Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) Read Online Free

your special Union Jack mug: the one I’d filched from “I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet” on Carnaby Street in the 1960s.
    We’re both still here .
    The mug’s colours were faded and there was a hairline crack under the handle. Me? I’m smart as ever - not that I ever was smart.
    I dropped the teabag in but as I turned for the kettle, I heard your shriek, ‘Advance…’
    I swung round, catching your mug tottering off the edge. I saw the danger but bugger me if I could do anything to stop it. Not this time.
    Everything was in slow motion: the Union Jack mug tumbling arse over elbow to the flagged floor, red and blue smashing in a spectacular bang Mr Firework. Great Britain shattering. Yet all I could do was watch.
    I stared down at the now still pieces. Your mug. Broken.
    Then I was bawling out my nancy little heart, balled up under the oak table, because it was like the world was falling and I’d better find somewhere to hide. Except I’d forgotten how to feel like that because Blood Lifers’ll tell you that we don’t fear. Yet we do, when we’re motivated. And love’s the greatest motivator of all.
    So I kept on bawling, until it felt like there was nothing of me left - I’d salted it out in tears. Then I cleared away that old broken mug, before brewing you a new cuppa.
    You studied me dead close as you supped your tea.
    I experienced one of those moments, when I reckon you know me - not for long - just for a second or two.
    I snuggled down next to you, massaging your palm, in the way you always like: round and round, anti-clockwise. You smiled.
    ‘We’d lie like this out on the moors, remember Kathy? That first night we did it, on the hilltop by the Twelve Apostles? Buggered your dress with stains, but you’d stripped me down to the skin, so my clothes were all right.’
    Was that another smile? Your blue peepers were wide.
    ‘Your hair was…’ How could I go on, when I could see the dandelion fluff puffed over the pillow beside me? ‘…bloody gorgeous. Just growing long again. It’d tickle me when you did that thing you liked to…’ It didn’t feel right going into details. Not if you weren’t with me. Not truly with me. Christ I ached for you. ‘Well, yeah, that thing you love. Of course there was the danger and the thrill. You told me I was a junkie for it. You were right. There’s nothing like the hunt. Also nothing like being the prey. I grew out of it. Or maybe I did.’ I looked down.
    You were whining again. Your gaze was unsteady.
    ‘But it was a rush. What they’d do if they ever… It heightened those moonlit shags. Ranks them in our top ever and we’re, well, thoroughbreds, at least in that department. But you know what I never told you? It was the moments after, when we were starkers, yet in no hurry to dress, when I’d share the night and the beauty of the stars with you, whilst you’d share the day and the sun with me, all those details of your life that I couldn’t live with you, which I loved the most. Did you ever get how sodding jealous I was of every daylight hour? You’d say how tasty the blackberries were, or how yellow the spikes of the Bog Asphodel. Or you’d tell me about the flutter of the Green Harstreak butterflies, the loud bark of frogs, or whirr of Red Grouse over the low heather. You brought a world to life that I’d died to. Day and night united, darlin’, that’s us.’
    I grinned, but you snatched your hand away from me with a deep growl.
    You were lost in the darkness again, and I was lost to you.
    You didn’t know who I was; I frightened you, some kid in a studded leather jacket yakking about day and night.
    Just leave out the poetry? Well, all right then.
     
     

3
     
     
    Sometimes Blood Lifers come back wrong.
    We never talk about it, as if pretending it doesn’t happen makes the nasties of the world puff in a cloud of bleeding smoke. But it does, all right?
    During the Cuban Revolution, I had a run in with this one berk, who didn’t like