Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (23 page)

If there was nothing else going, I’d work bars or take a bouncer gig, like that time in Mississippi. But you hadn’t been keen. Look, it’d been the accent. The American birds had been dead into it; you’d got shirty about them stuffing their numbers into the back pocket of my jeans.

When we were settled long enough to make it count, you took the type of office roles, which I’d sworn would never be for a woman like you. Another broken promise. It seems I’m better at breaking them, than keeping them.

I did show you the world though, didn’t I?

You never mentioned your singing again and because you didn’t, it meant I couldn’t. Yet there were so many times, especially in the quiet of twilight, when I’d see that distracted look on your mush and I’d break inside not to say…sod it,
something
. Like
I
had the right? So I didn’t.

I couldn’t listen to your record, and since you never sang either, the silence drove me mad.

I reckoned - just once - you’d burst free. Then I’d hear the beauty of your sultry, raw tone, even if you were only cleaning the bathroom or thought I was still sleeping, as you pulled on your stockings in the morning.

Peace is overrated.

Occasionally, we’d pass a pram with some gurgling tyke, and I’d see this expression behind your peepers, like sadness or…regret. You’d mask it quickly, which you First Lifers are so good at. I knew a part of you yearned for children, grandchildren and the whole package deal fantasy, which everyone’s fed from the cradle. That deep down you craved a
normal
life. Except that’s no more than a sticky label again.

It’s no different to how I’ve always wondered if electing was like having a child. Whether Ruby had seen
me
in that way. How can it ever be an equal pairing, when it starts with one having such power over the other? When an Author tries, like a parent, to create their own reflection? Which then led me to question how anyone would want to subject another being to childhood and that abject powerlessness.

If I’d elected you, then you’d have been
my
act of procreation; I’d have been birthing a new member of my species. But you didn’t want that. It was
you
who denied me the chance.

How do you reckon I felt, every time you looked at some kid and got that expression in your peepers, when I’d have given you anything but I couldn’t give you that…gift of humanity?

Not that First Lifers are so special, of course, before you go running away with that thought. Like you’re a shining example to the rest of us..? If the Lost seem like monsters, then we learnt everything we know from First Lifers.

I’ve more of a conscience than many First Lifers. Sure I’ve killed to survive. There are, however, bleeding worse things.

Just watch the news.

I know plenty of Bloody Lifers with more of their Souls intact, than the bastards I met in my First Life. And I’ve met First Lifers, who seem to have none.

If there’s something after death or second death, I don’t have a bloody clue how they’ll sort us all out. But it’s not going to be a neat little reaping; it’ll be messy as…well, Hell.

Still, when everything’s said and done, I need to say sorry.

I’m sorry you lost everything. Sorry I buggered up your short First Life. Sorry you didn’t even have a home, not before I brought you to Ilkley Moor again and I don’t even know if you can really tell you’re here.

How much do you know or sense?

I reckon you do realise you’re home. I can feel it deep in me, like something moving.

You’re home and…sod those wankers at the Blood Life Council: when you die, what more could anyone do to me that I give a damn about?

As a First Lifer, I never had a real home, not since I was very young. And as a Blood Lifer? Who’d choose to live out their span in one tiny box, like cats marking their territory, when we could prowl the earth every inch our own in the night?

Wherever we rested for a day (or settled for weeks or months) was our crib but never - no matter the trinkets I filched and discarded as fast - our home. We were beyond that. At least, that’s what I’d reckoned.

When we came to stay at Advance in 1968, however, I realised something about Ruby, which she’d kept buried secret from me in all our years of nomadic wandering.

You see
I
never had a home. But
her
? It’d been right there at Advance with her brothers. And before that? With Plantagenet.

Every time Ruby had disappeared on me without a word
that
was where she’d been: playing happy families. Without me.

In a world of outsiders that’s got to make a bloke feel like the biggest outsider of them all.

But then I found you.

NOVEMBER 1968 LONDON

We were curled together on the red baroque rug, as I stroked my fingers through your long, black hair in the quiet of evening.

The moments with the stillness and silence have always been the most perfect ones to me. In Blood Life, you’re never in the eye of the storm - you
are
the storm. So I took the calm, with you, whenever I could.

This disease of humanity? I guess I was riddled with it.

Then
bang
,
bang
,
bang
, as loud as a thunderclap. You startled up.

‘What is it, luv?’ There was something in your peepers, almost like you’d been expecting this knock in the dark of the night; the same something, which’d made you say you couldn’t have someone like me – Rocker, bad boy, freak – in your life. ‘It’s just the door. You want me to..?’

We both pushed ourselves up, but you brushed me aside, like I was a ghost. Then you paced out into the hall by yourself.

Here’s how I figure it, you die once and come back? Then an ancient part of your brain, which is attuned to danger, fight or flight, grows or ups its game because it’d be a right berk not to.

So when I saw how you were acting all of a sudden? I got real quiet and crept to the door out to the hallway.

There was this dark silhouette framed on the step, all bulky suit and hat. You weren’t moving. You were like this fairy statue next to a giant; I knew dodgy when I saw it and I could taste it sour now.

Not all your nightmares are mine.

The ones that shake you side to side and make you rake your nails bloody down my mug? They could be yours - this one moment - the same as any of my night-time horrors.

Do you want me to lie to you about this? I wish you could tell me, or that I was able to decipher your
tap,
tap
,
tapping
on the white covers. But love, I’m lost here, so all I can do is tell it how I remember it. What else is there now?

I pushed the lounge door wider. I knew this was it then - this wanker - the reason you’d reckoned I’d not want to know you: the
real
you.

‘All right Kathy?’ My voice seemed to trigger you to life. You turned towards me.

The figure next to you emitted a low growl, as it burst by, shouldering into the lounge. You trailed at the man’s heels. He reeked of stale bitter and fags. When he spun round on me, I could read the threat in his peepers. He backed me further into the room, but you patted my arm, as if calming a bleeding guard dog.

‘Who the bloody hell is this?’ The man snarled. ‘You living tally ower t’brush with him?’

You quickly shook your nut. Too quickly, for my liking. ‘No, father.’

Father
? I eyed the shambling wreck, as he glowered at me blearily. His single-breasted suit was bulky and creased under his overcoat, like he never wore them except at weddings. He crumpled his hat between weathered fingers. I could see a breath of you in his hard features: the black hair threading to grey and watery blue peepers.

He tossed his head at me dismissively. ‘Then get thee gone.’

‘Not a chance, mate.’

‘This is between--’

‘Not a chance.’

Your father glared first at me and then at you, whilst scuffing his dirty shoes backwards and forwards through the shagpile. Then he nodded. ‘Get ready lass, you’re going home.’

You started; a pink flush spread up your neck to your cheeks.

Here’s the thing, when the bloke first barged in here, breaking into our safe cocoon, I hadn’t understood the skin of tension, which had sent warning howls from my ancient brain, through every nerve of my body. But now the scent of fear was overwhelming. Your distress and the menace on your father’s face was impossible to miss; it would’ve been even to a First Lifer.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the hunger to rip out your father’s throat and let him watch himself bleed out at your feet; my bloody sacrifice for everything I sensed he’d done to you. There wasn’t any need for words: it was all there in the fear, which is something we Blood Lifers sodding understand.

You stepped away from your father, twisting your ivory scarf in these little nervous jerks –
twist
,
twist
,
twist
– like you were struggling to breathe. ‘This is my home now. I don’t have to go back.’

‘Happen you do.’

I knew your father was going to move towards you, moments before he did. Blood Life heightens every sense, and then the hunt sharpens them with a thrill, which is as great as enslaving the world. Don’t knock it just because it’s hard to imagine. And yeah, maybe it corrupts, but power’s a bleeding turn on.

So when I realised your father was preparing to belt you, I blocked him. Then I eyeballed him, like the bastard’s never been eyeballed.

Your father was so shocked, he merely stood there, like he’d been stuffed and mounted

When I heard you behind me, however, you were bleeding pissed. ‘I fair don’t need you fighting my battles.’

Your father chuckled; his peepers were mocking.

You really know how to cut off a bloke’s baubles, you know that? Like a deflated balloon, I stepped aside. Stalking to the corner, I kicked the beanbag loudly as I passed for good measure, realising as I did it what a teenage tosser I looked. I leant against the wall with my arms crossed, trying to regain some pride.

‘You mun know you don’t belong here? And not with…
him
?’ Your father’s voice was softer. He ran his rough finger down your cheek. You flinched. ‘Why did you run? Stop acting fair maungy. There’s nowt here for thee…for people like us. But you have family. Think on.’

You pressed back against the wall. ‘I have.’

Your father smashed his fist close to the side of your nut.

When you jumped, I struggled not to dive at him, fangs out. Trinkets crushed, however, I didn’t intend to be your white knight, if you didn’t want rescuing. There was also no bloody way I was going anywhere, until you were safe. It was typical of how you made me feel: my every impulse and emotion turned on its head, see-sawing between contradictions.

Guess that’s what life’s about, right?

Your father ripped the poster of Jimi Hendrix, which he’d felt under his hand, off the wall in disgust. He waved it in your face. ‘This? You choose
this
?’ He crumpled up the poster, tossing it hard at you.

This time you didn’t flinch. ‘Yeah, I do.’

I thought your father was about to throttle you; his hands were so close to your throat and that ivory scarf of yours that I tensed every muscle hard enough to spasm.

You, however, didn’t move or look away from your father; I’ve never admired you more.

Ruby had got you First Lifers all wrong. When your backs were against the wall, some of you had the same bottle as any Blood Lifer - you simply had to take the time to see it.

Then the moment passed. Your father slammed his hat down on his nut, like a goodbye, before he stormed out, banging the front door closed after him. It rang in the silence of the flat with deafening violence.

I studied your immobile expression. Buggering hell, I never was one for times like this. Did you want me to rush to you and hold you or to sod off?

I hovered half way between the two, when to my surprise you crumpled, slipping to the carpet. That’s when I finally got how much strength it’d taken to hold up your puppet strings taut enough to deal with your father.

You’d have made a blinding Blood Lifer. Why was I never able to convince you of that?

I ran to you (castrated or not), and drew you up into my arms. For one bleeding wonderful moment, you held onto me like you needed me, with your cheek on my chest. I knew you could hear my heart thudding, just like I could always hear the pound of yours.

Then you pulled back, however, your face twisted with rage and…

Smack
– you slapped me hard in the mush.

Before I’d even registered the pain, you’d dragged me closer and were kissing away the hurt. You snogged me as if you never wanted us to part.