Yet the difference was that Ruby wasn’t even trying to hide her new lover. It was as if she wanted me to know: rub the pup’s nose in it. Whereas me? I’d bathe, scrubbing my skin until it near bled, like that bloke, who I’d been forced to shank during the Cuban Revolution.
Look, I wish that I could’ve held onto every embrace, allowing your scent to cocoon me and keep me safe. I still shared a bed with Ruby, however, and that devil could’ve plucked me apart.
Yet the greatest problem was that I still needed blood. Without it we’re not alive, and to hell with it if I was dying twice.
Every day that went by, Ruby was catching on, glancing at the way my hands would betray me with their trembling. I couldn’t rely on stumbling over spaced out berks in the toilets every time I needed a feed.
So, I got creative.
Right, all the nasties and wankery? Don’t roll your eyes. I know that you’re going to, however, because on the way to yours through Soho, there were all these sex shops, and one night I collected some cards for…
The blood donor’s skin was crusted with pimples and her room stank of cum. But she was the one who said yes — for the right fee — and I was desperate.
Ruby always let me have money now, like I was her wife (or maybe her whore), so that I could buy what I liked, rather than nick it. I’d rejected her money before but had started silently pocketing it without a word, which meant that I had enough to pay for the blood.
The First Lifer stuck a needle into her vein, selecting the one closest to her muff because the others had already collapsed. Despite everything, I started to salivate, as she drew out the blood. She watched, when I squirted it into my mouth and then swallowed in my near starvation, as if it was the sweetest (rather than the rankest), blood that I’d tasted in decades. Her expression, however, didn’t change: it was blank, like she’d seen it all before.
Maybe she bleeding had.
She was only young, yet even a freak drinking her blood from a needle didn’t surprise her.
I saw the blood donor once a week, taking just enough to keep the tremors at bay. I never asked her name; she never asked mine. And I never told you.
In two lifetimes of bad choices and carnage, that’s a lie, which never let my conscience rest. I let myself believe that it was about survival because that’s the get out of jail free card.
But never telling you? That was all on my head.
After Ruby’s ruthless training in Blood Life, I struggled to hold onto my humanity. You were the only one who’d offered me something different to Ruby, but I shivered at the risks I took to be with you and the terror that you’d die…and I’d be alone again.
I vibrated, whilst my blood hummed. Would you be mine forever, as I was Ruby’s?
I sprawled on a bean bag side by side with you in your flat to the soaring soundscapes of Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced”.
“Susan got it.” You murmured. “The secretarial post.”
I grinned. “Blinding.”
You tore at the rough edge of the shagpile, dragging frayed edges out — hard — between your fingers. “It would be if her new boss wasn’t a right pig.”
I stiffened with that automatic tension when a predator’s close, yet a swirl of confusion too because this time the adrenaline surge wasn’t for me, but rather for a First Lifer. Everything I’d been taught told me that wasn’t right. But I still couldn’t stop myself. “What’s he…?”
“It’s not like he’s any worse than the rest, I guess.”
“Do you want me to…?”
“What?” You stopped worrying the carpet, trapping my fingers between yours instead. “Are you our white knight?”
Mockery.
You were always good at that, with an added hint of seduction. You could play me so well, ensnaring me somewhere between rage and lust, which for a Blood Lifer is bloody heaven.
Let’s face it, neither you nor me would be content with boring, ordinary lives, whatever the hell they look like. It’s not only us Blood Lifers, who walk and crave that thin line between pleasure and pain. I’m not simply talking about the kinky stuff either.
Do you remember the nights (and if you remember nothing else, Christ in heaven, you must remember those nights), when you’d edge me for hours because you said you loved to watch me stretched out naked, shuddering under you, in that hazy zone where pleasure and pain meld sublimely? What divides the screams and moans, which everyone the world over makes when they come, from the sounds of torture?
You did that to me with your words. I don’t know if you ever got that.
Disgruntled, I shrugged. “Armour wouldn’t suit me; I’ll stick to leathers.” I kissed the tips of your fingers; they were soft, but your nails grazed my lips. “Have you got a gig this weekend?”
You nodded. “Recording next month…” You stopped.
“What?”
‘It’s nothing. But what I do…it burns me with exhilarating fear because I know that I’m lucky. I don’t want it to end or… Not with everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve been through. It could be me in that office with a pig of a—”
“Never you. That could never be you.”
You rolled off your beanbag onto me; your body was hard against mine. Then we were snogging, lost somewhere in the wild roar of the music. My mind opened to this new age; the stars burst and the rhythms beat through my blood in time with the power of the drums.
At last I knew what this thing was. You’d possessed me, invading every bleeding inch of me, until all I breathed was you. But now I knew its true name: this was love.
You snuggled closer onto my chest; your arms hugged tight around me, limpet-like. “I wish that you didn’t have to go and we could be here like this. Forever.”
What had you just said?
I tried not to tense as I stroked a dark curl back from your cheek. “Do you?”
“What?”
“Forever?”
You smiled. “What are you on about, freak?”
Was this the moment that I’d been hoping for and dreaming about?
Had it been like this for Ruby? A sudden awareness that the time had come?
Yet Ruby hadn’t even known me, not like I knew you; she’d only tasted my Soul. That was enough, however, for most Blood Lifers. I’d tasted your Soul too; I’d been hollowed out by it and now I was filled up with something real.
This…love.
Did you love me as well? Maybe. But I did know how I felt and that was enough.
Election was meant to be for the cream of each generation. You had beauty, talent, and ambition with the streak of ruthlessness that made a leader.
You deserved Blood Life.
Then we’d be together fully and forever. Not in that fairy-tale bollocks way but as long as anyone could wish for on one planet. I’d always known something had been different…this call to you. Different to the taste of every other First Lifer.
The vistas stretched before me of the world that I’d reveal to you, just as you’d introduced me to yours. I remembered the decades of exploration with Ruby and all the wonders that she’d shown me. I shook with anticipation that I could be your Author, muse, liberator…
And love.
I sat up, pulling you with me onto my lap. You stared at me with a look of surprise. I tried to smile but I was too nervous. “If you could… If there was a way to live for centuries and—”
“Like a vampire?”
I stiffened. “No, not like a sodding vampire.”
“You want to go out somewhere tomorrow evening?” You raised your eyebrow. “We can take the Mini and—”
I bit my lip. “So, when you said you wished that we could be like this forever...?”
You frowned. “I was just playing. You’re serious all of a sudden. Look, I’d rather live fully every second. Who’d want to go on and on with no end? Always out of step with the world? It sounds lonely to me.”
I hugged your small body closer; I found that I couldn’t l
oosen my arms. My eyes burned, and I fought not to let the tears fall. “But if you were with someone else? Like, you’d found someone who… It was me and you, together...?”
“The vampire and his bride?”
“Not bloody vampires,” I snarled.
You dragged my arms away from your middle, and I let you. You shoved up, swinging to the record player and lifting the needle off the Hendrix LP.
The sudden silence was like a bleeding black hole.
I stared at your tense back, when you didn’t turn around to me. I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms. I’d done that all wrong, hadn’t I?
How had I buggered it up so badly?
Ruby had opened my eyes to the splendors of Blood Life at my election. She’d exhilarated me with the glorious possibilities of my new world and the superiority of the species, into which I’d evolved. But daft berk that I was, all I’d been able to conjure up for you was shadow puppets of Halloween nasties.
I’d screwed up the moment — the only moment — to join with your forever and I knew it.
You’d never want to be elected into Blood Life with me.
Yeah, it was lonely.
At last, you twisted back to me. Your expression was serious and dark. “But you wouldn’t be human, would you? I’d never want that. I could never love something that was… Isn’t this life enough for you?”
“You are,” I replied, softly. “You are, love.”
MAY 1866 LONDON
I checked the numbers again. There was no doubt: Overend, Gurney and Company, London’s wholesale discount bank — the banker’s bank — was about to collapse.
Junior clerk as I was, I could see the ripples from the rumbling earthquake in its wake spreading out with photographic clarity: the panic and run on banks spreading to Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Derby and Bristol, and then all the other companies failing, like dominoes in a row.
I’d written warnings to the directors, especially Mr John Wesley Erwood, ever since they’d employed me on the written recommendation and good word of my uncle. That, however, had nearly got me fired.
Junior clerks weren’t meant to get above themselves; it was bleeding presumptuous and should’ve been already beaten out of me. I should’ve simply got on with my job, bowed and scraped — yes sir, no sir — and kept my gaze to the ground, rather than lifted to the lofty heights of high finance.
I’ve always been a curious bastard, however, and the one talent I had was for numbers.
Numbers had danced in my mind in glimmering cascades, before I even had the words to describe them. And these ones at the bank didn’t add up. Not when the bank had millions of pounds more liabilities than liquid assets, yet still couldn’t see the danger. Not when the stock and bond prices collapsed. Not when the Bank of England failed to play ball.
I slammed the hefty leather accounts book shut, tapping my fingers thoughtfully on top. I’d requested to work late in a dusty backroom, which was lined with the bank’s ledgers; their secrets for the last decade were hidden in the numbers. Gradually, I’d unearthed the truth in their patterns. The fading light streamed through the single high window.
I’d discovered in that room of numbers that the world was about to come tumbling down on all our heads. Yet no one realized it because the reality was masked by the directors’ fraud: that was the buried truth.
Every night I came here, I was working myself up to something, which took more courage than I reckoned I possessed.
The directors were conning the world, and I was the only one who could do anything about it. If I didn’t, honest men and their families would suffer; I understood too well what poverty and misery could follow, when livelihoods were lost.
I knew I’d have to reveal the lies.
Real hero, right?
Prat more like.
I was innocent as a babe in my First Life but I was fired by the flames of the righteous for all the little people who’d be caught in the whirlwind, when the banks turned bad. My plan was to worm close to Mr Erwood, (the stuffed walrus). I made sure to be in the position to overhear snatches of muttered meetings, which I could then match up with the dodgy numbers that paraded — day and night — in my brain.
The numbers became like a second conscience.
Luckily, the directors never worried about my presence because a nobody doesn’t matter. They spilled their secrets in front of me, no different to a master talks about his mistress in front of his servants: they’re invisible and what would they know?
What did I know? More than they did, and I was going to show them. I was a man on a sodding mission; I burnt with it.
Most of all, I had to prove that they knew (those fat cats in their gold-gilt offices), who were scrambling to safety, whilst the death knell had already sounded for the common man with his life savings invested. But the banks and their directors, who’d caused the catastrophe? They’d survive.
I guess, just once, I wanted to even the odds.
But love will rot you through every time.
Mr Erwood had a daughter: Grace. I reckon she only came to the bank, with her shrew of an aunt as chaperon, to torment us clerks. No, hands up, to torment me because I was the poor sod assigned to escort her.
I don’t know why her papa chose me, but it could’ve been partly because I’d been sticking to his side like a limpet and partly because he couldn’t imagine anybody who’d be less of a threat to his unmarried daughter: this ambitious but friendless clerk.
He wasn’t a good judge of character that one.
Grace wore the latest Parisian fashions. Her cloud of blonde hair was always perfectly arranged and smelling of the sweetest violets. She was alien to the male environment of echoing marble halls and clusters of blokes trying not to be caught out in their furtive glances, whilst hiding their stiffys behind clutched bundles of files. Grace would flash a glimpse of ankle, as I’d help her back into her crested carriage amidst blankets, pillows, and footwarmers, like an Arabian princess.
Then she’d give me that coquettish smile of hers.
I had no way of hiding my stiffy in my tight trousers after that.
Grace: my first love, sweet torturer, and for three years the only lady who haunted my dreams.
But the real hell of it…? She knew it.
Cat and mouse, Grace played with me (out of boredom I knew); I was only a little something to pass the time. The bleeding crime was that I let her because it felt so good to have someone to worship.
Ever being loved back by someone seemed too distant a hope.
That evening when I strolled out of the backroom, the numbers crashing through my brain and pounding so hard that a headache had formed, something made me stop and make the decision that I’d been building up to for weeks.
Bravery isn’t as easy as they show it in the flicks. It’s slow burn, stoked by incremental choices. When you decide to risk everything, few First Lifers can do that in a moment, unless it’s drilled into them. That’s what military training’s all about, or did you reckon pulling a trigger was to do with finger strength?
That night was when I finally knew that I was ready to throw away everything that I’d built up over the last three years. I would find those incriminating papers, take them to the authorities, and explode this bank and my whole life along with it.
And that did take balls. Stupidity but balls.
I knew the papers were in Mr Erwood’s office; I’d watched him perusing them, his heavy features furrowed in a frown. I’d have to nick them. There’s a first time for everything, right?
Adrenaline and fear surged. I stalked along the corridors that were deserted now after hours — clack, clack, clack — each footstep was sharp against the marble, even in my stealth. I drew in my breath, when I saw the wide doors to Mr Erwood’s office were open. Then movement in the dancing light of the lamps. I crept closer with my back to the wall.
When I reached the door, I peered around into the dim room. Like a vaulted cathedral, the ceil
ing domed high above me, veined in gold. Mr Erwood’s vast oak desk crouched in the centre. His papers were laid out, as if awaiting a clandestine meeting.
My blood pounded because it was Grace pacing back and forth in front of the desk, floating in a dress of lilac tartalan muslin with matching sash, so light that it was almost transparent: a fairy ghost that shaped her into a perfect doll. Her arms, however, were crossed impatiently.
I drew back, but it was too late: Grace had seen me. “Do come in, Mr Blickle.”
I reluctantly edged inside, eying those papers, which proved that the world was about to change unimaginably. They were just there but out of reach.
Grace was studying me in the way she had, which made me shiver: half haughty and half inviting.
Uncomfortable, I noted that Grace’s aunt wasn’t with her.
Grace seemed to read the question in my eyes, as I shifted my feet. She smiled. “Aunt’s not feeling quite well. So, she has left me here. Alone. I am awful bored by myself, waiting for papa and his dreadful friends. Why, they barely say two words to me, can you imagine?” Grace stroked her hair back, before raising her eyebrow.
“I…need these papers, and then I should leave you…” I made a grab for the sheaf on the desk but as soon as I did, Grace’s fingers curled around my bicep, giving it a light squeeze.
Any other day, Grace’s touch would’ve paralyzed me with desire but today it caught me off guard. I simply stared at her.
Affronted by my response, Grace withdrew her hand. She pouted, and something darker flashed in her eyes, which made me step back from her. “Stay with me, until my papa returns, will you not? It is late and I do not wish to be alone, Thomas.” My name on her lips. For the first time on any lady’s lips. I froze. A smile curled Grace’s mouth because she’d known what it’d do to me. When she saw what she’d achieved with a single word, which her touch alone couldn’t, Grace’s blue eyes sang victory. She bustled to a drinks cabinet, which was shaped like a globe. It marked out Britain’s bloody empire: money and power proudly displayed. She slid it open, pouring whiskey into a tumbler. And that’s how the bitch did me because she held out that heavy glass to me (solid with affluence and influence), as she said, “Taste it.”
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 13
