Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (15 page)

I slunk closer, so I could taste the scent of your sweat - my Moon Girl - sniff out the flowing strands of Soul underneath the painted beauty. ‘I meant they’re different… You’re different to--’

‘You’re fair coming onto me?’ You stepped back, eyeing the exit.

‘No, what..?’

‘I’m not into the whole Rockers scene,’ you zigzagged your finger down, from my jacket to my scuffed motorcycle boots.

Confusion and humiliation, with something blazing at its core, which I wasn’t going to bloody well accept (not this Blood Lifer and not again), shuddered through me.

I hurled down my ciggie, grinding it into the patterned carpet. ‘That wasn’t… As if I’d… And you know what? You were off coming into the third verse.’

Silence.

Your peepers were hard now: definite hit nerve. Yeah, bloody genius I was. I’d just risen in the rankings from insignificant to loathed. You crossed your arms, and I mirrored you.

‘You ever tried not being a total prat?’

‘Once. Didn’t stick.’

You edged towards the door. ‘Fab as this hasn’t been, I must get on. My cousin’s walking me home.’ You tossed your nut at a bird with a thick fringe and Beatles do, who was perched at a spool table by the exit, glancing curiously over at us.

‘I wanna take your picture.’ The words had spilt out of my gob, before I’d even realised myself that I meant them.

I imagined my trusty camera snapping you from every angle, so I could possess your image to study without the accusation of
gawpin
. And then, before I could stop myself, the second image of tossing myself off over your smiling face, as Ruby shared blood with Aralt downstairs in his study.

See, I promised all
the nasties
and wankery
, didn’t I?

You were still heading for your cousin. ‘Does it work with the other chicks? Pretending like you’re David Bailey?’ I darted after you through the hot jiving bodies, which stank of blood so strongly I gagged with the effort of keeping my fangs retracted. My own blood was up because this - what was happening between us? It was dead close to a
hunt
. I had to chain every instinct deep to stop myself from going for the kill. I grabbed hold of your arm. ‘That the best line you can come up with? Think I’m a little fool?’

You shook me off, and I let you; it was more exhilarating this way. I wove after you through the crowds, catching you before you could reach your cousin. I was panting now, not out of breath but from the effort of controlling the bloodlust. ‘It’s for publicity, all right?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Reckon I’d want to spend time with you?’

‘Happen you can give my agent a ring and set it up,’ you admitted defeat with a weary sigh. ‘I do take a good likeness.’

My quarry felled.

‘Tomorrow evening?’

You frowned. ‘Why evening?’

‘That’s when I work best, darlin’.’

You started towards your cousin again: a flash of silver. Stardust fallen to earth. Then you stopped and turned back to study me. ‘You know you’re a freak?’

I shrugged: one Blood Lifer lost in a sea of stinking humanity. ‘No shame in flying that flag.’

For the first time your frown cleared and you seemed to see in the dark beyond the pompadour and the leather – see like a Blood Lifer - to the Soul and emotions buried underneath.

You First Lifers suck at that.

‘You like Hendrix?’

‘Of course.’ I knew you’d have dead cool taste. It was in your scent. Your voice. And the way you were throbbing in my blood.

You stepped closer. ‘What’s your name?’

You hadn’t even bothered to ask before. Now the hunt was really over. I smiled. ‘Light. My name’s Light.’

So I took your photo and it was one of the best nights of my life. You in gold catsuit and that bloody mask of make-up, which I craved to claw from your skin and find the woman underneath.

Flash
,
flash
,
flash
…

In an empty room at the back of the Heartbeat Club. Your cousin and cigar-smoking agent hawk-like in the door. You in a strop refusing to say a single word.

Yet there was me, you and my camera, alone in a way I’d never been with anyone but Ruby and never cared to be, not since I was elected.

This new need to be wanted was messing with everything I knew. And everything I reckoned I was.

Your smile lit your peepers as much as your mouth; even though something told me it was a trick (and you couldn’t mean it), I still treasured it.

You glowed, the same as any Blood Lifer - no, bollocks, it was different. Because this was
life
- true life - in a way I’d never stopped to scrutinise before. Only drain. It was real and I could smell it: courage, imagination and ambition.

Was this what it’d been like for Ruby, when she’d found me? Before she’d decided to elect?

Flash
. The curve of your lips. The wisp of creativity.

Flash
. Black curls caught behind your ear. The edge of ruthlessness.

Flash
. Those blue peepers staring right down the lens, like a challenge. The scent of passion.

I’d captured your Soul, forever mine, and you didn’t say a word.

Flash
,
flash
,
flash
.

It must’ve been sodding hours I’d spend sprawled on my back each night in Alessandro’s room, drinking in your record over and over, until the lyrics were branded onto my brain and then haunted my sleep.

Ruby would nudge me irritably when I’d start to hum the tune next to her in bed, without realising.

You were eating me whole. A delicious torture.

Whenever I was alone, I’d spread your photos out over the crimson covers, pressing my fingers to your face and trying to taste your spark, as the memory shuddered through me of that night.

Had you felt it too? This…thing? I didn’t have a name for it. No sticky label.

Ruby would’ve called it a
perversion
.

Ruby still came to my bed but she hadn’t touched me. Not like...that. It was as if she could sense I was less than the Blood Lifer I’d once been.

Bugger that, I was
more
, but Ruby couldn’t see it. She was too caught up in whatever dodgy business the twins had going. I knew there was no place in her new family for me.

Did you lie awake thinking about me too? The dark things you wanted to do to me? Were we lying there at the same time, whispering each other’s names?

Yeah, all right, I know the answer; I’m not deluded now. But then…that’s what I fantasized about, whilst this empty, bunched feeling, built twisted in my gut. I had to see you again, even if you called me
freak
or didn’t say a word and strolled on by, as if I didn’t even exist.

The next Saturday, however, when I checked the lists at the club, you weren’t playing. I’d booted the sound system, sending the guitarists scattering. I could’ve ripped the joint to shreds.

I needed a drink of blood so sodding badly I shook with it.

Ruby was noticing at last: the grimacing pain when I stood, the way I grasped onto edges of chairs to stop myself from blacking out and the constant tremble, which I couldn’t hide any longer.

I stumbled to the khazi, kicking through into its muffled quiet. I sprayed freezing water onto my ashen mush.

A sudden low groan came from the corner of the latrines.

Bollocks
.

Some berk tripping out on wacky backy had fallen, smashing his skull on the porcelain.

I crouched closer, licking my lips.

Blood was seeping from the wound in fat, purple clots and trickling down between the bloke’s spaced out peepers.

I waved my hand in front of him: no response. Not a flicker. He was flying.

My whole body was quivering… The smell… The intoxicating splendour of it, burst like stars in showers around me; I could reach out and touch them, closer and closer…

Saliva dribbled, as my fangs shot out. I couldn’t retract them. This was happening.

Christ in heaven
,
it was happening
…

I gripped the bloke’s shoulders, sliding out my tongue, further and further away from those teeth and deadly toxins.

Then I was licking, drinking from the gash, as if I was a panther. The blood hit my anaemic bloodstream, like it was my very first kill. The whole world was alive. And I was resurrected.

I shook with the high of pot infused blood; the kid giggled, whilst I fed from him.

Afterwards, I wiped myself clean at the sinks, before staring down at the still quietly sniggering mess, who was sprawled in his own piss.

I shook my nut, before swaggering back into the bar. The world was bright and small again in the brilliance of the blood’s light.

Abstinence had neutered me, Ruby was right about that at least: we had to feed. The two drives were tearing me in two; I was blood but did I have to be death?

For tonight at least I was full.

I banged on the counter for the barman. ‘Khazi needs checking. Something’s blocking it.’

All right then, so most exciting lay there is: the jewellery heist. You’d have guessed that, right?

Look, any lay gets my blood going. It’s not the money. It never is with me. It doesn’t need to be high value diamond bollocks either, as that’ll take you into a whole new league of headache on the planning side; I’m more for the cut and thrust of a good caper, clean and fast.

So jewellery: best payoff, minimum boredom. Not to mention those glittery trinkets speak to the Soul, even though what are they but pretty rocks strung on string?

That night, exploding with blood, I’d wandered the London streets searching for just the right hit because all I wanted was to share the moment with you. I knew, even then, lost as I was in the haze, that you weren’t thinking of me and maybe hadn’t since the day I’d snapped you. Yet still I couldn’t stop myself.

I was addicted and I thought maybe…just
maybe
…

Hope - that’s the true killer.

I had the idea this was what you First Lifers did, wasn’t it? Courted with gifts? Or had the rituals changed so much since I’d been elected?

I knew a lad bound and wrapped in scarlet ribbons, or a horsehair whip, wouldn’t be your thing. Jewellery though, I’d always relied on that to make Ruby smile. And I hungered to earn another smile from you.

Then there it was in the window, displayed on black velvet cloth: a silver choker, with sapphire disc, for my Moon Girl.

That’s when the fun started
.

Later, back in my room, I ran the choker gently through my fingers. I hadn’t seen Ruby all night and it’d soon be dawn. I traced over the sapphire; its cold burnt.

Now I had it though, what the bloody hell did I do with it?

I paced up and down, glancing at your mug smiling up at me, over and over, from the photos, which were strewn on the sheets.

What did people even say in this new age?

‘I saw this and…’ I held out the choker loosely at an invisible you. ‘Well, it’s…and you’re, well, you’re blinding and…’ I shook my nut in disgust, as I paced away. ‘Look, I got you this, you fancy it, it’s yours, all right?’ I booted the bed, so hard the pictures became a trembling sea. Then I closed my peepers, holding out the choker towards your photo. ‘Please accept this as a token of my highest regard… Laugh at me, will you?’ I stared down at your mush, annihilated by your imagined mockery and my own frustration. ‘Why don’t you just sod off?’ I hurled the choker skittering down the length of the room. Immediately, I regretted it. I rushed to scoop up the choker, twisting it between my hands to check it over: it wasn’t broken. I breathed deeply, before holding it out again in front of me. ‘So, you like sapphires?’

What you don’t know, is what it took for me to find out where you were renting in Soho.

See, behind every important man in those days was a Secretary. Your agent’s was called Jane (this daft bint with pasty legs), who spilled her boss’ secrets for a bit of slap and tickle. I hope you don’t reckon she got the raw end of the deal: I whored myself for you. Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Yeah, I’m the big romantic me.

Have the
hearts and cupid
shown up yet?

All right then, so I had this spiel all planned out, with the choker snug in my pocket, because no way was I going to look like a gormless wanker again.

My heart was wild stallioning, as I dived between the shadows, passing sex shops and illegal gambling dens. The night was alive with car horns and riffs of jazz drifting from coffee houses.

This is how it would play out: I’d knock, you’d ask me in and I’d say…