A Bloody London Tale (Book 1): Unrest Rising Read online

  “Nay can come and stay too, if she wants. It will protect your aunt.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” I bit my lip. “I’m going to have to talk to her about this and see what she does want to do beforehand, otherwise it’s going to make things difficult.”

  “Ring her off our phone, Tree. Once you know what the two of you want to do come tell us.” Jess smiled at me. “We’re not going to force you to do anything, partly because we don’t agree on what you should do, so make sure you do what’s best for you. You know what we each think.”

  “Yes, I do.” I smiled at both of them and wished Lisa would smile back, but she still looked worried. “It’s going to be okay, Lise.”

  “I don’t agree.” She sighed. “This is going to end up being a big mess and it’s going to be down to Liv to fix it, because it’s always down to Liv.” Lisa sighed. “I’ve been trying to convince them rioting is a mistake, but the don’t want to listen to me. The majority of the vampires believe this is the only step we can take to make things better for us.”

  Paul

  Being in the middle of a riot was exhilarating. I don’t know how many of us there were, but one thing I noticed straight away was the short time it took for the reporters to arrive on the scene. They were showing the world our anger and I smiled. It was going to work. I had to believe that, otherwise there was no point in the whole thing, and as another window smashed I found myself chanting along with everyone else. “We want equality.” If it had been a protest we would have had banners. As it wasn’t, all we had were our voices and they were getting louder. More vampires joined us. I didn’t know why everyone was there, although I hoped we all had the same aim in mind. “Give us equality.”

  None of the shops along the street were open and that was just another reminder of how little the humans thought of us. They didn’t want vampires in their shops, so they closed them at sunset, no matter when sunset was. Humans seemed to be changing, though, along with their shops - they were up at dawn and in bed by sunset. I couldn’t imagine what that life was like for them and I could understand them being upset with us for ‘making’ them do that, even though what we were actually trying to do was work alongside them. Unfortunately they didn’t want to work alongside us. They wanted us gone. They didn’t want to have to deal with vampires, because of what we are.

  “Anyone willing to give me an interview?”

  I turned to look at the reporter. I knew her, because I’d seen her on the telly before, and I found myself wondering if it would be a good idea to talk to her. For a moment our eyes met. I could have let myself be swept away by the crowd, but I chose instead to take a step forward, in order to give her the interview she wanted, knowing that it would make me a target. “Hi.” She smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I didn’t think anyone was going to stop for me and I’m glad you did.”

  “Well, we want our voices to be heard, and this is one of the best ways to do that.” I smiled back at her, wishing I knew what she was thinking. “How would you like to do this?”

  She nibbled her lip. “I think the best way would be for the two of us to stand here with our backs to the riot and I ask you some questions about what it is you’re doing our here tonight.” Nodding, I looked at the camera man. He seemed just as scared as the reporter. “It won’t be going out live, so we can do it now, to make it easier for all of us.”

  I knew that meant they wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible, but that didn’t bother me. “Okay.” I brushed a hand through my hair. “Let’s get it done then.”

  “Great.” She nodded at the camera man and a light came on. “This is Susie Jenkins, at the London Vampire Riots, and I have a vampire here who’s willing to talk to me.” Susie looked at him, her eyes professionally smiling. “First off, what’s your name?”

  “Paul O’Connor.”

  “And why are you out tonight, Paul?”

  “The vampires are angry that they’ve been rejected by the humans. We share this world and we’re fighting for equality.” I looked at the camera. “I know what you see when you look at me, You see a creature, not a person. I’m not a creature. I’m a person just like you and being pushed aside like this hurts more than most of you will ever know. The time has come for us, after ten years of fighting behind the scenes, to show you how your choices have affected us. You may think we’re nothing more than predators, only interested in drinking your blood or turning you into one of us, but we have lives, and loves, and friends, and flaws, and the belief that we do deserve to be treated like you.”

  “Why do you think we believe that - that you’re nothing more than predators?”

  “I’ve heard the stories. We all have, unfortunately. We know what you think of us. Well, we know what the majority of humans think of us.” I gestured at the shops across the road. “It’s an hour after sunset on the shortest day of the year and the shops are closed. Does that mean anything to you? It does to me. It means they don’t want vampires in them. They aren’t willing to sell to us, in the same way that so many other people aren’t willing to, and there are some humans who wouldn’t even give us the time if we were to ask. You don’t understand how hard that is.”

  “Tell us.” I thought I heard the beginnings of some sympathy in her voice. “Give us some idea of what it’s like to be a vampire today.”

  “You know how you can go into a shop whenever you want to buy food, or clothes, or toiletries?” Susie nodded. “I can’t do that.” I sighed. “I don’t have the freedom to be able to buy new clothes for myself, because I can’t even buy them online, due to when they’d be delivered. I wish things were different every day, as I’d love to be able to buy a nice pair of trousers online, but I can’t open the door to the delivery person, even if it’s a cloudy day.”

  “Sunlight will kill you.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not the sunlight. It’s the UV. I can feel it even now, but there isn’t enough of it to turn me into a pile of ashes, luckily.”

  Susie looked at him, pity filling her eyes, and he hoped the other humans would feel the same way she did. “So what do you do?” That was a question he was certain she knew the answer to, but it didn’t matter. “How do you work around these constraints?”

  “We hire humans. It’s our only option and the number of humans who wants to work with us is dwindling, because everyone believes the horror stories they’ve been told, so there’s nothing we can do to stop them from believing we are the predators we’re said to be.” I hated that more than anything else. “All I want is for people to be able to think for themselves. We aren’t evil.” I shook my head. “There was a time when I was human too. It’s long in the past now, but that doesn’t mean I forget what I once was. It doesn’t mean I look upon you as food, because… it’s hard, you know, for someone to look at me and see a person one day, until they’re told I’m a vampire. Then, for some reason, I’m entirely different.”

  “How can someone not know you’re a vampire?”

  “It’s different now, Ms. Jenkins. You all know that vampires exist, but there was a time when people didn’t and there are times when I wish you’d never found out. Ten years ago we were treated like we were a part of the community. We really thought change was coming, that our lives would be better, and then we found that it had all been a lie. You couldn’t accept us, not really. It was easier to believe that we were out to take over the world and treat you all like cattle, when all most of us want is a normal life.” I shook my head. “That was taken away from me on the day I became a vampire and I don’t think you can ever possibly understand what that’s like.”

  “Explain it to me. Give me a chance to try.”

  “Before I became a vampire I had my life ahead of me.” I bit my lip, mostly to stop myself from crying, because I didn’t want to cry on the telly. “It was a very different life to the one I could expect to have now. I was looking forward to getting married, to having children, to following my father into his business. No
ne of that happened. I was taken away from all that and we didn’t have a community then. I was changed because it was something my sire could do - he didn’t care about what my life would have been like. He’s one of the few who is like the vampires in the horror stories, so I’m not going to stand here and say they don’t exist, but they’re rare. Most vampires change other because they’re lonely. They don’t have anyone else and the only way they can think of getting some company is by changing someone.”

  “Is that different now?”

  “Yes, it is. We don’t feel we can change anyone now, even if they ask us to, so the only option was have is to keep our distance from the humans who do accept us as something more than monsters, because getting too close really does have an effect on everyone. I know vampires who’ve fallen in love with a human and chosen to move miles away in order to make it easier for everyone involved. We have a community now, thanks to what happened ten years ago, but even that’s getting torn apart by this mess. The only thing we agree on at the moment is that something has to change. We need to be able to live our lives.” I sighed. “At the moment we can’t. At the moment we survive, but that’s all we do, and it’s not what we want. We want our lives. We want the freedom to be who we are. We want to be seen as equal to you. We want the chance to buy some bloody clothes.”

  “I hope you were all listening to that. It’s the first chance we’ve had to hear from one of the vampires in the midst of all this and I think he has something important to say. Are we so determined to believe that the people we once loved have become something different when they’re transformed that we can’t stop to look at how little they really have changed? Is it so hard for us to accept the truth? Or is what we’ve been told tonight nothing but lies? Is this person here a creature who’s moment away from biting me or someone who’s had enough of being treated like he’s an inferior being due to what he is?” Susie made a gesture at the camera and the light went off. “Are you okay?” It was a surprise to see the worry in her eyes. “I know that can’t have been easy for you.”

  “It wasn’t.” I didn’t want her to worry about me. “Let go of this, Ms. Jenkins. The humans who stand up for us… they’re hated more than we are, because they’re traitors. Go back to your life and forget any of this happened. It’s going to be much safer for you.”

  When she grabbed hold of my arm I was surprised. “Maybe I don’t want to be safe, Paul. Maybe I want to be able to do something more than this.” I turned to look at her, so I could see the fire in her eyes. “Take me to where you live.”

  Laughing, because I couldn’t stop myself, I shook my head. “That’s not going to happen, Ms. Jenkins.”

  “My name is Susie and I want to know what your life is really like. Take me to where you live. Show me the truth. Let me report it, because you need someone on your side and I’m willing to be that someone, no matter how hard it is. You need a voice. Paul, please, listen to me. Give me a chance.”

  Olivia

  Only the humans were surprised. I don’t know why they were, because it’s not as though they hadn’t dealt with riots before - people who were unhappy with the position they found themselves in were always going to react in some way, but they’d stopped seeing us as people, which had affected their understanding of how they thought we were going to react to the way we’d been treated by them. We had warned the government more than once that it was possible. There was never any doubt in my mind that something was going to happen. I didn’t think the unhappy vampires would use a night we’d always viewed as ours to show the humans how we felt and I realise that I made a mistake there. As it was our night it was always the night it was going to happen and after going from being treated like valuable members of the community to being looked at like we were worth nothing those who were hurting the most wanted the humans to understand.

  Rioting, to me, wasn’t the way to do that. I could understand why it had happened, though, because words hadn’t been working for a long time - the government said they’d try to help us, before turned to problems that were easier to solve. With the riots they had no other option but to do the work. The humans were scared to go out at night, knowing the vampires would be out in force, while I was sitting in another meeting trying to get people to understand why the riots were happening and why they weren’t going to stop any time soon. Sighing, I brushed a hand through my hair, trying to find yet another way to explain to them why they needed to fix things.

  “You can’t put a vampire in prison.” I’d had that argument with the previous government. “No one has bothered to adapt any of them for our use, so it would lead to their death.”

  Someone, I didn’t remember his name, shook his head. “We could work something out. A blanket over the windows in one of the cells.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I was getting to that point where if I didn’t laugh I would cry. “Do you understand what it is that kills vampires?” I stared at him and he shook his head, looking very much like it was something he’d never cared about before. Well, it was time for them to care, because I was beginning to get to that point where I’d really had enough of dealing with idiots who saw me as a monster. “Okay, well, it has nothing to do with the light itself - it’s the UV rays. You know, those things that give humans a sun tan and skin cancer. Those rays are what would kill us, which is why we live in houses with windows we can board up, and if you don’t start trying to understand us you’re not going to get anywhere. Angry vampires are rampaging through the streets because they’re fed up with being treated badly and your answer to the problem is to throw them in prison.

  “Doing that is not solving the problem. You’d actually make things worse if you did something stupid like that, because the vampires would see it as you trying to kill us off.” I shrugged. “If that’s what you want then keep going with these terrible plans. If that isn’t I suggest you start listening to me rather than to the sounds of your own voices. It isn’t as though we hadn’t warned you this was coming. It isn’t as though we told you multiple times there were problems. It was your choice to focus on other things and now you have no choice but to deal with the vampires. You could, of course, turn to the hunters.” I’d heard them on T.V. talking about how they could put the unrest to an end in moments if someone asked for their help. “Or you could go back to doing what you were trying to do years ago and make us into productive members of society.

  “We could be working and paying you taxes. There are thousands of vampires out there who want to be doing something with their lives, something that isn’t rioting, but you haven’t been helping us. Every time I come here you say you’re working on something that will help us and then I find that whatever it is has been ‘tested’ and you’ve found it isn’t going to work. I have no idea how you’ve been testing things when none of us have ever been involved.” I brushed my hand through my hair, looking around at the people sitting with me. “I want to help you. The vampires don’t want to be doing this. I just can’t help you if you’re not going to treat us with the same respect you would treat your other votes. I am a young vampire. Just over ten years ago I was still human, but my change, for some reason I’ve yet to come to understand, means that I’m no longer permitted to work, or go out to eat in a restaurant, or shop, or do anything a normal person would be able to do. I hate the humans for that. To you, and I know this is true because I can see it in your eyes, I’m not a monster, because I have to drink blood in order to survive.”

  “Human blood.” One of the government ministers helpfully added that and I tried my hardest not to glare at her. “I’ve never known a vampire to drink animal blood.”

  “Do you know why we have to drink human blood?” I went through this every time I worked with a different group of ministers. This one had been put together to deal with the riots and I didn’t know any of them. I actually thought I was getting somewhere with the last group. Maybe that was why they’d been changed. “Do any of you actually know anything about vampir
es, other than what you’ve seen on T.V.?” There were hundreds of different programmes about us and none of us had ever been involved in any of them. “If you don’t understand what it is you’re dealing with there’s never going to be any way you can help us.” I sighed. “Are you willing to learn?”

  The ministers looked at each other. No one had been designated the spokesman, but a couple of them nodded, which made me feel a little happier about it all. “We are willing to learn.” The speaker was an older man, someone I remembered seeing before, although I didn’t know why I remembered him. “I understand your unhappiness. As a government we haven’t done enough for the vampires and that is something we do have to change, otherwise I don’t think this will come to an end.”

  In the corner of the room there was a television, showing scenes of the vampire riots, and I turned to look at it. One of the things I did appreciate was how everyone involved was treated by the humans who were reporting on the riots. Before my meeting with the Government I’d been out there talking to people about what they wanted out of the riots and someone had been there checked to make sure that no one got hurt, everyone had drinks and something to eat, and, to me, it seemed as though those who were out there had slowly begun to understand why the vampires were rioting. The woman talking at that moment was someone I’d actually met and she spoke of the vampires in a way that lifted my spirits. “We’re out on the streets of London again tonight, witnessing the vampire riots, and… my producer didn’t want me to say this, because I’m meant to be neutral in this whole mess, but that’s impossible for me to be now. There is a chance I might not be back on tomorrow night, as I’ve spent a lot of my time talking to the vampires here, so I’ve come to understand why this is happening.” She smiled. “The vampires want to be treated the same way as everyone else. They’re rioting for equality. They’re rioting out of fear, because they believe that they’ll never be treated the same way we are, and I believe it’s time for us to do something to help them.