“Assimilate? Are you a secret nerd? Just think about this: isn’t your real fear that your family are abandoning you? As you’ve always been abandoned?” I wrestled away from Blake’s forceful grip as I glared at him. I didn’t give two sods that he was right. I’d lost too much, both in First and Blood Life, to lose my newly created family as well to this bastard and to Plantagenet. “Or,” Blake whispered conspiratorially, “is the real fear that you should never have had a family? Now you’ve found your true home for the first time, and everyone fits here except you.”
I turned on my heel in silence, marching away before I could risk falling. The alien punchbags batted at me, as I passed.
“I told you that I knew my guests better than they knew themselves,” Blake called after me, “and by the way? Yes, you can have a tour of Revolution Evolutionary. I don’t know why you didn’t just ask. Anyone would think that you were scared of me.”
The following evening, I stared at the photo of Mr Darwin, which was projected across all four walls of RE Headquarters on his knuckles. As I watched, he stood erect, transforming into a purple suited Blake. The Ascent of Man: evolution’s purest propaganda.
Kallis giggled. “It was Mr Blake’s idea. Neat, huh?”
Blake dropped to all fours, and the cycle started again. Christ, help me.
Kallis had collected me from the lifts in her slip-on green shoes, which had honeycomb soles that tap tapped along the hard floors.
“Kallis,” she’d purred (although it’d come out more as a rattle of phlegm). She’d rapped a finger heavy with paint and wooden rings, which were like cavemen sweets, down my chest in jerky spasms, “it means beauty in ancient Greek.”
“Good on your mum, love, brave woman.” I’d caught her fingers, giving them a squeeze, before pushing them away from tracing patterns down my t-shirt.
Now Kallis was leading me into the central department of RE Headquarters, which was on the bottom floor of Blake’s whale-like building. It seemed that they worked night shifts here as much as day. It was as if we were adventuring into an indoor town. There were no cubicles, offices, or meeting rooms.
It turns out that Blake was into the whacky unconventional.
There was a tearoom and patisserie with damask upholstered chairs, which were slap-bang next to stools and a trestle desk that was big enough for each worker to be private but still part of the RE community, with clip-on lamps and plastic shelves. Moon lights, which were like alien ships, hovered overhead.
Everything was in shades of green, including the hologram RE, which was projected up from the center.
And me? I was the risen Messiah.
I froze — cat caught doing the unmentionable — when the workers stopped and stared. Except for those who whispered and pointed. Or the bloke who dropped to his knees.
He was my favorite.
“What’s all this then?” I mouthed.
Kallis raised a radio device, and instantly her voice boomed through the open-plan office. “Back to work people.” Just like that the clockwork drones in slogan t-shirts were reset. “How often do you see a myth? Your hero? The heart of what you’ve dedicated your life’s work to?”
“Come again?”
“Take me.” Kallis wrapped her fingers around my wrist. “I dropped my Stanford degree, family…hell, I dropped everything. We all did to join RE. Blake headhunted us from forums, closed groups, or our Internet histories because of what we believe, as much as what we can do. We wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s a genius, and this is our home.”
“You’re the Renegades.” I yanked my hand free. “The whole company?”
“Now wouldn’t that be awesome? Just headquarters, of course, silly.” Kallis seized me forcefully by the arm, before leading me further into the futuristic town, her rings clicking. “Now having one of the Blood Three visit…”
“Look, one of us is crazy here because I don’t know what you’re talking about.” As I passed, the Renegades would sneak glances, hidden behind piles of files, coffee mugs, or their laptops. I shivered.
“Hartford, Donovan, and you. You saved the Blood Lifers. You’re the Originals: The Blood Three.” Kallis’ eyes burned feverishly. “The website on Tor? That’s how most of us discovered about Blood Lifers. Before that it was only whispers across the globe. Until Blake, that is. There was always one name though: Our Light.” Suddenly Kallis’ lips were touching mine. “Our Light…”
Like an incantation, it was taken up around the room, “Our Light, Our Light, Our Light…”
Cold with panic, I stumbled backwards.
Christ in heaven, what had I done?
We weren’t heroes, myths or examples for First Lifers to copy in their rose-tinted berkdom. We’d simply been Blood Lifers seeking vengeance…justice for our enslavement. It’d been a warning for all other slavers.
Not a blueprint for baby terrorists.
But life has a way of biting you on the arse.
“Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if Blood Sun dropped in too?” Kallis clapped her hands together. “Mistress and slave united together. You know, it made me cry when—”
“She’s not my mistress,” I growled.
That’s when I recognized them: the slogans on the workers’ t-shirts.
REBEL HERE, YEAH?
EVERYBODY KNOWS WORDS CAN NEVER HURT THEM…
I’M THE BLOODY SUPERHERO.
Buggering…bollocking…sodding hell.
“Where. Is. It?” I stalked towards Kallis.
She fiddled with her rings. “What’s the problem?”
“The t-shirts...? The phrases on them…?”
“Aren’t they awesome?” Kallis struggled out of her baggy sweater, trapping her arms, before triumphantly thrusting her tits at me, which were emblazoned with the words: YOU CAN’T FLAY A REBEL’S SOUL.
I hadn’t reckoned that you could flay a rebel’s Soul. But I was wrong. Because they’d violated my most personal memories and thoughts for their own First Lifer entertainment.
I twirled around, diving under the trestle table with a snarl. A bird shrieked, and a bloke wailed. They wanted a Blood Lifer, did they? Our Light?
Then I’d let them have him.
A siren was spinning and wailing. Kallis was calling my name, but I wasn’t with her any longer. I was back in Primrose Hill, sitting in a dining room with a mural of gentle hills and rivers; there were my Manx cats to find and count and the sun to touch. Buttery cream pages were laid out before me, with the scent of Italian calf leather.
Then I was writing…
I didn’t notice the tears or Kallis and the other workers forming a barrier to hold back the security team, stopping them from shooting me. That was only after.
Instead…? I was hunting, searching, and ransacking the headquarters because I was certain that Blake and his Renegades would’ve kept the book like a trophy, when they discovered it amongst my things.
The bloody bastard.
I caught a glimpse of the RE hologram, and just like that, I knew.
I launched myself at the case, which was projecting the logo, and when I smashed it with my fist, it sprang open.
There, like a holy relic, was The Slave Journal of Light.
My journal.
I rocked back on my heels, cradling the papers to my chest and smelling the leather. For the first time in months everything was real. The Grayse of these pages was dead, but I had Sun. This was all happening: Donovan was taken, pure death was a reality and Blake...?
We were his bleeding prisoners.
When I felt Kallis’ soft touch on my shoulder, I looked up. Only then did I realize that my cheeks were wet, security were being held back by a bunch of office workers, and headquarters was trashed.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
Kallis beamed. “That was epic! The journal is yours anyway. Blake should never have… We shouldn’t have taken it. In case you haven’t guessed? Every one of us would bleed out for you. You’re Our Light.”
> And if that didn’t scare me, then nothing would.
When I stood across from Blake in his office, he surveyed me coolly.
“I hear you destroyed headquarters?” He asked.
“It turns out that you had something of mine.’ I held up the journal.
Blake made to take it, but I snatched it back close to my heart. No way was Blake contaminating it again.
Kallis had led me into the second cone of the building, after a furious bark through the radio from Blake’s secretary.
Blake’s office was a mix of extreme surreal and minimalism. The walls were warped science fiction like being stuck in a cosmic comic battle, but there was no furniture, except a giant mahogany desk, which had something etched into its surface (even upside down the pattern looked uncomfortably familiar), and a black leather chair: Blake’s.
Keeping the other bloke standing was a classic trick to reduce him to sniveling schoolboy in front of the headmaster.
I wasn’t taking a caning.
Blake sprawled back in his chair; it creaked. “There’s some good reading in there. Really heart-wrenching.”
I clenched my jaw. “Sod off.”
Blake smiled slyly. “My name is Light…my name is Light…my name is…”
This time, I bit my tongue to hold back the fangs. “Again, sod off.”
Blake smiled around those perfect white teeth. “It made my workers’ lives to read that. Be generous. We’re fighting to stop your extinction. This is a crusade for them.”
“That’s what I’m frightened of.”
Blake assessed me. “Did you know that us humans aren’t unique? Once there were four others, just as advanced? Yet they died out. It was luck alone that allowed our survival. We may even have made contact with these others. Maybe we’ve made contact many times with Blood Lifers too?”
“And your point?”
‘Listen, then maybe you’ll learn something, like how only one percent of DNA divides humans and chimps.”
I rolled my eyes. “Bleeding important one percent.”
Blake’s laugh set my teeth on edge. “It makes you wonder: by how much are First and Blood truly divided? You see, before they died out, we’d already interbred with those four species. We’d adopted their babies, raided, and raped their women. There’s no such thing as pure blood: we’re all mongrels.”
I examined him carefully. “And this has to do with me how?”
“We’ve been running tests on Plantagenet. I want your blood and venom too. I intend to see if there’s a genetic connection between some ancient ancestor, or if we interbred—”
“Now hang on a tick,” I thumped the desk; I hadn’t noticed how fast my heart was thundering, until I couldn’t catch my breath, “I’ve seen where this type of science leads, and it’s not anywhere good.”
Blake pulled at his cuffs. “The world’s moved on.”
“Don’t fool yourself. Folks are just as hysterical, fearful, and tribal as they ever were. Plus, I’m nobody’s lab rat.” My gaze hardened. “Plantagenet? He’s a Magnificoe. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but if you want to study us? Start there, not sticking us with needles and reducing us to spiraling strands of DNA.”
“Everything comes down to evolution.” Blake stroked the etched surface of his desk.
“You know what? We’ve evolved beyond the need to interbreed. We’re a life born of fangs. It’s in the venom. Death and life, it’s all the same to us.” I followed Blake’s finger, as it traced the tangled web of a…branching tree.
Everything blurred, until I was back strapped to a medical examining table: naked, starving, and with a snaking IV…the stand stamped with a black tree logo.
I grasped onto the edge of the desk, willing myself to keep my mouth shut.
Blake, however, had noticed my gaze.
“True evolution,” he crowed, “isn’t linear. It has unequal survival, extinction, and an unpredictable end.” He rapped on the table. “So, a branching tree for my personal logo: my private deals only. It’s merely a little joke.”
But it meant that Blake had been the supplier to my torturers and Will’s murderers, rather than my savior, and I wasn’t bloody laughing.
Sun laughed. “Blood Sun? Am I, like, in The Matrix?”
“You’re missing the point. That tosser’s private logo was all over the research lab where I was sliced and diced. The one that’s developing pure death.” I pulled Sun closer into the Wiccan circle with Hartford and me, until all our foreheads were touching. Our breaths dragon misted in the cold air.
I’d called Hartford and Sun up to the flat roof, amongst the flowers, casual as if I’d been arranging a picnic, rather than a war summit. The wind stole our words, masking them from the CCTV.
I hoped.
“I told you that we should blow this joint,” Hartford whispered fiercely. “This whole empire business is dodgy.”
“Na-ah, there’s a whole other side to RE that you just don’t get on account of you’ve been Blood Lifers so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human,” Sun insisted.
I couldn’t fault Sun’s brutal honesty, or the way that it shanked me right through the sodding heart.
“And you?” Hartford held out his hand, and I took it tenderly. But Sun kept her hands at her side, and I had to fight not to snatch hold of her anyway but I wouldn’t become like Ruby. “Talk nonsense because you haven’t been a Blood Lifer long enough to know what it is to live as the Lost.”
And I couldn’t fault Hartford’s honesty either.
I peered beyond the roof at the laced ivy heart, which webbed over the pale moon’s face. We were in jail but since when did we have to act like prisoners?
“We’re the Blood Three.” I glanced between Hartford and Sun, willing them both to understand. “We started this terrorism against the slavers. We didn’t mean to but we did, so we have to stay and figure it out, either stop Blake or help the Renegades…I don’t bleeding well know, do I? But we do it together, as family.”
I reached for Sun’s hand, but she pulled back. My chest ached so hard that I thought I couldn’t breathe. Then she wrenched away, breaking the Wiccan circle.
Breaking us.
Breaking.
10
NIGHT 10
I need not remind you that only four nights remain.
Then don’t. A counting clock of doom brings a bloke down.
A man cheating me makes me not care. Where was your secret yesterday?
And where’s my ciggie today?
Waiting on a missing secret.
Fun as your game is, Liberty, I don’t play games, not over love or death.
Then it appears that you do break promises.
You broke yours first: how many days with Captain must I… After suffering his torture, which you refuse to stop, do you reckon that I’ll still dance to your tune? I can barely stand. Now don’t get all prissy, with your rustling papers and whatnot, as if I suddenly don’t exist.
If you can’t keep me safe, then you don’t have a witness.
Look, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try and see if I can at least reduce…
As long as it’s ratified in triplicate first?
We can’t all be rebels.
Try it on for size sometime. I reckon that it’d suit you.
Let me be sure that I have this straight. If I do something about Captain’s sessions, then you’ll bear witness?
It’s all about choices. We have as many as there are stars in the sky, if we’d only look up from the ground to see them.
The stars were accusing eyes, furious and cruel. In the clear night sky, just turning to spring, they burned.
Yet I was out of RE, free and away from Blake. In the fresh (all right polluted) London air, but it was my London, which was the only thing that counted.
I knew that I was being tracked; I’d immediately spotted the two First Lifers tailing me.
It was out on London Bridge, however, my own turf, as the
cabs coughed by and the Thames silver-licked underneath, that I realized a bloke needed distance. When you’re caught in a trap, it’s hard to see the bastard who’s set it or the way out.
Sun had pulled back.
When I ran my hand through my hair, there was my wrist — empty without Will’s bracelet.
Breaking.
I was a moron for reckoning that I was free of any trap. Blake’s First Lifers were waiting for me on the other side of the bridge.
And Will was dead.
Where was Mutt? I was flooded with guilt, when I thought of her shaggy black-and-white face and her bravery, as she’d leapt to Will’s defense against the world. Then I imagined Blake’s expression, if I brought an adopted dog into his pristine home of silk sheets and designer sofas.
I’d like to see Mr Darwin try to bully his new brother…
Mutt was also something of Will’s, I could admit that. Not him, but a memory. I needed that, at least.
Whistling to myself, I jumped down the side of the embankment in a crunching avalanche of sand. There was a holler on either side of me; Blake’s wankers hadn’t been expecting that.
I laughed, before I choked. Barbed wire was looped around my throat. I could feel it slicing through skin. One tug, and I’d be headless.
“What’s happening, cuz?” Trinity’s lips were hot against my ear. When she twisted the wire, I gasped. “You come like a tourist to my yard, acting all guardian angel. Then my Will goes missing. Where’s my Will, Mr Angel Man?”
I blinked back tears. “I only came to fetch Mutt.”
“Why?” Trinity demanded. “Because you want to eat him too? I knew that you were going to switch on us. This be because I made you drink my Will’s blood, innit?”
And just like that I was crying. For Will: the life born of my fangs that never was.
I knew Trinity was going to do it. Pull that wire. She’d meant to the moment that she’d wrapped it around my throat.
It turns out that the myth about vampire hunters wasn’t bollocks after all.
I was only still breathing because Trinity was desperate and terrified that I’d tell her Will was dead but she had to know for sure. Although she was wrong that I’d drained him, she was also right that he’d died because of me. It was going to break her, the same as it had me.
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 74