Vampire Kiss

by Sophie Stern

  “Do you feel that way?”

  A little.

  Sometimes I thought that.

  Sometimes when nobody else was around, I thought that maybe, just maybe, this was the end. One of these days, I was going to go after the wrong creature. It might be a vamp or a werewolf or something else that smelled just as bad as it looked, and I wasn’t going to be fast enough or strong enough or brave enough.

  And that would be it.

  Everything would be over.

  “No,” I lied. It wasn’t a waste. I couldn’t let myself believe that it was. I just needed to find the Vampire of Garnetia. If I could do that, if I could bag the big one, then everything would be okay. My entire life would be completely all right. My problems would be solved.

  “Finding him isn’t going to solve any problems,” Raven pointed out. “It’s only going to make more.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed that, but I brushed it off with a shrug. It was easier to give up on the conversation that to try to prove that I was right. Raven and I were both strong and stubborn. Neither one of us was likely to bend, regardless of whether or not we were actually right.

  She seemed to realize that I was ready to move on, and Raven was smart enough or kind enough not to bring it up again. Instead, we spent the rest of the night joking around, talking, and planning our next weapon purchases.

  By the time we left the bar, it was after midnight. Raven got a ride home, but I decided to walk. I didn’t live too far from the bar, and it would serve me well to get some extra steps in. I was fit and toned, but I also wasn’t 19 anymore. After a night of drinking, it would feel good to stretch my legs and burn off a few of those liquor calories.

  As I walked home, I found myself wandering off the main street of Ashbury and closer to the Grove. I never, ever went to the Grove. Never. I wanted to, sure, but after what had happened with my roommates, I had never dared to risk going back. Oh, I’d wanted the Vampire of Garnetia, but my plans had always involved trying to nab him when he wandered out of the Grove. There were vampire events and vampire house parties. I’d been to more than a few, but I’d never managed to find him.

  Besides, until recently, I’d always had something to lose.

  Hank.

  I’d had Hank to lose.

  I wasn’t sure who the vampire was I’d caught that night. More appropriately, I wasn’t sure who the vampire was who had caught me. I was certain he was a powerful lackey whose master gave him more than he should appropriately be able to handle. Despite asking around, I’d never been able to put a name to the face of the mysterious creature, and I’d never known who exactly it was who had killed my friends.

  Now, whether it was the alcohol or the exhaustion that pushed me, I found myself walking closer and closer to the Grove. That part of town had been gated off for years. It contained a bunch of little starter houses and suburban wannabe homes. They were all falling apart. Most of them had rotted floorboards, and the kitchens were swathed with pastels and floral patterns.

  It was no wonder that was where the vampires liked to gather. They didn’t have any taste when it came to anything else in their lives. Why would they suddenly become fashionable when it came to their houses?

  I stopped by the wrought-iron gates that guarded the entrance. They were closed over, but not locked. Of course not. The Grove was never locked. Anyone could go there who wanted to, for a price.

  Usually, that price was something monetary or physical.

  Sometimes, that price was your life.

  It was the place where the vampires sought refuge. The monsters gathered there. They were uninterested in taking over the rest of Ashbury, but they still liked to be close by. Ashbury wasn’t exactly a small town, but the Grove was. It was its own little haven, tucked away from the rest of society. Every few years, some new politician or young well-meaning do-gooder would try to clean up the Grove and make it part of the main city of Ashbury, but he would always die some strange, unpredictable, unexplainable death.

  After awhile, everyone stopped trying to clean up the Grove.

  Tonight, I couldn’t resist. I stood there and reached for the iron bars of the gate.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice said.

  I turned, surprised at the voice I heard behind me. I hadn’t known I was going to find my friend here tonight. Was this a place she frequented often? I didn’t think so.

  “Raven,” I said. “I thought you went home.”

  “I’m on the way,” she said.

  I looked behind her. I could see the car pulling away from the curb where it had dropped her off. I hadn’t even heard it. I’d been so lost in thoughts that it hadn’t bothered me.

  “I thought you lived on the north side,” I pointed out. “Near the new development: Brookhaven.”

  “I did, for awhile.”

  She looked at me, watching me.

  “Then what are you doing in the Grove?”

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  I looked toward the gate. Then I looked back toward my friend. Raven and I had been hunters together for years. Then I’d started dating Hank last year and the two of us had drifted apart. Raven had gotten more involved with her roommates. She’d been busy volunteering. She’d gotten a “real” job and wasn’t exactly as interested in hunting as she once had been. She’d always had an excuse when I invited her to come out and slay creatures with me, but all of a sudden it hit me.

  “You’re turned,” I whispered.

  It made perfect sense, and I felt like a fool for not realizing it earlier. They’d gotten her. There was a reason Raven and I no longer met up in the daylight, and there was a reason why she was always telling me to be careful about how I hunted. She was a vampire now, and I hadn’t even noticed.

  “It’s not like that,” Raven said, cocking her head.

  “Then what’s it like?” I said.

  I felt...betrayed, somehow. It was like everything I’d ever believed had been a lie. That wasn’t true, of course, and Raven was her own woman. She was allowed to be a vampire if she wanted to, and I’d never slay her. Not in a million years. Besides, I was more upset that she’d hidden this big, huge thing from me than the fact that my friend was secretly a vamp.

  Vampires...there were plenty of those.

  Best friends?

  Not so much.

  Raven sighed and shook her head.

  “I can’t explain that to you,” she said. “But you should go. Kim, this isn’t the place for you.”

  I looked at the gates, and then back at my friend. My friend was now a vampire, and suddenly, so many things seemed to click into place. She could only ever meet me at night. She was never available to go hunting. She’d had a premonition about Hank.

  Wait.

  Hank.

  “Raven,” I said.

  “You should go.”

  “Is Hank a vampire, too?”

  “No.”

  “But you are.”

  Raven’s eyes told me everything I needed to go, and I bit my lip so hard that it threatened to break open and start bleeding. Remembering who I was standing with, I stopped before I tasted blood. I didn’t need to tempt my friend.

  “Please,” I said. “You have to tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said. “Goodbye, Kim.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, and she looked different than she usually did. She wasn’t looking playful anymore. She didn’t look calm or happy or content. She looked angry, and she looked tired.

  She was exhausted, I realized, and she was worn out from carrying this secret. Well, either that, or she was worn out because she hadn’t been eating enough. I didn’t exactly want to be her dinner. I loved her so much, but not that much.

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  Then I turned, and I walked the rest of the way back to my apartment.

  I WOKE UP STILL WEARING my clothes from the bar, and despite being alone, I had s
omething to keep me company: the worst hangover I’d ever had in my life. I wasn’t sure what had gotten into me or why I’d chosen to drink so much. At the time, it had seemed like the right choice. It had felt good to drink a lot and to get a little wild and crazy.

  I needed to let go of more of the garbage from my life. Throwing caution to the wind had been exactly what I needed to do that. Only now, I was nursing the world’s most horrible headache, and that was just the thing I needed to combine with my aching heart.

  Raven.

  They’d gotten Raven.

  I didn’t know how or why or when it had happened. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed. Something like your best friend losing her humanity was something you’d usually pay attention to, yet I hadn’t.

  Why the hell not?

  I knew the answer. I’d been obsessed with my boyfriend. The two of us had been inseparable for over a year. Then he’d suddenly become entirely too “busy” for me, and as it turned out, busy had a name: Amy.

  I stood up and started pacing in my room, ignoring the way my head felt like it was on fire. I really needed to learn how to control my drinking. That was another thing Hank had always complained about. He thought I was to wild. Would he be happier with Amy?

  I would like to think that I held no ill-will toward either of them, but losing Hank had been like a slap in the face. The truth was that I’d probably lost him long ago, just as I’d lost Raven. As with her, I hadn’t even noticed him slipping away until it was too late for me to do anything about it.

  “Well,” I looked down at my cat, who was currently rubbing his body around my legs. “I guess that’s that, huh Victor?”

  Victor only meowed.

  I picked him up and kissed the top of his head. Then I carried him into the kitchen, opened a can of wet cat food, and set it down on the floor. Victor quickly slid out of my arms and started eating, acting like he hadn’t seen food before.

  “Come on,” I muttered, watching him. That cat ate more than any other cat I knew. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to have to put him on a diet. Turning away from the world’s best companion, I grabbed a glass, filled it with water right from the tap, and started drinking.

  So, this was it.

  I was a hunter without a partner.

  I was a hunter without a best friend.

  The only creature I had was Victor, and he wasn’t exactly fierce and mighty. The only thing I had left to go after was the vampire. I’d learned, through years of hunting and talking and bribing people, that the Vampire of Garnetia was, in fact, the one who had had my friends killed that night all that time ago. Even though I’d suspected it while being attacked in the Grove, I’d double and triple-checked to make sure that my suspicions were right. While his lackey had me pinned beneath his steel-toed boot, the vampire had been sneakily working behind the scenes to make sure I never smiled again.

  Well, fuck that guy.

  I was going to smile.

  I was going to get my happiness back no matter what it cost.

  I had to.

  I didn’t have a choice.

  2.

  Liam

  I STOOD LEANING AGAINST a tree across from her house, watching her through the window. She was sly. I’d give her that. I’d been looking for the human for years. I never should have let her go. Allowing her to escape had been a horrible choice. There had been no real reason to allow her to run away from me in the Grove, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to kill her.

  I hadn’t wanted her to die.

  Despite every instinct within me telling me otherwise, I’d wanted something other than death from Kimberly. I’d wanted something that only she could give me, and it didn’t involve murdering her. I’d wanted her to be my mate.

  For five years, I’d been searching for her, trying to find her again. She’d been sad about the deaths of her companions, but she hadn’t let it hold her back. She’d made new friends, and she’d dated, and she’d pushed herself out into the world.

  And she’d been looking for me.

  Raven had been wildly insightful in my quest to find Kimberly. Without her, I likely never would have relocated the woman I’d let escape. Raven didn’t know I was looking for her friend, specifically. Rather, Raven liked to talk, and I’d been told I was a good listener, so she’d talked.

  And I’d listened.

  And I’d learned quite a few things about the woman called Kimberly. I’d learned that she was funny and quirky and that she had a cat named Victor. Of all the silly things you could name a cat, she had chosen Victor. It was a little ironic, and slightly funny. Her cat had passed away unexpectedly, and she’d been sad about that, Raven told me. Still, she hadn’t stopped hunting. She hadn’t stopped searching.

  Now, as I stood in my quiet little spot, I watched her through her apartment window. She was staring out at the sky, but I didn’t know what she was looking at. What was worse was that I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  Being the Lord of the Vampires was supposed to have some perks. As the Vampire of Garnetia, I ruled over the vampires in this land. It was my job to take care of them, to keep them safe, and to make sure they didn’t do anything so horribly awful that it would attract the attention of the Vampire Council. Sometimes I had to kill a vampire to save the rest of our kind. I didn’t enjoy doing that, but I did what I had to in order to keep our kind safe.

  With Kimberly, though, I didn’t know what to do. Logically, I should probably kill her. I should have killed her five years ago. She was, after all, something of a threat. She was tenacious, and she was smart, and according to Raven, she was looking for me. Me? I felt honored by the fact that she was obsessed. She had been, even at the time, but over the years her desire to find me had only grown.

  She knew I was in the Grove, but she was scared to come in and look for me. She’d tracked me to other places, though: parties, events. She’d tried to casually show up at places where I was. Anytime I saw her, I always left immediately. I didn’t want to attract attention to myself, and I hadn’t been ready for her. Now? Well, now things were different. Now I had Raven, and Raven had given me a deeper understanding of who Kimberly was, and what she wanted from life.

  “You just can’t get me out of your head, can you?” I asked quietly as I looked at her. For a second, I thought that she might have heard me because she stopped staring up and her eyes moved down, toward me. Before she could spot my hiding place, though, I’d already turned and started walking.

  The sun was coming up, anyway.

  It was time for me to take my leave.

  “IT HAS TO HAPPEN TONIGHT,” I told Raven. She looked over at me and frowned. I knew what she was thinking. It was too soon, and taking her like this was going to be sloppy. I’d been waiting so long to take Kimberly. What was one more night? Only, I wanted her. I craved her. There were few things I desired more than I desired that particular human.

  “Tonight?” She scratched her neck, cocking her head. It was one of her nervous ticks. Although Raven was usually very well-behaved and wildly put-together, every so often she seemed to grow nervous and tired.

  “Yes,” I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Time is of the essence,” I said simply, but this was a lie.

  It wasn’t.

  I was immortal.

  I had all of the time in the damn world.

  I was the kind of person who had nothing but time, and yet I couldn’t stand the thought of wasting another second without her in my mansion. I wanted her locked away: safe and isolated and completely mine.

  That was what I wanted.

  It was a fucked-up thing to want, but I was a fucked-up sort of person. Most vampires were. We spent all of this time chasing forever, and after so many years, we all seemed to lose whatever it was that made us human once upon a time.

  Raven sighed and looked at me. I liked that Raven wasn’t afraid of me. What I didn’t like was that she constantly called me out on my bullshit. She didn’t bu
y I was selling, but that was okay. She didn’t have to. She wasn’t the one I wanted for a mate, anyway, and if she gave me too much trouble, I’d just tell Helena.

  “She’s not going to come easily,” Raven warned me.

  “I wouldn’t want her if she did.” Every vampire liked the chase. There was a certain thrill that came with hunting, after all.

  “She’s got issues.”

  “We all have issues, Raven.”

  Raven bit her lip, crossed her arms over her chest, and then frowned at me a little more.

  “Why did you turn me, Liam?”

  “I didn’t turn you.”

  “No, but you let Helena turn me, and that’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not the same thing at all.” Helena was my second-in-command. She handled everything for me that I couldn’t handle myself. Anytime I had a problem with anything at all, I called on Helena, and she saved my ass.

  Helena was my everything. We’d been together for years, and I could always count on her. In my eyes, she only had one flaw, and that was that we both liked the same prey. She had her eyes set on Raven, and although the fresh vampire didn’t realize what that meant, there was no doubt that Raven could feel exactly how Helena cared for her.

  “Whatever,” Raven said.

  “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

  “No.”

  “I hope not,” I said carefully. “I don’t think Helena would care too much for that.”

  Raven stilled. She might be brash and new to our world, but she understood who Helena was and the kind of power she held. No, Helena wasn’t my mate. Not by a long shot. Still, her name and her position gave her power in our world, and she wasn’t someone to be trifled with.

  “I’m sorry,” Raven whispered quickly.

  Footsteps approached. I stood from my position at my desk, and Raven, who was across from me, did the same. We both turned to see the newcomer enter the office. Dressed in a deep velvet Victorian-style gown, complete with ribbons and bows and bustles, she was every bit as wonderful as her reputation.