Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (16 page)

Then all of a sudden you were there.

You were coming out of your flat in high silver boots and a metal tunic, over a mini-skirt, which transformed you into a futuristic Amazon queen. You slammed the door and marched straight towards me, before I even had time to think of a new plan.

This I hadn’t practised, in fact, hadn’t even thought of in all my scenarios:
yeah
,
I was
a sodding genius
.

You still hadn’t seen me though, so there might be time to get out of it - for tonight at least.

I hung back and nearly let you pass. My palm was tense around the choker, like it was a relic.

Then came the fresh scent of you and it was too much: it overwhelmed me. You were devouring me.

I stepped out right in front of you, so close our faces almost touched.

I hadn’t realised you’d jump like that. Then you looked pissed.

‘
You
,’ you gripped your bag closer, ‘what do you want? I’m late.’

It’d never started like this in my head. ‘Well I…’ I began to draw out the choker. But then I frowned. ‘Don’t throw a wobbly, luv; Public Street last time I looked.’

‘Then you’re welcome to it.’ You skirted round me.

For a moment, I listened to you march away.

‘Hold up,’ I dashed after you, but you kept on striding in those bloody high boots, towards the beat of the rock club on the corner and between the rush of the dirty traffic, ‘come on, sorry, I was…’

‘You following me?’

‘No, I…’ You stopped, raising your eyebrow. ‘Yeah, a bit. I just… Look, this is for you.’ I pulled out the silver and sapphire choker, which rested on my pale palm. Looking down at it, I wished I’d scrubbed my nails. I could see your peepers widening. But something was wrong because you weren’t taking the choker. Instead, you were simply standing there, under the off yellow of the streetlight, studying me with this look, which I didn’t understand. Was this what First Lifers did? It didn’t feel right; it was more kind of sickening. I gestured with the choker towards you, but you shrank away. Then I remembered something, which I’d seen other First Lifers do. ‘Right, sorry, want me to put it on you?’ I began to fumble with the clasp.

‘No, don’t.’ You hurriedly stilled my hand with your fingers; your unexpected touch was like a silver roar. ‘You can’t just… Some’at like this, it’s…too much. Don’t you..? I can’t accept it.’

The silver roar transformed into a howling blackness: the type, which made me hunger to feast on the world because maybe that’d dim the pain. ‘Why?’ I clutched the sapphire disc so tightly it sliced into my palm; I felt my blood meld with the rock, like a sacrifice.

Your voice was softer than I’d yet heard it. ‘You know nowt about me and if you did…maybe you wouldn’t want to.’

‘What if I say I do?’

‘Then you’d be a right fool.’

‘That’s my choice.’

‘No,’ you pushed me back with a firm shake of your nut, ‘it’s mine. Reckon this is a game? Little girl with a voice runs away to London for a record contract? Easy, is it? My life? What I want? I can’t have someone like you--’

‘That right? Someone like me?’ Anger flashed at last and it was laced with a raw, remembered bitterness. You never forget your First Life and you don’t forgive either. ‘Suppose you’d prefer a bank clerk?’

‘I’d settle for someone who wasn’t a freak.’ You bit your lip as soon as the words were out. I’ve always wondered if you regretted them, as much as they hurt me.

You immediately put your nut down, avoiding my eye, as your strode deeper into the centre of Soho. You didn’t look back.

This time I didn’t follow.

The choker was buried in the flesh of my palm; blood poured down my wrist. I wrenched the choker out, gasping with pain. Tipping my nut back, I hollered to the stars, with the rage and humiliation.

Then drawing my arm as far back as I could, I chucked that sodding choker in front of the wheels of a double-decker bus. I watched as it was pulverised; I wanted it to be ground back into the earth, so I’d never have to see it again. But you? I still yearned to see you and for the sweet torture to continue.

How can someone trap you with simply a smile?

8

You smiled at me in the early hours of this morning.

Will you ever understand what your smile means to me?

Because for that moment, as we lay curled together under the warmth of the covers, you were with me again: you saw me.

When I held you soft in my arms, you were Kathy and you remembered.

Your blue peepers studied mine, as clear as ever, and then came
that
smile. The one, which has always caught me helpless on your lips. And you know what?

For those few minutes before your peepers clouded, your smile wavered, and you were lost again -
that
was bloody
hearts and cupid
.

AUGUST 1968 LONDON

Another Saturday night in the dark buzz and clashing din of the Heartbeat, slouched with a smoke and a pint, flicking through the psychedelic pages of an underground magazine.

Bloody hell, these First Lifers weren’t as blinkered or dull as us Blood Lifers conned ourselves, at least not in the world of these mags, which catered for the freaks out there. Free love and screwing the system right royally?

Just add blood and I was sold.

Here’s the thing, the more I wandered this First Lifer world without Ruby, the more I realised my Author, muse and liberator didn’t have a buggering clue what she was on about.

Instead (for some reason I didn’t fully understand), Ruby was too frightened of the First Lifers, who were meant to be our prey, to dive headfirst into their world. Without the parent in the room, however, I’d been drowning in them. I luxuriated in the teeming, reeking humanity, with all its uncivilized barbarity. Sod that,
because
of it.

So I’d died? Not like I wasn’t still here, kicking the hell out of the world. I breathed the same air. Pissed and shagged, just the same as any First Lifer. Were we really so bloody different?

That’s why
A Clockwork Orange
blew my mind. Because there it was, in black and white screaming from the page at last: the self-awareness of this new age and the evolutionary jump to a subversion of everything that went before. It was enough to give me pause. It challenged all I knew about being one of the Lost.

Now you First Lifers were in my territory.

I downed my pint. I was meant to be helping Alessandro after closing with Advance’s books. That was more of the twins’ dirt on my hands then.

The more I dug, the more I knew in my gut something was off.

The money, power and empire-building? It stank.

Was that the true Blood Life? Elected from death, simply to live through a rerun of First Life all over again? The same treadmill but this time only as a shadow, or a pale imitation in the darkness because none of us were getting a bleeding suntan, were we?

This existence, which the twins were creating for us, seemed to me nothing but a sick charade of humanity, and greedy wanker that I was, I hungered for more than that: for something better, bigger – different. That was my own. And that I’d
chosen
.

If I was finally outside the bullshit shackles of school, work, government and sodding money too (the bollocks of First Lifers, who can’t see the figures dance), then I’d earned the freedom.

But Aralt’s little family? We had new chains.

I’d just slipped out a new fag and lit up, when it started. The music.

I didn’t turn round, move or even bloody breathe because I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.

…
Everything’s changing, so
we’ve gotta change too…
It cut deep, bugger did you make me bleed…
But I’m alive, we’re alive, so we’ve gotta live
… And you were, like every one of the bopping Mods in this swarming club: sweating bags of skin, pounding with hearts, veins and arteries, which coiled in blue and red, like the wax anatomical models under the glass cases in Florence.

Yet here I was, trembling with hunger and the agony of the constant fight to leash it inside, but not one of you even noticed me – the dead bloke sitting right in your midst.

What would you think if you knew? What would you do?

I realised I was flicking my lighter -
on
,
off
,
on
,
off -
and staring into its orange flame, as your voice kept on singing.

I wanted to turn around so badly but I bloody well wasn’t going to.

It’s a myth that blokes think about sex every few seconds. Yet we’re still led by our todgers - that’s just nature - and when we’re in love, it sodding burns.

It’s a type of madness.

I wanted the thought of you - that worm squirming deeper and deeper into my core as you sang - incinerated.

I passed my hand over the lighter, holding its shimmering heat against my palm. And then again, lowering my hand…lower and lower.

The burn felt good. It was the first time in weeks I’d had something to really concentrate on. When it became too white hot even for me to bear, I snatched it away. Then, however, I forced my palm over the fire again. This time I held it there.

The skin blistered, peeling in blackened strips. I shuddered but I didn’t pull back. Instead I struggled to absorb the pain. This way I didn’t have to listen to your siren song; I could feel nothing but the fire.

At last, I wrenched my hand back; beads of sweat trickled down my forehead. Then I shifted my lighter over again but this time onto another spot.

It took me a couple more moments to notice you’d stopped singing, maybe you had awhile ago, but I’d been too lost to the world, submerged under waves of pain.

Breathing out with relief, I glanced over my shoulder, and there you were - my Moon Girl - dolled up and blinding as always.

Our eyes met. You were staring at me from across the dance floor in shock.

Buggering hell.

I snatched my hand away from the lighter, but it was too late - you’d seen.

I’d wager you reckoned I was a true freak after that?

I started off the stool, but you’d already dived for the door and were gone, before I’d been able to slip the lighter into my pocket (my scorched hand now making its protest known), and fight my way through the scrum.

The hunt was on.

I darted after you through the night-time streets. I didn’t even know what I’d say when I caught you. As if I could tell you I was burning myself because it hurt too much to listen to your voice, when I couldn’t have you…

That sort of thing would’ve been romantic to Ruby.

I was beginning to realise, however, that you First Lifers weren’t so obsessive. Every emotion amplified, right? Love is twinned with hate. Pain to passion.

When I glimpsed the flash of your silver ankle boot turning down a side street, I prowled after you, hunched against the light summer rain. My blood sang.

All right, cards on the table, I had my first stiffy in weeks, which hadn’t needed my own vigorous help getting there. Pursuing you pushed every one of my buttons. I was complete. Exhilarated. And alive in a new and yeah, sexual way. Reckon I’m going to apologise for it? You know me too well for that.

Two chicks in trucker jackets fell out of the doorway to a coffeehouse, which swung to the rhythm of jazz, jamming over a beat poet’s declaration of war on his parents’ generation. Squiffy, the birds hung onto my arm to steady themselves; they stank of light ale and cheap fags.

I shook them off, weaving on down the side street after you. I could scarcely see you now; the waves of your hair bobbed in and out, bleeding into the crowds.

That’s when I heard the muffled scream and scuffle. It was unmistakable to us Blood Lifers: a kill in an urban area.

Of course we all have our signature styles or quirks.

I once met this Blood Lifer in Berlin, who had a fixation with strangling his kills, not enough to stop the heart but just enough to silence them. I don’t know if that made him touched or highly efficient.

So I heard this sound down a narrow alley and out of curiosity, I glanced down it as I passed, in case it was Ruby, or one of the other wankers from Advance, catching a bite on their night-time wanderings.

Instead, I saw it wasn’t any Blood Lifer I knew but some dandy nancy boy, all white cravat and tight trousers, as if he was auditioning for the role of vampire in some crap flick. It definitely looked like I needed to go run through the list of bollocks myths with him.

Then I realised who the dandy’s kill was:
your cousin
- the bird with the Beatles mop. She was trapped trembling up against the wall and a rotting poster for a long ago jazz show, with the Blood Lifer’s hand slammed against her mouth.