I dived around the side of the shop.

  “Light,” Kathy yelled, “wait—”

  A heist sparks a particular adrenaline surge: senses heightened, blood pumping, and skin tingling. The dusty side door next to the bins gave way on the second kick, then I sauntered inside. Time was that I never went on a foray without nicking a gift for Ruby. Kathy, however, had put a stop to that, insisting that I earn my way in the human world. Yet it still felt so wrong because I was a Blood Lifer, and since when did I follow First Lifer rules? I gave that uncomfortable thought the two-finger salute, before ducking down to snatch the poppy.

  The poppy lay cold but comforting in my palm; it was blinding that I’d be able to give Kathy something back for once.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  I hunched my shoulders.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  I ignored the thumping on the window because if I didn’t hear it, then I could pretend that I didn’t realize Kathy disapproved of my methods. So, I wasn’t going to look, and she couldn’t bleeding make me.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  Instead, I sauntered back to Kathy with the poppy stretched out on my palm like a sacrifice.

  Slap — I hadn’t expected the hot handprint branding my cheek.

  My eyes burned, and I fought not to let the shamed tears fall.

  “You don’t just take.” Bloody hell, did Kathy mean it; her gaze was thunderous. ‘I don’t want you to steal for me, and especially not something that means what this poppy does. Ever. Again.” I flushed. The rejected poppy lay stiff and still as a corpse on my sweating palm. “Promise?”

  I forced myself to nod.

  I raised my arm to smash the poppy against the glass, but Kathy gently prised open my hand, pinning the broach to her scarf.

  “This one last time,” she said, softly. “I truly love it, but still…that was the last time you take the risk.”

  A judge’s sentence.

  I trailed my finger down Kathy’s arm, before snatching her hand. Then despite her anger and the slap, as I dashed down the back alley with her, I was exhilarated by the night, the heist, and the danger; I felt more alive than I had throughout the twilight exiled years, where we’d done nothing but hide.

  Kathy and I chased each other, making a game of the hunt, laughing and dodging through the streets back towards our rented rooms.

  And she was beautiful in her joy.

  Suddenly, it mattered to me that she see herself as I saw her.

  I caught her shoulder, swinging her round. “I was wrong. You’re not my bloody mama.”

  Kathy simply gave a sad shrug. Words. She’d long learned not to trust them.

  I smashed her back against the slate gray wall, crashing over the bins with a clang and pinning her hard in my arms. Then I was snogging her. Just two lovers kissing against a wall.

  I bit at Kathy’s lower lip, sucking…

  A scream.

  Through the haze of passion, I felt Kathy’s hands pressing against my chest and not in a playful, tweaking-my-nipples way.

  Reluctantly, I pulled back.

  “Mon bébé!” The mum wailed. “Mon bébé!”

  Kathy raised her eyebrow. There was tapping now, definite foot tapping.

  I glanced over my shoulder. “You want me to...?”

  Kathy’s gaze was troubled. “What do you reckon? Someone’s snatching babies, there’s a panicked scream, and you don’t think that you should help?”

  “I’m not a sodding superhero,” I huffed.

  “Pretend.”

  I flinched from the single, soft word, pushing back from Kathy and rubbing my hands down my jeans. “If you promise to go back to our room. I’ll be back in a tick.”

  Kathy hauled me into one final kiss, our lips butterfly-touching, as she murmured, “Don’t forget the dawn.”

  I rested my forehead against Kathy’s, before darting back to the main road. Up ahead was an overturned pram with its wheels still spinning — the same frilly one that’d run over my foot.

  So, karma.

  The angelic mother was wailing with her fists raised to the heavens, as if in an appeal for vengeance.

  But there was no baby.

  My jaw clenched, as I scanned across the empty pram. Some bastard had taken the baby, and a crowd of First Lifers was already swarming, furious at the loss of their young. Policemen in dramatic white caps and capes were already shoving through with frightening purpose in their eyes.

  I tensed. Kathy and I would be the top suspects in the crime: The foreigners who’d fussed over the missing baby. Until I solved this, we’d be hunted.

  Yet in these ancient streets, warm with the aroma of baguettes and soaked in the bitter scent of coffee, there was one other predator.

  One who wore cowboy boots.

  I prowled further into the maze of back alleys, which narrowed until I could touch the shale houses on both sides with my outstretched arms. If I found the baby before the Blood Lifer sank in its fangs, then I’d also save Kathy and myself from mob justice. Then maybe Kathy would talk about me like I could be a hero like her granddad.

  Look, killing kids? That’s a line most Blood Lifers — yours truly included — have never crossed. Yet now Cherbourg had its own baby-munching wanker.

  I stopped, twisting around.

  I was being watched.

  When I glanced up, a white cat glared back at me from an open window; its hair bristled like an albino hedgehog. I bared a fang, and it bared one back. Suddenly, it was exhilarating to be out hunting, as if I’d slipped my leash, and it was freeing to admit that because the First Lifer who I loved wasn’t here to judge what I should be enjoying or what broke some human code that brought up in an Orphan School, I’d barely known even when I’d been human. Instead, I tipped back my head and soaked in the night. The moon was lost in the wash of clouds, spectre-pale; the sharp air stung my nostrils.

  I was alive.

  I buzzed with the thrill and freedom, sprinting through the night: a true Blood Lifer, even though the predator that itched underneath my skin frightened me.

  The briny tang of the sea caught in the back of my throat; I must be close to the harbor. When a fine spray — I couldn’t tell if it came from the low clouds or the ocean — spat in my face, I coughed, rounding a corner into a blind alley.

  And into the Texan.

  Only, when I’d reckoned that I’d been hunting him, he’d been hunting me.

  The stolen baby bawled like an upturned crab on the cobbles at the feet of the Texan. The Texan slouched against the wall blocking the alley with his powerful shoulders. His hands were stuffed in his jeans’ pockets, whilst his eyes were unblinking.

  With his long legs, sharp cheekbones, and blond mane, he looked like he’d stepped off a Parisian runway, rather than a dusty range.

  When I stepped out, the Texan’s fingers twitched towards the lasso that was looped at his cowhide gold-buckled belt, as if this was a high-noon moment…with rope.

  Or fangs.

  “What I’d like to know, amigo,” the Texan’s thick lips curled into the whisper of a smile on the drawn-out drawl, “is why you’re hunting your own kind? I know you’re in love with that First Lifer who you follow like a whipped dog, but beautiful as she is, why would you abandon your true Blood Life?”

  His fingers twitched again.

  I shrugged, even though my hands clenched at his mention of Kathy. “I’m a rebel, mate.”

  The Texan rubbed his chin. “I’ve a friend who’d like to get better acquainted with you. Maybe even your First Lifer. If you had a mind to come with me…”

  My eyes narrowed. “Not a chance. Rebel, remember?”

  That ghost of a smile again. “You said that already, I believe.”

  “Then how about we make it a lucky three? Rebel. Here. Yeah?”

  The smile transformed from deadly calm into cold fury. Slowly, the Texan unhooked his lasso, lacing the rope through his fingers as if it was a lover.

  I guess he’d had some lonely nights.

  I glanced at the baby; her legs were kicking too hard to have been bitten already. Why did that shoot such relief through me that my knees almost buckled? Simply because of the thought of Kathy’s distress if I’d had to tell her that I’d failed to save the baby she’d cooed over?

  I edged as far as I could to the damp side of the alley because otherwise the fight between two Blood Lifers would trample the little First Lifer.

  “The way that I was taught it?” The Texan looked me up and down as if assessing whether to buy me or not at the market. “If a stallion keeps kicking, then it needs to be broken.”

  The rope curled in the Texan’s grasp like a serpent. I bounced on the balls of my feet, as he circled.

  Then he struck.

  I dived to the side, but the Texan had already guessed my move. The lasso caught me as if I was a foal. I thrashed, snarling, but the Texan jerked the rope tight. When the lasso pinned my arms to my side with a cruel bite, I hollered. Then the Texan yanked, as casually as if he was on the range.

  Oomph — I hit the cobbles face-first. My cheek grazed the stones, and crimson burst from my split lip.

  “Wanker,” I snarled, kicking my legs as ineffectually as the baby.

  “Maverick always gets his man, Little Stallion.”

  I snorted. “Maverick? Seriously, that’s the Blood Lifer name that you chose?”

  A vicious pull, and I was hauled towards Maverick — bang, bang, bang — each cobblestone was a star-explosion of pain.

  At last, Maverick hauled me over his boot, until all that I could smell was the whiff of leather: clean, as if someone had been licking it. I peered up through blood-matted eyelashes to catch Maverick watching me with that almost-smile again.

  Maverick would have to do more than rope play, though, if he’d set his hopes on me sticking my tongue anywhere near him….and I couldn’t even allow myself to think about Kathy’s tongue on him.

  “Now how about I hear a yes, sir from you, like a good boy?” Maverick nudged me with his boot. “Else, I’ll have a mind to take you to the woodshed.”

  I panted, lying still, as if cowed.

  Maverick crouched over me; his boots creaked, whilst the fringes of his suede top fluttered across my cheeks like wings. “Would you like a new family, Little Stallion? It must be lonesome exiled with a First Lifer. I don’t have an Author either, so I understand. I could love you both.” When I shuddered at both his domination and temptation that called to my blood and Soul, he rubbed his large hands gently up and down my flanks, like I was a skittish horse.

  His mistake.

  I twisted my legs, booting them back and catching Maverick in the stomach. He hissed and stumbled onto his arse. I wriggled out of the ropes, wrenching them over my head and grimacing at the burn on my palms.

  It didn’t matter the beauty of whispering tempters because Kathy had asked that I save the baby, and so I needed to become her hero.

  Before Maverick could get up, I pounced on him. Fangs shot from my gums. Bleeding hell, it was like coming home.

  I grinned. “Yes, sir.” I clouted Maverick in the mouth, and scarlet blood spurted. “Yes, sir.” Smack — his rib snapped. “Yes, sir.” A knee to the nose, and Maverick howled. “Yes, sir.”

  When I crushed Maverick’s windpipe, his eyes rolled back.

  Just then, I heard the baby’s soft whimper. Maverick and I had rolled so close in our struggle that the First Lifer’s little hand had stretched out to pull on my hair. Distracted, I sat up, edging the baby back, but then keeled over from Maverick’s vengeful knee to my bollocks.

  “Bloody hell.” I curled around the agony, and then the beating began.

  The whole time, the baby’s amused gurgles filled my ears, whilst I writhed in agony.

  “Not a good choice, boy,” Maverick growled. “If you’d chosen me, I could’ve protected both you and your First Lifer.”

  I lay motionless and bruised in a crimson pool, only able to watch, whilst Maverick swaggered to the baby and swung her into his arms like a saddlebag. Then he tipped his imaginary hat to me.

  One thing Maverick had was manners.

  “I could’ve killed you tonight,” Maverick mused, and I stiffened, whilst my pulse pounded. “But I believe that I have a better use for a fine specimen such as yourself. Even if you’re a trifle…unbroken. You and your beloved will come to see that there are worse monsters to belong to than me. Be seeing you, amigo.”

  I tried to raise my hand to stop Maverick and save the baby. Pretend, as I’d promised Kathy, to be the superhero. Yet in my agony, my hand was suddenly too heavy.

  I was no superhero.

  Maverick had the baby, but Kathy and I were the ones who’d be hunted by the humans for baby-snatching. Yet the bastard Blood Lifers — Maverick and the monsters who were worse than him — had also decided that I was prey.

  Then my eyes were heavy too, and I took a dive into darkness.

  6

  It’d been hours, before I’d finally regained consciousness from Maverick’s beating and had healed enough to stagger back to Kathy. Even with the accelerated healing of a Blood Lifer, my eyes had been purpled and my ribs had ached. I’d weaved through the back streets of Cherbourg, hiding from the mobs of humans who’d been searching for the foreigners.

  What would those First Lifers have done if they’d known that they were truly hunting vampires?

  I slammed the door behind me as I burst into my rented rooms. I was still high from Maverick’s beating and my own unleashing: pain and the call of blood does that. Yet there was something else thrumming through me: Maverick had reduced me to prey. He’d hunted, lassoed, and thrashed me. How long had I lived in fear of discovery by other Blood Lifers or First Lifers? Living in a twilight between worlds?

  Suddenly, with an intense aching shame, I needed to be the predator again.

  Kathy’s sleepy face popped up from underneath the blanket, as she yawned and blinked at me in the dark. I pounced, pinning her flat.

  Three hours it’d taken me to flit from shadow to shadow, whilst policemen with swinging torches and a baying mob of First Lifers patrolled the town to find the baby that I’d failed to save.

  Joelle: That was her name. I’d failed both her and Kathy.

  I needed to not remember…just for a moment…not to remember…

  Kathy’s heart beat like a stampeding mare, but she didn’t flinch. She lay as still as if my fangs had violated the beauty of her throat, paralyzing her with their poison. Her serious gaze never left mine.

  For the first time, as I licked up her cheek and my fangs itched to descend, she felt like prey because I’d fought like a true Blood Lifer tonight.

  I gripped Kathy’s shoulders, snogging her so hard that my lip split. Our warm tonguing was pain and blood… Trapped in the rope…powerless… I tore her silk nightdress, suckling on her tits… Hauled along the cobbles, nothing but a stallion to be broken…

  I roared, throwing Kathy around, until she was straddling me. She opened my jeans, pulling out my cock and stroking me to hardness, whilst I panted.

  Kathy’s black curls hid me in their shadow… The orange blur of Joelle, as Maverick strolled away with her…

  I thrust up against Kathy, willing her to hurt me, as she sank onto me and rode me but instead, she pinned my hands over my head and rocked gently.

  “Light, look at me,” Kathy whispered. Startled, I did. The rhythm of her body, pounding of her heart, and those calm blue eyes, steadied me. In the hush of our love, there was no room for the fight or Maverick. No space for losing the baby. All at once, I was there again, with no one but my Moon Girl. She ground harder against me, and I whimpered. “You’re safe; you didn’t forget the dawn.”

  My breathing slowed.

  Kathy kissed me again, but this time it was slow and soft, light feathering across my eyelids, cheeks, and lips. It was a tingling pleasure, instead of the pain that I’d thought I craved. Except, she’d known that this was what I truly needed.

  Then Kathy made love to me and it felt like an angel’s blessing, when all I deserved was to be blasted to hell.

  It wasn’t easy, this redemption lark.

  It was the next night, however, when I’d healed from the worst of the beating and come down from the high, that I realized Kathy had been giving me what I needed but that didn’t mean she’d changed her opinion on the hero business.

  “You’re buying me a new nightdress.” Kathy waved at the massacre of lace and satin ribbons as she rested back on the bed.

  I slouched up onto one elbow, whilst we both rested naked in the sheets — squeak. The mattress had seen as much action as me. “I’ll buy you a new one once we’re settled wherever we’re going next.”

  Kathy deliberately ignored the hint, even though I’d not missed how our empty cases had been kicked under the bed. Instead, she drew her finger down my cheek. “You could do with a wash.”

  I grimaced at the feel of dried blood still caked to my grazes; pigs’ blood would help the healing, but nothing like as fast as human blood… I let the thought slip away.

  Bad Light.

  Kathy swung out of bed, padding to the ceramic pitcher and bowl. In only the light from the streets, which forced its way through the cracks in the shutters, she splashed water into the bowl, then carried it to me with a sigh.

  I drew back, as she balanced the bowl on her knee. Then fast as a Blood Lifer, she yanked me closer and pressed a cloth, which she’d artfully hidden in her other hand, across my hurts.

  I yelped.

  “Brat.” This time, her smile was gentle.

  I peeked at her carefully from underneath my eyelashes. “The bloke who nicked the baby — the cowboy, Maverick — he could’ve killed me last night.” The cloth paused in the water, which swirled to rusty-brown. Its surface trembled. “But the thing is, he didn’t. Maverick fancied both of us joining him almost like…I don’t know. Then he wanted to take me to some other Blood Lifer, like we’d be mates. Actually, I had the feeling more than mates. Perhaps, all of us together like we are.” The cloth shoved hard at my lip, and I winced. I met Kathy’s thunderous gaze. “It’s not going to happen, love. The point is, the baby didn’t seem to be simply for drinking, which means that she may still be breathing. If we’re lucky, the other babies could be too. These Blood Lifers seem to want a true family.”

 

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