The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

They all stared at Pez who beamed benignly back at them. At last Faye cleared her throat.

“Right,” she said. “Let’s go through your program again, boys.”

They’d had it drilled into them for weeks. Christian looked out of the darkened windows again, and thought about how it had been at the first audition to become part of 4 The One, him desperately hoping to be chosen and hopeless about it, watching Faye’s eyes light up at Bradley’s careless, golden good looks.

“You’ll be the hot one,” she’d said calmly, then turned her eyes to Josh, who stared back beseechingly. “You can be the nerd. Geek chic is very in.”

“Lady, I think I got confused. I thought this was an interview for a job at a fast-food place,” said a guy with dreadlocks and crazy eyes who Christian would later learn claimed to be called Pez.

“You’ll be the drummer, obviously,” Faye told him.

Then she turned to Christian, who barely dared to hope in case she snatched it away from him and ground it to pieces under her scarily high heels. He’d had to leave home. Mum had told him that his little brother couldn’t sleep with a vampire in the house. He had no place else to go.

Faye smiled at him, almost as beautiful as she was terrifying.

“You’ll be the gimmick.”

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

* * *

There was a screaming crowd outside the auditorium.

“Um,” said Christian. “Did we go to a Stephen King signing by mistake?”

“You read, Chris?” Faye asked. “That’s good. Make them think you have layers, that you’re deep and interesting. The kind of guy who will write them poetry—better yet, songs. Be sure to mention that in the next interview.”

“Come on, guys,” said Bradley, flinging open the door of the limo. “Our public awaits!”

He launched himself out of the limo and onto the red carpet, where he actually did a backflip. The crowd made a sound a little bit like applause and a little bit more like baying wolves, and Christian covered his eyes from the sheer shame of being associated with such a ridiculous person.

Faye jabbed Christian in the stomach with her pen.

“Get out there! And if you could possibly do that thing where you shield your face with your caped arm and hiss—”

“Faye,” said Chris earnestly. “I will never do that thing.”

Faye snorted and crossed her admittedly excellent legs with a rasp of silk. “At least get out there and flash them some fang.”

Pez and Josh had already climbed out of the limo, knocking shoulders as the crowds screamed. They huddled together. Christian drew his cape around himself.

“I miss my hoodie,” he informed Faye as a parting shot. “I know you stole it.”

“You’re talking crazy, you never had a hoodie,” Faye said. “Don’t let me hear you speak of it again.”

Christian climbed out onto the red carpet. He’d thought that the studio lights at the interview were bad, but the dozen clicking, flashing cameras were so much worse. He lifted his hand to cover his eyes, then realized Faye had glued his cape to his sleeve somehow and now he was doing that thing. That vampire thing.

When he lowered his hand he saw Bradley was blowing kisses to the yelling girls, pretending to move forward on the carpet and then doing a little backward walk to blow more kisses.

Christian gave up and shielded his eyes, even though it meant he was doing that thing again. He felt so cheap.

Pez and Josh, at this point shamelessly clinging to each other, were making a rush for the door of the auditorium. Chris started to flee after them, picking up speed even though Faye had made it very clear that specific and terrible things would happen to anyone who ran, hid behind someone else or—and this was directed specifically at him—used supernatural powers to evade a camera.

Even Christian’s hearing could barely make out all the sounds as he passed the crowd. There was so much screaming it was making his migraine worse, his fangs stabbing into his lower lip as his head pounded, random shrieks interspersed with shouts of their names coming from the mob.

“Bradley, Bradley, look at me!”

“Bradley, I want your babies!” yelled a guy who looked about forty years old and was wearing a purple feather boa. Bradley winked and blew him a kiss.

“Chris!”

“Pez!”

“Josh!” Josh looked around, his face puzzled and a little pleased by the sound of his name, and Christian almost walked into his back. Josh looked terrified and backed sharply away.

“Chris, bite me!”

“I love you, Bradley!”

“Chris, I wanna be your queen of the night!”

That was the feather boa guy again, Christian couldn’t help but notice.

“Christian! Christian, help!”

That turned Christian’s head. It wasn’t only that the girl had used his real name, which nobody had done since he’d left home, but there was a pitch and urgency to her voice that said she was in real trouble.

He could see a particularly dense part of the crowd, a nexus where there were too many bodies crammed and things had become frenzied, people shoving too hard. In the midst of the crushed bodies Christian saw a hand waving, going down, as if there was a girl drowning in that human sea.

Christian grabbed hold of the rail on top of the barricades and vaulted over it in one easy vampiric movement. He spread out an arm to clear the space before him and watched people scattering in panic.

That was when he realized that when he’d spread his arm his stupid cape had flared out, a swathe of billowing darkness, and he’d exposed his face, lips curling back from his teeth.

How embarrassing. Faye was going to be thrilled.

He knelt down and lifted the girl up gently by her elbows. She was pink and breathless, with red pigtail braids that had gone wispy and eyes that had gone big. Christian could hear her heart racing with the speed and strength of a charging rhinoceros. He was worried she was going to faint.

“Are you all right?”

“I—um—yes?” said the girl.

Christian smiled. “Are you not sure?”

“Um,” said the girl.

“Come on, you should get …” Christian paused and tried to think of something that might persuade a girl not to faint. All he could think of were smelling salts, which just went to show he should never have started reading Mum’s Mills & Boon novels. “A glass of water? There are probably chairs backstage. Or boxes to sit on. I mean, I hope you can have a chair, but I want to prepare you for boxes.”

The crowd was no longer screaming, but they were drawing in. Christian wrapped an arm protectively around the girl’s fragile shoulders, his cape settling around her like a blanket.

“Thank you,” she said, low into his ear, her heart still pounding. “My name’s Laura. Thank you.”

Christian led her back to the barricades and then boosted her over them. She was light and he could throw her like a tennis ball. She had to grab the rail as she passed over it to slow her trajectory, and she landed kind of hard.

“You’re welcome,” said Christian, leaping after her and steadying her as she wobbled from the impact. “Sorry about that. I’m a bit—” terrible at being a vampire “—strong.”

“That’s okay,” Laura whispered, warm against him. She was underneath his cape again somehow.

He walked her toward the door of the auditorium, slipping out of the night full of mysteriously screaming people and into a cool concrete refuge.

At his side, Laura spoke. “I’m really sorry for bothering you on your big night,” she told him. “I was just scared and I panicked. I knew you’d come to save me.”

Christian looked down at her, startled. She wasn’t red and breathless anymore, but pale with golden freckles. Her eyes were summer-sky blue and still wide, and she was looking at him like he was a hero.