.

  I kept my head bowed respectfully but bugger me, Master had you trapped already.

  “Professor Zuniga Sanchez?” You were so proud, excited, and so sodding naïve. “Yah, he’s still at Harvard. He has a Research Fellowship in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.”

  There went that snort again from M.C.

  “Aye, Fernando: the Mexican feller.” Master shook his head. “I wasn’t pleased how he was shaping. From what I heard.”

  Your mouth was gaping. I should’ve felt sorry for you except…this was Alpha Geek we were talking about. “What does…? Mexican? I mean, what does that even…? And heard...? Who told you...?”

  “The bettermost people are in Manx,” Master continued, as if your views were an irrelevance: welcome to my world. “I’ll introduce you to some of them. But not yet. Right now, work comes first. In fact, work always comes first.”

  I felt less smug, when I realized that you were about to cry. You’d wanted your daddy to protect you from these new nightmares, but now you were finally waking up to my truth.

  Even though I wanted this, I didn’t want you hurt. My chest ached. Yet I couldn’t even rest my hand on your shoulder to comfort you.

  “Good evening all!” I jolted when a young Blood Lifer — obviously this Captain — strolled in like he owned the whole apartment and possibly us with it. He had a jaunty peak of strawberry blond hair and a blue shirt casually open two buttons at the neck, worn over pressed cargo trousers, as if he’d stepped out of a Young Tory Convention (maybe he had, when he’d been elected to Blood Life).

  What I couldn’t figure, however, is why not one of you First Lifers howled with outrage, when Captain sauntered to a chair at the opposite side of the table to Master and threw himself down.

  I drew in my breath, shuddering on Captain’s behalf. This empathy for other Blood Lifers was new: solidarity in oppression. I tensed, expecting a tech war of three tr
ackers pointed, like lasers, at Captain’s boyish self, followed by yowls.

  Instead, I heard Captain’s drawl, “It’s been a long week: dinners, events, yada yada… You know how it is. So, let’s make it snappy, yes?”

  What the bloody hell was going on?

  The humans were looking awkward but…

  Oh no, didn’t this take the bloody biscuit?

  This Blood Lifer wasn’t a slave. Nor did you Cains intend to make him into one. Cain Company, which traded in Blood Lifer slaves, also traded with Blood Lifers.

  Leech…bad…stupid…worthless…dirty…whore…slut…bitch…parasite… I’d started to believe those words. Yet you First Lifers didn’t even believe them. They were merely convenient tools.

  If Captain was free and treated with respect for the sake of dirty money, then you truly had been right: everything my people were suffering (and I’d endured), was down to the profit margin.

  And that was infinitely worse to live with.

  Captain must know that I was a Blood Lifer: we can always sense each other. I was, however, suited and booted, so how was Captain to know that I was a slave, even if I was standing like a sodding choir boy?

  Captain still had his fangs and venom.

  One bite.

  A single bite from him and I’d be free of the whole bloody lot of you. Not you, I don’t mean…

  And so would the world.

  If I could only catch his eye…

  Captain looked up and smiled. The baby actually had dimples. I reckon in First Life he’d been a real beta because they’re the sort who christen themselves when they’re reborn things like Captain, Ace, or Goliath: the types of nicknames that they wet dreamed someone had called them in First Life. Rather than Carrot-top, Loser, or Shorty.

  I risked a significant glance at Master. Then down at myself. Mimed bowing my head and then took an even greater risk with a nod back at Master.

  Captain’s smiled broadened. “Cute. I think that he’s trying to signal me.”

  You know the type of silence you want to tunnel away from?

  You were suddenly as still as me.