Blood Renegades (Rebel Vampires Book 3)

by Rosemary A Johns

  I was trembling. Sight, sound and smell: all gone. The scratch of leather was against my lips.

  ‘Ailill,’ I whispered.

  I’d played the game and come out a fake: no true hero.

  I’d lost.

  Yet I’d made the darkness hesitate. Pause over my lips. And in that moment?

  That was a sodding victory.

  Then the black was being delicately rolled back: senses returned one by one. To a world I no longer wanted to face.

  The Judas betrayal (of my own cousin), sickened me.

  I heard Sir’s, ‘good boy,’ as he ruffled my hair like I was a mutt.

  Yet drowned in my own guilt, it was as if I was underwater. When Sir pushed himself off me, giving my cheek a final paternalistic pat, I doubled up with it.

  What the bleeding hell had I just done?

  The chest looked suspiciously heavy when Sir dragged it in. He’d taken off his jacket and sweat patches had formed like growths under his salmon pink shirt. He never sweated. Now he stank but he was smiling.

  The smug bastard.

  The chest was steel. Strapped shut and padlocked with leather round its middle like a chrysalis. There were also these strange pinprick holes along its side, as if…

  The bloody, bollocking, buggering bastard…

  Sir dropped the end of the chest hard, and I heard the groan.

  I had a gander at Sir from kneel, not even attempting to hide the glare.

  ‘Don’t fret you,’ Sir turned his smile on me indulgently, ‘he can’t hear us.’

  Clang, clang.

  When Sir banged on top of the chest, there was a terrified whimper; it clawed at my insides, shredding them.

  ‘Sensory deprivation, like the hood, see? Hotter though. It’s an experiment. Let’s see if ailill enjoys the dark as much as you.’

  Sir left me alone then. Alone with the chest.

  I’d botched up, and Donovan was paying the price. It hurt too much to imagine Donovan as he danced the Charleston yesterday with Hartford around this cell, reliving Hartford’s glory days on the hunt in the Cotton Club to the throb of Duke Ellington. Then as they’d snatched my hands, pulling me up too with them. As they’d pulled me out of despair, reigniting the fire and rebellion, which today had led to…

  ‘Please, I’m sorry. Whatever I did…whatever it was? I’m sorry. Sir?’

  Sir hadn’t told Donovan.

  Wanker that I am, I was shot with relief. Then I was sick from it. I knew what it was to suffer and not to know why.

  I crawled across the cell to the chest as if – irony of bloody ironies – it could hurt me.

  ‘I’m about to freak out here… This is not cool… Sir? Let me out… Let me out…’

  Clang…Clang…Clang…

  This time the banging was from inside the box. It was muted. Padded then; considerate of Sir. I reckon he didn’t want the merchandise to bruise itself: that was his job.

  I raised my trembling hand to the steel side; the heat was radiating in waves like the sun. But I didn’t quite touch. The banging stopped. I heard a stifled sob.

  ‘Are you there?’ No more than a whisper.

  ‘Yeah, Donovan, I’m here.’

  ‘Is anybody there?’

  Christ, I wished he could hear me. ‘I’m here, you git.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, I’m bloody sorry, right?’

  ‘Just, don’t hurt Hartford. I…whatever it was…I did it. Me.’

  True hero, see?

  I threw myself to the corner, as far as I could from that mummified box. And rocked when the screams started. Yet it was worse when they stopped.

  Because Donovan’s silence was like an accusation.

  When Sir came back – all I knew by the burn for blood was that it must be days not hours – he found me huddled, with my knees drawn up and my arms over my nut, at the back of the cell. I’d briefly considered gouging out my own peepers, so I wouldn’t have to keep looking at that chest – or I couldn’t see it staring at me. See how guilt turns you potty?

  Lady Macbeth has nothing on me.

  Instead, I’d hidden and counted the cost of betrayal.

  Then Sir was there, crouched like a long-legged spider, stroking my hair away from my mush, as he cooed, ‘Is he disturbing you, my pretty little leech?’

  I could’ve exploded in anarchic rage, until the world cowered in its rightful place at my feet. Instead, I twisted my silver S.L.A.V.E ring, as I stared at my dirty toes. ‘No, Sir. But--’

  ‘Yes?’ There was danger in the tightness of that one word.

  Family. It makes you weak. That’s how they hurt you; shank you through the heart.

  Love? It’s for berks with neon signs over their goolies flashing Boot Me Here.

  The world’s one tangled web; you can strain against the sticky matrix all you like but you were born inside the nest. You’ll die inside it.

  I’d reckoned – daft bugger that I am – that my glorious rebirth into Blood Life had burnt through the web, and I was safe on the other side. But that was the lie. The con. As long as we love? We control, and we’re controlled.

  You don’t have to be a slave to lose your freedom. Just look around you – every First and Blood Lifer is a zombie cradle to the grave.

  And Sir? He was a necromancer.

  If I denied family…love…then Sir couldn’t make my dead limbs dance.

  At least, that’s what I thought.

  ‘It was my fault I drank from ailill, Sir.’

  ‘What a good boy you are. Confessing at last. So you need punishing then, don’t you?’

  I froze: not the outcome I was going for. Not the dark, not the dark, not the dark… ‘If I’m punished, you’ll let ailill out?’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  Sir was playing with my hair, tufting it up into a mocking pompadour; I hungered to rip off his bloody fingers. ‘I’m sorry I was bad and…I want to be good for you.’

  I realised I’d walked the right humiliating line, when Sir’s mush lit up. He stroked my cheek, now pale and perfect, as if to check I was real; I’d been wondering that too, ever since I’d been hunted, defanged and enslaved.

  ‘Of course you do. I’ll take that bitch away, and then we’ll have some quality time, see? Just us. You’ll still need to be punished.’

  When I tensed, Sir chuckled, as if my conditioned terror was a blinding joke. ‘A fortnight without blood. That’ll teach you to only drink from one source. I feed you, isn’t it? Me. Now,’ his too soft lips whispered into my lobe, and I cringed, ‘ailill didn’t know why he was punished. That can be our secret - just between us.’

  I’d been wrong: Sir could make me dance any time he liked. It hadn’t mattered what I’d said or done. Because family? Love? They hadn’t made me weak to Sir’s magic.

  My own bloody betrayal had.

  Secrets: we all have them worming at our Souls.

  Sir never told Donovan why he’d been punished, but I knew, and that’s the bleeding point.

  Hartford or Donovan.

  That’d been the choice at the heart of it. Biological or chosen family.

  I’d betrayed my blood, and everything comes down to blood. If Ruby – my Author – had been alive to see it? It wouldn’t have been pretty: my goolies and trampling comes to mind.

  I tell myself I betrayed Donovan out of fear for Hartford: to save Hartford from Master. He survived Master’s loving attentions once; I barely came back from it. No one – not even a Long-lived – could come back twice.

  Deep down, however, there’s still that whimpering slave git what if..?

  What if I grassed on Donovan because of my own unnatural fear of the dark? The black of that hood? Sir’s control?

  You reckon I’ve ever confessed this sin? Not bloody likely. You’re the first person I’ve ever told.

  Donovan is still - as he was then - in the dark.

  Secrets stain, fester and ultimately corrupt.

  We can all hur
t and betray those around us. Even those we love. It just takes the right pressure.

  Who do you trust?

  You tell me this sob story, and I apologise on behalf of the wrongs sanctioned by the Blood Life Council: is that how this works?

  I dare to dream.

  There will be no apology, official or otherwise. The Blood life Council established the human Blood Club to enslave our own kind – that’s the atrocity you expect to expose? You’ve already set Master’s Estate on fire.

  What you fail to understand is the justification and necessity.

  This’ll be good.

  Only certain Blood Lifers were selected for slavery: the most powerful lines, Magnificoes and their descendants.

  Play another tune, I’ve heard this one.

  You’re throwbacks to wilder, darker times. Politically destabilizing to our new world. Fundamentals and fanatics. Our council was attempting to bring in worldwide modernizing regulations with the Highbury Edict. Hartford was the first to refuse.

  What?

  That’s why he was our first acquisition. Hartford was trying to stop… He was in the way of the Council’s authority.

  Now listen here, sweetheart, there are only two words to justify the cruelty of one species enslaving its own: power and money. All the rest is spin.

  Extermination. That’s a third word. Captain used it, if slavery didn’t work. If the old families couldn’t be controlled.

  Which is preferable? Slavery or extermination?

  That’s like asking a bloke how he’d prefer to be castrated: starting at the right or left bollock.

  Still, at least it’s a choice. Never gave us that, did you?

  I don’t speak for the Council.

  Bleeding sounds like you do.

  I’d start worrying more about how you’ll sound when this witness is used in court.

  Don’t think I’ve forgotten that; not for one second. And it backfired, didn’t it? The Blood Life Council’s attempt to neuter your political enemies? Screw over the strongest bloodlines? You call us tamed Blood Lifers, but who’s your Most Wanted now? On your Red List? In chains--

  There are no chains, Mr Blickle.

  Metaphorically speaking. See, I can use big words too. We Victorian bank clerks are the most viciously pedantic berks you’ll ever find.

  Shame you sound – and look – like a ‘60s Rocker then.

  Shame you’re too young to know we cleave to the times we pass through, nicking what we love best. Babes to this world, your Council don’t even know how to be Blood Lifers. When were you elected? A decade ago? I’ve walked these streets generations before both your birth and rebirth. And the ‘60s brought me to life. Saved and freed me. I learnt we’re not predators alone to nosh on humans as prey--

  Play another tune, I’ve heard this one.

  Ha–bloody–ha. How about this then? Us tamed Blood Lifers are the terrorists in your new world. Yet we only enslave, imprison and scapegoat blame those we fear.

  You must be terrified of me.

  Would you enjoy that? After your period of…impotency?

  My what now?

  I believe you said you knew big words.

  Your fangs were removed, as part of Abona’s regimen. You haven’t had them back for long; I can only imagine how disempowering that must’ve been.

  Does it feel good to cause fear again? Instead of tremble with it?

  You don’t fear me. Why is that? Despite the obvious?

  Who are you?

  I’m Liberty. I’m born of Captain’s fangs. And he’s told me all about you - traitor.

  I’m the traitor?

  See here’s the thing: you can betray love, family, country, your own species, the world…or yourself. I’ve done all of that, at one time or another. Our identities, however, shift like chameleons.

  Still, if you’re Captain’s elected (my commiserations, by the way), then he knows by my fist what it’s like to be defanged.

  Does that make Captain impotent too?

  You can ask him tonight when he returns.

  Blinding. I’ve missed being brutally tortured. Hang on a tick, no, I haven’t.

  No need to be anxious; you’re under my protection. I have the lead on this inquiry. No one’ll hurt you for the next thirteen nights.

  If you say so.

  You asked who I trusted. It made me wonder, Mr Blickle: who do you trust?

  You’ve got your one secret. Isn’t that enough? What more do you want from me? Blood? Wait…don’t answer that. Just an e-cig and my coat, that’ll do me.

  This isn’t voluntary.

  So I ask again, who do you trust?

  Betrayed by your own people to your enemy. All it needs is the right pressure..? When it was applied to the Renegades they buckled, choosing to hand over their leader for burning on Easter Sunday to save themselves.

  Don’t blame us that you don’t like the outcome of their vote. We didn’t rig it.

  Everything’s rigged. If you can’t see it, only means you haven’t worked out how yet.

  For the purposes of the Light Inquiry, I wonder if you knew your family was a nest of Judases.

  If they’re Judas, does that make me Jesus?

  Only if you have a messiah complex. Do you?

  Bird once accused me of having a hero complex. Betrayal’s a funny thing: it hurts the one who does it, more than the one who suffers it.

  Will you still be saying that in two weeks? When you’re facing the flames?

  I didn’t think my death was a dead cert? My witness--

  Is the witness of a traitor, terrorist and betrayer. Tell it. See if it saves you.

  Don’t fret, I get this is my Last Will and Testament.

  I won’t hide from you, Captain, the Council or the danger of words because I’ve spent most of my life hiding in the shadows and hoping invisibility meant invulnerability.

  But it doesn’t.

  Remaining the Lost condemned us to slavery.

  I reckoned I could keep my misfit family safe by skulking on the edges in the dark.

  Yet when you hide in the wardrobe – alone – that’s when the monsters come. First Life or Blood.

  They always find you.

  The Cannibal Tarantula – that’s what they called him. The Blood Lifer I met one night in Southwark.

  Met? Maybe too strong a word.

  The Tarantula was quite a Blood Lifer tourist attraction back in the ‘60s. He nested in the crypt beneath Southwark Cathedral choir. I’d crossed London Bridge, prowling through derelict warehouses, which had been bombed out in the Second World War and left to rot, home to squatters and junkies.

  Ruby would’ve delighted in exploring such horrors back when she’d first authored me. But by then? She’d become distracted by her brother Aralt: money and power. Plus blood sharing with him, let’s not forget that. I’d been left that summer in ’68 to wander London alone.

  There was always going to be danger in that.

  I jumped the last two stone steps, landing in a fog of bone and stone dust. I spluttered, as it caught in my nostrils, stinking of decay and the merry dance of death.

  Just my kind of joint.

  I bowed my head under the low arch, peering through the deep black. Corroded lead coffins lined the crypt, which was sealed to humans. We Blood Lifers had our own way in. Sweat trickled down my neck; bleeding hell it was like being baked in a stone oven.

  ‘Mr Tarantula, I don’t fancy playing the fly but I’ve come for tea, yeah?’

  No reply, only the faintest rustling at the far reaches of the crypt.

  Sighing, I swaggered towards the sounds, which became dry snaps, cracks and scraping, which had my fangs aching.

  I needed my bleeding nut examined.

  An albino web of bones tangled out of the gloom.

  ‘Bloody hell…’

  A Blood Lifer crouched inside the white cage, hiding in the shadows, but it didn’t look up… Snap… Its long hair covered its mush, but its industrious
fingers never paused… Crack… A femur was shaped, pushed into the intricate framework of the web… Scrape… Just for a moment, glowing peepers darted to mine and then away.

  Yet although it was as grubby as any street urchin, it was dressed – he was dressed - like a toff, in striped boater jacket and dove grey waistcoat; his socks stuck out comical grimy, as he worked hunched over.

  It was as if someone had dressed him up doll-like to keep up appearances.

  ‘Shame of it is, he won’t feed from First Lifers.’

  ‘Christ in heaven…’

  If I hadn’t been so distracted by the sight of a bloke building his own human bone cage, whilst dressed like he was watching a 1920s Boat Race, I’d have sensed the Blood Lifer sidling up behind me in an emerald beaded flapper dress.

  She was the type of bint I would’ve both idolized and been too much of a mouse to raise my gaze to in First Life; her majesty grabbed you by the bollocks. If I hadn’t already been leashed by Ruby, she’d have collared me.

  The Flapper caressed my shoulder, tracing over the gold ace of spades on the back of my leathers, as if this was a new sign language. When she stroked lower between my legs, I jumped.

  ‘It’s a damn bother but he needs Blood Lifer. Blood, I mean. Yet he won’t feed from me.’ The anguish in the Author’s frown made a lie of the studied boredom in her words, as well as her wandering hands, which were crawling over my arse, like she was laying claim to it. How many times had she repeated this routine, like she was the sideman in a freak show? When the Flapper pressed her palm to the web and a bone clattered to the stone floor, I flinched. ‘Will you feed him?’

  ‘You must be off your trolley.’

  The Flapper’s mask slipped; such fire burned she could blaze continents to ash. I took a step back. Then her mush was blank again. She swung her pearl necklace in tense arcs, as if winding a hidden weapon. ‘Don’t be so horribly wet; put your arm through.’

  At the sounds of the clattering bone, the Tarantula had become still. His nut twisted towards us. Then he…sniffed…as if scenting the air.

  The bird had circled me predator-like. The crafty bugger was now between me and the way out of the crypt.

  How voluntary exactly was this donation?

  My black t-shirt was sticking to me, like a damp layer of skin, but I wasn’t taking off my jacket. Not in this place, no bloody way.