Yet the difference was Ruby wasn’t even trying to hide it. It was as if she wanted me to know - rub the pup’s nose in it. Whereas me? I’d bathe, scrubbing my skin until it near bled, like that barmy bloke, who I’d been forced to shank during the Cuban Revolution.
Look, don’t get the hump. I wish I could’ve held onto every embrace. Your scent cocooning me. I still shared a bed with Ruby, however, and that devil could’ve plucked me apart.
Yet the greatest problem was that I still needed blood.
Without it we’re not alive, and to hell with it if I was dying twice.
Every day that went by, Ruby was catching on, glancing at the way my hands would betray me with their trembling.
Remember the berk spaced out on wacky backy in the latrines? I couldn’t rely on stumbling over flukes like that when I went for a jimmy, every time I needed a feed. All that mind over matter crap’s clap-trap because the strongest will in the world can only hold out so long, when it comes to the stuff of life.
So I got creative.
Right, so all the nasties and wankery? Don’t roll your eyes. I know you’re going to, however, because on the way to yours through Soho, there were all these sex shops. And one night I collected some cards for…
This skanky bint was off her nut. Her skin was crusted with pimples and her room stank of cum and vomit. But she was the one who said yes - for the right fee - and I was desperate.
Ruby always let me have money now, like I was her wife (or maybe her whore), so I could buy what I liked. Rather than nick it. I’d rejected it before but had started silently pocketing the money without a word, which meant I had enough to pay for the blood.
The First Lifer stuck this needle into her thin vein, selecting the one closest to her muff because the others were already collapsed. Despite everything, I started to salivate, as she drew out the blood. You know what blew my mind though? She watched, when I squirted the blood into my gob and then swallowed in my near starvation, as if it was the sweetest (rather than the rankest), blood I’d tasted in decades. Her expression, however, didn’t change: it was blank, like she’d seen it all before.
Maybe she bleeding had.
She was still a teenager, yet even a freak drinking her blood from a needle didn’t surprise her.
I saw the bird once a week, taking just enough to keep the tremors at bay. I never asked her name; she never asked mine. And I never told you. In two lifetimes of bad choices and sodding carnage, that’s a lie, which never let my conscience rest. I let myself believe it was about survival because that’s the get out of gaol free card. Or so we tell ourselves. But never telling you? That was all on my head.
The soundscapes of Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced” soared, as we sprawled side by side on your bean bags.
‘Susan got it. The secretarial post.’
I grinned. ‘Blinding.’
You tore at the rough edge of the shagpile, dragging frayed edges out – hard - between your twisting fingers. ‘Would be if her new boss weren’t a right pig.’
Stiffening with that automatic tension when a predator’s close, yet a swirl of confusion too because this time the adrenaline surge wasn’t for me, but rather for a First Lifer. Everything I’d been taught told me that wasn’t right. But I still couldn’t stop myself. ‘What’s he..?’
‘Not like he’s any worse than the rest, I guess.’
‘Want me to..?’
‘What?’ You stopped worrying the carpet, trapping my fingers between yours instead. ‘You our white knight now?’
Mockery.
You were always good at that, with an added hint of seduction, just the right side of annoying. You could play me so well, ensnaring me somewhere between rage and lust, which for a Blood Lifer is bloody heaven.
Let’s face it, neither you nor me would be content with boring, ordinary lives, whatever the hell they look like.
It’s not only us Blood Lifers, who walk and crave that thin line between pleasure and pain. I’m not simply talking about the kinky stuff either.
Do you remember the nights (and if you remember nothing else, Christ in heaven, you must remember those nights), when you’d keep me on the edge for hours because you said you loved to watch me stretched out, shuddering under you, in that hazy zone where pleasure and pain meld sublimely? What divides the screams and moans, which everyone the world over makes when they come, from the sounds of torture?
You did that to me with your words. I don’t know if you ever got that.
Disgruntled, I shrugged. ‘Armour wouldn’t suit me. I’ll stick to leathers.’ I kissed the tips of your fingers; they were soft, but your long nails grazed my lips. ‘You got a gig this weekend?’
You nodded. ‘Recording next month and likely…’ You stopped.
‘What?’
‘It’s nowt. But this - what I do - it burns me with exhilarating fear because I know I’m fair lucky. I don’t want it to end or… Not with everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve been through. It could be me in that office with a pig of a--’
‘Never you. That could never be you.’
You rolled off your beanbag onto me, your body hard against mine. Then we were snogging, lost somewhere in the wild roar of the music. My mind opened to this new age, the stars bursting and the rhythms beating through my blood in time with the power of the drums.
At last I knew what this thing was.
You’d possessed me, invading every bleeding inch of me, until all I breathed was you.
But now I knew its true name – this was love.
You snuggled closer onto my chest; your arms hugged tight around me, limpet-like. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go. Wish we could be here like this. Forever.’
What had you just said?
I tried not to tense, as I stroked a dark curl back from your cheek. ‘Do you?’
‘What?’
‘Forever?’
You smiled. ‘What are you on about, freak?’
See that was the moment. Had it been like this for Ruby? A sudden awareness the time had come?
Yet Ruby hadn’t even known me, not like I knew you; she’d only tasted my Soul. That was enough, however, for most Blood Lifers. I’d tasted your Soul too; I’d been hollowed out by it and now I was filled up with something real. This…love.
Did you love me as well? Maybe. Dunno. But I did know how I felt and that was enough.
Election was meant to be for the cream of each generation. You had beauty, talent and ambition, with the streak of ruthlessness, which made a leader. You deserved Blood Life.
Then we’d be together fully and forever. Not in that fairy-tale bollocks way but as long as anyone could wish for on one planet. I’d always known something had been different - this call to you. Different to the taste of every other First Lifer.
The vistas stretched before me of the world I’d reveal to you, just as you’d introduced me to yours. I remembered the decades of exploration with Ruby and all the wonders she’d shown me. I shook with anticipation that I could be your Author, muse, liberator. And love.
I sat up, pulling you with me onto my lap. You stared at me, with a look of surprise. I tried to smile but I was too nervous. ‘If you could… If there was a way to live for centuries and--’
‘Like a vampire?’
I stiffened. ‘No, not like a sodding vampire.’
‘You want to go out somewhere tomorrow evening? Take the Mini and--’
‘So when you said you wished we could be like this forever..?’
You frowned. ‘I was just playing, ninny. You’re serious all of a sudden, what’s..? I’d rather live fully every second. Who’d want to go on and on with no end? Always out of step with the world? Sounds lonely to me.’
I hugged your small body closer; I found I couldn’t loosen my arms. ‘But if you were with someone else? Like, you’d found someone who… It was me and you, together..?’
‘The vampire and his bride?’
‘Not bloody vampires.’<
br />
Irritated now, you dragged my arms away from your middle and I let you, as you pushed off me. You swung to the record player, lifting the needle off the Hendrix LP. The sudden silence was like a bleeding black hole.
I stared at your tense back, when you didn’t turn round to me.
I’d done that all wrong, hadn’t I? How had I buggered it up so badly?
Ruby had opened my peepers to the splendours of Blood Life at my election. She’d exhilarated me with the glorious possibilities of my new world and the superiority of the species, into which I’d evolved. But daft berk that I was, all I’d been able to conjure up for you was shadow puppets of Halloween nasties.
I’d screwed up the moment - the only moment - and I knew it.
You’d never want to be elected into this Blood Life with me.
Yeah, it was lonely.
At last, you twisted back to me. Your peepers were serious and dark. ‘But you wouldn’t be human, would you? I’d never want that. I could never love something that was… Isn’t this life enough for you?’
‘You are,’ I answered softly, ‘you are, luv.’
MAY 1866 LONDON
I checked the numbers again. There was no doubt: Overend, Gurney and Company, London’s wholesale discount bank - the banker’s bank - was about to collapse.
Junior clerk as I was, I could see the ripples from the rumbling earthquake in its wake spreading out with photographic clarity: the panic and run on banks spreading to Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Derby and Bristol, and then all the other companies failing, like dominoes in a row.
I’d written warnings to the directors, especially Mr John Wesley Erwood, ever since they’d employed me on the written recommendation and good word of my uncle. That, however, had nearly got me bloody fired.
Junior clerks weren’t meant to get above themselves; it was bleeding presumptuous and should’ve been already beaten out of me. I should’ve simply got on with my job, bowed and scraped - yes sir, no sir – and kept my peepers to the ground, rather than lifted to the lofty heights of high finance. But I’ve always been a curious bastard. Not one to stay in my place.
The one talent I had was for numbers.
Numbers had danced in my mind, in glimmering cascades, before I even had the words to describe them. And these ones at the bank? They’d never added up. Not when the bank had millions of pounds more liabilities than liquid assets, yet still couldn’t see the danger. Not when the stock and bond prices collapsed. Not when the Bank of England failed to play ball.
I slammed the hefty, leather accounts book shut, tapping my fingers thoughtfully on top. I’d requested to work late in a dusty backroom, which was lined with the bank’s ledgers; their secrets for the last decade were hidden in the numbers. Gradually I’d unearthed the truth in their patterns. The fading light streamed through the single high window.
The answer I’d discovered in that room of numbers, was that the world was about to come tumbling down on all our heads. Yet no one realised it because the reality was masked by the directors’ fraud – and that was the buried truth.
Every night I came here, I was working myself up to something, which took more courage than I reckoned I possessed.
The directors were conning the world and I was the only one, who could do anything about it. If I didn’t, honest men and their families would suffer; I understood too well what poverty and misery could follow, when livelihoods were lost.
I knew I’d have to reveal the lies.
Real hero, right?
Prat more like.
I was innocent as a babe in my First Life. But I was fired by the flames of the righteous for all the little people, who’d be caught in the whirlwind, when the banks turned bad.
Clueless I was but still, that’s when I started my plan to worm close to Mr Erwood, (the stuffed walrus). I made sure I was in the position to overhear snatches of muttered meetings, which I could then match up with the dodgy numbers that paraded - day and night - in my brain. Those numbers never let me get a moment’s kip.
They became like a second conscience.
Luckily, the bigwigs never worried about my presence because a nobody hasn’t got lobes. They gabbed in front of me, no different to a master yaks about his mistress in front of his servants: they’re invisible and what would they know? What did I know? More than they did, and I was going to show them.
I was a man on a sodding mission. I burnt with it.
Most of all, I had to prove they knew (those fat cats in their gold-gilt offices), who were scrabbling to safety, whilst the death knell had already sounded for the common man, with his life savings invested: those poor sods would be bloody buried alive. But the banks and their directors, who’d caused the catastrophe? They’d survive (of course their type always do).
I guess, just once, I wanted to even the odds.
But love will rot you through every time.
Mr Erwood had a daughter: Grace. I reckon she only came to the bank, with her tiny shrew of an aunt as chaperone, to torment us clerks. No, hands up, to torment me because I was the poor git assigned to escort her.
I don’t know why her papa chose me, but it could’ve been partly because I’d been sticking to his side like a bloody limpet and partly because he couldn’t imagine anybody, who’d be less of a threat to his unmarried daughter: this ambitious but friendless clerk.
He wasn’t a good judge of character that one.
Grace wore the latest Parisian fashions. Her cloud of blonde hair was always perfectly arranged and smelling of the sweetest violets. She was alien to the male environment of echoing marble halls and clusters of blokes trying not to be caught out in their furtive glances, whilst hiding their stiffys behind clutched bundles of files. Grace would flash just a glimpse of ankle, as I’d help her back into her crested carriage amidst blankets, pillows and footwarmers, like an Arabian princess. Then she’d give me that coquettish smile of hers.
I had no way of hiding my stiffy in my tight trousers after that.
Grace – my first love, sweet torturer and for three years the only lady, who haunted my dreams.
But the real hell of it? She knew it.
Cat and mouse, Grace played with me (out of boredom I knew); I was only a little something to pass the time. The bleeding crime was that I let her because it felt so good to have someone to worship. Ever being loved back by someone, just seemed too distant a hope.
That evening when I strolled out of the backroom, the numbers crashing through my brain and pounding so hard a headache had formed, something made me stop and make the decision, which I’d been building up to for weeks.
Bravery isn’t as easy as they show it in the flicks. It’s a slow burn, stoked by incremental choices. When you decide to risk everything, few First Lifers can do that in a moment, unless it’s drilled into them. That’s what military training’s all about, or did you reckon pulling a trigger was to do with finger strength?
That night? It was when I finally knew I was ready. To throw away everything I’d built up over the last three years. I would find those incriminating papers, take them to the beaks and explode this bank and my whole life along with it. And that did take balls.
Stupidity but balls.
I knew the papers were in Mr Erwood’s office; I’d watched him perusing them, his heavy features furrowed in a deep frown. I’d have to filch them. There’s a first time for everything, right?
Adrenaline and fear surged. I stalked along the cavernous corridors, which were deserted now after hours - clack, clack, clack - each footstep was sharp against the marble, even in my stealth.
I drew in my breath, when I saw the wide doors to Mr Erwood’s office were open. Then movement in the dancing light of the lamps. I crept closer, my back to the wall.
When I reached the door, I peered round into the dim room. Like a vaulted cathedral, the ceiling domed high above me, veined in gold. Mr Erwood’s vast oak desk crouched in the centre. His papers were laid out, as if awaiting a
clandestine meeting.
My blood pounded because it was Grace pacing back and forth in front of the desk, floating in a dress of lilac tartalan muslin with matching sash, so light it was almost transparent - a fairy ghost that shaped her into a perfect doll. Her arms, however, were crossed impatiently.
I drew back, but it was too late: Grace had seen me. ‘Do come in, Mr Blickle.’
I reluctantly edged inside, eyeing those papers - those pretty numbers - which proved the world was about to change unimaginably. They were just there. But out of reach.
Grace was studying me in that way she had, which made me shiver: half haughty and half inviting.
You got me right, when you reckoned I was a dead pillock, watching you from the shadows in the club. Maybe Blood Life doesn’t change us as much as we like to think.
Uncomfortable, I noted Grace’s aunt wasn’t with her.
Grace seemed to read the question in my peepers, as I shifted my feet. She smiled. ‘Aunt’s not feeling quite well. So she has left me here. Alone. I am awful bored by myself, waiting for papa and his dreadful friends. Why they barely say two words to me, can you imagine?’ Grace stroked her soft hair back, before raising her eyebrows.
‘I…need these papers and then I should leave you…’ I made a grab for the sheaf on the desk but as soon as I had, Grace’s fingers curled around my bicep, giving it a light squeeze. Any other day, her touch would’ve paralysed me with desire but today it caught me off guard. I simply stared at her.
Affronted by my response, Grace withdrew her hand. A sullen pout settled onto her mush. Something darker flashed in her peepers, which made me step back from her. ‘Stay with me, until my papa returns, will you not? It is late and I do not wish to be alone, Thomas.’ My name on her lips. For the first time on any lady’s lips. I froze. A smile curled Grace’s mouth because she’d known what it’d do to me. When she saw what she’d achieved with a single word, which her touch alone couldn’t, Grace’s blue eyes sang victory. She bustled to a drinks cabinet, which was shaped like a globe. It marked out Britain’s bloody empire: money and power proudly displayed. She slid it open, pouring amber whiskey into a tumbler. And that’s how the bitch did me, at least how I figure it, because she held out that heavy glass to me (solid with affluence and influence), as she said, ‘Taste it.’
Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) Page 13
