Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series
Page 1
Rebel Vampires
The Complete Series
Rosemary A Johns
Contents
Rebel Vampires
Books in the Rebel Verse
Volume 1
Blood Dragon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Author Note
Volume 2
Blood Shackles
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Author Note
Volume 3
Blood Renegades
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Author Note
Vampire Huntress: Rebel Angels Book One
About the Author
Rebel Vampires
The Complete Series
This box set includes all three books in The Rebel Vampires series by USA Today bestselling author Rosemary A Johns. Escape into spellbinding supernatural worlds, dark vampire romance, and seductive adventures.
Once I was like you; I was human. Then the dark came for me: a secret Blood Life.
Light, a rebel vampire of the Blood Lifer world, has been hiding in the shadows of paranormal London since Victorian times. His only company? A savage Elizabethan Blood lifer, but he's keeping a secret from her that breaks every rule…
If you love dark vampires, steamy love scenes, and thrilling action, then start reading this award-winning edgy urban fantasy romance today!
With thousands of copies bought, readers are addicted to Rebel Vampires…
One hell of a journey into love, death, humanity, and monsters! 5 Stars
Light is courageous and a great lover. 5 Stars
Vampire fiction with a twist! 5 Stars
Totally pulls off different. A paranormal version of The Notebook. 5 Stars
A classy urban fantasy! 5 Stars
Books in the Rebel Verse
REBEL ANGELS - COMPLETE SERIES
COMPLETE SERIES BOX SET: BOOKS 1-5
VAMPIRE HUNTRES
VAMPIRE PRINCESS
VAMPIRE DEVIL
VAMPIRE MAGE
VAMPIRE GOD
VAMPIRE SECRET: REBELS AND RENEGADES
REBEL VAMPIRES - COMPLETE SERIES
COMPLETE SERIES BOX SET: BOOKS 1-3
BLOOD DRAGONS
BLOOD SHACKLES
BLOOD RENEGADES
STANDALONE NOVELLA - BLOOD GODS
Volume One
BLOOD DRAGONS
REBEL VAMPIRES
FANTASY REBEL
www.rosemaryajohns.com
BLOOD DRAGONS: REBEL VAMPIRES VOLUME ONE © copyright 2016 Rosemary A Johns
First Edition 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters, places and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.
www.rosemaryajohns.com
Fantasy Rebel Limited
Blood Dragon
REBEL VAMPIRES VOLUME ONE
Once I was like you; I was human. Then the dark came for me: a secret Blood Life.
Light, a rebel vampire of the Blood Lifer world, has been hiding in the shadows of paranormal London since Victorian times. His only company? A savage Elizabethan Blood Lifer, but Light’s keeping a secret from her that breaks every rule…
When a seductive singer tempts Light with a forbidden romance, their worlds collide. At the same time, Light discovers his ruthless family’s deadly experiments. Now he’s torn between slaying the humans that he was raised to fear, or saving them.
But an effort to play the hero could spell the end…
1
You know those vampire myths? Holy water, entry by invitation only, and sodding crucifixes?
Bollocks to them.
Because you know what? There are no monsters and no immortals. There’s just us: The Lost.
Somewhere deep inside, you know that it’s true.
I can see a glimmer Kathy — give me something — the slightest flicker in those glazed blue eyes.
You remember me today, don’t you, love? At least you used to and wouldn’t need me raking it up. If I can just get this down, or if you can just remember, I won’t lose my last thread of humanity. Sanity. Otherwise there’s no one with the pretty pictures in their mind but me…of what I’ve seen or done.
Do you even remember my name? Your Light?
You laughed when we first met and said that my parents must be hippies. You were direct like that: I loved it. But I couldn’t explain. Not then.
How many months has it been since you’ve looked at me and said my name? Looked at me and known me?
After all these decades, you’re lost.
And I’m alone.
Ilkley Moor’s bleak when you look out at it under the crisp snow of winter; sod it, it’s bleak when the sun beats down in the heat of summer too. Not that I’ve seen more than photos of the daytime.
Yet now, when I can’t even see the heather, just rolling mounds of snow, which cast blue shadows and make burial mounds of the hills (the boulders the gravestones), it’s bloody bleak. So, the tourists, dog walkers, day-trippers and climbers don’t come out here in the freeze of the dead months.
Except, we’re here because I wanted to bring you somewhere familiar that you’d recognize: for the end. For your end.
The doctors say — oh, you know, so much bollocks. This last decade, as you’ve slipped, and I’ve had to watch, useless as a…
Dementia they call it. They always have a pretty label, don’t they?
Dementia.
They mask the nasties with their lists and tick boxes. I reckon the physicians of
this age figure themselves brainy fellows.
So, I brought you back here to Ilkley Moor in the howling wind roar of December because I wanted you to feel at home. I hoped that you’d remember one last time.
Only now I realize that all it’s done is haunt. And we’ve a hell of a lot of ghosts clamoring on our backs.
I’ve a Soul to haunt, the same as you. Of course, I died (hollering, I don’t mind admitting). Yet when I was reborn into my second life, my Soul was stuck to me. Souls are fat mewling consciences, until we choose to carve them away, slice by crimson slice, with every First Lifer that we slaughter. But some of us Blood Lifers? We tend to our Souls’ shreds, chaining the pulsing migraine hunger.
We’re individuals, get what I’m fixing at? More so, because after election every emotion is amplified: the good, along with the bad.
It’s not as if freewill is your headline act alone. We Blood Lifers decide the body count, how fast the tune plays, and how deep the darkness bites. Because little by little — year by year — eventually the darkness consumes us all.
I stand most nights in the damp of our whitewashed stone farmhouse, where everything has been changed from when it was first our home. The shell, however, remains. No one can gut the core of a house: its beams, walls…
Soul.
I can taste our life still throbbing warm.
I stare out at the wilderness, which is shrouded in the mists that threaten to swallow us, because I don’t have the balls to turn and watch you. To see you rock backwards and forwards in the mess of our bed, wringing your hands until the nails rip the skin, like there’s something dirty that you can’t clean off.
That should be me, love. It’s all on my hands. Not yours.
On those nights, I know that you’re lost in the past and not with me, when you say one word like a bloody mantra: “Advance, Advance, Advance…”
Why can’t I wash it clean for you?
So, this — here — is me turning round.
This. Here. Now.
I can’t change the past. I never thought much about it before; I never had to. I was always the one who lived in each fleeting second, high on its intoxicating splendor.
You never got that. Not like Ruby.
Sorry, that’s a jinx just there. The blood talking and calling to me, but now I see that the tracks left behind are more than the picture-perfect moments in my brain; not clinically still but blurred bloody lines.
I want to share them with you: fully, unabridged, and unedited. All the nasties and wankery. The truth (as far as that exists), before you no longer understand me. I’m writing it down because then I can cut it straight.
If these are the last words that I ever say to you, then I need them to be right, so let me get it in at the start: I love you.
From the moment that I saw you…no scratch that…from the moment I heard you, I loved you. All right, there was awhile I reckoned that I hated you, and you thought I was a pillock and a bad boy Rocker too, let’s not leave that out. Have you forgotten what a hard time you gave me?
But these last five decades...? Although, to you our love was forever. Yet to me…? It flamed brighter than the bloody sun, but it’s not forever because that’s so much longer than you’ll ever know.
We tell ourselves lies, however, to maintain the pretence of safety, as if the folks in our civilized country wouldn’t burn the world around their ears if they missed just three square meals. So, if anyone but you reads this book, then that instinct for self-deception will kick in.
Still reckon they’ll believe? Think this more than fiction?
You lived it. Breathed it. Bled it. I want this to bite to your Soul. But to them…?
It’ll appear merely ink stains on a page, rather than the howling of a vast new world opening up in the shadows.
2
Rough leather motorcycle jacket, studded and faded, decorated with a worn gold Ace of Spades, collar firmly turned up, over a black t-shirt, jeans and tall motorcycle boots, topped by a light brown pompadour tamed with Brylcreem.
“That’s what you kids are wearing now, is it?” Your new carer for Wednesdays was studying me like she’d just revealed an offensive specimen in your bedpan. “The latest fashion?” Her gaze curdled; you could tell that it would’ve done, even when she was half a lifetime younger and not dried up with defeated dreams.
Karen the little thingy on her blue overall read. After years of an endless parade of day to night handovers, however, these carers blurred into a day of the week, rather than a name.
I grinned as I slouched against the wall. “No, love, these’ve been around awhile.”
Wednesday flinched at the love.
Babes to this world, you First Lifers bristle at words that are deemed outdated, as if they had more power than echoes. I’m too old, however, to change more than I already have (and that’s more than most).
How about a bit of bloody appreciation?
Wednesday was shuffling around your bed, checking for hospital corners. Now I knew that she was pissed because no carer ever does that. They stick to checking your pills, pressure sores, and signing timesheets, before dashing out of the stink of this room as fast as they can.
I try to cover the old woman smell with your Chanel No. 5. You’d have bit my bloody head off for spraying that around, back when you could speak. But the sweet scent of you, darling, it’s faded, as if you’re withering. I can’t even smell the blood in your veins. It’s like you’re being fossilized inside out, every day one drop less.
Are you still inside there?
As I watched Wednesday’s disapproving rearrangement of the sheets, I dragged out my pack of ciggies, before clenching a ciggie between my teeth. Then I rummaged in my jean’s pocket, pulling out my gold lighter. I snapped open the smooth lid, flicking on the heady orange surge of flame: I’ve got to get my kicks somewhere and there’s nothing like looking into the fire.
When I lit the ciggie, Wednesday emitted a squeal, like I’d sacrificed her new-born 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 ciggie to Wednesday, “want one?” She drew back, her lips pursed. Her eyes were puffy with exhaustion; 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 ciggie between my lips, shrugging. “I’m pretty sure that she’s not going to 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 — that smoking’s not going to kill me.” When Wednesday swung her bag onto her shoulder, slamming towards the door, I sighed. Then I flicked the stub to the 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, and 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 the dangerous lie.
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 that 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 First Lifers Who Deserve To Be Eaten 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 night air. You were asleep up in the bedroom, shriveled in that white bed, and I held red life in my hands.