Then I heard footsteps on the stairs but not a single pair: Aralt wasn’t alone. When he came strutting down, I saw Ruby magisterial on his arm, Alessandro scampering close behind and Donovan yapping at his heels.
‘It stopped mid-broadcast, man. Not cool,’ Donovan tried to grasp at Aralt, but Aralt was still heading down the stairs without slowing. ‘You gotta sort it.’
Yeah that was right, a couple more steps…
I tossed the fag away, rubbing my hands together.
‘What has befallen my dearest prince?’ Ruby was staring at me in surprise. She stopped, assessing the damage; I must’ve looked a bleeding mess - but then Ruby didn’t know the state of my adversaries.
I pressed my back against the door. I could see Alessandro’s pale face, as he cringed back against the wall, his hands instinctively clutched over his ears. Christ, if he started to rock…
I forced myself to breathe. ‘I know.’
‘Know what?’ Aralt jumped the last two steps, before swaggering towards me.
‘About Radio Komodo. And Silverman.’
Donovan was glancing between us. I couldn’t read his expression, but there was enough confusion in his peepers to make me wonder if he’d been played worse than I had. I hadn’t been betting on that. But Ruby? There were no surprises there. Her expression hadn’t changed - although of course she knew the truth when she shared a bed with her brother. I guess that was one thing Donovan couldn’t give Aralt.
I was part of one hell of a screwed up family.
‘Don’t hold out on me,’ Donovan sidled closer. ‘It’s dead air and--’
‘Shut up ya pile of nancy,’ Aralt’s gaze was intent on me, as he flicked my chest. ‘You’ve been fierce bold nosing into my business. What do you know?’
For the first time, I allowed myself to smile. This was it, when I brought Advance’s cardboard empire toppling, just like my life had been tumbled down. This nobody had teeth. ‘Everything.’ Aralt took one careful step back. ‘You wanna control the First Lifers. And for what? Blood on tap? Are we predators or businessmen?’
Donovan spun to his brother. ‘What’s he talking about?’
‘Not now.’
Donovan slammed Aralt against the wall, his fangs shooting out. ‘This was mine, you said. Promised. After everything, Advance was gonna be my baby. What have you fecking done?’
Aralt squirmed. Bloody hell, it was blinding to see that. ‘Nothing. It’s… You’re my brother.’
Donovan pushed himself off Aralt. ‘Am I now? Used to be.’
‘Don’t…’
‘I reckoned you already knew, ’ I said softly, not looking up at them, ‘seeing as Kira was on board. Wasn’t she your Night Terror, Donovan?’
Bugger, did that hit the mark.
‘You bastard,’ Aralt stared at me, as if a kicked puppy had sunk its teeth into his ankle.
‘Boom, boom, boom…’ I replied dispassionately.
Aralt’s jaw tensed, the muscles ticking. Before he could fly at me, however, I heard Donovan’s small question, which stopped him, ‘You used Kira?’’
‘You don’t understand. This was important--’
Donovan yanked his brother back by the lapels of his expensive suit; Aralt grimaced as it creased. ‘She’s my elected. Still you ordered her to keep secrets from me?’
‘I didn’t need to order.’
Donovan flinched. ‘We fought a war together, but now you’d have Kira tell your petty lies?’
‘Petty?’ Aralt flung his brother’s hands off him, shoving him back. ‘This is a war. Are you blind?’
Bewildered, Donovan stared at him. ‘Kira’s mine.’
‘Yours?’ Aralt snorted. ‘How could you satisfy a woman?’
Donovan stepped back in the silence, before stalking to the stairs. Ruby grabbed for the sleeve of his jacket, but he shook her off. He didn’t look round at Aralt again. ‘We stood side by side, even as our home burned and us with it. But whatever this is? You kept me in the dark. Like a stranger. Look, I’m gonna split before I have a total freak out and if I do…’ Donovan legged it up the stairs, pausing at the top in the shadows. ‘We’re not blood brothers anymore. And that’s on you.’
Then he was gone.
There was a long moment. Then Aralt dragged his fist back and slammed it into the wall. The plaster crumbled, but his knuckles were bloody; I hoped they were broken.
I smiled because an enemy’s pain is the most delicious type there is; anyone who pretends different is a liar. Aralt had lost his brother, the same as he’d made me lose you. I don’t normally go in for all that eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth stuff. But right then? It felt sodding smashing.
It felt slightly less smashing the next moment, when Aralt looked up from flexing his hand and caught my smile.
I read the murder in Aralt’s expression. He squared his shoulders, like the head of the pride once more, before he prowled towards me. As I figured it, this was bloody perfect.
Time for the heroics then.
I steadied myself, testing the handle and gripping its cold iron harder.
‘Pray let me correct Light’s behaviour. I’m sure he did not…’
Aralt didn’t even seem to have heard Ruby. And here’s the thing, when I glanced at her, there was still this sparkling defiance in her expression, as if I’d been a daft berk for ever thinking there’d have been a hint of apology for her scheming. Yet at the same time, there was also that glorious fire, which made me remember - in one flaming moment - every decade of cruel carnage and love.
And that was the moment Aralt swung for me.
I felt my lip split and the burst of my own blood on my tongue. I heard Alessandro slide to the floor and start to whine.
‘Who told you?’ Aralt’s voice was so soft it sliced with danger.
I shrugged.
Another belt, this time to the kidneys. I needed Aralt closer and more off balance. If I could wear him out through giving me a hiding, it wouldn’t be long…
‘How’d a wee gobshite like you..?’
‘Must’ve underestimated me, mate.’
That earned me a kick in the goolies. One more step and…
‘Me. It was me.’
Bollocks.
Alessandro was staring up at his Author with wide peepers, terror vibrating through him, until he quivered with it. Still he didn’t look away.
‘Shut up, Alessandro,’ I tried to grab at Aralt to distract him from Alessandro, but it was too late. The noble bugger had put himself in the firing line to save me. And there was nothing I could do about it.
‘You told him?’ Aralt asked shocked, as if he couldn’t compute that his tame little Blood Lifer could ever have an independent thought; my rebel nature had rubbed off on Alessandro, even after Aralt’s training. ‘You fecking told him?’
‘All this…was meant to be about Komodo you said…but it wasn’t. You lied.’
Lightning fast, Aralt hauled Alessandro’s small body up from the floor by the front of his vest, pinning him on his tiptoes. ‘That’s what grownups do when the babbies can’t be trusted.’ Aralt traced his hand over the neat line of Alessandro’s hair. ‘Who’s he to you? I’m your Author. I saved you.’
Alessandro’s simple reply nearly broke my bloody heart, ‘He’s my friend.’
‘You don’t even know what that means - an idiot like you.’ I could’ve flung myself on Aralt and ripped the tongue from his cruel mouth. If I hadn’t known I had to keep clinging onto that door handle, I’d have done just that and to hell with everything else. I wish I hadn’t seen the look in Alessandro’s peepers. Aralt glanced at Ruby, who was standing very still on the stairs. ‘Just because some of us,’ and then Aralt turned his attention to me, ‘don’t know how to deal with those, who they elect…’
It was the way Aralt smiled at me - this thin smile, like from one predator to another – which meant I knew…I bleeding knew…what he was going to do. But I couldn’t do anything about it fast enough. And Aral
t realised that too, which was the sodding point.
With one quick, efficient motion, Aralt snatched his silver fountain pen out of his pocket and rammed the entire length of it right through Alessandro’s chest cavity, skewering his heart.
‘Christ in heaven, no…’
Red stained out through Alessandro’s white shirt. Blood gurgled in his throat. He whimpered - just once. His peepers widened with startled pain, before they emptied, with what I tell myself is freedom, not simply a blankness because that’s what I need to keep going every time I remember that moment. In vivid detail.
All because of me.
Because I caught Alessandro up in my spy games, vendettas and vengeance. Now instead of me, he’d been the one doing the dying. And I couldn’t take it back…couldn’t ever take it back.
When Aralt let go of Alessandro, his body slid down like a broken doll, crimson trickling from the corner of his mouth.
How could you murder someone you’d elected, who was twinned to you by blood?
My friend.
The words swirled in my mind, heavier than any others. Neither in First or Blood Life had I ever had one of those before and Alessandro hadn’t either: sometimes it takes a loner to understand a loner.
But now Alessandro was gone.
Ruby was frozen, with an expression close to fear but more like the horror, which I remembered from when we’d edged, hand in hand, through the macabre La Specola, with its wax men flayed and gutted and our ape cousins stuffed on the other side of the glass.
That was when Aralt did something, which blew what tiny shreds remained of my reason, planning and thought to pieces: he wiped his hands together fastidiously, as if disgusted to have been dirtied by Alessandro’s blood.
Then the blood in my own ears was roaring and I was roaring too. Nothing existed but that moment. And that pain.
I was going to sodding kill the bastard.
I didn’t care if I went down with him because it was me, who got Alessandro done in. Just as I’d sacrificial offered myself up for slaughter at Erwood’s hands.
My choices. My decisions. And I bloody well knew it.
I hurled myself at Aralt, punching right at the throat. For a moment, he was caught off balance, struggling to breathe.
Shocked, Aralt stared at me but then he recovered, throwing me round and jabbing me in the ribs. I felt them break: one, two, three… I gritted my teeth, fighting through the agony. In the red blur of rage, nothing mattered anymore. Aralt grabbed hold of my arm, twisting it with a brawler’s dirty skill; he threw inverted punches with his palm on the weak underside, where the veins and arteries were. The wanker intended to enjoy this, he was making that clear.
I could feel Ruby’s hands, grasping down my back and trying to drag me away from her brother. I could see her pulling at Aralt too, but he wasn’t planning to give up his prize that easily.
‘Stop this madness.’ Ruby’s hair was soft against my mug, as she pressed herself between us. ‘Both of you desist. You men. Please, we can…’
That’s when Aralt hit her, backhanding Ruby hard enough to knock her away from us against the wall.
I managed to turn my nut to look at her, but Ruby was staring down at the ground; her cheek was red.
When had Ruby ever looked down?
When I turned back, Aralt noticed my expression and the wanker laughed.
And that laugh? That was the moment. The one when reason returned to me. I was ready.
I might never be a bleeding hero but I could keep my promises. Christ I hoped Alessandro was free now but it was time I freed you, Susan, Ruby and sod it, myself as well.
I would shut down for good that vision of a future world of factory blood without joy or life. And yeah, to hell with it, pay Aralt back for every belting and taunt, for Alessandro’s blood on his hands and for every tear you’d shed.
I let the force of Aralt’s next clout into my bruised ribs slam me back against the front doors because then the handle was in my hand again. When Aralt advanced on me for the next swing, I hooked my other arm around his waist, dragging him in close. As he decked me across the chin, I turned the handle, letting the force of the blow knock us both out into the sunlight.
I heard Ruby’s shocked scream and then saw Aralt scramble for the building’s safety. But I linked my arms tighter around the tosser’s waist, as I grappled him further into the light, away from the line of shadow cast by the oaks along the pavement.
My retinas were already scorched; it was too bright. A world aflame. I could feel my skin crisping. I held Aralt on top of me, like a shield.
Aralt’s howls were deafening. He was ripping at my hands to free himself but he was jerky in his agony and blinded.
Caught off guard, Aralt stumbled. I hurled him far out into the street under the hot sun and this world he’d thirsted to conquer – let him have it.
I staggered back under the shade of the oaks. Aralt was shrieking and giving these pathetic little yelps. His eyeballs were scorched out of their sockets; he was grasping the air with his fingers, as if he could somehow find a way out of the darkness. Then he collapsed to his knees, as the skin melted from his body, like a candle’s wax. The same as the anatomical man in Florence, with his inner workings on display bloody.
Finally Aralt was nothing but a shuddering mess. There wasn’t even that pitiful yelping anymore because his tongue was puddled too. There was nothing but a pool of blood left, like that vast vat in the hold of Radio Komodo, sucking the life from comatose First Lifers. The same stink too.
It’s not often you see your own future so vividly illustrated right in front of you.
Then there was no time for thought because I was melting too: there’s only so much a few branches can do against a savage sun. The first scream was wrenched from my reluctant throat.
I told you that you never forget the stench of melted skin fused to leather.
I staggered back through the oak’s shade to Advance’s entrance, banging against the doors. But they wouldn’t open. I wrenched on the handle, becoming increasingly frantic, when I realised Ruby had locked me out to face the sun with her brother. Choices and decisions, you see?
It seemed Ruby had made hers.
Ruby stepped closer to the darkened door. She placed her hand to the glass. As our eyes met, I slowly raised my seared palm to hers.
That’s when I knew there was no way out of it. I was going to cop it. Soon I’d be no more than a puddle in the sun too. You know what? It was better to be the flame, which burns out bright and fast because wasn’t that how I’d always lived?
I turned and fought to hold onto enough of myself just for the final few moments, so I’d go out as me; I didn’t want to die like Aralt had - reduced to animalistic terror. I swaggered towards the middle of the empty street, right under the rays of the sun and that pool of congealing blood.
It was agony - a pure and blinding burn - but I wasn’t het up. I was calm. It wasn’t as if everything was tickety-boo, but rather I was filled with this sense of completion.
With my first death, I’d botched the whole idealistic bollocks, leaving everything behind me in the same bloody mess. I’d lost my life in a stupid, meaningless way. Of course that’s the way it goes down for many people. When you’re dead, however, it’s too late to obsess over it. But if you’re elected into Blood Life? You try having centuries of something like that weighing on you. The problem for me, however, was it wasn’t a one off. I’d screwed up in the same way regular as clockwork.
This time, however, I’d taken Advance down with me. I’d saved the world. And the biggest surprise of all was I actually gave a damn.
So what if I fried? I’d had a good innings and I’d got to see the sun for the first time in over a hundred years. So I stood there, with my arms out and my peepers turned towards the flaming face of the sun.
And I waited to be burned alive.
See, I still didn’t know you well enough, did I? Because then there you were, charging ar
ound the corner in your red Mini Cooper. You threw open the side door and then grabbed me by the jacket, dragging me inside.
After everything, it turns out it was you doing the saving.
You didn’t need rescuing. I did.
I don’t know what you must’ve thought about the bloody thrashed state of me, the way I huddled instantly under my jacket away from the light, or dragged the picnic rug off the floor and over my nut for protection. You’ve never told me.
You didn’t say anything at all, you simply drove.
It was only when we were out of central London, somewhere north, when city had transformed to suburbs and then fields, hedges and the ridges of countryside, that you pulled off into a rutted lane and turned to me.
That’s when I dared to shift my agonised body enough to peer out from my shielding (everything still blurry through my damaged peepers) and realised your stuffed suitcases were crammed onto the backseats: your whole life packed up because you’d known that I’d need you…yet also it’d mean you couldn’t go back. Because of me.
At last I built up the bottle to break the final decree - the big one: I told you what I was.
I tore up the rule book into confetti pieces because I was never going to leave you again, which meant you had to know the truth. I trusted you with my secret. And my life.
You might’ve run from me. Called me monster. Kicked me out there and then to melt on the roadside. Yet if we were to spend our lives together, there could be no more masks.
Afterwards, I braced myself, my knuckles white around the rug. I had no right to expect anything but rejection.
The strange thing was, you didn’t do any of those things. You merely nodded with a type of detached curiosity, like it was only one more freakish characteristic to add to my long list.
I managed to smile at you tentatively. You looked cute in your sexy scarf, with your new Twiggy cut, which I now appreciated lit up your peepers and lengthened your beautiful neck. ‘Have I told you that’s a blinding hair do?’
At last you grinned, stroking your bare neck, as if surprised by the feel of it. ‘Fancied a change.’
Then you leant over and kissed me dead gentle on my tender lips.
Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) Page 21
