Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series

by Rosemary A Johns

  “We’re so close…”

  “Other men will campaign. Reform. They always do. But your brother? He’ll take you to hell with him.”

  My fangs were aching to spring out. I’d gripped Edmond’s arm and was hustling him with me south along the bridge, shoving the working girls and business men out of the way.

  Edmond gasped, gripping his hat hard to his head.

  Why was I so upset? This whole lay was intended to strip away the poor sod’s beliefs at the moment of death, yet they were his only comfort.

  And I couldn’t quite do it.

  What the hell was wrong with me? I was new to this dark Blood Life, learning to swim in its crimson tide; I wished that I had Ruby there to guide me.

  This was a test, however, to prove that I was a true Blood Lifer.

  Guess I was failing then.

  Edmond’s soft hand curled around my arm. “You can help me. Please, sir? I know that I have no right to ask.”

  Edmond wrenched back from my grasp with unexpected strength.

  Ruby would be sinking her fangs in right about now, deep into George’s whiskery throat, and pumping in the toxin. She’d leave him paralyzed amongst the sheaves of papers that he’d forsaken to sign, and then feed at leisure.

  Although, I imagine that politicians tasted nasty.

  Befriend. Then end. That was the game.

  Why couldn’t I finish it?

  I shook Edmond off; he was trembling. I screwed shut my eyes. Ruby would rip off my bollocks if she ever found out…

  When I opened them again, Edmond was studying me with deep concern. How long had it been since anyone had looked at me like that? “I hope that I did not distress you...?”

  “If I…help you…then you’ll have to leave and not merely London. England — forever. No coming back. More than that, you’ll have to change who you are.”

  To my surprise, Edmond nodded. “I would happily be someone else, if it means that I can escape this life.”

  I snorted. “Don’t go saying that too loudly. Trust me.”

  Edmond blushed. “But I’m hard up; I don’t have the needful. You see, my brother doesn’t allow me—”

  “I’ll stump up the money.”

  I don’t know why I said it. Why I reached into my pocket and handed over the folded wad of notes from my latest lay. Ruby would give me such a hiding, when I told her that I’d lost the cash during the kill.

  Edmond took the money with unsteady hands. “I shall pay you back.”

  “You shall certainly not.” I snatched Edmond by the shoulder, twirling him towards Southwark with a shove. “Take a cab, book passage…somewhere and start living. Give me your word?”

  Edmond smiled at me over his shoulder. “Only if you promise me the same.”

  Blood Lifer to First? There was no safe answer to that.

  I forced myself to nod.

  Then Edmond was gone, lost amongst the throng, and I was alone in the dark bustle of London Bridge. For a moment, I wished that I’d been able to run with him, but the relief that he was safe tasted as delicious as I knew his blood would have done.

  No one ever discovered that I’d let Edmond live. I reckon that he did a better job at changing my beliefs, than I did his.

  Still, I promised to live and I always keep a promise.

  And that? To you, Liberty? Is a warning.

  To me? It’s hope.

  Let me check that I’ve understood your stories correctly. You save a Victorian boy (having manipulated him quite masterfully). Then over a century later, you stumble upon a homeless boy and save him too?

  That’s not—

  At least, you want to save Will…by killing and electing him.

  You don’t have to make it sound—

  Is it guilt? Because that’s so unusual in a Blood Lifer. You’re quite the curiosity. Unique: Captain says.

  Me? I never buy into hype.

  If I did everything out of guilt, I’d spend my whole bloody life rescuing fragile humans.

  Don’t you?

  Guilty as charged, m’lud!

  Wait, what’s this then?

  You were right. I investigated, and it turns out that you were indeed being starved. That’s unacceptable. You may feed now from this young man.

  You’re crazy, if you reckon—

  The cuts are shallow; he won’t die. Suck like a baby, Mr Blickle, no need to let in the venom. He can be your pet snack.

  Captain would prefer it if you didn’t kill this First Lifer anyway because he’s fond of him; he drinks from him in the same way. In fact, he uses him in many ways.

  Does he now?

  He’s pretty: such lovely curls. For a First Lifer.

  Humans have other uses than—

  My, aren’t you prudish? I’d imagined after your time as a sex slave…

  Don’t pretend that you know me. How about this? I’m not sodding drinking.

  You truly want this dance?

  I don’t dance.

  I suggest you drink, or that torture you mentioned…?

  Been there. Done that.

  Not you. The First Lifer.

  Interesting how cooperative you are, as soon as someone else is threatened. That’s it… Doesn’t it feel better to feed directly from a First Lifer? To be wild again? Unleashed?

  Tell me, Mr Blickle, why do you see yourself as a protector for these humans, when you can never be human again?

  Humming “London Bridge Is Falling Down”, I sauntered over London Bridge in the dead of night. My skin stung, assaulted by the ice freeze. The concrete and steel bridge bled out into the Thames; light puddled in crimson blood pools. The Shard was bright on the horizon. Taxis honked, as blokes in hoodies with their hands deep in their pockets scurried by.

  I swaggered south out of the City, back towards Southwark and my apartment.

  I’d been scouting the posh shops for clothes to nick for Sun. She hadn’t lost her taste for the designer after her election, but our salaries at Peter Pan’s didn’t exactly stretch to her old wardrobe. I had a scarlet Alex Highbury-Lord dress stashed under my jacket, with which to surprise Sun.

  I couldn’t give Sun the world. Not how I wanted. But I’d give her every last bleeding thing I could.

  Kathy, my human lover for fifty years, had knocked the light-fingered stuff on the head. After Abona, however, and what the human slavers had stolen from us Blood Lifers...? I reckoned that we were entitled. I only took from those First Lifers who were rich enough: like a modern-day Robin Hood. Except, he never existed, and I don’t give to the poor.

  Family was coming first now. Any rules…? I was making them.

  I passed where once the severed heads of traitors had been displayed impaled on pikes (boiled and dipped in tar first, of course), when I clocked dusty blond curls and intense blue eyes.

  Will.

  Hunched over in the cold with Mutt padding at his heels, Will was hurrying over the bridge too.

  “London Bridge is falling down,” I sang softly, as the hunt began.

  So, here’s the truth of it: every night since that first one outside the comic shop, I’d been following Will. I lied to myself that it was pretend hunting, just to keep my hand in.

  Yet that was the bollocks.

  It was to keep the little git safe, and I knew it.

  Then there was the ache, like being edged when you’re not allowed to come. It was this desire to Author, yet also knowing that it had to be Will’s choice because wasn’t that what I’d always preached? Didn’t I despise Blood Lifers who elected First Lifers who were too young to understand the glories of evolution?

  As Aralt had done to Alessandro?

  I watched as Will drifted down the side of the bridge to the embankment, above the river’s marshy estuary, as he had every other night.

  “…Falling down…” I hopped after Will down the embankment, crunching on the gravel. Will disappeared under the bridge, before he was swallowed into the darkness. “…My fair… Sodding hell
…”

  A knife pressed right between my shoulder blades.

  It’d bleeding ruined my leather jacket.

  I scrabbled frantically behind me but I couldn’t reach the blade. When I heard a snort of laughter, I twisted around.

  A First Lifer with a huge Afro, khaki military jacket and low-slung trousers was assessing me with crossed arms and a smirk. “Problem?”

  “Little help here?”

  She raised her eyebrow.

  Writhing like a snake, I managed to curl my fingers around the shank’s handle, before wrenching it out with a holler. When I chucked it into the glass surface of the Thames, it disappeared silently. “You’re no lady knifing a bloke in the back.” I felt the ragged rips in my jacket, remembering everything that it’d been through with me since the ‘60s. “This is bloody vintage. A kid like you wouldn’t know decent clobber if it bit you on the neck. Bugger me, that hurt.”

  “Yeah? I shank to kill, you get me?” She edged closer to the embankment but her fight was still up.

  “You should learn your left from your right then. The heart’s not… Sorry, no, you shouldn’t. You ever considered not going around assaulting innocent…men?”

  “You ain’t no man.”

  Interesting.

  “That right?”

  Suddenly, she was up in my face. A tiny fury of hair and gangster. “You be slipping. Lucky I ain’t got my gun, you hearing me?”

  “Not bloody guns again,” I groaned.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why you be following my Will?”

  There was something about the way she said my. The possession and protectiveness that I recognized...and hated.

  I wanted to tear out the bitch’s throat. And that? Terrified me.

  I shrank back, but not from her, rather from myself.

  Her eyes, however, lit up like she’d been the cause and was reveling in scaring the monster.

  Power: anyone who says that they don’t get off on it is a damn liar.

  She shoved me in the chest, hard enough to send me stumbling backwards into the freeze of the Thames with a splash.

  Sopping wet, I dragged myself up.

  A woman in a scarlet dress was drifting south on the currents. Shocked, I was about to dive after the woman (all right, so maybe I do have a hero complex), when I remembered Sun’s gift: the Alex Highbury-Lord dress. My reason for being out here and away from family. Why I was now bleeding out from my back and shivering like a bastard.

  Whilst Sun’s present wraith-floated away.

  Furious, I stalked out of the river. This time, I couldn’t stop the fangs shooting out.

  I hadn’t expected the giggles.

  The First Lifer clapped her hands together. “Drowned rat, innit?”

  Not exactly the big reveal moment. Deflated, I retracted my fangs, sweeping my dripping hair back from my forehead. Grumpily, I shrugged.

  “My mates — Will and others from the streets — we be close. Move to me, and you’ll get shanked. Again. Because we know what things be in the shadows.”

  “Do you now?”

  Her gaze was hard. “You eat us.”

  I shuffled my feet. I hadn’t figured on coming face-to-face with a hunter. We were the Lost: camouflaged predators.

  It looked like we were doing a piss poor job of it.

  Hunters weren’t meant to exist. No hunters, torches, or pitchforks. And if hunters did exist, this wasn’t how I’d imagined the meeting going down: an awkward chat, whilst I dripped with stinking Thames water.

  I circled the hunter, whilst she prowled around me. “Homeless kids like you…your hearts must give out all the time. Tragic.”

  “I’m poor; I ain’t stupid. Hidden in doorways: we see. We be invisible even to you. We watch and we die, the same as the suits and the rich bitches.” The hunter raised herself on tiptoe. Her lips were dry against my wet. “You suck us too. How we taste?”

  “Lighter,” my mouth brushed against hers at each word, but like a confession I couldn’t move back, “diet flavor. Not as rich.” The hunter slammed towards me. Her headbutt stunned me. “Truth,” I gritted out, “is never bloody easy, is it?”

  The hunter was breathing hard. “You ain’t like the others.”

  I rubbed my bruised head. “They’re not like me. No one’s like me. And I don’t eat you First Lifers anymore.”

  Confusion fluttered in her eyes. Then she grinned. “Who be you? A tamed bitch?”

  I burned to smash the knowing look off the hunter’s calculating face. “I’m Light and all I want is to get the little man safely back. He’s staying here? You’re keeping him…looking out for him? I am too.”

  But it was a lie because it wasn’t all I wanted. I bloody knew it.

  Somehow the hunter seemed to know it too. She gave me an intent stare, before nodding. “I be Trinity, and this be my yard. Will? He be blessed with us.”

  I glanced towards the dark mouth underneath the bridge.

  Will’s new home: with Trinity, her knives, guns, and crew. I tried to suppress my scowl. “If I skulk sometimes, are you cool with that?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, but you owe me another shank. Does Will know?”

  “What?”

  Her lip curled. “That he has a guardian angel.”

  I sighed as I shook the water from first one boot, and then the other, preparing for the long walk still left back to my home. I mustn’t forget the dawn: I didn’t reckon that my welcome to Trinity’s crew extended as far as sleepovers. “Don’t go calling me that, it’ll give God a coronary. And no, he doesn’t.”

  “Yeah, he does,” Will’s soft voice called.

  Bloody hell…

  Will poked his curly sunshine head out of the shadows. He was shaking from the cold; I’d have to nick him a wool coat next time. Then Will bounded towards me with a grin. “Safe, man, my own angel.”

  “For the last time, I am not an—”

  “So, what are you?” Will was beaming at me but then bemused, patted my arm. “Why are you wet?”

  “I felt like a swim. And let’s just say that I’m something you kiddies shouldn’t know about.”

  “Who you calling kiddie? I shanked you, bruv.” Trinity licked her lips.

  Will launched his slight form at Trinity. It would’ve been comical, if he hadn’t been in deadly earnest.

  Trinity held Will back with one hand and a bored expression, before finally snapping, “Enough, boy.”

  I scooped Will around the waist, spinning him to face me. His eyes were gleaming like he was fighting to hold back tears. “None of that. There’s no harm done, except there’s a bloody big…”

  I shucked off my jacket…and found Will stroking over the hole with light touches.

  He peeked at me shyly. “I can fix it and that if...?”

  I glanced at him in surprise. “That’d be blinding, cheers.”

  I wondered if Will felt it too: this belonging. A need for family after a lifetime of rejection, loss, and abandonment. I needed that more than anything; I reckoned maybe — just maybe — Will was the same.

  Fantasies.

  We live in dreams our whole lives. It’s why we can convince ourselves of anything.

  Trinity was considering me thoughtfully. “If you ain’t feeding, then you be in the market for blood. Come to my yard to see your boy, then we talk. Maybe we can come to an arrangement?”

  Redemption?

  Sometimes the choices we make for our family mean that we sacrifice personal morals, even our chance of being saved.

  The following week, I held a cup of human blood in my hands for the first time in over fifty years.

  “Don’t hog the blood, man.’ Donovan jittered on his seat like an excited toddler.

  I took a single lick, like a cat, at the red liquid, blinking rapidly, before passing the brimming disposable coffee cup over to Donovan.

  Donovan was quivering with need and excitement. He vibrated with an addict’s first hit after years of forced abstention. H
e was already flying from the smell alone.

  We were huddled on the dusty oak floorboards of our tiny apartment. We’d stuck strips of cardboard to the windows: now we lived in a perpetual twilight. The stars were lost; we couldn’t see the bright open tapestry of the skies.

  You’ve no idea how much that booted me in the balls. Because locked in the dark, I’d dream of freedom, and it’d looked just like the crystal sharp night sky.

  The apartment’s walls were painted sky blue (as if to compensate). They were punched with random holes. Faint screams and creative strings of swear words floated up from the couple below us. Somewhere a baby wailed.

  The electricity was off again: three cheers for the slum landlords of London.

  We’d balanced candles in used teacups, and the flames cast wild shadows. Sun had been narked that we couldn’t afford scented candles, so I’d nicked a load the next time that I’d been in the City. Except, they’d been incense, and now the apartment stank like a medieval cathedral.

  We’d shoved the one sunken scarlet sofa back and were sitting in a Wiccan circle: the only time that we felt truly safe.

  Hartford’s navy sleeping bag stuck out from behind the sofa because after a decade of imprisonment he could still only sleep in confined spaces. Donovan? He drank, smoked whacky backy, stripped and shagged more than the psychotic bastard ever had because that’s one escape.

  Me? I had the nightmares.

  You can free a slave, but if you don’t free his mind, then he’ll always be in chains.

  Donovan was taking these quick, panting breaths. “Human, right on. I never reckoned that you’d…” He glanced down at the thick crimson.

  I bit my lip. “It’s ethically sourced. So, no snacking on humans, I mean it. This is all there is for now.”

  With difficulty, Donovan nodded. Then he passed the coffee cup to Hartford, without even taking a sip. I couldn’t help noticing how hard his hand trembled.

  “Aw, that java for me, baby?” Hartford took a deep swig.

  Then I had to dive for the cup.

  Donovan caught Hartford around the shaking shoulders. Hartford’s eyes rolled back, as he juddered like he was demon possessed.

  Alarmed, Donovan stared at me. “It’s hurting him.”

  “It happened to me,” I couldn’t meet Sun’s eye, “when I was with Master. Human blood after so long. He’ll be alright by tomorrow.”