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 dad.
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 wonderful moment, you held onto me like you needed me, with your cheek on my chest. I knew that 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.
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.
I was alight with you, bloody aflame; you were going to burn me to ash. You twirled us around in a crazy dance of entwined bodies. Then you pushed me down, and we ripped at our clothes and each other’s, lost to the world. Nothing existed but our lines, curves, and pleasure. We shagged right there in the lounge, which your dad had desecrated, as if our union was exorcising his haunting.
After, we sprawled naked on the rug in that intimate silence, which I bleeding loved, with your head resting on my chest and listening to my heart again. Your hand stroked my arm; it sent tingles, like static electricity, shooting all the way to my cock.
Then you whispered, “Don’t leave me.”
I stared down at the black crown of your head. “Don’t you get it yet? I’m yours. I’ll always be yours.” Then I heard something, which I never wanted to hear from you again because it made me vibrate with pain: sniffling sobs. Your salty tears were wet on my chest. I warned you that I was rubbish at these moments. “Love? What did I…?”
When you raised your head, I couldn’t read the look in your eyes. “I’m sorry. If you’re hurting, you hurt others. I didn’t mean to—”
I waved my hand dismissively. “I don’t mind.”
“That’s not the point, don’t you see?” You sat up, pulling your knees under your chin. I pushed myself onto my elbows, watching you closely. I didn’t get where this was going and I tingled with terror that you were about to throw me out or return to the steely indifference from earlier in the summer, when you’d acted as if I might as well have been a specter. First Life conventions were tight over me again. I couldn’t play this game, when all I knew was Ruby. What had I done wrong? You stared at me, as if you could read my thoughts or at least some of them. “Do you reckon I enjoy hurting…? I don’t own you. I want us both to be free. Together.”
You know what the Inquisition is?
The problem was that Ruby remembered it from first time around, so lucky me, she could make sure that my interrogation was extra bloody authentic.
My Author, muse, and liberator, as well as her brothers (the bane of my Blood Life), were ranked across from me behind the plastic table, which had been buried under gammon, crisps, and a halved grapefruit that looked like a hedgehog, the last time that I’d been in here for Ruby’s welcome home party.
Aralt had already removed his suit jacket. He’d carefully folded it over the back of his chair, and I knew what that meant: I was in for a beating.
Kira leant with crossed arms in the shadows at the back of the room: the enforcer for the proceedings.
Kira was the one who’d dragged me out of bed as soon as the sun had set, and before I’d had time to fully wake up. I’d cursed her with a string of sleepy expletives. She’d only allowed me to stumble into my pair of jeans, before she’d hauled me down here in my befuddled state, as if before a court of judges and bloody executioners. I’d blinked at my accusers in outraged confusion, whilst fielding their barrage of questions.
What had they discovered? How many of the rules that I’d broken did they already know about? And how the hell would I survive against the entire Plantagenet Court?
I dared to glance from underneath my eyelashes at Ruby. She had this strange calmness about her, which was unsettling. You know that look a barrister has when they’ve got something on you but they’re holding it back for just the right moment to go for the jugular?
Yeah, it was that look.
They were circling around something, but I didn’t yet know what it was.
Had Alessandro got himself caught by asking too many questions? He wasn’t exactly Mr Social Skills. I could just see him blurting the truth out and then not knowing why the twins had turned on him.
Why had I trusted something so important to Alessandro? Maybe because he was the first bloke that I’d ever felt was a true friend. Of course, I could be a trusting berk, and instead Alessandro had squealed on me. Aralt was his Author, after all, and ties of Blood run deep. Or worse, had it been tortured out of Alessandro’s small body?
When I imagined Alessandro in agony, something caught in my throat. I forced myself to block out the image from my mind; I had enough of my own worries. Tears still caught in the corners of my eyes, and I blinked them away, before the Plantagenets could use them against me.
Now here was a turn up for the books: discovering that the thought of another Blood Lifer’s hurt actually bothered me.
Before Ruby and I had come back to London, I couldn’t have cared less what happened to anyone — First or Blood Lifer — apart from Ruby. She was the start and end of my world. Society? All a lie, mate. Friends? A needy joke clung to by the terminally lonely. But now? That bloody conscience was clawing its way back in. And with it? These new feelings and the need for something different, even to what I’d experienced in my First Life.
It was fresh and raw. I didn’t know how to handle it; it was painful in its intensity.
Somehow, however, I reckoned this circus put on in my honor wasn’t about Alessandro or Silverman’s experiments.
I examined Ruby, hoping that she’d give something away. It was disturbing how her eyes shone and her fingers trembled. I wet my lips, taking careful steady breaths to concentrate on my lies…or else I’d be burnt alive.
That’s when Aralt asked it: the question that I was dreading. “Who’s Kathy Freeborn?”
Breathe, bloody breathe.
Their gazes bored into me.
I shifted from one foot to another on the cold wood, feeling strangely vulnerable without my boots, as I noted Ruby’s python smile. “You should know, after all, you signed her.”
Aralt scowled. “None of your cheek. We know that you’ve been riding her.”
I stared down fixedly at the floor. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Thou lies! I can smell the tiny trails of her, dirty on your skin.” Ruby pressed her palms hard on the top of the table as she leant across it. “You rub, rub, rub, but your bawd is in your Soul, stuck like a cawl and will not clean off. You’ve taken this conceit and you will die by it.”
I gasped, as my gaze flickered to Ruby’s.
Bloody hell, she meant it.
“You saved the skirt’s cousin.” Donovan watched me through lowered eyelids, which were painted lilac to match his jacket. “A Blood Lifer came to us complaining that his kill was stolen. Not cool, man.”
I glanced between the three of them. So, this was it then, what Ruby had been gloating about and waiting for the perfect moment to kick me in the bollocks over.
This was about you.
I was buggered.
I shivered in the cool of the twilight, hugging my arms close across my naked chest.
I tried to set my expression to total indifference. “So, I’m shagging some bird? It’s just a bit of fun.” I saw a muscle twitch above Ruby’s mouth. A quick glance at the twins told me that they weren’t buying it either: two Blood Lifer rules broken. “She doesn’t know what I am. It’s not like she—”
I made a dash for the door, snatching the moment.
You’ve got to pick your battles, and against three Plantagenets and the bitch that they’d elected? Yeah, I was as good as dead.
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Caught off guard, the siblings only managed to half-stand, trapped behind the table, as I grasped at the door handle. Kira, however, was after me like a bloody bullet. She snatched me by the hair, ripping it at the roots. I yelped, as she yanked me backwards like I was her latest trophy ready to be skinned.
I twisted, struggling, but Kira’s grip was iron. “Bloody hell…”
When Ruby laughed, I flushed.
“I rip out his heart now…?” Kira looked hopeful.
“Hey chill there, my sweet terror.” Donovan slunk around the table to Kira’s side, easing her fist off my hair and tearing thick chunks with it.
Donovan’s fingers teased down my chest, twisting my nipple. Then Kira flung me face forwards across the table, slamming me right in the guts: an offering.
Ruby smacked her hands together. “Darling Light has been bad and needs a beating.”
“Secret.” Aralt cradled his hands, like he was a bloody emperor. “Are you so gone in the head, babby, that you don’t get it? First Lifers mustn’t know that we exist. Especially now. You’d risk everything because you’ve scored some skank?”
“She’s not a…” Kira pressed me harder into the desk, and my cheek bruised. I struggled to get out the words. “I tasted Kathy’s Soul, and she’s better than most Blood Lifers.”
I couldn’t see Ruby but I could hear how silent the room had suddenly become.
Bollocks.
Next, the creak of Aralt’s chair, as he sat back. “Let the wee gobshite up.” When I felt the pressure on my back reluctantly ease, I pushed myself off the table. Ruby was glaring down at the carpet, like she wished that she could set it alight with her glare — or me. Yeah, I knew it was me that she craved to consume with the flames. “So, you fancy yourself in love? You do know that it’s just a boy’s fevered daydreams, not a man’s truth?” Aralt considered me, before he shrugged. “You are…what? Over a century old now? Donovan here has elected Kira, and I elected Alessandro. Yet we’re less than half your age. Perhaps it’s time your Author let you fly from the nest.”
Ruby started from her seat, but Aralt gripped her arm and dragged her down. I wanted to break every one of his fingers — slowly — knuckle down to tip, for the way that he was holding her.
Love, it’s a strange thing because it didn’t matter what Ruby had done to me, it didn’t stop me protecting her. Or trying to. But what good was I now, when I couldn’t protect myself?
I had the sudden urge to laugh, remembering the things that Ruby and I had done on every continent of this earth; how we hadn’t feared anyone. We’d never answered to anything but our own wants and the dance of the call of blood and each other. That was until Ruby had brought us to this place and her family. Where suddenly our freedom was leashed under the whip, and the fears were painfully real again.
What had happened to Ruby’s promises of liberation?
Aralt noticed the fleeting laughter across my face and frowned. “What’s...?” Then he composed himself, curling his lips into a smile, instead. “Sure, it’s a gift from me. It’s time you became an Author yourself; it’ll make a man of you.”
And there it was: the ultimate control.
Aralt had already taken everything from me: my first love and Author and even my freedom. But now he wanted more.
Aralt sought to decide who I elected as well. The most glorious act of creation that there is on earth: evolution from one species to another, through the process of dying and rebirth. The twinning of two creatures for centuries in the black shadows of night and blood. To me it meant being set free from men’s rules. From the cruelty of life’s society, which I’d never felt part of anyway.
And Aralt wanted to sully all of that with an order...?
To me, Aralt’s version of Blood Life was a repellent perversion. It revolted me to the gut.
I never told you that your election was offered twice. I couldn’t have explained this to you…any of it. Not with what came after. You’ve no idea how much I ached to.
But life’s not fair, and this was one of those times where you get booted in the balls.
I glanced at Ruby. With everything that we’d lived by, soaring through the world under no one’s thumb, I knew that she must feel the same as me. Her brother’s hand, however, was still clutched around her arm, purpling bruises.
Why wasn’t Ruby shaking it off?
I backed away. “Thanks, but I’ll have to say no. Humanity suits Kathy just fine.”
That did it.
Aralt surged up, pulsing with outrage. “You think that’s what this is? Take what you want, when you want? All bonds banjaxed. Hierarchies toppled. Yet everything’s grand? I wonder at how Ruby has allowed you to behave for so long; I would’ve taught you by now. First life ties are melted, but you were resurrected into the darkness of a second desperate and brutal world of blood. It unites us closer than any weak human love. We are family. We beat through each other’s hearts. There’s no escape from that.”
I smiled for the first time since I’d been hauled in here, half-dressed and barely awake, frightened of what awaited me, because now all the dreams were chased away. So, I bloody smiled. If I was going to go down, then I’d go down swinging. “Here’s the thing, I’ve always been the take what I want, how I want, and when I want, kind of bloke. I don’t play well with others, let alone — what was that bollocks? — beat through their hearts. So, this desperate brutal world of yours? I’ll have to say no thanks to that as well.”
Then Aralt was nothing but a blur of fangs and suit as he launched himself across the desk at me, and I was falling backwards under the weight of him. When he clouted me, the wind was knocked out of me.
There was no point fighting back.
This was no alleyway brawl. It was the head of my dysfunctional family teaching me in his dead special way, and if I didn’t take it, Aralt would simply keep going, until there was nothing left of me but a bloody mess. Or pass me over to Kira to take her up on the offer of ripping out my heart. So, I lay there unmoving, as I was battered by Aralt’s fury.
With a boxer’s precision, Aralt worked my bare chest down to my gut and he knew it hurt — he got off on it — pausing between belts, whilst he considered the reddening skin that was deepening to purple, before moving on and then back and working the same area over again.
I groaned and then bit my teeth hard together. I wouldn’t give Aralt the bloody satisfaction.
It wasn’t a good move, however, because Aralt sensed my defiance. That’s when he dragged my arms above my head and started in on my face: right cheek, left cheek, right cheek…
I started hollering then because a bloke can only be so much of a stoic and I never pretended to be a hero.
My cheekbone crunched. I could taste the coppery tang of blood, trickling from my broken nose.
Christ in heaven, broken noses were the bleeding worst: the pain’s like nothing else.
My eyes were swelling closed. Aralt was only a shadow now above the slits. At each swing of his fist, I could see my blood spattered on his pristine white cuff in crimson patterns. I had the sudden memory of how I’d stained Erwood’s cravat.
Do bastards like him and Aralt always paint themselves in the blood of nobodies like me?
When the shadow’s arm pulled back, readying for another clout, I braced myself the best that I could. Then someone grabbed hold of Aralt’s fist and heaved him off me, like a crushing stone had been lifted from my broken ribs.
Then I heard Donovan’s voice, “Cool it; he gets the message. Don’t freak out.”
Followed by a scuffle as Aralt shoved him back. “When are you going to think with your head and not obsess over the pretty ones, for once in your life?”
I didn’t have the strength to raise my head.
Then Kira pulled me up under my arms like I was a doll; blood spilled from every gash: my teeth, mouth, and nostrils…
I was bloody black and blue and couldn’t move without the tightness of pain. Ruby was examini
ng me, as if I was an interesting exhibit: a nice little show put on for her benefit.
I guess the instinct for protection didn’t cut both ways.
“You still won’t elect this bird?” Aralt demanded.
I weakly shook my head.
“But she doesn’t know what you are?”
I swallowed a mouthful of my own blood, before I managed to spit out, “Not a clue, I swear.”
“Your oaths are no use to us. Do you think we’ll trust you? You’re a chancer: I smelt it on you as soon as I met you.” Aralt was breathing hard. When he stepped closer, Kira held me straighter. Now this is what you never found out; the moment that I tried to explain as best as I could but which you never forgave. Not totally. Because it’s the one that shattered your heart, and I’m so sodding sorry. “Tomorrow, you’ll break up with this First Lifer. And make it good because then you’re never to see her again…or else I’ll kill her slow, as you’re too nancy to do it yourself.”
Rage and terror pulsed through me; I struggled against Kira. “Don’t bloody well touch Kathy or I’ll—”
Aralt’s fingers shot out, crushing my larynx, until the stars burst. “You’ll...?” I fought for breath, but that throttling hand stopped every whisper of oxygen. I tried not to panic, whilst my body instinctively fought and clawed at Kira. Sharp shanks shot through my lungs. Aralt only let go, when blackness started to consume me, and I grew limp in Kira’s arms. As I gulped in air desperately through my sore throat, ascending again into consciousness, Aralt wiped the trickles of blood out of my eyes. Then he moved his face so close to mine that it was all I could see. “You’re lucky this bitch brings in fierce amounts of cash for Advance, or else I’d have fed on her myself and made you watch.” He grinned — long and slow. His canine teeth glinted in the light. “Break up and don’t see her again. I don’t offer second chances: I’m not your Author.”
I glanced at Ruby, who stood at Aralt’s shoulder. When her gaze met mine, it was frosty.
My Author was Ruby and she didn’t offer second chances either.
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 17
