Captain rapped the second coffin and then tried to hide the wince. “Room for two.”
I blinked. “Not bleeding likely.”
Captain’s sneer was victorious. “See your great leader? A coward after all.”
I gentled my fingers down Donovan’s neck. His gaze was troubled. “You have me now. You can get your jollies torturing me, but not Donovan.”
Donovan shook his head, trying to pull back but he was too weak. “Not cool, man. Don’t come in here playing this crazy scene like the hero.”
I started…and I was back there again. Donovan in the steel chrysalis... Let me out… Let me out…
I was no hero. That was my secret, and Donovan still didn’t know the truth of my betrayal. In fact, I had more to redeem than I’d reckoned possible. Maybe this would count in the balance, however, if I believed the good could cancel out the bad and I didn’t.
Desperation though breeds self-delusion, and fantasies are prettier than reality will ever be.
Captain smiled. “Adorable. You truly still believe that you hold the power?”
I swung Donovan out of the coffin. He swayed, steadying himself on me, but didn’t fall. “I don’t think, you wanker, I know. If you want me to keep spilling my guts, then you play this my way.”
Captain feigned boredom, affecting the pose with his nails again. “Surely you wish to save your own life at the trial? I could ensure that we have adequate…prison arrangements, instead of a bonfire. Don’t believe that you can threaten me.”
“Give it a rest.” I sauntered closer to Captain, which was difficult to do with Donovan clutching around my middle like he figured the moment that he stopped touching me I’d vanish — puff — into thin air. “We both know that this inquiry is your chance to prove yourself to the rest of the bastards in the Blood Life Council, and you don’t get two of those. You want to risk that because of a game of Box Your Enemy?”
Captain considered me and then Donovan. “You have a deal.” He sidled towards us. “I could do with two pets anyway. It’s such a bore how easily that First Lifer boy tires.’ I tightened my arm around Donovan. “Into the coffin then. Chop-chop, I haven’t got all day. Take your medicine like a man.”
“Light, I’m freaking out.” Donovan rested the back of his hand against my cheek. “I can’t let you do this. You don’t know—”
“I do.” I eased Donovan away gently; he was still shaking, but I knew that it was for me now and for what I had to do.
There was no way that I was letting Captain see me hesitate, however, so I hauled myself up into the coffin.
The coffin was so small that I had to hunch to fit. I choked: it stank of antiseptic like it’d been dowsed in the stuff. Panic clawed at my shocking helplessness. I couldn’t move. Every involuntary twitch of my already cramping muscles knocked me against the cold ebony. My nose would be touching the lid when it shut.
And that image of the lid descending and the dark swallowing me up…? It paled me with terror.
Captain didn’t need chains. He already owned me.
Donovan’s face — pale against the blue of the heavenly ceiling — and then the lid was sliding across.
Nothing.
Only silence, darkness, and terror.
And I was lost.
I had no idea. Please believe me that I never wanted…that it was no intention of this inquiry to subject you…
But you did, you are, and I already told you before, remember? You didn’t believe me then. What’s different now?
The room that you described; I’ve seen it. Captain is more of a delight to be around after he’s spent time there…torturing you, I assume.
The question is, now that you do know, what does it change?
Nothing.
I have my remit, and you have your witness to deliver. We have our arrangement. I will not be distracted by petty details.
Figured.
Because there’s a world of difference between knowing that something’s wrong and doing something about it. And even if you do? Deciding what that something is, especially if it means rebelling against everything that you’ve ever known?
That’s the hardest part of all.
I tipped back my head to stare up at the wild reaches of the night sky and the real stars.
The wind whipped across my cheeks, stinging them red. I took a drag of my e-cig. It turned out that no smoking inside Blake’s mansion meant the artificial type as well. Then I prowled to the edge of the flat roof, which was alive with yellow flowers that absorbed the sun’s heat; the flowers were closed now against the moon. I rested my forehead on the laced chain-link: it was meshed into ivy. There was a heart dead center because doesn’t everything come down to the heart?
Trust Plantagenet to have subverted even the security.
I booted at the fence. It was becoming clearer that we were less honored guests and more prisoners. I peered down at the courtyard of the beached whale of a mansion, except it was more than a home. The bottom floors were a business.
“Top floor is my off-limits penthouse to everyone else.” Blake had explained with a smug smile. “My pretense as a hermit-like genius is the perfect cover, so you’re safe up here. There are private lifts down to my garage, swimming pool, and gym.”
“Hear that Light? A gym.” Sun had dug me in the ribs.
“This building, however, was designed for my company in seven sections and each is a different department. Below here, the future’s decided.” Blake had ruffled his hand through Plantagenet’s curls.
I’d raised my eyebrow. “Ever heard of: all work and no play makes Blake a dull boy?”
“Or very rich,” Blake had smirked.
“Point made. So, what’s this company all about?”
Blake had stopped grooming Plantagenet, instead his fist had tightened as it twisted. I’d flinched on Plantagenet’s behalf. “RE: Revolutionary Evolution. Our strategy is to be seven steps ahead of the trend. Our solutions are unique because we base them on evolutionary advancement. How humans are evolving or may evolve. Then we invent: driverless cars, direct neural interfaces, metallic hydrogen… We work with Governments or the private sector. As our company always says: Let’s evolve this!”
I’d eyed him warily. “Anyone would reckon that you were after a Nobel.”
Blake had shrugged. “A second one? Well, it would always be nice…”
I took another drag on my e-cig as I watched the First Lifer workers still scurrying in and out of the cone-like departments below me in the dark, which were divided by ivy-clad plinths. I wondered if Blake remembered that humans slept at night and whether Blake remembered that he was human.
On the horizon, St. Paul’s was a beacon. Yet it felt further away than the stars.
When I slammed my fist into the fence, it rattled. Again and again, I pounded, until the wire heart was crimson with my blood.
“Stop acting so screwy and come sit with me,” Hartford called.
I twirled around. Lost in my impotent rage, I’d figured myself alone. I was getting sloppy and that meant dead.
Hartford was sprawled amongst the flowers: all cream linen suit and spun gold hair. Yet his expression was more fight them on the beaches, than strawberries and peaches.
I sucked the blood off my knuckles as I swaggered to Hartford and threw myself down next to him. I took a deep vape. “What’s all this about then?”
Hartford nodded towards the CCTV cameras, which were perched like eagles on each corner of the security fence. “They can’t hear us out here. It’s the only place that we can talk on the up and up.”
Hartford looked ready to lead a council of war. Sod it, how did I talk down a Long-lived when I was as furious as this?
I met his gaze. “I know that this whole set-up’s…”
“Blake’s feeding us a line of bull. And Plantagenet?” Hartford’s expression softened, before suddenly hardening. “He’s a regular guy, underneath the torturing and visionary leader hooey. But there’s on
ly one thing that we need to decide: how we’re going to double-cross him.” I startled. It did me in to see the bitter flash of betrayal in Hartford’s eyes at the way that I’d drawn back from him. “Not you too,” he whispered. He was tearing at a loose thread on his trousers, unraveling it. “If you’ve chosen them…?”
“Bollocks have I.” I grasped Hartford’s hand between mine to stop it destroying his new suit. He was cool and trembling. “But there are other ways to fight than betraying Plantagenet.”
“Dry up. What are the Blood Life Council doing right now to Donovan? We already know what humans can do, but these are Blood Lifers.”
I shook my head. “First or Blood Life, it’s all the same.”
Hartford snatched back his hand from mine. “Then let’s blow this joint and—”
‘Betray Plantagenet and my family? That easy, is it?”
“And how!” Hartford choked on a sob.
I seized Hartford’s arm, as he turned to rise.
Mistake.
Hartford swung me up, dangling into the air and then slammed me down again, crushing the flowers.
“It bloody well won’t be,” I choked out. “I know that I said turn your grief to rage but I was wrong. Turn it to strength because we need to plan a caper, proper-like. Don’t be a pillock. Donovan would hate to see you acting like this.”
I held my breath. If Hartford wanted to go rogue? Then the Renegades would have a genuine renegade after them.
At last, Hartford wiped his arm across his eyes, before grinning as he took my hand. ‘I’m sorry, poor little bunny, you’re right. I can ab-so-lute-ski not be a pillock. For you.”
I glanced at our joined hands, trying not to miss the bracelet that Will had given me. “Hold on, I promise, just hold on.”
I left Hartford out on that wind whipped roof, flat on his back with his head cushioned on his arms in his flowery bed. He escaped into the map of stars, adventuring beyond our concrete and steel prison.
I didn’t blame him.
When I prowled down the corridors in the penthouse on the hunt for Sun, however, I soon realized that I was being hunted.
There was a sudden shuffle style scampering behind me.
Slam — a door on the right banged shut.
I sniffed: it wasn’t a First Lifer, nor Blood. But it was a predator…every nerve screamed it.
A good barney would set me straight, yet the hairs on my neck were rising, as if I was in a B-movie. I’d never been hunted like buffalo before.
Shuffle scamper. Slam.
Shuffle scamper. Slam.
The — thing — zigzagged across the corridor behind me.
Every time that I twirled around, however, it hid in another room, and there were only expanses of charcoal walls and doors stretching away, as if I was in The Shining.
I gulped.
We choose to be either predator or prey. That’s the truth of it. I used to reckon that it was God or our DNA, which birthrighted the glory or the shame.
But that was the bollocks.
We shift between the two, and right now…? Fear had transformed me into prey. So, I ran.
Behind me, I heard a loping scamper, followed by a banshee scream. I skidded around the corner to the ranks of lifts. Brains beat…everything.
I smirked: go evolution.
Still, I couldn’t stop myself pressing the underground garage button — press, press, press — frenziedly. As the steel doors clanged shut, I caught a glimpse of bristling black hair, yellow canines, and a pink whiskery face, which grimaced in infuriated rage at losing its prey.
I’d like to see any animal work out a lift.
When the doors pinged open, my heart was rapidly beating, and I was sweating. I hadn’t got a hold of this being the prey lark.
“Still traumatized by enclosed spaces, Light?” Blake was leaning in inky black V-neck and trousers against a BMW i8.
I attempted to swagger out of the lift but with legs like jelly, I didn’t even convince myself.
Then I heard a ping behind me.
It couldn’t be...?
Shuffle scamper…shuffle scamper…shuffle scamper…
That was sodding it: no more being the prey.
I spun around to face my tormentor.
A monkey.
A bleeding monkey.
He was now on all fours, with beady black eyes gazing up at me in cutest chimp at the tea party mode. There were no fangs or shrieking now. Then he held out his disturbingly human hand.
“Clear off!” I pointed at the chimp. “This…primate is a bully.”
“Nonsense,” Blake scoffed. “Shake Mr Darwin’s hand.”
“Seriously? That’s what you went with?” I sighed. “Don’t you dare bite me, you menace.”
I edged closer, taking Mr Darwin’s hot rubbery hand in mine. When Mr Darwin squeezed so tightly that my knuckles popped, I hollered.
“Mr Darwin, stop.” At Blake’s sharp command, Mr Darwin let go.
It was disturbingly like Plantagenet’s obedience, and made me wonder whether Blake had used the same training methods.
My gaze darted between human and monkey. “You taught him to use the lift?”
Blake waved his hand dismissively. “Just a party trick. He has a special one, as well as opposable thumbs. Plus, opposable toes, which in some ways makes him better adapted than we are.”
“Only if I’m figuring on hanging around in trees, and I’m not.”
Nursing my swollen hand, I glared at Blake, as he wandered between his sweet shop of luxury cars: Bentleys, Porsche 959 Coupe, and an obligatory Rolls Royce Phantom. Of course, the tosser also had a Ferrari: yellow because red ones are for the try-hards. Yellow are for flashy pillocks who truly do have it all.
Blake stroked his hand over the cars’ bonnets. I reckoned that he was only a whisper away from whisking his cock out and piddling over them to mark them. I wondered if he’d done that to Plantagenet… Then I shook my head to dispel the image.
I frowned when I realized that I was trotting after Blake in his shadow, just like Mr Darwin. I stood still, thrusting my hands in my pockets, but Mr Darwin continued to knuckle-walk his way after his…friend, owner, master…?
Mr Darwin was making these pant-grunts, holding his head low.
Blake paused by a green McLaren F1, which was like a futuristic beast, standing with his hands on his hips, as if an Emperor awaiting tribute.
Mr Darwin squeaked, before crouching and presenting his rump. Well, I guess that it was a monkey tribute…and it was clear who was alpha in this troop.
At last, Blake grinned. “Come on then, you.”
Mr Darwin turned and — God’s honest truth — signed something furiously with his little fingers, before grunting and launching himself into Blake’s powerful arms.
Blake cradled the monkey, as Mr Darwin clung around his neck.
“What’s with all the...?” I gestured with my hands.
Blake sat on the McLaren’s bonnet — bloody sacrilege. “American sign language.”
I gaped. “You’re taking the mick.”
Mr Darwin gestured up and down in what looked suspiciously like a rude gesture.
The cheeky bugger. “Did he just...?”
When Blake signed back, Mr Darwin clutched more tightly to him, howling with what sounded like laughter.
“Why do I get the feeling that you two are making a monkey out of me?”
Blake’s expression was stern and impossible to read. “No speciesism, please.”
Under the garage’s artificial lights, I shifted awkwardly. No one likes to be called out on being a…what now?
I nodded towards Mr Darwin. “That bastard was hunting me.”
Blake stiffened. “You’re mistaken.”
“Not a chance.”
Blake stood. Slow and deliberate. Like everything he did, it was measured and had an impact. When he strolled towards me, I had to remind myself at every step that I was the Blood Lifer. Blake pressed so close
that I could feel Mr Darwin’s heat and smell his cabbage stench. Mr Darwin’s lips were bunched back; his teeth were a furious yellow.
Blake towered over me. He was tall, just like Sun. “Let me make something clear. I do not make mistakes, and the people at RE and in my life do not question.”
“More fool them.”
Blake leaned even closer. “How do I know that Mr Darwin wasn’t hunting you? Because if he had been, he’d have killed and eaten you. He knows better than to eat my guests though, don’t you, Mr Darwin?”
Mr Darwin grunted: the picture of innocence.
The hairy wanker.
“Even wild animals can be tamed and trained. Mr Darwin’s mum died when I was a kid, in what’s now the Republic of Congo. I was out there with my dad, who was running a study into primates. Now there was a great man. Mr Darwin was…depressed. He wouldn’t eat or play, so my dad gave him to me. We raised each other.”
“I can tell.” And I wasn’t even bastard joking.
Blake’s smile didn’t reach his pale eyes. “Chimps? They have cultures just like humans and Blood Lifers. They adapt to environments and to survive. They’re bright with abstract thought and memories. Does that not fascinate you, when you have such talents yourself?”
I shrugged. “I simply like to know that I’ll survive mostly.”
Blake laughed. “Follow me, I’ve something to show you.”
Just like Mr Darwin had, I trailed at Blake’s shoulder, this time to the back of the garage.
By all that was holy, no…it was sacrilege. A white striped travesty, as if some berk had stolen my best memory (Kathy blasting her way through ‘60s London in her little red number and saving me from the sun), buggered it, and then stuck a British flag on top.
All in the name of reinvention.
I glared at the new Mini; it glared back.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Blake sighed.
I snorted. “You’re mad.”
Blake looked thoughtful as he did his heavy pace forward trick. I wasn’t stepping backwards this time.
Sod it, listen to me feet.
“Evolution, even in cars. Retaining the original DNA but making it better. That’s what RE strives for, and it’s what you are.”
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 71
