Free Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) by Rosemary A Johns

t-shirt in the muggy heat. I jumped the last two steps.
    Then I pressed my ear to the closed double doors. All I could hear, however, was the twang of guitars and the same pounding two chords, overlaying the clash of drums.
    ‘Don’t sulk in here all night, dearest prince,’ Ruby had insisted, curling her hand down my chest, in the way she knew made my blood roar. ‘Come join us, the twins and me.’
    Yeah, see there’s the lie. The darkness wormed in our crimson bed for so many decades, ones in which I’d done nothing but follow Ruby: my Author, muse, liberator and love. The reason I’d known there was something Ruby was hiding about our coming back to England. Something more than the need to resurrect me into Blood Life. And what was behind those doors was it: the sodding twins… Ruby’s brothers .
     
     
    We’d set up our crib in Liverpool, behind the Mersey docks in the shadow of the cranes, hulking ships and the whiff of general decline. I’d salvaged what we needed from boneyards.
    When Ruby had returned one night, however, from her lone wanderings, which had become frequent now, she’d told me that we were moving back to London.
    I’d just been out and nicked Ruby a pair of blinding ruby earrings to go with her pendant. I’d noticed a few weeks back that this dead posh jewellers had opened in the city centre. I’d been secretly planning a lay to surprise Ruby. I couldn’t wait for her peepers to light with fire, as she put them on for me.
    Yet when I’d passed the earrings to Ruby with a smile, she’d tossed the box aside, like I’d picked them up at the market. ‘We need to make haste and put away this idleness. They want us at their side. There are…important undertakings of our kind. We must go; after all, they are our cater-cousins.’
    Confused, I’d collected the earrings from the floor, fidgeting with the box. ‘Who are, luv?’
    Ruby had turned away. ‘Pack up.’
    I’d grabbed Ruby by the shoulder. ‘Who are these pillocks? What’s going on?’
    ‘Fie, remove your hand or by heaven…’
    I’d hurriedly snatched away my fingers. Ruby had looked at me, as if calculating my reaction. ‘My brothers. The twins.’
    ‘What?’ I’d stared at her.
    Ruby had family ? Decades of life lived together as one, but not a single word she had blood relatives?
    Our connection had been beyond words or blood, in the trembling of the world and our lives’ fever. Yet now I’d wondered, in one cracking jolt, if all I’d been to Ruby was a distraction. Nothing but a toy to while away the decades or her idleness ..?
    Was that all any Blood Lifer could be to each other?
    ‘We were elected by the same fellow, one of the Magnificoes. The Magnificoes have the purest bloodlines, which reach back further than any other. Days were when they reigned over every Blood Lifer.’
    ‘You were elected at the same time?’
    Ruby had shaken her nut. ‘My brothers much later.’
    A new suspicion had gripped me by the goolies. I had that itching sensation, which comes when you’re desperate to start bawling. I held it in, however, because Ruby hated it when I acted nancy. ‘After you elected me?’
    Ruby had nodded, stretching out on a pile of shipping crates, which we’d set up as seating.
    ‘And you…never mentioned them?’
    ‘Nay, I did not.’
    ‘I thought…You know I always reckoned we were the same: alone apart from each other. You know that’s what I thought.’
    Ruby had just shrugged.
    I’d jittered, not knowing what to do with my bloody hands, so I’d flipped a fag into my mouth and struck a match, raising it shakily to my lips. The haunting wail of a ship’s horn had broken across the dock. ‘That’s where you went then? To see them?’
    Ruby had uncurled to her full haughty height, her scarlet locks pure fire in the dark. ‘Have I taught you no better than this? These are not your affairs. Like no better than a First Lifer, did the lesson not seed?’
    ‘Oh it did darlin’,’ I’d