Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1)

by Rosemary A Johns

  You’d wanted nothing to do with me. I don’t blame you. It was Susan, however, who’d taken my weight on her tiny body, trusting this violent stranger enough to insist I was allowed into your home. Then she’d patched me up with her gentle hands, as you’d watched. All because I’d saved her.

  Yeah, I’m a sodding hero.

  It makes me feel dirty to think it now. That’s the kind of daft bint behaviour, which got you killed in this city.

  I stared down at Susan’s motionless body, bound on the floor of the freezing van: all because I wasn’t the hero she’d reckoned.

  In that moment, I decided I would rescue Susan for real this time, even if I had to burn Aralt, Advance and the whole bleeding Blood Lifer world around my ears to do it. She’d cared if I was all right or not. And that made me feel like I should care too.

  I reached under Susan’s arms. ‘Let’s get you sodding well…’

  I started to lift Susan up. Then, however, I carefully dropped her back down again. I patted her softly on her moptop nut, as I huddled close to her for warmth, whilst I waited for the van to pull out.

  All right then, so don’t get shirty, or at least - hands up - I was going to save Susan. Get her out of harm's way. But if I’d done that, then what would I’ve used as…bait’s too strong a word.

  Me turning round? Bait, yeah, I needed a First Lifer, the same as they were expecting. Susan was my passport onto Radio Komodo. I didn’t know if I’d get another chance at this…whatever this would be.

  Tosser, right? But Susan was that First Lifer. And there was nothing I could do about it.

  What was strange, was how hard that hit me in the gut. It hurt worse than I thought I could feel about a First Lifer. Except for you and you were different, weren’t you? Feeling something for you when you were… What, the woman I loved and would’ve elected in a heartbeat? That I got. But now feeling it for another First Lifer..?

  Still, I had to take this chance. And I don’t regret it. The only things I regret are those I didn’t have control over: the decisions I slid into, opportunities I let slip by or the times I was manipulated.

  Christ was I manipulated.

  But this? It wasn’t one of those times.

  This was all on me.

  At last, the van lurched, and we were pulling away across night-time London and then down towards the coast. I tried to occupy my mind on the journey by checking on your cousin. I listened out for the steady beat of her heart. The way her blood coursed through her, slow with the drugs. The way her breath would catch - once in a while - in the back of her throat. I cradled her nut in my lap, stroking her hair, like some kind of nancy.

  I guess that’s what they call guilt then?

  Trapped in that little metal box, shaken side to side as it swerved and deafened by its growl, I could only tell we were nearing Portsmouth when we slowed: there was the sudden hiss and slap of the sea and the ghost wail of horns in the black.

  I was struck with the photo clear memory of striding through the London Docks with Ruby, my red-haired devil, at my side. The cacophony of sailors’ songs, goats bleating from ships’ holds and ropes splashing into the water, as we’d wound our way to my first kill. Then later, when we’d boarded the first ship I’d ever sailed in, on route for our Grand Tour. I’d been intoxicated with excitement for a life, which I’d hardly understood.

  That was before the darkness had begun to bite. Before I’d lost Ruby. When I still thought she’d always be mine alone, as I’d be hers. Yeah, when I’d been a lovesick fool and killing was still as innocent as only a clean death can be.

  Well, this was it then. One more glance at Susan’s bound body and I was up, hurling myself at the van’s back doors and slamming out into the bitter night, before I could think too much about what I was doing.

  I hit the road hard, grating my mush, palms and knees…tumbling over and over in a dusty mess. Why does it always hurt more than you remember?

  When I dragged myself up, I saw the van swerve away down towards the harbour. The lights of the City curved behind, as the ships rose and fell on the waves, like hulking whales in the shadows.

  Hobbling after the van, I forced myself to gain speed.

  Sod my fractured ankle. Sod everything but Aralt and screwing him as much as he had me, Susan, Alessandro - even Ruby. As much as he had you. Sod everything but getting all our lives back.

  It wasn’t the noblest battle speech but it got me to the dock wall.

  I crouched down and peered round. The van was stopped now in the quiet, by an ancient fishing trawler, which was miniature next to the giants boxing it in on either side.

  Then the door was flung open, and Kira was jumping out of the front. It had to be that bitch, didn’t it? It was nice to know Aralt kept the business in the family.

  When Kira marched round to the back, she threw a seabag over Susan. Then she lifted her, as if Susan was a light catch of the day, over her shoulder and tipped her into the boat. I flinched, imagining the bang as Susan landed.

  When Kira embarked, she started the shuddering engine. I crept down the slimy slope, leaping into the back of the trawler.

  See here’s the thing, I’m mostly a winging it kind of bloke. Yeah, that’s a surprise, right? I figured I had about a minute - if I was fluky - to get out of sight.

  I had a quick shufti, staggering as the boat swayed under the steep, salty swells. I dragged up a corner of a slippery, canary yellow tarpaulin, which by the stink of it must’ve been used for covering the fish because Christ - the smell. I buried my nose in my sleeve (well, beggars can’t be chooses). I dived underneath the tarpaulin, shrouding myself in the stench, as I wriggled lower.

  Then there was nothing but the chug, chug of the engine and the rocking creak of the trawler. Enough time to think about the unknown, which I was riding to as willing victim. Enough time to think about you.

  The intimate closeness in our silence. Sitting with our fingers so tight around each other’s you couldn’t tell where your hand stopped and mine started. No longer my Moon Girl - my girl - like I was yours. I tried not to think about the look in your peepers - cold but defeated - as you’d turned away from me on your doorstep that last time.

  I tried so hard not to think about that last time, until my brain near burst. And you know what?

  Lying there, where the dead and dying fish waited their turn to be sold and gutted, gave me enough time for the adrenaline to build, pulse and bubble through what was left of my weak blood. To rejuvenate every bleeding inch of me. I sparked with it; I could’ve lit whole continents.

  All right, so I was going to die. Probably. But I was alive again right now. And if I was about to go out a second time, then this was how I wanted to cop it: not like some wounded baby bird starving slowly. But bloody alive and kicking.

  I pushed the edge of the fishy tarpaulin up and squinted out. First at a square of sharp stars and the bright moon in the deep black. Then further, at the back of Kira’s nut and the pull of her pilot’s jacket, as she steered. I felt the boat jerk, when we slowed. I couldn’t see the seabag with Susan rugged in it: Kira must’ve stashed it somewhere near her feet.

  Then the metal side of a ship’s hull loomed out of the dark – Radio Komodo.

  This was bloody well it then.

  When Kira cut the engine, we bobbed closer, clanging against Radio Komodo.

  I heard the slither of a rope thrown over the side. Then I ducked down, as Kira stepped back through the boat and – splash – that must be the anchor. I risked another gander.

  Kira’s wiry form was half-way up the rope-ladder, with your cousin in the seabag gripped over her shoulder; if they pulled up the ladder after them, I’d be stuck impotently kicking my heels in the trawler, like a right berk.

  Bugger.

  I forced myself to hold back and not go charging up there for a good two minutes at least. It felt like I’d lived another bloody century in that short span. But the ladder was still just hanging there.

&nbs
p; I struggled out from under the tarpaulin, clambering along the lurching trawler in the cutting wind.

  I assessed the ladder suspiciously, as if it was a rattlesnake.

  I took a deep breath and started to climb. The rough rope dug into my shredded palms, as it swung and twisted, like a bleeding fairground ride.

  When I reached the deck, I hung low enough to suss out if I was likely to have my head blown off; jammie bugger that I was, no one was on guard. I guess they didn’t imagine anyone would try and board a radio pirate station manned by Blood Lifers, secret labs or not.

  Blood Lifers are arrogant wankers like that.

  I crouched, scuttling crab-like along the deck, even though there were no windows to avoid. We don’t like suntans, remember? I noticed there was only one small lifeboat, which was good news: it hinted there weren’t hordes of Blood Lifers aboard. If there had been, I’d have been snookered. There were probably only a couple of them working shifts. And Silverman, of course: I mustn’t forget that scumbag.

  There were two routes down - one aft and one stern - whichever the hell was which. Russian roulette. My type of odds. I chose one, edging down the steel steps, and there she was: Susan was slumped to the side of an empty cabin.

  Was that relief surging through me? Making me giddy as a bloody teenager? I had to get a grip on these new emotions. They were damaging my Blood Lifer image.

  Susan was untied and out of the seabag at least. She was still, however, lost somewhere in fairyland. After a quick examination, I couldn’t hold back a sigh, when I realised there were no fang marks on her throat, like the world’s most lethal love bite. They hadn’t had time to heal. I hoped.

  I’d wager you reckon all I cared about was my bloody plan?

  Clap-trap.

  That suckling conscience…or Soul…or whatever the hell it is, which boots me in the goolies when I screw up, that’s what was relieved that for once in either life I hadn’t gambled and lost. What made it burn deeper, was this time it’d been your cousin, who’d been the stake.

  So I stopped everything and took Susan out of there. I was done playing with her, like she was no more than an object, just as Kira had used her.

  What made Advance any different to Ruby’s wanker of a father and husband?

  I took Susan gently in my arms, carrying her up the steps. There was still no one on the deck, so I ducked to the lifeboat and hid Susan in the bottom of it. I struggled to release the boat down onto the heaving waves, listening for the soft splash as it landed. If I ever got out of here, I’d row Susan safely to the coast - as long as I wasn’t burned like a candle by the sun before I got there.

  If I didn’t escape from here..?

  I watched the lifeboat, as it started to float away, carried on the currents. Susan would simply have to take her chances, like the rest of us.

  Now it was time to see what Aralt and Silverman had been researching in their fascist experiments. Why they’d been fighting to change our natural place in the world - a lesson Ruby had beaten into me well enough over the years - by splitting our venom. Wasn’t that the venom’s very genius? Its predator’s perfection: paralyse the victim so they couldn’t escape and then explode the heart to hide the kill?

  I ducked down the steps again, this time noticing the shadowed stairs, which led deeper into the hold.

  See this is how I figure it, folks bury their nasties: underground, basements or holds… It’s the same with your subconscious. You stuff down everything dark, as deep as it’ll go. Those nightmares, which you can’t face when you’re awake? You dream them, rather than admit their reality. Of course that doesn’t make them any less real, but everyone likes to pretend. For First Lifers, that’s what the night’s for.

  So I reckoned whatever nasties Silverman had set up would be hidden in the hold.

  As I stole towards the stairs, I heard Kira and Silverman, deep in conversation, coming down the passageway. I threw myself down the stairs. It was shadowy, reeking of stringent chemicals and something else: First Lifers and blood…

  When my senses adjusted into night vision, I stumbled back, knocking over a bubbling flask on a long worktop, which instantly burnt through the wood in furious spits.

  Christ in heaven, what was this..?

  Vats of virulent chemicals lined the walls. And between them?

  Now this is the part, which I’ve always skirted over (even to myself), because I’m a soft git sometimes and I hide from the nasties of this world, the same as anyone.

  And you?

  You only got the candy floss version. I never wanted you to know what Blood Lifers are capable of imagining…planning…doing…

  You love me. Yet if I’d put the same image in your mind as I had, then maybe you wouldn’t have been able to see past it. Or see me. Just like now you can’t, lost in your long-ago nightmares. I’m still haunted and I’m a Blood Lifer. Maybe I should’ve trusted you. But I couldn’t risk it.

  So I’m telling you now, when I know it’s too late to make a difference either way. At least, however, the truth of it will be out, rather than eating me from the inside.

  Naked First Lifers lined the walls of the hold. They were both male and female but they were so shrunken, paled to ghosts, that it didn’t seem to matter which they were anymore. Feeding tubes looped them into place, in and out of their bodies, like bloody lacing; one to keep them alive and one to drain their blood from them in dark umbilical cords, out into a central vat. That was the smell: overpowering fresh blood. It made my body tremble with its call. The worst of it? They weren’t dead or even dying, like they should’ve been if they’d been bitten. Yet they weren’t alive either. Not fully.

  I stumbled closer, waving my hands in front of each of them in turn, in increasing agitation. I punched this one bloke hard in the gut, but there was no response. It was like they were all in a sodding coma.

  Repulsed, I collapsed back away from them.

  When my hand touched the worktop, I felt the sharp prick of a needle. Twisting round, I studied a rank of syringes, which were filled with this thick, transparent stuff: like saliva. Evidence. I nicked one, pocketing it.

  That’s when I finally got it: why Aralt was so hooked on dividing our venom.

  Our pure venom - here in these neat little syringes - could be used for its various properties. The part that paralysed had been injected into these poor sods. I’d wager there was also one somewhere for pure death. And who knew how Aralt was planning to use that? I shuddered at the thought.

  To Aralt, Blood Lifers weren’t perfectly evolved. Instead, our double whammy of paralysis and death was a flaw to be fixed.

  Aralt’s Blood Life hadn’t unleashed a connection to the earth and nature, red in tooth and nail, rather the scientist of death, which he’d been in First Life. He was set on improving what his election had granted him. The same as the First Lifers racing to lunar victory.

  Aralt planned to subjugate the world.

  I forced myself not to shiver, as I ran my fingers down a feeding tube, which was gushing warm nutrients and water into one First Lifer’s gut. Another tube glugged the waste away, as blood was sucked in a dark red line from jugular and wrists. Dead cold efficiency. No need for hunting or the kill. When this method was perfected and rolled out, we could feed by simply strolling to the larder. Advance would hold the patent to the distilled venom, making Aralt…anything he bleeding wanted.

  I trailed my fingers lightly over the First Lifer’s lips. I could feel the weak flutter of breath.

  It’d been a woman once, although hard to tell when she’d been shaved bald, and her dugs were shrivelled and painful to look at. She was the same age as you, I reckoned. I wondered if she had a bloke desperately searching for her: his bird, the one who held him in the quiet and laughed at the same moments in the dark of the flicks.

  This was what they’d been planning to reduce Susan to, purely because I’d dared to love you.

  All on me.

  Christ this conscience business
was enough to make a man bloody cry.

  And the worst of it? The image of a silent, deserted world, with no life but us Blood Lifers - us select few - who were deemed worthy to wander the streets. Streets that were now ours alone, whilst the lonely sun baked a world without humanity because First Lifers only existed in our harvested factories.

  Disgust isn’t the word, love.

  How I figure it, First Lifers and Blood Lifers are two sides of the same coin, even though you don’t know it. One can’t exist without the other. Dark to the light.

  I love you, how many times have I said that? Yet how I felt about this wasn’t about that. Or even about you.

  I loved (and realised I’d always loved, even in those crazy, wild days with Ruby), your First Lifer world: Billy Fury, my leather jacket, the Triton on a hard, fast road, Florence’s piazzas, as evening sets over Duomo’s terracotta dome, the aroma of spices, “I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet” and the exploding joy of Carnaby Street.

  All that dead and silent, so we could feast in comfort? That creativity, spirit and life vanished, and in its place zombies with tubes and blood on tap, like sodding beer? A Blood Lifer World imagined and dictated by Aralt?

  This new vision wasn’t progress. Eden. The next step. It wasn’t buggering evolution.

  It was the end of the world for both our species.

  ‘Sorry,’ I murmured, not knowing as I said it, if these shells could even hear me (but uncontrollably feeling the need to say it anyway), as I smashed the flasks and booted at the vats until they shattered and the chemicals bubbled out.

  I dodged back into the doorway. The First Lifers didn’t even flinch, as their feet melted to the bone. But I reckoned they could still feel the pain under the paralysis. They just couldn’t get out the screams.

  There’s always something worse than dying, and there’s always someone in First or Blood Life, who’ll find a way to inflict it.

  When I flicked my lighter, the flame jumped. For a moment, I was mesmerised. Then I bent down and lit the boiling flood.