Romeo & Juliet & Vampires

by William Shakespeare

  Juliet knew that she had to pull back at some point, but when? No one had ever told her how to turn someone, so she would have to go with her instinct, although right now her instinct was pressuring her to ingest every bit of Romeo’s blood. She watched her husband’s complexion and how its color was fading away. She could also feel that his skin was icy cold when she touched it with her fingers. Using every ounce of restraint she could muster, she slowly let go of his neck.

  “Romeo. Romeo,” she murmured, gently kissing the two pink marks that her teeth had left on his skin. “Please come back to me.”

  Juliet stared at his face, willing his eyes to open or his lips to move. She repeatedly said his name, much like a magical incantation, and held him tight against her chest. But Romeo did not come back, not even for one brief, fleeting moment. There was no mistaking what had just transpired—all of Juliet’s efforts had failed and Romeo was dead. She let out one last agonized cry.

  The sound of rain pattering against the roof of the crypt slowly eased Juliet into a serene, almost catatonic state. Her mind was void of all thoughts, until one came into stark focus. She tenderly laid Romeo down on the floor of the tomb. She dug into his boot and took hold of his parrying dagger, then ascended and staggered toward a wooden sculpture of Vlad the Impaler, holding up the severed head of a Montague by the hair.

  “This is thy sheath,” she said plainly.

  Juliet steadied her trembling hands and stabbed the dagger directly into Vladimir’s chest, chipping away at the wood and sending a few jagged shards fluttering to the ground. Juliet got down on her knees and sifted through the wood, looking for the largest, longest, sturdiest piece she could find. Once she found one that was of the desired size, she ran the serrated edge across the palm of her hand to see if it would be sharp enough to penetrate both her ribs and her heart. It was so sharp that it scratched her skin deep enough to draw blood.

  Juliet winced a little, but forged ahead, her soul in far worse anguish than any kind of physical pain a person could ever endure. She crawled over to Romeo’s body and sat next to him, kissing his forehead as though they were just beginning an ordinary night’s sleep. Then she pointed the tip of the shard at her heart, closed her eyes for the last time, and said, “Let me die.”

  But before she could plunge the self-made wooden stake into her chest, a quaking hand grabbed one of her wrists. The instant she felt it, Juliet let go of the shard, one finger at a time, until the object fell out of her grasp. When she opened her eyes, they were met by Romeo’s, which were loving and alive and shining like red crystal.

  Juliet gasped—elated that Romeo had not died—but then she realized that for him to fully transform, he had to drink some of her blood. She was so relieved to have remembered this step—she would certainly have lost Romeo forever otherwise. Juliet held her bloody palm to his mouth and said, “Drink, my love, please.”

  Romeo nodded and sipped Juliet’s blood out of her cupped hand. Within moments, the wounds on his face slowly began to vanish and his skin turned the palest shade of white.

  Realizing that she had brought him back from the brink of death, Juliet laughed in relief and crumbled on top of him so her cheek pressed against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and caressed her back with his still-quivering hands.

  “I thought you had left me,” he whispered.

  “It is a long story, but I was under the spell of a powerful potion,” Juliet responded, her voice cracking with joy and agony in every word she spoke. “Friar Laurence was supposed to have sent a messenger to you.”

  Romeo stroked Juliet’s hair delicately, as though it were spun from gold. “Moldova has been quarantined. Smallpox outbreak. The messenger must not have made it past the border.”

  Juliet placed her hand on her chest and realized that her heart was no longer beating—and it never would again. With a quarantine in place, the friar would never be able to reach the shaman in Moldova. The window of time they had to perform the purification process would close before they could devise another plan—Tybalt’s corpse would soon be unusable and who knew when another dead vampire would turn up? If Lord Capulet was successful in getting Prince Radu to revoke the peace treaty, then that could be never.

  She and Romeo would remain vampires forever. But as she gazed upon her loving husband, Juliet thought perhaps that might not be the worst thing in the world.

  “I might not have made it either, if it had not been for you,” Romeo said, touching Juliet’s chin. “I owe you my thanks.”

  “You do not owe me that,” Juliet said, taking his hand in hers. “Because of me, we are now both sentenced to a life of everlasting depravity.”

  Romeo pulled Juliet up by the arms so that their foreheads were pressed together. She tilted her head when he’d tilted his, and she leaned toward him as they closed their eyes. She felt the tenderness of his lips trace the outline of her cheekbones.

  Then he gripped her tightly and said, “All that matters is that we’re together.”

  Unlike Tybalt, who had told her just the other day that his capacity to feel was compromised when he became a vampire, Juliet was met with startling waves of emotion crashing all around her. Romeo ran his fingers through her soft hair, his thumb grazing her forehead. She tipped her head slightly, her gaze steadily trained on his face. He leaned closer to her, then closer still. When Juliet felt his soft, inviting lips press gently against hers, she surrendered to that wondrous current, letting it carry her toward the horizon, where the sun never shone and this beautiful kiss lasted until the end of time.

  EPILOGUE

  That night, Romeo and Juliet fled Transylvania together, with only the clothes on their backs. They made their way through the Carpathian Mountains and crossed the northwestern border into Hungary. Eventually, the couple settled in the far outskirts of the country. They built a modest stone home in a beautiful, open meadow with greenery and a babbling brook. They lived there happily and peacefully for many years, consuming only the blood of the animals that they hunted by the light of the moon.

  As they aged, Juliet was afraid that their bodies would begin to weaken, much like the bodies of her parents, which she tried to track down after she’d gone to the castle one day and saw that it had been abandoned. Romeo, however, believed that true love and their pure (but dead) hearts had saved them from withering away. Once they brought a child into the world—a beautiful boy, who they named Laurence—Juliet could finally admit that Romeo might be right.

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  The rest of the vampires had no choice but to leave Transylvania, too. Lord and Lady Capulet were unable to convince Prince Radu to revoke, or even amend, his peace treaty. Then what they had feared became a reality—the vulnerable Capulets were forced to give up their castle and riches as reparations to the families of all those who had been killed during Vladimir’s reign. Suddenly faced with immortal but weakened bodies, and their new status as commoners, the Capulets disbanded, pairing off and fleeing to various sections of Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Albania.

  Some of the vampires lived like wild beasts—invading villages and preying on innocents one after the other, then moving to another town once the food supply thinned out. Some of them longed to return to civilized society so they found a way to hide their true vampire identities. These cunning creatures resided among the living, worked with them in town, and dined with them at parties. They would use their wit, intelligence, and charm to cast a potent spell on the most impressionable of humans, then gain their trust—and oftentimes, their love.

  As time went on, some of these secret vampires became assimilated and refused to kill like their brothers and sisters in arms. Instead, these enlightened vampires would reveal themselves and appeal to the mercy of their human counterparts. In many cases, the vampires had little trouble convincing them to be turned. It was no surprise that humans suffered from vanity and fear of death, so they were willing to earn immortality and offer their blood as the ultimate sacrifice without truly
knowing what they were getting themselves into.

  Historians believe that the Vampire Diaspora is what caused the proliferation of the species over the centuries. By the mid-1600s, descendants of the Capulets were scattered throughout Europe—France, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Italy, and Portugal, to name a few of the countries to which they emigrated. By the late 1800s, the vampire population in England, Scotland, Ireland, and all of North America had grown at an alarming rate.

  Today, vampires have a worldwide presence, and in some cases, they live among us openly. As for the other cases, they are most likely hiding in the shadows and waiting patiently, for just the right moment to turn us…

  …into them.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  LITTLE Vampire WOMEN

  Chapter One

  PLAYING PILGRIMS

  “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any corpses,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

  “It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.

  “I don’t think it’s fair for some vampires to have plenty of pretty squirming things, and other vampires nothing at all,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff.

  Being so poor, the Marches customarily dined on quarts of pig’s blood, goat’s blood, and, on very special occasions, cow’s blood, but they rarely had the luxury of a living, breathing animal to feast on, and when they did, it was usually a small creature hardly more than a snack. Most of their meals had to be warmed over the fire to be brought up to the proper temperature, which was particularly humiliating for the young girls. Gone were the days when they could sink their fangs into a wiggling beaver, let alone a writhing cow. A human had never been on the menu, even when the family was wealthy and lived in a large, well-appointed house, for the Marches were humanitarians who believed the consumption of humans unworthy of the modern vampire. Humans were an inferior species in many ways, but they deserved to be pitied, not consumed.

  “We’ve got Father and Mother, and each other,” said Beth contentedly from her corner. She was the shy, domestically inclined sister.

  “We haven’t got Father, and shall not have him for a long time,” Jo said sadly. She didn’t say “perhaps never,” but each silently added it, thinking of Father far away, where the fighting was.

  The war was the reason they were to be denied even a field mouse this Christmas. It was going to be a hard winter for all humans, and their mother thought they ought not spend money for pleasure, when so many were suffering in the army. That the suffering was limited to mortal men did not concern Mother, for her commitment to the human race was steadfast, despite the criticism of her neighbors, who found both the Marches’ beliefs and behavior baffling. Typically, vampires didn’t concern themselves with the petty wars of humans. They had roamed the earth long before people and would continue to roam it long after they were gone.

  “We can’t do much, but we can make our little sacrifices, and ought to do it gladly. But I am afraid I don’t,” and Meg shook her head, as she thought regretfully of all the pretty corpses she wouldn’t get to eat.

  “But I don’t think the little we should spend would do any good. We’ve each got a dollar, and the army wouldn’t be much helped by our giving that. I agree not to expect any gifts from Mother or you, but I do want to buy Mr. Bloody Wobblestone’s Scientifical Method for Tracking, Catching, and Destroying Vampire Slayers.1 I’ve wanted it so long,” said Jo, who yearned to join the league of defenders, brave and gallant vampires who protected their fellow creatures from those humans who would destroy them by any means possible. In the last century, the noble profession had undergone a vast change, adopting modern techniques to battle an ancient threat. Relying on one’s instincts, which had always been an imperfect process at best and a guessing game at worst, had been supplanted by steadfast science. Now, instead of spending three months learning the antiquated art of filtering out the smothering scent of garlic, one simply could put on an allium mask,2 which accomplished the task for you.

  “I planned to spend my dollar in new music,” said Beth, who loved to play music on the Marches’ very old, poorly tuned piano. Mrs. March believed in a liberal education and strove to cultivate an interest in the arts in all her children.

  “I shall get a nice box of Faber’s fang enhancements,” said Amy decidedly. Her fangs, though long, were blunt and did not come to an aristocratic point like her sisters’. No one minded the dullness save herself, but Amy felt deeply the want of a pair of killer-looking fangs.

  “Mother didn’t say anything about our money, and she won’t wish us to give up everything. Let’s each buy what we want, and have a little fun; I’m sure we work hard enough to earn it,” cried Jo.

  “I know I do—teaching those tiresome children nearly all night, when I’m longing to enjoy myself at home,” began Meg, in the complaining tone again.

  “You don’t have half such a hard time as I do,” said Jo, who served as companion and protector to their 427-year-old aunt. “How would you like to be shut up for hours with a nervous, fussy old lady who’s convinced every tradesman who comes to the door is there to slay her?”

  “It’s naughty to fret, but I do think washing dishes and keeping things tidy is the worst work in the world. It makes me cross,” Beth said.

  “I don’t believe any of you suffer as I do,” cried Amy, “for you don’t have to go to school with impertinent girls who plague you if you don’t know your lessons, and laugh at your dresses, and label your father if he isn’t rich, and insult you when your fangs aren’t nice.”

  “If you mean libel, I’d say so, and not talk about labels, as if Papa was a pickle bottle,” advised Jo, laughing.

  As young readers like to know “how people look,” we will take this moment to give them a little sketch of the four sisters, who sat knitting away in the near dawn, while the December snow fell quietly without, and the fire crackled cheerfully within. It was a comfortable room, though the carpet was faded and the furniture very plain, for a good picture or two hung on the walls, books filled the recesses, chrysanthemums and Christmas roses bloomed in the windows, and a pleasant atmosphere of home peace pervaded it.

  Margaret, the eldest of the four, looked to be about sixteen, and very pretty, being plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather vain. A year younger, Jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt, for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs, which were very much in her way. She had a decided mouth, a comical nose, and sharp, gray eyes, which appeared to see everything and were by turns fierce, funny, or thoughtful. Her long, thick hair was her one beauty, but it was usually bundled into a net, to be out of her way. Round shoulders had Jo, big hands and feet, a flyaway look to her clothes, and the uncomfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting up into a woman and didn’t like it. (Although her transformation to vampire brought an abrupt end to the growth spurt, the awkwardness of her appearance remained a permanent fixture.) Elizabeth, or Beth, as everyone called her, appeared to be an ashen-faced, smooth-haired, bright-eyed girl of thirteen, with a shy manner, a timid voice, and a peaceful expression which was seldom disturbed. Her father called her “Little Miss Tranquility,” and the name suited her excellently, for she seemed to live in a happy world of her own, only venturing out to meet the few whom she trusted and loved. Amy, though the youngest, was a most important person, in her own opinion at least. A regular snow maiden, with blue eyes, and yellow hair curling on her shoulders, pale and slender, and always carrying herself like a young vampire lady mindful of her manners.

  Each girl looked as if she’d been alive for scarcely more than a decade, especially Amy, whose pallid complexion could do little to mute her youthful energy, but they had all undergone the Great Change thirty-two years previous, which made them vampires of some experience. However, they were still considered adolescents, for vampires lived very long lives indeed and thirty-odd years was s
carcely a fraction of it. Therefore, in all the ways that mattered, the March girls, although chronologically older than their mortal counterparts, were perched just as precariously on the edge of womanhood.

  The clock struck six. Mother was coming, and everyone brightened to welcome her.

  “I’ll tell you what we should do,” said Beth, “let’s each get Marmee something for Christmas, and not get anything for ourselves.”

  “That’s like you, dear! What will we get?” exclaimed Jo.

  Everyone thought soberly for a minute, then Meg announced, “I shall get her a rabbit to feed on.”

  “A squirrel,” cried Jo.

  “A bunny,” said Beth.

  “I’ll get a little mouse. It won’t cost much, so I’ll have some left to buy my fang enhancements,” added Amy.

  “How will we give the things?” asked Meg.

  “Put them on the table, and bring her in and see her open the bundles. Don’t you remember how we used to do on our birthdays?” answered Jo.

  Having decided how to present their gifts, the girls discussed where to buy them, for the only store on Main Street that sold small animals was a pet shop and they didn’t know how Mr. Lewis would feel about providing tasty delicacies for their mother. Concord was an integrated town, where vampires could live peacefully in the open, but there were still moments when reminders of a vampire’s particular lifestyle could make the locals uncomfortable.

  Though they were eager to buy presents, they had to stay indoors, for the sun was about to rise. Jo suggested they practice hunting vampire slayers, her favorite occupation, and the girls complied reluctantly, for they didn’t share Jo’s passion. Meg was the slayer and Jo tracked her to the attic closet, where her quarry had already chopped the heads off Beth’s poor, blameless doll. Beth protested the unfair abuse and attached a neat little cap to the poor invalid’s neck. As both arms and legs had been removed during a previous field exercise, she had to wrap the deformed doll in a blanket.