Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (13 page)

Ruby laughed, clapping her hands. ‘Foolish men to brabble and lock horns to put on a play.’

‘His death will not be a play--’

‘Dance with me,’ Donovan darted off the dance floor faster than his brother’s slam towards me, spinning me away against the far wall.

I was het up; my pulse racing in fight or flight.

Donovan twisted towards me, blocking his brother’s view.

I dragged back from him. ‘I don’t dance.’

Donovan smirked. ‘You know what they say: doesn’t know how to dance, doesn’t know how to shag.’

‘I didn’t say I don’t know how to. Just that I don’t.’

Donovan’s thin tie was bobbing up and down like a snake, as he cornered me. ‘See my bro, he freaks out easy. And Ruby? You two are tight, but she’s not your chick; she’ll never be anyone’s chick, you cool? If not, you’re gonna get yourself dead real quick. So whilst she’s otherwise engaged, I’ve got some fab ideas how we can--’ Donovan’s hand was on my thigh, tarantula crawling higher…
Bloody hell
... I tried to concentrate on seeing round Donovan to Ruby and whether Aralt was back nuzzling her. I couldn’t see anything, however, as Donovan pressed closer still. ‘I’ve got this stuff that’ll blow your mind. You and me should…’

Thank Christ in heaven, the bird in the boss World War Two jacket flung herself against the wall next to me, just as Donovan’s hand reached my tackle. He sighed and flexed his fingers, reluctantly pulling them away.

I was starting to get shirty about being treated like a pretty toy, passed between this family, for a bit of slap and tickle. But I didn’t want to explain to Ruby the reason I’d decked her brother. Or more likely had been duffed up by him.

All the same, I couldn’t help noticing this edge to Donovan. It wasn’t exactly sadness, more akin to an aching emptiness, in the way he studied me. It was strange next to the waves of vibrant energy, which he radiated, like a bloody bunny, in every other bouncing moment.

‘She says time for a toast.’
Soviet
- that was the accent - not German. Miss Pilot’s Jacket ignored me, like the disposable trinket I was beginning to feel. She tossed her nut towards where I realised Ruby had been watching us all along.

No explanation needed then
.

‘Right on, Kira,’ Donovan was unperturbed, waving me towards the plastic table with a grin.

Ruby gripped my arm, her peepers glittering mischievously. ‘Out of the frying pan, into the fire?’

I forced myself to shrug nonchalantly. ‘When was I frightened of the flames?’

Aralt passed out the glasses. ‘Let’s welcome Ruby into the family again.’

Again
?

And what was I? The bastard son?

Aralt poured wine bubbling into our glasses, even into Alessandro’s, who was quivering on the edge of the circle, his peepers averted.

When Aralt reached Kira, she whispered what sounded like a question in Russian.

Aralt replied something to her (in a surprisingly placating tone), before Kira’s neck flushed and she looked like she was about to go nuclear. Her lips snarled and she hurled her glass at the wall; the wine stained, dripping down to puddle amongst the shards.

No one said anything, as if nothing had even happened.

I glanced between them. ‘Right, so that’s like a Greek thing?’

Kira glared at me. ‘Nyet. It’s a die all Nazis thing.’

‘German wine,’ Alessandro muttered, behind his cupped hand.

I shrugged, draining my glass. ‘Don’t think they pressed those grapes personally, luv.’

Kira was like bloody lightening searing right at me -
bam
– but just as fast, Ruby’s body was crushed in front of me, one naughty hand having a wank wander, like it’d forgotten the feel of me, the other hard on Kira’s chest. ‘Don’t damage another’s goods.’

‘I was known as a Night Witch,’ Kira hissed, ‘but at least those bastards knew to fear me.’

‘But dear woman,’ Ruby smiled, ‘do you not know to fear
me
?’

‘Chill,’ Donovan hurriedly wrapped his arm around Kira’s shoulder, landing a smacker on her cheek, which left the faint impression of lipstick. ‘Light treasure, this here is my shadow. More kills than any other fighter ace - male or female. So when she was downed…’ He mimicked the plane’s crash with his glass. ‘I offered her revenge. And together, side by side, we became known as--’

‘The Night Terror.’ Ruby smiled.

‘You ‘an all?’ I grabbed Ruby’s naughty hand, pulling it away from me. So that was where Ruby had been in those vanishing times of loneliness? Battling the Jerry in some dodgy blood pact with the Night Terror? ‘You the unholy trio?’

Ruby’s fingers batted mine aside, crawling back to their teasing. ‘I didn’t fancy you would welcome another dance with war, dearest prince. Not after the Great one.’

Donovan sniggered.

Aralt leant against the table, his dark gaze level and unflinching. ‘
Boom
,
boom, boom
?’ Then he raised his wine glass to his lips, which were curling into a smile.

She’d told them
- the bloody bitch had told them.

Instantly I was back there, trapped in that hole, with the stink of the putrid corpses, the lights flaring, until my retinas burned and with those
booming
guns bellowing.

Trying to hide the tremors, which were shuddering through me, I knocked Ruby’s hand forcefully this time away from my goolies.

Ruby tutted. ‘Don’t take so, lover. We are not all fashioned to be warriors.’

You reckon that’s what did it? The death knell to my male pride and yeah, as you know, I’m not exactly an innocent on that front. But you know what really did it? Broke something, which I couldn’t yet articulate, but I felt the snap of it, sickening and sharp?

Boom
,
boom
,
boom
…

That’s
when I’d known Ruby and me would never be truly alone. Just the two of us screaming at the world again.

Because she’d bloody told them
.

I stormed down the dark corridor towards Aralt’s bedroom, nothing in my head but the image of Aralt and Ruby necking from the same bird, who was bent over the desk in his study, and then how Aralt had licked the blood from Ruby’s lips. No more thought than Aralt’s hand tight around Ruby’s neck in that proprietorial gesture at the party.

Ma not giving you enough attention?

Jealousy flamed. Burning and consuming. My peepers were filled with it. Searing.

Love will get you like that and Blood Lifer love? Twisted obsession doesn’t come close to how I felt. I was losing Ruby to that bastard but I didn’t intend to go down without a fight.

I imagined Aralt bleeding at my feet. His smart white shirt soaked in red. His smooth hair messed up. His peepers puffy, but he could still look up at me - the man who’d beaten him (yet he’d called
babby
) - whilst Ruby watched.

I imagined that and it almost blotted out the rest.

Almost.

I swigged from the bottle of gin, which I was clutching and had been nursing, ever since I’d skulked away early from the party. I staggered on, wiping my wet mouth.

‘Light?’ Alessandro was staring at me, bemused, through the half-opened door of his bedroom. ‘What are you..?’

‘Not now.’

Alessandro trotted after me, glancing at the gin slopping at my side. ‘Golly, how much have you had?’

I grimaced. ‘Not enough.’ I took another deep swig.

Alessandro thought for moment, before offering, ‘Ruby’s been looking for you.’

‘Has she now?’

Alessandro frowned. ‘Why yes, that’s why I said it.’

I shook my nut. ‘I wasn’t… Can’t a bloke get a bit of peace and quiet to seek his vengeance in this sodding place?’

‘Vengeance?’ Alessandro snatched at my sleeve, dragging me to a reluctant stop. His peepers had widened to startled blue puddles. ‘I very much hope you’re not referring to my Author?’

I shrugged.

Suddenly I found my mush shoved against the wall, my arm twisted high up my back. ‘Buggering hell…’ For a small lad, Alessandro was surprisingly strong. I was stronger still (and larger), however, so it shouldn’t have been difficult to break Alessandro’s hold. Yet I couldn’t. He was dextrously pressing sharply into this one point on my back, sending sparks of pain that I hadn’t expected straight to my brain.

‘You see,’ Alessandro’s voice in my ear was light and matter-of-fact as he pressed harder, making me gasp, ‘what many people don’t realise is you don’t need to be the most powerful to win a set to, you simply need to have a scientific knowledge of anatomy. That’s another obsession of mine. The body, for example, has some bizarre quirks to it. It needs only the slightest pressure on a collarbone to break it. Do you wish me to break your collarbone?’

I could feel the thin bones straining. I moved my lips with difficulty. ‘No, I sodding well don’t.’

‘Then please do not move and listen. Are you angry?’

‘Of course I bleeding well am; you’re crushing me.’

‘I meant before.’

I blinked. This was one of Alessandro’s paper snowflake differences; his emotions were amplified, but whatever part of the brain decoded them, functioned differently. He walked in a world of perpetual emotional mystery, where we were as odd to him as aliens. It must’ve been bloody terrifying. ‘Yeah. And sad too.’

‘That’s why you’re drinking?’

I gave a bark of bitter laughter. ‘It’s meant to numb, right? Bollocks does it.’

I yelped with pain, as Alessandro pushed harder, enough to start a tremoring crack creeping through both collarbones. ‘Firstly, you will not drink anymore tonight. Secondly, you will not see Aralt or say anything to him about Ruby. And thirdly, you will not jolly well get yourself killed. Do you understand these three points?’

I struggled to answer with my gob squashed against the plaster. ‘I get it.’

He twisted my arm. ‘Say, Alessandro, I understand the three points.’

‘Alessandro I understand the three sodding points, all right? Will you please get the hell off me now?’ At last, Alessandro released the pressure, first on my back, and I sighed as my collarbones tipped back from the edge of breaking (but bugger me did they ache), and finally on my arm. I twirled round ready to belt him one, but Alessandro had crumpled to the side of the corridor. He was curled into a ball, trembling, with his chin down on his chest. He was in a worse condition than me. Shaking my nut, I hurled the bottle of gin skittering down the corridor, before ducking down to Alessandro, whilst massaging my sore wrist. He flinched away from me, expecting the volcano rained down on him, but I only gently touched his shoulder. ‘Thanks, mate. I was gonna do something… Let’s get you back to your room, all right?’

Alessandro glanced up at me in surprise, his quick hands fidgeting with the frayed threads of his vest. At last, he nodded. I helped him to his feet, feeling the soft quiver of him. Then we strolled together back down the corridor.

Later that night, when Ruby slipped out of her dress, I watched her derig, as I sprawled naked on our bed, in the room the twins had allocated to us.

It’d been a bland beige box, until I’d filched some dead blinding vintage Victoriana from local junkshops. It’d taken some ingenious lays: thick crimson curtains for the four-poster and a green and red Oriental rug. I’d even spent an entire night wallpapering with Gothic leaf patterns - right pretty it was.

Ruby had poked her nut in with lifted eyebrows, before disappearing for the evening, until it was finished: she never got her hands dirty. Ruby left the decorating to me, no matter where we were.

Once it would’ve been hard to unearth these types of pieces. Not now in this new London.

Ruby liked me to bring her presents. Elizabethan objects, however, were hard to come by, especially as museums have better security.

As I gazed at Ruby standing there, starkers apart from her fiery hair, which hung down between her breasts (every inch my Ruby of old), all I wanted -
Christ in heaven how I
wanted it
- was to forget what had happened in the study and that damn dining room. But one word, three times over –
boom
,
boom
,
boom
– resounded in my brain.

How’s a bloke supposed to forget that?

‘Darling Light, how serious you look,’ Ruby crept onto the end of the bed, her Bristols swinging alabaster white, as she crawled on all fours towards me. With a wicked grin, she licked up my leg. I closed my peepers. She wasn’t making this sodding easy. With a shake of my nut, I threw myself off the covers away from her. Ruby stared at me, confused and then lay back luxuriously. ‘Come, I want to play.’

There was something twisting inside me, bursting to get out. If I didn’t say it now, Ruby would touch me again, and my body would betray me, sinking down into the memory of her. ‘I took a shufti around the other night when you were… I went out into the streets. I discovered something: this time…these First Lifers…they’re not like I remember them. They’re--’