Eternal Kiss (11 page)

Julian looked up, startled. “Tilda?”

She snatched back her hand like she’d been about to touch fire. “Tilda,” he said. “What happened to you? Are you hurt?”

Matilda flinched, looking down at herself. “I …”

Lydia laughed. “She ate someone, moron.”

“Tilda?” Julian asked.

“I’m sorry,” Matilda said. There was so much she had to be sorry for, but at least he was here now. Julian would tell her what to do and how to turn herself back into something decent again. She would save Lydia, and Julian would save her.

He touched her shoulder, let his hand rest gingerly on her blood-stiffened shirt. “We were looking for you everywhere.” His gentle expression was tinged with terror; fear pulled his smile into something closer to a grimace.

“I wasn’t in Coldtown,” Matilda said. “I came here so that Lydia could leave. I have a pass.”

“But I don’t want to leave,” said Lydia. “You understand that, right? I want what you have—eternal life.”

“You’re not infected,” Matilda said. “You have to go. You can still be okay. Please, I need you to go.”

“One pass?” Julian said, his eyes going to Lydia. Matilda saw the truth in the weight of that gaze—Julian had not come to Coldtown for Matilda. Even though she knew she didn’t deserve him to think of her as anything but a monster, it hurt savagely.

“I’m not leaving,” Lydia said, turning to Julian, pouting.
“You said she wouldn’t be like this.”

“
I killed a girl
,” Matilda said. “I killed her. Do you understand that?”

“Who cares about some mortal girl?” Lydia tossed back her hair. In that moment, she reminded Matilda of Lydia’s brother, pretentious Dante who’d turned out to be an actual nice guy. Just like sweet Lydia had turned out cruel.

“You’re a girl,” Matilda said. “You’re mortal.”

“I know that!” Lydia rolled her eyes. “I just mean that we don’t care who you killed. Turn us and then we can kill lots of people.”

“No,” Matilda said, swallowing. She looked down, not wanting to hear what she was about to say. There was still a chance. “Look, I have the pass. If you don’t want it, then Julian should take it and go. But I’m not turning you. I’m never turning you, understand.”

“Julian doesn’t want to leave,” Lydia said. Her eyes looked bright and two feverish spots appeared on her cheeks. “Who are you to judge me anyway? You’re the murderer.”

Matilda took a step back. She desperately wanted Julian to say something in her defense or even to look at her, but his gaze remained steadfastly on Lydia.

“So neither one of you want the pass,” Matilda said.

“Go to hell,” spat Lydia.

Matilda turned away.

“Wait,” Julian said. His voice sounded weak.

Matilda spun, unable to keep the hope off her face, and saw
why Julian had called to her. Lydia stood behind him, a long knife to his throat.

“Turn me,” Lydia said. “Turn me or I’m going to kill him.”

Julian’s eyes were wide. He started to protest or beg or something, and Lydia pressed the knife harder, silencing him.

People had stopped dancing nearby, backing away. One girl with red-glazed eyes stared hungrily at the knife.

“Turn me!” Lydia shouted. “I’m tired of waiting! I want my life to begin!”

“You won’t be alive—” Matilda started.

“I’ll be alive—more alive than ever. Just like you are.”

“Okay,” Matilda said softly. “Give me your wrist.”

The crowd seemed to close in tighter, watching as Lydia held out her arm. Matilda crouched low bending down over it.

“Take the knife away from his throat,” Matilda said.

Lydia, all her attention on Matilda, let Julian go. He stumbled a little and pressed his fingers to his neck.

“I loved you,” Julian shouted.

Matilda looked up to see that he wasn’t speaking to her. She gave him a glittering smile and bit down on Lydia’s wrist.

The girl screamed, but the scream was lost in Matilda’s ears. Lost in the pulse of blood, the tide of gluttonous pleasure and the music throbbing around them like Lydia’s slowing heartbeat.

Matilda sat on the blood-soaked mattress and turned on the video camera to check that the live feed was working.

Julian was gone. She’d given him the pass after stripping him of all his cash and credit cards; there was no point in trying to force Lydia to leave since she’d just come right back in. He’d made stammering apologies that Matilda ignored then he fled for the gate. She didn’t miss him. Her fantasy of Julian felt as ephemeral as her old life.

“It’s working,” one of the boys—Michael—said from the stairs, a computer cradled on his lap. Even though she’d killed one of them, they welcomed her back, eager enough for eternal life to risk more deaths. “You’re streaming live video.”

Matilda set the camera on the stack of crates, pointed toward her and the wall where she’d tied a gagged Lydia. The girl thrashed and kicked, but Matilda ignored her. She stepped in front of the camera and smiled.

My name is Matilda Green. I was born on April 10, 1997. I died on September 3rd, 2013. Please tell my mother I’m okay. And Dante, if you’re watching this, I’m sorry.

You’ve probably seen lots of video feeds from inside Coldtown. I saw them too. Pictures of girls and boys grinding together in clubs or bleeding elegantly for their celebrity vampire masters. Here’s what you never see. What I’m going to show you.

For eighty-eight days you are going to watch someone sweat out the infection. You are going to watch her beg and scream and cry. You’re going to watch her throw up food and piss her pants and pass out. You’re going to watch me feed her can after can of creamed corn. It’s not going to be pretty.

You’re going to watch me too. I’m the kind of vampire that you’d be, one that’s new at this and basically out of control. I’ve already killed someone and I can’t guarantee I’m not going to do it again. I’m the one that infected this girl.

This is the real Coldtown.

I’m the real Coldtown.

You still want in?

“S
O DID YOU
come all the way from Transylvania to join this totally awesome band, Chris?”

“Er,” said Christian. “I’m from Birmingham.”

The lights in the studio hurt Christian’s eyes, and their interviewer was blowing a pink, bobbing balloon of bubblegum while she interviewed them. Every time she blew up the bubble a vein in her neck jumped under her makeup.

She’d introduced herself as Tracy. Christian didn’t like to think such filthy things about a girl he’d just met, but he couldn’t help suspecting she spelled it with an
“i.”

“So tell me, boys,” said Traci, swallowing the bubble, which collapsed and folded neatly into her mouth. “Any of you found that special girl yet?”

Bradley, who Christian might well have hated the most of all, gave her his best smile.

“Still searching, Traci,” he said, and looked bashful. “It’s hard to find someone really real in the music biz, you know? I just want a normal girl. Someone who gets me.”

Christian knew for a fact Bradley had been sneaking off with
Faye, which was a bad idea both because she was their manager and because she was possibly Satan’s emissary on this earth.

“How about you, Chris?” Traci chirped, turning her eyes on Christian like two blue helicopter beams. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Christian,” said Christian. “And, um, of course I don’t.”

“
Of course
you don’t?” Traci asked with sudden, terrifying intentness. In the shadows Christian could see Faye uncoil like a viper about to strike. Traci leaned toward him, her smile inviting honesty and her breath smelling of Bubblicious watermelon. “And why is that, Chris?”

“Uh,” said Christian. “Because I’m
undead
?”

“Do the girls not get the real you, Chris?” Traci drawled, leaning back and looking a little disappointed.

“I think they probably do, to be honest,” Christian said. “I think that’s sort of the problem. I mean, they’re aware of the fact that I drink blood, so I can’t take them out for dinner, plus understandably they worry about getting all the blood drained from their bodies. And if they asked me on a date to a barbecue, I might wind up on the end of a chargrilled stake. The prospect isn’t exactly appealing.”

Faye was pacing like a caged leopard, which alarmed Christian extremely. She’d said “just be yourself,” before the interview, and this was the only self Christian knew how to be, even though Faye seemed intent on redesigning him.

Bradley laughed far too loudly in Christian’s ear. Christian jumped.

“Good thing you’re cute, am I right, Traci?”

Traci winked back at Bradley. “How right you are, Bradders. So, Josh and Pez,” she said, turning to the rest of the band. “Do you two have girlfriends?”

Josh looked terrified. Pez looked distracted by Traci’s shiny earrings.

Christian wondered what having girlfriends had to do with music. They’d just come in from recording the last song for their first album—why hadn’t Traci opened the interview by asking about that?

It wasn’t like Christian had enjoyed much success with girls when he’d been alive anyhow. He’d been shy, and he’d had all that acne. Whenever he liked a girl she’d claim she valued their friendship too much, and in the name of said friendship she’d be forced to make out with rugby players while Christian held her purse. His mum had always said that there was plenty of time, that soon he’d be in college and there would be a thousand different paths for him to choose.

There had only been one path, though—the alley Christian had used as a shortcut home from school. It had been dark and cold, Christian stumbling along with his hands in the pockets of his thin school-uniform trousers and being glum that he’d forgotten his gloves. There was the huddled form of someone he had thought was homeless, who he’d stopped to help, and then there was the bloody attack that Christian didn’t remember clearly. It had been so fast, the brutal snarling creature leaping on top of him. He’d managed to open the blade on his Swiss Army knife
and score a long line up the vampire’s face. The wound had opened, dark and dripping blood into Christian’s mouth.

And then there were no more choices.

Christian was roused from the memory of that dark alley by Bradley’s loud laugh and the terribly bright television lights.

Why they had made the vampire with the super-hearing sit next to the man with the laugh of a hyena on speed, Christian didn’t know.

“I’m sweet seventeen,” said Bradley, who was a liar and a fiend and at least twenty. “And never been—”

He waggled his eyebrows without finishing his sentence and Traci laughed uproariously.

“Oh Bradders, you are so bad! How about you, Chris?”

Christian blinked. “Me?”

“How old are you?” Traci asked. “Two hundred? Three hundred?”

“Er,” said Christian. “I’m nineteen.”

At that point Traci leaned in again, covering his hand with hers and not drawing back at the chill. She looked deep into his eyes and said, in a warm, understanding voice:

“Would that be nineteen in …
vampire
years?”

“You didn’t have to get so narky with her, Chris,” Faye said as she shepherded them back to the limo which was meant to take them to their concert.

“Vampire years!” Christian repeated.

“Like dog years, but in reverse,” Bradley explained helpfully.

Christian did not hit him because the pamphlet they had given him at the re-education clinic after his attack—
The Responsible Citizen’s Guide to Vampirism
—was very clear about the fact that he had the strength to knock Bradley’s head clean off his shoulders and into the bucket of champagne set in front of them. Bradley was the stupidest person Christian had ever met, but he didn’t deserve that.

Besides, Faye would have given him hell.

“Yes, I understood her horribly speciesist and insensitive point, actually. Thanks,” he said instead, and rubbed at his temples. When he was annoyed his fangs tingled, and it always ended up giving him a migraine.

“I can’t believe we’re going to do our first concert right now,” Josh said, avoiding Christian’s eyes as usual and bouncing nervously in his seat. The roof of the limo was making his fuzzy brown curls a little static.

“Nor can I, since we don’t even have fans yet. What with only finishing up recording our first album today and everything.”

Josh carefully pretended he hadn’t heard Christian.
Vampire in the limo?
his body language screamed.
What vampire in the limo? I have no idea what you mean!

“We released the single and the photo-shoot pictures to all the best mags a month ago,” Faye pointed out cheerfully. “You guys already have five message boards dedicated to you. And the fan mail’s been pouring in, mostly for Bradley and Chris.”

“Oh ha ha ha,” said Christian, staring out of the darkened limo windows.

People were peering in as the car passed, curious and a little excited. Christian would have done it himself a year ago, presuming that the limo meant that those inside it had glamorous and interesting lives.

“Chris, Chris,” said Bradley, hitting him over the head to attract his attention as if Christian was deaf rather than, for example, a
vampire
with
super hearing
. “Are you really only nineteen? I thought vampires lived to be hundreds and hundreds of years old.”

“We do,” Christian said shortly. “And we get to be hundreds and hundreds of years old by living one year at a time. I’ve only been a vampire for a year.”

“That’s deep,” Pez told him.

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!”