Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1)

by Rosemary A Johns

  The thing is, we’re not big on self-control. It’s not like we give in-depth interviews, or decide we’ll move in together for a year first, in case things don’t work out, before we choose who we’re going to elect.

  We go on heart and gut alone, you know? A few months of stalking, or nowadays maybe throw in a search engine or two. There’s no psychological screening.

  Not even a pop quiz.

  Psychopaths? Sociopaths? The mentally unstable? That worm was already eating the apple from the inside out, but the Author only saw the fruit’s glossy red surface, until after they’d gorged.

  Every emotion amplified, remember? The bad right along with the good. Even love curdles into obsession.

  All right then, here’s a thought: maybe none of us come back right. Maybe I didn’t. But then maybe there’s no such thing as right. Who gets to sodding judge?

  It used to drive you wild, me not knowing things, which seemed bright as day clear to you, yet were dark as dirt to me.

  It’s you First Lifers, who divide and categorise.

  Abnormal, normal. Sane, insane. Gay, straight. The in-crowd and the out. Good and bloody bad… So many labels I can’t keep them sticky in my mind.

  Even when you shade to grey, you call things spectrums: rainbow arcs that everyone’s to be charted on. Sharp pins along a curve to mark our bleeding place.

  The Lost? So there’s something wrong with us? But there’s nothing wrong with that because I slashed the chart up to confetti, fluttering pieces like paper snowflakes. No one pattern the same. And there’s nothing so pure as snow.

  What First Lifer can see the snowflake patterns and not the black and white divides or the rainbow?

  You could. And you loved me because of it…eventually.

  Yeah, maybe I did come back wrong. But buggered if I’d go back to how I was.

  I prefer the pretty patterns in my brain.

  Your snowy hair laced eerie beauty across my fingers, as I lay with you in the cold of dawn. The sun was peeping around the blind, searing brands to mark me.

  You were stroking your ivory silk scarf again - that sexy little thing as I call it - up and down. It was as if the sensory touch of it could snap you back to me and wake you up to yourself. I’d sprayed it with Chanel No. 5 and now your scent clouded the air at each caress.

  I breathed in deeply - breathed you in - bloody well wanted to devour you.

  My Kathy.

  But you weren’t here this morning.

  Where’d you gone gadding about to again? A point back in your timeline, with me? Or when you were some tyke and I was..?

  All right, the same as I am now, of course. Different coat though.

  You’d have bleeding loved my coat.

  You were so still this morning, corpse-like (and I should know). Your peepers were wide open but there was no response in them. Not a glimmer.

  If you were really dead - not Blood Life and not this living death - but six feet under, worm-food dead, I’d understand, grieve and move into the blackness, which I can see even now on the horizon. But this twilight? One foot in both camps? The body lives on but the mind..?

  It’s like you’re being sucked into an oblivion, which is obliterating everything you are. I’m not going to sodding well let that happen. Not to you. So I remind you, in the only way left to me, when I’m now a stranger in your eyes.

  ‘How about some music, luv?’

  I slipped off the bed, dragging my vinyl collection out from underneath it. I flicked through the jackets: Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Marty Wilde, Eddie Cochrane, Chuck Berry, The Animals, Them and Billy Fury and THE FOUR JAYS – now that’s my man.

  I bowed “The Sound of Fury” open, holding it against my chest and letting the LP slip first out of its inner sleeve and then slide between my fingers. You never truly appreciated the first wave of rock ‘n’ roll pioneers. Instead, you developed a taste for the wild electric magic of Hendrix and the later anarchy of The Sex Pistols. But this song? It brings back memories of 1968.

  The year we met and the first time we danced.

  The Dansette record player was out of shape but the old girl’s done us good service. I placed the needle down midway: it still played.

  “Since You’ve Been Gone” crackled to life. As soon as the first bluesy piano chords riffed, shivers trembled through me - the same as always.

  When that raw voice started up, with its ravenous caged passion and the hunger under the surface - the one we’d listened to at night under the covers and swayed to in this house, when you’d been young but not innocent - I was suddenly back there… I never wanted to surface: my arms tight around you, your fingers curling in mine… Then the fast, slapped bass kicked in, igniting the song bam.

  I strutted towards you, grasping your hand and swinging it in time to the rhythm.

  Still not a flicker. But maybe deep under the layers, beneath the crust and the magma in that red hot core, you knew.

  Something stirred and all of a sudden, you did.

  Your fingers twitched and then clutched mine. Bloody hell, I could’ve burst and never stopped dancing.

  I laughed. ‘Now you’re getting it.’ A spark in your peepers. Your brow furrowed. Then your back jerked. ‘All right, darlin’; don’t get too excited.’ But now you entire body was thrashing in a paroxysm. I couldn’t tear my hand away without hurting you. Your nails were digging in; blood was dripping onto the white covers, staining them in fat blossoming drops. The core was now awakened, exploding in fiery volcano. ‘It’s me…it’s only… I’m not gonna…’

  Then you screamed - a high-pitched terror - your peepers were wide with it, as you let go of me to claw at them, like you wanted to put them out.

  I trapped your bird-like body under me.

  Christ, what were the carers going to write in their bloody paperwork, when they saw the bruises?

  ‘You’re all right. You’re safe.’

  But you weren’t seeing me. When did you now?

  You were hallucinating some past horror and thanks to sodding me, you had more real horrors in that beautiful mind of yours than most. You were weeping, quivering like a cornered animal.

  Then you said, clear as day, ‘Ruby.’ I stared down at you, pretending – wishing – I hadn’t heard. Those lies we tell ourselves, right? Because I was a total wanker. I’d conjured up that nasty from your murky memory, with my own selfish wander down memory lane. When I’d been trying to remind you of love, I’d invited the devil in, instead. ‘Ruby,’ you repeated and then screeched, over and over, ‘‘Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby…’

  JULY 1866 LONDON DOCKS

  ‘It has been many weeks, my darling Light, you have grown weak.’ Ruby drew me further down the London Docks, by the low lodging houses, lusheries and bordellos, through streets still swarming with labourers, sack-makers and all the poor, who clung onto the stinking river, which swept away both the City’s filth and delivered up the world’s riches.

  Rats those First Lifers seemed to me now in the dark.

  I was shaking but I struggled hard to hide it.

  Ruby’s red hair swung loose, like a bawd. She dressed, however, as if a queen. Although not one this Victorian age had ever seen. She floated above humanity in her own world, where she was without question, sovereign.

  Here’s the thing, Blood Lifers don’t follow trends. When you live as long as us, it’d be a sodding waste of our second life. Instead we choose our favourite and we stick (at least for a century or so), until something new comes along, which takes our fancy. Then we add it in, eclectic-like.

  It’s all dressing up, isn’t it, the whole bloody thing?

  The birds don’t go in for makeup because they don’t need it; night lighting’s not exactly harsh on the skin. And the blood? It gives us a glow. Ruby shone brighter than anyone - or anything – I’d ever laid eyes on.

  Ruby was still a bleeding mystery to me though because all she’d told me, since she’d elected me into this Blood Life
, was that she’d been Authored in the reign of Elizabeth the First, which made her one of the powerful Long-liveds. There was something about the crimson silk of her dress and the way she moved, as if she was an aristocrat and I was a servant on her Estate, which whispered of the world she’d died to.

  ‘Dearest prince, if you do not eat, you will not live.’

  ‘Then I won’t live.’

  The back of my nut banged against the sail maker’s window. Ruby’s long-nailed fingers were hard against my chest, crushing me, as she twisted the choker at my neck, until it bit.

  The tar from the lines stank. I couldn’t control it, these new nocturnal senses: seeing in the dark, smelling the stench, hearing the cacophony of sailors’ shanties, goats bleating from some ship’s hold in the basin, a rope splashing in the water and the feel…like my skin was being grated down to the eyeballs. It was as if I’d been surrounded by a bubble, which had separated me from the real world, and now everything was touching me for the first time. And all at once.

  ‘You will live. You will obey me. And you will feast most heartily.’ Ruby’s lips were close to mine. I couldn’t move. Ruby stroked my mush, with a tenderness I’d never experienced in my First Life.

  I remembered waking only a couple of hours before in our crib, tumbling naked in white sheets with Ruby and without a word, making the beast with two backs. Ruby had done things to me, which I’d never known had even existed.

  When Ruby released the pressure on my chest, I gulped for air. ‘I can’t do this.’

  ‘I am your Author, muse and liberator. Put away First Lifer thoughts. Death is a human companion. We are simply the agents, no different to smallpox or a tempest. God created those too, did he not?’

  Ruby nibbled my lower lip; her bite was hard enough to draw blood. When she pulled back, she stroked the hair out of my peepers in careful, moulding motions.

  ‘God created us?’

  Ruby smiled. It was child-like, yet so very ancient at the same time. ‘In that he created the world, and we’re of it. Should a wolf be begrudged its hunt, or its kill, because it too has to feed? There’s no sin in your new blood hunger; it’s as natural as the moon.’ Ruby tipped my chin back, and we stared up together at the bloated satellite, which was suspended in the fug of black. Blood. The word had triggered cruel clawing pangs, which hollowed me, driving me half barmy with the pain. ‘Let us play a little game.’

  Raising her eyebrow, Ruby pointed out into the bustling street, with her beringed finger, at a satin-waistcoated mate, who was clasping a green paraquet that was trapped inside a cage.

  The bloke was scrutinizing a shop window, which was stocked with quadrants, bright brass sextants and mariners’ compasses: he must be about to set off on one of those huge ships. Soon he’d be swept far away from these stinking shores. Just like I’d always dreamt of, when I’d watched the ships sailing up and down the Thames. In one bite I could end his journey…forever. I knew exactly why Ruby had chosen him.

  Bugger this.

  But still…I could smell the bloke’s blood from here, all their blood and its pulsating heat: he looked like a sodding feast.

  I breathed deeply, as I shook my nut. I wasn’t yet ready: for what I was, or what I could no longer be.

  ‘That one?’ Ruby whispered close in my ear, as she singled out a sailor, who despite the heat, had a large fur cap pulled low.

  There was something off about the sailor’s aroma, however, like it’d curdled. He was glancing at a covey of whores, who were already worn out with grinding the lads for pennies - fire ships, every last one of them. And that bitter scent? I reckoned he’d been sent out a sacrifice and had come back a burnt offering. I could taste the clap even at that distance

  I shook my nut hurriedly again.

  Next was a smart custom-house officer in brass-buttoned jacket, who was shoving his way through the little people, his piggy eyes sparking with contempt.

  ‘Come now,’ Ruby nuzzled down my cheek, ‘a customs officer? Who will weep for him?’

  ‘No.’

  I thought Ruby was going to belt me then.

  Instead she slipped her arm around my waist, dragging me close. ‘I’ll not let you die, when I have tasted your Soul. This…shyness is not curious for one so young to Blood Life but it must be mastered. See it for what it is: the dying of your old life. I have a gift, something to ease your too human guilt. The crossing from day to night.’

  Hushing my questions, Ruby dragged me by the hand further into the labyrinthine docks. The ships on the jetties, which reached out into the four basins, were a forest of masts; flags hung dead without the breeze, between the fingers of chimneys. And the stench…

  Every warehouse we passed, as we drew further away from the crowds, I was hit by a different wave: first pungent tobacco, next sickening hides and bins of horns, then fragrant coffee and spices and finally overpowering rum. That last one I didn’t mind so much.

  Ruby hauled me into the shadow of a titanic warehouse, snapping open the door as easily as if it’d been sugarcane. Inside the floor was sticky, like it’d been newly tarred.

  Now I got real quiet because I could smell something mixed in with the rest… Blood… But there was a fast thud to it. A surge of some extra ingredient.

  Then I realised it was fear, which was making it so delicious.

  Yeah, so I’m a bastard, right?

  But is it a First Lifer’s fault the lamb tastes better than its mama, or did nature choose to make it that way?

  I could hardly stand for the hunger now; Ruby had to wind her arms around me, heaving me down into the dark vaults. There were low lights hanging from black arches; gas lamps swung midway between each.

  Shocked, I gazed at the colossal catacomb of precious vintages, which had been sent from vineyards across the globe: thousands of tiers of casks, pipes, barrels of French or Cap wine, brandy or rum. The powerful fumes mingled with the peculiar one of dry rot. As I limped onwards with Ruby, it was like strolling through a city of the dead, but instead of bones and skulls, there were barrels and casks. ‘Are you trying to get me ran-tan?’

  ‘No, not that.’

  That’s when I saw what the smell was. The blood and fear, which made me thirst to consume the world.

  Who it was.

  Grace - my first love and sweet torturer for the last three years. My tempter and betrayer. Destroyer of my heart.

  Grace was strung in chains, her feet dangling helplessly above the ground, like a frog stretched out for dissection. Her back was arched against the barrels. She was gagged and when she saw us, she started up with these odd little squawking noises. She’d been stripped down to her corset; the stiff whalebone bulged her dugs out, like apples.

  I suddenly remembered the many nights I’d wasted alone, tossing off over the glimpse of ankle, which Grace had flashed me with a coy smile, as she’d climb into her carriage. Now her pale body - this weak flesh - which was laid out like it was in a butcher’s window, repulsed me.

  Ruby was watching me intently, as she nudged me closer. ‘My gift, darling Light, do you wish to unlace it?’

  I wasn’t shaking now. There were no more doubts or qualms. Nothing holding back the predator inside. There was just this tiny sliver, which watched with horror, at how right this felt.

  So this is how it went down: I derigged the drab down to bare skin and then I grinned because you know what? Grace was chicken-breasted under that corset - another First Lifer lie.

  Strange, all Grace’s thin body did was remind me how much I’d relished Ruby’s curves, tipping the velvet, until I saw nothing but red. I still smelled of Ruby; she was on my lips. This blonde beauty had made me weak. But now I was strong.

  When Ruby propelled me closer, there was safety in her touch because she was united with me in the kill.

  ‘Blood is our birthright,’ Ruby’s voice was low; it swallowed the darkness, until the vaults echoed with it. ‘It’s the natural order. We would never have existed on this fair ear
th, if it was not. We would not have these,’ as Ruby’s two thin canines extended, Grace squirmed frantically, ‘or our venom, which paralyzes and stops their weak hearts, as if they were clocks. We are so perfectly designed for their blood, as they are so perfectly designed for us. Blood Life is not hunger. It’s fulfilment. Freedom.’ Ruby’s hands caressed around me, naughty as before, to those places that had never been touched before my death and election. ‘Dearest prince,’ she breathed, ‘free yourself.’

  I edged the gag out of Grace’s mouth.

  Grace gasped, panting and then stared between me and Ruby, whose hands were still wandering wherever they fancied.

  I knew what Grace was thinking: how could some nobody, like me, have done this to her? Her little plaything turned round to bite her?

  When I saw the tears glistening in Grace’s peepers, it was like being booted in the gut. The death throes of my First Life. Then it was over.

  ‘Thomas, please--’

  ‘My name is Light.’ The fangs shot from my teeth; I sank them into the milky white of Grace’s neck. It was pure bloody instinct.

  Grace screamed, but I was lost by then, engulfed in the blood.

  Grace shuddered to paralysis, as I drained her. I was bursting with it – Ruby’s gift of new life. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced or imagined. I wanted everything the world could bleeding well throw at me.

  When at last I fell back from Grace’s still body, I was laughing with excitement, shock, mania… I draped my arms around Ruby’s neck. ‘My thanks for your most perfect gift. It was…’ I laughed again.

  My nut was ready to explode – boom – with the rush and roar of the blood and the beat of my own heart, powerful in my chest.

  Ruby glanced at Grace, whose eyelids were twitching feebly. ‘It’s the river for this Athanasian wretch; let it carry her away with the rest of the filth. Then you’ll be free of her most completely. Free of all First Lifer ladies. Do you not feel it? That roaring call? It’s the world unfolding before you. The next step into the light, even though we dwell in the dark. Are you ready now, dearest prince?’