Blood Renegades (Rebel Vampires Book 3)

by Rosemary A Johns

  I’d burned in the sun before: I don’t recommend it. But concentrated like this? Done slow? I hadn’t even realised I was sobbing, until I tasted the saltiness on my lips.

  Snap – Frankenstein shut off the lamp. ‘Subject One do screech, don’t it? I’ll give it a bloody clip, if it don’t stop squalling. Interesting response: Blood Lifers do react to sunlight,’ he leant over me, scrutinizing the burn: it was like being enfolded by a dusty spider, ‘like vampires.’

  My stomach muscles were shuddering with spasms. The burn swirled in multi-coloured waves, the ripples dancing out across my chest, until I trembled with it. My cheeks were wet, but I couldn’t wipe away the tear tracks.

  This wasn’t science.

  I had no illusions. In the name of science the worst atrocities and inhumanities have been carried out: the strong upon the weak. Isn’t that always the way? Good intentions or the greatest good. Grand speeches paving the way to abuse of power and genocide.

  But this? It was…

  Revenge.

  I’d tasted it enough to know.

  I just didn’t have a scooby why.

  ‘Prick,’ I threw back: when you have nothing but words they become your weapons.

  Frankenstein smiled. His peepers though? They were dark, with something even darker lurking in their depths, as he clutched the lamp. The angelic light was once more burning. ‘Having taken a geek at the first burn site, we need a second test.’

  ‘Are you certain? It appeared conclusive.’ Shah was gripping my hand, her fingernails biting in hard, cutting bleeding crescents.

  ‘On something more sensitive like…’

  Frankenstein lowered the bulb towards my todger.

  I panted, fixated on the path of the lamp. I hadn’t meant prick literally.

  Shah, however, caught Frankenstein’s arm. ‘Don’t you need that intact for your tests later tonight?’

  Frankenstein’s beaming smile gave me the willies.

  Clatter – there went the wankering torch.

  Frankenstein rubbed his spindly hands together, as if anticipating his delayed treat. Then he nodded at Shah, before sweeping out of the cell in his short lab coat and stained cord trousers, which were rubbed bare at the knee.

  I watched him potter off down the darkness of the metallic corridor, like he’d just left off working on his grandkid’s science experiment in the shed, rather than brutally torturing another species for a secret wing of the military. Or Government. I hadn’t worked that out yet. It was crystal clear First Lifers, however, had discovered our existence.

  That had been Ruby’s secret fear – mine too.

  There was no partnership, joy or celebration. We were a bug, another animal to be exploited and experimented on. Stripped back and everything of worth stolen.

  Maybe we were a weapon? Or maybe the First Lifers were attempting to drive us to extinction, like every other apex predator on this planet?

  Either way: the test subject always ends up dead. Autopsied and stuffed on display.

  It was only a matter of time.

  But here’s the thing: I wasn’t ready to take my place mounted next to the gorilla behind the glass in the Museum of Death, as my Author Ruby had once prophesied.

  I was Light. And I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  ‘You shouldn’t antagonise him, you know,’ Shah held a straw to my lips.

  Surprised, I sucked.

  Water.

  I drank quickly, trusting Shah could read the gratitude in my peepers; she gave me this awkward half-smile, so I reckoned she could.

  All too soon, Shah took away the straw; I guessed she didn’t want anyone to witness her small kindness to a subject.

  ‘Cheers,’ I swiped my tongue along my lips.

  She patted my arm: her habitual absentminded gesture. ‘Just so you know? There’s nothing – average – about you.’

  For the first time, I smiled: what bloke doesn’t need that ego boost? ‘You’re different to the others.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You see me. You’re bleeding talking to me for starters. Not like I’m a rat to be cut up. How about an e-cig or nicotine patch? Help a bloke out?’

  ‘Contaminates.’

  I tilted my nut. ‘Why do you even work here?’ Startled, Shah snatched up her steel clipboard, as if suddenly busy, before scanning through her scrawls. Yet she wasn’t reading a word. ‘Because the rest of them? They’re sadistic bastards. Call this research? You could take my blood, a saliva swab or brain scan. These lot? They prefer Nazi regime methods. You don’t seem the type.’

  ‘And you,’ Shah’s brunette hair was wildly escaping from her ponytail; it swept across my mush, as she whispered low and fierce in my ear, ‘need to keep quiet and stop pissing them off. Or this will only get worse.’

  Shah took a deep breath, before rushing in a furious shuffle out into the beetle-guts corridor.

  I’d almost manged to drift into an uncomfortable knackered kip, when (with predator’s instinct) I became aware I was being scrutinized.

  ‘Take a photo, Fernando, it’ll last longer.’

  A furious hiss – because what bloke likes to be caught out watching another bloke get his shut-eye? – followed by footsteps away, the squeal of the office chair wheeled back and the click, click, click of angry typing.

  I smiled, as I opened my peepers.

  Bloody hell, I needed to stretch.

  I wiggled my arse on the plastic table. My smile exploded into a grin, when Fernando’s clicking stumbled.

  ‘Little man, concentrating.’

  ‘Alpha Geek, not bloody caring.’

  Fernando’s checked shirt wasn’t as pristine today; there were sweat patches wafting sickly stench clouds, his sleeves were turned back to the elbows and the bottom button looked like it’d been ripped off.

  The venom had worn off Sun then…

  Fernando stiffened – long-suffering martyr. ‘What the frak? You’re not getting this; I hold your life in my--’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, heard it all before.’

  Fernando stiffly reached up – here it came – but only twisted the aluminium blades of the ivy leaf light, which hung over the desk like a striking cobra. Repressed rage was never healthy for a bloke. ‘Thing I can’t figure is: you’re a hacker. You should hate all these Government types, yet here you are in bed with them.’

  ‘That’s what happens when you say hack unencrypted. Not so paranoid much now, huh?’

  Fernando was breathing hard, still fiddling with the LED leaf lamp, casting the lab through a rainbow of spectrums in infinite variety: endlessly adaptable. Yet these First Lifers couldn’t see it in us – the good of it. Not when it was right in front of their noses in a sentient being.

  When I rattled my chains, Fernando jumped, leaving us under a scarlet light. ‘I reckon you’re a prisoner, the same as me. Makes you Subject Three.’

  ‘Great Scott! Being with Grayse Cain herself has taught you to be a frakin’ drama queen too. Only one of us is tied to a table, scheduled to have his…precious…stolen.’

  ‘You what?’

  Now it was Fernando’s turn to grin. In the crimson light his large teeth were devilish. ‘Hey, don’t look so scared. It’ll grow back…won’t it?’

  ‘Why are you doing this? I mean, I get me. I hated your guts way back, and you? Soon as you knew I was something else, you always looked like you were imagining me in your lab all trussed up. But Sun..? That’s a bleeding crime because you two were like family.’

  ‘Grayse Cain, not Sun,’ Fernando launched himself at me, the swivel chair smashing backwards – slam - against the false blood red of the wall. Smack – his arms caged me in; his forearms were matted gorilla hairy. ‘Grayse was mine. But she’s dead. Sun? I don’t know who the frak she is.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’ Yet even as I whispered it, I knew he wasn’t.

  Fernando straightened, as he shrugged. ‘This is my field of study: a whole new parasitic species. Evolved through
their venom. An infection--’

  ‘I take offence at that.’

  In the hell red, Fernando gave his goofy smile, as he pointed at me like I was the prize in a game show. ‘Little man, you’re heaven sent.’

  Later that night I learnt in graphic detail just how my precious would be stolen.

  I lay in stunned silence, having listened to Frankenstein chinwagging to Shah about the procedure, as if hacking off my prick was as humdrum as sticking in a needle for a blood sample.

  Shah was clutching my hand, like it was her privates (rather than mine), which were for the chop.

  Frankenstein was taking his time with sliding on the latex gloves – each finger individually. Relishing the limelight and anticipation.

  The terror.

  Then he got up and personal: my body was no longer mine.

  I was nothing. A subject. Flesh. To be cut and sliced. Harvested and studied. I wondered how long they intended to keep me here because on this IV of blood, it’d take a sodding long time to regenerate my todger.

  If I even could.

  It wasn’t the kind of thing we Blood Lifers shared.

  Oi, last time you were emasculated, grew back did it?

  ‘Ivor, please…let’s take something else. I mean, we talked about a finger?’ Shah glanced at me apologetically. ‘Or an internal organ? The liver perhaps?’

  Frankenstein dropped my todger – thwap.

  One way to humiliate a bloke? Don’t even bother to drop his prick so it lies straight.

  If I had to watch the whole procedure in the glass – touching, carving, removing – then at least let my last memory for months be of my goolies and todger looking decent.

  ‘Squeamish? Betterway I do this procedure alone. You take a geek at Subject Two.’

  Shah’s hand tightened around mine.

  A surge of hope – please, please, please…

  ‘Ivor, I really think--’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ sharp and hard now, ‘stop dilly-dallying and go.’

  Shah nodded. Reluctantly, her fingers loosened around mine.

  Crushed, I couldn’t meet her eye. Couldn’t let the tears I was holding back fall. Couldn’t give Frankenstein the bloody satisfaction.

  Suddenly the icy slam of the stainless steel clipboard on my chest, as Shah leant over me, flipping through her papers.

  But underneath? Hidden by the clipboard?

  Shah was loosening the chains around my left wrist.

  I struggled not to react, as I kept my gaze forward and breathing steady.

  Yet inside? I was predator roaring.

  Now I had to wait.

  Shah’s fingers curled around mine just for a moment. I squeezed her hand and hoped – even in that fleeting contact – I’d translated my thanks. She’d betrayed everything to save another species.

  I knew how that felt.

  Prey. Predators.

  I used to know which was which – First and Blood. But now? We’re all capable of being both predator and prey. It’s a choice. Sometimes we need to be one or the other. We just have to make the right decision at the right time.

  Makes you think: would you?

  Then Shah snatched up her clipboard, as she hurried out of the cell.

  ‘Maids,’ Frankenstein shook his nut in contempt. He pushed the steel tray with its regimented scalpels, saws and gauze next to me. I clocked Will’s green bracelet buried beneath the metal. Then Frankenstein sprawled on a stool, so he was at a perfect height to separate me from my precious.

  ‘May be dreaming here, but no anaesthetic?’

  Frankenstein only picked up my prick like he bloody owned it. My eyelashes were matted wet, my breath was ragged, and even though I was bleeding willing myself to close my peepers, I couldn’t. Look. Away.

  ‘I remember you.’ Frankenstein hadn’t spoken directly to me before: about me but not to me. He was still staring at my cock in his hand but he’d said you, not it.

  I eyed him warily. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You swaggered around backalong, like James Dean. Don’t look all that now.’

  ‘Try being the monkey, instead of the scientist; I wager you wouldn’t look up to much cop either.’

  Frankenstein’s hand tightened around my todger.

  Buggering hell…

  ‘Dusta remember me?’

  I half-considered inventing a poncey voice for my todger, seeing as Frankenstein still hadn’t lifted his gaze to my actual mush. Still, winding up the bloke who has his fingers squeezing your cock?

  Even I’m not that much of a daft git.

  Well, maybe just a tad…

  ‘Supposed to, am I, mate?’

  Frankenstein’s mug ash-whitened.

  I hissed, as he slapped my todger to the side. I could see the pink impressions of his fingers, like a branding. At least there was still something there to see.

  ‘Professor Silverman: I bet you remember him? Genius, folks said.’ I jerked. Silverman: a leonine scientist on a pirate radio ship of hidden horrors. Flames reflected flickering on the night sea. The cold stench of the burning…and my nightmares. You don’t forget saving the world but you bloody wish you could. Frankenstein stared at me for the first time. Demanding, cold and triumphant. ‘Doctor Ivor Glasse: Silverman’s research assistant. I did all his bleeding chores in the ‘60s, even though it was me who cottoned on to the separation: paralysis in half and pure death in the other. Silverman was agape. Then we had to test on humans. It’s why they had me because this crossed the species. But Aralt? The uppish chucklehead wouldn’t allow the next step: testing on Blood Lifers.’ So there had been some lines Aralt wouldn’t cross, not many but some. Frankenstein: Ivor? He’d already crossed every line. ‘Silverman be given all the credit, but then he burned on that ship – not me.’

  ‘I’d have happily toasted you, if you’d been on the ship.’

  Ivor’s shoulders relaxed. ‘Kind of you to say.’

  ‘Not to be the one to mention it, but you’re no spring chicken. Just fannied around for half a century then? Couldn’t be fagged to solve it? Or couldn’t figure it out on your own?’

  Me and my big gob.

  Ivor snatched up a scalpel: it glistened in the light, the tip cruelly sharp. Then Ivor yanked my flaccid todger straight.

  Good luck on getting that hard.

  I sneakily tested the chain on my left wrist. It bit into my skin, but if I coiled it round and then yanked…

  I glanced at Ivor from underneath my eyelashes.

  He’d pulled back the foreskin and was holding the scalpel next to the red head like a threat.

  ‘It’s some cruel decision: do I cut it off all at once at the base? Quick. Or slowly slice by slice?’

  I struggled to keep my breathing even, as I worked my arm back. The chain slipped. ‘So this pure death..?’

  I’d reckoned Silverman’s research had burned and then sunk to the bottom of the sea in the ‘60s, but I’d missed Professor Glasse. Now along with the Government, Fernando and whoever else was mixed up in this unholy alliance, Ivor was developing something so bloody terrifying – so world transforming – that it shook every nancy boy inch of me.

  ‘Silverman never tested. He was squeamish, unlike me. No one misses the homeless; they have no family, homes, or jobs. Of course we can feed you Blood Lifers off them too.’

  Ivor glanced at the IV.

  My IV - and Will’s blood.

  When I retched, Ivor chuckled.

  Red. Red. Red.

  I battled to remain still. Not to tear off the chains, sink in my fangs and make the bastard squeal.

  Ivor pressed the scalpel into my prick’s slit. Scarlet beaded. He gazed at it thoughtfully. ‘I was invisible backalong. You don’t remember me? You’ll bleeding know me now.’

  I slid my left hand silently free but then froze.

  Two uniformed figures were pushing a gurney through the bronze tunnel.

  There was something on the gurney. A black body bag. It was small. Just t
he right size for…

  Then everything was crimson. Shrieking. Death.

  When I came to? Sirens were whirring furious panicked scarlet. And the lab? Was painted a brilliant shade of Ivor.

  And yeah, I’d chosen to pull off his todger at the base. So…quick.

  I was buzzing. Muscles freed were bunched, tensed for a barney. Adrenaline surged.

  I couldn’t allow myself to think about that body on the gurney.

  Will.

  I howled.

  My venom had killed Will; I had killed him. The boy who my Soul sang was meant to be born from my fangs, instead died at them.

  Just as his blood healed and gave me life.

  I was bloody toxic. Yet he’d had faith in me in a way no one ever had; Will had believed I could save him.

  And I’d let him die.

  Ivor had chosen Will because he’d reckoned him a worthless outsider, but all I could see was a tumble of curls.

  No one would miss him? Then I was no one because I felt like I’d never be complete again.

  I caught a glimpse of Will’s snake green bracelet beneath the gory tray of torture devices: of course, it wasn’t my blood…

  It was Blood Lifer vengeance – justice – and all I wished was Fernando had been part of the show.

  I brushed Ivor’s remains aside, gently pulling out the bracelet. It’d been snipped off my wrist – the eternal loop broken – but I crushed it hard in my palm like it was a charm. Like it could magic Will alive again.

  Like I truly was a bloody angel.

  I wished - truly wished - I believed in the comforting opiate of heaven.

  But this world? It was too real, and I had to rescue Sun.

  I nabbed Ivor’s security thingy, before stumbling to the cell door: starkers, sobbing and scarlet - I gave Carrie a run for her money. I was a sodding sight, as I staggered down the corridor.

  Only to be bowled – clang – into the freezing metal by a dynamo covered head-to-toe in camouflage green, except for gold haloed amber peepers and bow lips.

  Soft lips I discovered, when the…bloke…snogged me.

  I tried to pull back but I couldn’t. He was slight but with his arm wrapped around me, the – Blood Lifer – was steel.