Starblood (The Starblood Trilogy) (20 page)

Star’s time will come. Eventually Lilith will make sure there is nothing left for her to hide behind. Either Star will accept the truth or it will destroy her. Lilith hardly cares which will be the final result as long as it means an end to this weakness, whining and insecurity. The violence wells up inside her again. She presses her thumb into the girl’s throat. Star moans and Lilith releases the pressure.
I want to kill you. I want to squeeze your throat and watch your eyes glaze over.
Standing up, she moves away from the bed, staring at Star’s naked body through narrowed eyes.
I need some air. I can’t stay here and watch you breathe. I need to kill, feel innocence die in my grasp.

Lilith steps out of the room. Her magical step takes her to the edge of a large park. The skeletal trees scratch at the violet sky as if trying to climb towards heaven. A crescent of large houses skirts the edge of the green. They are tall and elegant Georgian townhouses. Their golden Bath stone is lit from beams of light below. Almost all of them have been split into apartments now, but there is still wealth and power within these walls.

She scans the front of each, moving slowly from right to left along the row. Lives are being played out within them, people fucking, people crying, babies stirring in their cots. Some couples are finishing a meal, others starting one. A few apartments are empty.
There. That’s the one
. As quick as thought she steps into a bedroom on the second floor of the third house from the left. Inside, a teenage girl gets dressed for bed. Her day clothes lie discarded at her feet and she pulls a nightdress over her head. Her lifted arms reveal small breasts, still forming, her body almost hair-free.

The room in which she stands is huge, with high ceilings and rich furnishings. Her bed is draped with a velvet cover and on it a few soft toys are arranged.

A mass of auburn curls spring up as she pulls the nightdress down. The girl’s face registers shock at seeing a strange woman in her room. Before she can scream Lilith pulls her through space into the centre of the park below.

The girl shivers in the chill November air. ‘Who are you?’ she asks.

‘Lilith.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to hurt you and silence the torment inside my mind, for a moment at least.’

The girl’s eyes fill with tears. ‘My father will pay you well, Lilith. If you take me back. He’s very wealthy.’

Lilith nods. ‘You’re beautiful,’ she says.

The girl shudders and steps backwards. They walk together, one striding forwards the other stumbling backwards, shaking in her nightgown, until the latter falls onto the wet grass.

The girl lifts her arms trying to hold the woman at bay. Lilith watches her, amused. She crouches down next to the girl, avoiding blows and scratches by moving aside as fists and nails are raised. Staring at the girl’s face, she doesn’t see the kick coming and is knocked over. The girl scrambles to stand up. Continually looking back, she runs blindly across the grass towards the house, then stumbles and falls to her knees. Muscles strain as she tries to push herself back up. Lurching forwards now, her ankle turning awkwardly with each step, she keeps going, desperate to reach civilisation.

Lilith lets her run. The sweat will smell sweet on her skin. Before she can get close enough to the road to be heard Lilith is beside her, dragging her by her long red hair to the floor.

The girl crouches in the muddy grass. Her face is bloated with tears, her body shakes, and the chatter of her teeth sounds like applause.

‘Are you a virgin?’ Lilith asks.

The girl stares at her captor’s face. She is silent for a moment as if wondering which will be the right answer, the one which will free her. She seems to decide that the truth is better.

She nods, biting her lip. Tears wet her cheeks and the top of her nightdress. They crystallise into ice on her clothing.

‘Do you want to die a virgin?’ Lilith asks. A cruel grin spreads across her lips. The girl’s fear is nectar to her. Star’s face looks up at Lilith for a moment before reality is re-established.

The girl collapses. Despair has taken possession of her. Lilith imagines the internal monologue, will the answer
no
be her salvation or will it simply lead to further cruelty?

Lilith watches patiently as the girl tries to move on her belly, writhing like a serpent across the wet grass. When Lilith rolls her over the nightdress is soaked through and covered in green and black.

‘Well do you?’ she asks again, licking her lips.

‘Yes,’ the girl manages to squeak.

Lilith laughs. The girl turns away and stares towards the row of houses she was plucked from, so close and yet still too far away.

‘Right answer,’ Lilith says. ‘I’ll make it quick.’

Holding the girl’s throat in her hands, she watches the child’s limbs spasm as her victim tries to free her self. The child’s windpipe pulses between Lilith’s thumbs, trying to draw the breath that might save her. Eyes glaze over and the body stops moving. Lilith stands up and skips across the grass, bathing in the moonlight. She breathes the night air deep into her body, laughing, before she returns to the musty room.

Lilith strokes the polished scales of the snake as it dangles from the willow branch. It blinks at her, its forked tongue licking the air between them. She sighs. The heat is unbearable. She should never have come here this morning. Her cave is much cooler, much darker than the shade these feathery branches can offer.

‘A new bride, you say.’ Her words hiss around them. She doesn’t need to speak out loud but she enjoys the sound of her voice. It is far richer now than it ever sounded in The Garden. Far stronger, even in a whisper, than any cry of frustration or anger she had uttered within those walls. ‘What is she like?’

The serpent cocks its head. Maybe it doesn’t understand her question or perhaps it knows that any answer will elicit a violent response.

Lilith digs her toes into the sandy earth. ‘I don’t care of course. I wouldn’t go back there if God himself begged me to. I was just asking … because … well, it doesn’t matter does it? I have more than I need right here. I have my freedom.’

The snake bobs its head and coils itself around the branch once more, resting its head on its tail. Its eyes close.

Lilith stares at her dirty toes. Images of crushing Adam’s skull beneath her tiny feet make her grin. Then he is renewed, intact once more and she looks at him with a different shade of lust. ‘But you were beautiful.’

Thinking back to her time in The Garden, his beauty seems more vibrant, more breathtaking. Weeks of solitude feed her desire and give a golden glow to the remembered fragments. His assertion of his desires and ignorance of her own feels, at this distance, like a form of worship, a devotion to that part of her body which pleased him more than any other. If only he had let her teach him, submitted even a fragment of his control, what wonders she could have shared.

Of course God took his side. When the choice was made, when The Garden’s peace had to be restored, who was told to leave? She shed her humanity at the gate. That choice, at least, was hers. With a deafening screech she spread her wings and returned to her cave. What is a life without choice? Who can exist under someone else’s control? Freedom is above all other prizes.

The freedom she cherishes surrounds her. Choices fill her mind, so many possibilities.
Now, what does a demon, desired by two males, controlled by neither, do?
Lilith’s smile becomes a sneer.
Apparently she sits in the shade of a willow tree speaking to snakes, wondering
whether the new bride, of a man as beautiful as the sun, will fare any better than she.
I’ll bet she is silent, docile, yielding. She has no knowledge of any other way. Made new for the pleasure of her master.
Lilith nods.
This could be fun.

Chapter 31

‘Let’s not go to Club Midian tonight,’ says Star. ‘I feel so tired and I really have nothing to wear.’

Getting changed for the club this Saturday night is a surreal experience. She has to use the bathroom to apply her make-up as the only mirror in Lilith’s bedsit is a tiny, cracked, tile-sized mirror attached to her bathroom wall. The room is small and the mirror so high she has to stand in the bath and lean across, trying not to slip and fall.

When Star returns to the bedroom Lilith is pouting. ‘I want to go. I want to show you off.’ She has already changed her clothes and applied her make-up perfectly.

Star pulls a face at her lover and tells her off for being far too perfect. Her own choice of wardrobe is limited now. She packed in a hurry and curses her choices of clothing, raking through the suitcase again and again. Lilith laughs and embraces her.

‘I mean it. Let’s not go to Midian tonight,’ says Star.

Lilith scowls. ‘For one night, I want to be with you, outside this box, in a place where you will actually touch me.’

‘Lilith, my love, can’t we go next time? I just want to sleep.’ Star yawns.

‘What if I solve both your problems?’ Lilith asks her. ‘Just give me a moment.’

Star is left alone in the room. Crossing to the fine muslin drapes at the window, she tries to peer through them. She cannot understand how such sheer material can be completely opaque. She puts out her hand to brush them aside. They feel like liquid, making her fingers damp and sticky; she shrinks back, and rushes to the bathroom to wash them under the tap.

When she returns to the curtains, she ponders the mystery but cannot find an answer. She sits on the bed amidst her creased clothing awaiting Lilith’s return. Lilith smiles as she opens the door. In her hands she has a small packet and a black lace dress. She hands over the packet first.

‘Swallow it,’ she tells Star.

‘Speed?’

Lilith nods and Star does as she is told. She creases her face as she swallows the bitter white powder. She knows from experience that it will work.

‘What else have you got?’ Star asks.

Lilith passes her the dress for inspection. Star looks at the garment, feeling the soft fabric and admiring the way it falls. She tries it on and it fits perfectly. She smiles spinning on the balls of her feet.

‘It’s amazing,’ she says. ‘Are you sure I can borrow it? It looks expensive.’

‘It’s fine,’ Lilith answers. ‘Woman owes me a favour anyway. It’s yours now.’

‘Who?’

‘My neighbour.’

Star nods happily, and spins once again watching the hem of the skirt open like petals around her ankles.
This is why I’m a Goth! The eternal glamour, where adults can play dress-up, be a princess or goddess every day.

‘I’m ready,’ she says.

‘Coat?’ Lilith asks, handing Star her jacket.

They walk together towards the club. This time they do not hold hands. Lilith tries to entangle Star’s fingers, but Star shakes her head.

The amphetamine starts to take effect as they walk along. Star feels tiny crystals of energy spread across her body. Her hairs prickle and she grinds her teeth. She starts to talk, telling Lilith about everything her life was before and everything it will be in the future. Her voice is so fast it blurs into white noise.

Above their heads the sky flashes green, silver and red. Explosions echo through the street. Beyond the haze of street lamps the night is alive with colour and celebration, an echo of a turbulent past and a celebration of the enduring status quo.

‘Bonfire night,’ Star whispers.

The moment they enter the nightclub Star transforms. She grabs Lilith’s hand and pulls her onto the dance floor. They dance face to face, bodies swaying in time with each other, sometimes inches apart and other times with no distance between them. Dancers move around them, appearing between clouds of dry ice and smoke then vanishing again as Star’s attention is drawn back to the beautiful woman who is hers and hers alone. It feels as though she is dancing within a dream. Then her body seems to rise. She imagines she is floating above the floor, twisting around and around her lover. Bodies coiled together like pythons.

A faster track follows and her body sinks gently back to the dance floor. The deep rhythm pulses through her feet and brings with it memories of their love-making; that strange first night when she had thought Steve somehow possessed Lilith. The beats, like his thrusts, make her body shiver as she dances. It seems so long ago, and now she doubts her memory. As she rubs her body against Lilith’s she wishes she could know what was real and what imagination.
Steve’s world had been too strange for me to exist within. What then of Lilith’s, where body parts seem to grow out of nothing, muslin blocks out sunlight and clothing appears without a wardrobe?
Madness beckons, but she ignores its call. She loves Lilith and is determined to accept everything.

When Johnny O finishes his set and Ivy takes the DJ’s box, Lilith buys two glasses of absinthe and they sit together. They huddle close, their arms around each other. They giggle at private jokes and sip their potent drinks.

She feels connected to this woman. She curses herself for tarnishing it with feelings of confusion, wanting desperately to embrace everything Lilith is, however strange.
Surely being a Goth, more than the clothing, the music and the sense of freedom, is about accepting the strange and unusual, drawing it into myself as part and parcel of life?
She clings to this idea as they drink and talk about the other dancers, the music and themselves and how they have both changed over the last week.

‘I never thought I’d be sharing that room with anyone,’ Lilith says.

‘How does it feel?’ Star asks.

‘Not being alone? Wonderful. Look at them Star. Where’s their sense of rhythm?’

‘Or their aestheticism? It’s too painful to watch. Kiss me.’

Their arms wrap around each other’s shoulders and they kiss. Star’s body starts to rebel; she needs to use the bathroom.

‘I’ll just be a moment,’ she says to Lilith.

As she squats above the toilet, unwilling to touch the seat with any part of her body, she feels again the effects of the speed in her system. The balls of energy make her legs shiver as she tries to hold still. Her pulse quickens and the edges of her teeth rub together. When she is finished she looks for toilet paper, and finding none shakes herself then flushes. It takes an age to straighten her skirt back down, but she doesn’t rush. Only when she is ready does she reach for the lock.