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 slaughter. 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?’
I gawped at Aedan. ‘It the Apocalypse?’
Aedan flicked me with the bar towel. I squawked. ‘I’ll go tell She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.’
Aedan sidestepped the drunks and gropers with the skill of a boxer, before disappearing into the crowd.
Hartford had finished his set. “The Killing Moon” spilled spectral across the sound system. Hartford was dancing with Donovan now in the dark of the club to the mysterious mandarin style bass and cello.
They were lost in each other. Lost to this world. Lost to the First Lifers of this stinking club, as they reveled to be alive in our glorious second evolution.
Their cheeks touched; Donovan’s dark mop was falling over his mush. His snake-green eyeshadow sparkled. They were whispering secrets to each other, with these wicked smiles.
Hartford was centuries old: power radiated from him. He glowed. Yet he was dancing with his stripper partner – my cousin – in a human club because I was too afraid to be discovered by our own kind.
But this was my London. The dark and dirty behind the pretty.
Crash.
‘Bleeding hell…’
I ducked – just in time – as two black disembodied hands flew by my nut and – crash – there went a prime bottle of gin.
And my night’s pay.
Gloves.
Black gloves: my brain was just able to untangle, before I was surrounded in black (I forget how tall she is), the soft sway of ash blonde hair and a mouth.
Sun.
I was sodding consumed by her. The life born of my fangs.
She wasn’t Grayse.
Grayse had died that night out on the moors, I knew that now, but Sun had blazed to birth on her passing and she was here burning up every inch of me. A life created from me but never less than me. I wasn’t her Ruby. I’d authored her but I’d never be more than her equal.
Christ how I’d spent my long life aching to discover that.
Then I whimpered.
Icy fingers had worked their way up the back of my white shirt and were playing my spine like it was a piano. I tried to pull away, but bugger it was Sun powerful.
She smelled of cheap Tahitian Gardenia and freedom - me.
Sun nibbled my lips with her teeth. ‘It’s wick raw out. See what an ice queen I’ve frozen into on account of standing at the door all night?’
‘Suits you.’ When those torturing fingers teased their way towards the front of my trousers, I looked up into Sun’s flint peepers and was relieved to see the laughter there. ‘We could always swap back? You’re the one wanted to be the Big Bad.’
‘Na-ah, Mr Penguin suits you,’ Sun flicked my bowtie, ‘plus you make more tips in the dick jar.’
‘There is that. Aedan takes too many risks for us anyhow; it’s not like you’ve got a license or whatnot..?’
‘I’m not a frickin’ dog.’
I couldn’t quite hide my grin. ‘I remember telling you the same thing.’
Disgruntled, Sun snorted.
I grabbed both her cold hands, which felt blinding (and not just because it kept me safe from their torment), as I tugged her towards the dancefloor. ‘Come on, or we’ll miss it.’
Traditions. Habits. Rituals. Call it what you like, they bond and familiarize. Even the broken, fragmented and lost. Maybe us more than most. There’s a risk, however, a danger in every one we add crutch-like.
That we don’t control them: they control us.
Blokes in pinstripes, leather or starkers. Brandon’s punk hair and a punter’s neat side parting. Donovan and Hartford at the throbbing heart: a flash of white and sweating pink. United First and Blood in the musky heat going wild to the club’s signature closing song: the creepy, joyful alienation of Echo and the Bunnymen’s “People Are Strange”.
Caught in the song’s rapture, we were laughing, as I drew Sun close. I warmed her hands between mine: she fitted.
For the first time in 150 years I had the one I loved, family and a home.
I had hope.
I was bleeding soaring.
The organ rose to its ecstatic crescendo: lights burst in my mind. The world expanded. Who needed blood when I had this?
Sun’s fingers – hot and aggressive now – stroked down my neck. Questing. Her lips seared, as they pressed to mine.
Then we were kissing, as we were crushed amongst those First Lifers jumping to a song, which was warning them to look out for the very creatures in the shadows who were snogging in their midst.
Humans are berks like that.
We broke apart, when the strippers rushed onto the stage for the finale, Donovan amongst them. They writhed and twirled along that cross, as the punters whooped and catcalled, tossing money like confetti - and the grooms were for sale.
Sun’s body was entwined with mine; I could hear her harsh breathing. I was losing myself in her.
In those hedonistic moments of psychedelia, we were forgetting everything.
And for me? The human camera?
That’s like…heaven.
Christ I hope so.
The world. Our pasts. The pain.
Because right then? We were happy.
We were free.
You’ll only truly understand what that means, when you’ve been a slave.
Forgetting? Losing myself in the music? Dance? The feel of Sun’s lips – body – against mine was as good as the sweet opiate of blood.
Almost.
Yet I know in the choice between fight and flight I’d chosen flight. Safety. When you have family it’s a Siren call.
A sudden swing of red braids.
Aedan threw himself chimp-like at Hartford, who stumbled back and then laughing, twirled Aedan round: a First Lifer clambering up a Blood Lifer like he was trying to climb the evolutionary tree.
They were giggling. Whispering. Pawing. Two kids escaped to a playground.
Sun hissed, but when I licked up her neck, it turned into a sigh.
I watched over Sun’s shoulder in shock, as Donovan dived off the stage and ripped Aedan away from Hartford.
Buggering hell.
Aedan’s arms were windmilling, as Donovan’s mouth was pressing closer and closer to Aedan’s throat.
‘Sodding git…’ I elbowed my way through the crush of sweating, sexed up bodies – their blood pumping beat – beat – beat. I could smell it in every blood bag, beneath their skin.
Bleeding hell, I could drain every one of them dry; Ruby and I would’ve made a crimson soaked tempest night of it.
I closed my peepers; wet pricked their edges.
‘For crying out loud, mac, what’s your beef?’ Hartford wrenched Donovan by the hair, ripping him away from Aedan’s neck.
Was Aedan bitten?
I was panting. The shock or…horror?
Aedan looked dazed. He was rubbing his throat. I caught him around his waist before he could fall.
He didn’t seem paralyzed.
Please, please…just…sodding please…
Why did I care if one First Lifer died? Only Kathy - my Moon Girl for over fifty years – had ever truly crossed the divide of species. Why was my heart beating so hard my bloody chest ached?
Hartford was still dangling Donovan starkers by his dark tumble of hair; Donovan was howling like a trapped animal. We were putting on quite a show.
The other dancers were having a gander now: they looked pissed. The punters were amused at the extra entertainment.
‘Outside,’ I snapped, before reconsidering. ‘Clothes on. Then outside.’
Hartford nodded. ‘We’ll beat it.’ Then he pushed a path off the dancefloor, caveman dragging Donovan squirming and squealing after him.
When Aedan stroked my mush, I looked down. ‘Now tell me you don’t know who’s Batman and who’s Robin?’ Aedan wriggled in my arms. ‘I’m not a damsel in need of rescuing; you can let go now.’
‘Right, sorry.’
I backed up. Had Aedan been bitten? I ran my fingers down his neck.
Aedan jerked away. ‘Cop on and stop being a cock-tease.’
‘I wasn’t--’
Aedan waved it away. ‘Like Donovan wasn’t?’
‘About that. I mean, are we alright?’
‘You mean: are you fired?’ Aedan’s gaze had hardened.
I sensed Sun at my shoulder. When I glanced back, she smiled; all at once, I knew what it was not to be alone.
Aedan shifted, before shaking his nut. ‘This is your home, you tool. Now go and sort out those two idiots of yours.’
When I found them in the dank alley behind Peter Pan’s, where the pyramid of rubbish bags spilled stale beer bottles and used condoms, Hartford had Donovan slammed against the brick wall, with an arm against his throat…and he was right royally narked.
‘We do not eat friends,’ Hartford ground his arm into Donovan’s throat harder with each word.
I leant against the wall, crossing my arms. Donovan glanced at me, as if for help. I simply raised my eyebrow.
‘You’re blowing my mind. Since when were First Lifers friends? Your friends?’
Hartford lowered his arm; Donovan fingered the blossoming bruises. ‘Pipe down, will you? Aedan’s on the up and up. Can’t you see I’m balled up right now, baby? So Light says no humans, and that means we’re on the wagon-avous.’
Donovan’s features gentled. ‘Yeah, man, I understand-avous. But…friend? After First Lifers…tortured…raped…’ He swallowed carefully. ‘We’re still slaves inside. You still freak out over nothing: your nightmares and Light’s.’
Hartford couldn’t meet his eye. Or mine. He was shaking. ‘I need this. I just…’
I wished Donovan would shut up or Sun would hurry up.
What we needed?
A good hunt.
All right then: pretend hunt. Get the blood rushing and the predator roaring. Bury the ghosts because they’ll never vanish, only fade. You have to learn to live with the unwelcome lodgers.
That’s when I sensed him: the other Blood Lifer.
He was lurking – and yeah, anyone who lurks is suspicious in my book – at the end of the alley behind the industrial-sized green recycling bins.
He was watching us.
I was already coiled for the hunt. I didn’t even hesitate; I shot off into the black.
The bloke, however, was ninja fast. I only clocked a hoodie patterned with skulls before he was gone. Me? Now I could leg it with the best of them.
I buzzed with the predator freed, leaping over walls and bike racks. I was clouted when I shoved by a pug-faced john with a skanky hooker on her knees. I spun but didn’t even pause, as my peeper swelled: the gap was closing.
The wanker was leading me through rabbit warren alleys; the tang of the Thames was sharp on the breeze. Polish music bled from cars into the still of the night. Inside my brain, however, Echo and the Bunnymen was playing on loop, jabbering how sodding strange I was.
I’d have beaten my nut bloody on a lamp post, painting it scarlet – of course I know I’m strange, have some of that – if I hadn’t been so close.
I caught a glimpse of Blood Lifer – a slice of black.
I hammered my fist against my forehead and sped up.
For one brief moment, his slim figure was silhouetted against Southwark Cathedral. He was having a gander back over his shoulder.
At me.
As if he wanted me to follow…
I stumbled, before catching myself.
The bloody cheeky bastard.
So he was playing cat and mouse..?
I prowled back the way I’d come through the frozen streets under the death-white moon, working my way round. Bladdered geezers in blue shirts weaved in rowdy bands. The night stank of beer and desperation.
Typical Saturday night in London then.
I ducked down, jumping over the last wall.
The bloke was leaning against a humungous gleaming finger up to the sky, which they call the Shard.
He would be – the tosser.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, as I swaggered up behind him.
When I tapped him on the shoulder, he jumped a bleeding mile. He could barely have been authored: no instincts at all.
When he spun round, I saw he was a kid. A bloody Emo: skull patterned hoodie, black and white striped socks and matching scarf. Even a t-shirt with cartoon vampire: cute fangs and bat wings.
Perfect – he had a sense of irony too.
Emo flicked his long black fringe, which was sprayed green like a mouldy skunk; his peepers were rimmed with enough eyeliner for one too.
Donovan would want to swap tips.
Then Emo crossed his arms and tapped his foot, as if I’d been the one who’d been caught out being a bad boy.
And yeah, I was bloody bad but I’d proved I was no boy.
I frowned. ‘Who the bleeding hell are you?’
Emo just smirked.
That did it. No more Mr Nice Light.
‘Look, you pain in my arse, why were you watching us? Can you talk to me or do you have to go get your daddy first?’
The Emo’s smirk widened. Then he head-butted me.
Crack – there went my nose.
Hand strikes – one, two, three – so rapid I didn’t have time to think more than: Emo kids knocking the stuffing out of you with Kenpo Karate? Now that’s not something you see every day.
I choked on the pain blazing in hot shocks where his small hand sliced.
No more Mr Nice Light? All right then.
I grabbed the end of Emo’s stripy scarf and twisted. His turn to choke.
Gasping, Emo hesitated - my in.
Because here’s the thing: I know karate too. And the moment Emo realised it?
Blinding.
I slammed an elbow strike, followed by swift knife-hands, driving Emo crashing back against the glass Shard. It trembled. He kicked my legs; I gritted my teeth but didn’t lose ground. Close now, I went for a flurry of strikes, until all I could hear was his soft grunts and the hit of flesh on flesh.
I’d missed this: fists and fangs. You can’t tame a predator – and I’ve never pretended to be a hero.
Battering that cartoon vampire with its ironic batwings?
Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Reluctantly, I eased back, but kept my hand pressed to the brat’s chest.
Emo was panting, yet he still had that not bothered expression.
I tilted my nut. ‘So now that’s out of your system, let’s try this again. Why are you spying on us? Who do you reckon you are? Bond?’
It was Emo’s turn to tilt his nut, as he assessed me.
Confused, I glanced down: dinner jacket and bowtie.
Sodding hell.
I sighed, easing back from him. ‘Names Light. Just…Light. Now whatever this is? Can we get on with it? It’s been a long night. I need a kip and a quick bonk. That’s not an offer, by the way. I have a girl…’
That’s when Emo pulled out the shooter.
For a long moment, I simply stared at it – sleek and dark – between us.
Emo’s mush had suddenly stilled. It was strangely blank.
I blinked. ‘You’re having a laugh.’ Emo cocked the shooter. His finger on the trigger. Not having a laugh then. ‘Stop waving around that todger extension. Unless you’re figuring on shooting me through the heart, it can’t do me in.’
‘You’re right,’ Emo sounded so sodding young, stood there with a gun and fangs but no clue as to the true power of either weapon, ‘but it’ll hurt. Won’t it?’
Bang.
I screamed.
The barmy bleeding buggering bastard….
Scarlet searing exploding agony. I hunched over, struggling not to hurl.
Emo had shot me in the foot. He’d totally destroyed my boot.
Grayse – before she was Sun – had given me those boots. I was going to pay Emo back for taking that from me.
I stared up at Emo, astonished. ‘We don’t use guns; they’re the humans’ toys. Don’t you know anything about being a Blood Lifer?’
Casually, Emo shrugged, as he slipped the shooter back into the waistband of his tight jeans. ‘I was told you were a rebel,’ sneer – there was definite sneer in his tone, ‘you don’t sound like one to me.’
He was examining the gory gaping wound in my foot; his peepers were lit with enthusiasm. ‘How does that feel?’
‘Bloody awful, you little bastard.’
Emo nodded, as if this was a valid answer, which he was storing for future reference.
I shuddered, before trying to leap at him with my fangs out but only ended up – clang - against the front of the Shard, gasping with the pain of my shattered foot, when Emo casually sidestepped, mooching away towards London Bridge.
‘Oi, come back here…’ I punched the glass. Then regretted it.
Throbbing hand, foot and a long way to limp home? Not exactly how I saw the night ending.
Footsteps. Running. Blood Lifers.
Here was to facing the gallows - or a boot to the goolies.
‘Bollocks,’ I grunted, as I hit the floor hard, rolling side to side; I curled foetal around my…yeah, bollocks.
I peered misty-eyed up at Sun and then wished I hadn’t.
‘That’s for booking it outta there without me.’
‘Point taken,’ I gasped, still massaging my privates, as if somehow I could wank the pain out.
Sun was breathless like she’d legged it halfway across…
Bugger it.
I took a shufti at Donovan and Hartford, who were sauntering towards me, their arms casually wrapped around each other’s waists.
I reached up my hand, as if Hartford would drag me to my feet in a show of male solidarity, but he batted it away. ‘Swell. Now we don’t have to kick the poor little bunny too.’
‘That’s lovely.’
‘You’re screwy. Still thinking you’re the superhero, mac?’
I rolled my eyes, as I slumped onto my back. I didn’t know what hurt more: my blown to smithereens foot, pulverized goolies or Hartford’s words.
No, the sight of the hole in my motorcycle boot - that did it. I could’ve bleeding bawled.
‘Bit of sympathy; man down here.’
‘Not a chance,’ Donovan now, his shadow dark over me. Couldn’t leave him out: each one lined up to twist the knife. I was discovering it was the role of leader to take it. Must be why prime ministers go grey so fast: have you noticed that? I squinted up through the agony; Donovan was still narked. ‘It’s not cool. All these stunts. You’re not alone; none of us are, not anymore. We’re tight, which means no more wigging out. We need you and--’
‘Alright, no need to make a song and dance out of it.’ I accepted Donovan’s hand, and he tugged me bouncing onto my one good leg.
‘Bummer,’ Donovan examined the wound.
‘Chowderhead destroyed your boot,’ Sun pouted, before curling her arm around my shoulder, as carefully as if I’d suddenly transformed to china: born of my fangs, she understood.
Even when she’d been mistress, she’d crossed the gulf of both role and species. She’d seen me.
Those boots were more than merely the first tentative gift of love – they’d been the return of my freedom. Identity. Soul.
As I limped slowly towards home surrounded by my strange family, I knew I was no superhero.
The people I loved were safe, however, and that was enough to hope.
If that was the only time I’d seen the Emo kid with his skull hoodie and bat wing vampire t-shirt, I’d have been a happy bloke.
But it wasn’t.
So you want a secret? Something no one knows?
The next week I went hunting. Hunting my own kind. And emo was my prey.
Did I tell Hartford, Donovan or Sun?
Did I cocoa.
They’ll have my balls if they ever find out.
They figured I needed time in the glory of the night to work through the trauma and nightmare of our slavery.
Thing is? You don’t work through something like that: you survive or adapt.
I’d already done both.
I tracked the psychopathic pillock across Southwark: along the Thames, through Borough Market, which was kaleidoscopic with the fresh scents of fish, chicken and bread, and around the circular Globe that was like a bloody UFO landing. I shadowed him through alleys, which were dives back when blokes got their jollies from bull and bear baiting, and now got them from suck and hand jobs.
Other nights Emo would wander in the upmarket districts with their poncey bars, galleries and gated communities, which thumbed their noses at the rest of the poor sods clinging to the backsides of the housing estates.
Emo never, however, crossed London Bridge. Maybe he reckoned the rhyme was a curse: London Bridge is falling down…falling down…my fair lady.
I’d taken to humming it, as I stalked my melancholy ghost.
Here’s the thing: I couldn’t work out if I was hunting him. Or if he was hunting me.
All I knew? He wasn’t going anywhere.
One night Emo led me along a row of cafés. It was freezing. I huddled in my leathers in front of a closed graphic novels bookshop: yeah, I can wave the geek flag. The window was bright with posters: whip-wielding heroines and scowling anti-heroes.
Fantasies.
I’d picked up a black coffee from a street vendor – two sugars please, luv – and its warmth was seeping into my ice-cold hands. When I breathed in that mellow wondrous scent, it burst memories through every cell: clasping papa’s large hand on a street like this outside a Victorian coffee house, surrounded by fellow scientists, as battle waged over the merits of a latest lens. Excitement and safety both in that world and with my papa.
I shook myself. The scent of my personal specter was still fresh.
My recovery from the sensory deprivation had sharpened my senses. They were raw, as if they’d been flayed.
Adaptation – it’s a hell of a thing.
I whistled “London Bridge”, before touching my mouth to the lip of the cup for my first sip of heaven.
I didn’t notice the tiny First Lifer under the faded tumble of…all right, bloody comics…until I stumbled over him.
There was a whimper of pain. Then I let out one of my own.
A mangled ball of black-and-white fur had attached its jaws to my leg and was biting.
Hard.
At least it was above the new boots Sun had half inched from a charity shop.
Gasping, I shook my leg.
‘That be wack, man; don’t go hurting her.’
A cascade of dusty blonde curls, thin mush and too large blue peepers, like an anime hero had popped out of those discarded comics. Then he sneezed, snuffling the sleeve of his threadbare jumper across his nose.
The poor bleeder didn’t even have a coat.
He was fidgeting with a frayed neon and dark green friendship bracelet, twisting the baggy threads around, as if it was a talisman.
It didn’t look like it was working.
Passersby were ebbing and flowing around the boy like he was invisible; just another piece of London’s detritus. They were adapting around his existence, as they did the empty fast-food cartons and piles of ciggie butts: something not to be stepped in but around.
They didn’t see him at all.
I felt the heat of the coffee between my hands, with that drink me aroma.
I sighed. ‘Here,’ I held out the cup.
The kid took the coffee in his small hand. Then he gave me a nod.
The ball of tangled fluff was still making a chew toy out of my leg. I hopped up and down significantly.
‘Mutt,’ when the kid tapped his thigh, Mutt gave my flesh one final munch with a growl, before padding back to curl next to his master.
I remembered the spaniel pups I’d once craved to buy on Regent’s Street, the day I’d run from my papa.
I peered down: the bastard had bitten right through my jeans.
Mutt stared back at me with languid peepers.
I glanced between them. ‘Cheers, little man.’
He frowned. ‘Will.’
‘Light.’
Will took a gulp of coffee.
The poor sod can’t have long been a street kid. You could tell.
Then he smiled.
I’d been about to turn back to my hunt and the Emo kid, who was the exact negative image of this one. He could’ve been the same age when he was elected: two sides of a photograph exposure.
But then that smile was like…light…radiance…innocence.
Bollocks.
There’s no such thing as innocence. Or sin. We’re born animals and what we know best is how to survive because it all comes down to evolution. Who’s the quickest, smartest or strongest.
The most beautiful.
We all know it; we just pretend not to. Mask the inequalities. Our world (First or Blood) isn’t fair.
And no one is innocent.
Will’s smile, however, called to me.
Christ in heaven, no…
I stumbled away from him.
Will’s smile faltered. It was uncertain. And that hurt look?
I’d bleeding put it there.
Will ducked his nut, cupping his hands tighter around the coffee.
I wanted to say…something. But what could I?
That he wasn’t invisible? That I saw him? That I’d tasted his Soul and knew deeper than my heart – in my very DNA – that he belonged to me because he was meant to be born of my fangs?
That he was a new Plantagenet?
Way to freak out a bloke.
It was nothing like the way it’d been with Grayse, which had been a slow awakening; a love growing, until her death had forced my hand. Then Sun had been reborn. It hadn’t been a choice. It’d been panic. A fear of loss.
A decision – I’ll own it. Yet it wasn’t one I’d wanted. Not then and not like that.
This, however, was like being hit – bang – with the flowing beauty of another’s Soul, feeling the weave of it cleave to you.
Will would be a mix of all four types of Blood Lifer: thinker, beauty, warrior and leader. An individual – as dangerous as me.
Bugger it, I couldn’t catch my breath.
It wasn’t love: not like Ruby, Kathy or Sun. Yet it was love - of family.
I could smell Will’s blood. Sod it, I wanted to taste…
My hands shook. I twisted away, grateful not to see Will’s pain anymore, as I bent over a bench.
I must’ve looked a right berk.
‘Stinking homeless bastard,’ the posh voice jeered. Then I heard the oomph of an unmistakable boot to the guts.
Shocked, I leapt round to see Will sprawled in his paper bed, which was sodden now with a sea of spilled coffee, Mutt growling and a poncey git in monkey suit with a bird on his arm, no doubt on their way back from a night of Shakespeare at the Globe, getting in a quick beggar beating.
Everything. Turned. To. Red.
I roared, as I dived at the bastard. He paled to a ghost.
I slammed him back against the comic book shop’s window; his mug smashed right up against the tits of some heroine in leather. His gargled pleadings were muffled through the crimson fury hissing kill through every protective inch of me.
I twisted the tosser’s flabby arm up behind him, ripping that expensive suit.
He screamed.
My mouth was on his neck; my teeth grazed his dry skin. My fangs shot out.
One bite. Just one.
The bitch was shrieking and bashing me on the back with her tote – thud, thud, thud. Bruises burst, but even that pain was muted. Her nails were scratching, slicing, scrabbling…
Yet I was the predator: these humans were the prey.
I pressed my fangs harder into his skin.
Then there was this small voice tight with fear, ‘The po-po, Light.’
It was like being dragged back into my own body. I hastily pulled in my fangs. I could hear the thud of the boots.
I flung the bloke round. He was a jabbering mess. There was a wet patch down the front of his trousers; it was dribbling onto the pavement.
I tilted my nut. ‘Who smells of homeless now?’
I ducked under the bint’s witch claws. Then I grabbed Will and legged it down the street.
First Lifers scattered away from us. They saw us – yeah, they bloody saw us.
Barking at our heels. Mutt was chasing us, just like the pigs. It was all a game to her, as we snaked back through Southwark: hunted now, instead of hunting. When Will collapsed, I scooped him up and over my shoulder.
It was glorious: the cold and dark, and we were free. High on the adrenaline, edge and thrill. The star eyes were watching. Round and round.
I’d run like this from the pigs down Carnaby Street in the ‘60s: it’d been on the night I’d first realised First and Blood were not as divided as I’d been taught.
When freedom seemed…possible.
Naïve prat, right?
Then Will was giggling, Mutt was yapping, and I was laughing.
I tumbled Will to a heap on the floor of the alley. We were hidden. Alone.
So I bloody laughed to the black night like I hadn’t since before Abona.
Afterwards I leant back against the wall, lighting my e-cig. I took a drag. Then I eyed the kid.
He stared up at me like I was a god.
Bollocks.
‘That was sick. Are you…’ He cuddled tighter around Mutt; his peepers were crystal blue and so bloody large, ‘….an angel or something like that?’
Like an angel then, was it?
I gave him a full twirl – arms out: vintage gold ace of spades leather motorcycle jacket, black jeans (with bite marks), and pompadour. ‘Do I look like a bloody angel?’
Will glanced at me sideways. ‘Dunno. What do bloody angels look like?’
‘Oi, watch your language. Angels wouldn’t like it.’
Will pulled up his slight frame, as he gave me a sly smile. ‘So, like, you are..?’
‘Not even close.’ Embarrassed, I shuffled my feet. ‘You know, you shouldn’t be out here by yourself at this time.’
‘You’re not my rents.’
The sudden thought shot through me – like hot poison. ‘Where are you parents?’
For the first time, a guarded expression closed off Will’s mush; his mouth tightened into a thin line. ‘I don’t got none.’
I didn’t believe him. He knew I didn’t believe him. See the games we play?
But here’s the thing: the poison cooled to soothing balm at his lie.
No parents meant less guilt when I stole Will.
When, see? Not if.
That must’ve been what it was like for Ruby with me. An obsession. Every emotion amplified to agony.
I needed Will, the same as I needed the rest of my family: the bonds we form, tie and control us. They entangle us in a web of need, drives and compulsions.
Being alone makes us strong. Yet when you’re alone? You’re also the weakest creature alive.
It’s taken me over 150 years to begin to understand that.
‘The streets are dangerous. You should be home.’
Will snorted, giving me this funny look. ‘I ain’t got no home, bruv. Why you think I out here on my ones?’
Of course he had no home, at least no home he’d admit to: another game. Why else would he be out here in this cutting breeze with no coat and half-starved?
‘You should be with other…people.’
‘I ain’t going no shelter: piss, stinky feet and crazy-assed--’
‘Not out on the street then. There are predators. All sorts. Find somewhere--’
‘Says who?’ Will squared his shoulders, tossing his curls defiantly. He had some balls this one.
‘Says me.’
Will scrunched up his nose, before giving me that blinding smile. ‘Alright, safe.’ He trotted backwards, his hands burrowed in his threadbare jean’s pockets, as if following an order from God. Mutt jumped after him. ‘See you around, Angel of Light.’
Then he was gone.
The little git.
My little git.
And that was the problem - or my new hope.
I’d never felt so alive as I did in the crisp air of that cramped alley in the arse end of Southwark. I buzzed with it.
All because of one young First Lifer.
I made a promise then to protect Will, to save him and (Christ help me), to elect him.
Because I knew – I bleeding knew – he was mine.
That’s how we control and are controlled – biology, evolution, family or love – call it what you like.
Secrets: they silence us. The more they snare us, the harder it is for us to spill our Souls.
So I didn’t tell them - the others. About Will.
Because I wanted to hold the secret precious and safe for just a while longer.
Hope, promises and love.
That night? I burst with them.
And the Emo kid? I forgot all about him. The hunt. Being hunted.
I forgot to fear.
That was my biggest mistake.