Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (2 page)

When I lit the fag, Wednesday emitted a squeal, as if I’d sacrificed her newborn to a Druid god (and yeah, I’ve seen that done a few times, although it’s not my cup of tea).

I raised my eyebrow. ‘Sorry,’ I proffered the lit fag to Wednesday, ‘want one?’ She drew back, her lips pursed. Wednesday’s peepers were puffy with exhaustion; little burst blood vessels threaded her cheeks. You looked dead small in the middle of that big, white bed without me. I wanted to climb in with you and hold you against the emptiness of that white but I didn’t reckon Wednesday would’ve got it. ‘Suit yourself,’ I withdrew the ciggie, rubbing the tumbling ash between my fingers and thumb, as I took a deep drag. Wednesday looked significantly down at you. ‘Oh right,’ I wedged the fag between my lips, shrugging. ‘Pretty sure she’s not gonna want a puff.’

‘Second-hand smoke,’ Wednesday hissed.

‘Christ, reckon she could die from..? Wait, she’s already snuffing it. And I can honestly say - hand on heart - smoking’s not gonna kill me.’ When Wednesday swung her bag onto her shoulder, slamming towards the door, I sighed. Then I flicked the stub to the wooden floorboards, before stamping it out. ‘The world’s now safe one more night.’

That’s the thing about you First Lifers: you’re burnt up so fast, like fire consumes oxygen, that every second’s precious. Yet your bodies with their fragile cells are open to attack by mutation. Bacteria. Decay.

The worst of it, is that you understand enough of the threat to fight your own desires, impulses and urges. The joys of life, see what I’m fixing at? Smoking. Drinking. Sex…

Life is fear
.

Just the act of living for the whole bloody lot of you. And yeah, you’re right to fear.

Us Blood Lifers? We died already. We evolved past all that.

At least, that’s what we’ve conned ourselves.

The butcher’s delivery service had left the box in the cold of the stone porch, as per monthly instructions. They’re good like that - dead efficient.

As always, I’d waited until I’d heard the roar of their van struggling away down the snowy track, skidding on sheets of black ice, which were treacherous underneath. One year, when the winter bites too deep, maybe they’ll not be able to make it with their bloody titbits. Then we’ll see how well I’ve chained the hunger: or whether I’m the one in chains. Either way, Wednesday would be top of my nosh list.

Oh
yeah
,
there’s a list
.

As soon as Wednesday had stomped down the stairs, huddling like a malting owl in her coat, and then out into the smudge of shadows, I snatched up the box.

Bugger me it felt blinding
: warm in the cold, beating and pulsing. Alive even in its death. I slammed the door shut against the frost of the night air. You were asleep up in the bedroom, shrivelled in that vast white bed, and I held red life in my hands.

I panted, wiping my knuckles across my lips. I hugged the box to my chest, as I darted across the hallway towards the dark of the connected garage. Your light-proofing’s still holding up for the glass panels above the shelves.

I clicked on the over-head. It was fetid; mould seeped across the far wall in black blossoms behind the empty jam jars, which you were going to use six summers ago before…

So many sodding
befores
. Like before this thing got its teeth in you, munching through your mind, piece by bleeding piece. Before it took you away from me. Before it took you away from yourself.

I dived further into the garage, dropping the box, so I could start dinner preparations.

It’d been a long wait; the hunger had become a part of me. This isn’t sodding milk we’re talking about. It can’t be left in the fridge for later: this is kill or be killed. Basic predator 101. You hunt and then you feast. Want to recreate that artificially?

Eat fresh.

I pressed by my Triton motorbike - a slash of crimson in the drear. She was nudging me to take her out. She hates the winter slumber as much as I do. It makes her restless trapped inside.

I selected a latex glove, stretching it out – it’d do.

The blood from the butchers was thick, fresh pigs’ blood. I must be their most regular customer: I’m one for
black pudding
me. It was your idea to drop that in, when we set up the order. You still knew what was what back then, at least for some of the time. You always got how to cover, well, you know,
what I am
. You First Lifers act like blood drinking’s manky but you still nosh it with your fry ups, don’t you..?

I heated the blood in the microwave, which was stowed behind the broken plant pots, waiting for the
ping
. When I poured it into the glove, it bulged out each finger: a fat blood hand waving. Then I tied up the top tight.

Here comes the best bit, when I hold back, anticipating and letting the thirst build: that blinding, intoxicating thrill. How could a First Lifer understand the rush?

You never got it - how all life is laid bare in a moment - no matter how many times I tried to explain. Even though I’d see this look, as if you were laying yourself open, exposed to anything I gave you. Yet it didn’t matter: you weren’t one of the Lost. You’d never tasted the gush of blood. Words are simply the shadow. The memory of our real lives. But what else do we have?

So right, the glove? It’s the closest thing I’ve found to human skin. Then I can mimic the glorious sensation of violation, when the fangs sink in deep. It’s about more than the blood, you see.

Slowly, I extended my fangs: two thin canine needle points. As I closed my peepers, I imagined…

Said I’d tell you all the
nasties and wankery
, didn’t I? Flay myself bloody?

I imagined it was
your
neck, as my mouth closed on that glove. I always have done. I imagine, as my teeth pierce the latex in dual sharp points, it’s your skin I’m breaking. Your blood I’m sucking. Faster and faster. Harder and harder. That the warm coating the back of my throat is your life drawn into mine.

There’s a dizzying buzz, like the world’s exploded into multi-coloured connectedness, after a month of monotone loneliness. Then the glove’s empty, and you’re in me - all in me - completely. Then I climax.

It was over. My fangs retracted, as my peepers snapped open. I dropped the sucked dry glove into the bin, wiping the blood away with the back of my hand.

Now, don’t get narked. You’re to blame (or to be thanked, I don’t know bleeding which), that I have to drink this animal piss to start with.

For my abstinence.

It was an ultimatum - yeah,
yours
. Give up First Lifer blood or lose you. I reckoned you were barmy.

Not
bloody likely
, I said.

Then we rowed. I swore. Bargained. Begged…

Of course you didn’t get it (you never did), what First Lifer blood truly is to us Blood Lifers: it’s our very breath. No drug blows your mind to such a high. And the dead sweet part? There’s no down.

When it hits, you actually feel each chamber of your heart pumping, as every cell, nerve and synapse sparks. The atoms of the world unite in flowing motion, as if you’re part of something infinitely bigger than you or the world. You could touch the face of sodding…god, nature, the universe because you’re truly alive. In that moment more than when you slithered from your mama’s bloody womb.

But here’s the thing - animal blood? Not the same bleeding deal. It’s like pretending sugar free can give you the same rush as the sugar laden, delicious original. The spark and life is only just there. It singes but it doesn’t burn.

And I hunger for the burn.

Look, a pig’s not exactly as high up on the evolutionary chain. It doesn’t have the same DNA to ignite the match.

But you’ll survive
, you’d insisted,
you’ll live
.

Yeah, a half-life. A shadow.

Still I’d done it for you: a half-life with you was better than a full one alone.

There was no choice between loving you, or loving the blood, after what we went through to be together. After the corpses we left behind.

Real hearts and cupid me
,
aren’t I
?

Still, I deserved the ultimatum. Don’t think I’m wriggling out of the blame. After all, you found me with that skanky donor.

You must’ve followed me, when I was too drunk on the call of the blood to smell you.

This punk rocker had invited me up. She had piercings in her mush, lower down too, but I didn’t have a shufti because with that much metal, she’d have stuck holes in me if I’d got too intimate. She must’ve dressed for the occasion: pink tutu and combat boots, with eyeliner drawn on like battle paint.

The punk kept stroking the
Ace of Spades
motif on my jacket, like it was a religious symbol she’d sworn to memorise; it made me wonder if she was writing a text for a band of deluded Blood Life worshippers. But the smell, Christ in heaven, the
smell
. Pot wafted in mushroom clouds, choking me, as I swaggered after her inside. My peepers watered.

The bint had already drained her blood into a chipped
I Love My Mum
mug. It balanced on a dressing table that overflowed with spiked bracelets, ripped fishnet stockings, razorblades and a bowler hat, which jauntily hung off one edge, as if it’d dropped out of the pages of
A Clockwork Orange.

The bird smiled when she passed me the mug, just a hesitant twitch of her mouth’s acned corners. Her fingers drifted over mine. I’d already offered cash, but she’d refused. I suddenly realised I wasn’t bloody well offering what this bird - in her crush daydreams or death wish fantasies - reckoned either.

The blood was warm, swimming; I watched it dancing round and round in beautiful circles, singing to me to
drink
…

Then came hammering on the door downstairs and your voice, hollering loud enough to wake the dead, ‘Get out here Light right quick, before I come up and belt you one.’

I never did get that last drink.

I was pacing around the garage, my shoulders hunched, clenching my fists up, as if for a barney or a bonk, with the blood bobbing through me, when I noticed the board over the window was rotted.

It was flaking snowy splinters in dust showers. The rusted nail was bent out of shape, like a deformed spine. As I tested the board with my thumb, the wood suddenly crashed from the glass panel in a decaying mist, flooding the garage with the orange glare of the dying sun.

‘Buggering hell.’

I leapt backwards, as my cheek smouldered like the tip of a ciggie, my eyeballs melting ice-cream at the bleeding beach. I hissed with the agony of it, the nitwit braindeadery of it, the indignity of the one sodding vampire myth that holds true – night walking.

A sharp shaft of sun burnt across the garage, over the Triton and between me and the door out to the hallway.

I was trapped.

What if you needed me?

I strained to listen. But the house was silent. You were either sleeping or were…

Bloody morbid I was nowadays - death catches you like that. I’d forgotten. Not because Blood Lifers are immortal, in fact we simply decay more slowly because the blood replenishes us. We still have a shelf life: this whole planet does. I’ve never seen one of us much older than half a Millennium.

I leant against the damp wall, exploring my tender mug. I couldn’t make out anything but dim shapes in the garage with my burnt peepers, except that blinding spear of light. The blood would fix that, give it time. It heals, restores and resurrects, even pigs’ piss poor substitute for the good stuff. The new skin cells were already tight where they were knitting themselves into place, grafting my mush back to its never changing contours.

That bursting into fire in the cruel light of day?

See here’s the thing, it’s more like wax reacting to a flame. Us Blood Lifers are candles: we burn bright.

But there’s always a cost.

If you want the science and not the poetry (you used to say that, and I’d nark you by merely grinning), it’s to do with how our cells synthesise the blood to repair themselves.

What gives life, takes it away. The world’s big on irony. Or would be if it cared enough. And it doesn’t.

Our clever thinkers know the formulas.

Me? It’s enough to know the sun and me don’t mix. But I walked in the day once and now I have the night: 50:50 seems a fair split.

I tried to edge around the strip of light, but the sun was still too high. My boot protected my foot for the second test, but by the intense heat in my toes, wouldn’t for long. I didn’t want to have to get out the stink of skin fused to leather because that’s nasty. And not something you ever forget.

I slunk to the trapdoor in the far corner, swinging it open, before I slid down into the belly of the basement. The basement is a tiny cave-like room, with nothing in it but a truckle bed, wireless music system and my tatty editions of Mojo.