Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series

by Rosemary A Johns

  If I intended to spank you, I wouldn’t ask first. I wonder what Sun would say about that?

  Is that like What Would Jesus Do? But for Blood Lifers?

  Sun’s a law unto herself. If I knew what she’d say…?

  Maybe you wouldn’t be here.

  Maybe she’d love me, as much as I love her. Like she’s the true sun, and I’m melting every time that she looks at me. Like she’s the light, and without her I’m in the dark.

  Except, that’s just the hearts and cupid.

  The real stuff, deep in your guts, cock, and wormed in your brain…like maybe then she’d see what having a life born from your fangs feels like: a screaming, bloody part of me ripped from my Soul. Forever aching. Sensing her move inside me, even after the wonder of her rebirth. Touching the beauty of her death and sharing my life.

  Saving her to be mine.

  For the purposes of the Light Inquiry, I’ll summarize that you love Sun?

  You have no Soul.

  It’s not been proved either way. We have our scientists and philosophers working on it. Now I kept my agreement (you’re smoking that e-cig, aren’t you?), so I require a secret.

  How about I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?

  I’m not Clarice, and you’re not Hannibal. Keep your promise, please.

  I always keep a promise.

  Your memory’s photographic, so use it and prove to the Council that you have some use. Tell me about this new family of yours, starting with Hartford: a dangerous Long-lived, dissenter, and now terrorist Renegade.

  Hartford’s long pale fingers wove across the keys of a black baby grand. His left hand leapt in rhythmic bursts of sheer jubilation. In open-necked crisp white shirt and indigo blazer, with his golden hair slicked back, Hartford looked like an angelic jazz singer under the club’s spotlight.

  I was lost in the rawness of Hartford’s improvised “Rhapsody in Blue”. My spine tingled and my skin prickled. I could taste the notes, each sharp or sour. When I caught Hartford’s eye, I grinned. Tentatively, he smiled back.

  It’d taken months to get Hartford up there: in this club, outside, and even out of his sleeping bag.

  It was a bloody victory.

  Then a naked dancer spun between us, and I got an eyeful of cock.

  Wait, that doesn’t sound…

  “Hartford’s not some wee lamb to the slaughter. Adorable he is to be sure, but stop mothering him. Get your arse back to work.” The strip club’s tiny manager, Aedan, swatted me on the arse with a bar towel as he pushed me towards the counter.

  I raised my eyebrow at the customer. “What’ll it be, mate?”

  I heard Aedan tut behind me, smothered my grin, and gazed up at the posh gentleman with matching gray business suit and hair. He was drumming his fingers on the counter with repressed frustration like he yearned to take me over his knee but was having to put up with smiling in a paternalistic way instead.

  I guess that he liked to play the Daddy.

  Daddy looked as if he’d come from the City and a stressed day fleecing folks of their money to lounge on Peter Pan’s faux crocodile skin and fur sofas and drool over naked boys, as well as Blood Lifers who were actually centuries older than himself. Still, to the outside world we were young men. So, what did that make us?

  Fair game…but not if I could bleeding help it. Not one of these Lost Boys.

  My fangs itched, and my blood pounded. The urge to hunt and violate the customer’s sagging throat and feast on human blood, breaking my abstention, stole my breath. I clutched the counter’s sticky surface. I knew that I was panting.

  “A cotton candy martini,” Daddy reached out, stroking the back of my hand; his fingers were moisturized, and for a horrifying moment reminded me of Sir, “shaken, not stirred.”

  Daddy bayed with laughter, as if I hadn’t heard that one before.

  “I’m not sure 007 ever asked for cotton candy, even at a carnival,” I satisfied myself with pointing out.

  See it’s like this: black wool dinner jacket, me, I bloody had to wear it. I looked like a git...and apparently, James Bond.

  On the first night, my family and I had huddled in the box room behind the bar, which had nothing in it but a rail of clothes and a cracked sink; it stank of sweat and sex.

  Hartford had smoothed down my satin lapels. “Look at you, mac, all dolled up.”

  “Leave it out.” I’d shaken him off, before glancing at Donovan. “How’s your costume?”

  Donovan had twirled. “Groovy, man, this is going to be a blast.”

  I’d arched my eyebrow pointedly. Donovan was naked, wearing nothing but a silk bowtie…and black tube socks.

  Because the punters had to stuff the tips somewhere.

  “This is your choice,” I’d insisted, knowing that I’d said it before, but flooded with a sudden urgency. “You don’t have to—”

  “Don’t freak out.” Donovan had touched my cheek lightly with the back of his hand. “Look, Blood Clubbers didn’t hurt me, like they did Hartford and you. Hartford will play, I’ll dance, and we’ll get the cash that we need to live. And we’ll do it together.”

  I shook the cranberry, grenadine, and vodka like it was a missile, rather than a cocktail, pouring it into a glass. Then I sprinkled cotton candy on top, waiting for the magic. It dissolved into the blood red sea, as if it’d never been there. Mesmerized by it, it also gave me the shivers. Yet Daddy looked unimpressed. I pushed the martini over to him, whilst humming “Rhapsody in Blue”. The smarmy bastard slipped a folded note across my palm and then up into the tip jar, which was a pair of naked legs with an opening where the cock should’ve been.

  The classy in this club only went so far.

  I dropped a slice of lime into the martini deliberately using my fingers that were grubby from collecting the dancers’ tips. “Enjoy.” I smiled around my canines.

  Suddenly, Daddy’s frustration wasn’t so repressed anymore. “Stupid slut,” he muttered.

  And that was it: the fangs shot from my mouth and the predator inside howled. He wasn’t leashed; I wasn’t tamed.

  I was free.

  The only one holding me back and stopping this fur-lined operatic club where the boys never grew up from becoming a crimson bed of carnage and chaos…?

  Me.

  There was only me now. And that was terrifying.

  I sprang over the counter in a haze of fury. My tailcoat caught on the edge like I’d devolved into a monkey. Except, that’d be a human; I should say Komodo dragon. When I thrashed to the side, something ripped.

  That’d cost me.

  When I slammed Daddy back, he splashed his martini down his designer shirt like I’d already savaged his throat. He was tall: twice my size. Yet he couldn’t push me back.

  It was blinding not to be the weak one anymore.

  The smug wanker looked as astonished as if a beggar had told him to shove his pound.

  I kept my head bowed so that the First Lifer wouldn’t see my canines. “See, I reckoned that I just made you a drink. After all, I’m a barman. But it seems to me that you’re confused.”

  Daddy laughed. It was shaky, but he still laughed. “I’m supposed to be frightened, am I? Of a little bitch like you?”

  “You sodding well should be.”

  I could hear his blood: the rapid beat, beat, beat.

  I ran my tongue over my lips.

  One quick bite.

  Heart attack: his death certificate would read. Natural causes. Who would care?

  I took a shuddering breath.

  I was the moral example (and wasn’t that a joke?), for my family. If I slipped, there was nothing holding any of them back from returning to the hunt. Who was left to stop me falling into the dark and to help me become the man that I’ve been striving to be for decades? But…the blood…and Daddy was struggling now… Blood smells and tastes sweeter with a hint of terror... Yeah, that’s right, a bit of a struggle, always liked that, gets the blood pumping…

&
nbsp; The piano faltered. Notes fractured and broke. I swung around, forcing in my fangs.

  Buggering hell.

  Hartford was glancing over: He’d seen.

  I ducked my head, unable to meet his gaze. In my distraction, my quarry wrenched away; I could hear him bleating to Aedan. It sounded more like a kid telling on his classmate to earn him a caning than an alpha Daddy.

  Plus, his shirt was buggered. So, there was that.

  I tensed when Aedan stormed towards me, flicking his auburn braids like whips. “Your fanboy over there, the squealer, wants you fired.”

  I shrugged.

  Aedan’s eyes narrowed. “He said that he was playing some head games, and that you then made a holy show of yourself.”

  I tilted my chin. “The thing is, I’m not his to play with. I’m not anyone’s now.”

  “That’s why I’m throwing out his cry-baby arse,” Aedan replied loudly.

  “What?” Daddy stomped over, towering behind Aedan.

  “Do we have to get the bouncer?” I smiled. “I wouldn’t make us if I were you. She really doesn’t like folks touching me.”

  Catching the glint in my eye, Daddy hurriedly shook his head, before stalking away.

  I bit my lip as I glanced at Aedan. “Cheers, for standing up for me. I—”

  “You know who you remind me of?” Aedan poked me in the chest.

  “James Dean? Elvis Presley? A young Michael Caine, you know, in Alfie…”

  “Me.”

  “No offense,” I examined the elfin face of my boss, with his moss green eyes and mouth that looked like it was about to curl into a grin, “but we’re not exactly twins.”

  “When I’d just got away from my ex. He was a bad boy and not in the good way. We’d had quite the carry on. That’s when I opened this place.” There was something about the way Aedan had said got away from, which made my hackles rise in an instinctive protective response. This was a First Lifer: not family. Yet somehow that wasn’t what my blood was calling to me, when it screamed for revenge on the bastard, who’d forced this…friend my Soul whispered…to escape.

  “How am I like you again?” I asked.

  Aedan glanced at Hartford, who was settling in for the big finale.

  Donovan writhed snake-like down the center arm of the stage to the rhythm of Hartford’s music; his muscles rippled.

  I watched too with my teeth gritted, as the First Lifers pressed folded tips into his socks, caressing up and down his oiled thighs. Donovan was grinning and flexing like it was all some cosmic joke, which I hadn’t been let in on.

  He was high; he was always sodding high.

  Donovan was turning, sliding down the stage as if in a mating ritual, never taking his gaze from Hartford, who played like his tune was a returning mating call. And eye-fucking? I finally got what that meant.

  I could sense Hartford’s aching fevered obsession. Bloody hell, hadn’t I felt obsession like it often enough myself?

  Those pounding, pulsing humans were blind to the death playing and dancing as vitally as they’d ever be just…different.

  Hartford hunched over the piano with his back as tense as his jazz, like wings were hidden under his shoulder blades ready to break out and carry him away from the world.

  I’d better check on him.

  Aedan sensed my slight movement towards Hartford. He rested his hand on my elbow. “That’s how: on edge and about to bolt. As well as looking like Batman and Robin’s personal bodyguard.”

  “It’s the dinner jacket. Anyway, Batman and Robin? Which is which?”

  Aedan patted my arm. “You can’t tell?”

  “I promised to keep them safe.” I wasn’t able to hide the anguish; Aedan had broken through to it, and now it choked me. Aedan stared at me, startled. “To give them a home. I promised.”

  Listening to the soulful blues of Hartford’s set, those chilling snaking improvisations haunted me, as if the specter of our slavery was still on all our shoulders. In the close heat of the club, as the First Lifers danced to the rhythms of the Charleston in front of the stage, which was divided by a walkway into the shape of a cross, Hartford was messianic.

  Under mirror balls, blokes sprawled in red looped seats, as if they’d parked their arses in frightened mouths (or twisted cocks, depending how you looked at it). The walls and ceilings were in leather, damask, and brocade.

  It was a fantasy: a theater production. None of it was real.

  “We all have our histories and pasts. No home but here. Look around you,” Aedan gestured at the other dancers: our real Lost Boys. Brandon with a shock of neon green hair, Kyle with gold nipple rings, and tiny Jamie with the stammer. Aedan had taken them in, just like he had us because he was kind and he understood. Yet didn’t he know that it was dangerous to invite in strangers? “How about we close up a wee bit early?”

  I gaped at Aedan. “Is it the Apocalypse?”

  Aedan flicked me with the bar towel, and I squawked. “I’ll go tell She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.”

  Aedan sidestepped the drunks and gropers with the skill of a boxer, before disappearing into the crowd.

  Hartford had finished his set. “The Killing Moon” spilled spectral across the sound system. Hartford was dancing with Donovan now in the dark of the club to the mysterious mandarin style bass and cello. They were lost in each other. Lost to this world. Lost to the First Lifers of this stinking club, as they reveled to be alive in our glorious second evolution. Their cheeks touched; Donovan’s dark mop fell over his face, and his snake-green eyeshadow sparkled. They were whispering secrets to each other with these wicked smiles.

  Hartford was centuries old: power radiated from him. He glowed. Yet he was dancing with his stripper partner — my cousin — in a human club because I was too afraid for us to be discovered by our own kind. I couldn’t risk us being taken by the Blood Life Council.

  Yet this was my London: the dark and dirty behind the pretty.

  Suddenly, two black disembodied hands flew by my head, and I ducked just in time, before — crash — there went a prime bottle of gin behind the counter. And my night’s pay.

  They were a pair of gloves: my brain was just able to untangle what had almost hit me, before I was surrounded in black, the soft sway of ash blonde hair, and a mouth.

  Sun.

  I was sodding consumed by her: The life born of my fangs.

  She wasn’t Grayse.

  Grayse had died that night out on the moors, I knew that now, but Sun had blazed to birth on her passing and she was here burning up every inch of me. She was a life created from me but never less than me. I wasn’t her Ruby. I’d authored Sun but I’d never be more than her equal.

  Christ, how I’d spent my long life aching to discover that.

  Then I whimpered.

  Icy fingers had worked their way up the back of my shirt and were playing my spine like it was a piano. I tried to pull away, but bugger it was Sun powerful, and I always forgot somehow how tall she was. She smelled of cheap Tahitian Gardenia and freedom…she smelled of me.

  Sun nibbled my lips with her teeth. “See what an ice queen I’ve frozen into on account of standing at the door all night?”

  “It suits you.” When those torturing fingers teased their way towards the front of my trousers, I looked into Sun’s flint eyes and was relieved to see the laughter there. “We could always swap back? You’re the one who wanted to play the Big Bad.”

  “Na-ah, Mr Penguin suits you.” Sun flicked my bowtie. “Plus, you make more tips in the dick jar.”

  I smirked. “There is that. Aedan takes too many risks for us anyhow. It’s not like you’ve got a license or whatnot.”

  “I’m not a fricking dog.”

  I couldn’t quite hide my grin. “I remember telling you the same thing once.”

  Disgruntled, Sun snorted.

  I grabbed her cold hands, which felt blinding (and not just because it kept me safe from their torment), as I tugged her towards the dance floor. “Come on, o
r we’ll miss it.”

  Traditions. Habits. Rituals. Call it what you like, they bond and familiarize even the broken, fragmented, and lost. Maybe us more than most. There’s a risk, however, a danger in every one that we add crutch-like.

  That we don’t control them: they control us.

  Blokes in pinstripes, leather, or naked danced together. I caught sight of Brandon’s punk hair and a punter’s neat side parting. Donovan and Hartford held sway at the throbbing heart. First and Blood Lifer united in the musky heat to go wild to the club’s signature closing song: the creepy, joyful alienation of Echo and the Bunnymen’s “People Are Strange”.

  Caught in the song’s rapture, Sun and I were laughing, as I drew Sun close. I warmed her hands between mine: she fitted. For the first time in over one hundred and fifty years, I had the woman that I loved, family, and a home.

  I had hope.

  I was bleeding soaring.

  The organ rose to its ecstatic crescendo: lights burst in my mind. The world expanded. Who needed blood when I had this?

  Sun’s fingers — hot and aggressive now — stroked down my neck, questing. Her lips seared as they pressed to mine. Then we were kissing, as we were crushed amongst those First Lifers jumping to a song, which was warning them to look out for the very creatures in the shadows who were snogging in their midst.

  Humans are berks like that.

  Sun and I broke apart, when the strippers rushed onto the stage for the finale, Donovan amongst them. They writhed and twirled along that cross, as the punters whooped and catcalled, tossing money like confetti…and the grooms were for sale.

  Sun’s body was entwined with mine; I could hear her harsh breathing. I was losing myself in her, just as in those hedonistic moments of psychedelia, I could forget everything.

  And for me? The human camera? That’s like…heaven.

  Christ, I hope so.

  The world. Our pasts. The pain.

  Because right then? We were happy.

  We were free.

  You’ll only truly understand what that means, when you’ve been a slave.

  Forgetting? Losing myself in the music? Dance? The feel of Sun’s lips and body against mine was as good as the sweet opiate of blood.

  Almost.