Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1)

by Rosemary A Johns

  But here’s the thing - animal blood? Not the same bleeding deal. It’s like pretending sugar free can give you the same rush as the sugar laden, delicious original. The spark and life is only just there. It singes but it doesn’t burn.

  And I hunger for the burn.

  Look, a pig’s not exactly as high up on the evolutionary chain. It doesn’t have the same DNA to ignite the match.

  But you’ll survive, you’d insisted, you’ll live.

  Yeah, a half-life. A shadow.

  Still I’d done it for you: a half-life with you was better than a full one alone.

  There was no choice between loving you, or loving the blood, after what we went through to be together. After the corpses we left behind.

  Real hearts and cupid me, aren’t I?

  Still, I deserved the ultimatum. Don’t think I’m wriggling out of the blame. After all, you found me with that skanky donor.

  You must’ve followed me, when I was too drunk on the call of the blood to smell you.

  This punk rocker had invited me up. She had piercings in her mush, lower down too, but I didn’t have a shufti because with that much metal, she’d have stuck holes in me if I’d got too intimate. She must’ve dressed for the occasion: pink tutu and combat boots, with eyeliner drawn on like battle paint.

  The punk kept stroking the Ace of Spades motif on my jacket, like it was a religious symbol she’d sworn to memorise; it made me wonder if she was writing a text for a band of deluded Blood Life worshippers. But the smell, Christ in heaven, the smell. Pot wafted in mushroom clouds, choking me, as I swaggered after her inside. My peepers watered.

  The bint had already drained her blood into a chipped I Love My Mum mug. It balanced on a dressing table that overflowed with spiked bracelets, ripped fishnet stockings, razorblades and a bowler hat, which jauntily hung off one edge, as if it’d dropped out of the pages of A Clockwork Orange.

  The bird smiled when she passed me the mug, just a hesitant twitch of her mouth’s acned corners. Her fingers drifted over mine. I’d already offered cash, but she’d refused. I suddenly realised I wasn’t bloody well offering what this bird - in her crush daydreams or death wish fantasies - reckoned either.

  The blood was warm, swimming; I watched it dancing round and round in beautiful circles, singing to me to drink…

  Then came hammering on the door downstairs and your voice, hollering loud enough to wake the dead, ‘Get out here Light right quick, before I come up and belt you one.’

  I never did get that last drink.

  I was pacing around the garage, my shoulders hunched, clenching my fists up, as if for a barney or a bonk, with the blood bobbing through me, when I noticed the board over the window was rotted.

  It was flaking snowy splinters in dust showers. The rusted nail was bent out of shape, like a deformed spine. As I tested the board with my thumb, the wood suddenly crashed from the glass panel in a decaying mist, flooding the garage with the orange glare of the dying sun.

  ‘Buggering hell.’

  I leapt backwards, as my cheek smouldered like the tip of a ciggie, my eyeballs melting ice-cream at the bleeding beach. I hissed with the agony of it, the nitwit braindeadery of it, the indignity of the one sodding vampire myth that holds true – night walking.

  A sharp shaft of sun burnt across the garage, over the Triton and between me and the door out to the hallway.

  I was trapped.

  What if you needed me?

  I strained to listen. But the house was silent. You were either sleeping or were…

  Bloody morbid I was nowadays - death catches you like that. I’d forgotten. Not because Blood Lifers are immortal, in fact we simply decay more slowly because the blood replenishes us. We still have a shelf life: this whole planet does. I’ve never seen one of us much older than half a Millennium.

  I leant against the damp wall, exploring my tender mug. I couldn’t make out anything but dim shapes in the garage with my burnt peepers, except that blinding spear of light. The blood would fix that, give it time. It heals, restores and resurrects, even pigs’ piss poor substitute for the good stuff. The new skin cells were already tight where they were knitting themselves into place, grafting my mush back to its never changing contours.

  That bursting into fire in the cruel light of day?

  See here’s the thing, it’s more like wax reacting to a flame. Us Blood Lifers are candles: we burn bright.

  But there’s always a cost.

  If you want the science and not the poetry (you used to say that, and I’d nark you by merely grinning), it’s to do with how our cells synthesise the blood to repair themselves.

  What gives life, takes it away. The world’s big on irony. Or would be if it cared enough. And it doesn’t.

  Our clever thinkers know the formulas.

  Me? It’s enough to know the sun and me don’t mix. But I walked in the day once and now I have the night: 50:50 seems a fair split.

  I tried to edge around the strip of light, but the sun was still too high. My boot protected my foot for the second test, but by the intense heat in my toes, wouldn’t for long. I didn’t want to have to get out the stink of skin fused to leather because that’s nasty. And not something you ever forget.

  I slunk to the trapdoor in the far corner, swinging it open, before I slid down into the belly of the basement. The basement is a tiny cave-like room, with nothing in it but a truckle bed, wireless music system and my tatty editions of Mojo.

  I sprawled on the blankets, letting the door slam shut and entomb me in a familiar blackness, as I waited for my eyesight to return and my cheek to mend.

  I slipped in headphones, moving by touch alone in my private refuge. I hoped the haunting melancholy of The Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” would sear the pain away; the driving piano, plucked bass and recorder were part of the permanent soundtrack of my life. Memories of my own Author - lost to me - were brought to life in the black. My own Ruby.

  This is where I retreat - my underground hole - when the daytime carers come.

  In the early hours, when the sun’s still pausing for breath over the hills, I hand over your breakfast (toast and honey), your wash things and make-up because you deserve to look…yourself and your mountains of multi-coloured pills, to the whichever day of the week it is carer.

  Then I pretend to head for work through the garage. I don’t know what the carers reckon I do, or how I get there, but they don’t bother to ask, and I don’t bother to tell. It’s a game we play. We all do that. Not that I can work, not even cash in hand, no questions asked stuff, with you to look after. Other avenues aren’t much better. Not since you knocked the nicking stuff on the head.

  When I was first elected into Blood Life, there was nothing I couldn’t take, if I fancied. Now I have to budget your pension between the two of us.

  Talk about being bloody defanged.

  At least pensions are one less thing I’ll have to plan for: silver linings in the dark, right?

  But when you… When I’m left behind, there’ll be no more pension or house. No more you.

  What shred of the First Life, which we’ve built for nearly fifty years, will I have to hold onto then?

  What part of it’s been real?

  The terror rises - sticks in my throat, darling - chokes me…when I think that.

  The past, it’s like this series of photos. But the future’s just this expanse of black. What if I slip back into those shadows with nothing to hold onto? But I don’t want to because I’ve already seen what’s in them.

  I know what’s waiting for me.

  I always lock the garage, once I’ve left for my pretend work because I see those women’s looks, suspicion like spiders in their peepers. Big bloody double padlock on the basement once inside. I’d dug this hidey-hole the first year we came back here. Overkill, you’d called it. Security, I’d said.

  Because they know: the carers, delivery boys and all the other gormless First Lifers, who stumble across us. Not what exac
tly but they still pick up the prickling sense that something’s dodgy. Different. But do they say anything? Of course not. That’d be too simple and straightforward. The truth without artifice.

  No, I get the smile instead. You know the one. We get any more repressed in this great country of ours, we’ll implode with all the crap we’re not saying.

  It’s always been a problem. First I was your husband. Then toy boy, son, grandson…to strangers. To you I’ve simply been your Light. But we’ve had to keep moving, Christ, so many places, because of those labels. Also because of me, in the bible of you.

  ‘Why won’t you register with the Blood Life Council? Things could’ve changed? They’d sort it.’

  Sort it? Those nasty bastards? The Blood Lifers, who give other Blood Lifers the willies?

  We’d have got sod all from them. Apart from maybe done in.

  At least, they’d have given it their best shot.

  Let’s say they were reasonable for once. Reckon I want my balls crushed in the sweaty hands of Westminster? Just another dog to be leashed and tagged? Those wankering bureaucrats are no more than petty shadows of the First Lifer Parliament. And you know what I think of them.

  Except we don’t even have the vote. There’s no democracy in our world, only a bunch of brats no more than decades old, wielding their power like their dicks, in the way only blokes can, who are excited to discover how to use them: by buggering the rest of us.

  ‘Stop playing the rebel,’ you’d said.

  Know what? I’m not playing, love. I tried conforming once, didn’t fit.

  I won’t be what the First or Blood Lifers want. But I’ve tried - for you. My blindside. My wonderful weakness, for whom my blood hums.

  The sun had finally bled behind the moors. My new skin was tight and pale. I could see as sharp as a night owl again.

  I switched off The Stones, swinging out of the trapdoor into the shadowy garage.

  When the rotten board crumbled in my hand, as I tested it, I ached for you; I’m a creature of the night, but you were the creature of the toolbox. I ripped what was left of the wood from the nails, hurling it against the far wall, where it shattered with a satisfying bang. When I heard you startle awake, I instantly regretted it.

  You were crying. A low animal wail.

  I legged it into the hallway and then up the stairs into our room. You were thrashing side to side in the bed, agitated. Your gaze wandered to me in confusion, as I dived towards you. But there was no recognition. Only fear.

  ‘Just me, luv.’

  ‘No, no, no…’ Your fingernails were scrabbling at me, as I soothed, scratching deep gouges.

  ‘All right,’ I backed away, the blood trickling down the backs of my hands, ‘you’re safe. It’s night. Sleep time, yeah?’

  You quietened. For a moment. These bursts of violence burn you out. And scar me.

  I tried to smile. ‘Kathy…’

  A low moan. Your mouth hung open and then twisted into a snarl. You clawed at the covers, raking them up and down, as if you were trying to escape.

  It was your white wisps of hair - more fragile than even the bones in your thinning body - which got to me. Sometimes it’s the little things, which you could never guess at, rather than the big stress or drama, which boots you in the gut. It made me march to the door, without looking round again, as I mumbled, ‘I’ll make us a cuppa.’

  Only once I’d clicked on the kettle in the dark of the kitchen, resting my forehead against the exposed stone of the open hearth, did I realise we were out of mugs. That cheeky bitch Wednesday had slurped tea into her mush all day, without sodding well cleaning up after herself. Instead, she’d stacked the slimed mugs, with grainy rims, in haphazard piles in the Belfast sink. Sighing, I threw off my jacket, ran the water and started bloody rinsing.

  The image of your white hair on that white pillow, forced itself on me: no escape this time. Look, I’ve seen enough corpses in white coffins. Morbid, right?

  I concentrated on drying your special Union Jack mug: the one I’d filched from “I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet” on Carnaby Street in the 1960s.

  We’re both still here.

  The mug’s colours were faded and there was a hairline crack under the handle. Me? I’m smart as ever - not that I ever was smart.

  I dropped the teabag in but as I turned for the kettle, I heard your shriek, ‘Advance…’

  I swung round, catching your mug tottering off the edge. I saw the danger but bugger me if I could do anything to stop it. Not this time.

  Everything was in slow motion: the Union Jack mug tumbling arse over elbow to the flagged floor, red and blue smashing in a spectacular bang Mr Firework. Great Britain shattering. Yet all I could do was watch.

  I stared down at the now still pieces. Your mug. Broken.

  Then I was bawling out my nancy little heart, balled up under the oak table, because it was like the world was falling and I’d better find somewhere to hide. Except I’d forgotten how to feel like that because Blood Lifers’ll tell you that we don’t fear. Yet we do, when we’re motivated. And love’s the greatest motivator of all.

  So I kept on bawling, until it felt like there was nothing of me left - I’d salted it out in tears. Then I cleared away that old broken mug, before brewing you a new cuppa.

  You studied me dead close as you supped your tea.

  I experienced one of those moments, when I reckon you know me - not for long - just for a second or two.

  I snuggled down next to you, massaging your palm, in the way you always like: round and round, anti-clockwise. You smiled.

  ‘We’d lie like this out on the moors, remember Kathy? That first night we did it, on the hilltop by the Twelve Apostles? Buggered your dress with stains, but you’d stripped me down to the skin, so my clothes were all right.’

  Was that another smile? Your blue peepers were wide.

  ‘Your hair was…’ How could I go on, when I could see the dandelion fluff puffed over the pillow beside me? ‘…bloody gorgeous. Just growing long again. It’d tickle me when you did that thing you liked to…’ It didn’t feel right going into details. Not if you weren’t with me. Not truly with me. Christ I ached for you. ‘Well, yeah, that thing you love. Of course there was the danger and the thrill. You told me I was a junkie for it. You were right. There’s nothing like the hunt. Also nothing like being the prey. I grew out of it. Or maybe I did.’ I looked down.

  You were whining again. Your gaze was unsteady.

  ‘But it was a rush. What they’d do if they ever… It heightened those moonlit shags. Ranks them in our top ever and we’re, well, thoroughbreds, at least in that department. But you know what I never told you? It was the moments after, when we were starkers, yet in no hurry to dress, when I’d share the night and the beauty of the stars with you, whilst you’d share the day and the sun with me, all those details of your life that I couldn’t live with you, which I loved the most. Did you ever get how sodding jealous I was of every daylight hour? You’d say how tasty the blackberries were, or how yellow the spikes of the Bog Asphodel. Or you’d tell me about the flutter of the Green Harstreak butterflies, the loud bark of frogs, or whirr of Red Grouse over the low heather. You brought a world to life that I’d died to. Day and night united, darlin’, that’s us.’

  I grinned, but you snatched your hand away from me with a deep growl.

  You were lost in the darkness again, and I was lost to you.

  You didn’t know who I was; I frightened you, some kid in a studded leather jacket yakking about day and night.

  Just leave out the poetry? Well, all right then.

  3

  Sometimes Blood Lifers come back wrong.

  We never talk about it, as if pretending it doesn’t happen makes the nasties of the world puff in a cloud of bleeding smoke. But it does, all right?

  During the Cuban Revolution, I had a run in with this one berk, who didn’t like me much on his territory. Not to mention he was a bite at cards. He drained a do
zen chicks a night but he was touched. Because after? He washed, not only his hands but also his whole body, head-to-toe - scrub, scrub, scrub - with these stiff wire brushes and bleach, until he scraped the skin from his muscles. But then he killed and washed and healed and killed and…

  See what I’m fixing at? Touched.

  Blessing for him really when I staked the poor sod.

  Disappointing bollocks vampire myth two: we can be staked.

  In this particular tosser’s case, I shanked him. Anything pointy, however, does the trick. Wood doesn’t figure: sword, knife, spoon (if you’re twisted), it just has to stop the heart. Everything comes down to the heart. It always does.

  Here’s the thing, this geezer was always tooled up, apart from when he was starkers in the bath awashing away his bloody sins: that’s what gave me my chance to do him, before he indulged in all the nasties, which he spent his nights bragging round town he intended to visit on me. It’s kill or be killed in this world.

  There used to be these blokes, Order of Electors, who made sure no one came back addled. You’d cop it at the end of a sharp sword, if you failed their tests - doggy jumps through bloody hoops to prove you weren’t off your trolley. Ruby told me about them. I reckon she had to go through those trials back in the day. But now? They’re long gone.

  So we come back any old how.

  Then we whisper behind closed doors about whether a fragment of Soul’s been screwed up in the transmutation, or the wiring’s simply different, as if in some buggered up universe we’re experts in mental health. But know what I reckon? The problem was already there, deep inside that person’s Soul. In the dark places folks don’t talk about. The hidden demons we don’t admit to.

  Blood Life simply lets them come out and play.