Starblood (The Starblood Trilogy) (18 page)

‘She were a Goffic too. Beaten so badly…’ The man shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

Lilith feels her chest tighten. The rawness of the man’s grief distresses her. His emotions whirl around the car: violent, vengeful thoughts, drowning in an ocean of desperation and regret. She tries to hold on to the anger, it is the only feeling with which she can empathise, but the other two eclipse it. She rubs her skin, trying to cleanse herself of their contamination.

‘Please, let me out here,’ she asks him.

‘We’s in the middle of nowhere,’ he says, wiping his eyes. ‘I ain’t leaving you here.’

She doesn’t ask again. Opening the car door, she rolls out of the moving vehicle. The ground rushes up to meet her and she bounces off the tarmac then rolls and tumbles into a ditch. Standing up, she sees the red brake lights of the car ahead. Sensing freedom, she climbs the bank and heads into the woods. The scent of pine needles and rotting leaves hangs in the air. She heads towards the pine, where moonlight doesn’t pierce the darkness. Shouts from the man echo behind her. He seems panicked, frightened for her though, not for himself.

‘I’m fine,’ she shouts back. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Please…’ he calls after her. ‘Let me help you. If I can help you then maybe someone might help her. It’s a riddle, see. She don’t breathe no more, coz you won’t let me take care of you. Don’t make it happen again. I can’t stand it.’

His heavy footsteps crush the ferns and grasses a few hundred yards away from Lilith. She can see him staring into the darkness, unable to see, blinded not only by his grief. He kneels on the ground and she hears his whispered prayer. It sickens her, and she is tempted to silence him with her foot in his face, but she doesn’t. Something she cannot explain holds her back and she lets him finish.

Shedding her human form for that of the dog, she races away from him, bounding through the trees. His cries of frustration and pain chase her through the forest, just as she chases terrified rabbits. The excitement building inside her is released as she feels their tiny bones shatter between her jaws. She remembers a lover, one of so many, yet this one’s memory remains precious. In early days, when their lust was new, they would hunt together. Two enormous black dogs, hell bent on ripping the intestines from the world. She misses him. Maybe she will dress herself again in fang and tooth and visit him. Let him bow at her feet and lick her toes with his rasping tongue. Smiling, she acknowledges the humanness of her yearning. Sex is both disease and cure, bringing new life that is in turn, tied to mortality, death and decay. From the moment of birth, each mortal is dying. She can smell the putrefaction on their skin, which they try so hard to disguise with perfumes and oils.

Racing through the forest, unchained and reinvented, the temptation to never return to her humanoid form fills her head. The desire to bond with others, if only for a few brief moments, is too strong. Damn the twisted god who gave her that desire then denied her the means to sustain it. Just a few more hours of dashing among the trees and slaughtering the wildlife – then she will go home.

She considers magic as a means to return to her room, but feels just as restless as when she left the city. Dressing back into her human form, she dons a black skirt and jacket, simple and yet completely impractical. She wonders whether any cars will pass this way at night. Walking on the edge of the country road, she sees the lights of an approaching vehicle. The car passes her, then stops and waits patiently for her approach. A group of four teenage boys sit within its steel frame.

‘Got room for one more,’ one of them says as she starts to pass them.

‘Where are you heading?’ she asks them.

‘Anywhere you want,’ they promise her.

She can feel their excitement. They can barely suppress giggles as they look towards her.

‘The city,’ she tells them.

One boy eagerly opens a rear door and climbs out, letting her sit between the two of them on the back seat.

‘You’re lucky we were passing,’ the driver says, grinning at her over his shoulder. ‘It’s a long walk to the city.’

He puts the car into gear and drives. She is crowded in the back. The two boys next to her keep breathing on her face, their breath rank from alcohol and cigarettes.

One stretches to put his arm around her, when she doesn’t try to fight him off he giggles again. She stares at the blur of trees through the window. The car slows and turns a sharp right. Then it heads up a steep hill. The driver brakes and switches the engine off. He turns towards her, leering through eyes glazed with lust.

‘You might think this is your lucky day guys, but it isn’t,’ she warns.

The car doors open. The boy to her left grabs at her jacket and drags her out. Fabric tightens around her arms as he yanks at her. Outside the car she stands tall among them. She smiles and they stop grinning. They shuffle about, staring at their trainers, uncertain of what to do. Like actors who have forgotten their lines. She waits too, watching them, not willing to be their prompt.

The driver says, ‘Goth girls are always hot to trot.’

His words break the spell and they descend on her like wolves. Lips and teeth bounce off her skin and her clothes are tugged again. It is as though her body no longer belongs to her, and she feels them push her steadily towards the floor. Someone else has claimed her flesh shell as their puppet and is moving its limbs without her help or agreement. Is this how the magician felt inside her skin? He seemed to enjoy the experience, for her it has already grown tiresome.

‘Come now, guys. Are we not gentlemen? Let’s not crowd the lady,’ says the tallest. His smug grin will be the first she grinds under her heel. ‘Let her choose who she wants first.’

As the wall of boys parts around her, she stands back up and looks at them. Spotting the arrogant bastard, she walks across to him and challenges him with her stare. He smiles, confident in his masculine power.

‘You,’ she says and pushes him back hard. He falls heavily and grabs his arm, yelping in pain. She lifts her boot and smashes it down through his teeth. The bones crunch under her heel and she spins around to stare at the other pale and fearful faces.

‘Who’s next?’ she asks the three.

They run from her. The driver is already at the car, pulling open the door. He starts the engine and, in his blind panic, reverses into a tree, crushing the breath from another of his friends with the car bumper. Dazed, he looks into the rear view mirror and sees his comrade spitting blood. Changing into first, he wheel-spins away. Letting him leave, she turns her attention to the last one. He has vanished, into the trees probably. She sniffs the air. It reeks of his fear. She finds him cowering behind an oak tree. Bending down, she stares at his ashen face. He is panting. Sweat trickles from his brow into his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, blinking.

‘Yes, you are,’ she replies.

She zips open his jacket and tears his t-shirt. His heart hammers rapidly beneath his ribcage. He struggles to breathe, the adrenaline poisoning him, preparing him for fight or flight when he is powerless to do either. She rests the nail of her forefinger against his chest then digs into his skin. He yelps as she draws back a slender strip of flesh, pulling it further and further down like a zip, leaving his chest, from collar bone to navel, wet with scarlet. He stares beyond her as if his fear has blinded him.

‘I’m here sweetheart,’ she whispers in his ear. He struggles to push himself away but his back is pinned against the tree.

‘Please…’ he says.

This word, an echo of the father’s plea earlier stops her for a moment.

‘You aren’t going to live,’ she tells him.

‘Then make it quick,’ he pleads.

She places the palms of her hands on either side of his jaw and twists. His neck snaps. As she straightens her legs to stand she watches his body slump into the fallen leaves. Then she steps back into her own room, sated.

Chapter 28

A few minutes after nine in the morning Star arrives at Lilith’s flat. Vermelho Road has transformed yet again. A community buzzes through the street. Children play in the generous front gardens of Victorian town houses. Women gather in the street, not prostitutes, but mothers and grandmothers. They chat in a rich patois, the sense of which is lost on Star. Shops are open and the variety of vegetables and fruit arrayed outside eclipses any she has seen before. Familiar fruits: melons, oranges and pineapples, nestle beside a mass of vivid green bananas and large yellow alien-looking spheres.

The door from the street is unlocked and Star disappears inside, mounting the steps with the eagerness of a long absent lover. Knocking on Lilith’s door, gently at first then more insistently, she hears a movement within the room.

‘Lilith, it’s Star,’ she calls through the keyhole.

As she stands up again the door opens.

‘I’m sorry to come back so early,’ Star says. She stares at the woman’s face, frightened that she will be sent away, that Lilith’s assurances last night were words of desire, not reality. Her suitcase suddenly feels heavy in her hand, and she feels foolish. Lilith spots it and seems to understand. Her smile reassures Star.

‘Stay with me. It’s what I want. It’s what we both want.’ Lilith holds a hand towards Star.

‘It is. It is what I want.’ Star grabs the extended fingers, smiling.

‘Then why the sadness?’ asks Lilith, stroking a tear from Star’s cheek.

‘This isn’t sadness. It’s relief and joy.’

Lilith drags her through the doorway and into the dark room. They kiss and fall onto the bed in a tangle of limbs. Each eager body searching for its twin, they merge until they forget where one of them starts and the other ends, stroking their own bodies as often as each other’s, a melting pot of lust and need. Their coupling takes hours, each moment of which seems to stretch for an eternity. Tongues and fingers explore each other, tasting and feeling.

When they fall asleep in each other’s arms it is two o’clock. The cool rays of the autumn sun do not penetrate the room, however, and it could be any time. As Star shuts her eyes she wonders for the first time why the room is so dark. The question does not trouble her enough to keep her eyes from closing.

Two hours later she wakes again. Lilith’s face rests on the pillow beside hers. Her eyes are open. Star smiles and her lover smiles back, a mirror of emotion.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Lilith asks her.

Star laughs and nods. She moves closer to her lover. Her nipples touch Lilith’s, and as they breathe the soft tips move against each other. The sensation is as calming as it is arousing. She feels languid, content to simply look, breathe and feel her breasts stroking against these others. Wanting to commit each feature of her lover’s face to memory, she studies the green eyes, oval with heavy lashes, and the perfectly shaped eyebrows above them; the tone of her skin, like creamy milk even without make-up, and the way it stretches over her cheekbones as she smiles, she is perfect. Her full lips are soft purple, they look supple yet dry, they wrinkle when she pouts and smooth out over perfect teeth with each smile. Below her mouth she has a single piercing, a black labret. It bobs as she moves, swaying like a cobra’s head or a phallus. The way it felt knocking against her when they drank from each other was electrifying. Star licks her lips and sucks gently on the spike. She tastes herself on its cool surface.

‘Again?’ Lilith asks her. Her eyes are bright and full of humour.

‘No,’ says Star. ‘I want to know you. Not just your beautiful body, all of you. Have you ever played truth or dare?’

‘No, but don’t you think you should eat? When did you last have any food?’

Star shrugs. ‘Sure, let’s eat first.’

Getting dressed takes Star an age. Clothes, discarded around the room, are hunted down. To Star’s surprise Lilith dresses alone, strange that the woman feels shy
now
.

They cross to the grocer’s. The street is full of children in all manner of scary and beautiful costumes.

‘Is it really Halloween already?’ Star asks.

Lilith’s face wrinkles and she shrugs her shoulders. ‘Cute kids,’ she says.

They grab sandwiches and fruit from the shop and head back to the flat to consume their feast. Crumbs fall from their mouths onto the covers. They lick plum juice from each other’s chins. A date in the finest restaurant in the world could not have been more pleasurable to Star as the meal they share.

‘So, how do you play?’ Lilith asks.

It takes a moment for Star to understand. ‘We have to ask each other questions. Some can be silly, others intimate. We answer truthfully or ask for a dare,’ her first question is forming in her mind already.

‘Okay, and what if I say dare?’

‘Then I’ll dare you to do something and you have to do it,’ answers Star.

Lilith nods.

‘You start, what do you want to ask me?’ Star’s heart quickens. She watches as Lilith creases her brow trying to think of the right question to ask.

‘Do you like dogs?’ she asks at last.

Star falls backwards in a fit of giggles. ‘You can ask me anything and you ask me if I like dogs? Yeah, I guess they’re okay… My turn, what’s your real name?’

‘What do you mean?’

What do I mean? Huh?
She looks at Lilith who looks genuinely confused. ‘Well mine’s Sarah, I just call myself Star. I don’t know what Raven’s real name is. I want to know yours.’ Sitting back up, she stares into Lilith’s face.

‘It’s Lilith,’ she answers. ‘I’ve always had that name. Why do you call yourself Star?’

‘Hmm, a better question. Hard to answer though I guess. When I met Raven she was, well still is this big uber-goth. She made Donna and me change our names.’

‘Made? How could she make you change your name,’ Lilith asks, confused.

‘Not so fast, Lilith,’ Star says. ‘It’s my turn to ask a question. Am I the first woman you’ve ever been with?’

‘Yes,’ Lilith answers. ‘Okay, how did Raven make you change your name?’

‘I guess I saw her as this perfect image of who I wanted to be. I did it ‘cause she wanted me to and I wanted to please her.’ Star laughs dryly. ‘Unfortunately I can’t stand being near her now. How old are you?’