The Bottom Rung Read online

“No one will say that about you,” Bennett said darkly.

  “While you’re around, maybe. You guys have raced up the ladder since Rohan turned you, but you won’t be with me on every job.”

  “You don’t have to work. We have plenty,” Gavin said.

  “So, what do you want me to do? Keep house for you?” I said. “Wash other women’s lipstick from your collars? Other people’s blood from your clothes?”

  “We want it to be like it was,” Bennett said.

  It always came back to this. We’d grown up together, wild as weeds, my brother was the leader then. Hair a banner of white flags, he’d dared us to greater and crazier feats. Marley’s gift was actually useful: persuasion, being able to force people to do his will. We’d never know if we were scaling the sides of decaying buildings or jumping off cliffs into the bay because he’d coerced us, or for the sheer thrill of it. It didn’t matter. Our bodies grew long and lean and hard, and then the time came to explore their more adult potential. Marley was off on one of his quests, so when the three of us came together, it was as if time had stopped.

  The afternoon light was golden, pooling through the window like silk, limning Gavin’s hand as it shook. As he ran his fingers over my collarbone, Bennett’s breath was hot against the back of my neck. I tried to be like the girls in the books, quiet and passive, but as they drew closer, Gavin’s breath fanning over my lips, I found I had to move.

  As soon as my hands touched the hard plane of Gavin’s chest, the boys moved as one. Kisses peppered my skin, fingers trailing along behind them. Mouths lipped at me, closing unexpectedly on taut tips, suckling instinctively like babies, drawing gasps from me.

  We sort of knew what we were doing, plenty of my kind, the freaky albino reject children polite society threw away, weren’t all that circumspect about hiding their sexual encounters. We’d sat on a ledge in the Crèche and laughed, throwing stones at the moaning participants, until one day our rocks stayed in our hands, our fingers white as they closed around them.

  Now we sought to emulate all we’d mocked, as the terrible pleasure we’d been unable to see became apparent. My hand had been wrapped around Bennett’s hard cock, unsure of what to do with the satiny rigidity when I lost my virginity to Gavin. My body went still at the intrusion, the pain making me reconsider what we’d been doing. “Shh...” Bennett said, pulling from my grip. He’d repositioned us like a choreographer so that I lay on my back, Gavin scrambling to return to his former position. Bennett stalled him, slipping his fingers between my legs, his fingers questing until they stopped, then began to swirl.

  “Oh!” I gasped as a ripple of a kind of pleasure I’d never experienced before curled within me. I’d felt ghosts of it, spying on the boys as we washed up in the communal showers, the changing shapes of their bodies as they grew into manhood, prompting strange throbs between my legs. Bennett’s fingers became more insistent and I felt an increased pressure, part pleasurable, part irritating, begin to build.

  “He’s going to push himself inside you,” Bennett said, his grey eyes boring into mine as his fingers flicked over my slippery core. “The girls say it hurts a little, but I know how to make it good for you, I promise.”

  I watched Gavin move closer, his face twisted into a painful smile. “Always you, love,” he said, and then he moved.

  I wanted to shove him away and draw him deep inside me, heels digging into his butt. It felt like something massive and hard was boring into my most tender flesh, yet as much as it could, it opened and welcomed him. “Oh, gods...” Gavin panted.

  “Stay there,” Bennett said, “like we talked about.” I watched his head disappear down, where Gavin and I were joined and then…oh!

  My back drew tight as a bow as the most incredible sensation fluttered through my body. His soft mouth suckled, somehow softer and slipperier, yet more intense. “Oh! Oh!” My fingers scrabbled for purchase on the disintegrating foam we lay on as something huge began to loom over me. My core twitched and fluttered, furtive desperate rills of pleasure that only seemed to prompt more. Bennett was winding me up tighter and tighter and I didn't know why.

  “Do it,” Bennett said, pulling free of me. Gavin shoved himself into me but now I welcomed it. I wrapped my legs around his hips, not letting him pull out so much, forcing him deeper and deeper. It was as if Gavin’s cock scratched a gods’ awful itch inside me, one that had me bucking beneath him until... finally it all came to me with such clarity. The most beautiful and complete pleasure washed over me, filling me in ways none of my formative experiences had. All the hardscrabble and hustling, dropped away for one perfect moment.

  “Lethe!” Gavin gasped and then something hot released inside me.

  I watched his face in awe, the total desperate transformation making him look both younger and eternal. He collapsed on top of me, his long scruffy fall of hair smelling like saltwater and ozone. I wrapped my arms around him, wanting to keep the warm hard pressure of his body against mine.

  After what felt like an age, Gavin shifted, gingerly pulling his body from mine. He rolled so he was resting along my side, “The girls, they said we only had one go in us every half hour or so, but you…” His hand caressed my stomach. “They said you might like it more than once, if you’re not too sore.” I looked up at Bennett who sat on his heels looking hopeful.

  “It doesn’t have to be now,” Bennett said, putting his hand in mine. His face was a picture of longing, hope and disappointment. I closed my fingers around his and pulled him close.

  “Don't you want that?” Bennett whispered against my nape, trailing his fingertips up my arm.

  “It could be like it always was,” Gavin said, moving in closer, his hand echoing his brother’s movement. “We’d be together again.”

  I pulled free of their grip. The lovely swirling sensation on my skin, their woody scent, the hard presence of their bodies... it was the same, but different. “It can't be the same because you’re vampires and your kind bred mine for food, up until two hundred years ago. I’m not your friend, your lover. I’m your prey. You broke my heart when you opted for the change...”

  “Nothing’s changed, we told you that, we just secured our position,” Gavin said.

  “With the people who pick my kind up like juice boxes. Give us a squeeze and suck down all the goodness, then toss us away.”

  “You know we want to taste you,” Bennett said, his fingers tangling in my hair, baring my neck, “but both of us would vow on anything you like, to promise never to take even a sip, unless you ask for it. If that's what's holding you to that dump...”

  I spun around, dislodging his hand. “That’s not all that’s keeping me, and you know it.”

  “It’s time to let him go. He hasn’t been Marley for years,” Gavin said. “All that’s left is the addiction.”

  “You’re right, now that the Horde’s used him all up, none but the lowest are prepared to give him a pinch of yellow for a suck. He got you your invitation to Rohan’s court, you’d be nothing without his connections.” I watched the curious mix of guilt and frustration flicker across their faces. “Get the blood ready. I’m having a shower. We’ll go to headquarters, you make sure he’s logged the job, then I’ll deliver what Rohan wants.”

  The bathroom had been fitted after the Revolution, like all modern plumbing and electricity. Initially, terms were frosty but civil between the humans and the anomalous sides of Meridian City. Newspapers printed images of scrawny werewolf kids living in squalor, albino kids hanging around the suck bars, witchbreed hovering over cauldrons full of indeterminate body parts.

  The humans had won. There was no reason to care what we did. We could kill each other and rot, but the same principles of freedom and egalitarianism that had the humans revolting against the anomalous aristocracy, made people’s hearts soft when we were safely locked away. Buildings had been modernised; schools had been built.

  We were never going to be anything other than second class citizens, but we could be glo
wing examples of Cremorni goodwill. Images of rosy-cheeked youngsters in their uniforms were circulated internationally, to try and placate the anomalous dominated governments of surrounding countries.

  There were still uniforms when Marley and I came through. We went to school, got an education, but it happened inside a war zone.

  The weres and vamps fought the most. The witchbreed mostly sought to protect their little oasis of green, taking out anyone who messed with it- deliberate or not. Albinos, like Marley and me, we’d never had leaders or governments; therefore, we were unlikely to mobilise one during the chaos of internment. We had no strength, no speed, no fangs to bite with, nor claws to rend. Whatever magic we contained was unpredictable at best, and useless at worst. So, we did what we always did, found others that were stronger and tied ourselves to them. I was operating at the bottom of the food chain.

  I stepped reluctantly out of the hot water, wrapping my hair in one of the fraying towels hanging up. It smelt like the boys, every anomalous that came within three feet of me for days would smell them on me. I looked into the mirror; my eyes so light, a bluish-grey as to seem silver.

  The door opened as I wrapped the other towel around my body. Bennett walked in looking more solemn than before. His eyes met mine in the glass, what mine would be like if I’d had sufficient pigment. “From the vein, Lethe,” he said.

  The time for negotiation was apparently over. They knew I didn’t want to do this, but to them, this was the compromise point between making me their pet and leaving me to fend for myself. This is the price of independence, I told myself. I wanted them to pour some of their lifeblood into a cup so I could knock it back like a shot of whiskey, quick and interpersonal. Instead, he moved in close, crowding into my space until all that was between him and my bare flesh was his thin towel. He raised his wrist to his mouth, his breath coming hard. The vein in his neck jumping as his heart thundered.

  Biting and blood were sexual for vamps. The symbiotes, blood-borne parasites, were what turned a human into a vampire. They induced extremes of pleasure when anyone came into contact with a vampire’s bodily fluids. It helped them snare their prey, keeping them around and willing to serve as a food source again and again, which is what every other albino did. His fangs were out, his eyes boring into mine as his lips peeled back and he bit.

  The small incision was thrust toward me. I wrapped my fingers around his arm, my mouth watering despite itself. I could suddenly feel the excruciating rasp of the coarse terry-towelling across my nipples as they hardened instantly and then I began to suck. 1...2...3... I counted the mouthfuls to myself, then with shaking hands, I pushed his wrist from me.

  I was on fire. Lust roared through my body like a flame, slick juices pooling so quickly they started to run down my leg. My clit pulsed in time with the heartbeat that now pounded in my ears. My breath came in ragged gasps, verging on sobs, as I rode the temptation to broach the small gap between us. I knew I’d find him hard and heavy if I unzipped his fly, and then he’d bend me over the bathroom sink and wedge himself inside me... “Oh, gods...” I whimpered.

  He pulled me to him, holding me in a firm embrace, scrupulously keeping his hands to my hair. “Shh...” he said, running his fingers in long slow strokes through it. It didn't help, it wasn't what I wanted. I needed those fingers thrusting into me with a slight curl. I needed to grind on the strong thigh resting against mine. I needed to taste that mouth, with its aftertaste of cigarettes and copper pennies. “It’s OK, it’s OK…” I don't know how long it took, but I was finally able to push myself away from him, though I felt like I’d ran a mile. “You alright, tiger?” he said but I walked out, not trusting myself to answer.

  “It’s gotta be from the vein, Lethe,” Gavin said as I emerged from the bathroom. He took in my ruffled state, but I just held up my hand.

  “Let me get dressed and get my shit together, then we can do it.”

  “Of course, I put your stuff in your room.”

  I ran up the stairs on autopilot, walking in and slamming the door shut. It always smelled a bit musty in here. It really was my room and no one else was allowed to enter it, so if I didn't air it out it stayed stuffy. I ripped off the towels and hung them over the wardrobe door.

  Getting on the bed, I slipped my hand between my thighs. They’d know. They’d hear or smell my pussy on my fingers, but I didn't care. If I was going to walk out of here and be a good little courier after feeding from Gavin, I needed a release. I flicked at my clit; the slight sting mitigated by the heated state of my body. I was dripping. The intensity ratcheted up fast; I forced my hand to keep moving as my hips began to jerk in time with my ministrations.

  I came hard, my cunt twitching with abrupt spasms, feeling horribly empty, the pleasure somehow harsh and jarring, unsatisfying. I yanked my hand away, wiping my fingers on the closest towel and jerked on my clothes.

  When I ran back downstairs, Gavin was waiting. He grabbed my hand while I took his wrist in my other, his mouth closing over the fingers that had given me pleasure, as I swallowed down his blood like a chaser. His dark eyes bore into mine as he saw the second flush of symbiote wash over me, made me want to take my fingers from his mouth and replace them with my tongue. My fingers dropped from his lips, licked clean as I let go of his wrist, the glassy symbiote collecting in the incision point sealing it neatly. I lifted my hand, pushed it into the black raw silk of his hair as I moved closer. I brought my forehead to rest against his, listening to his rasping breaths match the rapid pace of mine.

  They were much more subdued on the ride over to headquarters. I looked out the window, watching as the buildings got nicer, the closer you got to the Wall.

  The hybrid sector was a lot less likely to get involved in the conflicts that tore up the Quarter. Most of the modifications done by the humans were completed here. Witchbreed also lived here, the soil was better for their gardens, and they were good at deterring others from fucking with what was theirs. There were even actual families raising kids, and houses that still seemed in reasonable nick, along with functioning shops.

  Then there was the Wall. Twenty metres high of heavily buttressed concrete and steel, blooded soldiers walked the top of it, sporting machine guns. The Wall was built directly after the Revolution with the blood and spells of the strongest witches at the time mixed with the very mortar itself, making it impenetrable, unscalable.

  The Clarence Courier Service office was built into the Wall, a small window opening the only view I ever had of the dispatch officer. “Whaddya got this time, breast piece?” Stan, the human behind the glass, said as I walked up. His eyes slid to Gavin standing at my side, “You doing a little side earn on your back?”

  I swallowed, forcing my mouth to move into a smile. Stan was a piece of shit, but getting pissed with him would achieve nothing. He was protected by glass that could stop a berserking werewolf, wore contacts that would protect him from any vamp persuasion they’d try to throw and the strongest anti-magic spells in the known universe woven into the Wall. He could do whatever he liked, and there wasn’t much we could do about it.

  “You talk big for a prick that’s locked in a protective box,” Gavin said idly. “You wouldn’t say shit if you were on this side of the fence.”

  “Ain’t never gonna be on the wrong side of this wall, dickhead,” Stan shot back. “Now, whaddya want, white meat? Chatting to youse guys isn’t as exciting as you think.”

  “Rohan will have a job for her. Get the paperwork,” Bennett said.

  “Fucking parasites…think they can order me around…” Stan muttered but sure enough, he found the slate for the job. He authorised the consignment, then said, “Coming through,” placing it in a slot, then locked his side of the container. A red light flashed which let me know it was safe to open my side and pick up the slate. If I tried any other time I’d be hit with a high enough pulse of electricity to kill me. Slates were thin digital tablets, easily replaceable, that contained all the details of the job, and th
e place for the consigner to sign. “No slate, no signature…” Stan said.

  “No pay. I know,” I said.

  “You taking one of the bikes?” he said.

  “Nah, she’s with us,” Gavin said.

  “Must be nice, make a few extra bucks, getting it in both holes…” Stan said. I watched his eyes glaze over slightly and his hand drop down from the counter to below.

  “You fucking sick cunt,” Gavin growled, slamming a fist into the glass booth. Stan began to laugh as an arc of electricity zapped across the surface, forcing Gavin to snap backwards with preternatural speed. Stan’s arm began to work up and down as he laughed and laughed.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here and see what his Highness wants today,” I said, steering them away.

  The vamps lived in what used to be the fanciest part of town. Surrounding the old Gramercy Park, were the remains of the once-proud townhouses of the vampire aristocracy. Their main places of living had been their huge estates covering the majority of Cremorne.

  Most of the really powerful vamps had been drained of blood, which was stored in vaults to use for everything from souping up human soldiers- giving them temporary vampire-like powers- to expensive anti-ageing creams. Now, all their land had been given over to the humans, to remake into towns and cities. The weaker vamps that were left, lived in the rubble of the old city’s former splendour. Those vamps had multiplied with extensive blood transfusions, riddling the ruins like fleas, known as the Horde. But not the king, Rohan.

  We walked up the cracked white marble steps to the old royal residence, the boys nodding to the members of the Horde milling around the front, guns in hand. There weren’t supposed to be any guns in the Quarter, but no one really gave a crap with the Wall in place. We could kill each other in increasingly creative ways, it mattered little. A few of the vamps looked me over, long and slow, as I walked, only glancing away when I met their gaze squarely, though they smiled to themselves as they did so.