Page 115 of Drift

Strangely enough, Drift started doing the same. “What fucking right do you have to piss up my door, you cunt?”

Light threw him a look. “Pisses you off, right? The wholeunwanted visitor invading your homeshit.”

Drift glanced up. “Fuck you, Light. Fuck you sideways with a horse cock coated in a dose of Syphilis, then fuck you backwards with another horse cock and a dose of whatever Covid bullshit virus they’ve called out, all just to make sure you really cry out over being double fucked.”

“Progress,” whispered Simon in his ear. “At least he’s stopped trying to stone you. Asshole can hold his own, but it’s typical street, playing the quickest move in, so move damn quicker around him. Don’t turn your back. But he’s… he’s definitely won on the creative mouth front.”

Yeah. He definitely came with a mouth all of his own.

Drift placed the last piece of broken mug to his side.. “From how you ran with the ‘fault’ play and let us in, youwerelooking for a visit. An invitation was given.”

“And you were daft enough to take the bait and steal the phone,” Light said rubbing at his eye and how a lump was already forming.

Drift seemed to bite back another round of fucks by the look of it. “Are you really that stupid, huh?” Blood ran from a small cut to his head, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Have something half-inched, most house-walkers cry unclean and go on lockdown, calling the rozzers and leavingthemto dirty their shoes. And out here, rozzers only want a cut of the stolen goods or a mouth around their cock to keep them happy. It was meant to warn you to back off and give me some fucking time to work out—” He stopped that there and stood, throwing out his arms. “You know what? Fuck this and fuck you.” He pulled something from his pocket and chucked it over. “Take it and piss off back to life with the Kardashians. No damage done. None ever fucking meant.”

The phone landed at his feet, and Light paused only for a moment before picking it up. Drift had tugged it out with no gloves, so if any trace of the virus was on there and this was a setup, he’d have risked being pricked himself. Light recognised Ray’s phone when he saw it, and Drift snorted and started to walk away.

Raif mumbled something through in his earpiece as Light pocketed it, then—“Mention a name for me. Let’s see if it will calm him down.”

Light stood and frowned as he listened to Raif. “Grant. He’s really why you came to the manor, right?”

Drift stilled and glanced back over his shoulder. “How would you know Grant?”

“Ah,” breathed Raif. “Got you, kid. I knew it. There was only one old-guard nightwalker who had the ability to drift from group to group. Drift’s picked the talent and contacts up from him. It’s why he gets called traitor because of how he doesn’t settle with any crew. So yeah, I know who schooled him on the streets to fit into them so well.” He said something else in Light’s ear.

Light narrowed his eyes. “He died. If you knew him, you were very young on the streets. Young enough for Grant to have seen who Jude was. So when you heard another potential old-guard making a call on the street over Jude, you thought Grant, someone who knew him. That’s why you answered the call. You weren’t really looking for blood ties, because family is made by the distance travelled to help you out, not the blood you carry under the skin, right?” Light knew that more than anyone, and he listened as the rest came through from Raif, and oh…. “Grant, he looked out for you and Jackson? Only when Grant died, Jackson didn’t just lose a mentor like you did, he lost his lover.”

Drift looked away, then wiped a hand over his mouth before coming back over. “Let me say it again, real damn fucking slowly this time, because you seemed to have missed it first time around.” He stepped in close. “How wouldyouknow Grant? Because if you walk out the door, you’re the taxpaying pip to have someone come looking for you. You’re no street-walker. There’s no trace of the cold and hunger shakes that settle deep into your bones, the sort that sees most new kids walk in here and say fuck to walking back out outside, just to have a… chat like this. So you… oh.” He gave a rough sigh—then shifted a strand of Light’s hair from off his ear.

“Fuck me,” mumbled Drift. “You came with friends after all.” It seemed to hit home again how specialist tech was being used with the earpiece Light wore, and the defeat in his eyes called out how many ways he could be fucked over. “Oh youutterfucking cock. All for a bastard phone? You that bloody materialistic driven?”

“For what family saw in Wales,” Light said quietly. “For the real reason behind why the UK is on a full lockdown.”

Drift fell quiet, took a step back.

Light made sure his ear was covered back up, then he went in close and kept it short, he kept it brief. He walked him through what had gone down with Ray, over the warning they’d been given… over the potential for a virus shifting from bloodborne to air. How they’d been targeted only after Drift had taken the phone.

Drift looked at him sharply. “I gaveno onethe phone.” It came out so hard and angry.

Light tilted his head a little. “DNA places you in Wales the evening of the Night-walkers. Your fingertips are acid-burned. You’ve beenwiththe Night-walkers at one stage and—”

“Fuck you, cunt.”Drift shoved him back. “I can’t get away from that no matter how hard I try.”He came in so close. “Me and Jackson, we lost Grant becausehethought me and Ava had turned and started to run with them. They put a goddamn noose around Jackson’s neck becausehethought we’d turned and ran with them and tried to drag me back. They—” He tried to stop all his anger there, fight down in every way possible by the look of it. “I was in Wales trying to feed a goddamn cello for one of ours, nothing more. Leon was with me, Brighty too, who you saw back in the fucking living room. What I saw there, I saw purely because I didn’t fucking run when I should have done.”

“You didn’t report it either—”

Raif groaned in his ear, and Light knew he’d screwed up.

“What fucked-up fantasy world do you live in, eh, Light?” Drift snarled, pulling away from Light one moment, coming back in another. “Out here, there’s no time-outs, no safe-words, there’s no aftercare with the beatings, no basics like antiseptic for the cuts unless you beg, steal, or lie flat on your back for them. And when you do lie on your back, they laugh and take triple out of your body to make sure you don’t beg, steal, or fuck-up offering your body again. That’s just talk with the rozzers. And after that?” He shook his head. “When the Night-walkers crawl out of the cracks, sniffing your way, youwantto run with them because you know running with them will get you killed a damn sight quicker and just put an end to all of this bollocks.”

Light held his heat. “They didn’t kill you. You walked away.”

“No I fucking didn’t.” Drift shouted in his face. “Jackson fucking carried me and Ava out when I’d turned ten years old, drugged up and sick to my eyeballs. It cost him Grant. It cost usbothGrant. So if you want to talk Night-walkers, you want to know why I stay so fucking quiet when it comes to knowing what happens when you do open your mouth and speak out against them—you take a long hard look at the scar around Jackson’s neck, you go talk to him. Because fuck knows I can’t. Not knowing how the last time we tried and went to the cops, they—” He cut that so short. “They made sure talking was never an option. Not at the cost of Jackson.”

Christ… ten years old, facing acid-burning—being drugged. So bloody young. Light eased off, but Drift did too as he turned away running a hand through his hair.

“I’m no Night-walker,” he said quietly. “Sometimes…” Drift frowned. “Sometimes the option to run with them is just so fucking… tempting, but no matter how much I shout it at Jackson, at West—the need to run with the Night-walkers is only because the death and dirt on my skin would come a damn site sooner with them than the fucked-up snail route I’m forced to face before I die out here. But I’m not them, and I didn’t give anyone the fucking phone.”

Light nodded, more worried over that same need for a quicker out over being left to walk the lonely route, but—“Did you have the phone on you all night?”

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