Tag Archives: blood shackles

Excerpt One

You grabbed my hand, dragging me after you down the warren of side streets behind the shops.

It was pelting down now. Even though I was soaked, I was still buzzing from the barney.

At last you stopped, shoving me up against a brick wall at the back entrance to a butcher’s.

‘Look,’ I said hurriedly, ‘I’m sorry about–’

‘Thanks.’

Questioningly, I tilted my nut. Your lips were close to mine. All I’d need to do was…

You pulled back (of course you bloody did), even if you were still clutching onto me, as if my body was yours.

Because no matter what other nasties you might do with it, you’d never kiss your slave, would you?

Then you suddenly hauled me closer, and we were snogging.

At that moment, none of it meant anything.

Slave or Mistress. First Lifer or Blood.

It never does when skin meets skin. It was just Light and Grayse.

So it was a good kiss. To me, it changed everything. But to you..?

‘If you would be so kind, some of us are trying to feed in peace.’ A nasal but polite Turkish Blood Lifer popped his nut up from further down the alley.

He licked down the neck of a twitching First Lifer bird, who was propped up against a skip.

When you shrieked and tried to jerk away, I held you still by the wrist.

I shrugged. ‘Yeah, my mistake.’

Your peepers were now flint.

I started edging you backwards out of the shadows. Now wasn’t the time to give you a crash course on Blood Lifer dinner etiquette.

It seems, however, that our Turkish friend was determined to educate me. ‘You know, young one, it is most inconsiderate to interrupt a fellow’s kill. I had no intention to do so with yours.’

EXCERPT TWO

‘London’s not yours.’

I stiffened. ‘The Lost have walked these streets as long as you humans,’ I whispered, low and intense, ‘which makes them ours, as much as yours.’

I might as well have clouted you. You drew back, with a shiver. ‘You hunt here – parasitically. But England? The world? It belongs to us. You’re just…’

‘Parasites?’ I offered. You didn’t even have the decency to look away.

‘These are my streets,’ you tapped the sticky table for emphasis, in a boozer, street, postcode you’d never have ventured into, if it hadn’t been for me.

I took a drag of my e-cig. ‘Over hundred and fifty years says different, sweetheart.’

You wore that narked expression, which I’d hoped we’d left behind for the night. ‘My home. Not yours.’

‘Any reason it can’t be both?’

‘On account of you’re…’ You stopped yourself, pushing your Guinness away with a jerky shove. Your shoulders slumped. You finished softly, ‘…not human.’

‘Right. Because I’d missed that.’ I took a mouthful of nuts, munching thoughtfully. You’d withdrawn hermit-crab like, your hair falling in two curtains over your mug. ‘There were humans once, who thought like you, the last time a Blood Lifer had the courage to reveal himself to a First Lifer. It was one of my ancestors. A man of reason, in an age of superstition. He reckoned our two species could live out in the open – side by side – so I was told. These First Lifers? They thought he was the devil.’ You’d raised your nut. I could see your peepers – dark grey now – through the veil of your hair.

‘What..?’

‘They burnt him.’

ROSEMARY A JOHNS is author of the bestselling Blood Dragons and Blood Shackles – the compelling Rebel Vampires series. Blood Renegades is released June 2017.

ROSEMARY A JOHNS is a music fanatic and a lover of the anti-hero. She wrote her first fantasy novel at the age of ten, when she discovered the weird worlds inside her head were more exciting than double swimming. Since then she’s studied history at Oxford University, run a theatre company (her critically acclaimed plays have been described as “uncomfortable, unsettling and uneasily true to life”), and worked with disability charities.

When Rosemary’s not falling in love with the rebels fighting their way onto the page, she heads the Oxford writing group Dreaming Spires.