The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

Her teeth ached to look at it.

There was a silence inside of her. No longer did she move to the rhythmic drumming of her heart. Her body felt strange, hard as marble, free of pain. She’s never realized how many small agonies were alive in the creak of her bones, the pull of muscle. Now, free of them, she felt like she was floating.

Matilda looked around with her strange new eyes. Everything was beautiful. And the light at the edge of the sky was the most beautiful thing of all.

“What are you doing?” a girl called from a doorway. She had long black hair but her roots were growing in blonde. “Get in here! Are you crazy?”

In a daze, Matilda did as she was told. Everything smeared as she moved, like the world was painted in watercolors. The girl’s pinkish-red face swirled along with it.

It was obvious the house had once been grand, but looked like it’d been abandoned for a long time. Graffiti covered the peeling wallpaper and couches had been pushed up against the walls. A boy wearing jeans but no shirt was painting makeup onto a girl with stiff pink pigtails while another girl in a retro polka-dotted dress pulled on mesh stockings.

In a corner, another boy—this one with glossy brown hair that fell to his waist—stacked jars of creamed corn into a precarious pyramid.

“What is this place?” Matilda asked.

The boy stacking the jars turned. “Look at her eyes. She’s a vampire!” He didn’t seem afraid, though; he seemed delighted.

“Get her into the cellar,” one of the other girls said.

“Come on,” said the black-haired girl and pulled Matilda toward a doorway. “You’re fresh-made, right?”

“Yeah,” Matilda said. Her tongue swept over her own sharp teeth. “I guess that’s pretty obvious.”

“Don’t you know that vampires can’t go outside in the day-light?” the girl asked, shaking her head. “The guards try that trick with every new vampire, but I never saw one almost fall for it.”

“Oh, right,” Matilda said. They went down the rickety steps to a filthy basement with a mattress on the floor underneath a single bulb. Crates of foodstuffs were shoved against the walls and the high, small windows had been painted over with a tarry substance that let no light through.

The black-haired girl who’d waved her inside smiled. “We trade with the border guards. Black-market food, clothes, little luxuries like chocolate and cigarettes for some action. Vampires don’t own everything.”

“And you’re going to owe us for letting you stay the night,” the boy said from the top of the stairs.

“I don’t have anything,” Matilda says. “I didn’t bring any cans of food or whatever.”

“You have to bite us.”

“What?” Matilda asked.

“One of us,” the girl said. “How about one of us? You can even pick which one.”

“Why would you want me to do that?”

The girl’s expression clearly said that Matilda was stupid. “Who doesn’t want to live forever?”

I don’t, Matilda wanted to say, but she swallowed the words. She could tell they already thought she didn’t deserve to be a vampire. Besides, she wanted to taste blood. She wanted to taste the red throbbing pulsing insides of the girl in front of her. It wasn’t the pain she’d felt when she was infected, the hunger that made her stomach clench, the craving for warmth. It was heady, greedy desire.

“Tomorrow,” Matilda said. “When it’s night again.”

“Okay,” the girl said, “but you promise, right? You’ll turn one of us?”

“Yeah,” said Matilda, numbly. It was hard to even wait that long.

She was relieved when they went upstairs, but less relieved when she heard something heavy slide in front of the basement door. She told herself that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting through the day so that she could find Julian and Lydia.

She shook her head to clear it of thoughts of blood and turned on Dante’s phone. Although she didn’t expect it, a text message was waiting: I cant tell if I luv u or if I want to kill u.

Relief washed over her. Her mouth twisted into a smile and her newly sharp canines cut her lip. She winced. Dante was okay.

She opened up Lydia’s blog and posted an anonymous message: Tell Julian his girlfriend wants to see him … and you.

Matilda made herself comfortable on the dirty mattress. She looked up at the rotted boards of the ceiling and thought of Julian. She had a single ticket out of Coldtown and two humans to rescue with it, but it was easy to picture herself saving Lydia as Julian valiantly offered to stay with her, even promised her his eternal devotion.

She licked her lips at the image. When she closed her eyes, all her imaginings drowned in a sea of red.

Waking at dusk, Matilda checked Lydia’s blog. Lydia had posted a reply: Meet us at the Festival of Sinners.

Five kids sat at the top of the stairs, watching her with liquid eyes.

“Are you awake?” the black-haired girl asked. She seemed to pulse with color. Her moving mouth was hypnotic.

“Come here,” Matilda said to her in a voice that seemed so distant that she was surprised to find it was her own. She hadn’t meant to speak, hadn’t meant to beckon the girl over to her.

“That’s not fair,” one of the boys called. “I was the one that said she owed us something. It should be me. You should pick me.”

Matilda ignored him as the girl knelt down on the dirty mattress and swept aside her hair, baring a long, unmarked neck. She seemed dazzling, this creature of blood and breath, a fragile mannequin as brittle as sticks.

Tiny golden hairs tickled Matilda’s nose as she bit down.

And gulped.

Blood was heat and heart and running-thrumming-beating through the fat roots of veins to drip syrup slowly, spurting molten hot across tongue, mouth, teeth, chin.

Dimly, Matilda felt someone shoving her and someone else screaming, but it seemed distant and unimportant. Eventually the words became clearer.

“Stop,” someone was screaming. “Stop!”

Hands dragged Matilda off the girl. Her neck was a glistening red mess. Gore stained the mattress and covered Matilda’s hands and hair. The girl coughed, blood bubbles frothing on her lip, and then went abruptly silent.

“What did you do?” the boy wailed, cradling the girl’s body. “She’s dead. She’s dead. You killed her.”

Matilda backed away from the body. Her hand went automatically to her mouth, covering it. “I didn’t mean to,” she said.

“Maybe she’ll be okay,” said the other boy, his voice cracking. “We have to get bandages.”

“She’s dead,” the boy holding the girl’s body moaned.

A thin wail came from deep inside of Matilda as she backed toward the stairs. Her belly felt full, distended. She wanted to be sick.

Another girl grabbed Matilda’s arm. “Wait,” the girl said, eyes wide and imploring. “You have to bite me next. You’re full now so you won’t have to hurt me—”

With a cry, Matilda tore herself free and ran up the stairs—if she went fast enough maybe she could escape from herself.

* * *

By the time Matilda got to the Festival of Sinners, her mouth tasted metallic and she was numb with fear. She wasn’t human, wasn’t good, and wasn’t sure what she might do next. She kept pawing at her shirt, as if that much blood could ever be wiped off, as if it hadn’t already soaked down into her skin and her soiled insides.

The Festival was easy to find, even as confused as she was. People were happy to give her directions, apparently not bothered that she was drenched in blood. Their casual demeanor was horrifying, but not as horrifying as how much she already wanted to feed again.

On the way, she passed the Eternal Ball. Strobe lights lit up the remains of the windows along the dome and a girl with blue hair in a dozen braids held up a video camera to interview three men dressed all in white with gleaming red eyes.