Together we were a force of nature.
AUGUST 1866 LONDON
Ruby and I were dossing in the rookeries, in the slums circling Westminster Abbey, before we set off for our Grand Tour.
We’d masqueraded as lodgers, who desired to share a dustman’s dark room in the crowded apartments for 2d a day. He’d stuffed his room with the broken treasures of the wealthy, which he’d sifted from the ashes and refuse. We’d ended the dustman’s miserable existence, moving in as eagles, rather than rooks.
We didn’t share the world.
From the tiny window, we could see out over the squalid roofs of the quarter and First Lifer watch.
Ruby would laugh at that: prithee, why do you hold to First Life so?
I, however, loved the chaos and the clamour - the death, clinging to the back of life.
Tails haunted doorways, raising their skirts at passers-by with a wink, even as they coughed bloody into handkerchiefs. A shivering Jemmy, his naked chest purpled with bruises, sprawled in the muck of a side street; he was tormented by a pack of destitute kids, who were like tiny skeletons.
A ditch snaked down the middle of the street, which ran with sewage the colour of green tea; doorless privies for both blokes and birds were built directly over it. When you were outside, you could hear the splash of buckets into the ditch, which was also conveniently the water supply for the quarter.
Life and death, see what I’m getting at?
Ruby and me stuck to the blood.
I was leant against the grimy wall, staring out over Westminster (or the Westminster of the poor), when Ruby slipped her arms around my waist.
We’d spent the last few hours making the beast of two backs, Ruby educating me in my own body, as much as in hers. We fitted - virgin that I’d been in First Life - in ways I’d never dreamed a man and a woman could. Now, however, our hunger was up for something else.
‘My turn to play the game,’ Ruby rested her chin on my shoulder.
Down below, the early evening street bustled with First Lifers. A full moon had just pushed itself into the smoke-laced sky.
Shrieking. Bawling. Pleading.
A punisher (a swarthy bruiser with bushy beard and whiskers), was stamping on the legs of a young down and out, who’d earned himself a hiding. Next the cosh was out, and scarlet was streaming to join the green tea sewage.
I raised my eyebrow. Ruby, however, shook her nut.
Ah, ah, ah…dirty…little…blasted…whore…
Right beneath our window a toff, who was as ran-tan as they come, with his loosely knotted necktie eschew and his top hat fallen into the mire, was brutally buggering a Mary-Ann. The Mary-Ann was so young, he was lifted up onto his toes on each thrust.
Ruby started to nod but then she hesitated and instead, pointed further up the street.
This bloke and bird, who were bundled under tatty coats and shawls despite the oppressive London heat, were cautiously creeping through the shadows.
When the light of the moon struck the couple’s smug, excited mugs, I knew what Ruby’s instinct already had, even though they’d tried to veil themselves in rags: they didn’t belong here.
They were masquerading as much as us Blood Lifers - the rich slumming it, as if the poor’s lives were a tourist attraction for their amusement.
Come and see the zoo…
Ruby smiled. ‘I’faith, I believe I have made my choice.’
We stalked our quarry through Westminster’s narrow streets and back-to-back tenements. We passed match girls, starving street urchins on street corners, who were hoping to be sent on the wealthy’s errands and rat-catchers wearing their ferrets like fashion accessories on their shoulders, as terriers trotted at their heels with their latest kill hanging limply from yellow-toothed jaws.
The undercover couple nudged each other, as the woman suppressed her giggles. When they reached the grander sweep of Victoria Street, they dived into a waiting brougham.
When Ruby hailed a hansom cab, the dour cabbie didn’t even blink at our request to set off in pursuit of the private carriage, simply flicking the reins at his stamping nag.
We’d not long ridden through the gas lit streets, before we were pulling up.
I should’ve bloody guessed: Belgravia, where the fashionable ladies and gentlemen rented elegant stucco townhouses in this aristocratic but dull district.
We watched as the couple – husband and wife, back from their ghoulish jaunt – descended and were admitted to just such a three-storied mansion.
I dived from the hansom cab - my dander up - ready to swoop after our prey.
Yet Ruby dragged me back. ‘Have patience, my darling Light, our tatty pheasants will change their plumage and fly again.’
At first I didn’t get it. Then I realised the First Lifers’ brougham was still waiting outside.
So it was playing dress ups, was it?
I booted at the cobbles. Belgravia was like being becalmed. I was used to the rattle and the roar. The confusion of the crowd. The bustle and the bother. Growlers, cabs, broughams and the whiny of steaming horses. The sharp, brutal, never-ending merry-go-round of London. But this tranquillity?
A butler eyed me disapprovingly, as he took his evening constitutional. There was a volley of double knocks on a door several houses up, whilst a powdered footman next-door lounged lizard-like on the doorstep of a mansion, as if he owned it. I watched a high-cheekboned swell trot his gelding past us, with the type of expression, which implied all life was a bore; I itched to ease him of that burden.
The rich man in his castle/The poor man at his gate…
You First Lifers have always ordered each to his Estate. Only the god now is named Capitalism. Look around London and see if the rich and poor don’t still live cheek by jowl.
To your reckoning, Ruby was right when she insisted it was God, who’d lifted us up to Blood Life.
If First Lifers didn’t question the natural order, why was I? And if we Blood Lifers were the apex predator, then you were the prey.
Between Darwin and God, they had it stitched up.
When the couple's door swung open once again, I nearly didn’t recognise them. ‘Christ in heaven.’
Cinderella fairy tale, they’d been transformed ready for the dance. She was dolled up in a short-sleeved light pink number, which was trimmed with tulle and embroidered in gold, which glinted when the rays of the moon caught it, as if she was caught halfway in the process of metamorphosis. He was in a black dress coat and trousers, with white linen shirt and cravat. His waistcoat was gold-studded, as if to match the preciousness of his wife’s outfit. His overcoat was trimmed with black velvet.
It was a cracking coat.
‘Do they not look splendid?’ Ruby snatched up my hand, spinning me in a wild circle, in a parody of the waltz. When I stumbled to keep up, she tsked. ‘We will hire you a tutor, dearest prince. Every man should know how to dance.’
Impatient, I eyed the couple, who were dithering in their doorway, collecting up the lady’s ornate fan, gold and diamond bouquetier and white lace gloves. ‘Must we wait all night for these lovers to go to the ball, whilst I--’
Ruby stopped me with a kiss. All too soon, she drew back. I followed her with my lips but found only air. ‘Now, my lover. We hunt bloody, now.’
We rested our foreheads against each other, and I nodded. Then we swooped.
We took out the liveried footman first. One quick bite. Ruby tossed him into the opulent entrance hall, under the glare of the bright gas light, as we barrelled into the shocked pair of toffs. We slammed the door shut behind us.
Ruby caught the husband, and I caught the wife close in my arms. The wife was frozen still in shock and then a moment later with paralysis. Her fan clattered to the Oriental rug.
She was warm and sylph-like; I could feel the flutter of her terrified heart.
The husband? He struggled and thrashed like a hooked perch, as Ruby twisted both his arms behind his back. He stomped at Ruby with his pat
ented leather boots, gasping out a litany of Cynthia, Cynthia, Cynthia, whilst he stared at his wife.
He jerked like he’d been shot, when Ruby slowly licked up his neck, tasting - the fear and rush of blood - beneath the surface.
Then Ruby bit and let in the toxin.
Ruby nodded at me, before glancing upstairs. I smiled because I knew she had something planned.
I was more the fangs and fists type of bloke.
I dropped the wife to the rug, before creeping up the stairs to the top of the house and the attic rooms – servant quarters.
The cook and the housemaid had retired for the night.
So, honesty…
The housemaid was a regular stunner, even in her plain cotton nightdress; if she’d been a debutante she’d have had her card filled for every dance, instead of being on her knees each morning lighting fires.
Cinderella is nothing but claptrap spun to kids, as an opiate against the pain of their inevitable future disappointments. Blood Lifers look beneath the surface. They taste the Soul, electing true beauties, thinkers, warriors and leaders. The mistress of this house might’ve ruled in First Life, but it was her maid, who would’ve been chosen for election.
But not tonight. Tonight was for feasting, not authoring.
The maid screamed because a man in her rooms could only mean ruin. And it did, although not the sort, which she’d fantasised about in the lonely hours before dawn.
The bird’s squawking was getting on my wick, so I snapped her neck – crack – pushing her long black braid aside, before sinking in my fangs.
Blood.
I barely stopped to savour. The roar blasted through me. The world was undone and remade again in the moment.
I was so lost in the sensation, I almost didn’t register the clang and sharp pain across the back of my nut.
Reluctantly, I withdrew my fangs, before dropping the maid. I turned to face my attacker - a portly matron in a nightgown and cap, wielding a ceramic bedpan like a cudgel. The cook, I’d wager. Plucky old girl that she was, she still staggered back at the sight of my dripping fangs.
How much honesty can you handle? Put it this way: mutton didn’t taste as fine as lamb.
Afterwards, high on the blood and its intoxicating thrill, I took a shufti through the house, stumbling from their bathroom, which even had its own flushing khazi (no sewage in the drinking water for them), to their bedroom and discovered what had been keeping Ruby amused.
The bedroom was a grand room, as if it was a set in a play; it was rich and dark with heavy navy curtains, floral pink and blue wallpaper and over-stuffed furniture.
I caught a butchers of the bleeder’s velvet trimmed overcoat, which had been discarded, like a seal’s skin, on the rug.
It would really suit me when I half inched it.
Ruby, however, never did like that coat. It wasn’t until the Great War that I acquired another blinder. The next was… Well, you know the one. Leather motorcycle jacket, with gold ace of spades on the back..? That was Brighton, May Bank Holiday 1964. I got it off some Rocker, who’d been so set on battling with the Mods, he hadn’t looked out for what was in the shadows – or his hotel room.
The couple’s bed was in the centre of the room: the set piece.
Ruby had arranged the starkers husband and wife in a loving embrace, with one arm around each other, chaste-like. But the other..?
The husband’s hand rested on his wife’s right knocker. And his wife’s? On her husband’s knob.
Their mouths were close. Almost kissing but not quite. This intimacy was denied them (as it is for all whores).
I could tell by the occasional twitch of their muscles that the venom had fully set in. But not death. They were aware. Trapped in their bodies.
‘What do you think, dearest prince, of my dolls?’ Ruby wound her fingers between mine, drawing me closer. ‘This wretched cur and his base bitch thought to make a spectacle of others. But now, by heaven, it is they who shall put on a show.’
Ruby pulled me towards the bed. She paused to lift the discarded gold and diamond bouquetier, which hung on a delicate chain, from the side table, where it lay amongst the wife’s sad array of beautiful things that would now never see the ball: a hand cooler of chilled glass, unsullied lace gloves, white satin shoes that looked like they’d never been worn before tonight and a headdress of roses, ivy and lilies of the valley.
Ruby held the bouquetier up to her neb and sniffed. Then she sighed.
I was tripping on the blood. The blue and pink flowers were dripping from the walls. Creeping from the rugs. I was drowning in them. I could even smell them on Ruby’s breath. ‘Roses, signifying love.’ I plucked a rose from the headdress, slipping it into Ruby’s long hair.
Ruby startled, as if the tenderness was unexpected.
It was Ruby, who liked to play rough: I’m all about the romance.
It was me, however, who was surprised a moment later, when Ruby pressed a sprig of ivy into my hair. ‘Ivy signifies faithfulness,’ she whispered, before adding, ‘let us blood share tonight.’
Blood share? That was…sacrosanct…holy to us, Ruby had said. It was a closeness I’d only experienced once before and hadn’t thought I’d experience again. I didn’t know what I’d done to earn it, or if the couple we’d stalked had brought it on.
I fairly launched myself at the bed.
Ruby had unwound the wife’s hair from its plaits, and it hung in a glossy blonde waterfall to her waist. It mingled with Ruby’s scarlet hair, like a meeting of seas, when Ruby leant over her.
The First Lifers watched us with petrified peepers, as we watched them. I wasn’t sure who was putting on a show for whom.
I clutched onto Ruby’s hand, when she twisted the bird’s neck, so we could both latch onto it. Then came the moment when my fangs sank through the creamy skin.
It’s all about that moment…when you know you’re going to feed. You wait for it. It builds up, whilst your teeth descend. The sensation when the layers of skin break. Then you hit the artery, just before you start to suck. And the blood hits – bang.
Ask addicts in opium dens why they go back for more, or crackheads why they beg for the pipe, or…why bloody ciggies are so hard to kick.
To a Blood Lifer, take all that and multiply it by…ten, a hundred, a thousand…because there’s nothing - nothing - to compare to the hit of fresh, human blood from the source.
That’s honesty for you.
Knowing Ruby was on the other side of the neck - the rose still in her hair, as the ivy was in mine - doubled the intensity.
I could feel Ruby in the pull of the blood: my Author, muse, liberator and love.
I was made to love Ruby. And in sharing blood, we were joined.
Crouching over the body of that bird, whilst her husband impotently watched her being drained (all the time knowing he was next), I near on climaxed.
Of course, that came later.
So what if that’s not all I am - the blood – if it’s not all I became?
You don’t get to wrest those precious memories from me. Violate those too.
Honesty - it’s a double-edged sword.
You lot are keen as mustard to believe me a thing deserving slavery. Now you have the ammunition.
Hate away, darling.
MAY 16
Look, that honesty claptrap?
It didn’t seem such a good idea this morning when I woke up.
But it was too late. I’d already stuffed my journal into your hands last night.
No wonder you looked so startled.
So I was lying in bed, pulling the covers up to my lobes (like that’d save me), whilst I listened to the furious whirr of the blender.
I notice you still haven’t got any coffee in but…
Yeah, more important things, right.
At last, I couldn’t put if off any longer. I built up the bottle to peer into the kitchen.
There you were: high Fendi heels, white frill shirt, with black
A-line skirt and scarlet lipstick. Every inch the twenty-first century business woman.
Stuff it – here’s to facing the gallows.
I swaggered towards you. ‘Alright?’
You blinked at me, before turning away.
Nonplussed, I was expecting a bigger reaction.
But now you were reaching for something dark, which was folded behind you on the marble side. You swung back to me.
I jumped.
Then it was my turn to blink.
My motorcycle jacket.
Intact. Better than: cleaned and mended.
My hands shook, when I took the jacket from you. I turned it this way and that. Black and studded, gold ace of spades. It smelled the same - felt the same too. A part of me. It took a moment to believe it was real. Then I was excitedly dragging it on; it fitted like a flayed skin. I shrugged my shoulders, running my fingers along the studs. I closed my peepers, breathing in deeply the scent of the leather, as I hugged my arms around myself. When I opened them again, I saw you watching me, with an amused expression.
I attempted to calm myself, nonchalantly leaning against the counter. ‘Wankers told me they’d burnt it.’
‘They told me that too…until I said, in that case, they’d be next.’
I laughed and then caught myself. ‘So does this mean I get to go out?’
‘Don’t push your luck.’
I realised that for the first time, we were grinning at each other. ‘Cheers…I mean--’
‘I’d have given it to you last night, if you hadn’t stormed in like…’
I flushed. ‘About that--’
You waved it away. ‘No time. Breakfast.’ You turned back to the marble side and continued pressing kale.
I pulled a face, as I settled on a stool. You’d left the Guardian newspaper neatly opened, and I considered snatching a nose.
The world outside, however, now seemed so distant and remote I might as well be invisible, travelling in a tandem, parallel universe to every other First and Blood Lifer, who wasn’t part of the Blood Club.
Blood Shackles (Rebel Vampires Book 2) Page 5
