by Trisha Telep
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.
This is insanity, I thought, as outside the church quivers of wooden stakes were slung across our chests like bows and arrows. We carried packs of crosses, holy water, and communion wafers. Modern weaponry was not allowed, nor did it work—another inexplicable fact, among so many, that made up what we had been taught about vampires and vampirism.
It wasn’t true, for example, that being bitten by a vampire or drinking its blood changed you into one of them. Our side didn’t know why some humans changed into vampires and some didn’t.
I wondered if love had anything to do with it. I had a feeling I might find out for sure.
Tonight.
We fanned out, although there was nothing in the rules about having to separate. If we wanted, we could hunt in a group—a grupo—for the last time. As we stood on a rise and gazed down into the valley, Anita and Marica hugged me and wished me luck. Eriko and Holgar raced along the stream-bed, disappearing into darkness. Heavy clouds scudded across the cloudy moonlit sky, and fog rolled in like ocean waves—tall, relentless, wet, and powerful.
Can Jack command the elements? I wondered anxiously. My heart was trying to leap out of my chest, and then my throat. I was icy with fear. Diego had sworn to us that if we kept training and training, our reflexes would take over and we would fight without thinking. I hoped that was true.
The fog raced up over our ankles, then doubled back to sweep over our calves. We were hip-deep in it when Antonio turned to me and said, “I know.”
Moonlight shone down on the crown of his hood like a halo. Fog swept behind his back and fanned out, giving the impression of wings. I couldn’t see his face. His voice was hard and angry.
“You’ve s
nuck out three times to see him,” he continued.
Oh, God. “Tonio,” I said. My voice was hoarse. “They’re not all the same. Just as we’re not all the same.”
“All of us here are dedicated to the cause,” he said. “The holy war against los vampiros. Except you.”
“I was,” I told him. “And then … on Halloween …” I faltered as Antonio came out of the moonlight.
“You think you’re some romantic heroine. Juliet. And he’s Romeo. He’s a murdering thug who takes pleasure in what he does. And you know that. You know that.”
I licked my lips. My tongue was as dry as the dust that coated the tombs of those buried in our chapel. Our revered dead. In some cases, there hadn’t been anything to bury. In others—a hand, or a head.
“I know we have been told that,” I finally managed.
Antonio’s face contorted with rage. He raised a hand as if to strike me. “Idiota,” he said through clenched teeth. “If you had these doubts and these beliefs, you should have spoken up. You should have left.”
“I know,” I said brokenly. I tried to look away. I didn’t know what to say to him, but as it turned out that was the least of my worries. From somewhere close by, a girl screamed. The sound was high-pitched and terrible. Then it was cut off abruptly. Vampires were close, and one of my classmates was already dead.
Antonio grabbed my hand and pulled me in the opposite direction. “Shouldn’t we be going after the vampire?” I asked, teeth clacking together as we stumbled over uneven ground.
“That’s what they want us to do,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s what I would do if I were them. Human senses can’t match theirs in this darkness and fog. She only had time to scream because they wanted her to.”
I pulled my hand free from his, fell to my knees, and began to wretch.
“What is wrong with you?” he hissed. “She is not the first you know to have been killed.”
He was right, but how could I explain to him how I felt? For some twisted reason, that last two years hadn’t seemed real to me. It was as though I was some contestant on a twisted game show. Who will get the fabulous elixir? Tune in next week to find out! I was changing. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I felt like a woman. And I owed that to Jack. I had felt so alive when he was holding me, kissing me. I had listened as he talked about his kind and how peace was all he really wanted. It had seemed the mature thing to do, to listen to him and try to understand. Now, I was wondering if he had been laughing at me the entire time.
I pushed myself to my feet. Maybe the girl who had screamed wasn’t really dead? I knew it was crazy to believe that, though.
Antonio grabbed my arm to steady me. “Which side are you on? If it is not mine, then you should leave. Right now.”
I stared deep into his solemn eyes. Why couldn’t he have told me months ago how he felt instead of waiting so long? I should have been home, spending the night playing games with my family and laughing with friends. Instead I had chosen to leave, run away after a bad fight with my mom and dad. I had come to Spain because the Universidad took anyone who was at least sixteen. I was sixteen (barely) and I knew that my life was my own. My parents couldn’t control me, not inside the halls of the Universidad.
I took a deep breath. Running had gotten me here. Running again would probably just make everything worse. “I’m with you,” I pledged Antonio. But I knew I couldn’t kill Jack. I still prayed he would survive. But the rest of his gang were fair game as far as I was concerned.
Antonio nodded but before we could move a vamp came out of the darkness behind him, its face a contorted death mask of fangs and lust. And Diego had been right; the training took over. I knocked Antonio to the side, reached for a stake, and plunged it into the monster’s chest. It stopped it in its tracks.
It was a moment before either of us realized I had missed his heart.
Antonio regained his footing, just as I shoved a cross into the vampire’s face. The creature lit up like a Christmas tree, flames licking at its eyes, making it look that much more demonic. The scream that came from it nearly paralyzed me. Antonio drew a short sword from beneath his robes and beheaded the creature in one move. The severed head rolled on the ground like some gruesome, flaming soccer ball. Before I could stop myself, I kicked it as far as I could. It sailed up into the sky, hanging for a moment as the flames danced upon the rolling fog.
And that was when I saw the rest of them. The vampires were in a loose half circle, facing us. They had Anita and Marica. As I watched, the vampires, with sick smiles, slowly sunk their teeth into the necks of the two girls.
“No!” I screamed, racing forward.
Antonio grabbed me around the waist and spun me. “Run!” he hissed in my ear.
The darkness pressed in, and I did as he said. We ran for ten minutes, twisting our way in and around trees, climbing steadily upward, away from the Universidad. At last Antonio pushed me into a cave and followed, lighting a single match to show the way. I had never been this far from the Universidad and I stared toward the back of the cave. I couldn’t see a wall, just a bend in the path.
“What’s going on?” I had so many questions but that was the one that crowded to the surface first.
“Things have gone wrong,” Antonio said. “We were supposed to be hunting them, but instead they are hunting us.”
“And at least three of us are already dead,” I said.
“More,” Antonio said darkly.
I desperately wanted to ask him how he knew, but I couldn’t really stomach the answer. I thought of all my remaining classmates and wondered how many of us would survive the night.
“This cave is one of a network. We can move through them more safely than we can across the ground outside.”
I looked doubtfully into the darkness which seemed deeper than the night. “I’m claustrophobic,” I mumbled.
“Better terrified than dead,” he said. “Speaking of which, take a moment to bandage your wound.”
Puzzled, I looked down at myself and noticed that some underbrush had scratched me through one of the holes in my jeans. I tore a piece of cloth off the bottom of my robe, pulled a tube of antiseptic from my pocket and bandaged the wound. Once the war had begun, they had started putting extract of garlic in the antibiotic creams in order to neutralize the smell of fresh blood. I had never been more grateful for the innovation. The one thing vamps could do better than see in the dark was smell a drop of blood miles away.
“If we get out of this alive, I’m going to have to apologize to my mother,” I said, making quick work of the bandaging. “And I’m going to have to thank her.”
“For what?”
“For this,” I pulled an unlit glowstick from my pocket. “She sent it in my last care package.”
Antonio put away his pack of matches and cracked the glowstick alight. “I will thank her too.”
“So, what’s the game plan?” I asked, as ready to move into the confines of the cave as I would ever be.
Antonio led the way, and I followed him, forcing my eyes to stay on the glowstick in his hand. I’m not descending into dark, terrifying caves and fighting for my life, I told myself. I’m ten and it’s Halloween and I’m just trying to beat the bigger kids to the best candy.
“We have to find a way to take the vampires out without exposing ourselves.”
“And hope that they are tracking some of the others, right?”
“We won’t be so lucky.”
“Why?” I asked, scrambling to stay directly behind him and within eyesight of the light.
He hesitated. When he finally spoke his voice was tense. “There’s something I probably should have told you before.”
So, I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. The revelation gave me a sense of relief and something else to focus on besides the fact that the cave walls seemed to be getting closer.
“What is it?”
“I am known to the vampires, an
d I have made many enemies.”
I waited for him to continue. Nothing he had said came as any real surprise to me. The silence stretched between us and finally he went on.
“I believe they will try to find us before they go after the others.”
There was something he wasn’t telling me. I thought about calling him on it, but I was still reeling under the weight of my own guilty secret. Where was Jack? Would we be bumping into him soon?
A sudden rustling sound ahead caused us both to freeze in our tracks. I had my hand on Antonio’s arm, and I could feel the play of his muscles beneath the skin. He shifted slightly so he could press his back against the cave wall and I did the same, my heart beating uncontrollably. I don’t want to have to fight in here. I don’t want to die in here. There’s so little room, it might as well be a coffin. My coffin.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. Focus, focus, focus!
I heard a soft whooshing sound and then a bat flew right by us, its wing brushing the tip of my nose. I jerked, slamming my head against the cave wall. All the stories I had ever heard about vampires when I was a kid flooded my mind.
“Vampire!” I gasped.
Antonio laughed, low and deep, and the sound cut through my terror. “You know vampires can’t change into bats.”
And he was right. I did know that. I had spent the last two years studying vampires, not the fictional kind, but the real, just-as-soon-kill-you-as-seduce-you kind.
We continued moving forward, slightly faster now, which was a relief because it required more attention on my part not to twist an ankle. We wove through several different tunnels, which branched off into smaller and smaller corridors until I knew I could never find my way back.
“You know I love you,” Antonio said, breaking the silence that had once again fallen between us.
I didn’t know how to respond. It was a statement, not a question, like there could be no doubt that I knew he loved me. I had managed to avoid the topic for two months. As I contemplated how to sidestep it now though, a couple of things occurred to me. First, I’d much rather talk about it than think about the caves we were walking through. Second, one or both of us would likely die before morning. Suddenly talking about it seemed like a really good idea.
