Blood Renegades (Rebel Vampires Book 3)

by Rosemary A Johns

  My London: thriving and thrusting.

  Birds hurried with bundles of umbrella frames and cages of hats, mingling with dirty coster girls and oily sackmakers with humungous piles of sacking balanced on their nuts. Waifs. Strays. Roughs. Working men and women ebbing and flowing across the great river, whilst the rich rode in their carriages.

  Then there was us: one First Lifer and one Blood, in the black freeze of the evening.

  I paused against the lip of the bridge, resting my arms on the granite.

  Surprised, Edmond stopped. In his top hat and velvet collared evening cape, he looked like a startled but posh bat.

  I avoided his eye, gazing out instead over the Thames.

  A chaotic shock of houses overhung the water. Through the grey fog was the pencil outline of railway station and cathedrals: chimney pots and cupolas, steeples, gables and towers.

  London.

  A grey shrouded ghost.

  I couldn’t help smiling.

  All right then, so here’s the truth of it: this was the end of a game Ruby had set in motion a fortnight before.

  Ruby and I had been in The Anchor, which clung to the banks of the Thames, sprawling in a beer stinking nook, with etched glass and emerald tiles, when we’d overheard the blathering of a pompous ass.

  George Darrington.

  The puffed-up leader of the Reform League had been spouting claptrap to a rapt audience.

  I’d seen Ruby’s peepers spark. Her body had coiled, snake stiffening.

  Darrington had transformed to prey.

  Suffrage for the common man? Democracy? That was the trendy cause back then. Of course, democracy has turned out to be the saviour of us all…

  Bugger. That.

  It terrifies me the blind faith folks have in the system.

  This tosser was a hypocrite. He didn’t believe in the working man or his vote. Even in the democracy, for which he was battling.

  Ruby? She wanted to show the world: unmask him.

  Seduce, change his vote, and then kill.

  That was the game.

  Anyone can be manipulated to change their beliefs. Love? That’s the weapon. Ruby was the queen of that sport – and my mentor.

  Ruby had sashayed round to Darrington’s table. Darrington had been stiff in starched formal suit, with a ginger beard and moustache, like an overgrown ferret. When he’d seen Ruby, he’d licked his lips and grown a stiffy; he’d been hooked.

  But George? He had a brother: Edmond.

  It was my job to discover Edmond’s weakness, turn his beliefs, and then…

  What’s a belief anyway? Why do we hold close these few mantras, prejudices, or faiths? Anyone can be convinced of anything.

  Your mind is your own. Or anyone else’s. We’re all wide open, if only we knew it.

  Tentatively Edmond plucked at my sleeve. ‘Even Gladstone--’

  ‘Oh let’s not waste a fine evening speaking of Gladstone; your brother has entertained us quite enough.’

  Edmond chuckled but then hung his nut. ‘My sincere apologies.’

  ‘Who taught you to apologize all the time?’ Edmond blinked, his hands fluttering in confusion. ‘Afeared of your brother? Of another caning?’

  Edmond’s butterfly hands flew automatically to the back of his trousers. Then he reddened. ‘Sir, I--’

  ‘Your brother’s a brutal man. I’ve seen him blow up at you and I am more than acquainted with the type; I’ve suffered them.’ I couldn’t help the shiver: the memory of everything I’d endured at the orphan school because my uncle hadn’t sent for me, threatened to overwhelm me. I swallowed. ‘Now, however, you’re a man. The same as your brother. What are you campaigning for if not freedom? Choices and opportunities? Where are yours?’

  It was Edmond’s turn to shrug. ‘He’s family.’

  ‘Bugger family.’ I don’t know where it came from, this…tidal roar rage against… Except that’s the bollocks because deep down? I did. When I met Edmond’s gaze, it was understanding. He suddenly looked older than me. Then it was my turn to redden. ‘Believe me when I say it’s not safe,’ I urged softly, ‘the affairs he’s leading you into. He doesn’t believe in the League. It’s just for the thrill. The chase,’ I gave a bark of laughter, ‘and I am one who lives by such games. Truly.’

  ‘It’s nothing but a diversion. Men’s lives are pawns to be played with, between the brandy and cigars,’ when Edmond leaned in closer, I felt his breath warm against my cheek. ‘I comprehend this, sir. They rant and discourse but then they guffaw, decrying the working men as brutes.’

  Edmond whispered the last word, as if he’d be caught out and whipped. His peepers were wide at his own daring; his pale mush delicate and beautiful. His ever moving fingers worried at the buttons on his evening cape.

  I’d done it.

  It’d been so easy. Beliefs are as intangible as mist. They shift and vanish in the light just as swiftly too. It’d taken so little to transfer Edmond’s loyalty.

  To break him.

  Now to the next step.

  I had a shufti around the bridge.

  A copper was directing traffic in the center. The bridge was blocked. Steaming horses stamped, their hot breaths spirit white, as drivers flicked their reins. An oik, with bruises staining his starkers chest, weighed us up as he limped by; I glared, and he turned away.

  Too many witnesses.

  I’d lure Edmond into Southwark: there were plenty of narrow alleys, which would do the job.

  I should be elated. This was it: time to feast. Yet I couldn’t shake this squirming sense of unease.

  I could tell Edmond was waiting for me to say something; I forced myself to still his hands, before they pulled off one of those expensive buttons. ‘I know you have pluck, but men like your brother? They incite rebellion. Then when it gets bloody? They walk away.’

  ‘We’re so close--’

  ‘Other men will campaign. Reform. They always do. But your brother? He’ll take you to hell with him.’

  My fangs were aching to spring out. I’d gripped Edmond’s arm and was hustling him with me south along the bridge, shoving the working girls and business men in their bowler hats out of the way.

  Edmond gasped, gripping his tile hard to his nut.

  Why was I so het up? This whole lay was intended to strip away the poor sod’s beliefs at the moment of death, yet they were the cub’s only comfort.

  And I couldn’t quite do it.

  What the hell was wrong with me? I was new to this dark Blood Life, learning to swim in its crimson tide; I wished I had Ruby there to guide me.

  This was a test, however, to prove I was a true Blood Lifer.

  Guess I was failing then.

  Edmond’s soft hand curled around my arm. ‘You can help me. Please, sir? I know I have no right to ask.’

  Edmond wrenched back from my grasp with unexpected strength.

  Ruby would be sinking her fangs in right about now, deep into George’s whiskery throat. Pumping in the toxin. She’d leave him paralyzed amongst the sheaves of papers he’d forsaken to sign and then feed at leisure.

  I imagine politicians taste nasty.

  Befriend. Then end. That was the game.

  Simple.

  So why couldn’t I finish it?

  I shook Edmond off – he was trembling.

  I’d told him to make his own choice and break from his old beliefs.

  Looked like he’d taken my advice.

  I screwed shut my peepers; Ruby would rip off my baubles if she ever found out…

  When I opened them again, Edmond was studying me with deep concern. How long had it been since anyone had looked at me like that? ‘I hope I did not distress you..?’

  ‘If I…help you…then you’ll have to leave and not merely London. England - forever. No coming back. More than that, you’ll have to change who you are.’

  To my surprise, Edmond nodded. ‘I would happily be someone else. If I can escape this life.’

  ‘Don’
t go saying that too loudly. Trust me.’

  Edmond blushed. ‘But I’m hard up; I don’t have the needful. You see, my brother doesn’t allow me--’

  ‘I’ll stump up.’

  I don’t know why I said it. Why I reached into my pocket and handed over the folded wad of notes from my latest lay. Ruby would give me such a slating, when I told her I’d lost the cash during the kill.

  Edmond took the readies with unsteady hands. ‘I shall pay you back.’

  ‘You shall certainly not,’ I snatched Edmond by the shoulder, twirling him towards Southwark with a shove. ‘Take a cab, book passage…somewhere and start living. Give me your word?’

  Edmond smiled at me over his shoulder, as he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. ‘Only if you promise me the same.’

  Blood Lifer to First? There was no safe answer to that.

  I forced myself to nod.

  Then he was gone, lost amongst the throng, and I was alone in the dark cold bustle of London Bridge.

  No one ever discovered I’d let that boy live.

  I reckon he did a better job at changing my beliefs, than I did his.

  Still, I promised to live and I always keep a promise.

  And that? To you? Is a warning.

  To me?

  It’s hope.

  Let me check I’ve understood this correctly. You save a Victorian boy (having manipulated him quite masterfully). Then over a century later you stumble upon a homeless boy and save him too?

  That’s not--

  At least, you want to save Will. By killing and electing him.

  You don’t have to make it sound--

  Is it guilt? So unusual in a Blood Lifer. You’re quite the curiosity. Unique: Captain says.

  Me? I never buy into hype.

  If I did everything out of guilt, I’d spend my whole bloody life rescuing fragile humans.

  Don’t you?

  Guilty as charged, m’lud!

  Wait, what’s this then?

  You were right. I investigated; it turns out you were indeed being starved. That’s unacceptable.

  So you may feed now from this boy.

  You’re off your trolley, if you reckon--

  The cuts are shallow; he won’t die. Suck like a baby, Mr Blickle, no need to let in the venom. He can be your pet snack. Captain is fond of this one; he uses him in the same way. In fact, he uses him in many ways.

  Does he now?

  He’s pretty: such lovely curls. For a First Lifer.

  Humans have other uses than--

  My, aren’t you prudish? I’d imagined after your enslavement as a sex slave--

  Don’t pretend you know me. How about this? I’m not sodding drinking.

  You truly want this dance?

  I don’t dance.

  Then I suggest you drink, or that torture you mentioned..?

  Been there. Done that.

  Not you. The boy.

  That’s it… Doesn’t it feel better to feed directly from a First Lifer? To be wild again? Unleashed?

  Tell me, Mr Blickle, why do you see yourself as a protector for these humans, when you can never be human again?

  Humming “London Bridge Is Falling Down”, I sauntered over London Bridge in the dead of night. My skin stung, assaulted by the ice freeze. The concrete and steel bridge bled out into the Thames; light puddled in crimson blood pools. The Shard was bright on the horizon. Taxis honked, as blokes in hoodies with their hands deep in their pockets scurried by.

  I swaggered south out of the City, back towards Southwark and our apartment. I’d been scouting the posh shops for clothes to half inch for Sun. She hadn’t lost her taste for the designer after her election, but our salaries at Peter Pan’s didn’t exactly stretch to her old wardrobe.

  I had a scarlet Alex Highbury-Lord dress stashed under my jacket, with which to surprise Sun.

  I couldn’t give Sun the world. Not how I wanted - not yet. But I’d give her every last bleeding thing I could.

  Kathy, my human lover for fifty years, had knocked the light-fingered stuff on the head. After Abona, however, and what the human slavers had stolen from us..?

  I reckoned we were entitled.

  I only took from those First Lifers who had. Like a modern-day Robin Hood. Except he never existed, and I don’t give to the poor. Unless we count..?

  Family was coming first now. Any rules? I was making them.

  I passed where once the severed nuts of traitors had been displayed impaled on iron pikes (boiled and dipped in tar first, of course), when I clocked dusty blonde curls and intense blue peepers.

  Will.

  Hunched over in the cold, Mutt padding at his heels, Will was hurrying over the bridge too.

  ‘London Bridge is falling down,’ I sang softly, as the hunt began.

  So here’s the truth of it: every night since that first one outside the comic shop, I’d been following Will. I lied to myself that it was pretend hunting, just to keep my hand in.

  Yet that was the bollocks.

  It was to keep the little git safe, and I knew it.

  Then there was the ache - like being edged, when you’re not allowed to come. It was this desire to Author, yet also knowing it had to be his choice because wasn’t that what I’d always preached? Didn’t I despise Blood Lifers who elected kids too young to understand the glories of evolution?

  As Aralt had done to Alessandro?

  I watched as Will drifted down the side of the bridge to the embankment, above the river’s marshy estuary, as he had every other night.

  ‘…Falling down…’ I hopped after Will down the embankment, crunching on the gravel. Will disappeared under the bridge; he was swallowed into the darkness. ‘…My fair… Sodding hell…’

  A shank.

  Right between my shoulder blades.

  It’d bleeding ruined my leather jacket.

  I scrabbled frantically behind me but I couldn’t reach the blade.

  When I heard a snort of laughter, I twisted round.

  A First Lifer bird with a huge Afro, khaki military jacket and low-slung trousers was assessing me with crossed arms and a smirk. ‘Problem, wasteman?’

  ‘Little help here?’

  She raised her eyebrow.

  Writhing like a snake, I managed to curl my fingers around the shank’s handle, before wrenching it out with a holler. When I chucked it into the glass surface of the Thames, it disappeared silently. ‘You’re no lady knifing a bloke in the back,’ I felt the ragged rips in my jacket, remembering everything it’d been through with me since the ‘60s. ‘This is bloody vintage. Bleeding kid like you wouldn’t know decent clobber if it bit you on the neck. Bugger me, that hurt.’

  ‘Yeah? I shank to kill, you get me?’

  She’d edged closer to the embankment but her fight was still up.

  ‘Should learn your left from your right then. The heart’s not… Sorry, no, you shouldn’t. You ever considered not going around assaulting innocent…men?’

  ‘You ain’t no man.’

  Interesting.

  ‘That right?’

  Suddenly, she was up in my face. A tiny fury of hair and gangster. ‘You be slipping. Lucky I ain’t got my gat, you hearing me?’

  ‘Not bloody guns again.’

  ‘Why you following my Will?’

  There was something about the way she said my. The possession and protectiveness, which I recognized.

  Hated.

  I wanted to tear out the bitch’s throat. And that? Terrified me.

  I shrank back. Not from her but myself.

  The bint’s peepers, however, lit up. Like she’d been the cause and was reveling in scaring the monster.

  Power: anyone who says they don’t get off on it is a damn liar.

  She shoved me in the chest, hard enough to send me stumbling backwards into the freeze of the Thames.

  Splash.

  Sopping wet, I dragged myself up.

  A woman in a scarlet dress was drifting south on
the currents.

  Shocked, I was about to dive after the bird (all right, so maybe I do have a hero complex), when I remembered Sun’s gift: the Alex Highbury-Lord dress. My reason for being out here and away from family. Why I was now bleeding out from my back and shivering like a bastard.

  Whilst Sun’s present wraith-floated away.

  I stalked out of the river. This time? I couldn’t stop the fangs shooting out.

  I hadn’t expected the giggles.

  ‘Drowned rat, innit?’

  Not exactly the big reveal moment. Deflated, I retracted my fangs, sweeping my dripping hair back from my forehead. Grumpily, I shrugged.

  ‘My mandem – Will and others from the streets – we close. Move to me, blud, and you click get shank. Again. ‘Cos we know what ‘tings in the shadows.’

  ‘Do you now?’

  Her gaze was hard. ‘You eat us.’

  I shuffled my feet. I hadn’t figured on coming face-to-face with a hunter. We were the Lost: camouflaged predators.

  It looked like we were doing a piss poor job of it.

  Hunters weren’t meant to exist. No hunters, torches or pitchforks. If they did? This wasn’t how I’d imagined the meeting going down: an awkward chinwag, whilst I dripped with stinking Thames water.

  I circled the hunter, whilst she prowled round me. ‘Kids like you – homeless – hearts must give out all the time. Tragic. So--’

  ‘I’m poor; I ain’t stupid. Hidden in doorways: we see. We be invisible even to you. We watch and we die; the same as the suits and the rich bitches with the bling.’ The hunter raised herself on tiptoe. Her lips were dry against my wet. ‘You suck us too. How we taste?’

  ‘Lighter,’ my mouth brushed against hers at each word, but like a confession I couldn’t move back, ‘diet flavor. Not as rich.’ The hunter slammed towards me. Her headbutt stunned me. ‘Truth,’ I gritted out, ‘never bloody easy, is it?’

  She was breathing hard. ‘You ain’t like the others.’

  I rubbed my bruised bonce. ‘They’re not like me. No one’s like me. And I don’t eat you First Lifers. Not anymore.’

  Confusion fluttered in her peepers. Then she grinned. ‘Who be you? A tamed bitch?’

  I burned to smash the knowing look off the hunter’s calculating mug. ‘I’m Light and all I want is to get the little man safely back. So he’s staying here? You’re keeping him…looking out for him? I am too.’