Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1)

by Rosemary A Johns

  You pressed back against the wall. ‘I have.’

  Your father smashed his fist close to the side of your nut.

  When you jumped, I struggled not to dive at him, fangs out. Trinkets crushed, however, I didn’t intend to be your white knight, if you didn’t want rescuing. There was also no bloody way I was going anywhere, until you were safe. It was typical of how you made me feel: my every impulse and emotion turned on its head, see-sawing between contradictions.

  Guess that’s what life’s about, right?

  Your father ripped the poster of Jimi Hendrix, which he’d felt under his hand, off the wall in disgust. He waved it in your face. ‘This? You choose this?’ He crumpled up the poster, tossing it hard at you.

  This time you didn’t flinch. ‘Yeah, I do.’

  I thought your father was about to throttle you; his hands were so close to your throat and that ivory scarf of yours that I tensed every muscle hard enough to spasm.

  You, however, didn’t move or look away from your father; I’ve never admired you more.

  Ruby had got you First Lifers all wrong. When your backs were against the wall, some of you had the same bottle as any Blood Lifer - you simply had to take the time to see it.

  Then the moment passed. Your father slammed his hat down on his nut, like a goodbye, before he stormed out, banging the front door closed after him. It rang in the silence of the flat with deafening violence.

  I studied your immobile expression. Buggering hell, I never was one for times like this. Did you want me to rush to you and hold you or to sod off?

  I hovered half way between the two, when to my surprise you crumpled, slipping to the carpet. That’s when I finally got how much strength it’d taken to hold up your puppet strings taut enough to deal with your father.

  You’d have made a blinding Blood Lifer. Why was I never able to convince you of that?

  I ran to you (castrated or not), and drew you up into my arms. For one bleeding wonderful moment, you held onto me like you needed me, with your cheek on my chest. I knew you could hear my heart thudding, just like I could always hear the pound of yours.

  Then you pulled back, however, your face twisted with rage and…

  Smack – you slapped me hard in the mush.

  Before I’d even registered the pain, you’d dragged me closer and were kissing away the hurt. You snogged me as if you never wanted us to part.

  I was alight with you, bloody aflame; you were going to burn me to ash. You twirled us round, in a crazy dance of entwined bodies. Then you were pushing me down, and we were ripping at our clothes and each other’s, lost to the world. Nothing existed but our lines, curves and pleasure. We shagged right there in the lounge, which your father had desecrated, as if our union was exorcising his haunting.

  Afterwards, we sprawled naked on the baroque rug in that intimate silence, which I bleeding loved, with your nut resting on my chest and listening to my heart again. Your hand stroked my arm; it sent tingles, like static electricity, shooting all the way to my todger.

  Then you said, real quiet like, ‘Don’t leave me.’

  I stared down at the black crown of your nut. ‘Don’t you get it yet? I’m yours. I’ll always be yours.’ Then I heard something, which I never wanted to hear from you again because it made me vibrate with pain: these sniffling sobs. Your salty tears were wet on my chest. What a prat I was. I told you I was rubbish at these moments, right? ‘Luv? What did I..?’

  When you raised your mush, I couldn’t read the look in your peepers. ‘I’m sorry. If you’re hurting, you fair hurt others. I didn’t mean to--’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘That’s not the point, don’t you see?’ You sat up, pulling your knees under your chin. I pushed myself onto my elbows, watching you closely. I didn’t get where this was going and I tingled with terror that you were about to chuck me out or return to the steely indifference from earlier in the summer, when you’d acted as if I might as well have been a spectre. First Life conventions were tight over me again. I couldn’t play this game, when all I knew was Ruby. What had I done? You stared at me with serious peepers, as if you could read my thoughts or at least some of them. ‘Dust a’ reckon I want… I don’t own you. I want us both to be free. Together.’

  You know what the Inquisition is?

  The problem was Ruby remembered it from first time round, so lucky me, she could make sure my interrogation was extra bloody authentic.

  My Author, muse, liberator and her brothers (the bane of my sodding Blood Life), were ranked across from me behind the plastic table, which had been buried under gammon, crisps and a halved grapefruit that looked like a bleeding hedgehog, the last time I was in here for Ruby’s welcome home party.

  Aralt had already removed his suit jacket. He’d carefully folded it over the back of his chair, and I knew what that meant. Kira was leaning, with crossed arms, in the shadows at the back of the room - the enforcer for the proceedings.

  Kira was the one, who’d dragged me out of bed as soon as the sun had set, and before I’d had time to fully wake up. I’d cursed her with a string of sleepy expletives. She’d only allowed me to stumble into my pair of jeans, before she’d hauled me down here, in my befuddled state, as if before a court of judges and bloody executioners. I’d blinked at my accusers in outraged confusion, as I’d tried to field their barrage of questions.

  I dared to glance from underneath my eyelashes at Ruby. She had this strange calmness about her, which was unsettling. You know that look a barrister has when they’ve got something on you but they’re holding it back for just the right moment to go for the jugular? Yeah, it was that look.

  I could tell they were circling round something. I didn’t, however, have a bleeding clue yet what it was.

  Had Alessandro got himself caught by asking too many nosey questions? He wasn’t exactly Mr Social Skills. I could just see him blurting the truth out and then not knowing why the twins had turned on him.

  Why had I trusted something so important to Alessandro? Maybe because he was the first bloke I’d ever felt was a true friend.

  Of course I could be a trusting mug, and instead Alessandro had squealed on me. Aralt was his Author after all. Ties of Blood run deep.

  Or worse, had it been tortured out of Alessandro’s small body?

  Something caught in my throat when I imagined Alessandro in agony. I had to work hard to block the image out of my mind. I had enough of my own worries. But even so, I found myself blinking back the tears, which were forming. I couldn’t let these gits see they were getting to me.

  Now here was a turn up for the books: discovering that the thought of another Blood Lifer’s hurt actually bothered me.

  Before we’d come back to London, I couldn’t have cared less what happened to anyone - First or Blood Lifer - apart from Ruby. She was the start and end of my world. Society? All a lie, mate. Friends? A needy joke clung to by the terminally lonely. But now? That bloody conscience was clawing its way back in. And with it? These new feelings and the need for something different, even to what I’d experienced in my First Life. It was fresh and raw. I didn’t know how to handle it; it was painful in its intensity.

  Somehow, however, I reckoned this circus put on in my honour wasn’t about Alessandro or Silverman’s experiments.

  I examined Ruby, hoping she’d give something away. It was disturbing how her peepers shone and her fingers trembled.

  I tried to clear my mind, so I could concentrate on my lies. Or else I’d be burnt alive.

  That’s when Aralt asked it: the question I was dreading. ‘Who’s Kathy Freeborn?’

  Breathe, bloody breathe.

  Their gazes were boring into me.

  I shifted from one foot to another on the cold wood, feeling strangely vulnerable without my boots, as I noted Ruby’s python smile. ‘You should know, you signed her.’

  ‘None of your cheek. We know you’ve been riding her. Stop acting the maggot.’

  I stared down
fixedly at the floor. ‘Dunno what you mean.’

  ‘Thou liest! I can smell the tiny trails of her, dirty on your skin,’ Ruby pressed her palms hard on the top of the table, as she leant across it. ‘You rub, rub, rub but your bawd is in your Soul, stuck like a cawl and will not clean off. You’ve taken this conceit and you will die by it.’

  ‘You saved the skirt’s cousin,’ Donovan was watching me through lowered eyelids, which were painted lilac to match his velvet jacket. ‘This poncey Blood Lifer came to us complaining his kill was stolen. Not cool, man. Not cool.’

  I glanced between the three of them. So this was it then, what Ruby had been gloating about and waiting for the perfect moment to kick me in the googlies over. This was about you.

  I was buggered.

  I shivered in the cool of the twilight, hugging my arms close across my naked chest.

  I tried to set my expression to total indifference. ‘So I’m banging some bird? It’s just a bit of fun.’ I saw a muscle twitch above Ruby’s mouth. A quick gander over the twins told me they weren’t buying it either. ‘She doesn’t know what I am. It’s not like she--’

  I made a dash for the door, snatching the moment.

  All right, so this once I chose flight over fight; you’ve got to pick your battles. And against three Plantagenets and the bitch they’d elected? Yeah, I was as good as done in.

  Caught off guard, the siblings only managed to half-stand, trapped behind the table, as I grasped at the door handle. Kira, however, was after me like a bloody bullet. She snatched me by the hair, agonisingly ripping it at the roots. She yanked me backwards, like I was her latest trophy, ready to be skinned.

  I twisted, struggling, but Kira’s grip was iron. ‘Bloody hell…’

  I heard Ruby laugh. I flushed.

  ‘I rip out his heart now, da?’ Kira looked hopeful.

  ‘Hey chill there, my sweet terror.’ Donovan slunk out around the table to Kira’s side, easing her fist off my hair and tearing thick chunks with it.

  I gasped.

  Donovan’s fingers teased down my naked chest, twisting my nipple but I refused to register his touch.

  Then Kira flung me face forwards across the table, slamming me right in the guts, like an offering.

  Ruby smacked her hands hard together. ‘Darling Light has been bad and needs a beating.’

  ‘Secret,’ Aralt cradled his hands, like he was a bloody emperor, ‘are you so fecking gone in the head, babby, that you don’’t get it? First Lifers mustn’t know we exist. Especially now. You’d risk everything because you’ve scored some skank?’

  ‘She’s not a…’ Kira pressed my back harder into the desk. My cheek bruised against the cold plastic. I struggled to get out the words. ‘I tasted her Soul, and she’s blinding. Better than most sodding Blood Lifers.’

  I couldn’t see Ruby but I could hear how silent the room had suddenly become.

  Bollocks - that’s never good.

  Then the creak of Aralt’s chair, as he sat back. ‘Let the wee gobshite up.’ When I felt the pressure on my back reluctantly ease, I pushed myself off the table. Ruby was glaring down at the carpet, like she wished she could set it alight with her gaze – or me. Yeah, I knew it was me that she wanted to consume with the flames. ‘So you fancy yourself in love? You do know it’s just a boy’s fevered daydreams, not a man’s truth?’ Aralt was considering me with dark peepers. Then he shrugged. ‘You are…what? Over a century old now? Donovan here has elected Kira, and I elected Alessandro. Yet we’re less than half your age. Perhaps it’s time your Author let you fly from the nest.’

  Ruby started from her seat, but Aralt gripped her arm and dragged her down. I wanted to break every one of those fingers – slowly - knuckle down to tip, for the way he was holding her.

  Love, it’s a strange thing because it didn’t matter what Ruby had done to me, it didn’t stop me protecting her. Or trying to. But what good was I now, when I couldn’t protect myself?

  I had the sudden urge to laugh, remembering the things Ruby and I had done on every continent of this earth; how we hadn’t feared anyone. We’d never answered to anything but our own wants and the dance of the call of blood and each other. That was until Ruby had brought us to this place. Her family. Where suddenly our freedom was leashed under the whip, and the fears were painfully real again.

  What had happened to Ruby’s promises of liberation?

  Aralt seemed to have noticed the fleeting laughter across my mush because he frowned. ‘What’s..?’ Then he composed himself and smiled. ‘Sure it’s a gift from me. It’s time you stopped being a dosser and became an Author yourself instead. It’ll make a man of you.’

  And there it was – the ultimate control.

  Aralt had already taken everything from me: my first love and Author and even my freedom. But now he wanted more.

  Aralt sought to decide who I elected as well. The most glorious act of creation, which there is on earth: evolution from one species to another, through the process of dying and rebirth. The transformative twinning of two creatures for centuries, in the black shadows of night and blood. To me it meant being set free from men’s rules and wankery. From the cruelty of life’s society, which I’d never felt part of anyway. And Aralt wanted to sully all of that with an order..?

  To me, Aralt’s version of Blood Life was a repellent perversion. It revolted me to the gut.

  I never told you that your election was offered twice. I couldn’t have explained this to you. Any of it. Not with what came after. You’ve no idea how much I ached to.

  But life’s not fair, and this was one of those times where you get booted in the balls.

  I glanced at Ruby. With everything we’d lived by - soaring through the world under no one’s thumb - I knew she must feel the same as me. She bloody had to. Her brother’s hand, however, was still clutched around her arm; I could see the bruises forming.

  Why wasn’t Ruby shaking it off?

  I backed away. ‘Thanks. But I’ll have to say no. Humanity suits Kathy just fine.’

  That did it. Aralt surged up, pulsing with outrage. ‘You think that’s what this is? Take what you want, when you want? All bonds banjaxed. Hierarchies toppled. Yet everything’s grand? I wonder at how Ruby has allowed you to behave for so long; I would’ve taught you by now. First life ties are melted, but you were resurrected into the darkness of a second desperate and brutal world of blood. It unites us closer than any weak human love. We are family. We beat through each other’s hearts. There’s no escape from that.’

  I smiled for the first time since I’d been hauled in here, half-dressed and barely awake, leery of what awaited me, because now all the dreams were chased away. So I bloody smiled. If I was going to go down, then I’d go down swinging. ‘Here’s the thing, I’ve always been the take what I want, how I want and when I want, kind of bloke. I don’t play well with others, let alone - what was that bollocks? - beat through their hearts. So this desperate, brutal world of yours? I’ll have to say no thanks to that as well.’

  Then Aralt was nothing but a blur of fangs and suit, as he launched himself across the desk at me, and I was falling backwards under the weight of him. The wind was knocked out of me, when he decked me.

  There was no point fighting back. This was no alleyway brawl. This was the head of my dysfunctional family teaching me in his dead special way, and if I didn’t take it, Aralt would simply keep going, until there was nothing left of me but a bloody mess. Or pass me over to Kira to take her up on the offer of ripping out my heart. So I lay there unmoving, as I was battered by Aralt’s fury.

  With a boxer’s precision, Aralt worked my bare chest down to my gut and he knew it hurt - he got off on it - pausing between belts, whilst he considered the reddening skin that was deepening to purple, before moving on and then back and working the same area over again.

  I groaned and then bit my teeth hard together. I wouldn’t give Aralt the bloody satisfaction.

  It wasn’t a good move, howeve
r, because Aralt seemed to sense my defiance. That’s when he dragged my arms above my nut and started in on my mug: right cheek, left cheek, right cheek…

  I started hollering then because a bloke can only be so much of a stoic and I never pretended to be a hero.

  I felt my cheekbone crunch and smash. I could taste the tang of blood, trickling from my broken nose. Christ in heaven, broken noses were the bleeding worst - the pain’s like nothing else.

  My peepers were closing; I knew they’d be purple and black. Aralt was only a shadow now above the slits of my swollen peepers. At each swing of his fist, I could see my blood spattered on his pristine white cuff in a pretty crimson pattern. I had the sudden memory of how I’d stained Erwood’s cravat: do bastards like him and Aralt always paint themselves in the blood of nobodies like me?

  I saw the shadow’s arm pulled back, readying for a right old belt and braced myself the best I could. Then someone was grabbing hold of Aralt’s fist and heaving him off me, like a crushing stone had been lifted from my broken ribs.

  Then I heard Donovan’s voice, ‘Cool it, man; he gets the message. Don’t freak out.’

  Followed by Aralt’s cold tone, ‘When are you gonna think with your head and not your langer, for once in your fecking life?’

  ‘When that’s more of a gas.’

  I heard Aralt sigh but I didn’t have the strength to raise my nut. Then someone lugged me up under my arms and I realised it was Kira, holding me like a doll, as blood spilled from every gash: my teeth, mouth, nostrils, peepers…

  I was bloody black and blue and couldn’t move without the tightness of pain. Ruby was examining me, as if I was an interesting exhibit: a nice little show put on for her benefit.

  I guess the instinct for protection didn’t cut both ways.

  Aralt asked, ‘You still won’t elect this bird? But she doesn’t know what you are?’

  I swallowed a mouthful of my own blood, before I managed to spit out, ‘Not a clue, I swear.’