The lips curled into a smile. “Well-beloved.”
Then Plantagenet, who was Ruby and Donovan’s Author and more powerful than any Blood Lifer that I’d ever met, dashed me backwards one – two – three times.
As I fell towards the long dark only one word spiraled on cruel accusing repeat: Sun, Sun, Sun…
Then everything went black.
7
NIGHT 7
You fear the dark, Mr Blickle, yet do you not also fear the flames?
The thing about me, sweetheart? I’ll never tire of staring into the glorious heart of the fire. The dancing, surging, freedom of those flames.
I don’t fear death, only slavery.
In First Life you were a bright up-and-coming barrister. When I was elected, Ruby saved me from death. But how was Captain saving you? From what was he freeing you?
I didn’t need saving. I was happy.
Then it sounds to me like he stole your First Life.
I once knew a Blood Lifer who believed in electing only the best, as if he was picking from a sweet shop. Advancement of the evolutionary superior. Aralt wanted to take over the world.
Most Plantagenets author differently. We burrow underneath to the enslaved: by families, societies, or themselves. Then we offer to show them a glorious new world because it turns out that Blood Life is freedom. It’s not a loss.
Is that how you authored Sun?
Sun was different. Not electing her would’ve been the loss, even if I lost her to a Blood Life world whose darkness she dived into in a way that I couldn’t follow.
Pain…but that was nothing new. I groaned.
The sudden memory flooded me of having my head smashed in by Plantagenet, which was an interesting response to meeting your long-lost descendant for the first time.
My eyes snapped open, and I sat bolt upright in…bed?
Bollocks.
I gripped the silk sheets higher up my chest, like a naked woman in some romcom after a one-night stand. Not that I had any modesty left to preserve.
I carefully glanced around the cavernous bedroom. There was the cloying scent of cherry blossoms and no windows.
Blood Lifer adaptations 101.
The dark gray walls were in that rich pigment, which bounces back until your temples ache, and the carpets were in a stylish shade of biscuit.
Yet there was something off, as if the building was breathing, growing — evolving.
A spiderwebbed moon light cast me in twilight. The bedside tables had stainless steel bases but curled with spirals of petals. Two oversized vases stood like sentinels either side of the (thank Christ) open door. One was black and painted with skeletal flowers. The other? A forest of green. They both had an unnerving beauty. The lilies inserted into their branches transformed the vases into blossoming trees.
I glanced at the clothes that were laid on the bottom of the bed. Black jeans and a t-shirt? At least Plantagenet knew what I liked, even if he was a psycho wanker.
My blood screamed then, punishing me for fighting the pull to Plantagenet. His charisma and the memory of his lips on mine throbbed through me. Plantagenet would be one hell of a cult leader, except I reckoned that it was more than that. He was a Magnificoe, a Long-lived like Hartford. I’d felt the power in Hartford too, but he hadn’t been my blood.
And it always comes back to blood.
Yet Plantagenet hadn’t even allowed me to speak, before he’d dominated me and taken away my choice. He’d silenced me instead. I refused to exchange one gag for another.
I’d burned Aralt in the sun, when he’d been head of my family. Rebel here, yeah?
If Plantagenet hadn’t also saved Sun from those First Lifers...? Then he was going to wish that I’d burned him like Aralt.
Resolved, I dragged on my jeans, before easing the t-shirt over my head. Someone had washed the blood out of my hair, in fact, had cleaned every inch of me.
Considerate of them.
There were no socks or motorcycle boots. You forget how reduced you are in bare feet. Still, it was blinding for sneaking, and I was on a sneak mission.
I edged to the door, peeking out.
There was a long silent corridor with matching biscuit floors and gray walls. I slipped out into the corridor. It stretched like some wealthy bloke’s idea of the walk to heaven. In hunt mode, I made no sound on the thick carpets.
Silence.
Then Ronson’s distorted Les Paul guitar riffs…drums…and that voice. “Ziggy Starburst” exploded in joyous eccentricity: a glam space fantasy.
I blinked. All right then, not what I was expecting. I felt as far from home as Ziggy.
A splash of light in enchanted pale green washed from an open door.
I glanced over my shoulder, before stalking shadow to shadow to the fairy light. With my eye to the gap, I let my fangs descend as I raised my fists.
Now I was bloody ready.
The room was like forest baroque, as if a world had sprung alive amidst twenty-first century tech. Steel, iron, and titanium, but swarming with butterflies, moths, and flowers. It was a breathing animal that could swallow you. There were screens of ivy in waves, and in the very middle was a huge bed, which was big enough for…
Sun: she was dressed at least but back in Alex Highbury-Lord pencil skirt and cashmere top. Plantagenet: at least I guessed it was him by the flicker of gold eyes. Black curls cascaded to his waist. And some tosser who I didn’t know (and was twice my size), in Savile Row purple suit, his haircut so precise that it could’ve been scientific — the billionaire to match the pad — like a First Lifer god in the center.
The First Lifer’s jacket was thrown over a Louis XIV upholstered chair, his crisp white sleeves were rolled back, and his arms held out Christ-like (if Christ had been in ecstasy, rather than agony).
Sun and Plantagenet were on either side of the First Lifer, licking and nuzzling at shallow cuts along his arms: blood sharing. Their eyes were rolled to white, as they juddered.
Lost.
Me? I was the poor git peeping in at the door.
And this? Meant the loss of my elected because I’d seen this before. Blood sharing was sacrosanct. Yet Sun had broken it with one of our own. Worse? She was awake but she hadn’t been there when I’d awoken.
Had she even seen me, her own Author, since the rescue?
I craved to rent the world…that First Lifer…all three of them…in two. Donovan, however, was still kidnapped, and I’d made a promise.
So instead, I slowly pushed open the door. “Alright?”
The three glanced up like they were doing no more than sipping tea together.
The First Lifer smiled. “Our sleepy head awakes. You’re too late to join the party.”
I clenched my jaw. “Pity that.” I took a step forward, before realizing that my fangs were still out; I battled to force them back in. “Sun, love, do you mind telling me, whether you’re all in one piece after our adventure?”
At last, Sun drew back from the human’s muscled arm. Crimson dribbled down her chin; she licked it off luxuriously. I suddenly realized that she’d never drunk directly from a human before.
Bloody hell, what were they thinking? She was flying, of course she was. She was too young in Blood Life to be played like this. How was I ever going to…? I flinched when I imagined the word leash. But Sun unleashed? She’d be a wild Blood Lifer as fierce as Ruby.
I’d never wanted that for Grayse…bugger it…Sun.
“Want to try?” Sun gestured at the bloke’s arm, as if it was an ice cream. “It makes you, like, see the stars.”
The businessman let out a bark of laughter.
I winced. “Blinding, sweetheart, but I’ve seen the stars: the real ones. And right now? I want a quiet word with Plantagenet.”
Plantagenet looked up from his licking. His lips curved into a smile, but his eyes were steel. He kissed the businessman teasingly, then — sodding hell — Sun too.
I bounced up and down on my toes, strugglin
g to control the fighting instinct.
Plantagenet swung himself onto the edge of the bed. Only then did it register that he was naked. His slight body was a piss annoyingly perfect warm Mediterranean olive. He raised an eyebrow.
Blushing, I turned around. Still, that meant Plantagenet had been naked in front of Sun. I cut my tongue when my fang partially shot out. I whimpered, trying to hide it with a cough, as I sucked at the hole.
“I’m Jamie Blake, by the way,” came a lazy drawl, “but most people call me Blake.”
I already had some other names for the First Lifer…but for once, I kept my mouth shut.
Suddenly, there was a hand on my shoulder, and I was yanked around, so fast that I stumbled. Oranges and cypress wove their spell. Then Plantagenet’s neat hands were on my waist, steadying me.
I gasped, when I noticed a flash of silver: a ring on Plantagenet’s left hand. A slave ring…?
Plantagenet was a slave?
So, that meant that Blake was...?
I hadn’t realized that I was snarling, until Plantagenet took my chin hard between his fingers. “My dear child, calm yourself. What is done, is done. We must reshape the future, not bewail the past.”
“You’re a sodding slave?” I growled.
I didn’t miss Plantagenet’s glance back at Blake, or Blake’s returning nod, before he answered, “Was, well-beloved. But I did not suffer at Master’s hand, as you and so many others did.”
I took in Plantagenet’s clothes: the bloke was barely dressed. He wore a silk white catsuit, slashed to the navel. He was nothing but smooth golden skin and black curls. Two guesses who’d chosen it for him.
He had bare feet too, like me.
Yet those two lounging on the bed…? Sun was wearing embossed leather platforms, just as Blake was smart in black Oxfords.
I could’ve bleeding wept.
“I wished to train Plantagenet myself,” Blake chipped in.
I scowled. “Not helping your case, mate.”
“Indeed, Jamie did take me in hand.” Plantagenet arched his brow. “But believe me, he discovered it not as easy as he'd bethought.”
Sun snorted. “Fricking join the club.”
Blake wrapped his arm around Sun, as she burrowed down onto his shoulder, like master and mistress shaking their heads over the daftness of slaves.
I bristled, until Plantagenet shook my chin, and I was lost in his gold gaze again. “Yet love? We’re all her slaves, are we not? Master and slave alike? God’s heart, I never bethought to follow Cupid’s path to a First Lifer. Never that. For Jamie this was…it was new as well. Do not blame him: he’s the reason for your freedom.”
“That right, is it?”
“He saw those most despicable pictures of you and the others. The ones that you uploaded, whereby none may pretend ignorance of the infamy, and it changed him.”
I wrenched away from Plantagenet.
He’d seen. Blake too. Ironic because that was what I’d planned, when I’d hollered the truth of the slavery empire onto the Tor Network.
Yet to finally meet the mythologized Plantagenet and revered ancestor of my line, only for him to have witnessed my greatest degradation and abuse was more humiliating than I’d imagined possible.
I twisted away, stumbling out of the green, green, green, sinking in the spidery strains of David Bowie and my own hot shame.
“Stay, my well-beloved,” Plantagenet called, concerned. “What ails you? You flame bright, not break at words.”
“You don’t know me,” I hissed, not understanding why tears burned and threatened to fall. I’d never known Plantagenet and yet something ached at suddenly discovering him like this. Ruby had chosen her Blood Lifer family over me and Plantagenet it seemed had done the same because in all the years of my existence, he’d never bothered to find me out, until now. “Where have you been? A hundred years is a long time to be missing.”
I sensed the sudden tension behind me. Note to brain: Magnificoe here…he could snap me in half with one of those small hands.
Instead, Plantagenet bounced around in front of me with his curls flying. To my shock, he was grinning. When he grabbed my hands, I fought not to flinch back. “Then we must make up, must we not? You are the true rebel in this war with the evil doers. We’ve merely taken up your standard.”
You know when suddenly the penny drops? And you sodding wish that it hadn’t?
“You’re the Renegades?” I breathed.
“Guilty as charged,” Blake smirked.
“And…” I squeezed Plantagenet’s hand, “you’re the leader?”
Please…no…don’t let him say it…
Plantagenet dragged me close, snaking his arms around my neck and caressing the hair at the base of my neck, as he swayed to the beat, beat, beat of the drums and blast of guitars with his hips tight to mine, and sod it was it hard to remember that I don’t dance. “In the country of the blind,” he whispered hot into my ear, “the one-eyed man is king.” Then he chuckled, low and sensuous.
“Good on you,” bugger, bugger, bugger, “but let’s just slow things down and rewind.” I reluctantly pushed Plantagenet back, and he let me. I could never move him if he didn’t. He looked shocked, however, and hurt. I wondered how often his spell was fought. “The other night at that lab, there was…a young bloke. At least…” I tried not to think about the black body bag. “I would’ve told you, if you hadn’t gone all caveman. We need to go back and find him…”
“Family?” Plantagenet was frowning.
“Bloody well he is.”
Plantagenet’s eyes widened, before he bowed his head. “Then I have offended, and as high heaven is my witness—”
“Na-ah, no way you’re going back there on account of some First Lifer pet. Either of you. You’re soft if you reckon I’ll let that happen.” Sun shook her hand in the air imperiously. “The boy’s not family.”
I stared at Sun. I remembered every moment that I’d suffered in the lab thinking of her, loving her, and taking the pain for her.
I wish love wasn’t so bleeding blind.
“A First Lifer?” Plantagenet’s frown deepened.
“What’s Blake then?” I growled in frustration. “An ape in a suit? Hang on a tick, yeah — he is.”
Plantagenet’s backhand slammed me so far across the room that I smashed through the ivy screen. I sprawled on the floor; the scent of cherry blossoms was coppery now. I licked at the blood on my lips as I hauled myself around.
Plantagenet was fidgeting on the spot and eying Blake worriedly.
Interesting.
“Well, help him up then,” Blake ordered.
Plantagenet rushed to lift me to my feet: Christ, he was strong. He gave an apologetic shrug.
Blake stroked Sun’s hair. “Plantagenet isn’t so keen on people insulting me. He’s a good guard dog.”
“And me?” I turned my gaze on Blake. “I’m not so keen on folks calling Blood Lifers mutts.”
There was a warm wetness on my mouth… Plantagenet was licking the blood from my lips kittenish.
I guess I did always say waste not, want not.
“Your boy?” Plantagenet’s breath gusted against my mouth, although his gaze had hardened. I shivered. “My apologies, but he is not of need to our mission. It’s a piteous look you bestow upon me, but a leader must make sacrifices. Make no bones about it, I shall.”
“Not your sacrifices though, are they?”
I wondered then, when I’d be of no more need, and it’d be my turn to be sacrificed.
“It’s my responsibility,” solemnly Plantagenet studied the ring on his finger, “to free all slaves. To work until this unfair world has equal rights for Blood and First alike.”
‘Equal…what now?’ I spluttered, pulling back from Plantagenet.
“Light…” I heard Sun’s warning from the bed.
All right then, so my zealot of an ancestor was all for thrusting his hand into the fire too, but something had been niggling at me
from the moment that I woke up. “What I can’t figure is how you found Sun and me at that sick research lab?”
That quick glance by Plantagenet back to Blake again; I wondered if he even knew that he did it, or whether he was so conditioned that it was now automatic.
Blake stretched, before casually swiping the last crimson off his arms to Sun, who sucked it with orgasmic fervor, and then turned his sleeves back down. He leapt up from the bed, sauntering to Plantagenet: a giant and his captured fairy folk. “Hartford,” Blake’s expression was hard and blank, transformed to all business. “This Blood Lifer shows up at the door. He knows about the Blood Club and Plantagenet and he spins a tale about having discovered us via hacked names. Then an even more unlikely one about both you and some elected having disappeared. He thinks that we’ll help find you.”
I cocked my head, even as my pulse pounded at the fear of what had happened to Hartford because why wasn’t he up here snuggling with Sun and Plantagenet? “And you jump to help, just like that?”
Plantagenet stared at the carpet, refusing to look up.
Blake swung his jacket off the armchair, sliding his arms into it, like cutting through water, in the way that only the super-rich ever manage. “We take precautions. To some? We’re not freedom fighters: we’re terrorists. Our identities are secret for a reason. It could have been a trick or a trap to lure us—”
‘Where’s Hartford?’ I demanded.
Silence.
I glanced at Sun, who was avoiding my eye, with her knees drawn up to her chest. “You knew about this? Have you seen him then?”
Sun shrugged.
“That’s not really an answer, princess. Just take me to Hartford.”
Plantagenet nodded.
I caught Plantagenet by the arm. “I don’t give a rat’s arse if you’re my grandfather…whatever…Long-lived…Magnificoe. If Hartford’s not alright, then we’re going to have a barney.”
When Plantagenet led me to Hartford, I knew that something terrible had been done to him.
The first clue? Plantagenet hadn’t come into the room with me. The second? The room was a bleeding BDSM dungeon: chains, paddles, and spanking benches. Unlike Master’s training room, however, it had the pristine feel of folks who played at it, rather than the cold cruelty of a slave trafficker who knew how to break a man.
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 68