“More like a team bonding session.”
I recoiled. “Bloody hell, why don’t I just prance naked through the office?” Then I regretted the outburst because of the way three pairs of eyes lit up, although for entirely different reasons. “You all forgave the wanker? Trust him?”
Kallis’ expression hardened. “Never. I told you though, we arrive here by different paths and we have no other home. Now Fernando’s the same.”
“He doesn’t touch me: rule one.” I pointed at Fernando and hated the way that my finger shook. “Rule two? You tell me right quick why I don’t rip out his throat and none of this team bollocks.”
“Whoa, always the drama queen.” When Fernando pushed Kallis out of the way, there he was: the bloke who’d betrayed me into the hands of my torturers. Who’d started all of this out of jilted love, when I no longer even knew if Sun loved me.
Except, everything had been set in motion long before Fernando had made his choice, one that’d ended in Will’s death by my venom. One small choice, after one small choice. Fernando had been caught in a web, which had been spun by someone or something too large to see. Yet if you traced those silk threads back…
Suddenly it was so obvious.
Ivor’s research lab must be owned by the Blood Life Council, the same as the CIE: that’s how Blood Lifers were sanctioned as lab rats. And lucky old me, with Hartford left on the outside to keep up the search for the Renegades, desperate to get Donovan back, it would’ve been like lighting a fire under the arses of your enemy, by leaving me as bait for the Renegades to rescue.
I was the trophy for either side: Our Light.
I’d made the ultimate mistake. I’d underestimated the enemy. Captain was even more conniving than I’d reckoned.
“I’m still waiting on rule two,” I snarled.
“I get it, straight down to business. I respect that.” Fernando leant closer, almost touching but not quite. I tensed. “Because I’m the guy working on the antidote to the separated venoms.” I startled, bumping our noses. Fernando chuckled. “Hey, come on, no touching now.”
“You’ve got a second chance here. Only one mind. We have some heroics ahead. So, the question is: are you in on the rebellion or not?’ I demanded.
“It’s not like I ever wanted to kill any…humans.” Fernando’s gaze slid from mine. “But I can’t just magic a solution…”
“I’ll pretend that I didn’t hear that first bit. Have you tried primroses for the paralysis? Maybe there are other natural antidotes to the pure death. Everything doesn’t always come down to Blake’s science of the future.”
When Kallis stroked my arm, I glanced around: security, along with a fuming Blake with Mr Darwin clinging around his neck.
Another round of playing monkey chew toy then…
I saluted Kallis and marched out of that Komodo graveyard, before I could be hauled away.
A bloke's got to have his dignity.
And a plan.
The truly blinding part, however, was that for the first time, I did.
I didn’t even care when Mr Darwin pushed me out of bed again that night. Let him gloat.
My time was coming.
11
NIGHT 11
There are only three nights until the trial. I can’t simply let you die in someone else’s place. Not now. You could save yourself if you simply testified against—
Plantagenet’s not guilty, at least, not in the way that you mean. Blake? He’s a First Lifer. Do you reckon that the Council’s leaders would believe that a human could make fools out of them?
But our procedures are flawed. The whole system is…
Bollocks?
Quite. Blood Life is not what I’d imagined it would be and nor is Captain. I’ve investigated your claims about Fernando, the CIE, and the research labs, and it’d appear that you weren’t lying.
Is that a fancy way of saying that I was telling the truth? Well, doesn’t that throw a spanner in the works or does it still change nothing? I burn, and my witness is censored or buried, whilst you sit in silence.
Do you ever grow weary of thinking that you know everything?
Why? Do you?
Sometimes. Then someone came along. A terrorist, traitor, and Renegade. The most irresponsible anarchist who has ever spread chaos and carnage through Blood Life. A multiple murderer of his own kin—
All right, sweetheart, you’re not painting me in my most flattering light here.
Then I actually meet you and I come to understand that my Author was wrong. In fact, everything that I believed was wrong. Yet none of that matters because indeed you will still burn, and there’s no way that I can save you.
There’s always a way, we simply have to want it enough.
As a slave I was a product. Captain sees all Blood Lifers as products, however, merely useful weapons, pets, or scalpels.
To Captain, you’re the office stationery.
You have no idea, either what I am or what I could be.
Then show me.
I’ll continue to give you my witness, if you promise to sodding show me what you truly are.
“Abso-bloody-lutely perfect.” I slammed the pillow over my face, futilely attempting to drown out Metallica’s thrash “Master of Puppets”. “Who the bloody hell is that in the middle of the sodding day?”
Mr Darwin grunted his agreement, whilst his palm patted my head.
I stilled, before slowly lifting the pillow.
Mr Darwin peered at me from his side of the bed, primly holding up the covers to his whiskery chin.
I sighed. “You’re looking a bit rough today, Sun. Someone you ate?”
Mr Darwin gripped me around the waist with his feet, and before I could twist away…tickled.
“Stop it…stop…I bloody mean it,” I gasped.
Now I got the meaning of tickle torture.
I doubled up with my muscles in spasms from the forced hilarity. Mr Darwin shook with breathy laughter to match my giggles. I only noticed that there was someone else in the room, when Mr Darwin’s grasping fingers paused in their play. Then I realized that the music had paused too.
Mother was standing at the bedside with an iPhone wired to a UFO shaped speaker, which was clipped to her pocket, staring down at the Mr Darwin and me tangled together.
The covers had been kicked back in the commotion…and I was naked.
I struggled to roll Mr Darwin off me, as he embraced my neck (just like he had Blake’s). The chimp was as much of a pillock when he decided to be my mate, as my nemesis, unless having proved that he was the alpha, he was now playing nice again, dominating his troop.
I finally managed to shrug off Mr Darwin as I hauled on my jeans.
“Fie, sir!” Mother’s amused gaze slid between us. “Satisfy your longing. It is no shameful act of sin.”
Both Mr Darwin and I gaped at Mother; I couldn’t tell which of us she was encouraging.
I pulled on my t-shirt. “I’m not laughing anymore.”
I pushed past her out into the long stretch of corridor.
Sun hadn’t been to bed. She worked at night, trading and running finances. Yet she’d never been missing during the day, at least that I’d realized.
It prickled me in cold sweat.
Blake would be down in his surreal cartoon of an office; I couldn’t let myself imagine Sun with him. Not after their staged intervention the other dawn, when they’d waited in the lounge for me like parents trying to catch the teenager creeping back after curfew. Sun had pulled away from Hartford and me out on the roof. Yet that dawn Sun had stood with me: she’d chosen me.
Hadn’t she?
Yet the image of Sun in Blake’s office blood sharing over his branching tree desk, just like Ruby had with her brother over his desk, unmanned me.
My Sun Girl. My girl. Mine.
Click, click, click.
Mother’s kitten heels clicked behind me, with the rustle of her crinkly gold trousers. She let out a breath, when she cau
ght up, wrapping an arm around my neck, as Mr Darwin had done. “Hey, slow down already, speedy much?”
“Things to do,” I muttered.
When I tried to slide away from underneath her arm, Mother dragged me close. “Are you mad?” She murmured. “Are you out of your wits?”
“Not me, love.”
Mother shoved me away, holding her iPhone and UFO speaker above her head like a sacrifice. Metallica’s distorted amps and aggressive guitars burst out; I didn’t need to have Master barked at me in any more lifetimes.
As if her puppet strings were being controlled, Mother danced: a pixie in a mosh pit. Led on a string as well, I prowled after Mother, my bare feet sinking into the carpet.
“What an excellent shape you hath,” Mother yelled over the violent roar, “I should have courted you, except that I see you.”
I stumbled.
What had she just...?
Those dangerous eyes sparkled. “I’m just saying.”
“No one sees me.”
“Damn, dude, that’s heavy.” Mother mock pouted. “I’m Plantagenet’s creature, and we? Don’t need you.”
I crossed my arms. “Bleeding shame for you that I’m here then.”
“Don’t you get it yet?” Mother stilled. “You would create Sun one of your familiars, but she’s not yours. Foolish man, this will never be your home.”
I realized then where we were. Outside Blake’s bedroom.
I was terrified to see what was inside. I was desperate to turn and pretend that I’d never woken up to find Sun missing.
Yet with a mind like mine, there was no forgetting. At times like this that was a curse.
Mother gave me a devilish leer as she swiped her iPhone: the poignant rawness of “Nothing Else Matters” sang out. One bloke’s agony at his separation from his love, whilst his longing was an open wound bleeding from vocals and acoustic guitar.
I stood frozen, caught in the ballad’s web, as Mother pushed open the bedroom door.
When the electric guitar kicked in like the heart and Soul, I knew what I’d see. What Mother was leading me to will-o’-the-wisp.
A giant’s tangled steel forest. Butterflies and moths in confusion. An enchanted bed.
Sun.
Plantagenet.
They were shagging like it was the apocalypse, and if they didn’t, then they’d lose everything.
Like me.
I didn’t move, speak, or breathe.
It was Plantagenet who noticed me first mid-thrust. He was polite enough to widen his cat eyes in surprise, before he rolled off Sun. He snogged her, however, with the same gentle intimacy that he’d shown me.
For a moment, I didn’t know who I was the most jealous of.
I was trembling with this wave of…fear…worse than when I’d been strapped down in the lab. I remembered how M.C. had tricked me into believing that Grayse had abandoned me to slavery: how it’d broken me. I’d lost my identity, even my name.
To be abandoned and lose someone that I loved again...?
The cracks were still there. Yet this time, I wouldn’t let anything shatter me.
Sun boldly met my stunned stare: no apology.
So, I simply told Sun what I’d been desperate for her to understand since I’d authored her into this new world, “I love you.”
Mother gave a disgusted snort.
Plantagenet pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Under pain of death, Mother, you shall hold your wicked tongue. What ensues is your doing.”
Mother rolled her eyes, muting Metallica. In the sudden silence, the shamed couple looked twice as naked.
I crossed my arms. “Don’t get narked at your creature here because you fancied sleeping with my lover and elected. See, Mother reckons that we’ll have a fight, and you’ll kill me or throw me out. Else, I’ll have a tantrum (because you’re both lying tossers), and leg it out of here like Hartford wants. But what she doesn’t get?” I stepped closer to the green mouth of the bed and the magical world that I could just reach out and touch or else be swallowed by. “Is that I bloody love you, Sun.”
When Sun edged towards me, her tits brushed against my hand. I tingled — Christ help me — with a sudden rush of blood to cock (and don’t let any bloke deny its dizzying hold).
But Sun didn’t need that: the carnal.
Grayse and I had never been about that. Considering that she’d chosen me as a sex slave, it was ironic how (even though she’d come close to the edge once), she’d never used me. Yet she’d loved me, and I’d loved her. By the time that she’d died in my arms, I’d been certain of that if nothing else.
But now, Sun was someone new. There was a darkness coiled under her skin, which Blood Life had freed and amplified, and that was no one’s fault but mine.
Sun clutched my hand. “You’re soft if you don’t fricking know that I love you. Still, just because you elected me, doesn’t mean that I’m yours alone.”
And there it was. Bold, undeniable, and the true bonfire of my dreams.
A world together to explore, joined by our love? Burned. The special bond between Author and their elected? Burned. My hope that I’d ever be good enough (or would deserve) to be loved again, as Kathy had once loved me?
Curled to ashes.
I was wrong. Someone could shatter me.
Then I felt Plantagenet’s small hands behind me on my shoulders. When had he risen? How long had I been standing there, lost in my grief?
Plantagenet was stripping me with practiced ease like I was a puppet.
I let him.
“Well-beloved, it breaks me to see you so melancholy. In faith, there are different loves. Family or home.” When Plantagenet’s curls stroked down the curve of my spine, I shivered. “Forever is too long a time to take one’s pleasure with merely a single lass or fellow.”
Sun pulled me onto the bed.
Hands.
Stroking, pinching, and caressing. I quivered, overloaded and struggling not to squirm. My skin was alive with their kisses.
It would be so easy to choose this fall into their dual embrace. Black mane mingled with ash blonde veil. Familiar curves and the strange new hardness pressed to mine. Alabaster skin starkly beautiful against golden. A silk soft canvas of the known and the unknown calling to me — my blood.
This was home. Wherever Plantagenet was, I knew it. I’d always known it. I was his familiar. Plantagenet’s touch ignited me; I was bloody ablaze.
Two mouths: two kisses, both tasting of oranges. And just like that? I was burnt to ashes.
I struggled out of their web of limbs, elbowing Plantagenet. He toppled off the bed with a startled oomph.
I bounced on the balls of my feet, ludicrous in my nakedness, because Mother had been right: I’d always been the fists and fang type of bloke.
At least I had fangs, unlike… All right then, wanker here.
Flushing, I held out my hand to Plantagenet, who took it warily, allowing me to pull him to his feet.
Then he didn’t let go. Instead, his fingers played across my palm. “If I have offended…”
“This isn’t about you or whether I…love you. It’s about the woman that I love.” I glanced at Sun, who was perched on the edge of the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest. She looked more vulnerable than I’d seen her since her election. How could I blame her for loving Plantagenet when I felt the same call to his Magnificoe blood? “She’s losing herself in this business: RE and the Renegades. We burned one slavery empire, why are we enslaving ourselves to another?” Sun was still avoiding my eye, but she was listening. That was the best you could ever hope for with Sun. “Hartford was right: I was an arrogant pillock to reckon that I could make a difference here and change the world like some bloody hero. If I lead a rebellion but lose you doing it…? Then it won’t be sodding worth it. I need you, Sun. Now we have to—”
“Book it out of here?”
Thank Christ, just like my Grayse.
I grinned. “Good on you, princess. Le
t’s—”
Sun’s gaze was frosty. “Are you joking?” My grin slipped; it hung precarious. “We just found our new family, and you already murdered my old one.”
My grin fell and broke. I bet I looked a sodding mess: I felt one.
Her family? Slavers, rapists, and torturers? Yet now Sun was getting all sentimental? She’d taken a chance — Hartford, Donovan, and me as well — we’d all taken a chance to bring them down. It seemed now, however, that the decision was to be blamed on me alone.
“A fabulous job, home, and money,” Sun counted each one off on her fingers, oblivious to my distress. ‘Finally, to be safe. It’s fried how you reckon that I’d want to leave this.”
“Money?” I gritted out. Plantagenet had been tracing pretty patterns — branching trees — across my palm, but I snatched away my hand. “That’s bollocks, and you know it.’
Sun’s eyes blazed. “You don’t get to tell me what to think or what Blood Life is or isn’t simply on account of you’re my Author. I won’t be caged.”
Despair hit me in a black scream. I craved to huddle fetal with my arms clasped over my head to block out all the nasties of the world.
Caged. How had I made Sun feel that way? After everything I’d been through — truly caged by Master and controlled by Ruby — I’d only ever wanted to set my own elected free. Yet it turned out that the bars to her birdcage might’ve been invisible but they were strong, and I was the bastard who’d ensnared her all along.
I simply nodded because what do you say to the woman that you love to explain you never meant to take her freedom, only keep her safe?
Sun blinked, before giving this small smile. It shone: pure and joyful. It was so different to how she’d looked at me lately that I knew I’d set her free, even though it was breaking my heart.
True love was a bitch.
Plantagenet, as courteous as any courtier, kissed the back of Sun’s hand, before raising her to her feet. “Let us play some more, my pretty lass.”
“Plantagenet, stop,” Blake growled.
Plantagenet froze.
Blake stood like an ink gargoyle in the doorway.
He was glowering at the lovebirds, probably much like I had. I experienced a pang of sympathy for the bloke, until I realized that Blake was only narked that he hadn’t been invited to the party.
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 76