The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

Not yet.

He offered her his arm and led her gently back to Rochelle, who would be her friend for the night because she had got them invited to this great party. They both seemed willing to engage in a little human deception.

“I’ll see you around?” Laura asked. She sounded both uncertain about whether she would and about whether she wanted to.

Christian lied to her, intentionally, for the first time, and said, “You will.”

* * *

When Christian tried to go back down to his room, he almost tripped over Haley and Josh on the basement stairs.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, and backpedaled hastily before Josh could become asthmatic with combined terror and passion.

He crashed into a man wearing a papier-mâché lion head who turned out to be Pez.

“Oh, hey, man,” said Pez. “Where’s your lady friend?”

Christian was mildly surprised that Pez had noticed Laura existed at all. Many things happening on Planet Earth passed Pez right by. “I think she only liked me because I’m a vampire.”

Pez looked stunned. “Hang on,” he said. “You’re actually a vampire?”

“Ah, yes?”

“I thought that was a gimmick Faye came up with!”

“Yes, Pez,” Christian said wearily. “I’m a gimmick. I’m also a vampire.”

Pez nodded his fluffy, dreadlocked head which bounced with all the product that Faye ordered into it every day.

“Huh.”

Christian waited while Pez processed the idea, feeling slight dread at the thought of how terrified Josh was of him.

“Dude,” said Pez. “If you’re actually a vampire, it is really nice of you to go grocery shopping so much.”

“Oh, well,” Christian mumbled, feeling unexpectedly flustered. “There’s a late-night grocery shop down the road. I don’t mind. I know Josh needs sugar, and Bradley drinks all that milk, and you kind of use up all the bubble bath.”

“It’s tangy,” Pez assured him. “Very refreshing.”

“Okay.”

Pez punched him in the chest and then swayed back, laughing. “Appreciate it, man,” he said, and then rejoined the conga line.

Christian was feeling a bit too fragile to cope with a conga line full of unlikely and intoxicated papier- mâché animals, so he went down to the projection room where he thought he could hear the video recording of their first concert being played.

He did not at all mean to see Bradley and Faye kissing in the darkened room, but that was exactly what he saw, and his vampire vision left nothing to the imagination.

Christian blinked hard three times to dispel the terrible sight.

“Chris, you are in so much trouble,” said Faye, disentangling herself from Bradley’s embrace, her lipstick blurred.

“I am so sorry, I had no idea. The music was up very loud. Please don’t kill me.”

“You keep sidling away from the wind machine,” Faye said, ignoring him superbly, as she did when she had decided people were being stupid. “Don’t try to lie to me. It’s extremely clear.”

Christian looked at his blown-up image on the farthest wall, bathed in violet light and definitely shying away from the wind machine.

“Hey, where’s Laura?” Bradley asked. He was wearing Faye’s lipstick, too. It made him look monumentally ridiculous.

“Not with me,” Christian said. “You were right.”

Bradley looked sympathetic, which Christian appreciated. The look on Faye’s face gave him chills.

“Chris, do you mean that you just gave me a dramatic rescue and a tragic love affair, all in only two days?” she asked slowly. “Because if you’ve done that, I have to say, I think I love you.”

Bradley made a distressed face. “Faye, give the guy a break. He has feelings.”

“I know—torment, isolation, longing for love,” Faye said, as if checking boxes in the terrible list that lived inside her brain. “Adore it. Totally classic.”

“I’m not …” Christian burst out, and stopped.

He wasn’t that vampire thing Laura had longed for. That was what he wanted to say. But to Faye and Bradley, of all people, he just couldn’t do it.

Faye’s face softened a little. She walked over to him, hair mussed and lipstick smeared. For a moment, Christian thought that she might actually be experiencing a wave of womanly sympathy.

“But you are,” she said, stabbing her perfectly manicured nail in his direction, and his wild dream died. “You’re the vampire wishing for his lost humanity, yearning for love as a way to recapture it, always thinking that someday, someone will understand.”

“You don’t understand,” Christian said reflexively, and then bit his tongue (that was extremely painful for a vampire).

“Oh, I know,” Faye said. “Nobody does. But you’ll keep thinking maybe someone will. You’ll keep searching for the one, and they’ll keep hoping they could be the one, and the album will go to the top of the charts!”

“I feel somewhat exploited,” Christian said. “I think that’s due to the fact that you’re exploiting me.”

He looked over Faye’s shoulder at the images onscreen. Bradley was shaking what his mother and his plastic surgeon had given him, Josh and Pez shuffling behind him. Christian was all alone, his black hair lifted like wings by the wind machine.

“Sure,” Faye agreed. “But what else are you going to do? What else are you going to be? You’re a vampire, Chris. And I’m going to make you a star.”

The haircut on that lit-up musician on the big screen didn’t look as stupid as it always did in the mirror. Even the cloak didn’t look stupid.

“It’s not so bad, Chris,” Bradley said encouragingly. “Stop moping.”

Faye whirled on him. “Never tell him that again!”

“Sorry, Faye.”

“Keep moping, Chris,” said Faye sternly. “Mope your little heart out. Now, I’m tired of this party. Nobody is doing anything scandalous or newsworthy at all. We’re going to my house, Bradley. Feel free to mope here alone, Chris. Or if you like, you can join us.”

Chris took a moment to ponder the possible implications of Faye’s offer, and feel his head go all swimmy with horror. He looked at Bradley to check that Bradley was also horrified, and Bradley gave him a thumbs-up.

Christian’s horror reached almost cosmic proportions.

“I think,” he said coldly, “I will fetch my cape and go for a walk.”

“It’s raining, man,” Bradley informed him.

“I think that I will fetch my cape and go for a long, miserable walk in the rain.”

Faye smiled brilliantly. “And that’s why we all love you, honey.”

Christian paused on his way out to cast one more reproachful and traumatized look at the pair of them.

Over their heads he saw his own image: the rock star vampire, eyes shut, lost in the music and the moment of love. Christian saw himself looking wistful and oddly beautiful, pale in neon lights and makeup, yet somehow divorced from both, shining like an icon. He looked happy and almost human.

Almost, but not quite. He was smiling a little.

In the spotlights, his fangs gleamed.

Kat by Kelley Armstrong