Serere (4 page)

Now here they were. Ste would never call himself gay, nor Robin come to that, but they had developed a rather interesting friendship, one with very few boundaries. It wasn’t about sex, none of it was; it was about the rush, the high they both got. Be it with each other or with women involved, it didn’t much matter. What mattered was the end result; the high!

“What if I told you that you’re still missing out on the biggest high of them all?” Robin asked, almost as if he had read Ste’s mind.

“Then I’d say let’s do it, man!”

Robin nodded his head slowly. “Right, okay, but I need to show you something first.”

“What?”

Robin looked at Ste and winked. Then, without preamble, he flung himself off the roof.

For a second, unable to believe his eyes, Ste continued to look in the spot Robin had occupied, then he lowered his head, his heart beating faster than it had ever beaten before, and saw something that he just couldn’t accept.

Several stories below, on the grass, Robin was clambering to his feet. At first he seemed to have little balance, but Ste figured that might have had something to do with the way Robin’s left leg was completely out of joint. He shook his head, wondering at the way he was viewing this. It was abstract, unreal. Yet...

Robin popped his leg back into place and waved up at Ste. “Come down!” he shouted.

Ste swallowed. BASE jumping was one thing, but to do it without a parachute... He was an adrenalin junkie, sure, but not insane. “I’m taking the stairs,” he mumbled, his throat suddenly dry.

* * *

In the time it took for him to walk to the ground floor, two things changed in Ste. One, his legs had decided to work properly again, the alternate stiffness (from the extreme exertion) and shakiness (from the shock of seeing one’s best mate commit a failed suicide) had subsided. Two, his mind had settled on anger. The shock, which probably hadn’t gone totally, had crystallised into anger.

He found Robin still outside, now sitting on the bar that ran the length of the wall at the edge of the grass. He had his back to Ste, looking across at the Fulham Pools on the opposite side of Lillie Road.

“What the fuck was that, man?” Ste wanted to know.

Still Robin didn’t turn. Ste slowed his walk. Something was different about Robin, the way he sat. There was new strength to him, not to say that Robin had ever proven weak, but he sat like a different man. The kind of man you didn’t want to fuck with.

“Listen, how did you do that?” Ste stopped a few feet away.

“Come sit with me, and I’ll tell you.”

Even Robin’s voice sounded different. He sounded like an older man, with an accent Ste had never heard before. He would have said German, but there was something not right about that guess. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t back away now, he had to know how Robin had managed to jump off that block of flats and survived. So he did as he was told. He climbed the wall and sat next to Robin. For a moment neither spoke, they both looked out to the empty road. Fortunate that it was half three in the morning, no spectators to witness Robin’s miracle BASE jump.

Robin turned his face slightly, and the person Ste saw looking at him was not Robin. It had nothing to do with the cuts on his face, it was more to do with the way the face sat. The features seemed harder somehow, more serious, no trace of a smile at all. Ste didn’t know what to think, but he was sure he was not looking at the nineteen-year-old Northern lad he’d known for four months.

“Do you still want the biggest high ever?”

Again Ste swallowed. He really did want it. It’s what he lived for. All the hours he put in at work at the coffee shop, he hadn’t become a manager at twenty-two just because he loved his job. Will paid him a good wage, more than enough to pay for his extreme life style. And he’d done it all, every extreme sport that had been invented he’d given a go, found new ways to push, to make the rush even more intoxicating. Now Robin was offering him something else entirely...

“What is it?”

“My blood, Stephen. It’s special, keeps me alive. Forever.” At this Robin smiled, but it wasn’t the wide “here comes the rush” smile he usually had. This was more ironic. “That’s how I survived.”

“And you...what? Want to give me your blood?” At this Ste laughed. “Come on, dude, this is the twenty-first century, I’m not taking your blood. I don’t know what you might have.”

Robin raised an eyebrow, and for the first time, without the shadow of the brow covering it, Ste saw that Robin’s right eye was extremely bloodshot. Well, he
had
fallen from a great height, something was bound to be damaged. “If I had anything, don’t you think you would have caught it by now?”

“Good point. But still...”

“Then perhaps you’d like to sample the goods?”

Ste wasn’t too sure about that, but before he could decide Robin moved. Fast. Faster than it took them both to jump from Canary Wharf. Ste’s eyes went wide as Robin forced his mouth open. Robin’s wrist was a gash of blood, torn open by an incredibly long thumbnail. No, not a nail, it was if a talon made of bone had sprouted from the tip of Robin’s thumb! Ste barely had time to take any of this in, before Robin’s blood poured down his throat.

Robin whipped his arm away and Ste fell back onto the grass. He lay there for a while, feeling his heart beat so fast, the blood whizzing around his body, adrenalin kicking in. He jumped to his feet in one swift movement, eyes darting about. He espied the play house in the park outside the Pools, and before he knew it he was standing on top of it, balancing perfectly on the tiny roof.

“Wow. This is the shit!” he said, his voice sounding loud in his ears. Robin leapt the fence and walked through the park.

“Well?”

“This is just...” Balance suddenly gone, Ste tumbled and landed on his arse beside the play house. Robin was looking down at him; he offered a smile and his hand. For a brief second Ste was looking down at himself, looking up at Robin, eyes glassed over. Then he changed. It was not Ste he was looking at but an old man, incredibly old, wizened skin like bronze. He sniffed. Something was burning...

“Come back to me, Stephen,” a voice said.

The smell faded, and once again he was looking up at Robin, who effortlessly pulled him to his feet. “What was that? I was...”

“In one of my memories. A long, long time ago...in Moldavia.”

“Your memories?” Ste shook his head, trying to get that image out of his head. “Who was that man? How was I in your...”

“His name was Wamukota, the oldest of my people. And it’s the blood, Stephen, it’s always the blood. Our life source.” Robin offered a smile. “The effect becomes more pronounced each time, the buzz better, and every time a different memory.” A beat. “Want more?”

“God yes!” Ste replied without compunction.

Robin nodded, the bemused expression slipping off his face like oil. “Then we trade. I will give you as much as you like, but I need you to do something important for me.”

Ste shrugged. “Hey, Rob, there’s always a price, right?”

“Quite so.” Robin took a step back, and for a moment the light from the lamp outside the park flashed on his face and Ste saw the truth. Robin’s right eye was not bloodshot, it was transparent, and he could see the blood flowing behind it. But the left, that was brown still... Robin blinked and reached for his eye. “Ah yes, I lost one of my contacts when I landed. Not too worry.” He removed the lens from his left eye, and looked directly at Ste. With matching transparent eyes. “Do we have a deal then? My blood for your help...?”