NIGHT 11
There are only three nights until the trial. I can’t simply… You could save yourself if you testified to--
Plantagenet’s not guilty, at least, not in the way you mean. Blake? He’s a First Lifer. You reckon the Council’s leaders would believe a human could make a chump out of them?
Our procedures are flawed. The whole system’s--
Bollocks?
Quite. Blood Life is not what I’d imagined it to be. I’ve investigated your claims – Fernando, the CIE and research labs – it appears you weren’t lying.
Well, doesn’t that throw a spanner in the works? Or does it still change nothing? I burn; my witness is censored or buried, whilst you sit in silence.
Do you ever grow weary of thinking you know everything?
Why? Do you?
Sometimes. Then – just once – someone comes along. A terrorist, traitor and Renegade. The most irresponsible anarchist who has ever spread chaos and carnage through Blood Life. A multiple murderer of his own kin--
You’re not painting me in my most flattering light, sweetheart.
Then I actually meet you and I come to understand that my Author – Captain – was wrong.
Everything I believed was wrong.
Yet none of that matters because indeed you will still burn, and there’s no way I can save you.
There’s always a way, we simply have to want it enough.
As a slave I was a product; Captain sees all Blood Lifers as products, however, merely useful weapons, pets or scalpels.
You?
You’re the office stationary.
You have no idea, either what I am or what I could be.
Then show me.
I’ll continue to give you my witness, if you promise to sodding show me.
‘Abso-bloody-lutely perfect,’ I slammed the soft pillow over my mush, futilely attempting to drown out Metallica’s thrash “Master of Puppets”; the blazing guitars were taking a hammer to my dreams. ‘Who the bloody hell is that, in the middle of the sodding day?’
Mr Darwin grunted his agreement, his palm patting my nut.
I stilled, before slowly lifting the pillow.
Mr Darwin peered at me from his side of the bed, primly holding up the silk covers to his whiskery chin.
I sighed. ‘You’re looking a bit rough today, Sun. Someone you ate?’
Mr Darwin gripped me around the waist with his feet, and before I could twist away…
Tickled.
‘Stop it…stop…I bloody mean it.’
Now I got the meaning of tickle torture.
I doubled up, my muscles in spasms from the forced hilarity.
Mr Darwin shook with breathy laughter to match my giggles.
I only noticed there was someone else in the room, when Mr Darwin’s grasping fingers paused in their play. Then I realized the music had paused too.
Mother was standing at the bedside, an iPhone wired to a UFO shaped speaker, which was clipped to her pocket, staring down at the two of us tangled together.
The covers had been kicked back in the commotion.
And I was starkers.
I struggled to roll Mr Darwin off me, as he embraced my neck (just like he had Blake’s). The chimp was as much of a pillock when he decided to be my mate, as my nemesis.
Unless having proven he was the alpha, he was now playing nice again, dominating his troop.
I finally managed to shrug off Mr Darwin, as I hauled on my jeans.
‘Fie, sir! Satisfy your longing. It is no shameful act of sin’
Both Mr Darwin and I gaped at Mother; I couldn’t tell which of us she was encouraging.
I pulled on my t-shirt. ‘I’m not laughing anymore.’
I pushed past her out into the long stretch of grey corridor.
Sun hadn’t been to bed; she’d worked at night, trading and running finances. Yet she’d never been missing during the day, at least that I’d realized.
It prickled me in cold sweat.
Silence.
Blake would be down in his surreal cartoon of an office; I couldn’t let myself imagine Sun with him. Not after their staged intervention the other dawn, when they’d waited in the lounge for me like parents trying to catch the teenager creeping back after curfew.
Sun had pulled away from Hartford and me out on the roof. Yet that dawn Sun had stood with me, choosing me.
Hadn’t she?
Yet the image of Sun in Blake’s office – blood sharing – over his branching tree desk, just like Ruby had with her brother over his desk, unmanned me.
My Sun Girl.
My girl.
Mine.
Click, click, click.
Mother’s gold kitten heels clicked behind me, with the rustle of her crinkly gold trousers. She let out a breath, when she caught up, wrapping an arm around my neck, as Mr Darwin had done. ‘Hey, slow down already, speedy much?’
‘Things to do.’
When I tried to slide away from underneath her arm, Mother dragged me close. ‘Are you mad?’ She murmured. ‘Are you out of your wits?’
‘Not me, luv.’
Mother shoved me away, holding her iPhone and UFO speaker above her nut like a sacrifice. Metallica’s distorted amps and aggressive revolutionary guitars burst out; I didn’t need to have Master barked at me in any more lifetimes.
As if her puppet strings were being controlled, Mother danced: a pixie in a mosh pit.
Led on a string as well, I prowled after Mother, my bare feet sinking into the thick carpet.
‘What an excellent shape you hath,’ Mother yelled over the violent roar, ‘I should have courted you, except that I see you.’
I stumbled. What had she just..?
Those dangerous peepers sparkled. ‘I’m just saying.’
‘No one sees me.’
‘Damn, dude, that’s heavy,’ Mother mock pouted. ‘You’re bomb but you’re sketchy. I’m Plantagenet’s creature, and we? Don’t need you.’
‘Bleeding shame for you I’m here then.’
‘Dontcha get it yet?’ Mother stilled. ‘You would create Sun one of your familiars, but she’s not yours. Foolish man, this will never be your home.’
I realized then where we were.
Outside Blake’s bedroom.
I was terrified to see what was inside.
I was desperate to turn and pretend I’d never woken up to find Sun missing.
Yet with a mind like mine? There is no forgetting. At times like this it’s a curse.
Mother gave me a devilish leer, as she swiped her iPhone: the poignant rawness of “Nothing Else Matters” sang out. One bloke’s agony at his separation from his love; his longing an open wound bleeding from vocals and acoustic guitar.
I stood frozen, caught in the ballad’s web, as Mother pushed open the bedroom door.
When the electric guitar kicked in – the heart and Soul – I knew what I’d see. What Mother was leading me to will-o’-the-wisp.
But it was too late.
A giant’s tangled steel forest. Butterflies and moths in confusion. An enchanted bed.
Sun.
Plantagenet.
They were shagging like it was the apocalypse, and if they didn’t? They’d lose everything.
Like me.
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t sodding breath.
It was Plantagenet who noticed me first mid-thrust.
He was polite enough to widen his cat peepers in surprise, before he rolled off Sun. He snogged her, however, with the same gentle intimacy he’d shown me.
For a moment, I didn’t know who I was the most jealous of.
I was trembling with this wave of…fear…worse than when I’d been strapped down in the lab.
I remembered how M.C. had tricked me into believing Grayse had abandoned me to slavery: how it’d broken me. I’d lost my identity, even my name.
To be abandoned and lose someone I loved again..?
The cracks were still there. Yet this time? I wouldn’t let anything shatter me.
Sun boldly met my stunned stare: no apology.
So I simply told Sun what I’d been desperate for her to understand since I’d authored her into this new world, ‘I love you.’
Mother gave a disgusted snort.
Plantagenet pushed himself up onto his elbows. ‘Under pain of death, Mother, you shall hold your wicked tongue; what ensues is your doing.’
Mother rolled her eyes, muting Metallica. In the sudden silence, the shamed couple looked twice as starkers.
I crossed my arms. ‘Don’t get narked at your creature here ‘cos you fancied some hanky-panky with your mate’s bird. See, Mother reckons we’ll have a barnie, and you’ll do me in or throw me out. Else I’ll have a tantrum (‘cos you’re both lying tossers), and leg it out of here – like Hartford wants. But what she doesn’t get?’ I stepped closer to the green mouth of the bed and the magical world I could just reach out and touch or else be swallowed by. ‘Is that I bloody love you, Sun.’
Sun edged towards me, her naked knockers brushing against my hand. I tingled – Christ help me – with a sudden rush of blood to todger (and don’t let any bloke deny its dizzying hold).
But Sun didn’t need that – the carnal.
We – Grayse and I – had never been about that. Considering she’d chosen me as a sex slave, it was ironic how (even though she’d come close to the edge once), she’d never used me.
Yet she’d loved me, and I’d loved her.
By the time she’d died in my arms, I’d been certain of that if nothing else.
But now?
Sun was someone new. There was a darkness coiled under her skin, which Blood Life had amplified – freed - and that was no one’s fault but mine.
Sun clutched my hand. ‘You’re soft if you don’t frickin’ know I love you. Still, just ‘cos you elected me, doesn’t mean I’m yours.’
And there it was.
Bold, undeniable and the true bonfire of my dreams.
A world together to explore, joined by our love? Burned. The special bond between Author and their elected? Burned. My hope I’d ever be good enough – would deserve – to be loved again, as Kathy had once loved me?
Curled to ashes.
I was wrong. Someone could shatter me.
Then I felt Plantagenet’s small hands behind me on my shoulders.
When had he risen? How long had I been standing there, lost in my grief?
Plantagenet was stripping me with practiced ease; like I was a puppet.
I let him.
‘Well-beloved, it breaks me to see you so melancholy. In faith there are different loves. Family or home.’ Plantagenet’s soft curls were stroking down the curve of my spine; I shivered. ‘Forever is too long a time to take one’s pleasure with merely a single lass or single fellow.’
Sun pulled me up onto the bed.
Hands.
Stroking, pinching, caressing.
I quivered, overloaded; I struggled not to squirm, my skin alive with their kisses.
It would be so easy to choose this fall into their dual embrace. Black mane mingled with ash blonde veil. Familiar curves and the strange new hardness pressed to mine. Alabaster skin starkly beautiful against golden. A silk soft canvas of the known and the unknown calling to me – my blood.
This was home. Wherever Plantagenet was: I knew it. I’d always known it; I couldn’t forget it.
I was his familiar.
Plantagenet’s touch ignited me – I was bloody ablaze.
Two mouths: two kisses, both tasting of oranges.
And just like that? I was burnt to ashes.
I struggled out of their web of limbs, elbowing Plantagenet; he toppled off the bed with a startled oomph.
I bounced on the balls of my feet – ludicrous in the altogether – because Mother was right: I always had been the fists and fang type of bloke.
At least I had fangs, unlike…
All right then, wanker here.
I held out my hand to Plantagenet, who took it warily, allowing me to pull him to his feet.
Then he didn’t let go. Instead, his fingers played across my palm. ‘If I have offended…’
‘This isn’t about you. It’s about the bird I love.’ I had a shufti at Sun, who was perched on the edge of the bed, her knees pulled up to her chest; she looked more vulnerable than I’d seen her since her election. ‘She’s losing herself in this business: RE and the Renegades. We burned one slavery empire; why are we enslaving ourselves to another?’ Sun was still avoiding my eye, but she was listening. That was the best you could ever hope for with Sun. ‘Hartford was right: I was an arrogant pillock to reckon I could make a difference here. Change the world like some bloody hero. If I lead a rebellion but lose you doing it? It won’t be sodding worth it. I need you, Sun. Now we have to--’
‘Book it outta here?’
Thank Christ.
I grinned. ‘Good on you, princess. Let’s--’
‘You zoo’n’ on me?’ My grin slipped; it hung precarious. ‘We just found our new family; you already murdered my old one.’
My grin fell and broke. I bet I looked a sodding mess: I felt one.
Her family?
Slavers, rapists and torturers? Yet now Sun was getting all sentimental?
She’d taken a chance – Hartford, Donovan and me as well – we’d all taken a chance to bring them down. It seemed now, however, the decision was on me alone.
‘Nizza job. Home. Money,’ Sun counted each one off on her fingers, oblivious to my distress. ‘It’s fried how you reckon I’d wanna leave this.’
‘Money?’ I gritted out. Plantagenet had been tracing pretty patterns – branching trees – across my palm, but I snatched my hand away. ‘That’s claptrap, and you know it.’
‘Na-ah, you don’t get to tell me what to think. What Blood Life is or isn’t on account of you’re my Author. I won’t be caged.’
Despair hit me in a black scream. My ears bled. I craved to huddle foetal, with my arms clasped over my nut, to block out all the nasties of the world.
Caged.
How had I made Sun feel that way?
After everything I’d been through – caged by Master, controlled by Ruby – I’d only ever wanted to set my own elected free.
Yet it turned out the bars to her birdcage might’ve been invisible but they were strong, and I was the bastard who’d ensnared her all along.
I simply nodded because what do you say to the woman you love to explain you never meant to take her freedom – only keep her safe?
Sun blinked, before giving this small smile. It shone: pure and joyful.
It was so different to how she’d looked at me lately that I knew I’d set her free, even though it was breaking my heart.
True love was a bitch.
Plantagenet – as courteous as any courtier – kissed the back of Sun’s hand, before raising her to her feet. ‘Let us play some more, my pretty lass.’
‘Plantagenet, stop.’
Plantagenet froze.
Blake. An ink black gargoyle in the doorway.
He was glowering at the lovebirds, probably much like I had. I experienced a pang of sympathy for the bloke, until I realized the tosser was only narked he hadn’t been invited to the party.
Mother was scuffing her heel against the skirting, her fingers tapping the iPhone in her pocket.
Blake must be plan B.
I was going to leg it, if they started the whole seduction routine on Blake, as they had on me. Freeing Sun was one thing. Watching her play out her fantasies with other blokes..?
Remember, I was no angel.
Sun immediately dragged the green sheet to drape over herself, however, like a toga. Plantagenet was motionless and giving these quick little gasps; I suddenly recognized it as fear.
‘Did I give you permission to..?’ Blake couldn’t quite make himself say it.
Plantagenet shook his nut.
When Blake stretched out his arm, Plantagenet paced towards him with feline steps, his slender body quivering. Blake pressed their two bone rings together – fang meets tooth.
Slap.
Blake’s backhand staggered Plantagenet away from Blake, breaking their touch. A purple bruise was already forming across Plantagenet’s cheek.
Three Blood Lifers moved towards Blake – Sun, Mother and me. It was instinct – blood and love…I don’t sodding know…but no First Lifer was beating a Plantagenet.
Plantagenet was right – we were family.
‘In God’s name, hold,’ at Plantagenet’s order, we hesitated, glancing between each other; I reckon I was beginning to get the hang of these unholy alliances.
Blake hadn’t quailed. He hadn’t even looked away from Plantagenet. I knew what that was like – the flame of obsessive love. ‘You wanted to see Plantagenet spanked? He’s earned a flogging now. Go prepare yourself.’
Plantagenet’s mouth twisted, but he gave a quick nod.
‘You’re barmy if you reckon…’
Plantagenet caught my eye, silencing my outburst, as he slipped out of the bedroom. I noticed Mother tried to rub against him, but he pulled away from her.
Blake coldly assessed Sun. ‘Your head girl badge doesn’t look so shiny today. It’s lucky you have Plantagenet as whipping boy.’
‘No way you’re thrashing him,’ I prowled to Blake, forgetting in my fury that I was starkers, ‘get your jollies over the internet: wank to porn, like everybody else. Don’t take it out on a Magnificoe’s arse.’
Blake tapped my bare chest with one manicured finger. ‘The difference between you and Plantagenet? He’s learnt how to take his punishment.’
Then Blake spun on his heel and stalked out, pursued by one Blood Lifer wrapped in a silk sheet, a second clicking in kitten heels and a third starkers.
We found Plantagenet kneeling in the center of the dungeon – what a bloody surprise – with his hands clasped and his nut bowed.
Punishment positon.
He’d laid out a heavy buffalo hide flogger next to a St. Andrew’s Cross – a wooden frame with leather cuffs, which was shiny and new, like it’d been inbuilt with this ready-made playroom. I flinched, remembering the flogger’s thud and sting. Its cruel bite. Being manacled to that cross, helpless to the prison strap, cane or birch. Marked under the hand of my Master.
Now Plantagenet was willingly submitting, and I couldn’t figure out why. He was a Long-Lived. Why was he allowing Blake to have this hold over him and us all?
When Plantagenet glanced underneath his eyelashes at us witnessing his humiliation, he blushed.
‘Face the Cross.’
Plantagenet marched, like a knight onto the battlefield, before holding out his hands and feet to the cuffs. Blake slipped the leather carefully round, doing up the buckles. Then he pushed Plantagenet’s Rapunzel curls to the front, exposing his back.
Only after he stepped back, did I notice Blake was shaking.
The black despair must’ve screamed through him, the same as me, and that made him dangerous.
Blake picked up the flogger, testing it – whoosh – through the air.
I cringed. Then Sun was pressed against me, her mush against my neck, like it used to be. Like I needed it to be.
Sun was shaking too.
I held her tightly: we were united in this.
Blake lifted the flogger high, before flicking it with practiced ease hard across Plantagenet’s upper back. Angry red lines, as if Plantagenet had been clawed, scored his golden skin. He let out a pained gasp, after he’d breathed through the agony. He wasn’t taking it silently though: Blake clearly liked to know the lesson was being learned.
Blake pulled his arm back again.
Sun and I stiffened.
“Ziggy Starburst” burst in tinny glam rock sacrilege from Blake’s pocket.
As casual as if he was answering his phone between checking emails, Blake slipped it out. ‘Blake here. What, now..? The CIE? Wait, I’ll meet her… No, my private rooms are most certainly not acceptable. I don’t care that she can track me. You must not allow…’
Blake twirled round, all coolness vanished. Punishment forgotten. Something scarier than him had spooked him.
‘There’s going to be an inspection. We have protocols to protect and hide our work in headquarters but my rooms…here…you..? Hide.’
Blake’s panic was infectious.
‘We’re not chameleons,’ I clutched Sun closer, ‘we can’t just camouflage into the wallpaper.’
Blake was banging about the dungeon, slamming open drawers, as if we could shrink down to fit. ‘You don’t understand; she’s up there now. Plantagenet’s my slave: he can be here when she arrives. But if you’re discovered..?’
Mother spun in circles. ‘Stop tripping out, bitches.’
‘Not helping.’ I hissed.
‘Mr Darwin’s cage,’ Blake threw off the thick plastic cover. The cage was large – more than man-sized. Steel, sturdy and shiny.
New.
‘Mr Darwin’s cage?’ I lifted an eyebrow. ‘Sure about that?’
Blake shifted his feet. ‘It came with the room; I’ve never tried it out on Plantagenet. I wouldn’t.’ Blake undid the padlock, swinging open the door. He smiled, as he glanced between us Blood Lifers. ‘I am delighted, however, to christen it with you.’
‘Wanker,’ I muttered, before dropping to all fours and crawling into the cage. It took almost more courage than I had to shuffle, my knees pressing painfully into the metal, into that cage. To trust Blake to trap me and repeat what Master had done, stripping away my manhood.
Then there wasn’t time to think because Sun was pushing into the cage behind me, and I was being shunted against the front bars.
The bars rattled angrily.
‘Hurry up. I need to get the cover back over before--’
‘Hold on - what..?’
A final push crushing me against the bars – three Blood Lifers in a cage built for one man – the slamming clang of the door being closed and locked, and then the cover being drawn back and over. ‘Wait…’
I couldn’t stop the whining fear.
Black, black, black.
I was caged in darkness; terror infected, I moaned.
‘Shh…’ Sun’s lips were warm on my ear. A kiss. Just one on the sensitive pulse point. Then her arms were sliding around my waist.
And I was safe. Home. The fear flew from her touch.
Sun loved me.
I knew it in that moment. That single kiss.
Everything else was snowflake patterns.
I could live with those differences. If Sun loved me.
‘I’m not at all displeased to discover you are capable of disciplining your slave, Jamie,’ some bint’s uptight voice, so close to the cage that if she’d reached out, she’d have been touching us.
‘The best gift anyone ever gave me, Ms Kane. I’ll always be grateful for our business connection.’
‘Why so formal? I hope our connection shall be fruitful for many years to come.’
‘Hasn’t it always been, Julia?’
‘Quite. This Blood Lifer problem, however, is not a simple one; we need to develop a long term solution.’
‘Agreed.’
Agreed? The tosser.
‘Your slave was from a genetically powerful bloodline; they were most uncertain he could be tamed. That’s why those Magnificoes, as they call themselves, rather than the weak children at the Blood Life Council, had possession of him. In a way, he was like tribute. Tell me then, how did you domesticate such a bitch? We understand you’ve used solutions such as defanging, and I can see here strict discipline. But what else?’
My fangs were out, as I struggled to remain motionless. Behind me, I felt two other Blood Lifers fighting the same battle.
‘Conditioning. Punishment and reward. Blood Lifers are animals, when you come down to it; they respond to training, the same as a chimp.’
‘Intriguing.’
‘Of course, there’s a magic ingredient: they have to be motivated behaviorally to change,’ Blake was warming to his theme, ‘with fear or pain. Aversion therapy to human blood, for example, would be most effective. I’ve found, however, that allowing him natural behaviour and environment is better – as far as possible in the artificial.’
‘The CIE will bear it in mind, when weighed against cost. We’re considering a range of…solutions to the Blood Life disease.’
‘Wait,’ blossoming alarm, which tickled spider legs down my spine, ‘Blood Life is not a disease.’
‘Infection then.’
‘It’s not a disease or an infection. It’s--’
‘Thank you, Jamie. Always an education.’
Silence.
Then light, followed by the clang of the cage’s door banging open.
We backed out one by one. My knees were stiff against the cold bars. I stretched, as I pulled myself up.
Surprised, I clocked Blake undoing Plantagenet’s cuffs, instead of continuing the flogging. When Blake hauled Plantagenet into a bear hug, Blake’s powerful shoulders were suddenly rising and falling in waves, as he sobbed.
‘I’m sorry,’ Blake whispered, stroking Plantagenet’s curls all the way down to his waist, before tracing the scarlet weals, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Plantagenet pushed away. ‘You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Are you indeed with us?’
‘It’s too late; didn’t you hear her? The CIE think you’re an infection to be cured.’
‘Where’s Hartford?’ I stood in the center of that dungeon, staring at the rack Hartford had been stretched on for me and felt like the worst mate, family member, leader…ever.
Because I’d only just noticed Hartford wasn’t there.
What if the CIE bint had stumbled across him..?
I’d been too caught up in the blood spell that was Plantagenet and Sun: together it was home, family and love.
It was a fantasy.
A bloody dangerous one too.
I’d promised Hartford not to take any wooden nickels: yet my pockets were weighed down with them.
I’d told Hartford he was my family. Yet who had I forgotten (we all forgotten), in the danger and the fear?
Hartford had never forgotten me.
Then everyone started talking, yelling and accusing. All at once.
‘Pipe down, for crying out loud!’
As one, we shut up, turning to see an astonished Hartford peering in at us.
I laughed then and once I started, I couldn’t stop. Since when has a little hysteria hurt a bloke?
Slap – oh yeah, when he gets smacked in the mug by a Long-lived. ‘Stop acting screwy and spill. What is all this?’
Hartford eyed the half-covered cage, flogger and us. Starkers – or at least Plantagenet and I were. Sun was just about holding onto her sheet.
‘Life, helmethead, bloody life,’ I was buzzing, as if I’d feasted on human blood, ‘and we’re going to start living it. We’re rescuing Donovan and we’re not going to be afraid. Why? Because we’re Renegades.’