The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

Jen turned to look at Gabby, who was staring at her sadly. She looked so glum and miserable and ordinary. Jen almost felt sorry for her.

“You knew, too,” she said to her cousin. “Didn’t you?”

“My mom told me about the curse once she figured out I didn’t have it,” Gabby admitted. “Sorry I couldn’t tell you. But honestly, I didn’t think you had it, either. Not till Bridget started talking about Colin being a vampire and I saw how fascinated you were. It was weird, Jen.”

“Gabby warned us what was going on,” said Jen’s mother. “It gave us a little time to be prepared. See, you can’t control yourself right now, Jen. And that’s why you have to go live with your grandmother for a while. Someone will have to teach you how to be what you are.”

“I’m not doing that,” Jen said, turning back to her mother. “I’m not leaving here.”

Her mother looked startled. “We know what’s best for you—”

“No, you don’t,” Jen said. “You should have told me all this stuff before. You said you were protecting me, but you set me up. I killed Colin because of you.”

“And if you stay here, you’ll wind up killing someone else.”

“I guess you should have thought of that before,” said Jen. Gabby gave a startled laugh as Jen stood up, pushing her mother’s restraining hand away. “You called it a curse,” Jen added.

“It is a curse,” said her mother. “A family curse. Only the women in our family get it.”

“Maybe I don’t think it is one,” Jen said.

Her mother’s expression changed. Jen remembered what Gabby had always said about their grandmother— that everyone was afraid of her. Her daughters, too.

Her mother stood up, facing her. “You’re upset,” she said. “You should go to bed. We can talk about this in the morning.”

“Sure,” Jen said. “In the morning.”

She turned and walked out of the kitchen, up the stairs toward her bedroom. She caught sight of herself in the mirror that hung on the landing. Her clothes were stiff with dried blood. Her face was luminous, her eyes glowing. She looked—different. Under the blood, her skin seemed to shine. She was almost beautiful.

She smiled, wide as she could, showing the sharp tips of her needle incisors, the ones Colin had thought were so funny and so fake. She thought of the way his skin had crunched under her teeth when she bit into it, like the skin of an apple.

Her mother had been right. There would be other boys.

Passing by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié

IT WAS ALMOST time—a few minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve. New Year, new vampire hunter. Would I be the one?

I sat down shakily in the ancient stone chapel of the former Universidad de Salamanca, the most ancient university in Spain. When the war broke out, most of the universities in Europe shut down. The Americans figured the vampires would never attack us on our native soil. We paid dearly for our arrogance.

For the last twelve years, Salamanca had been the home of the Academia Sagrada Familia Contra los Vampiros. It was the school for vampire hunters—my school. There were foreign students from all over the world, because the Academia was the best. Academia graduates took out the most vamps, and they had the highest survival rate. There were six living Academicians; Juan Maldonaldo had been a hunter for nine years. Unbelievable.

Not that the survival rate was very good—out of the original ninety-six of us in our class, we were down to eighteen. We shuffled into the chapel in our ceremonial black robes, our hoods concealing our faces. We were about to take our final exam. Only one of us would pass.

I had dreaded this moment for two long years—the moment my foot crossed the threshold of the Academy —and feared it for two months. Diego, our Master, had warned us that as the time grew near, we would experience high anxiety. About a dozen of my classmates woke screaming from nightmares. There was a lot of jogging in the middle of the night. Even though drugs and alcohol were forbidden, I knew that people were swigging wine and taking Xanax so they could get some rest.

None of them carried the extra burdens—or the accompanying terror and guilt—that I did.

I should say something, tell someone, I thought. But I would sooner cut out my own heart than tell them what I’d done. What I might do.

At the thought, my heart skipped beats, and I clung to the back of the carved mahogany pew.

In the last two months, I had broken a lot of rules. For some of the things I had done, they didn’t even have rules. No one would have dreamed of crossing the line I had leaped across last Halloween.

Exactly two months ago, on October 31, everything had changed. The Vampire War had taken a brutal turn when the vamps had murdered the daughter of the president of the United States. The Cursed Ones didn’t put it that way, of course. They claimed they had “liberated” her—changed her into one of them—and that our side had murdered her when we drove a stake through her heart and cut off her head.

Like everyone else, I demanded payback. I couldn’t wait to take revenge. Although we were pledged to run together, I wanted a vampire to die by my own hand. I ran with my grupo across the ancient medieval bridge as the dying sun turned the stone city a golden color. We scoured the hills for blood drinkers, Spaniards and Americans, Koreans and Swedes. In our body armor, we sang our song, which had always sounded so corny to me before. Translated into English, it went like this:

We are the vampire hunters.

Our cause is holy.

From Spain we come to save the world.

Race from us into the sunlight, demons of hell!

Better that you die in flames than by our hands!

That night, Antonio de la Cruz was by my side. Sometimes he held my gloved hand in his as we charged through the darkness. My crossbow smacked the bruises I had gotten in Advanced Streetfighting the day before.

Fog rose around us like smoke from a wildfire. I heard shouts and Antonio’s hand left mine. I called for him; he answered, very far away. I saw a face floating in the fog before me, and I ran toward it. But it wasn’t Antonio.

It was Jack.

Don’t think about him, I ordered myself, my vision blurring as I focused on the stained glass windows of the saints. The Savior melted and blurred. Think about your legacy, and the promises that you made. Think of your grandparents.

Charles “Che” and Esther Leitner, my grandparents, were former revolutionaries, or at least that was their term for it. Nowadays we called them terrorists. During the Vietnam War, they had bombed banks and military bases. I had a picture of Papa Che and Gram in a locket around my neck. In the picture, Gram was my age. Her super-curly hair—like mine—tumbled down to her waist. She wore a leather headband, round wire-rimmed glasses, an army jacket, and a pair of tattered jeans. My grandfather could have been her twin, except he was taller.

They were so proud of me for joining the Academia. My parents … not so much. Not at all, in fact. They were pacifists, and they said that it was time to stop the fighting and listen to the vampires, find a way to coexist. We fought about it, bitterly.

My grandparents said my parents were hopeless dreamers. When the war became more brutal, I sided with Gram and Papa Che. There was no way we could sit down and negotiate with the vampires. They were monsters, ravening beasts. We might as well walk up to them and show them our necks.

But now …

“Let us come to order,” Diego said, as he swept into the chapel from the side door by the altar. We all had to learn Spanish. In the old days, before the vampires declared war on us, students came to Salamanca to learn