Blood Renegades (Rebel Vampires Book 3)

by Rosemary A Johns

  I inched my arm towards the cage.

  When, however, was I ever frightened of being bitten?

  I thrust my arm into the web, with my hand tightly fisted because I didn’t want my fingers to look like delicious nibbles.

  A scuffling scuttle and…

  The Tarantula was there.

  His warm breath was over my tender wrist - right over the pulse point.

  Blood sharing was intimate, and I was about to break one of those rules with…

  He was beautiful. His black hair hanging in matted waves over a mush as pale as his bone prison.

  His violet peepers were…blind.

  The Tarantula was so thin his ribs showed through like knives. His delicate fingers were searching, smoothing over my wrist in quick motions.

  ‘The darkness,’ he muttered. ‘The black feeds. Three…three…three…’

  Each three lit up spectacular explosions in my brain: my magical number. Hearing it gunshot chanted, with the sensation of the Tarantula’s soft strokes over my pulse point, was orgasmic.

  Shuddering, I breathed, ‘Have yourself a good nosh, mate. Looks like you need it.’

  Tarantula startled, like he hadn’t expected to be spoken to; I wondered how long it’d been since he had been. I don’t know why I’d felt the nancy need to reassure this stranger. Why did I give a rat’s arse if he shriveled to nothing in his web?

  Yet the idea of being trapped tugged at me, awakening a confusion of new feelings.

  That’s why when Tarantula sank in his fangs deep I hissed, yet – just as fast – I was lost. I closed my peepers in ecstasy.

  I could feel the steady suck, the touch of his lips and the swirl of his venom: it was firework in heaven glorious. I was caught in the bond, every molecule alive with it.

  Sod it, no hunt or feed can equal blood sharing.

  I wondered faintly why Ruby had denied such joy to me – rationing her own bite, as well as other blood sharing – she might as well have forbidden me to wank.

  The Tarantula? He was touched. Some of us don’t survive the rebirth whole or put a match to our Souls after. Else the snowflake patterns of difference were there to start with and Blood Life merely amplified.

  What I couldn’t figure – as I swam in the bubbling flow of our bonding – was whether Tarantula had caged himself or been caged. Whether he truly was touched? Or if this treatment of him (and didn’t I bloody remember it well from Bedlam?), had turned him touched?

  The dark…

  I smiled, sinking deeper into the bond, imagining Ruby’s expression if I brought Tarantula back to Advance with me. If I saved him…

  When suddenly – agonizingly – the bond was broken.

  I shot up.

  The Author was standing next to me. A human rib, gory crimson, still grasped in her mitt. She dropped it – clatter – so loud in the silence.

  Woozy, it took me a moment to…

  Tarantula lay on his back in the bone cage staring up at the stone ceiling of the crypt, with his unseeing violet peepers. Red crept out of his waistcoat.

  Over his heart.

  Where the bitch had shanked him.

  I’d been a distraction. A toy to dangle, whilst she did in her own elected.

  I don’t know whether it was the blood sharing, but I was shaking.

  ‘He came back wrong,’ the Flapper whispered, staring down at the boy she’d authored and then murdered. ‘The Order of Electors warned me, but I thought it no account. I stole him away, before they could… I hoped I would be enough.’

  I didn’t hesitate, and she didn’t stop me.

  When I rammed the same rib through the Flapper’s heart, she fell next to the cage like an emerald butterfly. Broken – the same as the kid she’d authored. Her pearls spilled like shining tears into the crimson.

  She stretched out to try and touch the Tarantula’s fingers with her own but couldn’t through the layers of human bone.

  How’s that for bleeding irony?

  It turns out you can’t hide in the shadows. You’re not safe in your cage. And the dangers in life? They’re from those you love, as well as from across the divide of the species.

  You know what I learnt that day? There’s no way to tell who’s the predator.

  And who’s the prey.

  NIGHT 2

  I keep my promises; I hope that’s duly noted.

  No need to get your knickers in a twist, sweetheart, it’s only…all right, not only anything, but it’s an e-cig and a leather jacket. Not the promise to save me from the lick of the flames or to let him go.

  I thought family made you weak.

  I was wrong.

  I’m glad we have that recorded: I don’t imagine you say it often.

  Shows how little you know me. So, listening yesterday were you?

  That’s why I’m here.

  What you do in here is anything but listen. Analyze, twist, manipulate…I haven’t figured it out yet.

  But not listen.

  This bloody room is smothering me: red floors, ceiling, poncey rugs and cherry desk, as if this is an interrogation suite for billionaires. I could sink in my fangs and drain the whole sodding room. It does match your lipstick though…

  We’re Blood Lifers. Unlike the human slavers, we don’t need training on – interrogation – was it?

  Because that, Mr Blickle, is the point of the Red Room.

  Red Room? If you wanted to spank me, you only had to ask.

  If I intended to spank you, I wouldn’t ask first.

  I wonder what Sun would say?

  Is that like What Would Jesus Do? But for Blood Lifers?

  Sun’s a law unto herself. If I knew what she’d say..?

  Maybe you wouldn’t be here.

  Maybe she’d love me, as much as I love her. Like she’s the true sun, and I’m melting every time she looks at me. Like she’s the light, and without her I’m in the dark.

  Except that’s just the hearts and cupid.

  The real stuff, deep in your guts, todger, wormed in your brain…like maybe then she’d see what having a life born from my fangs feels like; a screaming, bloody part of me ripped from my Soul. Forever aching. Sensing her move inside me, even after the wonder of her rebirth.

  Touching the beauty of her death and sharing my life.

  Saving her to be mine.

  For the purposes of the Light Inquiry, I’ll summarize that you love Sun?

  You have no Soul.

  It’s not been proven either way. We have our scientists and philosophers working on it. Now I kept my agreement (you’re smoking that e-cig, aren’t you?), so I require a secret.

  How about I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?

  I’m not Clarice, and you’re not Hannibal. Keep your promise, please.

  I always keep a promise.

  Your memory’s photographic: prove to the Council you have some use. Tell me about this new family of yours.

  Hartford: a dangerous Long-lived, dissenter and now terrorist.

  A Renegade.

  Hartford’s long pale fingers wove across the keys of a battered black baby grand. His left hand leapt in rhythmic, Art Tatum style bursts of sheer jubilation.

  In open-necked crisp white shirt and indigo blazer, with his golden hair slicked back, Hartford looked like an angelic jazz singer, under the club’s weak spotlight.

  I was lost in the rattling rawness of Hartford’s improvised “Rhapsody in Blue”. My spine tingled. Skin prickled. I could taste the notes, each sharp or sour.

  When I caught Hartford’s eye, I grinned.

  Tentatively, he smiled back.

  It’d taken months to get Hartford up there: in this club, outside and out of his sleeping bag.

  It was a bloody victory.

  I’d take what I could sodding well get.

  Then a starkers dancer spun between us, and I got an eyeful of dick.

  Wait, that doesn’t sound…

  ‘Hartford’s not some wee lamb to the sla
ughter. Adorable he is to be sure, but stop mothering him. Get your arse back to work.’ The strip club’s tiny manager – Aedan – swatted me on the arse with a bar towel, as he pushed me towards the counter.

  ‘What’ll it be, mate?’

  I heard Aedan tut behind me, smothered my grin and gazed up at the posh fellah in sleek grey business suit and even greyer hair. He was drumming his fingers on the counter with repressed frustration, like he yearned to take me over his knee but was having to put up with smiling paternalistically instead.

  Guess he liked to play the Daddy.

  Daddy looked as if he’d come from the City and a stressed day fleecing folks of their lolly to lounge on Peter Pan’s faux crocodile skin and fur sofas and drool over starkers boys, as well as Blood Lifers centuries older than himself.

  Still, to the outside world we were young men. So what did that make us?

  Fair game.

  Not if I could bleeding help it. Not one of these Lost Boys.

  My fangs itched. My blood pounded. The urge to hunt – violate the bastard’s sagging throat and feast on human blood, breaking my abstention – stole my breath.

  I clutched the counter’s sticky surface; I knew I was panting.

  ‘Cotton candy martini,’ the bloke reached out, stroking the back of my hand; his fingers were moisturized, and for a horrifying moment reminded me of Sir, ‘shaken, not stirred.’ He bayed with laughter, as if I hadn’t heard that one before.

  ‘Not sure 007 ever asked for cotton candy. Even at a carnival,’ I satisfied myself with pointing out.

  See it’s like this: black wool dinner jacket, me, bloody had to wear it.

  I looked a dead poncey git.

  On the first night, we’d huddled in the box room behind the bar, which had nothing in it but a hanging rail of clothes and a cracked sink; it stank of sweat and sex.

  Hartford had smoothed down my satin lapels. ‘Look at you, mac, all dolled up. Why aren’t you the bee’s knees?’

  ‘Leave it out,’ I’d shaken him off, before glancing at Donovan. ‘How’s your costume?’

  Donovan had twirled. ‘Groovy, man, this is gonna be a blast.’

  I’d raised my eyebrow.

  Donovan was starkers. In just a silk bowtie…and black tube socks.

  Because the punters had to stuff the tips somewhere.

  ‘This is your choice. You don’t have to--’

  ‘Don’t freak out. I wasn’t… Blood Clubbers didn’t hurt me, like they did Hartford and you. Hartford will play, I’ll dance, and we’ll get the cash we need. Together.’

  I shook the cranberry, grenadine and vodka like it was a missile, rather than a cocktail, pouring it into a glass. Then I sprinkled cotton candy on top, waiting for the magic. It dissolved into the blood red sea, as if it’d never been there.

  Mesmerized, it gave me the shivers. Daddy looked unimpressed.

  I pushed the martini over to the Daddy wannabe, whilst humming “Rhapsody in Blue”. The smarmy bastard slipped a folded note across my palm and then up into the tip jar: a pair of starkers legs with an opening where the todger should’ve been.

  The classy only went so far.

  I dropped in a slice of lime, my fingers grubby from collecting the dancers’ tips. ‘Enjoy.’ I smiled around my canines.

  Suddenly Daddy’s frustration wasn’t so repressed anymore. ‘Stupid slut.’

  And that was it.

  The fangs shot from my gob. The predator inside blazed. Howled. He wasn’t leashed; I wasn’t tamed.

  I was free.

  The only one holding me back? Stopping this fur-lined operatic club, where the boys never grew up, from becoming a crimson bed of carnage and chaos?

  Me.

  There was only me now - and that’s what was giving me the bleeding willies.

  I sprang over the counter in a haze of fury, my tailcoat catching on the edge, like I’d devolved into a monkey. Except that’d be a human; I should say Komodo dragon. When I thrashed to the side, something ripped.

  That’d cost me.

  When I slammed Daddy back, he splashed his martini down his designer shirt, like I’d already savaged his throat.

  He was tall: twice my size. Yet he couldn’t push me back.

  It was cracking not to be the weak one anymore.

  The smug tosser looked as if a beggar had told him to shove his pound.

  ‘See, I reckoned I just made you a drink. Barman here. Seems to me you’re confused.’

  Daddy laughed. It was shaky, but he still laughed.

  ‘I’m supposed to be frightened, am I? Of a little bitch like you?’

  ‘You bleeding well should be.’

  I could hear his blood. The rapid beat, beat, beat.

  I ran my tongue over my lips.

  One quick bite.

  Heart attack: his death certificate would read. Natural causes. Who would care?

  I took a shuddering breath. I was the moral example (and wasn’t that a bleeding joke?), for my family. If I slipped, there was nothing holding any of them back from returning to the hunt.

  Who was left to stop me falling into the dark? To help me become the man I’ve been striving to be for decades…but…the blood…and Daddy was struggling now… Fear smells and tastes sweeter with a hint of terror... Yeah, that’s right, a bit of a struggle, always liked that, gets the blood pumping…

  The piano faltered. Notes fractured and broke.

  Hartford.

  I swung round, forcing in my fangs.

  Buggering hell.

  Hartford was having a shufti. He’d seen.

  I dropped my nut, unable to meet his gaze.

  In my distraction, my quarry had wrenched away; I could hear him bleating to Aedan. It sounded more like a kid telling on his classmate to earn him a caning than an alpha Daddy.

  Plus his shirt was buggered. So there was that.

  I tensed when Aedan stormed towards me, flicking his auburn braids like whips. ‘Your fanboy over there – the squealer – wants you fired.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘He said he was playing some head games, and you made a holy show of yourself.’

  ‘Thing is, I’m not his to play with. Not anyone’s.’

  ‘That’s why I’m throwing out his crybaby arse,’ Aedan replied loudly.

  ‘What?’ Daddy stomped over, towering behind Aedan.

  ‘Do we have to get the bouncer?’ I smiled. ‘I wouldn’t make us if I were you; she really doesn’t like folks touching me.’

  Catching the glint in my eye, Daddy hurriedly shook his nut, before stalking away.

  ‘Cheers, I--’

  ‘You know who you remind me of?’ Aedan poked me hard in the chest.

  ‘James Dean? Elvis Presley? A young Michael Caine, you know, in Alfie--’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘No offence,’ I examined the elfin mush of my boss, with his moss green peepers and mouth, which looked like it was about to curl into a grin, ‘but we’re not exactly twins.’

  ‘When I’d just got away from my ex. He was a bad boy and not in the good way. We’d had quite the carry on. That’s when I opened this place.’ There was something about the way Aedan had said got away from, which made my hackles rise in an instinctive protective response. This was a First Lifer: not family. Yet somehow that wasn’t what my blood was calling to me, when it screamed for revenge on the tosser, who’d forced this…whatever this new closeness…not family but friend my Soul whispered…to escape.

  ‘So how am I like you again?

  Aedan glanced at Hartford, who was settling in for the big finale.

  Donovan writhed snake-like down the center arm of the stage to the rhythm of Hartford’s music; his slim muscles rippled.

  I watched too – teeth gritted – as the First Lifers pressed folded tips into his socks, caressing up and down his oiled thighs. Donovan was grinning and flexing like it was all some cosmic joke, which I hadn’t been let in on.

  He was high; he was always sodding
high.

  Donovan was turning, sliding down the stage as if in a mating ritual, never taking his gaze from Hartford, who played like his tune was a returning mating call.

  And eye-fucking? I finally got what that meant.

  I could sense Hartford’s aching fevered obsession. Bloody hell, hadn’t I felt obsession like it often enough myself?

  Those pounding, pulsing humans were blind to the death playing and dancing as vitally as they’d ever be just…different.

  Hartford hunched over the piano, his back as tense as his jazz, like wings were hidden under his shoulder blades, ready to break out and carry him away from the world.

  I’d better check on him.

  Aedan sensed my slight movement towards Hartford; he rested his hand on my elbow. ‘That’s how. On edge and about to bolt. As well as looking like Batman and Robin’s personal bodyguard.’

  ‘It’s the dinner jacket. Anyway, Batman and Robin? Which is which?’

  Aedan patted my arm. ‘You can’t tell?’

  ‘I promised to keep them safe.’ Aedan stared at me, startled. I hadn’t been able to hide the anguish; Aedan had broken through to it, and now it choked me. ‘To give them a home. I promised.’

  Listening to the soulful blues of Hartford’s set, those chilling snaking improvisations haunted me, as if the specter of our slavery was still on all our shoulders.

  In the close swirling heat of the club, as the First Lifers danced to the rhythms of the Charleston, in front of the stage, which was divided by a walkway into the shape of a cross, Hartford was messianic.

  Under mirror balls hung in alien-like clusters, blokes sprawled in red looped seats, as if they’d parked their arses in frightened mouths (or twisty todgers, depending how you looked at it). The walls and ceilings were in leather, damask and brocade.

  A fantasy. A theatre production. None of it real.

  ‘We all have our histories and pasts. No home but here. Look around you,’ Aedan gestured at the other dancers: our real Lost Boys. Brandon with a shock of neon green hair, Kyle with gold nipple rings and tiny Jamie with the stammer. Aedan had taken them in. Like he had us - the daft berk. Didn’t he know it was dangerous to invite in strangers? ‘How about we close up a wee bit early?’