Eternal Kiss of Darkness by Jeaniene Frost

 

AN IMMORTAL WAR HAS BEEN BREWING IN THE DARKNESS…

AND NOW ONE WOMAN HAS STUMBLED INTO THE SHADOWS.

Chicago private investigator Kira Graceling should have just kept walking. But her sense of duty refused to let her ignore the moans of pain coming from inside a warehouse just before dawn. Suddenly she finds herself in a world she’s only imagined in her worst nightmares.

At the center is Mencheres, a breathtaking Master vampire who thought he’d seen it all. Then Kira appears—this fearless, beautiful…human who braved death to rescue him. Though he burns for her, keeping Kira in his world means risking her life. Yet sending her away is unthinkable.

But with danger closing in, Mencheres must choose either the woman he craves, or embracing the darkest magic to defeat an enemy bent on his eternal destruction.

 

Eternal Kiss of Darkness (Night Huntress World, book two) by Jeaniene Frost

Start date: September 10, 2021

End date: September 12, 2021

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Trigger warning: attempted suicide, sex trafficking

Dare I say I liked this book?

This is the second book in the Night Huntress World series, which is a spin-off of the Night Huntress series involving Cat and Bones. This takes place in the same world with most of the same characters. I hesitate to even call this series a spin-off. The first book, First Drop of Crimson, starred Denise and Spade, and this book features two entirely different characters. This “series” doesn’t create anything new, and at least the first book requires previous reading to understand who the characters are and any sort of context a reader would need. Since these books are about previously established characters in the Night Huntress series having side adventures, I’d be more willing to include them in that series in between the main books versus separating them into their own. 

This novel is about a private investigator named Kira Graceling and the vampire grandaddy himself, Mencheres! I love a good, old-fashioned 30-year-old human and 4,000-year-old vampire romance—don’t analyze that too closely. After the first initial chapters that made my eyes roll, I found myself enjoying the story, which is a first for me.

Kira is walking on her way home from work when she overhears laughing coupled with moans of pain coming from a nearby warehouse. Her former police training kicks in and she goes to investigate the scene. Kira calls 911, which leads to this awful exchange.

“Nine one one, what’s your emergency?” a voice intoned after Kira punched in the numbers.

“I want to report a Code 37,” Kira said.

“Say again?”

“Aggravated assault,” Kira amended, surprised the dispatch operator hadn’t registered the police code. She gave the address of where the warehouse was located. “Sounds like the bottom floor,” she added to be more specific.

“Please hold while I transfer you to that station,” the operator replied. (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 9)

            I was pretty sure that emergency phone operators don’t transfer calls like that, but I wanted to be positive before I said anything. On the official website for 911, it states, “With few exceptions, 911 calls cannot be transferred to other towns, cities or states.” In defense of the operator not knowing the police code for aggravated assault, I found this statement: “911 professionals are employed by a variety of local and state agencies, including law enforcement agencies, fire departments, emergency management agencies, and Information Technology (IT) services, either as sworn or civilian personnel” (“Frequently Asked Questions”).

A sudden breeze blew her hair into her eyes. They didn’t call Chicago the Windy City for nothing. (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 9)

We know from this…creative bit of place setting that this event is taking place in Chicago, Illinois, but we don’t know what type of operators staff the phones in Chicago. It’s presumptuous of Kira to assume that the person on the phone would know random police codes. I also take issue with Kira stating there’s an aggravated assault in progress. She can’t see what’s going on inside the warehouse, so, as unlikely a scenario as it would be, she has no way of knowing there isn’t a consensual sexual play scene unfolding inside. She assumes a lot. It would make more sense for her to tell the operator what she heard and have them relay that information to an officer in the area to investigate.

            Inside the warehouse, Kira finds none other than Mencheres, and he’s allowing a group of ghouls to torture him for reasons we’ll get into later. Believing him to be a helpless victim, she pulls her gun on the group and demands they back away from Mencheres, which tips everyone off to her presence. The ghouls attack Kira, mortally wounding her. Mencheres feels a sense of protectiveness towards her for wanting to rescue him, so he telepathically decapitates the ghouls. He tries to feed Kira his blood to save her but finds his body is drained from the torture that the ghouls were inflicting on him. He scoops his blood off the floor and forces it into Kira’s mouth and wound. Please let that visual sink in. I died laughing imagining an anemic person trying to shovel blood off the floor into an unconscious person’s mouth. Police arrive on the scene in time for Mencheres to fly away with Kira’s body.

            A little aside here. I hate flying vampires. I’ve read a decent amount of paranormal fiction in which vampires fly, and it takes me out of the story every time. I end up picturing Superman with a black cape and fangs soaring across the night sky. It’s neither sexy nor scary. Who does this do it for? Who are these people who romanticize airborne humanoids? Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled review.

            Mencheres takes Kira to one of his houses and discovers that he can’t hear her thoughts despite usually hearing the thoughts of humans around him. (I made a note that didn’t make it into the final draft of the review for One Foot in the Grave about how for being a paranoid vampire who can only hear human thoughts, Mencheres doesn’t solely employ humans like you think he would.) Kira also seems to be immune to his vampire mind control, which he needs to use to make her forget about what she learned about the creatures of the night when she tried to rescue him. Mencheres devises to keep Kira at his house until his blood wears off her, which should take at most a week. I have a bone to pick with this. Mencheres believes that because Kira ingested his old-as-dirt blood, she’ll be immune to his mind control until the blood leaves her system. The effects of blood transfusions usually only last for 24 to 48 hours but maybe his ancient blood makes it different (Doyle). After a week of waiting for her temporary resistance to go away and it doesn’t, Mencheres believes she’s a rare human who’s immune to vampire powers, and he lets her go. Mencheres has seen a lot in his time as a human and a vampire, so why doesn’t he realize this is a possibility prior to keeping Kira detained for a week? And previously, the only character who’s been immune to vampire mind control is Cat, the half-vampire main character of the Night Huntress series. Is Kira then supposed to be part vampire? It’s never explained.

            Mencheres is suicidal. His normal ability to see into the future is gone. Now all he sees when he gazes into the future is darkness, which he believes to be Duat, the Egyptian realm of the dead. He infers that that means his end is near, and he decides he wants to end things on his own terms. Meeting Kira disrupts his plans. Mencheres grapples with a strange attraction he feels towards Kira while she stays in his house.

It was ironic; he held her captive, yet she’d captivated him. (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 44)

            Kira is initially frightened learning of the existence of vampires. She even tries to escape Mencheres’s house by climbing out a window using a makeshift rope.

It had taken hours to tie the bedspread, sheets, drapes, and shower curtain together until it was long enough to reach to the bottom of the house. Then she secured it around two corners of the bed, waiting tensely until after dark so she’d have less chance of being seen. It took another half hour of mental pep talking before she’d worked up the courage to heave herself over the window ledge, and she’d had a moment of sheer panic when the rope first stretched under her weight. (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 18)

She’s weary, but she slowly comes around to the idea that Mencheres means what he says about keeping her until he’s able to erase her mind. In the meantime, Kira has nothing to do but think and worry about her sick sister, Tina. One day, when Tina doesn’t answer the phone after Kira repeatedly calls her, Kira unloads her problems on Mencheres who immediately flies Kira to the hospital to check on Tina. At this point, it’s been a week and Mencheres still hasn’t been able to erase Kira’s memories. Mencheres offers to save Tina’s life in exchange for Kira’s silence. He gives Kira his blood in pre-filled syringes (he mind-controls a nurse into giving them to him) and drops Kira off at her home. It’s a classic love story: vampire saves woman’s sick sister, making woman fall in love with vampire.

            I read this book as an eBook, and I wasn’t paying attention to the number of chapters as I was reading. I honestly thought this was where the story ended. This part of the book had a natural cadence like it could have started life off as a short story that evolved into its final novel length. Kira thinks wistfully of Mencheres after going back to her normal life. Mencheres inadvertently reveals he’s been stalking Kira when after a run-in with her deadbeat brother, Rick, Mencheres decides to mind control Kira’s boss into changing her late hours and giving her a company car. Kira realizes her boss’s out-of-character behavior must be the work on Mencheres, and she decides to try to find him.

            Of course, this ends in Kira being kidnapped. I’m getting bored by the damsel in distress narrative device that’s prevalent in paranormal romance, but I digress. Kira uses her work access to case files to sift through the ones with supernatural explanations to find vampire hangouts, ergo she’ll find Mencheres. It’s not a very logical plan, but she ends up failing upwards when it works despite her best efforts to the contrary. Kira scopes out a strip club called Around the World where she believes a young woman who may have been kidnapped by a vampire is working. (It’s shown yet again that the author struggles with names because the stripper’s name is Candy Corn, which sounds like a Halloween-themed stripper name. Why didn’t she call her Candy? Why add Corn?) She’s able to get the stripper in a room under the guise of a private show and asks her if she needs help getting away from the vampires. That’s when the vampire, named Flare, who’s been keeping Candy Corn (real name Jennifer Jackson) hostage bursts into the room and drags Kira away to interrogate her. In the process, Kira’s hand is smashed, and she lets slip Mencheres’s name. Flare and his companions, Patches and Wraith, freak out and call Mencheres to confirm if Kira is his property.

            Unbeknownst to Kira, Mencheres has arranged with Bones for her care after his demise (which he is still actively planning for). He acknowledges her as his property to the group of vampires keeping her hostage, and he comes to Kira’s rescue, planning on savagely murdering the vampires who tortured her. A Law Guardian named Radjedef, who has been Mencheres’s enemy his entire life, follows Mencheres to the strip club and intervenes when the vampires allege Kira was trying to steal from them, which she was in a way by trying to set Jennifer free. Because Radjedef is a Law Guardian, their complaint is formalized and must be weighed on. Radjedef determines Kira’s punishment is death, and Mencheres figures out a loophole would be to change Kira into a vampire.

I would like to get in Kira’s headspace for the moment. She’s captured when she tries to help a victim of sex trafficking get away from her captors. Her hand is mutilated when she’s tortured. The vampires who took her panic when she mentions she knows Mencheres, and there’s no explanation given as to why. Then he shows up. She believes Mencheres is furious at her for mentioning him to the vampires and she’s broken their contract jeopardizing Tina’s future health. Another vampire appears, tries, and sentences Kira to death for her crime. If I were her, I would be terrified.

            Mencheres drains Kira’s blood and then feeds her his blood in the presence of the Law Guardian and the Three Stooges (Flare, Patches, and Wraith that is). Satisfied that the punishment has been carried out, Mencheres leaves with Kira’s unconscious body. They arrive to another one of Mencheres’s houses—this one is in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for some reason—where Mencheres plans on caring for Kira during her transition to vampiredom.

We learn a little bit more about vampirism in this book. Mencheres often meditates at the bottom of his pool, which is possible because vampires don’t need to breathe. While it’s stated in previous books within the Night Huntress series that vampires don’t need to breathe, we never see vampires doing things that would kill a human because of their need to breathe such as being buried alive or, such as this case, staying underwater. This fact becomes a crucial plot point when Mencheres and Kira must hide from the Law Guardians, and Mencheres does this by plummeting them deep into the ocean. We also learn that vampires can’t see darkness. It’s like their brightness has been turned all the way up.

“It doesn’t seem right not to see the darkness,” Kira said, finally breaking her silence. “I know it’s night, but it looks like a sharper, overcast afternoon with a sun that doesn’t hurt my eyes instead. There are no shadows anymore. Only spots of shade. How long did it take for you to get used to there being no darkness?” (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 83)

Let’s talk about the mythology of vampires presented in this series overall. When Mencheres explains to Kira about his special powers, he also gives a rundown on vampirism.

“Cain was the father of our race, cursed by his god forever to roam the land as a fugitive in punishment for murdering Abel. But Cain pleaded that his sentence was too great, and his god took pity, marking Cain so none could kill him. Cain thus became the first vampire, dependent on blood for sustenance but beyond mortal death and possessing incredible power. Cain then made his own race to replace the family he’d been driven away from, but to only one of his offspring did he will out a portion of his incredible power. Enoch was the first recipient, and many centuries later, Enoch passed on Cain’s legacy of power to his heir, Tenoch, who then passed it on to me.” (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 139)

            This has always bothered me about this series. The explanation of Cain’s punishment makes no sense. God was angry at Cain for murdering Abel, so He forced Cain to wander the land and drink blood according to this story. Cain complains that the punishment is too harsh. God agrees with him, so He marks Cain, which in this context means he’s given immortality and incredible power. Those turned Cain’s punishment into a reward—now he can never die, and he has an undescribed power. It would be one thing if the lore in these books was rigid, but there’s a possible alternative theory to the origin of vampires introduced in Halfway to the Grave.

Bones almost smiled. “You want the evolutionary or the creationist version?”

I thought for a second. “Creationist. I’m a believer.” (Halfway to the Grave 239)

            Because Frost introduced a secondary theory early in the series, it makes me question the one the characters repeat. Bones even suggests later in that exchange that ghouls have yet another idea of how they came to be (again, though, using the Cain and Abel story). Unless I’m mistaken, Cain and his descendants would have died in the flood that takes place later in Abrahamic religious texts, so the existence of vampires relying on the Cain and Abel story is internally flawed.

            While Mencheres tends to Kira, their relationship spices up (I’m talking two vampires in a bathtub spicy), and they’re informed that the authorities are on the hunt for them. Radjedef has been busy framing Mencheres for the murder of the three vampires who tortured Kira, the burning down of Around the World, and the release of proof of vampires via the security camera footage of Mencheres turning Kira. Mencheres decides to go into hiding with Kira underneath Big Thunder Mountain in Disneyland of all places.

He glanced at the ceiling. “We are underneath a roller coaster. Big Thunder Mountain, I believe it is called.”

For a second, Kira didn’t know whether to laugh or ask if he was kidding. Disneyland? That was where Mencheres decided it would be safe for them to flee to after leaving in such a hurry? He hadn’t told her where they were going when he flew them away from the house, and falling asleep at dawn had prevented her from seeing where they were headed after several other stops and starts.

“First bubble baths. Now Disney parks. You’re shattering every creepy vampire myth I’ve ever heard.” (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 100)

            Kira hunts a human for feeding purposes for the first time with Mencheres as her mentor. From there, Cat and Bones make an unnecessary appearance. Bones, thinking Mencheres is guilty of what he’s been accused of, accuses Mencheres of choosing another woman who makes him do crazy things, and Cat is her usual charming self.

“So you’ll understand if the sight of Mencheres making goo-goo eyes at you strikes fear in the hearts of me and anyone else who lived through what happened the last time that man had it bad for a woman.” (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 112)

            I think it’s unfair of Bones and Cat to compare Kira to Mencheres’s late wife, Patra. She was the main bad guy in At Grave’s End, and before her demise, she and Mencheres had been separated for 900 years. Frankly, her murderous actions reflect her whether she was still technically married to Mencheres at the time she committed them. I will defend Mencheres and Kira here. Their relationship shouldn’t strike at anyone’s heart.

            Then the Enforcers for the Law Guardians find them at Disneyland and all hell breaks loose at the park. Mencheres uses his Cain-given “incredible power” to turn off all the lights within the park, throw Bones and Cat miles away, and bounce the Enforcers up and down on the ground all without touching anyone. Mencheres goes into hiding with Kira, and later they meet up with another character from the main Night Huntress series, Vlad Tepesh.

Her brow furrowed even as she shook the hand offered to her. That name sounded familiar. Where had she heard it before . . . ?

“Oh!” Kira exclaimed. Her eyes widened. “You’re not the real Dracula, are you?”

“Does no one think to warn people before they meet me?” Vlad muttered, shooting an irritable look at Mencheres. (Eternal Kiss of Darkness 125-126)

            After consorting with Vlad and another Law Guardian named Veritas, Kira sneaks away from Mencheres (or so she makes it seem) to visit Tina, and Radjedef kidnaps her. Surprise! He holds her hostage at the Temple of the Warriors in Chichén-Itzá for some reason. Honestly, there’s no rhyme or reason for why the characters are going to the places that they’re going to. Mencheres owns houses in Chicago, Illinois and Jackson Hole, Wyoming (which I had never even heard of before reading this book), and Radjedef hides away in a crumbling Mayan temple. As it turns out, Radjedef is Mencheres’s uncle. They’re both former Egyptian pharaohs. Wouldn’t they want to have homes and hideouts closer to Egypt or at the very least in the same climate? Anyway…

            Mencheres performs a magic ritual that nearly kills him to find where Kira is being held. In the ritual, he contacts the ferryman of the dead, who knows where every soul is located, and the ferryman tells him he’ll need a body in his boat before he leaves because he doesn’t travel the River of the Dead emptyhanded. Mencheres decides he’ll bring him Radjedef to end things once and for all. Meanwhile, in the temple, Kira breaks her hands and feet to slip the shackles she’s being detained with and runs into the jungle with Jennifer (Candy Corn), who Radjedef was holding hostage for unspecified reasons. Mencheres meets her in the jungle to confirm she’s okay and then jet sets off to Atlanta where he’s scheduled to meet Radjedef. They have a “I am very badass” fight in which Mencheres records Radjedef confessing to his crimes, and then Mencheres kills Radjedef so the ferryman can take him into Duat.

            It wasn’t the worst story I’ve read so far in this series. I liked aspects of the story, mainly Tina’s medical recovery, Kira’s relationship to her siblings, Jennifer’s rescue (we don’t know what happens to her after Kira rescues her from the temple, though), Kira’s vampiric transformation, and Kira and Mencheres’s blossoming relationship. I liked seeing a new side of Mencheres. All we ever learn of Mencheres in the Night Huntress series is how awful he is because that series is told from Cat’s point of view, and she really hates Mencheres for some good reasons and some not. I was hoping for more from this “spin-off” series, but I was pleasantly surprised by this book.

 

Works Cited:

Doyle, Glynda Rees, and Jodie Anita McCutcheon. “8.7 Transfusion of Blood and Blood Products.” Clinical Procedures for Safer Patient Care, BCcampus, 23 Nov. 2015, opentextbc.ca/clinicalskills/chapter/blood-and-blood-product-administration/.

“Frequently Asked Questions.” 911.Gov, www.911.gov/frequently_asked_questions.html.

Frost, Jeaniene. Eternal Kiss of Darkness. Avon, 2010, Hoopla Digital, www.hoopladigital.com/title/13325969.

Frost, Jeaniene. Halfway to the Grave. Avon, 2007.