“In Blood Life leaders aren’t chosen. They’re authored. You’re my leader, poor little bunny, so let’s rescue my lover.”
Aedan patted my arse. “Not my leader, just so as we’re clear. I’m in though.”
Hartford’s expression clouded. “What I can’t work out, mac, is how you plan to get Donovan out of there. The way I see it? There are only two ways: we double-cross the fella that you’re now goofy over, or I sacrifice myself.”
I wrenched back from Hartford. “What the buggering hell are you on about?”
Hartford smiled sadly. “Captain wants the leader of the Renegades. But that’s bull. He just needs the big cheese to parade in chains before the Council to show how tough he is. He doesn’t care who it really is. You hand me in: I’m a Long-lived and an ex-slave. You reckon that he won’t believe it? If I confess to being the leader of the Renegades, Donovan will be free.”
My mouth was dry, as tremors ran through me. How the buggering hell could I stop Hartford from sacrificing himself?
Later that day, I nudged Hartford down the corridor in Blake’s mansion.
He glanced back at me in confusion. “Hey, mac, are you certain that you heard...? What did you hear?”
I put on my most concerned expression. “You know…screams, like Blake was hurting—”
“Plantagenet?” Hartford spun around. I’d expected him to give me that same hard look, but instead there was only the anxious compassion that Hartford had worn whenever Sir had laid into me at Abona.
I’d known that Hartford would always help a slave, even one who’d tortured him.
I flamed with guilt. “In that bloody play dungeon.”
“There’s nothing play about it.” Hartford dove down the corridor so fast that I couldn’t keep up with him. “Get a wiggle on! Do you want to save him or not?”
Smash — there went the dungeon door.
I traced the sharp outline of the needle in my pocket. Kallis had nicked it for me, all overexcited in spy mode, from the research department.
“Say, there’s nobody here,” I heard Hartford’s bewildered call.
Hartford was hesitating in the heart of the dungeon. His feet almost touched the cage, which I’d hidden in from Kane. He was transfixed by the rack, making these frightened panting gasps, so like the ones that Plantagenet had made when Blake had discovered Plantagenet in their bed with Sun, that I had to steady myself.
I could do this. I had to bleeding well do this.
I tried to give a reassuring smile as I sidled closer. “Don’t look at the rack. Sometimes things happen; we don’t want them to, but they do. I’m sorry, I wish that I’d been better, that’s all.”
“What’s all this baloney? And where’s...?”
I stabbed the needle into Hartford’s neck. I pushed down, letting in the venom: Plantagenet’s venom, which had been separated by Fernando in his search for an antidote.
Hartford didn’t react, as if my betrayal couldn’t be real.
Then for the first time ever, he unleashed his full Long-lived force on me, scrabbling the needle out of his neck and shoving me back. I flew the length of the room, slamming against the wall.
Crack — there went half my ribs.
I coughed as I bent over. When I looked up, Hartford had slumped to the concrete, shuddering with cramps, and then collapsed onto his back, as the paralysis took hold.
When mixed together our venom bite isn’t toxic to another Blood Lifer. It’s that ecstasy-thrumming line between heaven and hell. Yet when it’s separated to paralysis alone, it’s none of the heaven and all of the hell.
I sighed, trudging to kneel by Hartford.
Hartford’s glare of hate filled accusation sliced me in two. He was trying to speak, but the paralysis was overtaking his control, trapping him in his own body.
I leaned closer to catch his whisper and then bloody wished that I hadn’t, “Double-crosser.”
I avoided Hartford’s glower (the only thing that he could now control), as I dragged him to the cage. When I unlocked the cage’s door with a clang and carefully pushed Hartford in like a doll, mindful to leave his head facing out towards the room because I remembered the crushing boredom of having nothing but wall to stare at, I noticed the slick of sweat on his forehead.
I was a git.
Because Hartford remembered that boredom too. He’d been caged just as I had by Master. The only difference was that I’d been at Master’s mercy for only a month, whereas Hartford had copped it for years. I’d never be able to understand everything that Hartford had suffered. Yet here I was betraying him, entrapping him in his own body and caging him.
I was the leader though. And sometimes? Leaders have to make the tough decisions.
Wankering responsibility.
I slid my fingers through the bars and then through Hartford’s sweat dampened hair, neatening it back into his matinee idol style. “It’ll wear off soon. I couldn’t let you sacrifice yourself, and we both know that you’re too stubborn to… I’ve got a plan, but it has to be me who… I promised to rescue Donovan and I will.” I cradled Hartford’s lifeless hands between mine. “It’s not goodbye or any of that bollocks. But Sun has Plantagenet now, see? And Donovan has you. So, if one of us has to play at hero and go out bloody, then I’m voting for me. I’m the one who won’t be missed.”
…A black body bag in military bronze corridor... A tumble of blond curls…
Rivers of tears were leaking from Hartford’s eyes. So, his tear ducts weren’t paralyzed then.
I wiped the wet away: Hartford wouldn’t be comfortable like that. Yet as fast as I tried, the tears streamed.
I gave up, pushing myself to my feet. “As soon as you’re together with Donovan, take your First Lifer fanboy (and don’t pretend that you don’t know who I’m talking about), and go. Become a family and be wild Blood Lifers again, free in the world. Donovan can run a music business, and you’re a singer: it’s perfect. Find your talent and live it. I wish I could’ve given you that. I wish…well, it doesn’t bleeding matter now, does it?”
And it didn’t.
Every step I backed away from that cage and the motionless, weeping Hartford, who’d been silenced, I lost part of myself: family and home.
I was swallowed into the darkness.
Here’s the thing though: it was my choice. Plantagenet had been wrong because a leader mustn’t make sacrifices. He was the sacrifice.
Plantagenet was stretched out like a panther on the bed. Except, he wasn’t wild. Under the green cast by the ivy screen, the moss sheets, and the steel roses...?
He was an exhibit in Blake’s zoo, and it was time to set him free.
Plantagenet studied me lazily with his arms crossed behind his head, as I stalked, then pounced.
Lips soft as I remembered, opened on a gasp with the scent and taste of ripened oranges. There was no fight, only surrender. Black curls coiled around my fingers. I slipped my hand down the slash of Plantagenet’s catsuit, questing onto golden skin and stroking over one peaked nipple.
Plantagenet mewed, squirming under me, as if I was working his cock. I peeked at the CCTV camera, which was winking at us from the corner, before tweaking Plantagenet’s nipple again. Plantagenet pouted as his hips worked.
I leaned in, allowing myself to feel the closeness of blood.
Just once.
Then I twisted Plantagenet’s nipple, and as he closed his eyes caught between agony and ecstasy, I edged out the knife from the back of my jeans.
Trinity had sworn that it would do the business: small enough for a bloke to hide but deadly enough to kill a Blood Lifer. She’d bought it for Will to carry, except he’d told her that he didn’t need it. Not now that he had a guardian angel.
I was no bloody angel.
As I raised the blade, I wished that I could shut my own eyes, so I wouldn’t have to always remember this. The feel of it and the blood on my hands.
But my name was Light: I was cursed to remember. Even wh
en the world forgot.
I raised the blade, as Plantagenet shivered and purred his delight underneath me, and I brought it down over his chest.
Into his heart.
Just enough…
Plantagenet’s gold-flecked eyes flew open. Then he screamed as his back arched feline. I rolled away from Plantagenet, staring at the knife sticking from the wound, which was oozing thick crimson down the white of his catsuit.
Blood. It was staining my hands. I shook.
Death. All great stories need a death. Weren’t you hoping for this?
I raised my panicked gaze to Plantagenet’s. Plantagenet ripped out the knife, hurling it against the wall. He was breathing hard, pressing his palm over the wound to slow the bleeding.
“We talked about this,” I rushed to explain.
Christ, I felt like a wanker.
“Indeed?” I’d never heard his voice so icy.
“I had to make it look realistic, yeah? So that when I show those Blood Life Council tossers the CCTV recording… I mean, they’d see through anything staged. We just have to edit it right. Now I can hand them me taking out the head of the Renegades. It gets me in.”
“Was it truly needful to bed me? May you not, well-beloved, have murdered me over cake?” Plantagenet whimpered as he pulled himself up.
I winced. “Hartford was about to sacrifice himself like the daft heroic berk that he is.” I shrugged and couldn’t admit how much I’d craved this connection to Plantagenet before I sacrificed myself. “I had to stuff him in the cage downstairs. He’ll be furious when… I just wouldn’t get into any more fights with him because I wouldn’t figure on you winning.”
“Still,” Plantagenet beckoned me closer. Reluctantly, I slid across the bed. You shank a Magnificoe? Then you’re a dim pillock if you accept an invitation to see how big his teeth are. “You tease and torment me, playing at my lover. You hold me down, as if you wish to do the deed of darkness. But instead, traitor? You hurt me, thus…” He held out his bloody hands to me.
“Put like that?” I bit my lip. “It does sound bad.”
“In faith, it makes me wonder: do you love me? Or merely Hartford and Donovan?” Plantagenet traced a crimson trail down my cheek. “Would you betray us…the Renegades…if thou had to choose a side? Villainy of shame! I see the answer writ upon your face.”
“Weren’t you the one who told me that there were different loves? I don’t have to choose. That’s the point.”
“Wrong, I’m afraid.” Blake was leaning in the doorway with his mouth set in a tight line. He examined Plantagenet’s injured form like he was only stopping himself from sweeping him up into his arms damsel-like by an iron will. “Loyalty is the key skill essential to be employed at RE. No one gets in without it.”
“Lucky I’m not applying then.”
When Sun slunk into the bedroom, I smiled. Sun avoided my eye, however, slicing her fangs into her wrist, before offering the snaking scarlet to Plantagenet who eagerly suckled.
I bristled, but Sun cut me off before I could protest. “You didn’t offer to help Plantagenet, even though you hurt him. I haven’t forgotten a word you wrote in your journal. How Hartford and Donovan fed you from their wrists, when you were starving. We bleed for our fricking family.”
Both Sun and Plantagenet were right. Hartford and Donovan were mine to care for: my misfit family forged through slavery. After what we’d been through together, they’d always come first.
So, what could I possibly say?
I straightened my shoulders. “Let’s murder you, deliver me to the Blood Life Council, and sodding save the day.”
Let me clarify: you intended to trick us? The entire Blood Life Council?
That’s about the long and short of it.
Did you truly believe that we’d be taken in by that CCTV footage? That we wouldn’t also demand a body? Habeas corpus?
Bless you. You’d be amazed what folks are tricked by: smoke and mirrors. We only needed enough evidence to get me in the door long enough to free Donovan.
But instead they double-crossed you, pretending that you were the Renegades’ leader...?
No need to rub it in. See what happens when you’re not a team player?
Betrayal. It seems to haunt you, Light.
Or I haunt it. Either way, I’m the one in this Red Room, whilst you scribble down my witness. What I can’t figure? Why didn’t you let Donovan go once you had me?
Come now, did you truly believe that we would?
What happens if…when I die? To Donovan?
When…if you die...? Then Captain will have a Blood Lifer pet.
13
NIGHT 13
I’m sorry, Light, they were meant to walk you down a different way. You shouldn’t have seen…
The bonfire? All that wood stacked up below in the courtyard with the stake to tie me to, ready to burn the heretic?
Pull the other one. You wanted to put the fear of hell in me (or the Witchfinder Captain did), before the trial tomorrow. You’ve arranged an Easter to remember with me blubbering out my guts today.
Did it work?
Here’s your answer…except the two-finger salute works better when you have two fingers.
Good god, what happened?
Captain promised that you wouldn’t be hurt anymore. This is my opportunity to employ my methods. Torture is never effective at burrowing underneath the skin because ultimately, we’ll all say anything — lies mixed in with truth — to make the pain stop.
Yet we all crave to tell our story. To be heard and seen. There’s power in words. I weave them without the crudity of pain.
I don’t even have to touch my—
Victims? And they don’t touch you, right? That’s a cold way to live.
Still, they die the same, don’t they? Once you’ve wormed under their skins, flaying them bare. They’re punished, the same as if you lit the match.
What happens after is not within—
Don’t say your bleeding remit. We’re responsible for every moment that we live. If you tear a bloke apart — his secrets, weaknesses, and guilt — then you don’t stand back, wash your hands Pontius-like, and call what comes after justice.
Right now? You’re a cog in a machine, which is grinding down the rest of the Blood Lifer world. What’s worse? When pure death is developed, it’ll be the First Lifers caught in its gears.
But I’m just a cog. How do I...?
We both know that you’re not just anything. It only takes one cog to stop turning for the whole machine to stop working. That’s how revolutions start.
I’m not one of your Renegades, Mr Blickle.
You’re not Captain’s puppet either…or his cog.
Tell me, how were your fingers burnt?
A reward. Because the interesting thing is that when you told me about your First Lifer sister, you never mentioned that you had a Blood Lifer brother.
In the black, banshee panic echoed through my mind so loudly that I didn’t know if I was hollering or only on the inside.
My chest was sticky with blood from my torn fingernails; I’d scrabbled at the coffin’s lid every day. A terror-stricken let me out, let me out, let me out…
A waking nightmare flashback to my slave days.
Swaggering bravado? It’d lasted just as long as it’d taken for the lid to be nailed down.
I bet Captain had a right laugh…or gloat. He was the sort to gloat listening to another bloke reduced like that because he’d never been broken. I’d have given Captain a day tops in Master’s hands.
Then I heard the sound that was like angelic choirs: nails being ripped out. When the coffin lid slid across, I blinked against the heavenly blue, shivering at the sudden rush of air.
“Diddums, he’s cold,” Captain cooed. “Maybe you can warm him up?”
Two faces stared at me, appraising me like I was the latest toy.
Captain’s hand was resting on the shoulder of…
Buggering hell: Emo.<
br />
I banged my head against the bottom of the coffin. Maybe I could knock myself out.
Captain chortled. “Look how pleased he is to see you.”
When Emo leant over the coffin, his scarf tickled my nose. “He’s mine?”
“You were such a good boy watching him and reporting back. I knew that you could be motivated. You simply needed the right reward system.”
“Gold stars didn’t work then?” I tried to clamber out of the coffin, but Captain slammed me back.
“Donovan could be substituted if you prefer? No? Well, I have grownup’s work now, you know how it is.”
My gaze darted between Captain and Emo in shock. “You’re not leaving me alone with that psycho?”
Captain’s hand clamped over my mouth and nose. I flailed as my eyes flew wide open, and my lungs ached in agonizing bursts.
“That psycho?” Captain whispered; he lowered his face within inches of mine, “is my elected, a karate champion, and your owner for the next hour. You really do have authority issues, don’t you?” At last, he lifted his hand.
I took a deep lungful of air and then another. I’d never reckoned breathing a privilege before.
Captain was Emo’s Author? He seemed the type to Author a kid, then leave him ignorant of the truths of Blood Life.
“Just remember,” Captain straightened, before tapping Emo on the shoulder, “no killing.” Emo’s black rimmed eyes were so puppy-dog that you’d have reckoned his daddy had just forbidden him from texting his mates. “But torture? Well,” Captain spread his hands expansively, “it is your reward…”
When Captain met my gaze, his look was considering. Then he turned on his heel and he was gone.
Reluctantly, I studied Emo, who was assessing me like he was deciding which limb to hack off first. “Captain’s your Author then? You work for him?”
Emo flicked his fringe. “I work for myself. Do what I like.”
I shrugged. “Didn’t sound like it.”
Emo scowled. “What does Captain know? He’s old and stuff. After all, didn’t tell anyone, did I? Didn’t tell them about the pet.”
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 78