The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

Passing by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié

IT WAS ALMOST time—a few minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve. New Year, new vampire hunter. Would I be the one?

I sat down shakily in the ancient stone chapel of the former Universidad de Salamanca, the most ancient university in Spain. When the war broke out, most of the universities in Europe shut down. The Americans figured the vampires would never attack us on our native soil. We paid dearly for our arrogance.

For the last twelve years, Salamanca had been the home of the Academia Sagrada Familia Contra los Vampiros. It was the school for vampire hunters—my school. There were foreign students from all over the world, because the Academia was the best. Academia graduates took out the most vamps, and they had the highest survival rate. There were six living Academicians; Juan Maldonaldo had been a hunter for nine years. Unbelievable.

Not that the survival rate was very good—out of the original ninety-six of us in our class, we were down to eighteen. We shuffled into the chapel in our ceremonial black robes, our hoods concealing our faces. We were about to take our final exam. Only one of us would pass.

I had dreaded this moment for two long years—the moment my foot crossed the threshold of the Academy—and feared it for two months. Diego, our Master, had warned us that as the time grew near, we would experience high anxiety. About a dozen of my classmates woke screaming from nightmares. There was a lot of jogging in the middle of the night. Even though drugs and alcohol were forbidden, I knew that people were swigging wine and taking Xanax so they could get some rest.

None of them carried the extra burdens—or the accompanying terror and guilt—that I did.

I should say something, tell someone, I thought. But I would sooner cut out my own heart than tell them what I’d done. What I might do.

At the thought, my heart skipped beats, and I clung to the back of the carved mahogany pew.

In the last two months, I had broken a lot of rules. For some of the things I had done, they didn’t even have rules. No one would have dreamed of crossing the line I had leaped across last Halloween.

Exactly two months ago, on October 31, everything had changed. The Vampire War had taken a brutal turn when the vamps had murdered the daughter of the president of the United States. The Cursed Ones didn’t put it that way, of course. They claimed they had “liberated” her—changed her into one of them—and that our side had murdered her when we drove a stake through her heart and cut off her head.

Like everyone else, I demanded payback. I couldn’t wait to take revenge. Although we were pledged to run together, I wanted a vampire to die by my own hand. I ran with my grupo across the ancient medieval bridge as the dying sun turned the stone city a golden color. We scoured the hills for blood drinkers, Spaniards and Americans, Koreans and Swedes. In our body armor, we sang our song, which had always sounded so corny to me before. Translated into English, it went like this:

We are the vampire hunters.

Our cause is holy.

From Spain we come to save the world.

Race from us into the sunlight, demons of hell!

Better that you die in flames than by our hands!

That night, Antonio de la Cruz was by my side. Sometimes he held my gloved hand in his as we charged through the darkness. My crossbow smacked the bruises I had gotten in Advanced Streetfighting the day before.

Fog rose around us like smoke from a wildfire. I heard shouts and Antonio’s hand left mine. I called for him; he answered, very far away. I saw a face floating in the fog before me, and I ran toward it. But it wasn’t Antonio.

It was Jack.

Don’t think about him, I ordered myself, my vision blurring as I focused on the stained glass windows of the saints. The Savior melted and blurred. Think about your legacy, and the promises that you made. Think of your grandparents.

Charles “Che” and Esther Leitner, my grandparents, were former revolutionaries, or at least that was their term for it. Nowadays we called them terrorists. During the Vietnam War, they had bombed banks and military bases. I had a picture of Papa Che and Gram in a locket around my neck. In the picture, Gram was my age. Her super-curly hair—like mine—tumbled down to her waist. She wore a leather headband, round wire-rimmed glasses, an army jacket, and a pair of tattered jeans. My grandfather could have been her twin, except he was taller.

They were so proud of me for joining the Academia. My parents … not so much. Not at all, in fact. They were pacifists, and they said that it was time to stop the fighting and listen to the vampires, find a way to coexist. We fought about it, bitterly.

My grandparents said my parents were hopeless dreamers. When the war became more brutal, I sided with Gram and Papa Che. There was no way we could sit down and negotiate with the vampires. They were monsters, ravening beasts. We might as well walk up to them and show them our necks.

But now …

“Let us come to order,” Diego said, as he swept into the chapel from the side door by the altar. We all had to learn Spanish. In the old days, before the vampires declared war on us, students came to Salamanca to learn 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.

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 snuck 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, and 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.

“I’m not sure that I actually knew that,” I said, grimacing. I was grateful he couldn’t see my face. It was my intention to let him down easy. Still, there was a part of me that had actually wanted to hear him say the words.

“I don’t know how I could have been more clear. I love you, Jenn.”

All girls dream of having a guy say that to them. When I was younger, I spent countless hours imagining hearing those words, visualizing who would say them, where we would be, how I would feel. But in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have pictured a guy quite like Antonio. And although at least once or twice I had thought I might hear those words one New Year’s Eve, I could never have anticipated hearing them in the middle of a cave while engaged in a battle with vampires. And I certainly had never anticipated having such a mixed reaction to the words themselves.

The moment he said them out loud I knew that I still had feelings for Antonio. I had so wanted to keep my heart shut up and stay detached, but maybe that was unrealistic. “I didn’t let myself care for you in that way because it seemed pretty obvious to me that there was no chance,” I admitted.

“It was … important … for me to stay focused on why we were here.”

“I know that vampires killed your whole family. I thought that revenge was all you wanted.”

He laughed, a hard, bitter laugh so different from the one before. “Yes, you’re right, revenge was all I wanted.”

“And now?”

“I’ve already told you I love you.”

“I think … I’m in love with Jack,” I admitted. There, I’d said it. I held my breath, afraid of what his response would be.

“No, you aren’t,” he said so softly I barely heard him.

That was one response I hadn’t expected. “Why would you say that?”

“He’s a vampire.”

“That doesn’t mean that I can’t love him.”

“I’m not saying you can’t love a vampire, just that you don’t love that one.”

“I’m not following you,” I said in frustration.

“He’s mesmerized you.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Antonio took a few more steps before turning around. The light from the glowstick threw shadows around the cave in bizarre patterns, and they danced across his face. I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that it was a lie. Somehow I asked instead, “How do you know?”

“I just do. Stop and search your soul. You know it, too.”

Everything seemed to slow down, like in a nightmare. Where my obsession with Jack had flamed and burned, something icy and cold walked over my grave.

I gasped. I hadn’t been myself. He had used me.

As awareness rushed in, I began to shake and cry. In two years, I hadn’t shed a tear for the dead, or the pain. Now it all seemed determined to be released at once.

“What’s happened to me?” I asked Antonio.

When he pulled me close and held me, he was shaking too. “I think Jack mesmerized you to get at me,” he whispered. “I’m so, so sorry. Just remember that as long as you’re aware of it, his mesmerism is broken.”

I pulled away and wiped my eyes on my sleeve. But … but it had been so real. And now—just another vampire lie. They hadn’t come in peace. Jack didn’t come for love.

“Jenn,” Antonio said. “I am sorry.”

“We should keep moving,” I said stonily. “We’ve got vampires to kill.”

He nodded and took my hand. As our fingers interlaced, I felt a peace I had not known for years. He turned and began to move through the caves at a half run. I kept up with him, grateful to be doing something at last.

Winding through the caves, I lost track of time. When we finally emerged from them, I was surprised to see the moon directly overhead. We scrambled up a rocky slope for about a hundred yards before emerging in a clearing.

The vampires were already there. The sick feeling in my gut told me that they had been waiting for us.

And there was Jack. He stretched out his hand toward me exactly as I had pictured him doing the last several, sleepless nights. His grin was wide, no longer as playful as I remembered it, but simply arrogant. His eyes were laughing and cruel. I could see everything that had been hidden to me before. He had mesmerized me. Damn him. He had tricked me.

But I was free now. And he didn’t know it.

I gave Antonio’s hand a squeeze, hoping he understood what I was going to do. I walked forward, a smile on my face, heart pounding out of control.

“Beloved,” Jack said, when I was just a few steps away.

He had called me that before, but this time I blushed out of embarrassment instead of excitement. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see the other vampires. They wanted me dead. I could feel the hatred coming off of them in waves. More than that, though, they wanted Antonio dead. I understood it all now. I had just been the bait.

If I could kill Jack before they could stop me, then Antonio would have a fighting chance. An owl hooted not that far off, and I did my best not to turn my head. None of the vampires seemed to notice, but I knew that it wasn’t a real owl—it was our classmate, Jamie. It was a message: You are not alone.

And I smiled even more broadly. Jack had his grupo and I had mine. This then was the final lesson. We were not alone, not just single hunters against many vampires. We had friends who would fight and die with us, and for us. It was something not talked about in the Universidad because it was something that they couldn’t teach. It was camaraderie built out of shared pain and adversity. I understood everything now.

“Did you miss me?” Jack purred. I came to stand before him. He reached out to me, wanting me to take his hand. I kept my face turned coyly to the ground. When I finally raised my eyes to his, he was still smiling, confident I was still under his spell. Bastard.

I ripped the stake free of its holder in a flash. “No, I didn’t!” His eyes suddenly widened as I raised the stake and ruthlessly drove it straight through his black vampire heart.

His eyes flickered in surprise for a moment that suspended me somewhere humiliating and shameful. I would never let anyone use me again. Never believe in a vampire’s lies again.

Then he was gone. I spun around to ward off the next, nearest vampire, but it threw me to the ground, knocking the wind out of me. Then it leapt in for the kill. Its fangs brushed my throat.

This is it. This is how I die.

Suddenly, something grabbed my tormentor from behind, and he went flying thirty feet through the air. The only thing strong enough to do that was another vampire. And as I struggled up onto my elbows, that was exactly what I saw.

Antonio turned toward me. I knew it was no trick of the light. The fangs he was baring were real. I gasped and he smiled sadly at me. Then I understood exactly what he had meant that first day at the Universidad when he had said the vampires took everything from him. His family, his friends, his life. No wonder he hated them. And no wonder they hated him—one of their own kind who hunted them.

Jamie and Skye burst into the clearing. Antonio turned as another vamp came running toward us. Eriko and Holgar emerged into the battle, bloody and brutal. Vampires turned to ash around us. Our ferocity knew no bounds. This time we would take them all out! Jamie ran toward us, now covered in the blood of the vampires he had recently staked. He skidded to a halt when he got a good look at Antonio.

“Something new?” Jamie asked warily eyeing Antonio’s fangs.

“No, something old,” Antonio said.

“Bloody hell.” Jamie lunged to stake him.

But I stepped in his way.

“No. He saved my life,” I heard myself saying. I was trembling. “He’s … one of us.”

I want to say that then and there, we became a team. Five crazy humans and one vampire. But it took a long time, and we were tested over and over again as the nights unfolded.

But as we stood together on New Year’s Eve, I turned and saw another half dozen vamps emerge from the trees. Their long teeth gleamed in the moonlight, and they were hissing in anticipation of the kill.

“I don’t remember Jack having a group this big,” I said.

“Looks like someone’s been recruiting.”

“Building his own little army,” Antonio added.

I grabbed a stake in each fist. “Good thing we’ve got a vampire of our own.”

“Let’s get this party started!” Eriko shouted.

Antonio spared one look at me, and I felt a strange mix of horror and excitement. Antonio was a vampire. He’d said he loved me.

And I knew it was not a lie.

The knowledge propelled me into battle. I moved like whirlwind, fighting as I had never done before. I was almost crazy, I was so fierce. I felt my stake slam into vampire chests, taking vampire lives.

Miraculously, it was over in under five minutes. Even more miraculously, we were all bloodied but still standing.

“Everyone bandage up.” I set to work on my own wounds. Antonio stood a safe distance away, and by his stance, I knew he was trying to regain control over his vampire self. I had so many questions, but they could wait. When I killed Jack, his power over me had vanished completely. At that moment, I remembered that before I met Jack I had loved Antonio. And not as a brother. Jack had twisted that emotion for his own ends. He had made me forget who I was for a moment. But that was all over now.

I had loved Antonio, and I loved him again. The idea was strange, and new, and yet it felt old. I thought of my parents and my grandparents, and felt a dizzying connection. Was I going somewhere in my heart that they had never been? Or were the hearts of humans and vampires more alike than different?

I had other questions. Some were for my classmates. Except for Jamie, they seemed fine with the idea of a vampire as comrade. I had fully expected them to turn on Antonio after we had dispatched the rest of the vampires.

I cleared my throat. “Are we going to have any problems?” I asked my new grupo.

“With Antonio?” Jamie frowned.

I nodded.

“He’s okay with me,” Holgar said. But Jamie said nothing.

I stared at them all in disbelief. After two years of training to kill vampires, of witnessing the horrors they were capable of, I didn’t know how the rest of them could let this go so easily.

“Why? How?” I blurted.

Eriko smiled. “If Father Armand let a vampire study at the Universidad, then he must be one of us.”

Us. Not one of us humans. One of us hunters. I hadn’t thought about that. Father Armand personally screened every student for admission. He was a very kind, but intense, priest with a twisted sense of humor. Still, would he have even been able to tell Antonio was a vampire?

“You think Father Armand knew?” I asked.

“He knew I was a witch,” Skye said calmly.

“And he knew I was a werewolf,” Holgar added, as if it was common knowledge.

I stared at them all in shock. Finally I pivoted to face Jamie and Eriko. “Anything about the two of you I should know about?”

“No,” a deep voice answered from the shadows behind us.

I spun around, my hand on a stake, and slumped in relief when I saw that it was Father Armand.

“Each pairing has one normal student, and one with special abilities,” he explained. “It’s safer for everyone that way.”

“But—”

He raised his hand. “You think humans are the only ones who wish to fight evil? No. This war against the vampires has pulled in many people from many groups. A very few vampires retain enough of their original self that with meditation, study, and discipline they can control their bloodlust. Antonio is one of those. Skye is kin to some friends of mine and I recognized her talents when we met. Holgar, years ago, learned how to safeguard himself and others from his wolf aspect. This war touches us all and, I’m afraid, it does not stop here.”

“Then we will continue to fight,” I said. “Or at least, I will.”

“And I,” Holgar said.

“Me too,” Skye put in.

The others echoed in the affirmative, Jamie last. Antonio appeared suddenly nearby, slipping his hand around mine. I fought the urge to lean against his shoulder. There would be time enough later for the two of us.

“I have only elixir for one,” Armand reminded. “And it is for Eriko.”

“Yes,” I said. I wondered how I had managed to appoint myself spokesperson for the small group, and why no one else seemed to object.

The priest—our priest—smiled at me. “You understand, then. A witch may offer protection to her partner. A vampire may do the same. However, a werewolf has a wild talent. He could inflict unintentional damage on his partner and cannot change at will.”

Eriko bowed her head. “I am not worthy,” she murmured.

Armand put his hand on Eriko’s shoulder and forced her to look up. “Then become so,” he whispered.

We all will, I vowed.

“Sí,” Antonio whispered in my ear.

And so it began.