Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite (17 page)

"She's here," Lucenzo said, keeping a cautious distance as Romeo burst across the threshold of the crypt staircase. "Please, sir, she's terrified."

Romeo nodded. "And the man?"

"We have him, too. He's the son of the head gardener."

"I hope
Signor
Gardener has more than one son," Romeo declared, as his fangs lengthened and he allowed the blood- lust to come over him. "Where are they?"

"In the music room," Lucenzo told him.

Lucenzo trailed behind him as he walked to the room. The white columns of the room were still tipped over, and their festoons of white ribbons and roses wafted in shredded tatters, intermixed with the rose petals scattered on the hardwood floor. A harp stood in the center of the room, and beside it, Claire—Juliet—was on the floor, crying and clinging to a young man Romeo had never seen. The young man had blond hair pulled into a ponytail, and blue eyes that darted nervously back and forth as the lord of the manor planted his feet in front of both of them.

"Please," she managed to croak out, "please don't hurt us. Just let us go."

"Why should I?" he demanded.

"Because she's not Juliet!" the blond man yelled at him. Then, as if he realized how foolish it was to shout at Romeo, he lowered his voice. "She's
not. . .
Juliet."

Romeo watched them holding each other, weeping, and he trembled. She was
his.

"You just don't remember," he began. It occurred to him that the son of the gardener knew too much to be left alive. He was glad. "But I
know
you are Juliet, Claire."

Deep sobs made her shoulders jerk. She shook her head violently.

"I knew a long time ago that I wasn't. But
I ...
I had nowhere else to go. I'm sorry. I thought I could fake it but, it's just too . . .
gross."

He frowned at her. "Then why did you text me for help?"

She raised swollen eyes toward him. "I didn't. I told you, I lost my phone."

"Then who is this?" he asked, showing her the message.

"I don't know."

"You have to let us go," the man insisted. "We've done nothing to you."

Nothing but rip out my unbeating heart.

"Everyone here is loyal to me," Romeo said. "They would rather die than reveal my secrets. If your father works for me, then he's made the same vow." He gave Lucenzo a look. Lucenzo flushed at this lapse in security.

"I don't know this young man," Lucenzo declared.

"I came for a visit, from university," the young man said. "And I saw her at the balcony ..."

Romeo's body contracted as if he had been stabbed through the heart. Claire—no, Juliet, she was Juliet!—gave him a look that reminded him of the scarred maid. He raised the hand in which he held the cell phone, clenching it so tightly it began to crack, and she cowered, sobbing.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I really am. But I'm not her. I'm not."

"Let me take them away," Lucenzo said. "Don't do anything you might regret. Perhaps in
time ..."

It was in his heart to refuse. To kill the boy who had confused her. To drain him in front of her, make her sorry . . . to make her shriek . . .

God, I have become a monster.

He was overcome with anger and grief, shame and despair. Friar Lawrence was right. He should have died, rather than become this. How could Juliet love him? Was there anything of Romeo left to love?

"Get them out of here. Everyone," Romeo said without looking at him. "All the servants. Every single one."

Lucenzo hesitated. "Sir?"

"Get them out!" Romeo bellowed. "Now!"

For two or three more seconds, Lucenzo stayed. Then he turned and walked away. Romeo kept his head lowered as he listened to the heartbeats of each person in the villa. They grew fainter in clumps; then in smaller groups; and then there was one left, lingering, as if hoping to be called back.

Then that one left, too.

He sank to his knees and bowed his head. He was done. Awash in misery, and self-hatred. How could he have thought this would be what she wanted? How could he ever have hoped?

"Madness," he whispered.

Nothing tired vampires except the rising sun, and Romeo felt its pull as he got to his feet. Despairing, he surveyed the destruction of the music room, which he barely remembered having caused. He trudged out, numb with sorrow, and staggered through the villa.

Down to his coffin? Was there any reason to preserve his own life? He was at the end. All of it had been for nothing. Juliet was not coming.

She was never coming.

Then he paused, detecting the weak beating of one more heart. Lucenzo? Or—

"Juliet?" he cried, unable to stop himself. "Claire?"

There was no answer but the heartbeat, and he realized it was coming from outside—in his gardens. The scene of the crime of the gardener's son. He remembered Lucenzo telling him that Claire had gotten out of the car, and the boy—Romeo didn't even know his name—had talked her into getting back in.

"Claire?"

The sun was threatening to rise, but he had to know who was there.

The heartbeat pumped against his eardrums like the clang of a distant buoy. He cast off through the shambles of his once-exquisite garden—across wrenched fields of orange- tree flowers and lilies, listening as the heartbeat grew.

There, beneath a toppled Grecian column! It was strongest there, although it was very weak. It was the heartbeat of a dying person.

He rushed toward the white cylinder. Black athletic shoes stuck out from beneath it. He made his way around to the other end, moving as through mud. The sun was rising. He should go back.

The column had fallen at an angle, just missing the head of the horribly scarred little maid. Claire's cell phone lay in her outstretched hand.

As he approached, her eyes fluttered open. For a moment they were blank, and then they focused on his face. A strange, strangled cry bubbled out of her mouth, along with a trickle of blood.

"Romeo," she whispered, and then he knew.

It was she.

"Oh, God, oh, my God," he cried. "Juliet."

Juliet.

Juliet.

Juliet.

He fell to his knees and covered her disfigured face with kisses. Gray light glowed against the scars. Sunlight.

Juliet.

Juliet.

Juliet.

More blood trickled from her mouth.

"You texted me for help?"

"You came," she whispered brokenly.

"Why didn't you tell me who you were?" he cried. But he knew why: he had become a demon, a heartless fiend. Evil.

"Ugly," she whispered, echoing his thoughts.

"I, yes, I have become ugly." He wrapped his arms around the column, grunting as he yanked and pulled. It was too heavy.
He
couldn't budge it, not when he was so weak. It was crushing the life out of her, as the sun was smothering the life out of him.
His
back began to smoke. He felt prickles of heat along the nape of his neck, his scalp. It was too near day. "I have become a monster, hopeless, loveless."

"No. I am ugly," she said.

"Oh, Juliet, is that why you hid from me?" he wailed as he dug
in
his heels and pushed against the cold, unforgiving stone. "Only that?"

"Hie hence, be gone," she murmured. "More light and light it grows."

"I have more care to stay than will to go," he replied, fighting back tears.

He stared at the blood
on
her lips.
It
would replenish him. Then
he
would be able to push the column off her, carry her into the house, and transform her. They would be together, at last. If
he
had time,
only
a little more time . . .

"Ah," he moaned, as the
pain
washed over him. Then
he
realized: "You drugged the old man. To stop me."

"Si." Her heartbeat slowed even more, barely beating. She was on the verge of death. And he, as well, for the sun was about to break through the last vestiges of the night.

He was flooded with remorse. "I thought she was you. Did
I
betray you, love?"

"I almost lost you," she whispered.

"Never. You would never lose me." He choked back a sob, clenching
his
teeth as the lassitude, so like death, gripped his limbs.

"I wrote you letters," she said. "I have them all."

"I will read them," he promised her. He realized that had been the message of his dream, and tears streamed down his face.

"In heaven," she said faintly.

He bowed his head. "This is my doing, all of it. I was too blind, too rash. If only I
had seen that I was to come to
you
. . . that you were here."

"I am here," she echoed. And she gazed at him with the love he had waited for, for seven hundred years. Did she smile with that twisted mouth? Or was she squinting against the sun's glare?

"My
love ...
as boundless
.
. ."

"Lovely. Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear," he serenaded her.

". . . as the sea."

"Oh, my love, my wife." He tried to hold her, and to comfort her. The sun had fully risen. He was out of time. He was timeless.

"Thus, with a kiss, I die." He pressed his lips to hers, forever.

Which happened first, her death, or his? As
he
burned in the blazing sun, gazing down at that dear, beautiful, ruined face, Romeo dreamed that they died at the same instant; and that because of her goodness, her faithfulness, and her love, he went to heaven with her. Whoever it was said that vampires did not dream, was a liar.

And for those who believe that true love never dies . . . they live in a state of grace, from one century of dreams to the next.

The Other Side

Heather Brewer

Blinding pain ripped through Tarrah's shoulder and she wrenched away from it, snapping from sleep and shuffling off her disturbing dreams like she would a too-heavy blanket. She opened her eyes, but was no better off for having done so—the room was pitch-dark as night, its blackness weighing down on every inch of space that surrounded her. But that wasn't the strangest part of what had woken her; not by a long shot. She was on her side, her hands bound behind her, something cold and metal linking her wrists— handcuffs, she was almost certain.