Eternal Kiss (15 page)

“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 vam
pire, 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.

T
HE VAMPIRE HUNTERS
came just before dawn. I was sound asleep—a total knock-out sleep, deep and dreamless, after a night spent sparring with Marguerite. I woke to her cool fingers gripping my bare shoulder.

“Kat?” she whispered. “Katiana?”

I pushed her away, muttering that I’d skip the bus and jog to school, but her fingers bit into my shoulder as she shook me.

“It’s not school,
mon chaton
,” she said in her soft French accent. “It’s the hunters. They’ve found me.”

My eyes snapped open. Marguerite was leaning over me, blue eyes wide, her heart-shaped face ringed with blonde curls. When I was little, I used to think she was an angel. I knew better now, but it didn’t change anything. She was still
my
guardian angel.

I rolled out of bed and peered around the dark room. If I blinked hard enough, I could see. Cat’s-eye vision, Marguerite called it. I was a supernatural, too, though not a vampire. We had no idea
what
I was. At sixteen, I still didn’t have any powers other than this bit of night vision.

Marguerite pushed clothing into my hand. For two years,
we’d slept with an outfit and packed backpack under our beds, ready to grab if the hunters came. Two years of running. Two years of staying one step ahead of them. Until now.

“Where are they?” I whispered as I tugged on my jeans.

“Outside. Watching the house.”

“Waiting for daylight, I bet.” I snorted. “Idiots. Probably think once the sun comes up, you’ll be trapped in here.”

“If so, they will be in for a surprise. But I would like to be gone by then, to be sure they are not waiting for reinforcements.”

“Going up, then?” I asked.

She nodded, and we set out.

We snuck through the top-floor apartment we rented in the old house. In the living room, I hopped onto the couch, and Marguerite handed me a screwdriver. I popped off the ventilation shaft cover, handed it down to her, grabbed the edge and swung up and through.

Ever seen a TV show where the hero sneaks into the villain’s lair through a ventilation shaft? Ever thought it looked easy? It’s not. First, your average ventilation shaft is not action hero-sized. Second, they’re lined with metal, meaning it’s like crawling through a tin can, every thump of your knee echoing.

Fortunately, neither Marguerite nor I are action hero-sized either. And we know how to move without making a sound. For Marguerite, it comes naturally. Vampires are predators, and she’s never sugar-coated that for me. My skill comes from training. I’m
a competition-level gymnast, a brown belt in karate and a second-degree black belt in aikido.

I’d been taking lessons since I came to live with Marguerite eleven years ago. All supernaturals need to be able to defend themselves, she says. I might eventually get powers that help me, but if I turn out to be something like a necromancer, I’m shit outta luck. Not that she’d use those exact words. Marguerite doesn’t swear and doesn’t like me to either. She has no problem with me kicking someone’s ass—she just doesn’t want me saying the word.

When my elbow bumped the metal side, I managed to swallow my curse, turning it into a soft growl.

“You’re doing fine,” her whisper floated to me. “Keep going.”

We finally reached the attic, where we’d removed the screws from the vent right after moving in. As I pushed it up and out of the way, I mentally cursed again, this time cussing out the landlady for nailing shut the attic hatch, which would have made for a much easier escape route. That was why we’d rented the place—Marguerite had seen the hatch in our apartment and slapped down the cash … only to realize it was nailed closed, the wood too rotted to pry open.

Once in the attic, Marguerite took over. She can see better in the dark than I can. In the vent, she’d let me go first to cover my back, but here she led to make sure I didn’t trip or step on anything nasty. That’s the way it’s always been. She trains me to defend myself, but when she’s there, she’s always the one taking the risks. When I was five, it made me feel safe and loved. Now
… well, there’s part of me that wants to say it pisses me off, but the truth is, I still like it.

Marguerite walked to the dormer window. Oak branches scraped against it like fingernails on a chalkboard, setting my already stretched nerves twanging. She wrenched off the rotted window frame. Those branches, creepy as they were, made excellent cover, hiding us as we swung up and onto the roof. Following her lead, I slid across the old shingles, feeling them scrape a layer or two off my palms. We crept along to the shadow of the chimney, then huddled against it and peered out into the night.

Marguerite started to close her eyes, then opened them wide, her nostrils flaring.

“Yes, I’m bleeding,” I whispered. “Scraped palms. I’ll live.”

She handed me a tissue anyway. Then she closed her eyes, trying to pinpoint the vampire hunters with her special senses. A vampire can sense living beings. Marguerite doesn’t know how it works, but years ago I saw this show on sharks and how they have this sixth sense that detects electrical impulses, making them perfectly evolved predators. So I’ve decided that’s what vampires have—a shark’s electrosensory system. Perfect predators.

Tonight her shark-sense wasn’t up to snuff, and Marguerite kept shaking her head sharply, like she was trying to tune it in. She looked tired, too, her eyes dim, face drawn. I remembered how cool her skin had been when she woke me up.

“When’s the last time you ate?” I whispered.

“I had a storage pouch—”

“Not that stale blood crap. A real meal, I mean.”

Her silence answered. While she can get by on packaged stuff, it’s like humans eating at McDonald’s every day. Not very healthy. She needs real food, hot and fresh. Though she doesn’t need to kill people to feed—she just drinks some blood, like a mosquito—it’s always dangerous, and since we’ve been on the run she doesn’t do it nearly enough.

“You can’t do that. You need to feed more to keep up your energy.”

“Oui, maman.”

I made a face at her and hunkered down, letting her concentrate. After a moment, she pointed to the east.

“Two of them, over there. Watching and waiting. We must go.”

I nodded, and followed her back to the rear of the house and down the tree, hidden by its branches. We hop-scotched through yards as the darkness lifted, giving way to predawn gray, pink touching the sky to the east. The rising sun wasn’t a problem. Bram Stoker got one thing right with Dracula—vampires can walk around in daylight just fine.

We headed for the bus station three blocks away. These days, when we looked for a place to live, Marguerite didn’t ask how many bedrooms and baths it had or even how much it cost. She picked apartments based on how easily we could escape them—and get far away, fast.

“I’m sorry,
mon chaton
,” she said for the umpteenth time as we ran. “I know you liked it here, and I know you were looking forward to your date Saturday.”

“I’ll live.”

“You liked him.”

I shrugged. “Just a guy. Probably turn out to be another jock-jerk anyway.”

Being on the run meant home-schooling. Home-schooling meant limited opportunities to meet guys. So I did most of my socializing at the gym, which had lots of really hot guys. Unfortunately, most of them knew how hot they were. Luke had seemed different, but I told myself it was just a front. That always made leaving easier.

We dashed behind a convenience store. I leapt onto the wooden fence and ran along the top of it.

“Slow down, Kat,” Marguerite called behind me. “You will fall.”

I shot a grin back. “Never. I’m a werecat, remember?”

She rolled her eyes. “There is no such thing.”

“Because I’m the first.”

It was an old routine, and we knew our lines by heart. I’ve loved cats for as long as I can remember, and I’m convinced it has something to do with my supernatural type. Marguerite says no—there are no werecats. She says the reason I like felines so much is just because, when I was little, people always told me I looked like one, with my sleek, golden brown hair and tilted green eyes. Even from the day we met, Marguerite had called me
chaton
—kitten.

Back when I lived with my parents and was named Kathy, I’d always wanted to be called Kat, but my mother said that was
silly and Kathy was a perfectly good name. When I went away with Marguerite, I had to change my name, and I’d done so happily, wanting something fancier, more exotic, like her name. So I became Katiana, but everyone called me Kat.

I darted along the top of the wooden fence, then hopped down behind the bus station. When I headed for it, Marguerite caught my arm.

“You will stay close to me when we are inside,” she said. “No running off.”

“I’m not five, Mags,” I said.

I could also point out that she was the one the hunters were after, but she’d only say that still put me in danger. Given a chance, they’d grab me as bait for her. I’d say if they did grab me expecting a hysterical sixteen-year-old girl, they’d be in for a shock, but I wasn’t dumb enough to put myself in harm’s way. Rule one of martial arts: never underestimate your opponent, and I didn’t know a thing about these opponents. Marguerite said they’d be supernaturals—all vampire hunters are, because humans don’t know about our world—so we could be facing anything from spellcasters to half-demons to werewolves.

As we entered the trash-strewn alley, I noticed a foot poking out from a cardboard box.

“Dinner,” I said, pointing.

“We do not have time—”

“We’ll make time,” I said, lowering my voice as I strode to the box. “You need your energy.”

I bent and peered into the box. The guy inside was sound
asleep. I motioned Marguerite over. She took a look and hesitated, glancing over at me. She’d rather not do this with me watching, but I was right—she needed the energy boost. So, she daintily wedged her shoulders into the box, moving soundlessly. Another pause. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew what she was doing—extending her fangs.

When she struck, it was with the speed and precision of a hawk. Her fangs sank in. The homeless guy jerked awake, but before he could make a sound, he slumped back into the box, out cold again. A vampire’s saliva contains a sedative to knock their prey out while they feed. Like I said, perfectly evolved predators.

I didn’t look away as Marguerite fed. Why would I? She didn’t turn her head when I downed a burger. Humans kill animals for food. Vampires knock out humans and borrow some blood. People would donate that pint at a clinic to keep a human alive, so what’s wrong with taking it fresh from the source to keep a vampire alive? Marguerite says I’m oversimplifying things. I say she overcomplicates them.

When Marguerite finished feeding, she took a moment to seal the wound and make sure the man was comfortable. Then she tucked five twenty-dollar bills into his pocket, and motioned for me to fall in behind her as she continued to the end of the alley.

Of the five people inside the bus depot, two were sprawled out asleep on the seats. They clutched tickets in their hands, as if to prove they had a reason to be there, but I bet if I checked the tickets they’d be months old. Homeless, like the guy in the alley.

Marguerite caught my elbow and whispered, “We will go home, Katiana. I promise.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”

But, of course, I was. I missed home. Not the house or even the neighborhood, just the feeling of having a house and a neighborhood. Even as I walked past the posted bus schedule, I couldn’t help looking down the list of names, finding my city. Montreal. Not the city where I was born, but my real home with Marguerite, the one we’d been forced to leave when the hunters tracked her down two years ago.

We walked to the counter.

“Kathy,” a woman called.

I didn’t turn. Marguerite had drilled that instinct out of me years ago. But I still tensed and looked up. Reflected in the glass of the ticket booth, I saw a woman approaching me, smiling.

“Kathy.”

Marguerite caught my hand, squeezing tight. I glanced over, slowly, saw the woman and my gut went cold—a sudden, mindless reaction, something deep in me that said I knew her, and I should run, run as fast as I could.

Still gripping my hand, Marguerite started for the door. The woman only watched us as we hurried outside.

“She knew my name,” I said.

“Yes, they know about you. That is why—”

“She knew my
real
name.”

Marguerite looked away. I stopped walking. When she tugged my hand, I locked my knees.

“What’s going—?”

“Not now. We must leave.”

I didn’t move.

She met my gaze. “Do you trust me, Kat?”

I answered by letting her lead me to the sidewalk.

“We will call a taxi,” she said, fumbling with her cell phone.

Two figures stepped from behind the bus depot and started bearing down on us.

“Marguerite?”

She looked up.
“Merde!”
She grabbed my hand again. “Run, Kat.”

“But we’re in a public place. Shouldn’t we just go back inside—?”

“They will not care. Run!”