Alessandro blinked. ‘I broke in one night and crept upstairs. But then in the dark I heard this babbling sound from my old nursery. They’d done it: what the doctor had suggested. There was my baby brother tucked up tight in my cot. The new heir. They’d moved on and I simply couldn’t…’ Alessandro wiped at the corners of his peepers. ‘I never saw them again. I’ve often wondered if anyone ever told them I went missing, or if they still think I’m shut away from the world.’ He gave a high laugh; Christ in heaven, it was unsettling. ‘Still am I guess, aren’t I? At least, from their world. But Aralt freed me, which means I owe him everything. To be alone and trapped, that’s worse than death.’
Abnormal, normal. See what I mean about sticky labels?
All right, so Alessandro had always been barmy in his own way. But so what? Who’d got the right to chuck him out with the rubbish and breed another kid in his place?
There’s nothing but snowflake patterns.
We’re all individuals, that’s the long and short of it: born alone, dying alone and grasping at each other as we fall.
And I should know.
6
JULY 1968 LONDON
Remember when there was only one correct way to act, decorate or dress? Paris and Milan, the trend setters?
Us Blood Lifers? Do me a favour. We take what we fancy and drop the rest. We’re not slaves to etiquette, dictates or form. We’re not tied to someone else’s apron strings.
But then something happened in those hot, spacey 1960s summers, as if a switch had clicked collectively in your brains. At last you could see through your brutish First Life enslavement, out to the untold combinations, possibilities and wildness beyond. Or a glimpse of it anyway. To the life around you, which sears with spark and Soul.
You grasped it all in a moment - at least in London. The rest of you? Well, you got there.
Sauntering down Carnaby Street in the early evening, the sun just set, was like bursting out onto a madman’s canvas.
There were myriad creations and not one the same: colours, prints, styles and no decorum because no one was waiting for some stuck up bint across the channel to tell them what fashion meant. Yeah, here’s the cool bit, they were going to invent it fresh, nicking whatever they liked from their ancestors: Art Nouveaux or my beloved Victoriana.
It was the age of freedom.
Even if you First Lifers will never taste real freedom, not like the burn of death and then election.
I’d slipped out, whilst Ruby was in another one of her sodding meetings in Aralt’s study, which I’d discovered I was shut out of. I was relegated instead to glorified bouncer at their club and babysitter for the child prodigy.
I’d pressed my cheek to the rosewood door before I’d left, deeply breathing in Ruby’s scent.
It was maddening.
I could almost taste her; my blood sang for her.
Yet she was with him now.
My jealousy bubbled; the pain was hot. My imagination went awandering about what was happening on the other side of that door…
So now I was exploring this brave new world of Carnaby Street - by myself - to keep from thinking of the study and my rage.
I wove beneath Union Jacks, which were strung across the narrow road between the taxis and parked vans, passing under a pale blue awning and then spying a boutique, where starkers mannequins with humongous knockers lounged in the windows. That made me stop and back up for a second look, I’ll admit.
There was this buzz: a heat of chatter, music and laughter. Donovan would’ve called it a scene but you know, that’s what it was.
The First Lifers’ threads were an eclectic vintage mix, which transformed the whole bleeding lot of them into Blood Lifers.
Apart from the scent and the blood, there was no way of figuring the difference, as one strutted towards me in the twilight with a swaying afro and an old regimental jacket and faded waistcoat.
Bloody hell, what was this?
It brought me up short: me standing there, like a right berk, in the middle of the stream of humanity. Because all I could think, was that never had the divide between our species been so slight; I could sense it sticky on my skin.
Ruby would’ve choked me, if I’d ever said that out loud: I’d be blacked out for a week. Yet it was true. It was like First Lifers had jumped up several rungs of the evolutionary ladder, in one drug fuelled bonk fest of love.
This mutation (or whatever it was) meant I could see more of me in you, just as you saw more through our peepers.
That’s when I started freaking out.
Because this was the bastard of it: now it wasn’t so easy to dismiss First Lifers as prey or hunt you down. Ruby’s justifying of your deaths, using our inherent superiority, began to feel like simply more of the black and white bollocks, which I didn’t go in for.
I was stiff with the shock of these new feelings. I wished I could go back to the old, safe certainty and be wrapped in its flames.
An idea once freed from its box, however, won’t let its wings be clipped twice.
I forced myself to be swept along with the night. I couldn’t go back to Ruby. Not whilst I was still thinking like this. Otherwise I might say something wild about these whirring ideas and I knew bloody better than that.
I found myself standing staring blankly into the window of the boutique “I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet”. As I slowly unthawed, I realised what I was looking at.
This was the dog’s bollocks: the source of those vintage jackets, which had been blowing my mind and sending me into poofy angst, as if an undead army had suddenly been resurrected. I grinned, studying the pairs of Union Jack trousers, which crowded the windows. They were sheer Donovan; I’d wager he already had a pair.
I edged round, jimmying a back door.
I had a tradition that on forays to new places, I brought something back for Ruby: some trinket, whiskey or a pretty little something to bite…
You’ve got to show your love somehow, right?
Just because we were back with Ruby’s brothers, didn’t mean everything had to change. In fact, more reason for our traditions to continue. I needed to remind Ruby of what we had too, using our secret language, which was all our own.
I took a shufti around in the darkness, before spotting a Union Jack mug. I knocked it off quickly, before scarpering back out into the alleyway. My blood was up and pounding.
The night was fine and the world new in a way it hadn’t been for decades, with that added rush I always get from a lay – mug or bar of gold, it doesn’t make any difference. A lay’s a lay and a hell of a kick.
I was soaring in the sweating heat - not even thinking about the feeds I’d missed - when I bumped headlong into this posh suit.
He wasn’t looking where he was going either, whilst he lit up his cigar with this blinding gold lighter.
Then it hit me: the memory of every bastard I’d known in my First Life (and there’d been a sodding ton of those), who’d treated me like I was vermin.
In fact, with the same contempt as that wanker registered, when he recoiled, examining my leather jacket, like I was about to rob him.
The bloodlust engulfed me; I hungered to rip out his jugular.
Something, however, held me back.
I didn’t get it then - what it was. Not straightaway. Yet it was like that epiphany on Carnaby Street had infected me.
Still, the bloke reckoned dirt like me couldn’t do anything but rob?
I didn’t want to disappoint the man.
I snatched the lighter from him and legged it.
‘Hey, stop! Did you see..? He just stole my…’
The pigs joined in the chase; I heard their hollers and the thud of their boots.
This was it: the run, heat and the fear.
Laughing, I threaded through those throbbing streets, pushing the lighter into the pocket of my jeans: yeah, that was nifty. I clutched onto Ruby’s mug too because I had to keep that. I needed something to return us
back to normal again.
I was back. Alive, fully and monumentally. Dashing through those night-time London streets, I was bloody alive.
The First Lifer’s pale pink nails scratched against the stove-painted, metal arm of the lamp. Her body, which was splayed over the elliptical conference table, jerked, twisting and rotating the lamp, which was clamped to its edge. Her crochet angel dress rode higher, until I could see her muff.
Aralt’s jacket was neatly hung over his desk chair, his sleeves rolled back; he was the sort of prat, who’d make sure he didn’t get a drop of blood on his threads.
They’re the ones you need to watch out for, who pretend they’re more civilised than the rest of us savages: the ones who take off their jackets before giving you a kicking.
Aralt was suckling at the bird’s throat.
Christ in heaven, Ruby was too, right on the other side of the neck. She was sharing blood, which was as intimate as communion, just like we’d done on the anniversaries of my election. A bond of love, which Ruby had withheld from me, apart from on the rarest of occasions because it was close to sacred.
But now Ruby was doing it with Aralt? Her own brother?
I could only see the curves of Ruby’s body, which had tortured me for decades and the scarlet sweep of her hair. Creak, creak, creak – the lamp’s swinging was a torment. The reek of blood like poison.
I must’ve backed up a step because Aralt glanced over the First Lifer then.
When Aralt saw me, his peepers sparkled. He drew back, with what I knew was a victor’s smile: an Alpha male marking his bloody territory.
Or that’s what he thought.
No man’s ever owned Ruby, not since she’d been elected into Blood Life. I couldn’t wait for Aralt’s slam to earth when he finally discovered that.
‘No one ever taught you it’s rude not to knock?’ Aralt challenged.
‘It’s nearly dawn and Ruby wasn’t--’
‘Ah, you hear that? Babby was missing his ma.’
Ruby lifted her nut, shuddering from the kill. She scrubbed the heel of her hand over her mush. She was tripping. Overloaded on the blood. Her eyelashes were fluttering. Only the whites of her peepers were showing.
This bird must’ve been the dessert at the end of a hell of a feast.
I didn’t reckon Ruby could even see me or knew I was there; she was too away with the faeries. She never let herself lose control. Not like this.
When Aralt trailed his long fingers down Ruby’s neck, I started into the room. ‘Is she..?’
And then I was up against the wall, my nut gashed against a framed photo of Apollo 5. Red trickled down my forehead.
Bloody hell, Aralt was faster than Ruby.
‘Now listen here, you wee gobshite, the only reason you’re not a puddle in the sun is because Ruby’s grown sentimental in her old age. But me? I think I was right first time: you’re a chancer. A thick ride, who likes throwing shapes. I have no need for one of those. When it was just the two of you dossing around, you might have been the big man. But here?’ Aralt slapped me across the cheek lightly with a smile, before sauntering to Ruby, who was swaying now. Aralt hooked Ruby tight to him, before loosening his tie. ‘No windows,’ as Aralt glanced around the office, I realised he was right. ‘I’ve defeated dawn. You’re not the full shilling, are you?’ You know those bastards, who simultaneously make you feel the idiot and burn to clock them? Screw it, I wanted to feel Aralt’s heart stop bloody in my hands. ‘Run along to bed, like a good babby,’ Aralt licked the blood from Ruby’s lips, and she sighed, low and contented, ‘and I’ll take care of your Author.’
Alessandro examined the thin cut, which was rapidly healing up into a white line, with tentative fingers. ‘Still not scared of Aralt?’
I shoved away from Alessandro with a shrug. ‘Kids play. Saturday night in with Ruby.’
We were sprawled together on Alessandro’s wooden floor, in a glorious chaos of singles and LPs, as if a tornado had hit, and we were in the eye.
I’d found them, one after the other, ranked in bright orange paper record racks, alphabetically listed. Alessandro had given this vole-like squeal, each time I’d wrenched one out, devoured its cover and tossed it aside.
I drew out the psychedelic cover of The Stone’s “Their Satanic Majesties Request”. I turned it over reverentially in my hands. ‘You’re a dark horse. Because for a square? You’ve got cool taste.’
Alessandro fidgeted. ‘Another one of my…you know? You hear an awful lot of this modern stuff working at Advance. They even let me name the radio station.’
‘We have a radio station?’
The rot had set in already – we? I should’ve cut out my bloody conforming tongue. Society creeps up on you; it catches you by the balls, taming you until you’re leashed.
See here’s the thing, we’re all bound by our family, friends, jobs and love… But love doesn’t need to be bound or to bind - it can be free.
Society’s the prison we volunteer to lock ourselves in, hiding behind its bars without the need for guards because it’s comfy, safe and as predictable as you First Lifers crave. Yet it’s a fantasy because it’s built everyday on lies: from the laws you follow gormlessly unquestioning, to the roles you mould yourselves into, so you can fit square pegs into round. That’s what you’re conditioned for, cradle to the grave.
Here in our Blood Life, I’d thought we were beyond that. At Advance, however, I was being exposed to a whole new society; it made me feel like I was being castrated all over again.
Alessandro nodded. ‘A pirate radio station. You haven’t heard it?’ His arms started to flap. ‘Goodness, you must.’ He dived under the bed, so far I could only see his pale white feet sticking out. When he wriggled free again, he was clutching this bloody great box of transistor radios and beaming, like he was about to present his first born. ‘My collection. Donovan finds them for me because he knows I… Well, see..?’ Alessandro passed them over to me one at a time. Tiny pocket transistors. A real mink RL200 radio. And portable radios shaped like lipsticks, Batchelors tins or cups and saucers. He raised a red pop-art radio to his ear, twiddling with the tuning. ‘Guess what I named it?’
I craned my hands behind my nut. ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’
Alessandro grinned, the static clearing as he found the frequency.
…And now on Radio Komodo we have another groovy record for all you hip listeners out there…
‘Komodo?’ I kicked at Alessandro with my boot. ‘Nice one.’
All right then, so this is the moment…the one I’ve never told you about…I don’t know why.
Sod it, yeah I do. Honesty, right?
I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to feel like just another groupie, or any more of a sad git than I already did when we first met.
How’s that for a superior species?
But now’s my chance. My turning round.
So, this was our first true meeting. Only you never knew it until now.
This song started up on the radio. Then this singer and the voice… It was sultry but fragile, with a northern edge and a hint of Marianne Faithfull. Yet it was rock, rather than folk, through to its core. It belted me in the sodding gut because it was like everything I’d tasted on my trip down Carnaby Street - this new world blossoming from the earth, which made me feel old for the first time: dusty and dead. I craved another shot of this vibrant vitality and to suck the Soul from that voice – you - directly into my veins.
I’d wager it was your humanity, which we stripped away with every kill, rejoicing in each sacrificial hunt, that drew me to you.
For the first time in a century, I missed the heat of the sun.
I tried not to point too wildly at the radio. ‘Who’s this?’
Alessandro flushed. Interesting. ‘One of ours. She sings at The Heartbeat Club, so I hear.’
‘You’ve gone a little red there.’
Alessandro pressed his palms hard against his lugs, rocking backwards and for
wards for a moment. Then he wrapped his arms around his middle. ‘Kathy’s…dishy…’
‘That right? Listen,’ I edged closer, ‘the twins, what’s up with them? All this record company bollocks? I’ll be buggered if all they’re building is a music empire. Are they like the Kray twins or something?’
Alessandro sharply twisted off the radio. Your voice and world was lost to me again, leaving me with only the aluminium starkness of neat corners and the festering mouths of Komodo.
‘Or something.’
‘They’re Irish,’ I began thoughtfully, ‘elected after me. They’re brutal, ruthless but dedicated leaders. Taking a wild guess, they’re IRA?’
Alessandro clutched my arm, his small fingers digging in hard enough to hurt, as he dragged my forehead close, until it was touching his. ‘Members of the original Irish Volunteers; they were involved in the Easter Rising and the later fight for freedom against England. Aralt told me it was all right though - what they did - because Ireland was in a state of guerrilla war. They’re not terrorists or… The struggles made them officers in Ireland’s army. I don’t know if I…but that’s what he said. They were special too. Members of the Twelve Apostles. Assassins.’
‘Yeah, blokes who murdered their Old Bill, right?’
‘British troops too. It was war Aralt said. And in war people do things, which are… But please, you can’t… He only told me because he’s my Author. He’s private like that. About his past--’
‘You could knock me down with a feather. And? How were the twins elected?’
‘Black and Tans hated men like Aralt and Donovan. They burnt down their home one night. With the twins in it. Lucky for the twins, however, he’d already been watching and following their impressive exploits.’
‘Who?’
Alessandro rocked back on his heels. ‘Ruby’s Author, of course. Plantagenet.’ Alessandro looked confused at my blank expression; even he couldn’t misread that obvious a reaction. ‘She didn’t tell you? How she was elected? About Plantagenet?’
‘Doesn’t look like she told me sod all, does it?’
Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) Page 8