Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series

by Rosemary A Johns

  Mother was scuffing her heel against the skirting, whilst her fingers tapped the iPhone in her pocket: Blake must be plan B.

  I was going to leg it, if Plantagenet and Sun started the whole seduction routine on Blake, like they had on me. Freeing Sun to love Plantagenet was one thing but watching her play out her fantasies with other blokes…?

  Remember, I was no angel.

  Sun immediately dragged the sheet to drape over herself, however, like a toga. Plantagenet was motionless and giving these quick little gasps; I suddenly recognized it as fear.

  “Did I give you permission to...?” Blake couldn’t quite make himself say it.

  Plantagenet shook his head.

  When Blake stretched out his arm, Plantagenet paced towards him with feline steps, his slender body quivering. Blake pressed their two bone rings together: fang meets tooth.

  Slap — Blake’s backhand staggered Plantagenet away from Blake, breaking their touch.

  A purple bruise was already forming across Plantagenet’s cheek.

  Three Blood Lifers moved towards Blake — Sun, Mother, and me. It was an instinct of blood and love; no First Lifer was beating a Plantagenet.

  Plantagenet was right: we were family.

  “In God’s name, hold.” At Plantagenet’s order, we hesitated, glancing between each other. I reckon that I was beginning to get the hang of these unholy alliances.

  Blake hadn’t quailed. He hadn’t even looked away from Plantagenet. I knew what that was like: the flame of obsessive love. “You wanted to see Plantagenet spanked? He’s earned a flogging now. Go prepare yourself.”

  Plantagenet’s mouth twisted, but he gave a quick nod.

  I stiffened. “You’re crazy if you reckon…”

  Plantagenet caught my eye, silencing my outburst, as he slipped out of the bedroom. I noticed Mother tried to rub against him, but he pulled away from her.

  Blake coldly assessed Sun. “Your head girl badge doesn’t look so shiny today. It’s lucky that you have Plantagenet as whipping boy.”

  “There’s no way you’re thrashing him.” I prowled to Blake, forgetting in my fury that I was naked. “Get your jollies over the Internet: wank to porn, like everybody else. Don’t take it out on a Magnificoe’s arse.”

  Blake tapped my bare chest. “The difference between you and Plantagenet? He’s learned how to take his punishment.”

  Then Blake spun on his heel and stalked out, pursued by one Blood Lifer wrapped in a silk sheet, a second clicking in kitten heels, and a third naked.

  We found Plantagenet kneeling in the center of the dungeon (what a bloody surprise), with his hands clasped behind his back and his head bowed.

  Punishment position.

  He’d laid out a heavy buffalo hide flogger next to a St. Andrew’s Cross, which was a wooden frame with leather cuffs that was shiny and new, like it’d been inbuilt with this ready-made playroom. I flinched, remembering the flogger’s thud and sting and being manacled to that cross, helpless to the prison strap, cane, or birch, when I’d been marked under the hand of Master.

  Now Plantagenet was willingly submitting, and I couldn’t figure out why. He was a Long-Lived. Why was he allowing Blake to have this hold over him and us all?

  When Plantagenet glanced underneath his eyelashes at us witnessing his humiliation, he blushed.

  “Face the Cross,” Blake barked.

  Plantagenet marched, like a knight onto the battlefield, before holding out his hands and feet to the cuffs. Blake slipped the leather carefully around, doing up the buckles. Then he pushed Plantagenet’s Rapunzel curls to the front, exposing his back.

  Only after he stepped back, did I notice that it was Blake who was shaking. The black despair must’ve screamed through him, the same as it had me, and that made him dangerous.

  Blake picked up the flogger, testing it — whoosh — through the air.

  I cringed. Then Sun was pressed against me, her face against my neck, like it used to be. Like I needed it to be.

  Sun was shaking too.

  I held her tightly: we were united in this.

  Blake lifted the flogger high, before flicking it with practiced ease hard across Plantagenet’s upper back. Angry red lines, as if Plantagenet had been clawed, scored his golden skin. He let out a pained gasp, after he’d breathed through the agony. He wasn’t taking it silently though: Blake clearly liked to know that the lesson was being learned.

  Blake pulled his arm back again, and Sun and I stiffened.

  “Ziggy Starburst” burst in glam rock sacrilege from Blake’s pocket. As casually as if he was answering his phone between checking emails, Blake slipped it out. “Blake here. What, now...? The CIE? Wait, I’ll meet her… No, my private rooms are most certainly not acceptable. I don’t care that she can track me. You must not allow…”

  Blake twirled around, all coolness vanished and punishment forgotten. Something scarier than him had spooked him.

  “There’s going to be an inspection. We have protocols to protect and hide our work in headquarters but my rooms…here…you...? Hide.” Blake’s panic was infectious.

  “We’re not chameleons.” I clutched Sun closer. “We can’t just camouflage into the wallpaper.”

  Blake was banging about the dungeon, slamming open drawers, as if we could shrink down to fit. “You don’t understand. Ms Kane is on her way up now. Plantagenet’s my slave: he can be here when she arrives. But if you’re discovered...?”

  Mother spun in circles. “Stop tripping out, bitches.”

  “Not helping,” I hissed.

  “Mr Darwin’s cage.” Blake threw off the plastic cover.

  The cage was more than man-sized. Steel, sturdy, and new.

  “Mr Darwin’s cage?” I lifted an eyebrow. “Sure about that?”

  Blake shifted his feet. “It came with the room. I’ve never tried it out on Plantagenet. I wouldn’t.” Blake undid the padlock, swinging open the door. He smiled, as he glanced between us Blood Lifers. “I’m delighted, however, to christen it with you.”

  “Wanker,” I muttered, before dropping to all fours and crawling into the cage. It took almost more courage than I had to shuffle, my knees pressing painfully into the metal, into that cage. To trust Blake to trap me and repeat what Master had done, stripping away my manhood.

  Then there wasn’t time to think because Sun was pushing into the cage behind me, and I was being shunted against the front bars. The bars rattled angrily.

  “Hurry up,” Blake ordered, “I need to get the cover back over.”

  A final push that crushed me against the bars (three Blood Lifers in a cage built for one man), the slamming clang of the door being closed and locked, and then the cover being drawn back and over.

  I couldn’t stop the whining fear.

  Black, black, black.

  I was caged in darkness. Terror infected, I moaned.

  “Shh…” Sun’s lips were warm on my ear. She placed a single kiss on my sensitive pulse point and then her arms were sliding around my waist.

  And I was safe, home, and the fear flew from her touch.

  Sun loved me. I knew it in that moment. That single kiss.

  Everything else was snowflake patterns. I could live with those differences. If Sun loved me.

  “I’m not at all displeased to discover that you are capable of disciplining your slave, Jamie,” a First Lifer’s uptight voice, so close to the cage that if she’d reached out, she’d have been touching us.

  “The slave was the best gift that anyone ever gave me, Ms Kane. I’ll always be grateful for our business connection.”

  “Why so formal? I hope that our connection shall be fruitful for many years to come.”

  “Hasn’t it always been, Julia?” Blake’s voice with a hint of charm now.

  “Quite. This Blood Lifer problem, however, is not a simple one. We need to develop a long-term solution.”

  “Agreed.”

  Agreed? The tosser.

  “Your slave was
from a genetically powerful bloodline. They were most uncertain that he could be tamed. That’s why those Magnificoes, as they call themselves, rather than the weak children at the Blood Life Council, had possession of him. In a way, he was like tribute. Tell me then, how did you domesticate such a bitch? We understand that you’ve used solutions such as defanging, and I can see here strict discipline. But what else?”

  My fangs were out, as I struggled to remain motionless. Behind me, I felt two other Blood Lifers fighting the same battle.

  “Conditioning,” Blake offered, casually. “Punishment and reward. Blood Lifers are animals, when you come down to it. They respond to training, the same as a chimp. Of course, there’s a magic ingredient: they have to be motivated behaviorally to change,” Blake was warming to his theme, “with fear or pain. Aversion therapy to human blood, for example, would be most effective. I’ve found, however, that allowing my slave natural behavior and environment is better, as far as possible.”

  “The CIE will bear it in mind, when weighed against cost. We’re considering a range of…solutions to the Blood Life disease.”

  Solutions…disease…? Alarm shot down my spine at Kane’s clinical dismissal of Blood Life.

  “Wait,” Blake sounded as panicked as I felt, “maybe I’ve given you the wrong impression. Blood Life is not a disease.”

  “Infection then.”

  “It’s neither a disease nor an infection. True, these creatures need to be conditioned and there are effective ways to train them. But Blood Life is—”

  “Thank you, Jamie.” Kane cut Blake off curtly, in a way that I’d never heard anyone else manage before. “Always an education.”

  Silence.

  Then light, followed by the clang of the cage’s door banging open.

  We backed out one by one. My knees were stiff against the bars. I stretched as I pulled myself up.

  Surprised, I watched Blake undoing Plantagenet’s cuffs, instead of continuing the flogging. When Blake hauled Plantagenet into a bear hug, Blake’s powerful shoulders were suddenly rising and falling in waves, as he sobbed.

  “I’m sorry,” Blake whispered, stroking Plantagenet’s curls all the way down to his waist, before tracing the scarlet weals, “I’m so sorry.”

  Plantagenet pushed away. “You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Are you indeed with us?”

  “It’s too late, didn’t you hear her? The CIE think that you’re nothing but an infection to be cured.”

  “Where’s Hartford?” I stood in the center of that dungeon, staring at the rack that Hartford had been stretched on for me and felt like the worst mate, family member, leader…ever.

  Because I’d only just noticed that Hartford wasn’t there. What if the CIE bitch had stumbled across him...? I’d been too caught up in the blood spell that was Plantagenet and Sun: together it was home, family, and love.

  It was a fantasy, and a bloody dangerous one too.

  I’d told Hartford he was my family. Yet who had I forgotten (we all forgotten), in the danger and the fear?

  Hartford had never forgotten me.

  Then everyone started talking, yelling, and accusing. All at once.

  “Pipe down, for crying out loud!” As one, we shut up, turning to see an astonished Hartford peering in at us.

  I laughed then and once I started, I couldn’t stop. Since when has a little hysteria hurt a bloke?

  Slap — oh yeah, when a bloke gets smacked by a Long-lived.

  “Stop acting screwy and spill.” Hartford stroked my scarlet cheek. “What’s all this?”

  Hartford eyed the half-covered cage, flogger, and Plantagenet and my nakedness. Sun was just about holding onto her sheet.

  “Life, helmethead, bloody life,” I was buzzing like I’d feasted on human blood, “and we’re going to start living it. We’re rescuing Donovan and we’re not going to be afraid. Why? Because we’re Renegades.”

  Maybe this new life was a fantasy but the danger was real. I wouldn’t hide in my cage any longer. It was time that I united both sides of my rebel family, even if that meant risking death.

  12

  NIGHT 12

  Have I been in any way remiss in my duties? Unclear as to the nature of this inquiry? Perhaps I should’ve kept things visual, making the adaptations that you need for your particular style of learning?

  Enough of that. Just spit it out, Liberty.

  Your statement taken from last night: we’re the Renegades.

  It seems clear enough to me.

  Therein lies the problem. I’ve been fighting to save you. Yet you only have today, tomorrow, and then comes the trial.

  The flames are already warming me. I’ve made my peace with it. Why won’t you?

  Because that’s not how this works! I come in here and I untangle the witness, so that the guilty can be punished. It’s what I do. Yet you hide truths and unmask lies. You confuse and manipulate, until I don’t know…who I am.

  Funny thing about who we are: no one can make us anything. Only we get to choose. Sometimes we get so buried under the controls of this world — family, society, and love — we forget that and lose ourselves. Then we no longer know who we are or once were.

  We can become whoever we want because we do have a choice, and coming from a bloke who was once a slave, you have no idea how precious that is.

  That’s all there is to it? I choose to act?

  I tend to get booted in the bollocks first, then tortured. But…yeah.

  Make the choice, lay the caper, and then act.

  Thank you, Mr Blickle, that was a fascinating insight into terrorist mentality. If I were you, I’d make your remaining witness count. We only have one more session together after this.

  Tell me a story of hidden truths and unmasked lies: of a man who chose to act.

  “It’s been ages since Hartford bolted. And you…?” Aedan’s green eyes sparked. “You’re a massive idiot if you reckon you can pull that on me.”

  “Kidnapped. Researched on by mad scientists. Hartford to the rescue. Kept prisoner by terrorist Renegades. New caper to save Donovan: are you in?” I cocked my head.

  Aedan sprawled in his looped cock of a seat, whilst his face screwed up with the effort to process the craziness of our Blood Lifer world.

  The Peter Pan was dark and silent before opening. It was eerie without its music, dancers, and men in suits looking to lose themselves for one night at least.

  Reinvent or hide: what’s the difference?

  Hartford and I sank into the brocade and damask, but it wasn’t the same because Donovan was missing. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept catching glimpses of Donovan’s dark mop of hair as he danced sinuous in nothing but bowtie.

  No wonder Hartford was so tense.

  Aedan chewed at one braid in thought. “I know that I said we all had our histories? Remind me what a thick tool I am for not guessing yours. You’re not exactly a choir boy, are you?” Then he glanced significantly at Hartford. “Donovan wasn’t going to give me a love bite that time on the dance floor, was he?”

  Hartford shook his head, before to my shock — and Aedan’s — dropping to his knees next to the First Lifer. “I’m goofy over my lover. I’d do anything to save him; I’d suffer anything. We could’ve fed you a line, but you’re my friend. I don’t want to treat you like some sap. Please help us.”

  Aedan threw himself to his knees next to Hartford, clinging around his neck.

  I’d forgotten this intimacy: friendship.

  Aedan had taken us in and given us a home. He’d accepted us, even when he’d discovered that we were something other than human. I’d only known one other First Lifer like that, and now she was dead. What else had Plantagenet’s…spell…forced me to forget?

  I coughed awkwardly. “We’re doing this then?” Two resolved faces turned to me — angelic gold hair mingling with impish red — so close that they were one. I couldn’t help the chuckle. “Are you climbing off him anytime soon?”

 
“Why?” Aedan rested his cheek against Hartford’s. “Am I frightening the horses?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, right.” Both Aedan and Hartford stared at me. Buggering hell… “It was nothing,” I wagged a finger at them, “and this is a council of war, not a place of gossip…”

  “Plantagenet,” Hartford’s voice was flat and cold.

  “Look, it’s just the call of his blood because I’m of his line. It’s nothing real.”

  “Says you. But from the moment that you met Plantagenet, you were stuck on him. Sun was the same. Why do you think that she let him…didn’t help me? See, what I can’t understand is why. A snob with his head up his ass.”

  Aedan sniggered, but I couldn’t help the way that my fists clenched.

  “You don’t have to understand,” I bit out, “because I don’t. I know that Plantagenet’s truly not bad, he just…”

  “You see how you feel about a fella after you’ve been broken on the rack by him.” Hartford snapped.

  Aedan wound even closer around Hartford, and the look that he threw me, should’ve staked me with a sodding spoon.

  “Nothing’s changed,” I said softly. “You’re still my family.”

  “And Donovan?”

  “Bloody hell.” I exploded up, knocking Aedan and Hartford tumbling back in a tangle of red and gold, as I paced the dance floor in front of the stage. “I’m not perfect. I’m falling from crisis to crisis, surviving the best that I can. It’s what I do. Only before, it was just me. And now there’s you lot. These others, who I love by the way, are looking to me for decisions, and I’m getting it wrong or getting it right, but the rug’s still pulled out from under me. I’m trying, alright? To do the best for everyone. If I could take it all on me…every hurt and blow…I would but I don’t know how. I’m sorry. This is new to me. This is…”

  “Being a leader.” Hartford fluidly rose, pulling Aedan after him. Then he sauntered to me, pausing my agitated pacing with a slight yet powerful hand on my shoulder. “Our leader.”

  I managed to smile. “Are you sure that you want to choose me?”