The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

Spanish, not hand-to-hand combat.

Diego stood in front of his ornate wooden chair, which was upholstered in black velvet. Black was our color, the symbol of darkness. The sun was not for us. More than once I had stopped to think how much more in common we hunters had with the vampires than with the rest of humanity.

So, it begins, I thought, trembling. The bell would toll at midnight, both a celebration of the new year and dirge for the seventeen of us who would not become vampire hunters. The vampires would hunt all of us for the rest of our lives. Our identities were known. Only one of us would receive the sacred elixir that would strengthen him or her for the ordeal ahead, and make them quick to heal. The rest of us would be vulnerable, easier to kill.

The elixir itself was magic. Rumor had it that it was made up of some incredibly rare herbs that could only be harvested on a single night of the year and lay in the heart of one of the vampire strongholds. Armand, one of the priests at the school, was the only one who could make the elixir, and there was never enough for more than one hunter.

I looked across the stone chapel at Antonio, who was busy crossing himself. He was dressed in a black robe, like me. Beneath the robe he wore body armor, like me. His profile was sharp. Tendrils of loose black hair brushed his cheeks. Like every other girl at the Academia, I had had an intense crush on Antonio. It took almost a year to understand that his heart had no room for romance or girls. Vampires had slaughtered his entire family. He was the only one left. They took everything from me, was what he said. He burned with a hatred that astounded me; it made him seem like a different kind of being.

In his presence I often felt foolish. No one had slaughtered my family members, or friends. I had come to study how to fight vampires because it sounded cool, glamorous, and because I wanted to be more like my grandmother than my mother. I had been a stupid kid. As my thoughts drifted back to Jack, I realized that I still was.

On the night I met Jack—Halloween night—Antonio had told me that of all the girls in the class, he respected me the most. Would he still have respected me if he had known that I had fallen in love with a vampire? No, he probably would have killed me himself.

“You understand,” Antonio had said, “why I cannot …” And then, and there, I knew that Antonio loved me. I don’t know what kind of private battle he had fought, but he had lost it.

It was too late, but I never told him that. We never talked about it, and so I never had to tell him that I had been so careful not to let my feelings deepen for what I had assumed was a lost cause. Since he never told me that he loved me, I had no reason to tell him that old cliché—that while I loved him like a brother, it went no further than that.

As if to make my point, I sat alone, like almost everyone else. The only two who sat together were Jamie and Skye, both red-haired. The rest of us guarded ourselves; we had learned to harden our hearts. Jamie, a fierce streetfighter from Northern Ireland, was the hardest of all of us. Skye, a London goth, liked him, but it was obvious that he was oblivious. I was afraid that my own choices tonight might kill them.

Or Antonio, I thought, staring at the gut-wrenching carving of Christ Crucified hanging behind the altar. If you didn’t enter the Academia a believer, you became one: crosses, holy water, and communion wafers really did work against vampires. Most vampires.

I knew one who was immune.

Or Jack, I added to my prayers. Don’t lay his death at my door.

I could see my breath. My stomach clenched as Diego looked straight at me. He doesn’t know, I reminded myself. He can’t know. I’ve been so careful.

Beneath my black robe, my body armor was strapped on over a ratty old black sweater and a pair of faded, tattered jeans. It was what I’d had on the first time I met Jack. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was trying to say by wearing the same clothes, but I felt better with them on. Safer, maybe.

It was dangerous to feel safe. Possibly even fatal.

My grandparents had never felt safe. They had been on the run all their lives. Warrants for their arrests were still active.

“And so, on your last night, we are assembled,” Diego said.

I jerked upright. My thoughts were scattering. It was a nervous habit, a terrible one—“drifting,” I called it. I had been drifting when I met Jack. He could have killed me.

After all this time, I still wasn’t sure why he hadn’t.

“First we will say Mass, and then I’ll pair you up for your hunt this evening.” Diego nodded to the back of the church. “The archbishop himself will give you communion. You will be as well armed as the archangels.”

But only one of us would receive the elixir after tonight’s exam. It seemed so horribly wrong, so unfair. To go through all the training, and make the vows, and then to be denied the best weapon our side had. They would try to protect us; some of us would make our way to other schools to try again. Or maybe to teach. But honestly? Most of us would die.

The archbishop and the altar celebrants arrived next, swaying down the center aisle as the altar boys and girls swung incense burners. One tall boy, a little younger than me, carried an enormous gold cross. The archbishop wore gold and white robes. He was old and solemn. Some people claimed that the church kept the war going because they wanted the vampires wiped out. There was even talk that the church had ordered the death of the president’s daughter to make sure no one softened toward the Cursed Ones.

At last the archbishop arrived at the altar. He raised his hand high and blessed all of us. I swallowed hard. My throat was so tight I was afraid I would choke to death.

The Mass proceeded. I had imagined this night a hundred times, a thousand. The pageantry of the ancient Latin mass. The heavy symbolism. I had even dreamed about it—bats flying from the altar to be transformed into white doves. But whatever comfort the Mass might bestow on others was wasted on me.

I was shivering. It was so very cold. Then finally the archbishop gestured for us to sit in the pews.

Diego stood beside the archbishop. He raised his chin and began to read from a list held a distance away from him.

“Jamie and Skye,” he began, announcing the first pair. Jamie glowered at Diego, earning a glare of disdain from the archbishop. Skye flushed to her roots.

“Eriko and Holgar,” he continued. The two gestured to each other in the drafty room.

I looked at no one, and no one looked at me. Antonio stared straight ahead. Maybe he knew.

“Jenn and Antonio,” said Diego, and there were actual sighs in the chapel, like steam. Some girls had not given up on Antonio. It seemed so ludicrous—and yet, I envied them. I hadn’t let any of my strong emotions out … before Halloween.

Diego finished reading the list. Then the midnight bells tolled, waterfalls of music purifying us, baptizing us.

There were vampires in the hills. They had been sighted. They knew that tonight we would come after them, and they had probably already sown the forests and the hills with traps for us. Last year’s vampire-hunter graduate had been slaughtered less than twenty-four hours after this very ceremony.

Then two by two, we took communion. I stood shoulder to shoulder with Antonio, as the short line progressed up the aisle, to accept the communion wafer and drink the ceremonial wine—the body of Our Savior, the blood of Our Savior. I was intensely aware of Antonio beside me. And then, as we knelt for our blessing, his hand brushed mine.

I had never understood why they sent us out two-by-two, as if we were animals on the ark, or Mormon missionaries—the Mormons kept each other company and guarded each other from sin, but they had a common goal: to convert others to their cause. We, however, were in direct competition with each other. Some of us believed that the Academia was lying to us; maybe we were put together because after the examination was over, we would work together.

Then it was over, and we were filing out of the chapel. Someone had put a candle in my hand. The golden glow played over Antonio’s sharp features.

There had been talk of the savage vampire band in the woods. There were seven of them. Two of them were French, four Spanish, and one—the leader—was an American, named Jack. The Academia held Jack personally responsible for the deaths of thirty-six of my classmates.