Kisses from Hell

A whisper. A name. Floated from the moon and kissed his heart.

Rheena.

Sol stepped into the night.

Hunting Kat KELLEY ARMSTRONG

I stretched out on the lounge chair in front of our motel room.

“Basking in the sun, mon chaton?” Marguerite’s French-accented voice sounded behind me. “You have been doing a lot of that lately.”

“Can’t get sun cancer now.”

“No, you just like thumbing your nose at the myth.”

I grinned. “A sunbathing vampire. So Dracula-retro.”

She sighed. I tilted my head back to look at her as she stepped out the screen door. Like me, Marguerite is a vampire. She’s been one a lot longer, though. Over a hundred years, though she looks twenty, the age when she died. Eternally beautiful. Well, in Marguerite’s case, at least—she’s tiny with blond curls and big blue eyes. I’d thought she was an angel when I first met her. She was my angel, rescuing me from a science experiment and from parents who weren’t my parents at all, but people paid to care for me.

That was ten years ago. I was sixteen now, and undead for six months. Marguerite had nothing to do with making me a vampire. That was the experiment, plus a bullet to the heart.

Marguerite had known what I was all along. That’s why she’d taken me. She’d never told me the truth, though. I found out the hard way, waking up on a morgue slab. I understand why she kept it a secret—she wanted me to grow up normal—but I haven’t quite gotten over it. I don’t tell her that. When it comes to feeling guilty, Marguerite doesn’t need any help.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, holding out a travel mug.

“Not for that.”

She set it down beside me. I could smell the blood, warmed to body temperature. Like that made a difference.

“You need to drink, Katiana,” she said.

“It’s stale. Now that…” I waved at a man three doors down, passed out drunk. “That’s a proper breakfast. Not like he’d notice. He’s already going to have a killer hangover. A missing pint of blood wouldn’t matter.”

“You are too young to drink alcohol.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I am serious, Kat. Whatever is in his blood will be in yours. Drugs, alcohol…You have to consider that.”

“No, I need to consider what I am. A hunter. I need to hunt, Mags. You do.”

“And so will you, mon chaton, when you are—”

“Psychologically and emotionally ready.” I tried to keep the edge out of my voice. “But you’re going to talk about it with the other vamps, right? That’s why we’re going to this meeting in New York.”

“We are going for many reasons.”

“But you are going to ask them whether I should start hunting.”

“Yes, I will. Now drink. We still have a long drive.”

Marguerite went back inside to get ready. I drank the blood. It was like eating store-bought chocolate chip cookies—I could taste hints of what I really wanted, what I craved, but they were hidden under a leaden layer of foul crap.

As I sipped, I eyed the drunk guy and imagined sinking my fangs into his neck. Imagined his blood, hot and rich. The back of my throat ached so much I could barely gag down my blood-bank breakfast.

I know I sound like a coldhearted bitch, fantasizing about drinking some guy’s blood, like I’m brutally nonchalant about the whole vampire situation. I’m not. I have my good days. And I have my bad ones, too, when I can’t get out of bed in the morning, when I lie there and think and worry.

Am I going to be sixteen forever? Marguerite says no, that the genetic modification experiment was supposed to get rid of the eternal youth thing, which when you think about it, isn’t really such a blessing, being one age forever, never able to settle in one place, make friends, get a job, fall in love….

What if the modifications failed? What if I am sixteen for the next three hundred years? I think about all the things I didn’t get to do before I turned. Things I might never get to do.

Even if the modifications took, how would that work? I can’t be injured, can’t get sick. Does that mean I’m invulnerable, but not immortal? That I’ll die when I’m a hundred, like everyone else? Or will I live to three or four hundred, like real vampires? If I do, will I keep aging at a normal rate, and turn into some hideous old hag? Marguerite doesn’t have any answers, just keeps saying it will work out, which means she’s just as concerned as I am.

I try not to think about all that. I’ve got enough to worry about with my life now. Hungering over humans. Drinking blood. Fearing that the Edison Group will find me again. Worrying that I’ll screw up and get caught.

Even without the Edison Group problem, there’s so much to stress out about. What if I get hit by a transport and the paramedics take me to a hospital where, whoops, suddenly I’m as good as new? What if people figure out I’m a vampire? Would they kill me? Experiment on me? Lock me up? Would I be any better off than if the Edison Group did catch me?

So, no, I’m not nonchalant about it. I’m dealing. Kind of. Today we were heading to New York to meet other vampires and get some answers about the genetic modifications and about how to handle my situation. So today was definitely going to be a good day.

As for hunting humans, I’m not nonchalant about that, either. When the time comes, even if it doesn’t have lasting effects on people, I expect I’ll feel guilty about it. Marguerite does. But I still need to hunt. I feel that in my gut, a gnawing restlessness, like when I haven’t done a workout in a while.

When the feeling gets bad, no amount of canned blood helps. I’ll be walking along and I’ll smell something unbelievably good. I’ll start salivating, stomach growling, and I’ll turn to see, not a plate of freshly baked cookies but a person, maybe even a friend. I can’t describe how that feels. It’s bad. Just bad.

I finished my drink and went inside. Marguerite was in the bathroom putting on makeup. I perched on the counter, watching her as she applied pale lipstick to a mouth that was already a perfect pink bow.

“So who’s the hot vampire in New York?” I said. “A tall, dark Napoleonic soldier you met during the Civil War? Sheltered him from the witch hunts? Got separated on the Titanic, each floating off on your own icebergs?”

“History is not your strongest subject, is it, mon chaton?”

“I’m improvising. So who is he?”

“There is no he. I want to look nice for people I have not seen in a while.”

“Uh-huh.”

I looked in the mirror—yes, unlike Hollywood vampires, I can see my reflection. Beside Marguerite’s fragile porcelain perfection, I always feel big and clumsy. Seeing us together, though, the difference isn’t that obvious. I’m only a few inches taller, and skinny enough that I can snag her designer shirts and leather jackets. No one ever mistakes us for sisters, though. My golden brown hair, green eyes, and lightly bronzed skin guarantee that.

I reached for her makeup bag. She snatched it away and handed me lip gloss.

“When you are seventeen,” she said.

“I may never be seventeen.”

“Then you will have no need for makeup, will you?”

I sighed. Marguerite can be unbelievably old-fashioned sometimes. The perils of having a guardian who grew up in the nineteenth century. On this point, though, I don’t really care. I’m a jock, not a cheerleader. Makeup is a pain in the ass. Well, most times. I make an exception for dates. Not that there’d been any of those since I