Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) (19 page)

I slammed the hefty, leather accounts book shut, tapping my fingers thoughtfully on top. I’d requested to work late in a dusty backroom, which was lined with the bank’s ledgers; their secrets for the last decade were hidden in the numbers. Gradually I’d unearthed the truth in their patterns. The fading light streamed through the single high window.

The answer I’d discovered in that room of numbers, was that the world was about to come tumbling down on all our heads. Yet no one realised it because the reality was masked by the directors’ fraud – and
that
was the buried truth.

Every night I came here, I was working myself up to something, which took more courage than I reckoned I possessed.

The directors were conning the world and I was the only one, who could do anything about it. If I didn’t, honest men and their families would suffer; I understood too well what poverty and misery could follow, when livelihoods were lost.

I knew I’d have to reveal the lies.

Real hero, right?

Prat more like
.

I was innocent as a babe in my First Life. But I was fired by the flames of the righteous for all the little people, who’d be caught in the whirlwind, when the banks turned bad.

Clueless I was but still, that’s when I started my plan to worm close to Mr Erwood, (the stuffed walrus). I made sure I was in the position to overhear snatches of muttered meetings, which I could then match up with the dodgy numbers that paraded - day and night - in my brain. Those numbers never let me get a moment’s kip.

They became like a second conscience.

Luckily, the bigwigs never worried about my presence because a
nobody
hasn’t got lobes. They gabbed in front of me, no different to a master yaks about his mistress in front of his servants: they’re invisible and what would they know? What did
I
know? More than they did, and I was going to show them.

I was a man on a sodding mission. I burnt with it.

Most of all, I had to prove they knew (those fat cats in their gold-gilt offices), who were scrabbling to safety, whilst the death knell had already sounded for the common man, with his life savings invested: those poor sods would be bloody buried alive. But the banks and their directors, who’d caused the catastrophe? They’d survive (of course their type always do).

I guess, just once, I wanted to even the odds.

But love will rot you through every time.

Mr Erwood had a daughter: Grace. I reckon she only came to the bank, with her tiny shrew of an aunt as chaperone, to torment us clerks. No, hands up, to torment
me
because I was the poor git assigned to escort her.

I don’t know why her papa chose me, but it could’ve been partly because I’d been sticking to his side like a bloody limpet and partly because he couldn’t imagine anybody, who’d be less of a threat to his unmarried daughter: this ambitious but friendless clerk.

He wasn’t a good judge of character that one.

Grace wore the latest Parisian fashions. Her cloud of blonde hair was always perfectly arranged and smelling of the sweetest violets. She was alien to the male environment of echoing marble halls and clusters of blokes trying not to be caught out in their furtive glances, whilst hiding their stiffys behind clutched bundles of files. Grace would flash just a glimpse of ankle, as I’d help her back into her crested carriage amidst blankets, pillows and footwarmers, like an Arabian princess. Then she’d give me that coquettish smile of hers.

I had no way of hiding
my
stiffy in my tight trousers after that.

Grace – my first love, sweet torturer and for three years the only lady, who haunted my dreams.

But the real hell of it? She knew it.

Cat and mouse, Grace played with me (out of boredom I knew); I was only a little something to pass the time. The bleeding crime was that I let her because it felt so good to have someone to worship. Ever being loved back by someone, just seemed too distant a hope.

That evening when I strolled out of the backroom, the numbers crashing through my brain and pounding so hard a headache had formed, something made me stop and make the decision, which I’d been building up to for weeks.

Bravery isn’t as easy as they show it in the flicks. It’s a slow burn, stoked by incremental choices. When you decide to risk everything, few First Lifers can do that in a moment, unless it’s drilled into them. That’s what military training’s all about, or did you reckon pulling a trigger was to do with finger strength?

That night? It was when I finally knew I was ready. To throw away everything I’d built up over the last three years. I would find those incriminating papers, take them to the beaks and explode this bank and my whole life along with it. And that did take balls.

Stupidity but balls.

I knew the papers were in Mr Erwood’s office; I’d watched him perusing them, his heavy features furrowed in a deep frown. I’d have to filch them. There’s a first time for everything, right?

Adrenaline and fear surged. I stalked along the cavernous corridors, which were deserted now after hours -
clack
,
clack
,
clack
- each footstep was sharp against the marble, even in my stealth.

I drew in my breath, when I saw the wide doors to Mr Erwood’s office were open. Then
movement
in the dancing light of the lamps. I crept closer, my back to the wall.

When I reached the door, I peered round into the dim room. Like a vaulted cathedral, the ceiling domed high above me, veined in gold. Mr Erwood’s vast oak desk crouched in the centre. His papers were laid out, as if awaiting a clandestine meeting.

My blood pounded because it was
Grace
pacing back and forth in front of the desk, floating in a dress of lilac tartalan muslin with matching sash, so light it was almost transparent - a fairy ghost that shaped her into a perfect doll. Her arms, however, were crossed impatiently.

I drew back, but it was too late: Grace had seen me. ‘Do come in, Mr Blickle.’

I reluctantly edged inside, eyeing those papers - those pretty numbers - which proved the world was about to change unimaginably. They were just there. But out of reach.

Grace was studying me in that way she had, which made me shiver: half haughty and half inviting.

You got me right, when you reckoned I was a dead pillock, watching you from the shadows in the club. Maybe Blood Life doesn’t change us as much as we like to think.

Uncomfortable, I noted Grace’s aunt wasn’t with her.

Grace seemed to read the question in my peepers, as I shifted my feet. She smiled. ‘Aunt’s not feeling quite well. So she has left me here. Alone. I am awful bored by myself, waiting for papa and his dreadful friends. Why they barely say two words to me, can you imagine?’ Grace stroked her soft hair back, before raising her eyebrows.

‘I…need these papers and then I should leave you…’ I made a grab for the sheaf on the desk but as soon as I had, Grace’s fingers curled around my bicep, giving it a light squeeze. Any other day, her touch would’ve paralysed me with desire but today it caught me off guard. I simply stared at her.

Affronted by my response, Grace withdrew her hand. A sullen pout settled onto her mush. Something darker flashed in her peepers, which made me step back from her. ‘Stay with me, until my papa returns, will you not? It is late and I do not wish to be alone,
Thomas
.’
My name on her lips
. For the first time on any lady’s lips. I froze. A smile curled Grace’s mouth because she’d known what it’d do to me. When she saw what she’d achieved with a single word, which her touch alone couldn’t, Grace’s blue eyes sang victory. She bustled to a drinks cabinet, which was shaped like a globe. It marked out Britain’s bloody empire: money and power proudly displayed. She slid it open, pouring amber whiskey into a tumbler. And
that’s
how the bitch did me, at least how I figure it, because she held out that heavy glass to me (solid with affluence and influence), as she said, ‘Taste it.’

Easy, wasn’t I? Grace was my tempter and destroyer. But I was weak - I can admit that now - because I had those bastard papers tight in my daddles and could’ve walked out right there and then.

How would things have been if I had?

Moments like that - we all have them - are turning points. Bollocks, they’re simply choices: decisions we make every day. We can’t go back or change a single bloody one.

So you have to deal with it. Deal with what you decided to do. You and no one else. That fight you took on or didn’t. The time you walked away or stayed to the bitter end. The love you stuck with or gave up on. Every one you and you alone.

No one takes responsibility – First Lifer or Blood – but the hard truth is yours is the ugly face behind every shred of pain. The paths you took or never walked. No one and nothing to blame or praise, apart from yourself.

We’re all alone with that reality, when everything’s said and done. Alone every breath.

So I could’ve walked there and then with the papers. But fool that I was, I chose to stay because a bird, who I reckoned I was in love with, had taken notice of me for the first time. She’d found out my first name and then had offered me a forbidden drink from her papa’s own booze. I was tempted - more than I’d ever been in my life - to take a sip of this world, which I knew I’d never be a part of, before I brought it crashing down.

When I rushed to Grace, taking the tumbler from her with shaking hands, she watched me with hungry, admiring eyes. The whiskey was smooth and warm. Suave as I was in those days, however, I choked on it. I wasn’t one for alcohol back then: I’d seen what degradation gin could lead to. It was Ruby who later introduced me to those delights.

Grace smiled, as she pressed me down into her papa’s brown leather chair.

The throne itself? Sod it, I was sweating now.

I resisted, but Grace’s hands on my shoulders pushed harder. Insistent.

At last, I sank into the soft leather, as the last rays of the sun bled over the dying day, through the high arched windows: the eyes out from this cathedral of finance.

‘Don’t you look grand?’ Grace caressed my collar.

Gazing over the shining desk, my palms pressed on its cold surface, I felt like a cardinal: this was power. For the first time a new, odd sensation swelled. It confused me - this biting need, which was twisting my gut, for something
more
.

When you’ve had so little (and what you did have has been snatched away from you), it doesn’t take much to corrupt the good in you. Although, as I don’t go in for sticky labels, maybe it’s more that it doesn’t take much to be taken as a mug.

When I caught Grace’s scent of violets, my lust was lit. The blood rushed down below to my tackle, as if at some unspoken signal. I surged up from my chair.

Bloody hell
,
this was it at last
.

I was going to crush Grace in my arms and ravish that bowed mouth. Just like I’d wet dreamed, ever since Grace had swept down from her carriage and into these corridors to torture me. But I’d caught her unguarded and unmasked: Grace’s expression wasn’t admiring, as it’d been only moments before. Instead, there was mocking laughter in her blue peepers.

Instantly, Grace readjusted her features, catching her smile behind her hand, as she turned back to the drinks cabinet. But it was too late. Because I’d sodding seen.

I was cold. The room had drained to grey.

I realised right then my own ludicrousness for playing at king and something I’d never be, with someone I’d never have. Worse, that I’d never be more than the outsider looking in.

Yeah
,
everybody laugh at the clown
.

All passion ruthlessly slaughtered, I felt sick; I loathed the bitch.

Grace glanced back at me, her peepers still shining with mockery.

I snatched the papers off the desk, before storming out of the office with Grace tripping at my heels.

‘Where are you going so fast? Do you not wish to play some more?’ Grace was trying to catch at me with her betrayer’s fingers, but they burnt red hot, each one a brand of my idiocy. ‘Thomas, please, you are no fun at all, Thomas…’

Bang
…

You know how life kicks you right in the balls sometimes, yet when you look at it dead close, you’re actually the one who put in the boot yourself? That’s when it hurts so much bleeding worse.

I bolted out of the director’s office, like I was in the midst of a caper, with a bundle of the director’s nicked papers clutched to my chest, his beloved only daughter (and no chaperone), in tow, hot after me and panting my first name, as if we’d just been up to some serious hanky panky, when I collided with the monolith that was Mr Erwood.

I bowled backwards. The files flew up like white rain. Grace stumbled into an ungainly heap, her dress riding up to show her layers of petticoats and a single glimpse of her drawers.

‘My word…’ The other directors were huddled, like a group of schoolboys, gawping goggled-eyed.