Blood Renegades (Rebel Vampires Book 3)
Page 1
Table of Contents
TITLE
COPYRIGHT
INQUIRY TITLE
NIGHT 1
NIGHT 2
NIGHT 3
NIGHT 4
NIGHT 5
NIGHT 6
NIGHT 7
NIGHT 8
NIGHT 9
NIGHT 10
NIGHT 11
NIGHT 12
NIGHT 13
NIGHT 14
REBEL WEREWOLVES 1: MOON BROKEN
DID YOU LIKE THIS BOOK?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DISCOVER ROSEMARY'S WRITING
ONE LAST THING
Contents
TITLE
COPYRIGHT
INQUIRY TITLE
NIGHT 1
NIGHT 2
NIGHT 3
NIGHT 4
NIGHT 5
NIGHT 6
NIGHT 7
NIGHT 8
NIGHT 9
NIGHT 10
NIGHT 11
NIGHT 12
NIGHT 13
NIGHT 14
REBEL WEREWOLVES 1: MOON BROKEN
DID YOU LIKE THIS BOOK?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DISCOVER ROSEMARY'S WRITING
ONE LAST THING
BLOOD RENEGADES
ROSEMARY A JOHNS
They twirled each other round, as they danced out into the courtyard garden, like I’d once danced with Ruby in the carnage and the flames - a kid let loose in the world. No conscience or battle for redemption. Nothing forcing me to grow up and face an adult world beyond my own will, wants and delights.
Together? A fanatical Magnificoe and his wicked witch?
The First Lifers didn’t stand a chance.
FANTASY REBEL
Copyright © 2017 Rosemary A Johns
First Edition 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters, places and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.
Copy design by JD Smith
Fantasy Rebel Limited
rosemaryajohns.com
THE LIGHT INQUIRY
NIGHT 1
Betrayal. Death. Hope. Isn’t that how all truly great stories start?
I don’t know if anyone will hear it. Governments silence their critics. Censor. Detain. Execute.
Bollocks to them.
The Blood Life Council’s atrocities and war crimes--
Mr Blickle, please note: we are not at war.
Yet. We’re not at war – yet. And my name is Light.
Very well, Light. We’re not holding this inquiry, however, to debate the nature of the Council’s actions. Rather those of your terrorist group.
We prefer ‘freedom fighters’, sweetheart.
And I prefer to be called Liberty.
Having a laugh, aren’t you?
You don’t think Light has a touch of irony to it?
All right, Liberty, but I delivered my band of merry misfits out of slavery – one you wankers sold us into. So labels..? They don’t figure.
They never do.
Your band of misfits does have a name?
Yeah, it’s called a family.
Captain told me you were cute. Renegades. As you know, we’re well aware what you call yourselves. You paint it bloody for us to find.
Look, you want me to bear witness? I’ll bleeding bear witness. I’m a prisoner here anyway with a stake pointy-like at my heart and I’m all about survival. Just don’t figure on liking what you hear.
No one does when it’s the flayed truth.
You want to be ready don’t you? You know what’s coming in less than two weeks?
Your trial.
Kangaroo court more like.
Closed court. Nothing’s been decided. Yet. It rests on your testimony.
Then where’s my solicitor?
You’re a terrorist - you’ve forsaken your rights, as you have your own species.
And the jury?
The material’s too sensitive--
Embarrassing. The word you’re grasping for, sweetheart, is embarrassing. For you and the rest of the Blood Life Council. So here’s a question--
I ask the questions, Mr Blickle.
Bit of respect here: dead man talking. So who’s the judge?
It won’t help you to know…
It’s Captain, right? I’ll take your awkward silence as a yes.
Bugger.
So let’s say Captain doesn’t like what I have to say – and he won’t – what then? What happens in two weeks? Slap on the wrist? Trip to the naughty step? Bare bottom spanking across his lap until I bawl? Or..?
Execution. By fire. Most likely.
Figured. Thirteen more nights until I go up Mr Bonfire for you nice people then.
You don’t know--
Don’t play games. Not about this.
That’s outside my remit; I’m only here in the council offices with you to take your statement.
It must be nice to fit everything into neat little boxes. Then go home happy each dawn with no dirt on your pretty hands because all you’ve touched is paperwork.
Hitler’s lawyers were good at that too.
If I’m going out in flames, high in their glory, then Christ in heaven will you get my witness: one you’ll never forget.
Even though I may only have two weeks to live, it’s a truth I’ll remember until my second death.
Sod it; bring on the fire and ash.
But before all that dramatic buggery…I’d kill for an e-cig.
When I was hauled in here, like catching your most wanted had sun maddened you into a spot of desperate slap and tickle with your new toy, some bureaucratic bird snatched my e-cig; she also managed to get in a good grab and grope. How many of you pervs does it take to do a strip search?
Perhaps you’re just popular.
I’ve been called many things over the last 150 years but never that.
I tried going nicotine cold turkey once; I don’t recommend it. So unless you want one pissed off Blood Lifer, do me a favour and--
Why should I do you a favour?
Seriously? You’re pointing at a ‘No Smoking’ sign?
We’re Blood Lifers – glory of the electrifying, sublime, beat of the night and burn of the endless hunt – yet you’re following No Smoking rules?
Wait, sorry… I’m in the greedy clutches of the Blood Life Council. Pale ghosts of Westminster. I forgot who I was talking to for a moment. What do you kids, only decades old to this dark evolution, know of real Blood Life?
I know you’re not permitted to smoke.
Sodding hell…please?
You almost sound desperate. Intriguing: for a brutal terrorist leader.
We could negotiate.
Haggling with the Devil never ends well.
It does for the Devil.
And which of us is that then?
You want your nicotine hit; I want to impress my superiors.
An inquiry into the leader of the ruthless Renegades: a terrorist organization fanatically dedicated to eradicating human slavers, thereby endangering our secret world.
That’s the remit.
<
br /> Yet I know I could provide answers to questions the rest of the Council don’t even understand they need to know.
This is more important – bigger – than anything they can conceive. But I do.
So I want one truly personal memory every day of the trial. Your secrets. Ones you’ve never told anybody. Then I may allow your treats.
Memory? You want to violate my mind as well?
That’s the deal. Or we could just get on with it. You don’t need to smoke.
I abs-bloody-loutely do.
Right, I’ll bite. One secret a day. Something I’ve never told anyone. But I want something else thrown in: vintage ‘60s motorcycle jacket with gold ace of spades on the back. It's mine, and you wankers took it.
Cold are you?
That coat? It’s been through the bloody wars with me, and I’ve been through the bloody wars to get it back.
What’s it worth? One memory – one secret - for one coat.
A sensory deprivation hood is a cracking piece of kit.
Sight, sound, smell. Taste and touch. Wiped out.
Blackness. Silence. Nothingness.
As if you don’t exist, or the universe doesn’t.
All that remains is the howling in your mind.
I was adrift in the darkness. Giving these shallow, panted gasps. No gag this time, so small blessings.
I could only smell the suffocating stink of leather. Only feel the freeze of the cellar floorboards underneath my shivering skin. Everything was narrowed down – focused – onto the few senses I had left: the strain in my shoulders, as my hands were shackled behind me and the furious beat, beat, beat of my heart.
My blood called to me, whispering predator in every pulse, harsh behind my eyelids.
I was lost, however, in the black.
Soon I didn’t even feel the pain…cold…floor. My shoulders weren’t mine because I wasn’t sodding me.
As I said: a sensory deprivation hood is a cracking piece of kit…if you want to break a Blood Lifer, and the First Lifers of the Blood Club wanted us as their pretty playthings all in a row.
The specters of the dead rose before me in comfort: my two human sisters, Nora and Polly beneath our willow tree, my Blood Lifer family and first mate Alessandro, smiling up from a chess match waged against himself. And Kathy: my gorgeous Moon Girl.
Each of them was erased, however, as fast as they were conjured, as if my brain was shutting down.
Loss. Loss. Loss.
Each one abandoned me. Alone in the dark at the end. Because we always bloody are.
Alone in the dirt.
And it was my own wankering fault.
I was still playing the rebel, you see. Because there’s no play about it.
You’re a born a rebel; you die a rebel.
It’s just that moment was looming closer than I’d hoped.
‘Prostrate.’ Tap, tap, tap. I’d risked a quick glance from underneath my eyelashes at Sir; he’d been tapping the red-and-black hide riding crop impatiently against his grey-suited trouser leg. A little furrow had been between his plucked brows. ‘Prostrate, shadow.’
I’d known that one: drop to the floor on my stomach in front of his bloody Nibbs, and then turn my nut to place my cheek against his black Oxford shoe. If Sir was in the mood? It gave him a stiffy if I also kissed it; it didn’t matter that I was never in the mood.
I’d stayed in kneel, however, even straightening my shoulders.
It’s hard to look dignified when you’re starkers and on your knees before a bloke in a suit, but I like to reckon I pulled it off.
Yeah, deluded prat here.
That shred of Light not yet swallowed into shadow hadn’t let me prostrate myself. Not to Mr Poncey Corporate. Not again. I wasn’t a trained monkey: even if I performed like one.
Pride: it’ll catch you by the balls every time.
Sir had pushed his black framed glasses further up his nose. He’d studied me in disturbing silence. Then the tongue of his riding crop had licked out, welting my right cheek.
I’d yelped.
‘Look you, my pretty leech, don’t start and make trouble,’ a sick caricature of a smile had tugged up just one side of Sir’s mouth, ‘or maybe you’re the sort of bitch as likes to make trouble, isn’t it? Shall we play a game? See if you’re a true hero or just a worthless little leech?’
I’d knelt in silence.
I’m not that much of a nitwit: Sir’s games were never going to end well for yours truly.
Sir’s smile had snarled into a frown. He’d reached behind him excruciatingly slowly.
I’d tensed, my cheek still stinging from the crop’s kiss.
That’s when Sir had pulled out something, which had been tucked into the waistband of his suit trousers. It’d been folded in half, so I hadn’t been leery of it until…the smell.
That stink of leather.
And before I’d known it? I’d been bawling out my nancy heart. ‘Please, Sir, I’m sorry Sir…’
‘Don’t. Move.’
Intense citrus underlined with cedarwood – Sir’s aftershave – had choked me, as he’d leant closer.
Closer.
And…
I’d shuddered but I hadn’t legged it like every instinct shrieked. Fight had already been stolen from me in the fight or flight equation.
Then everything had gone dark.
I don’t know how long I was lost in the dark. Time has no meaning in that torture. Our blinding senses are our strength but used against us they become our weakness.
An hour? Day?
In that panicked, gasping void, I lay curled on the freezing floorboards and I shook.
All right, so I was a pillock to nark off the human, who had the power to steal the light.
Yet such extreme punishment, over such minor rebellion..?
We’d been playing cat and mouse for weeks; it’s not like I had bugger else to do: starkers and chained in a bricked up cell. A thrashing here, a day or two of starvation there. Adrenaline drenched interludes, in between days of lying on my back counting the blossoming demonic hordes of spores; angelic warriors clashed against them, when I counted the splinters in my fingertips.
Numbers are the only mates who’ve never deserted or betrayed me.
The game? Somehow it’d changed, and I’d been caught bloody in the cat’s jaws.
Problem was: I hadn’t reckoned I was the mouse.
White needles pricked my retinas. I screamed, as the hood was wrenched off. I screwed up my peepers against the sudden light; tears tracked from their corners.
I let out a sob of relief; I wasn’t lost anymore.
Sir had found me.
Rich mould, thick dust and ancient floorboards; I could smell again in a volcanic rushing overload. It was citrus, however, which was invading every bleeding inch of me. Through my bleary peepers I could see a dark shadow.
Sir was crouching down.
I curled closer around myself but I couldn’t save myself: I knew it. Even in the midst of our dance, I’d never forgotten that.
I could feel again: my aching shoulders and numb legs. My body was my own once more.
That was the illusion, however, because I was property.
Possessed by Sir.
Then Sir was on me; he crouched over me, one arm cradling my thin spine, whilst the heavy weight of his legs held me down. He stroked my cheek with his manicured fingers, lightly tracing where the red welt had paled to pink. If I’d fed? It would have become as invisible as I now was to the world outside, locked here in Abona House.
Sir gently lifted my chin. I forced myself to meet his hard gaze. I was shocked to see it suddenly tender. ‘You don’t know nothing, you don’t. How things work in here. On the Estate. Why I have to…’ Sir tightened his grip; I gasped. ‘Now, little leech, you tell me which bitch has been feeding you, like the greedy baby bird you be.’
Sir knew?
The Blood Lifers risking – everything - to feed me blood gnawed from the
ir own wrists, even though blood sharing was like communion, a bond as close as family?
Two Blood Lifers saved me: Hartford, the powerful Long-lived (or angel-haired cupid to the johns), and my cousin Donovan (with slave name ailill, meaning elf in Irish Gaelic, just to right royally strip away his dignity).
I’d once done in Donovan’s sadistic twin, Aralt; I’d saved the world too from his screwed up vision of using our venom in the name of superior evolution. Yet even Donovan, with his dark mop and lilac eyeshadow, blood shared.
We were united in adversity.
True hero?
They were the bloody heroes.
Sir knew?
I shook my nut quickly.
Sir’s lips brushed my cheek, whispering wet patterns across the pretty pink of the skin. ‘Come on, don’t look so frightened. I’ll keep you safe, my shadow. Your Sir’s here. Just tell me which bad bitch is forcing you to feed. It’s cupid, hmm?’
Shocked, I startled, but Sir held me fast. His long body hard on mine.
I had the sudden flashshot memory of Hartford’s tiger-striped arse, bruised from the same riding crop, with which Sir had marked me, and then Hartford’s brilliant smile, as he watched me suckle at his bloody wrist.
‘No, Sir,’ I blurted.
‘Don’t lie,’ Sir jerked my nut back; buggering hell that hurt, ‘you leeches think I’m stupid, isn’t it?’ When he laughed, every part of me wanted to crawl into itself and hide. ‘Say it. The truth now.’
‘No, Sir.’
‘Cupid thinks he can be a father to you leeches. That he still be worth something. But look you, he be nothing but a whore, and after this offence? I’ll send him back to Master. There was never no slave he couldn’t break. Even cupid. The things Master will do when he trains him a second time--’
‘No, Sir.’
Sir’s lips crawled across mine. ‘You must love the dark, isn’t it?’
I heard a rustle. A movement, like the slither of black tar. Then Sir was dragging the hood over my nut again.
I screamed, thrashing side to side like a snared Komodo dragon, but I was pinned tight under Sir.
Then everything went black.