Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (22 page)

‘Beats a pointy stick.’

‘Right on,’ Donovan flashed me that smile of his, which was predatory in all the wrong places. It made me itch to bolt again. I held myself still, however, with a struggle. ‘See my brother, he’s the money man. That’s why I leave him to his numbers. Me? I’m the creative.’ Donovan leant closer, his fingers trailing over the back of my hand. ‘The music? It’s my lifeblood. The most righteous thing about this backward country. It’s like, in Ireland I was into the bloodshed. The rush and the roar. But Aralt? Freaking cold heart, mind and Soul to the cause. He was a scientist of death. I was just along for the thrill. Having a blast, man. But I’m his bro, so where else would I’ve been? Here,’ he stabbed his joint at me, ‘what’s family for, if we don’t share?’

I risked another small shake of my nut.

‘No?’ Donovan stared down at the stub, which was rimmed with a lipstick ghost, like he was accusing it of something, before tossing it away over his shoulder.

Then Donovan’s hand caressed up my arm, as he slid closer along the sphere, until our groins were touching. Donovan was rock hard – that wasn’t something I wanted to feel. I started up, but his fingers stiffened around my arm.

I suddenly remembered your cousin in the damp alleyway, trapped under that dandy, who had one hand clamped tight over her mouth and the other crawling down her waist, before inching up her micro-mini…and how I’d hesitated to help her.

It was strange this conscience bollocks. Things had been so much simpler with Ruby: slash and burn the world and dance in the flames.

‘You’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t swing that way.’ I kept my voice as low and level as I could manage.

I tried to stand again, but Donovan dragged me down closer. ‘Hey, that’s OK. There’s no need to split…‘cos I do.’

Then Donovan was snogging me, his snaking tongue forcing its way deep into my mouth and down my throat, until I tasted his bitter lipstick.

Even in the moment, there was still a part of me detached enough to recognise the way Donovan kissed, like a touch memory. After a century with Ruby, I knew every variation of her and here it was, like they’d been swapping notes. Or learned from the same lover.

Then there was no time, however, even for those thoughts because despite my struggling, Donovan was pinning me back onto the sphere; my legs were pushed out either side and my arms were dragged above my nut.

Those Plantagenets were something else: stronger, faster (Ruby would’ve said purer Blood Lifers), but
worse
, that’s what I’m looking for.

Don’t get narked, like I cheated on you twice: first with Ruby and now with her brother. I promised all the
nasties and wankery
, but this was anything but consensual, you figuring that?

Donovan’s fingers were worming down the waistband of my jeans, and then I felt them dextrously undo them, as he edged inside the denim towards my…

That’s when Donovan pushed himself off me, like we’d just been having a casual chat and announced, ‘Snack time.’

The spaced out bastard wandered to his desk. Donovan glanced back at me with a smile, as if I was going to thank him for this treat.

I wouldn’t have let any of the others see how badly my fingers shook as I did up my jeans, as soon as Donovan turned away from me again and leant over the desk.

Then Donovan yanked something –
someone
– over the top by their short, straw-coloured hair. Donovan dangled the limp body of a bound and gagged First Lifer, who’d been stripped to only his white underwear. Bleeding hell, the poor sod wasn’t moving. Yet he hadn’t even been bitten yet. It was like he’d been sedated.

I jumped up, glancing once again at the door. Could I make it before Donovan stopped me? Maybe whilst he was distracted by his new toy…

‘Want a bite?’ Donovan offered the First Lifer’s pale jugular.

I saw the slow throb of his arteries and felt the painful pull of his blood. I wet my lips. I wondered if Ruby knew her brother was offering to blood share with the man, who she’d elected. And what she’d do to me if I accepted.

‘I prefer to hunt, mate.’

Donovan wagged his finger at me. ‘You’re the type. Me? Delivery and convenience every time.’

When Donovan sank his fangs into the First Lifer’s throat, I watched the movement in his own, as Donovan swallowed down the blood in deep sucks. I shuddered, hungering to dive to him and savage the other side. To taste blood like it should be tasted: from warm skin, rather than dirty needle.

Nothing’ll ever be the same as a kill. The death drives the desire; you can’t have the one, without the other.

First Lifers are no different: pain and death excite passion because they remind you that you’re always going to experience both. If not today, then someday. For us Blood Lifers it’s even more intimate because we already have. We’ve died once (and that’s not something you bloody forget). It covers you like a second skin and you wear it every moment, until the instant of your second death.

When I sidled towards the door, Donovan didn’t look up. He was too lost in the blood. I should’ve slipped away there and then.

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 glass and not to be the one pocketing my winnings. You, however, had been very firm about that.