Your father sprawled there - his skull caved in - scarlet seeping onto the stone flags.
In my hunger, all I could think about was the waste, not of life but of sodding blood. If you hadn’t been in the room, I’d have scrabbled on all fours licking it up. The hunger was now at such a pitch, it was like I’d shrapnel in my guts.
You didn’t scream, cry or even blink. You simply stood there, hand flexing around the poker. Then you said, in this strange, flat voice, ‘We need a spade.’
You’ve always been practical like that.
At last, something I could do for you, which few other blokes would’ve understood or had the balls to stand shoulder by shoulder with you on.
Finally, you needed me.
In this new world, I’d botched every attempt to demonstrate my love, whether with jewellery or words: a freak in your world. But this? Burying the father, who you’d murdered, in order to save you the pain of doing it yourself?
That was right down my alley.
I waited until night was darkest, before carrying your father’s heavy weight out onto the moors, through the fluffy white tufts of cotton grasses, to damper ground. I buried him deep, where the bogs sucked him deeper, and he’d never be found. One less nightmare to haunt you. Or so I’d thought. Now, however, when I see you rocking and wailing at things, which aren’t there..?
Maybe nothing can be buried that easily.
Bleeding frozen, I darted back through the bracken and sharp patches of bramble, which tore at me in the black. I was all het up, not bothering how scratched I became. I was more rent inside, not knowing what I’d find when I got back. Because to a First Lifer killing..? It’s no predatory necessity (like it is to us Blood Lifers), as natural as breathing. I remembered the taste of enough humanity to know it wasn’t pukka to knock off your old man. Dealing with the corpse was only the business end.
When I climbed the stairs of the farmhouse, however, I found you unpacking your suitcase in what must’ve been your old room: I could tell by the glamorous posters of The Shirelles, who glimmered in gauzy mauve gowns and clippings of the The Shangri-Las. Dresses, boots, bags, make-up and false hair were spread out like a shop, whilst you were humming, cross-legged in the midst of it all, as you dragged out another piece of your life.
You grinned up at me.
I so hadn’t bloody expected this, that I stopped short.
‘All right?’ You asked.
I nodded. ‘Sorted.’
You jumped up, pulling me further into the room.
I’d done something right at last; it burnt me hot inside.
I’ll tell you now, I’d never have guessed this is how First Lifers courted today. Sod conventions, rules and petty boxed boundaries.
I don’t reckon you’d ever have been content with another First Lifer. You were always too close to Blood Life, even though you never knew it.
‘Look what I found.’ You pushed me towards a dusty Dansette record player, which was buried under a pile of old records. ‘It was my mother’s. We’d listen to…everything. You left something at mine. I packed it because…’
You glanced at me with a mixture of shy embarrassment and the same expression, which a kid wears when it’s about to produce a present. You rummaged in your suitcase, emerging with my Billy Fury and THE FOUR JAYS LP. I was flooded with an irrational joy because I told you what it’s like when the only things you possess are the clothes on your back and a motorbike.
‘Nice one!’ I swung you round in my arms: you were a blur of blue peepers and laughter. I never wanted to let go. ‘Now for the first time in too bloody long, I’m gonna dance.’
When I placed the needle down, the vinyl crackled to life, and there was the rhythm, familiar as my own heartbeat, along with that fragile raw voice.
I clasped you round the waist, curling so close that our bodies and breaths were one; our cheeks touched.
Then we danced. Yeah, we bloody danced.
15
Lemon-scented fern – I spread the fronds in a vase by your bed this morning. You know, the one you haggled for, in the mountain village in Beirut, back in 1971? I picked the fern last night on my wanderings. I reckoned then you could at least smell it, even though now you haven’t the strength to turn your nut to see.
I think you can still smell... I wish you could tell me. I’ve heard it said, however, that it’s the last sense to go, when we fade. Ghosted. When you do, you’ll remember those nights we’d lie cocooned in the lemon aroma, staring at the map of the sky and plotting our lives. When everything was still open to us, and we seemed to have such a long time together…
The snows are melted now.
That daft bint Wednesday says it’s officially spring because the flowers are pushing their heads up to the sun. It is warmer. The track’s not so bleeding impassable; the butcher’s getting the piss poor pigs’ blood through more easily, so I won’t have to get munchey on my tosser list, you’ll be pleased to know: Wednesday’s safe a little longer. I don’t need the blankets anymore down in my hidey-hole in the garage either. I remember when you were always fussing over that.
It’s been a long time, however, since anyone’s fussed over me. I’ll have to get used to that, won’t I?
And you? Where are you? Every time I look at you in that white bed I…
Don’t go thinking I’m some kind of nancy boy, but I’ve taken to sleeping with your ivory scarf during the day when we’re apart, curling it close to my cheek, so I can breathe in your scent.
Wednesday pushed more leaflets under my nose again yesterday. This time there was a new one: Hospice, this one read. Then she patted me on the shoulder, giving this little, sympathetic smile, which on her looked plain wrong.
Before you get pissed, you can cool it because the leaflets are binned. Never leave you, right? I made that promise. And I meant it. I won’t ever break it again.
Not after what you gave up for me. Not after what you lost. And not when you saved me.
I know I’m losing you. But you’ll never lose me.
MARCH 1970 YORKSHIRE
I’ve always needed something to drive the thrill, buzz and the danger: to dive through the roaring fire.
What? You reckon I was castrated because I fell in love with a First Lifer? My bollocks sliced off neat? That the world sang quieter, my skin didn’t tingle like I was ready to combust, or the hunger pulsed less fiercely?
Don’t flatter yourself.
Love might have led me by the dick but it didn’t control anything else.
Loving doesn’t change who you are, only what you choose to do. I came to discover that. Transformation isn’t fairy-dust quick. This is no Hollywood namby-pamby fairy-tale.
I struggled, every minute of every day, trapped in that farmhouse. Strike that, every sodding second. I was a predator, who caged myself for you. But I was still a predator. No matter the reasons behind my blood abstention, the impulses and throbbing urges never quietened and the cost didn’t lessen. You never asked me how I managed it: maybe not knowing was the only way you could let yourself love me back.
I found these systems of caves, which were dark and cold, especially in high winds.
Before I’d discovered them, I’d spend nights booting the energy out of me at the Twelve Apostles: the remains of a ring of engraved stones on the east of the moors. The stones had fallen amongst the heather; I reckon they were once used for observing the moon. It made me feel closer to the night, jumping from stone to stone, kicking against the millstone grit, cracking my toes and howling at the black. Until you got cross at the state, in which I’d come home.
Then I’d hike all the way to the moor’s precipitous north edge, on the gritstone lip, staring out at the tiny lights of Ilkley and Lower Wharfedale, like they were sodding Jerusalem because we were so remote and lonely.
You never seemed to notice. After all, this is where you’d grown up. This was home.
Me? I’d been birthed in the shadow of London. And after my second birth, I’d roa
med the delights of the world’s greatest cities. I’d known remote but that had been like a penance, after the horrors of the Great War.
Then, of course, you had the day and the other First Lifers, who inhabited it.
You’d told folks your father had gone to London to stay with your cousin and they’d believed you.
In fact Susan was now safely lodging with her mates in Manchester and was the only soul you wrote to, whilst your father rotted under the dark earth. Those were more innocent, less suspicious times.
Bollocks - people just kept their dirty secrets and lives to themselves because if they went digging in someone else’s, then maybe someone would go digging in theirs.
The problem was we hadn’t got the balance right. It wasn’t easy, when only one of us was nocturnal and had been ripped from the Blood Lifer world. Two cultures - day and night - and somehow we were trying to force them together.
It wasn’t simply a matter of blood. It was much more basic. Biological. I wanted to claw at the world and tear it to shreds. Yet I couldn’t say a word to you because how would you’ve looked at me then?
Even free from Ruby, the twins, Advance and every other Blood Lifer, I couldn’t be free from myself. There was no place for me in the First Lifer world. No role or fulfilment. I was still one of the Lost. I itched with the desperation for excitement. Stimulation. Something…
Which is why I was so bloody relieved when I discovered those caves. Then it was like every night I found a new challenge to satisfy the Blood Lifer I am.
At first, I climbed by hand alone, feeling for footholds and grips… Left, then right… I worked out routes dead quick as I hung there, fingers aching and biceps stretching. My fear of heights transmuted to thrill. The adrenaline rush, when I nearly wasn’t able to reach far enough and I felt myself slipping…before finally making it, was intoxicating. The next time I’d find a harder route, go higher and further.
I soon became more adventurous.
I sent you out with a shopping list, which you gawped at, like I’d lost my mind. It took you weeks to find everything from specialist places, as I grew increasingly impatient and took greater risks by hand. I wanted to climb higher and higher, deeper and deeper into the caves.
You laid out the equipment on our bed (yeah, it was our bed now, and it was blinding we were calling it that): sharp metal pitons, hammers to drive the piton spikes into cracks in the rock, carabiners to attach to the rings and climbing ropes.
You were suddenly all questions, bristling with excitement, as you threaded each one in turn through your fingers, like they were part of some type of elaborate foreplay. That shut me up for a moment because it got me imagining. You stopped, staring at me hopefully.
I realised you wanted to share this secret thrill of the night with me.
I don’t reckon you’ve ever understood what it meant that you didn’t want to teach or mould me. Instead you were happy to share in something, which blazed me with passion. I hadn’t seen it before in you and no one had shown it to me, in either First or Blood Life.
That’s when I truly got what you meant by wanting us both to be free together.
The problem was that the moors weren’t safe at night for you. All right then, safe enough for our little excursions together and nookie in the heather. But not to cross the whole thing, when you didn’t have my nocturnal vision. That’s why we worked out this trick, which became our treat to ourselves, where the caves transformed into our personal, night-time playground.
I’d get there just before dawn, descending deep enough that I wouldn’t melt. Then I’d spend the day setting up, before I’’d settle back and zonk out. I’d surprise the occasional climber, who’d shake me awake with comic urgency, terrified I’d fallen. It was always fun to see their different responses, when I’d give them the diver’s signal for A-ok and then say cheers, as I’d settle back for a kip.
When the sun had set, and the last of the climbers had found their way out of the caves, you’d drive down the road up to the quarry. You’d wait until you were alone, before you’d tool up: ropes looped over your shoulder and a helmet with a lamp on your nut.
It wasn’t long before you were as good…buggering hell, all right…a better climber than me.
We pushed onto harder routes, hammering pitons into new seams. We supported each other when it became tough. Shagged each other on the damp cave floors when we got too turned on.
Funny the burst of extra courage a bloke gets when his bird’s watching him. It’s even greater when his bird’s the one right behind him, shadowing his every move. I wasn’t going to back down from a cave wall. And that was the buzz. I was never closer to life, than when I was touching the face of death.
One night, we’d just descended from a bugger of a climb, which had been as exhilarating as hell.
You wrapped your arms tight around me, shivering in the night’s cold at the cave’s entrance. Then you snogged me hard and long, before drawing back. ‘Ready to go? I’m fair starved.’
I shook my nut. ‘I want one more shot at it.’ I ran my finger down your cheek. ‘Eat and get warm.’
You smiled. ‘Don’t forget the dawn.’
That’d become your singsong catchphrase every night, like I could ever bloody well forget the searing heat of the boiling sun. Yet since I’d had to tell you what’d happened to Aralt… Only under duress, mind you. You’d forced it out of me, whilst I was still smoking in a scorched state on the seat of your car.
Anyway, how I figure it, you deserved the truth, since you were the one, who’d managed to scrub the melted skin from my leather jacket.
It would have done me in to lose that coat.
Well, you’d been anxious since then, every time the sun first started to dye the horizon with light. Look, I don’t blame you. What happened was enough to give me sodding pause. So you said, don’ t forget the dawn. And I loved you even more for it.
I watched you back out of the quarry in a trail of dust, before I ducked down into the labyrinth of caverns.
I’d taken my first grip on the rock face, when I knew something was wrong.
That smell - her smell.
You never forget the call to blood. But it was too late. Even though every muscle tensed, as I swung my shoulders, the rock still connected with my temple, hard enough to force me stumbling to my knees.
Black crashed over me, like a curtain swishing shut at the flicks. Show over.
As my peepers closed, I saw the sweep of red silk.
At last my peepers fluttered open again, blurred and confused.
Christ did my head hurt.
Then panic, twisting into fear, because my wrists and ankles were bound tightly with my own climbing ropes.
As I struggled, my skin crawled with cold and the dawning realisation howled through my muddled brain that I was starkers, stretched across a rock in the caves, like a sacrificial offering.
Bollocks.
I thrashed from side to side wildly – hollering - but the ropes only bit deeper. I could feel the dull, heavy throb of bruises and the sticky trickle of blood.
‘Prithee peace. Be still,’ Ruby bent over me, her red hair stroking my exposed skin. Her pendant rubbed against my lips, as if expecting a deferential kiss. ‘Your brazen-faced First Lifer has gone. We are alone.’
‘Why?’ I tried to slow my heart and remember I was the predator and not the prey.
But this was Ruby: my Author, muse… Sod it, not my liberator. She’d never been that. But habits bred over a century are difficult to break.
Ruby slapped me hard across the mush; her nails raked my flesh. ‘Why? You traitorous wretch. You murdered my brother.’
‘He murdered Alessandro. He was gonna murder the world.’
When Ruby drew back, I saw the slightest shard of doubt in her. ‘We were going to build a new one.’
‘You mean Aralt was? One in his own image?’
‘He was a Plantagenet. A slave like you will not speak of him. Not when you l
eft me for a First Lifer bawd.’
Ruby was wrapping a rag around a thick stick, dipping it in something, which stank of…paraffin.
Ruby didn’t look up at me but her hands were shaking. ‘Plantagenet was a bastard son, with no family in a time when that was shameful indeed. When his Author, one of the Magnificoes, elected him, all he wanted was to create a family. A family, which would be his legacy and blot out that beginning. His Author was…foolish, like you. He believed in a time of intolerance that some First Lifers could be trusted. Instead, they mistook him to be the devil. He could have saved himself but to hide the existence of Plantagenet and his family, he let himself burn.’ Ruby turned to me: her peepers were hollows. ‘We watched him scream and did nothing, as he blackened to ash. We are not one of us safe in this First Lifer world. Pray, do you believe they would willingly share it with us? Love you, if they knew what you are…and what you’d truly done?’ I shifted my gaze away from Ruby. This is what I hadn’t allowed myself to think. Couldn’t think. ‘As we hid in the shadows, watching the flames dance, the lesson seeded well.’ Ruby paced closer, holding up my gold lighter in her other hand. Then she smiled. As she flicked the lighter and it sparked, I twigged what she was planning. Christ in heaven, those are the moments you wish you were still in the dark. Ruby dipped the paraffin into the flame. The torch roared to life, casting grotesque shadows. I strained against the ropes, but they only cut my skin. Again. ‘I could smell you,’ Ruby trailed her hand down the length of me, caressing the inside of my thighs and then my tackle. She painted spirals on my chest with her nails. ‘I could taste your blood calling.’
‘And what was it saying?’ I trapped Ruby’s gaze with mine. ‘Sod off?’
Ruby’s hand stopped mid-pattern. Then I was howling with pain, unable to move away - held down by the ropes – and absorbing every ounce of agony, as Ruby shoved the torch against my naked gut. At last she pulled away, leaving my skin seared and blistered.
Right, so the bitch intended to cook me slowly.
Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) Page 23
