Easy, wasn’t I? Grace was my tempter and destroyer. But I was weak - I can admit that now - because I had those bastard papers tight in my daddles and could’ve walked out right there and then.
How would things have been if I had?
Moments like that - we all have them - are turning points. Bollocks, they’re simply choices: decisions we make every day. We can’t go back or change a single bloody one.
So you have to deal with it. Deal with what you decided to do. You and no one else. That fight you took on or didn’t. The time you walked away or stayed to the bitter end. The love you stuck with or gave up on. Every one you and you alone.
No one takes responsibility – First Lifer or Blood – but the hard truth is yours is the ugly face behind every shred of pain. The paths you took or never walked. No one and nothing to blame or praise, apart from yourself.
We’re all alone with that reality, when everything’s said and done. Alone every breath.
So I could’ve walked there and then with the papers. But fool that I was, I chose to stay because a bird, who I reckoned I was in love with, had taken notice of me for the first time. She’d found out my first name and then had offered me a forbidden drink from her papa’s own booze. I was tempted - more than I’d ever been in my life - to take a sip of this world, which I knew I’d never be a part of, before I brought it crashing down.
When I rushed to Grace, taking the tumbler from her with shaking hands, she watched me with hungry, admiring eyes. The whiskey was smooth and warm. Suave as I was in those days, however, I choked on it. I wasn’t one for alcohol back then: I’d seen what degradation gin could lead to. It was Ruby who later introduced me to those delights.
Grace smiled, as she pressed me down into her papa’s brown leather chair.
The throne itself? Sod it, I was sweating now.
I resisted, but Grace’s hands on my shoulders pushed harder. Insistent.
At last, I sank into the soft leather, as the last rays of the sun bled over the dying day, through the high arched windows: the eyes out from this cathedral of finance.
‘Don’t you look grand?’ Grace caressed my collar.
Gazing over the shining desk, my palms pressed on its cold surface, I felt like a cardinal: this was power. For the first time a new, odd sensation swelled. It confused me - this biting need, which was twisting my gut, for something more.
When you’ve had so little (and what you did have has been snatched away from you), it doesn’t take much to corrupt the good in you. Although, as I don’t go in for sticky labels, maybe it’s more that it doesn’t take much to be taken as a mug.
When I caught Grace’s scent of violets, my lust was lit. The blood rushed down below to my tackle, as if at some unspoken signal. I surged up from my chair.
Bloody hell, this was it at last.
I was going to crush Grace in my arms and ravish that bowed mouth. Just like I’d wet dreamed, ever since Grace had swept down from her carriage and into these corridors to torture me. But I’d caught her unguarded and unmasked: Grace’s expression wasn’t admiring, as it’d been only moments before. Instead, there was mocking laughter in her blue peepers.
Instantly, Grace readjusted her features, catching her smile behind her hand, as she turned back to the drinks cabinet. But it was too late. Because I’d sodding seen.
I was cold. The room had drained to grey.
I realised right then my own ludicrousness for playing at king and something I’d never be, with someone I’d never have. Worse, that I’d never be more than the outsider looking in.
Yeah, everybody laugh at the clown.
All passion ruthlessly slaughtered, I felt sick; I loathed the bitch.
Grace glanced back at me, her peepers still shining with mockery.
I snatched the papers off the desk, before storming out of the office with Grace tripping at my heels.
‘Where are you going so fast? Do you not wish to play some more?’ Grace was trying to catch at me with her betrayer’s fingers, but they burnt red hot, each one a brand of my idiocy. ‘Thomas, please, you are no fun at all, Thomas…’
Bang…
You know how life kicks you right in the balls sometimes, yet when you look at it dead close, you’re actually the one who put in the boot yourself? That’s when it hurts so much bleeding worse.
I bolted out of the director’s office, like I was in the midst of a caper, with a bundle of the director’s nicked papers clutched to my chest, his beloved only daughter (and no chaperone), in tow, hot after me and panting my first name, as if we’d just been up to some serious hanky panky, when I collided with the monolith that was Mr Erwood.
I bowled backwards. The files flew up like white rain. Grace stumbled into an ungainly heap, her dress riding up to show her layers of petticoats and a single glimpse of her drawers.
‘My word…’ The other directors were huddled, like a group of schoolboys, gawping goggled-eyed.
Grace’s peepers flashed with humiliated rage but then immediately filled with spoilt tears. They fixed on me and in that moment, I knew what it meant: I was buggered.
The other blokes seemed to suddenly remember their chivalry; they rushed to Grace’s shamed aid.
I heard Grace’s muffled sniffles, as I forced myself to raise my gaze to Mr Erwood. His mottled, Dundreary whiskered face peeping out of his starched collar was crimson, shaking with outrage.
Bloody hell, I was going to cop it.
‘Take her home,’ Mr Erwood curtly ordered.
I heard the shuffle of Grace’s light footsteps, as she was escorted away. Her whiney voice melted to honey, once she warmed to her new male company.
Now I was alone with her papa.
Everything told me to leg it. My body, however, wouldn’t obey me. I shrank back against the wall.
All right then, so here’s the thing, I wasn’t a brawler back then, not once I was out of the schoolyard. That came later with Ruby. I guess the talent had always been buried under there; Ruby simply unleashed it. But as a First Lifer? I took the beatings, I didn’t dish them out. It was just the way things were, that’s all.
Mr Erwood had noticed the papers now, which were lying in snowy mounds across the marble floor. At first he frowned, as if I really was merely a junior clerk. The nobody, who’d been forced on his consciousness, like an irritating flea, and who’d disappear again just as quickly. Then, however, realisation spread like a dark sea. And with it, a hissing fury, which was greater even than when he’d seen me with Grace, because a flea like me trying to despoil his business was worse - to a bloke like him - than me despoiling his daughter.
Priorities, right?
I’d tried the hero bit - to save the world. I’d spectacularly failed. Now I knew I’d pay a bloody high price.
Mr Erwood didn’t say anything. Instead he crushed me, like a man would crush a flea.
Mr Erwood raised his silver-headed cane and brought it down across my nut. Then he hauled me closer to him with one hand and brought the cane down again. And again and…
My blood sprayed over Mr Erwood’s pristine white cravat, patterning it with crimson; even through my haze of agony, I saw him grimace at the inconvenience to his threads. I clutched my hands over my nut, struggling away from him. That surprised Mr Erwood because what flea fights back?
I was dizzy, stumbling to my knees, when I saw the shadow of Mr Erwood’s cane swinging above me again.
This time, however, I grasped hold of the wood as it arced down. I stopped it, inches from my cheek.
Mr Erwood shook me off, clouting me across the jaw and dropping me sprawling over the cold marble.
Then I felt, like fire, blow after shattering blow across my back, followed by the snap of ribs and spine. I tried to crawl away, sliding inch by inch, by my fingertips. I was caught in a daze of blazing pain. I was driven by the one thought of escaping it.
But there he was, with that sodding cane, blocking me.
The hiding continued: me b
loody at Mr Erwood’s feet, unable now even to move.
The thought squirmed in me that he didn’t intend to stop, not until there was no breath left in me. This was it then. How it ended. I was going to cop it, beaten and alone on this cold floor.
It’s strange that when death comes, you don’t have any astounding revelations. The most you think is: is this it then?
And I was bloody pissed about it.
It was right then - right when I reckoned I had no more life left on this world - that’s when she came.
I was stretched out on that marble, with blood trickling into my peepers, so I couldn’t see her. But I heard her all right.
First the doors banging open down the corridor and then I felt the blows from the cane suddenly stop, followed by the cane’s clatter, when it was hurled against the wall and lastly, as Mr Erwood followed it.
‘Good God…’ Then Mr Erwood’s scream, which was high-pitched like a little girl. That was the last noise he ever made. And I’ll admit that was bleeding satisfying.
There was this silence, and then footsteps coming towards where I lay, broken and defenceless… The swish of a dress… When I blinked the blood away from my peepers, I could see scarlet silk sweeping the floor…
A bird had done this? Like a bloody avenging angel.
She knelt next to me, a long veil of red hair brushing against my bruised mug, as she peered at me.
I didn’t have the strength to do anything but lie there. I knew I was buggered, after what this creature had done to Mr Erwood.
Yet I wasn’t scared; for once in my life, there was no fear worming under my skin. The threads of my life were already unravelled. My heart was hardly beating; it was no more than the trembling of a butterfly’s wing in my chest. I’d laugh if I was still able to because what more could she do to me? It wasn’t like she could hurt me any worse.
That was when she said something, which made me understand how wrong I was – about everything. ‘You are going to die, dearest prince. After that? We will talk more formally.’ She stroked my hair back from my forehead gently. ‘Because then all these petty things, which seem important now, will fade to nothing. I give you my troth. Have courage, for you and I will be twinned eternally, blood to blood. Close your eyes; I shall see you when you open them again.’
Before my peepers fluttered closed, I thought I saw her teeth elongate, as she stretched her mouth wide, like a python.
10
OCTOBER 1968 LONDON
‘Darling Light, see how the flame dances?’ Ruby wove the scarlet candle in front of my peepers, in the dark bedroom; shadow imps cavorted across the bed’s heavy curtains, as an incense infused lake pooled at the candle’s wick.
Then Ruby caressed her fingers down my naked body, which was stretched out on the bed. My hands clutched at the wood of the four-poster, which had been stripped of its sheets because it’s sodding hard to get out hardened wax. Ruby laughed when she saw how intently I followed the light’s ghost trail.
Look, there’d been no way out of it, you’ve got to believe that. I’d rather bleeding well not have been banging Ruby too and all this - play - was more her cup of tea than mine. It always had been. But she was still my Author, and we had decades of history, right?
There’s no way a First Lifer can understand the bonds of Blood Life. Death and then resurrection are bloody big deals. They’re not something you can just shrug off.
Yeah, it’s a poncey excuse.
The truth? I didn’t yet have the bottle to fly solo.
Rebel to the core? Who am I kidding?
Still, this was Ruby noticing me again - testing me more like it - and with months of scrubbing your scent off my skin, I didn’t have any choice but to make it convincing.
Ruby slunk even closer. She was lethally beautiful in black lace corset and suspenders. I hadn’t filched or bought them with my shameful allowance, so they distracted me for a moment.
Ruby never indulged in stuff like that for herself. So who’d got them for her? Aralt?
Then Ruby’s hand was teasing my todger, and I wasn’t distracted anymore.
Ruby licked down my cheek and round my lips. As she kissed me, she tipped the wax, burning pretty crimson patterns down my chest and stomach: marking her property.
I gasped and arched. I could take this. It wasn’t any different to the hundreds of other times we’d played this game.
Yet this time it was different because now there was you and the way your hand curled gently into mine, rather than pinning me down hard into place, like Ruby was doing, with that gleam of dominance in her peepers. Now I had a new way. And this?
I didn’t sodding want it anymore.
The realisation hurt more than Ruby’s games.
Ruby smiled, stroking my hair. Then she tipped the wax once more. She straddled me, moving the wax lower and lower down my agonised body. She bent to snog me again.
And that’s when it happened: I cocked up.
One simple movement but it said everything.
That’s when I couldn’t stop myself turning my mouth away from Ruby’s kiss.
Ruby sat back, staring down at me in shock. Then she hurled the candle so hard it smashed against the wallpaper behind my nut.
‘Buggering hell…’ I covered my mush against the flying spots of burning wax. I could hear Ruby’s breathing, like a lion about to savage its kill. I carefully lowered my spattered arms. Ruby was still just kneeling over me, glaring down. ‘Look, I…’
‘Peace be quiet.’ I saw tears sparkling in Ruby’s peepers: it kicked me in the gut, in a way I hadn’t expected. ‘We were twinned eternally, blood to blood. But still, I’m losing you, am I not?’
I peeked up at Ruby, not daring to speak because when you’ve been together as long as we had - crossed continents and centuries, survived wars, rebellions and disasters - you know the lies in each other’s words, so what’s the bloody point?
Ruby slowly pushed herself off me. ‘But to lose you to…the disease of humanity and this base time? To have to live with a shadow of the Blood Lifer you once were…the man you were..? You think I know not you’ve been blood abstaining? That I cannot tell the signs in one of my own? Such beggarly behaviour brings down shame on our line.’
Furious, I threw myself out of the bed and opposite Ruby, scratching off the wax and enjoying the pain, as it ripped tender pink skin underneath. I didn’t want her branding of ownership on me. Not any longer. ‘Sorry I haven’t lived up to your name. And what is it again? Plantagenet? Yeah, see the lesson about keeping my nose out still hasn’t seeded.’
I reckoned for a moment Ruby was going to fly at me, like a flaming arrow, across the bed and throw me against the wall. Instead, she shook her nut. ‘Why does it matter who my Author was? He’s gone, and we’re his legacy.’
I leant across in one final effort to reach Ruby, in the bond of blood shared and the burn of a love, which had been brighter than any fire, as we’d revelled in the Bedlam, alone against the world. For those long days and dark nights in the Great War and the years after, when Ruby had sat quietly tending to me, pressing First Lifers’ necks to my lips. For a lifetime together.
‘We were good, weren’t we? Before we came here to your family. They’re sure as hell not my family. That’s what’s ripped the heart out of--’
‘You would blame me?’
‘I warned you that I don’t play well with others, or that they don’t with me.’
Ruby let out a long hiss of exasperation. I bloody well knew how she felt. ‘My brothers are the best of--’
‘That right? Assassins? Who despise the British, and were murdered by the Black and Tans? Yeah, this babby’s been doing his homework. So tell me they still don’t want to blow our bloody heads off? All reformed, are they?’
‘Being elected does that for you,’ Ruby raised her eyebrow, as she prowled towards me around the bed. ‘Prithee, why do you still think like a First Lifer? Petty divisions fade and die, as First Life
has faded and died. I pray you, live more years, and then you’ll understand.’
But here’s the thing, I wasn’t sure Ruby was right.
Hate’s a powerful emotion, and all are amplified: the bad, the same as the good. Obsession surges through me, just as passion does. It’s no different to how I experienced it in my First Life, only it’s brighter. The emotion worms through us, off-kilter and on a grander scale, like a dream half-remembered when you wake up with a morning glory and a head full of crazy. It’s still there, deep inside.
As I dragged on my black jeans, Ruby watched me through narrowed peepers. When I wrenched on my t-shirt, she demanded, ‘Where are you..?’
I shrugged.
Ruby darted forward, so fast she was blocking the door, before I’d even taken a step. ‘Let us hunt together; it has been too long. You can show me this street, which has so bewitched you. Carnaby, is it not? We’ll eat this city whole together, my dearest prince and regain your birthright,’ she circled her long finger around my lips. ‘We will anoint you with blood and wine.’
I caught her finger between my hands and gently lowered it. ‘I don’t think so, Ruby.’
I might as well have cut out her heart, there and then, by the expression on Ruby’s mush.
Yeah, wanker.
After that, I’d ducked out as fast as I could, seeking refuge from Ruby’s rejected fury in Alessandro’s room.
Surprised, I’d stared around at Advance’s account books, which were cascading over the desk and wooden floors. Flicking one open, the streams of numbers absorbed me, like an exhilarating game of chase.
Because this?
Aralt didn’t see it (clearly didn’t want to), but this was where I was king: buried balls deep in the numbers and giving my mind free rein for once.
Aralt wielded effortless control because he preyed on others’ weaknesses, sniffing them out like blood. Yet he never saw their strengths. And that? Was his weakness.
Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) Page 14