Kathy had freed me. Yet now she’d been gone, and I’d been alone and desolated. I’d promised Kathy, however, not to meet the second death. My only plan had been to flee the pain, riding away on my Triton before the daytime carers or cops could arrive.
I never intended to come back to England. Not after Kathy.
One hundred and fifty years of loneliness, obsession, rejection, and betrayal. Yet nothing has come close to the agony of that moment.
Then again, I’m only a slave, and we don’t feel, right?
I realized that I hadn’t heard the click of the front door, when I glanced up, and you were standing there.
You were leaning against the wall with a thoughtful expression as you watched me on my knees, dusting cloth in one hand, glass vase in the other, and tears in my eyes, whilst I sang along to Amy Winehouse.
I must’ve looked like a right berk.
Abruptly, I shut up.
You dropped your tote, shucking off your jacket. “I reckoned that I’d work from home; I’ve got tutorials this afternoon.”
“You back for dinner then?” I managed to ask, placing down the vase and hastily wiping at my eyes.
“Is eight OK?”
Now wasn’t this domestic?
I nodded.
“I’ve got to go out after. Marlane wants me to work on some project.” You started to sit down on the Sponge chair but then popped up again. “He’s not a bad guy, you know.”
Had I missed half a conversation? Then our gazes met, and I knew exactly who you meant. “Fernando?” It was like sucking sodding wasps.
“Professor. And yeah, he worked his ass off for his fellowship at Harvard.” Why were you so agitated? Wringing your hands and pacing up and down, until I felt dizzy just watching? “He helps out his family and he was kind to—”
“Got it, right, decent bloke.”
When you stopped in front of me, I wished that I wasn’t still on my knees, like I was ranked ready to service you, which was both disturbing and hot.
You wet your lips. “We’re not… I mean, yeah, we dated for, like, all of two seconds. But now we’re… Fernando’s my best and only friend. So, don’t screw that up for me because you’re jealous.”
Then you marched into the kitchen, and I could breathe again.
It was nearly eight o’clock. The apartment thrummed with the dream world of the Beatles, sighed with the rich aromas of fresh pasta, beef, ham, wine and grated Parmigiano and glowed with every candle that I’d been able to unearth, like the stars had descended to burn amongst First and Blood Lifers alike for one night only.
Buggering hell, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” took me back to the summer of 1968 and the buzz of Carnaby Street, when First Lifer creativity forced me to question the fundamentals of Blood Lifer belief. No longer could I hold the comfy notion that the Lost were the superior species feeding as evolutionary right on the weak. Instead, we were only another creature, one step alongside you humans.
It was a summer of obsession, caught between two women: The Blood Lifer Ruby, who’d authored me, and the First Lifer Kathy, who freed me from Ruby’s control.
I chose between two worlds that summer. At least it was a choice.
Now my life has narrowed, until there are no choices. Only obedience.
Survival though, that’s a choice.
Adapting.
So, how can what I’m feeling be...? I’m waiting for you to come back to me, and my Soul’s sodding soaring.
What is this? No different to marie antoinette and Sir? And I bloody pitied her.
It’s all right, I’m not a total pillock; I know that you don’t want me, not like I want you: equal to equal. I’ve already had that with one woman. Maybe to seek it with a second is chasing shadows.
When I heard the front door open and shut with a click, I darted out of the dining room and swung you around the hall. You were stiff as a marionette. Then as I twirled you around to Lennon’s joyous nursery rhyme, you relaxed and laughed, throwing down your tote, before clasping your hands behind my neck.
I spun you, as one drug fueled summer back in the 1960s, Donovan had once spun his groupies.
“How’s my Sun Girl?” I asked.
You laughed.
Then your nose scrunched up. “Is that lasagna?”
I faltered, blinking. “Yeah, that alright then?”
You grinned. “It’s mint.”
I grinned too, as I danced you into the dining room. When you dragged back against me in shock, I let you pull out of my arms.
You stared around at the piles of Marzolino and Pecorino sheep milk cheeses and honey on the sideboard, which were next to Willow plates of biscuits and cakes: a dark chestnut castagnaccio, littered with nuts and raisins, almond cantuccini and fiorentini.
You twisted to me. “You baked these?”
I shoved my hands into my pockets. “I told you, one hundred and fifty years is a long time to—”
Your lips quirked. “Bake?”
“Got to do something.”
You titled your head. “You’re not—”
“What you expected?”
You laughed again.
The Manx watched from their hiding places, behind the oak and holly bush; the sun beat down, even though it was night.
You fell into your seat with a sigh of delight. “I love lasagna. And this is just right for…” I was settling into my chair, glad that I’d bothered to lay the posh candles — their flames flickering like fireflies — when I noticed that you were peering at me suspiciously. “…Florence.” Your gaze became frosty. “How’d you know that my family are from there?”
Confession time.
I squirmed. “There’s a woman in a photo in your bedroom, who I guessed is your mum. In the background, there’s Brunelleschi’s Dome. So, Florence. Plus, you’ve got that Italian glass vase.”
I remembered strolling those piazzas with Ruby, under the velvet black of a Tuscan sky: the joy and freedom.
You forked some pasta. Creamy béchamel sauce seeped off one end. “You’ve been then? Florence?”
“Not for over a century, but the beauty of that city doesn’t change.” I took my first meaty mouthful. “Ruby and me took a Grand Tour, of sorts.”
You sucked the pasta off your fork: from the orgasmic expression on your face, I figured that it was good. You nudged my foot under the table. “So, maybe you can do, like, more of the cooking?”
I raised my eyebrow. “Anyone would reckon that I was your slave.”
You flushed, hurriedly munching another forkful. “Mummy would talk about it — Florence — but I’ve never been on account of the studying. And mummy…” Your shoulders hunched, as you looked down. I’d wondered where Mrs Cain figured in all of this. “She died. So, Daddy sent Marlane to work in London on account of she was sixteen, and he wanted her to make it herself to prove that she could run that wing of operations. I wanted to stay in Mann with daddy, but he was like, na-ah, you’ll get in the way. I had to go and live with this aunt I didn’t even know in Boston.” You finally glanced up at me. “Lucky me, huh?”
“Considering what I know about the rest of your family, I’d say yeah.”
You bristled. “It wasn’t always… Marlane and I would go riding on the Estate. And mummy would cook these wicked meals like… fried eggs with black pepper, bacon, and—”
“Spinach, I know: it’s next.” I grinned. Bugger me, what I wouldn’t have given for someone to cook my mother’s meals: for the memory of that time to become real again. “So, come on, eat up.”
You gaped at me. It was priceless, until… “Na-ah, how’d you really find out about my family?”
I stiffened. You’d transformed from warm to icy in a single mouthful. Every emotion amplified? That’s obsession for you. I bit my lip. “Look, before you freak out, I did recognize the photo. But the food?” I fiddled with my knife. “I saw you online to your sister. About how you missed your mum’s meals.” Your expression had tightened int
o sudden fear. “I wasn’t snooping, I swear. I just caught it over your shoulder—”
“Are we…?” You stared around: at the candles, cake and biscuit laden sideboard and layers of Parmigiano topped lasagna in front of us, as if only just swimming awake. “Are you...?” I blinked at you in confusion. “You’re not my boyfriend.”
Any colder, you’d have cryogenically frozen my bloody balls.
I struggled to answer, as my fingers curled around the polished edges of the table; my slave ring was bright under the candlelight, “I think I’ve got that sodding clear, cheers.”
“You can never be my boyfriend.”
“Again, thanks for the clarity, but not a problem.”
There was an awkward silence. Quickly, you leant forward. “Then why...?”
Frustrated, I shoved away my plate. “I wanted to do something nice, alright? Cook your favorite meal. Because you saved me from that place. And a fortnight ago you didn’t…when you could’ve…” I remembered lying naked on your bed. Your caress on my cheek, chest, and lower… But you’d stopped: you’d made yourself stop. If anybody knew how hard that was, it was me. You’d chosen to defy your family and your training to give me back myself. I wouldn’t forget it. “Sorry,” I whispered, “you hate it.”
When I banged away from the table, you caught my hand between yours. “I don’t hate it. Please, can we eat now?” I sat back down slowly, picking up my fork. “Light?”
“Yeah?” I asked, before stuffing in a mouthful of mince and ham.
“Don’t go catching what I write again.”
I gulped the food at the hardness of your tone. Then I grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart.”
Later, when you’d left for your night project, I was still buzzing, bustling around the kitchen, banging cupboards open and closed, as I piled away washed up coffee cups, foiled the remaining castagnaccio and stored it in the fridge, before stacking left over cantuccini and fiorentini into a red-and-black biscuit tin.
When I heard the front door click, I didn’t even turn from the counter. I smiled. “In here. What? You too tempted by my delicious treats to stay away?”
“Not me, little leech, but I reckon you got that proper right about my sis.”
Bollocks.
I twisted, but M.C. already had her arm around my throat.
“Let go…” When I struggled, M.C. crushed me against the counter, sending the Willow plates — smash — to the tiled floor. The fight went out of me then. Two birds: Souls broken apart forever.
“Why don’t you settle?” M.C. shook me again for good measure and then hauled me through to the sitting room.
This had to be a setup: M.C. sends you on a wild goose chase, so that she can get up close and personal with yours truly. The only thing that I couldn’t work out was why. When I saw the neat man with silver beard in a woollen coat who was carrying a black medical case…?
That’s when I became terrified…and I understood why M.C. had set this up.
I clutched hold of the doorframe, digging in my nails. Behind me, the Doctor chuckled.
“They always try this on, don’t they?” The Doctor sounded so genial, like he was here to check a brat’s temperature, who merely needed to be coaxed to take their medicine with strawberries and sugar.
“They don’t like it, innit? Know what else this wallad doesn’t like?” The agony frying my nerves dropped me to my knees in a mad surge of Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 3; I was falling deeper into the fairy tale. At last, M.C. took her finger off the touchscreen. “On the chair.”
I tried to stand but felt like my bones had been melted. Refusing to look at either of the bastards, I crawled to the Fjord Relax chair, hauling myself up onto it by my arms; I do realize the irony because any second now I would be anything but relaxed.
M.C. grabbed my wrists, binding them with the red nylon rope, which I bloody hated: what was it, on bulk discount? She strapped my arms close to my body and then all of me to the chair.
I guess they really needed me to stay still.
As M.C. worked on tying me down, the Doctor was busy laying onto the coffee table his work tools: curved extraction forceps, brushed satin stainless-steel scissors, orthodontia pliers, an ominously large pile of gauze, and a pair of steel dental retractors…
I shuddered, struggling to control my shallow, panted breathing. But I’d been through this once and nothing that’d been done to me had touched this sacrilege: fangs are a Blood Lifer’s proof of evolution.
You weren’t the same as M.C — the rest of your family knew it. That’s why M.C. had made sure that you weren’t here to witness this abuse.
I couldn’t help the tears forming.
The Doctor soothed his hand over my forehead, as if I was his patient, rather than his victim. “Now, now, come on, be brave; there’s a good chap. It’ll soon be over. You know the drill: open your mouth.” I considered keeping my lips clamped shut, but that’d only earn me another dose of the wankering tracker. Reluctantly, I opened my mouth. The Doctor shoved in the retractors, winding until my jaw ached. “Has he been a good enough boy for anesthetic…this time?” The Doctor gave a bright smile, which didn’t reach his eyes.
I stared up at M.C., as if at an executioner. Her expression was hungry and hard. It didn’t surprise me, when she shook her head.
“Shame,” the Doctor purred. Then he spread green plastic sheeting over me and the chair because God forbid my blood stain the furniture, before he selected the steel forceps. He tested them a few times — the sadistic tosser. Finally, he was all I could see, as he stood close, tapping my canine. “Fangs out.”
My fangs shriveled back inside my gums, like a bloke’s bollocks when he sees a mate taking a boot to the privates.
I forced my half-formed fangs to shoot out. The Doctor grabbed me by the hair with one hand and gripped the first fang with the forceps, ready to wrench.
I closed my eyes, trying to hold still, but I was shivering.
“What the frig are you doing?” You: my savior and Sun Girl.
Thank you, thank you, thank you…
I opened my eyes, as you stalked into the apartment.
You were dead pissed.
You growled, “I said…”
The Doctor didn’t even remove the forceps from my fang. In fact, he twisted.
I let out a distorted holler.
Before I knew what was what, the Doctor was sprawled face first on the floorboards, his tools clattered with him.
“Out,” you barked. “Get your damn asses out of here. Both of you.”
M.C., for the first time, appeared flustered. “Sis, the Doc’s safe. He’s got to remove the leech’s fangs before—”
You shoved M.C. “Get the hell out of my apartment.”
“Alright.” M.C. reddened. Her scowl promised payback. “But I be telling dad that you ain’t following care instructions. You reckon he be letting you keep an untrained bitch with all its fangs?” The Doctor shuffled — limping — out of the apartment in front of M.C., casting obsequious, apologetic glances at you. M.C., however, threw back, before she slammed the front door, “When the leech be mine, I’ll do more than defang it, you feel me?”
I shuddered.
Then you were a blur: flinging the plastic sheeting off me, unwinding the ropes around the chair, ripping at the knots around my chest, arms and wrists, and then dropping to your knees next to me.
You rubbed my bruised wrists, which were encircled by a deep purple line, before lifting each to your lips and tenderly kissing them in turn.
I held still in case somehow I broke the spell.
My fangs were out, for the first time since they’d last been ripped from my mouth; it thrilled me. Yet I also knew how you felt about my Blood Lifer status: this parasite.
I began to pull my fangs into my gums, but when you knelt up and gently removed the dental retractor, you didn’t recoil.
Gasping with pain, I stretched my jaw. I was still only half a Blood Lifer:
my venom wouldn’t function until the fangs were fully regrown. But you hadn’t let the Blood Club take them again.
You’d saved me.
Now I had to save the others.
You stroked the back of my hand. “I…decided that I wanted to be here tonight more than work. That I chose you.” Your eyes were bright with tears. “What if I’d chosen work...?” Those tears were for me. Deny it all you like. Call it a non-date. I don’t sodding care: you couldn’t let them do that to me because…we both know why. “Tell me,” you begged, “everything that they did to you.”
Finally, I retracted my fangs and then, even though my wrists throbbed, I took your hand because you looked so bloody defeated. “Nosey bugger. I thought you were reading my journal?”
“The truth.”
My lips thinned. “It is the truth.”
“I need…the worst.”
My grip tightened around yours. “It’s not enough?”
You examined me with an intense gaze. “Family? Promises? There’s a whole other buried story going on, and I need to know.”
I tensed. You’re not daft, are you? I looked down. “If I tell you…will you let me go?”
You snatched your hand back from mine in shock. “You want to leave me?”
I shoved up from the chair, still unsteady but unable to stop my agitated pacing. “I want to be free, sweetheart.”
“Then no, Light,” your voice had hardened, as you too pushed yourself up, your arms firmly crossed. “If freeing you means that I lose you, then fricking no.”
I was breathing too rapidly. “OK then, how about this: loan me out…just for…buggering hell…for a bit? I’ve got business, right?”
“Business?” You stared at me blankly.
“I’ll write it: the worst of it. What I’ve promised and left behind.” I clasped you around the neck, and you didn’t pull away. “I write it. You read it. Then you’ll understand why you need to let me go. Even if I have to come back to you.”
You nodded.
Now all I have to do is write, and all you have to do is read…
25
JUNE 10
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 42
