Yet something about what he’d said got to me: delivery? That and the way the lad had lain there, like he was awaiting an operation, reeked of Silverman and the white room with its needles.
When Donovan finally raised his nut, his gob sticky with scarlet, I asked, with an effort to sound casual, ‘How’d you get it delivered then, you lucky git?’
‘Secret.’
I could see the blood was pounding through Donovan - a burst of surging heat - mingling with the wacky backy, in a tripper’s heaven. It’d be piss poor if I couldn’t ferret the information out of him in that state. Even if it was like tugging on a shark’s tail. ‘Aralt, right?’
‘Yeah, how’d you..? Groupies man,’ Donovan laughed, as he swayed, steadying himself with one hand on the desk. ‘It was Aralt’s idea for our Blood Lifer bands to pick out the tastiest, slip something fun in their drinks and then send them back to us. Perks of being the boss.’
‘Just to feed on?’
‘Hey,’ Donovan dropped the boy’s corpse across the desk – bang – the steel back in his peepers; sod it, I’d gone too bloody far, ‘this is a drag. No more questions. Come here.’
Donovan opened his arms wide, like I’d rush back into his powerful embrace.
Not bleeding likely.
I could feel the door knob hard behind my back; its sharp outline was all I could think about. I tested it with my fingers without Donovan seeing. ‘He’s a good bro for letting you have them all. Come on, what’s the big deal? We’re tight, aren’t we?’
‘All? My bro was never one for letting anyone but himself have it all. He feeds me one or two scraps and the rest…’ Donovan stopped, peering at me suspiciously. ‘Why are you over there? I said, come here.’
‘Love to but… I’ve gotta hunt.’ I thrust the door open in one twist, diving out into the corridor. I was expecting to feel Donovan’s hands hauling me back in, but he didn’t follow.
This time nothing would stop me from finding out what the hell was going on.
I legged it down the deserted corridor to Aralt’s study; bloody blinding, no one was in. I slid inside, slipping to the storage unit, which skirted the desk and tried not to think about that prat sharing blood with Ruby over it, until she was overdosed.
It still smelled of both of them, under the rich blood, which laced the entire room.
Life’s like that: it bites you where it hurts. The bad memories kick themselves to the surface faster than the good. We’re secret masochists at heart.
I didn’t know what I was searching for, I only knew I had to look, like the stupid berk I was (and always have been I guess).
The top compartment of the unit was an internally lit Plexiglas band. Beneath that were box drawers and sliding aluminium doors. I scrabbled through them, discovering finances, formulas and scraps of data, which all formed a picture of something big. It was still too scattered and fragmented, however, to leap to life.
Yet.
The pattern was there and it was off, like it’d been at the bank a century before. If I could just study it a bit longer…
I glanced up at the door, as I reached for the next file.
Voices.
Then footsteps coming closer.
I was in his Nibb’s study, surrounded by a tempest of paperwork, in a way that would only have looked comical to me: Aralt wouldn’t get the funny side.
I snatched the papers up in handfuls, throwing them back, snapping shut boxes and crashing aluminium doors round, before chucking myself across the room.
Visions of Overend, Gurney and Company’s marble floor, my spit and blood pooling, as my peepers closed, possessed me… You are going to die, dearest prince… Yeah, so your own death’s hard to shake. And my second one was seeming a lot closer.
Some blokes just don’t learn from their mistakes.
Aralt slammed through the door, his arm hooked around Ruby’s waist. He was nuzzling into her neck. Ruby was laughing, and I could tell by the way she quivered, shuddering in waves, that she was high on feasting again. They stopped abruptly though, when they saw me bang centre of the study.
‘And what is my darling Light doing in here, all by his lonesome?’
Aralt wasn’t looking at me. He’d disentangled himself from Ruby and was sauntering over to a UFO-shaped drinks cabinet, where he poured himself a whiskey. He swirled the amber liquid around the glass. ‘You’re taking ages to answer there, babby,’ he said softly.
Here’s the thing, it’s easier to think of lies, when your bloody life doesn’t depend on it. I remember a time too as a First Lifer, when they’d come tripping from my tongue, as easily as breathing.
A century spent with Ruby, however, when our Souls were bared, and we were each other’s truth (at least I’d thought so), had weakened my ability to fib. Reckon that’s a small thing?
Ask the autistic bloke.
It’s our natural defence because either everyone must tell the truth or everyone must lie. Now I’d found myself in a land of falsehood and it was me with the serious design flaw. Still, I was getting better every day I shared the same fetid air with these lot. After all, I’d held my own with Donovan, hadn’t I?
‘Looking for Ruby. Where else was she gonna be? Not like she’d be with me, is it? The bloke she actually elected?’ I tried to act the sulky teenager, sticking my hands in the pockets of my jeans with a sullen pout. I reckon they half believed me.
Ruby stretched on her back over the length of the desk, her hair flowing out, like a flame. ‘Dearest prince, you have been naughty indeed.’
Aralt stroked down the silk of Ruby’s stomach, taking small, careful sips of his whiskey. His black gaze didn’t leave my face. You know that feeling when someone’s mentally ripping you apart?
I glanced at the door, but Aralt was already stalking towards me. He stood so close our noses were nearly touching. ‘Remember that wee conversation we had?’ I tried to twist my head away. Aralt, however, grabbed me by the chin, yanking me back. ‘Ruby’s not your ma. She’s not even your bird anymore. Stop making such a holy show of yourself.’
Aralt turned away but then just as fast, cracked the whiskey tumbler down across the side of my mug.
I felt the skin split, and the blood pour from the gash, as I fell to my knees.
Through my quickly closing peeper, I saw the wanker swagger back to the UFO cabinet and casually take himself a new glass. He poured himself a second whiskey, trailing his hand between Ruby’s knockers.
And Ruby? She was gazing up at her brother admiringly, like he was head of the pride. As if I wasn’t crouched in a mess of my own blood and bruises, with a lacerated face sliced to sodding pieces.
That was it, the moment I knew beyond any doubt: we’d been twinned in blood for over a century. Yet now that bond was broken.
I’d been replaced.
Ruby would always love Aralt more than me.
11
Funny how you First Lifers divide everything with your sticky labels, as if it’s not enough for a house to have four walls to be called a home or even to be with the one your heart bleeds for.
I never got it until now. Not until these last few quiet years with you.
We’ve spent so much of our life running, and that’s all on me. I’ve tried to make it into one big adventure because I can be full of bollocks too, if it’d help you. Was that how you felt? You never told me. And now it’s too late.
I’d work nights. It didn’t matter what city or job and no matter how dirty or low the work because I wasn’t exactly official, no matter where we went. I wasn’t in the taking what I wanted, when I wanted business either - not with you at my shoulder.
When we were travelling through the Philippines, it was brutal cage fights, like the blinding martial arts matches in Japan. In Las Vegas, I’d help casino owners sniff out card counters. It wasn’t like I didn’t know every trick in the book. They weren’t the sort of bosses to worry about paperwork, although it’d felt wrong to be sitting on that side of the gla
ss and not to be the one pocketing my winnings. You, however, had been very firm about that.
If there was nothing else going, I’d work bars or take a bouncer gig, like that time in Mississippi. But you hadn’t been keen. Look, it’d been the accent. The American birds had been dead into it; you’d got shirty about them stuffing their numbers into the back pocket of my jeans.
When we were settled long enough to make it count, you took the type of office roles, which I’d sworn would never be for a woman like you. Another broken promise. It seems I’m better at breaking them, than keeping them.
I did show you the world though, didn’t I?
You never mentioned your singing again and because you didn’t, it meant I couldn’t. Yet there were so many times, especially in the quiet of twilight, when I’d see that distracted look on your mush and I’d break inside not to say…sod it, something. Like I had the right? So I didn’t.
I couldn’t listen to your record, and since you never sang either, the silence drove me mad.
I reckoned - just once - you’d burst free. Then I’d hear the beauty of your sultry, raw tone, even if you were only cleaning the bathroom or thought I was still sleeping, as you pulled on your stockings in the morning.
Peace is overrated.
Occasionally, we’d pass a pram with some gurgling tyke, and I’d see this expression behind your peepers, like sadness or…regret. You’d mask it quickly, which you First Lifers are so good at. I knew a part of you yearned for children, grandchildren and the whole package deal fantasy, which everyone’s fed from the cradle. That deep down you craved a normal life. Except that’s no more than a sticky label again.
It’s no different to how I’ve always wondered if electing was like having a child. Whether Ruby had seen me in that way. How can it ever be an equal pairing, when it starts with one having such power over the other? When an Author tries, like a parent, to create their own reflection? Which then led me to question how anyone would want to subject another being to childhood and that abject powerlessness.
If I’d elected you, then you’d have been my act of procreation; I’d have been birthing a new member of my species. But you didn’t want that. It was you who denied me the chance.
How do you reckon I felt, every time you looked at some kid and got that expression in your peepers, when I’d have given you anything but I couldn’t give you that…gift of humanity?
Not that First Lifers are so special, of course, before you go running away with that thought. Like you’re a shining example to the rest of us..? If the Lost seem like monsters, then we learnt everything we know from First Lifers.
I’ve more of a conscience than many First Lifers. Sure I’ve killed to survive. There are, however, bleeding worse things.
Just watch the news.
I know plenty of Bloody Lifers with more of their Souls intact, than the bastards I met in my First Life. And I’ve met First Lifers, who seem to have none.
If there’s something after death or second death, I don’t have a bloody clue how they’ll sort us all out. But it’s not going to be a neat little reaping; it’ll be messy as…well, Hell.
Still, when everything’s said and done, I need to say sorry.
I’m sorry you lost everything. Sorry I buggered up your short First Life. Sorry you didn’t even have a home, not before I brought you to Ilkley Moor again and I don’t even know if you can really tell you’re here.
How much do you know or sense?
I reckon you do realise you’re home. I can feel it deep in me, like something moving.
You’re home and…sod those wankers at the Blood Life Council: when you die, what more could anyone do to me that I give a damn about?
As a First Lifer, I never had a real home, not since I was very young. And as a Blood Lifer? Who’d choose to live out their span in one tiny box, like cats marking their territory, when we could prowl the earth every inch our own in the night?
Wherever we rested for a day (or settled for weeks or months) was our crib but never - no matter the trinkets I filched and discarded as fast - our home. We were beyond that. At least, that’s what I’d reckoned.
When we came to stay at Advance in 1968, however, I realised something about Ruby, which she’d kept buried secret from me in all our years of nomadic wandering.
You see I never had a home. But her? It’d been right there at Advance with her brothers. And before that? With Plantagenet.
Every time Ruby had disappeared on me without a word that was where she’d been: playing happy families. Without me.
In a world of outsiders that’s got to make a bloke feel like the biggest outsider of them all.
But then I found you.
NOVEMBER 1968 LONDON
We were curled together on the red baroque rug, as I stroked my fingers through your long, black hair in the quiet of evening.
The moments with the stillness and silence have always been the most perfect ones to me. In Blood Life, you’re never in the eye of the storm - you are the storm. So I took the calm, with you, whenever I could.
This disease of humanity? I guess I was riddled with it.
Then bang, bang, bang, as loud as a thunderclap. You startled up.
‘What is it, luv?’ There was something in your peepers, almost like you’d been expecting this knock in the dark of the night; the same something, which’d made you say you couldn’t have someone like me – Rocker, bad boy, freak – in your life. ‘It’s just the door. You want me to..?’
We both pushed ourselves up, but you brushed me aside, like I was a ghost. Then you paced out into the hall by yourself.
Here’s how I figure it, you die once and come back? Then an ancient part of your brain, which is attuned to danger, fight or flight, grows or ups its game because it’d be a right berk not to.
So when I saw how you were acting all of a sudden? I got real quiet and crept to the door out to the hallway.
There was this dark silhouette framed on the step, all bulky suit and hat. You weren’t moving. You were like this fairy statue next to a giant; I knew dodgy when I saw it and I could taste it sour now.
Not all your nightmares are mine.
The ones that shake you side to side and make you rake your nails bloody down my mug? They could be yours - this one moment - the same as any of my night-time horrors.
Do you want me to lie to you about this? I wish you could tell me, or that I was able to decipher your tap, tap, tapping on the white covers. But love, I’m lost here, so all I can do is tell it how I remember it. What else is there now?
I pushed the lounge door wider. I knew this was it then - this wanker - the reason you’d reckoned I’d not want to know you: the real you.
‘All right Kathy?’ My voice seemed to trigger you to life. You turned towards me.
The figure next to you emitted a low growl, as it burst by, shouldering into the lounge. You trailed at the man’s heels. He reeked of stale bitter and fags. When he spun round on me, I could read the threat in his peepers. He backed me further into the room, but you patted my arm, as if calming a bleeding guard dog.
‘Who the bloody hell is this?’ The man snarled. ‘You living tally ower t’brush with him?’
You quickly shook your nut. Too quickly, for my liking. ‘No, father.’
Father? I eyed the shambling wreck, as he glowered at me blearily. His single-breasted suit was bulky and creased under his overcoat, like he never wore them except at weddings. He crumpled his hat between weathered fingers. I could see a breath of you in his hard features: the black hair threading to grey and watery blue peepers.
He tossed his head at me dismissively. ‘Then get thee gone.’
‘Not a chance, mate.’
‘This is between--’
‘Not a chance.’
Your father glared first at me and then at you, whilst scuffing his dirty shoes backwards and forwards through the shagpile. Then he nodded. ‘Get ready lass, you’re going home.’
You started; a pink flush spread up your neck to your cheeks.
Here’s the thing, when the bloke first barged in here, breaking into our safe cocoon, I hadn’t understood the skin of tension, which had sent warning howls from my ancient brain, through every nerve of my body. But now the scent of fear was overwhelming. Your distress and the menace on your father’s face was impossible to miss; it would’ve been even to a First Lifer.
Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the hunger to rip out your father’s throat and let him watch himself bleed out at your feet; my bloody sacrifice for everything I sensed he’d done to you. There wasn’t any need for words: it was all there in the fear, which is something we Blood Lifers sodding understand.
You stepped away from your father, twisting your ivory scarf in these little nervous jerks – twist, twist, twist – like you were struggling to breathe. ‘This is my home now. I don’t have to go back.’
‘Happen you do.’
I knew your father was going to move towards you, moments before he did. Blood Life heightens every sense, and then the hunt sharpens them with a thrill, which is as great as enslaving the world. Don’t knock it just because it’s hard to imagine. And yeah, maybe it corrupts, but power’s a bleeding turn on.
So when I realised your father was preparing to belt you, I blocked him. Then I eyeballed him, like the bastard’s never been eyeballed.
Your father was so shocked, he merely stood there, like he’d been stuffed and mounted
When I heard you behind me, however, you were bleeding pissed. ‘I fair don’t need you fighting my battles.’
Your father chuckled; his peepers were mocking.
You really know how to cut off a bloke’s baubles, you know that? Like a deflated balloon, I stepped aside. Stalking to the corner, I kicked the beanbag loudly as I passed for good measure, realising as I did it what a teenage tosser I looked. I leant against the wall with my arms crossed, trying to regain some pride.
‘You mun know you don’t belong here? And not with…him?’ Your father’s voice was softer. He ran his rough finger down your cheek. You flinched. ‘Why did you run? Stop acting fair maungy. There’s nowt here for thee…for people like us. But you have family. Think on.’
Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) Page 16