NIGHT 6
You look…
Knackered? Like a dog’s breakfast? Death warmed up? Starvation, sleep deprivation and five rounds of torture on the trot will do that to a bloke.
Mr Blickle, the Blood Life Council does not employ such methods. I was assured--
If you were assured…and you are again?
The woman who’s trying to save your ungrateful – and rather worn – behind from an untimely demise.
If you wish to heal today and smoke that e-cig of yours, then secrets are on the agenda. If you also wish me to delve into your claims of unfair treatment..? That extraordinary mind of yours - I want it.
I’m only here – alive – because of my photographic memory?
I’d wondered at your generosity.
Talents are our genetic advantage. Why we’ve always been the apex predator.
What you’re also not figuring, however, is that when you’re persecuted, you use every trick and con to adapt.
That’s what makes me the bloody king.
You won’t be pulling the wool over my eyes, Thomas.
We’ll see. But truth or trust? None of that means a thing when weighed in the balance with survival.
Dark.
Help, help, help…
I. Can’t. Open. My. Eyes.
Chains.
Tight around my wrists and ankles, tying me down to the cold plastic of an examining table.
You feel that once? You never forget.
Can’t move. Can’t speak. Can’t see.
Can hear though and feel…
Hands.
Touching every bleeding inch of me, probing and exploring, alien-like in latex gloves.
Bloody make them stop.
But they didn’t stop; icy fingers owned me in the dark, as if I was a cadaver, ready to be sliced, before my lungs were pulled from my chest.
Inside panic coiled, but I couldn’t even shudder or pant: the venom kept my heart pumping as calm as you like. I could hear it, mocking in my ears – beat, beat, beat – as those hands reduced me to nothing.
Yet Sun wasn’t with me. Amongst the terror and despair – hallelujah to the golden heavens – Sun was safe. She should’ve been at the café. If I hadn’t narked her off? She would’ve been.
Whatever they did to me? No matter what the bastards stripped from me this time?
They couldn’t hurt me - not truly.
Because Sun was safe.
‘Subject One is a proper job,’ the hands’ owner – a First Lifer – patted my stomach.
My name is Light, my name is Light, my name is…
But I couldn’t even whisper it.
Dark. Violation. Dark.
Hours? Days? Weeks?
Trapped. Powerless. Lost.
Entombed inside your own motionless body, time doesn’t mean a bleeding thing. All I knew? Hunger, blood pangs, nicotine craving, cold, cramps…
As a slave, I’d been strapped down: stripped of hair to be fetishized into a plaything. Suffered surgery with no anaesthetic: to be implanted with the wankering tracker or to have my fangs pulled out one by one by the Doctor.
I had no choice or control. Yet I’d freed myself, slaughtered the slavers and freed my family. But this time? I didn’t even know who’d kidnapped me, why they’d taken me, or if it was a death sentence.
‘Subject One’s responding as expected, aren’t ‘ee? Let’s increase the dose.’
Subject.
In one sodding word I was sticky labelled nothing. No identity or personhood.
I was the monkey in the lab, and when did he ever escape alive?
To lose my freedom a second time was… My mind fled into the slave dark.
Welcomed it.
There was no Grayse this time to save me by reminding me I was Light.
My name is…
Light.
A thin crack – angelic awe-inspiring glory – spilling through the bottom of my eyelids.
I could move.
Just a fraction but I’d take what I could get. I wiggled my toes.
Blinding – that’d never felt so good.
Next my fingers. They felt loose, as if I was a ragdoll, or had been on one hell of a bender.
Tongue next – serious one that, because not talking? You try it when you’ve got a big gob like me. My tongue was like a sleepy snake but still…possibilities.
I risked opening my peepers half-mast.
Bollocking hell.
Retinas scorched, with tears running down my cheeks, I let out a strangled yelp.
Voice box was up to snuff then.
Gasping, I waited for the blaze of glory to settle. Fuzzy shapes spectred out of the strip lighted haze. A glass barrier directly in front of me out into a narrow corridor, which was panelled in bronze military style, as if I’d been swallowed by a beetle and was pinned to its metallic guts.
Let’s all scrutinize the bug on the slide.
I could see my own starkers, strapped down reflection bounced back: I wouldn’t be winning any Miss Britain sashes.
An IV set-up was running into the back of my left hand; there was a steady ache where the thick needle pressed under the skin. A crimson bag hung limp from the stand; it was stamped with a logo: a branching black tree.
I sniffed: human blood.
My hollow belly groaned.
They were keeping me alive like a sodding coma patient.
Suddenly the slavers’ baby bottles were looking more appealing.
I licked my dry lips. No water or food. Of course not, because I wasn’t human, was I?
‘Paralysis has reduced in subject.’
I rolled my nut to one side to see my chief tormentor in the long dark: a spindly bloke with neat grey hair and intense peepers, like a decrepit spider. His white lab coat, over cord trousers, was too short and his shirtsleeves were rolled back, revealing thick forearms.
The tosser was scribbling notes in a file on a ‘60s oak desk, which was out of place amongst the laptops, Blackberries and gleaming steel trays of scalpels, pliers, saws…and the sliced remains of Will’s green bracelet.
I was going to hurl.
The scientist scampered to my side, running his latex gloved hand down the centre of my body with casual ownership. His fingers curled around my todger: weighing and measuring. ‘As noted earlier, Subject One is…average.’
I shot out my fangs. ‘No touching the goods, Frankenstein.’
‘Subject One is teasy ‘cos it’s still tired. You have the gag?’
‘Yes, professor, but surely we don’t need--’
‘Call me Ivor. Dusta think I care about titles like professor?’
I twisted to the other side.
A frumpy bird in an oversized lab coat was banging through a glass cupboard of scientific equipment.
Torture devices.
If you’re the rat it’s one and the same.
The bint was flushed and wouldn’t meet my eye. She brushed a stray brunette strand, which had fallen out of her haphazard ponytail – cry for help if ever I saw it – as she handed Frankenstein a steel gag. It even had the black tree logo on it: thorough branding that.
‘Thank you, Ms Shah,’ Frankenstein held out the gag like it was a gift, ‘now if the subject is a babby and don’t open up, remove the IV. Do it some good to go without vittles. See if the subject won’t knuckle-in then.’
I glanced between them. Sometimes you have to lose a battle to win a war. And sometimes?
You don’t even know who you’re fighting.
Reluctantly, I withdrew my fangs and opened my gob. Tremors took hold, as Frankenstein fixed the gag at the back of my nut, wrenching my jaw. And then as the experiments began.
Sometimes as I drifted in and out of paralysis in a pain induced fog, I just wished they’d bloody get it over with.
Whatever it was.
Because this was playing silly buggers, like a kid pulling off a fly’s wings. I tried to remember if I knew the bastard: it felt personal. If I’d noshed his family or feasted on his lover back in the bad good old days with Ruby. Yet there’d been a rule: no witnesses. Ruby had drilled it into me with kisses and clouts.
I couldn’t have been that careless?
Despite the relish Frankenstein was taking, however, there were also the soldiers, with their hands smartly behind their backs, observing me in all my naked, battered glory, as they stood behind the glass.
The soldiers had curt chinwags, but because my cell, which masqueraded as a lab, was soundproofed (after all, it’d be a crime for my screams to interrupt their morning coffee), I couldn’t hear them.
Their expressions – like an army of clones – were always the same: a dumb smart blankness. As if experimental research on a Blood Lifer was just another day at the office. Maybe they were dissecting a bulbous headed alien in the cell next to mine: I was nothing special at all.
But somehow?
I reckoned this was all to do with Blood Life.
Our venom: how it paralysed, and how the military could use that to carve a crimson path in whatever war they pleased.
Everyone reckons it’s about defence, but there’ll always be terrorists. The enemy.
Others.
There’ll always be an excuse to fight like the beasts we are. Yet it’s needing an excuse, which raises us above the animals.
None of us should kid ourselves though, First or Blood. We pretend we want peace, when in fact our blood calls for war. We cherry pick the battles we can win and then to be the victor we create the best warriors, with the deadliest weapons.
Any First Lifer stole the advantage of our venom?
They’d be conquerors of the world.
All I knew? I couldn’t allow it to happen. I didn’t have a scooby though – trussed up, gagged and brutalised as I was – how I was going to stop it.
I blinked the sweat out of my peepers. That was…nine increases now?
I couldn’t help having a butchers at the black box in the wanker’s hands, as his thin fingers turned the knobs: when the wires were attached around my bollocks for a spot of electro torture before bedtime, I was long past playing it cool.
‘Handsome: Subject One’s heart rate be significantly increased. Let’s see how loud the subject can screech. Level ten coming dreckly.’
The hum leapt. Furious wasps all flying to fry my privates, except they weren’t so private anymore. My tender balls were out there: free to be shocked, thumped, and burnt.
I shook from the stink of my own sweat, the agony, which had swallowed me in searing waves and the shuddering fear of level ten because Frankenstein loved to build the anticipation: until it struck – lightning bolt. A shock worse twice over because you couldn’t prepare.
Tosser knew what he was doing.
A low whine. Like a mutt.
Then I realised it was coming from me.
Cool fingers were on my brow, brushing back my hair.
I forced myself to glance away from that black box – and level ten. Shah was – trying – to smile at me. This wavering little thing, as frightened as I felt.
‘We’ve proven the sensitivity of Subject One’s…of that part of a Blood Lifer’s anatomy surely by now?’ Shah concentrated hard on the notes she was scribbling on her stainless steel clipboard, ‘I don’t think we--’
I shrieked into the gag, my fingers clawing at the arms of the medical table. My body bow rigid.
White hot searing agony: I recognised it from the tracker. But not there.
Not like this.
I was floating. A crescendo of sparking agony with no end. Maybe this was how it was always meant to be. Sun rose before me on the clouds of the ceiling in her flint-speckled top; she cast it aside for an Alex Highbury-Lord suit, as she transformed into a trader. Our family’s leader: powerful and ambitious. And Will? He watched me through his sunshine curls in a halo of light, Trinity at his shoulder. No longer dragged into the dark with me: his false angel. Now he was left to live his mortal life, as I’d allowed Kathy to live hers.
The nancy boy tears fell then.
Dimmed, I could just make out panicked voices far below.
‘He’s not responding…’
‘Subject’s a bleeding tuss. If I give him another dose--’
‘Don’t you dare, Ivor.’ Shah protectively cradled her arms around my chest.
Ivor shook his nut. Then – like a kid denied his treat – sulkily ripped the wires from around my bollocks.
And that? Sodding. Hurt.
At last, Shah let go of me, straightening her lab coat. ‘Professor, I had no intention--’
‘Hush, no harm done, and it’s Ivor, remember?’
Movement. Down the beetle bronze corridor. On the other side of the glass.
Whilst my muscles were still cramping from the strain, my throat was still sore from screaming, and my balls still fizzed on fire.
The bustle of two soldiers, stony-faced giants in the narrow space, dragging a tiny First Lifer between them. Caught still between the real and dream worlds, I let myself watch, as if it was all an illusion. Just another false future, except this time a nightmare one.
Then, however, like a boot to the gut, all dreams were chased away.
Will.
Will’s arms had been wrenched behind him in handcuffs, but he was still struggling, even though his ankles were in shackles too. His peepers were puffy, like he’d been bawling, but he wasn’t crying now. He was furious: struggling and trying to fight.
Like I’d taught him.
The brave – stupid – little git.
Why the buggering hell did the military want some homeless kid?
Suddenly lead colossus gripped Will by the curls and cracked him across the jaw. The blood spurted.
That was e-bleeding-nough.
I fought my chains. They cut, breaking the skin and purpling rainbow bruises. I howled and cursed: garbled round my gag.
The cell was soundproofed, but when the lead soldier shoved Will, and he stumbled, Will glanced up – and our gazes met.
At first, Will’s peepers widened with a mix of shock and hope. Just for a second. But then? I wished he’d never seen me: starkers, bound and bleeding. Because then he did bawl, as the soldiers hauled him off down the darkness of the corridor, until he was lost to me.
And I bawled too.
I’d understood the despair. I was Will’s angel: I was meant to save him, but now he had no hope. If Will had been captured by these bastards?
Then I had no hope either.
‘What..? Is the subject hungry? Do we need..?’ Shah was patting my arm, as if calming a baby.
‘Subject’s a bleeding tuss, I told you. Now I’m jumping; this is not acceptable.’ When Frankenstein snatched up his Blackberry, I didn’t notice his blathering.
I couldn’t breathe through the waves of sobs, which were shuddering through me: impotent rage. My hands were fisting repeatedly against the cold plastic; unable to fight, run, hunt, smash, boot, bloody kill, all I could do was lie there and wail, like the kid Shah seemed to be pretending I was.
Someone new was opening and closing the door. A shadow dark over me, then a laptop’s screen shunted in front of my mug. Ghosted through my tears, it was blurred.
‘Told you I’d have my vengeance, little man.’ It was like being submerged in a bath of ice water. No more tears. Struggling. Despair. Because this betrayal was a bitter path I’d walked before. Now I knew the face of my destroyer? I was me again. I’d show Fernando just what Blood Lifer vengeance was all about. ‘What? No clever comeback? Where’s that witty sense of British irony now?’ Alpha Geek traced a casual finger along my gag. Bloody hell, how I wanted to take just one bite… Little man: that was Will, and a blasphemy on this tosser’s lips. Fernando laughed. ‘Whoa, don’t look like that; we had a deal. I get it, your end? Not so great, but the frackin’ research? It’s going to win us Nobels. You’ve no idea.’
Except I did, which was the sodding problem.
‘No talking to Subject One.’ Ivor shoved Fernando’s hands, which were clutching the laptop, higher. Confused, I stared at the blank screen.
Then it sprang to life.
If I reckoned I’d been in ice water before? Now I was in an ocean of it.
Sun.
She was strapped – like me – starkers to a medical table, in a cell that was identical to this one. She was motionless and silent without the need for a gag. Desperately, I inspected her: no injuries. She must’ve been injected and paralysed. A living death. She was hooked up to a crimson IV circulating artificial life.
Everything crumbled. Resistance. Rage. Reality.
They had Will and they had Sun.
There was nothing they could do to me – nothing – that was worse.
I’d promised – fought – to keep them safe. My mind had fled through every torment to the cocooned hope of their better futures without me.
But now that was smashed, and me along with it; there was nowhere left to hide.
I shook, as I raised my gaze to Fernando.
He was watching me hungrily.
It’s strange when you meet a bloke, you’ve only ever seen over Skype. He was shorter then I’d expected. His perfect black hair was messier. His white toothed grin was more crooked close up.
Yeah, he was no Mr Perfect.
I realised then something, which I’d been a daft berk to miss: just how dangerous Fernando was.
Because hell hath no fury like a geek scorned.
‘Subject One needs to know that Subject Two,’ when Fernando tapped the screen, I jumped, as if he was actually molesting Sun’s helpless body, ‘is also part of our research project. Come on, I’m a scientist. All experiments need controls. Professor here says you’ve been acting like a chowderhead, so let me paint a picture. If you be a good little man and play along with Mr Scientist here? Then I’ll spend some quality time with the erstwhile Grayse Cain.’ When Fernando wet his lips with his long tongue, I stiffened; decent bloke my arse. ‘If you don’t..?’ He held my gaze, as he snapped shut the laptop – bang – cutting me off from Sun; I felt the loss keenly in every aching inch. ‘And instead are a bad little man for Mr Scientist..? Then we’ll have to see if Sun can be a better girl than you in these tests, and there’s some wicked frickin’ pissa ones coming up, which involve the heart and pointy things. How the frak do you reckon she’d handle those?’
Frantically I shook my nut.
I’d be a good little man, even if it meant testing a stake to the heart, before I let them play one game of research the Blood Lifer on Sun.
‘Hey, I’m not convinced. How about--’
‘You’ve made your point. We have work to get on with.’
‘Sure thing, Ms Shah.’ Fernando tucked the laptop under his arm, patted my nut as if I was his pet, and strutted out of the lab.
‘Bellend,’ Ivor muttered, as he shuffled his papers on the desk.
I lay unmoving, staring at the painful white of the ceiling, remembering the image of Sun on her own examining table. A twin of me: starkers, shackled and still. Fernando was with her right now, whilst I was powerless to stop him.
I might as well have had my fangs ripped out again.
I was no leader. No Blood Lifer. No man.
And now? I had to play perfect research subject to mad scientist or risk Sun taking my place.
Bugger it.
I was dragged back to the reality of the cell by the pain of the gag being loosened and then yanked out from between my teeth. I whimpered. Then I tested my jaw side to side; I’d never get used to that.
I glanced up questioningly.
‘Subject will cooperate without the need for gagging,’ Shah explained quietly, ‘because of--’
‘Threats to torture and kill the woman I love?’ I rasped.
Shah reddened.
Frankenstein was clattering objects onto a steel tray. I wasn’t going to look – I bloody wasn’t. Then he rolled it over to my side. This was like sodding Christmas to him.
Slam.
Without warning, Frankenstein slapped a heavy silver crucifix across my chest. Right over the heart.
I gasped from the cold. Then I only just held back the snigger. ‘I’m not a sodding vampire, mate.’
Clatter – there went the crucifix.
Slice.
I hissed, staring down in shock.
Frankenstein had carved right through my nipple.
Maybe shouldn’t have made the vampire dig.
He flicked and… I howled.
Bleeding hell: that had better grow back.
Clatter – there went the scalpel.
Then Frankenstein was pouring clear water… It wasn’t..?
The wanker, of course it was.
Holy Water over my abused nipple.
What was Frankenstein expecting? Bubbling blisters and steam?
‘Bollocks vampire myths…’ I got out through gritted teeth.
I saw a quirk of a smile from Shah, which was quickly hidden by her hand.
Clatter – there went the empty bottle of Holy Water.
Frankenstein examined me, in a way that made me want to scrub every inch. Then he carefully picked up a silver wand with a glass alien headed bulb in the middle and a sharp metal tip, like a giant needle; he was the picture of Doctor Frankenstein now.
‘Xenon-mercury short-arc lamp?’ Shah asked nervously.
‘Sounds like a rubbish band name.’ Then I twigged. ‘Hang on a tick…’
Shine – bluish-white light burst a blinding path from the lightbulb onto my gut. Artificial sun ejaculated in a ray searing onto my skin.
I hollered, as the skin melted under the sunlight. Thrashing side to side – white, white, white – exploding snowflake flurries.
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 the 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.
A sodding Long-lived.
Magnificoe?
The passionate kiss was gentled with intimacy. He cocooned me in the scent of ripened oranges with a hint of cypress, like we were lovers under an Italian sun.
Yet here’s the thing: once in those ‘60s tripped out days Donovan had snogged me, and it’d been like he and Ruby had learnt from the same lover.
When at last the Magnificoe drew back, I didn’t know whether to clout him or haul him back in for a second snog. ‘Plantagenet?’
The lips curled into a smile. ‘Well-beloved.’
Then Plantagenet dashed me backwards one – two – three times.
As I fell towards the long dark only one word spiralled on cruel accusing repeat: Sun, Sun, Sun…
Then everything went black.