Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (26 page)

‘Sure about that?’

Like Ruby wasn’t as caged in this building as me
..?

Ruby’s gaze darkened. ‘When I tasted your Soul, I knew that just as I had been, you were trapped and enslaved. So I freed you. You were called to Blood Life because it’s where you belong.’ I closed my peepers; I couldn’t continue to look at Ruby, not with that pleading expression on her mush. The one I’d never seen on her before. It twisted my gut, in a way I’d never have guessed at. ‘You will feed.’

Still I said nothing, willing my body not to move.

‘Look at me.’

I didn’t open my peepers. Bugger it, this was hard. Why was Ruby making it so difficult?

The ghost trail of Ruby’s palm lightly over my eyelids. Then I heard the
sweep
of her silk away from me and the
bang
of the door, as she slammed out of the room.

I thumped the covers, as waves of nausea wracked me. I allowed the effects of cold turkey to show now I was alone. It was bleeding agony.

‘Are you quite well?’

Opening my peepers painfully, I sighed. ‘What do you want?’

Alessandro was peering in at me anxiously from the doorway. ‘I’ve been hoping to see you for weeks, but you never came to my room. Then when I asked where you were, Donovan finally said…’

Alessandro pottered closer. He gasped when he saw my half-healed cuts and bruising.

We don’t heal so well without the blood, which is what regenerates, as much as gives us life.

I tried to smile. ‘Pretty, aren’t I?’

‘Is it still kids play?’

I turned my nut away from Alessandro, shifting on my side with a grunt. ‘Put a sock in it; I’ve got a whole lot of nothing to get on with here.’

Alessandro frowned. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You wouldn’t… Just spit it out, whatever you came here for, all right?’

I heard Alessandro’s quick pace to the bed and then felt his light touch on my shoulder. I fought not to flinch. ‘I found out for you…well that is, not everything, of course, but some of what you wanted to know. I did my best. That’s good, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t--’

‘About the Komodo.’

Shocked out of my personal black dog, I twisted back to Alessandro, ignoring the pain, which was spearing through my chest and shoved myself up onto my elbows. ‘Nice one! You’re bloody blinding. Close the door.’ Alessandro rushed to push it shut, glancing at the chick’s corpse as he passed and then perched next to me. ‘So what the buggering hell are those tossers up to?’

‘Experimentation on First Lifers. It’s something to do with splitting our venom, like I believed. I can’t for the life of me, however, work out why they’d wish to do it. I couldn’t discover more than that I’m afraid.’ I collapsed back onto the bed, deflated. All right then, so I’d been clutching at this unexpected information from Alessandro, which amidst my own grief at the loss of you, I’d forgotten he was even digging for, like it could call me back to life. It was as if I needed it for permission not to die. Amidst everything, screwing the twins and their dodgy plans for…whatever
this
was…sod it, was worth a thousand times more than the petty vengeance of taking my own life. ‘Ask me why.’

‘What?’

‘Why I couldn’t discover more.’ Alessandro was grinning now.

‘All right, I’ll bite. Why?’

‘Because Silverman only has
one
of his labs here. Not his main one. His chief lab’s somewhere more private, where he can work uninterrupted. Select First Lifers are taken to him for…’

I scrambled up, giving all thoughts of death or blood starvation the two finger salute. Reckon that sounds more like me? Give me a crisis every time. ‘The groupies?’

Alessandro nodded. ‘I’ve been poring over the delivery records, trying to unearth the ones, which don’t fit. There’s one that matches the pattern tomorrow night.’

‘Guess who’ll be catching that ride?’

‘But here’s the truly ingenious part,’ Alessandro edged closer. His peepers were lit by both an excitement and a fear, which I realised with a kick was for me. ‘Silverman’s lab? It’s on Radio Komodo.’

Right, so this is how it was. Alessandro had explained that there’d be a black van parked behind Advance’s offices at twilight, all ready to take its human cargo to Portsmouth. I figured one more passenger wouldn’t hurt.

First though, I found the card for the skanky bint, who plyed her trade in the tiny flat above the sex shop in Soho. I promised her five times her usual fee if I could see her right away. She was dead sweet, when she saw the state of me; I guess she felt an affinity because she recognised the signs of withdrawal.

When the girl drew her blood for me, bugger it looked good sucked up thick and dark like that in the needle, as she dragged her cardigan closer around her against the cold: I wasn’t there for her other talents, after all. Her cool expression didn’t waver, even though I was panting, as I squirted the blood down my throat in desperate gulps. Finally, the shaking subsided and I started to mend.

When I gave her a quick nod of thanks, she acknowledged it with the first smile I’d yet seen; it was so brief, maybe I imagined it.

At twilight I spied the black van. It was just where Alessandro had said it would be: parked up the alley behind Advance. Good on the little bugger. A bit of barmy in the mix makes a blinding snowflake pattern.

I scanned up and down the street. The Plantagenet siblings were nowhere to be seen. I darted for the back of the van, wrenching at the doors. Thank Christ, they weren’t locked. I swung them open, diving inside, before edging them silently shut behind me. Covert ops could get to be my thing.

When I backed up, I stepped on something warm and soft.

Buggering hell,
Susan
.

Susan was hogtied like a pig for slaughter. She seemed tiny and lost, in a red and purple jersey dress, in the dark of that manky, oil puddled van.

I crouched down next to Susan, examining her neck: no bite marks, which meant she was alive. For now. Unless the marks had healed over already…bloody evolution.

When I tweezed open Susan’s peepers, I saw her pupils were dilated, with the spaced look of the deeply sedated. She stank of her own tangy piss.

This whole setup sang of bloody Aralt tying up loose ends in a pretty bow. I realised I’d saved your cousin once, only to lay her open to this.

Are you?

It’s all Susan had asked that day in the damp alley, when I’d rumbled with the dandy over her honour and had been left limping and wounded. Yet it was the first time anyone had asked if I was all right, for over a hundred years. And meant it.

It was the first time since my parents…

I hadn’t let myself think about that because you mustn’t (not once you’re transmuted into Blood Life), or everything falls to pieces. This strange little First Lifer, however, had wrapped her arms around my broken body and supported me back to her home, like I wasn’t a… Like I was no different to her. As if I had a place there.

You’d wanted nothing to do with me. I don’t blame you. It was Susan, however, who’d taken my weight on her tiny body, trusting this violent stranger enough to insist I was allowed into your home. Then she’d patched me up with her gentle hands, as you’d watched. All because I’d saved her.

Yeah
,
I’m a sodding hero
.

It makes me feel dirty to think it now. That’s the kind of daft bint behaviour, which got you killed in this city.

I stared down at Susan’s motionless body, bound on the floor of the freezing van: all because I wasn’t the hero she’d reckoned.

In that moment, I decided I would rescue Susan for real this time, even if I had to burn Aralt, Advance and the whole bleeding Blood Lifer world around my ears to do it. She’d cared if I was all right or not. And that made me feel like I should care too.

I reached under Susan’s arms. ‘Let’s get you sodding well…’

I started to lift Susan up. Then, however, I carefully dropped her back down again. I patted her softly on her moptop nut, as I huddled close to her for warmth, whilst I waited for the van to pull out.

All right then, so don’t get shirty, or at least - hands up - I
was
going to save Susan. Get her out of harm's way. But if I’d done that, then what would I’ve used as…
bait’s
too strong a word.

Me turning round? Bait, yeah, I needed a First Lifer, the same as they were expecting. Susan was my passport onto Radio Komodo. I didn’t know if I’d get another chance at this…whatever
this
would be.

Tosser, right? But Susan was that First Lifer. And there was nothing I could do about it.

What was strange, was how hard that hit me in the gut. It hurt worse than I thought I could feel about a First Lifer. Except for you and you were different, weren’t you? Feeling something for you when you were… What, the woman I loved and would’ve elected in a heartbeat? That I got. But now feeling it for another First Lifer..?

Still, I had to take this chance. And I don’t regret it. The only things I regret are those I didn’t have control over: the decisions I slid into, opportunities I let slip by or the times I was manipulated.

Christ was I manipulated
.

But this? It wasn’t one of those times.

This was all on me.

At last, the van lurched, and we were pulling away across night-time London and then down towards the coast. I tried to occupy my mind on the journey by checking on your cousin. I listened out for the steady beat of her heart. The way her blood coursed through her, slow with the drugs. The way her breath would catch - once in a while - in the back of her throat. I cradled her nut in my lap, stroking her hair, like some kind of nancy.

I guess that’s what they call guilt then
?

Trapped in that little metal box, shaken side to side as it swerved and deafened by its growl, I could only tell we were nearing Portsmouth when we slowed: there was the sudden hiss and slap of the sea and the ghost wail of horns in the black.

I was struck with the photo clear memory of striding through the London Docks with Ruby, my red-haired devil, at my side. The cacophony of sailors’ songs, goats bleating from ships’ holds and ropes splashing into the water, as we’d wound our way to my first kill. Then later, when we’d boarded the first ship I’d ever sailed in, on route for our Grand Tour. I’d been intoxicated with excitement for a life, which I’d hardly understood.

That was before the darkness had begun to bite. Before I’d lost Ruby. When I still thought she’d always be mine alone, as I’d be hers. Yeah, when I’d been a lovesick fool and killing was still as innocent as only a clean death can be.

Well, this was it then. One more glance at Susan’s bound body and I was up, hurling myself at the van’s back doors and slamming out into the bitter night, before I could think too much about what I was doing.

I hit the road hard, grating my mush, palms and knees…tumbling over and over in a dusty mess. Why does it always hurt more than you remember?

When I dragged myself up, I saw the van swerve away down towards the harbour. The lights of the City curved behind, as the ships rose and fell on the waves, like hulking whales in the shadows.

Hobbling after the van, I forced myself to gain speed.

Sod my fractured ankle. Sod everything but Aralt and screwing him as much as he had me, Susan, Alessandro - even Ruby. As much as he had you. Sod everything but getting all our lives back.

It wasn’t the noblest battle speech but it got me to the dock wall.

I crouched down and peered round. The van was stopped now in the quiet, by an ancient fishing trawler, which was miniature next to the giants boxing it in on either side.

Then the door was flung open, and Kira was jumping out of the front. It had to be that bitch, didn’t it? It was nice to know Aralt kept the business in the family.

When Kira marched round to the back, she threw a seabag over Susan. Then she lifted her, as if Susan was a light catch of the day, over her shoulder and tipped her into the boat. I flinched, imagining the
bang
as Susan landed.

When Kira embarked, she started the shuddering engine. I crept down the slimy slope, leaping into the back of the trawler.

See here’s the thing, I’m mostly a winging it kind of bloke. Yeah, that’s a surprise, right? I figured I had about a minute - if I was fluky - to get out of sight.

I had a quick shufti, staggering as the boat swayed under the steep, salty swells. I dragged up a corner of a slippery, canary yellow tarpaulin, which by the stink of it must’ve been used for covering the fish because Christ - the
smell
. I buried my nose in my sleeve (well, beggars can’t be chooses). I dived underneath the tarpaulin, shrouding myself in the stench, as I wriggled lower.

Then there was nothing but the
chug,
chug
of the engine and the rocking
creak
of the trawler. Enough time to think about the unknown, which I was riding to as willing victim. Enough time to think about you.