Juliet

“Stop, both of you,” I call, stopping them both mid-movement. I point to the cell where the women start shrieking, throwing themselves at the bars, just when I wanted to ask what exactly they were.

“With Radek’s dark powers activated, these monster-bitches can feel him,” a spiteful female voice reaches us from the dark tunnel that leads deeper into Dracula’s territory. My head snaps in its direction, and I recognize Victoria.

Dressed like some kind of warrior queen, she moves pointedly toward us. Behind her, sticky sounds and hisses grow louder. When she fully emerges into the orange light of our torch, with some of the accompanying creatures’ faces appearing behind her, I shriek and pull back, scared out of my mind. Victoria grins at me.

“Vampires,” she says. “Dozens of them.”

Radek flashes in front of me. The vampires look away at first, then tentatively back at him—they must be afraid of the midnight monster’s curse.

“Do not be afraid, his face is covered,” Victoria declaims. “He’d never risk killing his mistress,” she spits. “You see, the great prince Radek Basarab can apparently no longer imagine life without her juicy pussy. All of you guys can get a taste of it tonight.” She grins wickedly.

Radek hisses, his body flexing, the leather stretching on his taut flesh. “Just try, and you’re all dead.”

“What if he removes the mask?” A worried vampire throws in from the back.

“He might remove the mask,” Victoria says, walking toward us like a model on a catwalk. “But behind that mask, is nothing more than a normal man.”

I recognize Gruia the guard by her side, the same one who stopped me when I wanted to follow Radek on my first day here. His face is whiter than I remember, his eyes sunken, with dark circles around them, and his lips blood red like the rest of the vampires’. She must have had him ‘upgraded’ into one. It’s amazing how cliché they all look, only that they have claws and apparently very hard, white, beautiful skin, as if they’re made of bare stone.

She stops in front of Radek, and I swear I could scratch her eyes out. She stares steadily up into his beautiful eyes with her own small witch-like irises in the middle of by contrast huge eyeballs, her nose long and pointy, dripping into her thin-lipped mouth that’s the same size as the base of her nose. It strikes me how much she has in common with the German leader that killed millions years ago.

“Can you be sure, Victoria?” Radek says calmly, holding her gaze. “What if I still retain some power? Will you take the chance?”

Victoria’s resolve wavers. She steps back from Radek, but she’s still facing him in a confrontational manner.

“I’m sorry I found you about to attack that poor human, Radek,” she says mockingly, motioning toward Lazarus. “It’s not his fault that he fell in love with your Juliet. She’s a little bitch, she teased him, turned him on.”

“The only bitch here is you, Victoria,” I react from behind him, stepping forward. “What have you done to those poor women? How did they end up in this state?” I point to the zombie-like creatures treading on each other to reach the bars and get closer to Radek.

Victoria laughs. “Why do you ask me that? Don’t you see, it’s him they go nuts over.” She points to Radek.

“But it wasn’t me who put them here,” Radek says commandingly. “I sent them back to their lives, with more than they ever had before. They weren’t so drained of life as they are now, they would have recovered perfectly under the sun. You put them in here, and the infection spread so much that they became female versions of the Black Monks.”

“Yes, but you see,” Victoria says wickedly, “I couldn’t let them return to their lives after having watched them get from you everything you owed me. I served you all these years, Radek! I loved you and craved you despite the beast you turned into every night.”

Radek snorts. “You loved me, you say, but at the same time you despised everything I was—for I am the beast as much as I am Radek the Handsome, Victoria. What you loved was only the beauty.”

He turns to me and winds an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. “While Juliet loved the monster as much as she loved the prince.” He squeezes me lovingly. “Forgive me for everything I’ve said and done, Juliet, but please try to understand. I was jealous. I’m insecure, for obvious reasons, and my kind of love is possessive, and very restrictive. I can’t bear to know other men around you, I fear all of them are trying to take you away from me.”

Victoria is boiling with rage and jealousy. Compelled to look from Radek into her face, I see her eyebrows that remind me of Morticia Addams arch upward as she gets ready for an attack.

“Well, let’s see how long you can keep her for yourself, dark prince,” she spits. “Let’s see if you can protect her without the monster’s magic to fight off other forces of evil.” She looks over her shoulder at the vampires she commands. It’s no rocket science she made a pact with Dracula.

“You can have her, boys,” she calls, her voice hoarse, then looks full of vengeance back at us. “You can have them all.”

The vampires give out a collective cry of war, a screech that’s so loud and sharp that it scratches my eardrums. I cover my ears with my hands, crouching away from them, and into Radek’s body. In a flash, he takes me in his arms and turns around, protecting me like a shield with his back as the vampires throw themselves at us like a huge wave. He withstands it like a block of concrete, but Lazarus isn’t as lucky.

To my horror, I watch the vampires befall him like termites. They hold him down and bite into him, while the young man struggles and screams, the blood squirting out of him. The scene goes through my heart like a blade, and I scream, giving it all I have. I scream until I no longer have the strength or voice to do it, becoming a mass of jelly in my lover’s arms, with my eyes on the other man who loved me and is now dying because of it.

***

Radek

THE VAMPIRES HIT AND bite into me, claw at me, tearing the leather, but their claws can’t cut into my skin.  They scratch against it like nails against stone.

“My God, they’re going to kill you, too,” Juliet calls among their screeches and hisses. The desperation in her voice pierces my heart like thorns. After they bit Lazarus she turned in my arms and buried her face at my chest, sobbing hard, trying to blot out this horrid reality.

“You’re safe,” I say in her ear. “My flesh is as thick as theirs, they won’t get through my body to yours.”

But I can’t withstand them forever, that’s a fact. They bump into my back like missiles, one after the other, sometimes two at a time, and I’m starting to lose balance. I open my inner channels and begin scanning the town for places I can teleport us to but, to my shock, there is none. I still have my power over the dimensions, I can feel it there as strongly as before, the map of this town being part of my ancestral body. I can feel remote places the way I can feel my own limbs. It’s something else that blocks escape, something like wards against my powers.

Victoria laughs.

“Trying to teleport your lover away from this? Think again, master of dimensions. Even if you do have some power left over them, Dracula has placed all his vampires under a spell that protects them from your power of imprisoning them in a different dimension, and now they’re spreading like cobweb over the town, preventing you to teleport anywhere they are. Even if that protective spell is temporary, it’ll hold enough until you are killed.” She bites that last word greedily.

“Vampires can mingle in easily tonight, since it’s the night of the Christmas festival, and everybody is wearing a mask or vampire make-up,” she continues with obvious enjoyment. “You can’t teleport anywhere in this town, because everywhere there’s a ward against your powers, ensured through the presence of one or two vampires. And since you’re surrounded you can’t get over the barrier of wards in Bran, and teleport farther.”

She laughs an evil, echoing laugh as the vampires wear me down. Unable to withstand their weight anymore, I fall to one knee, still protecting Juliet with my body, wishing for a sword or an axe. Blades and axes are my specialty, I’ve killed many Ottomans in my brother’s name a long time ago. Now I could reap through these bastards, or at least a good part of them.

Juliet has already given in to the idea of death, I can feel it. Her sobs have slowed. Her fingers claw into my leather jacket because she’s still scared, but she’s willing to die, put this horror behind us, here and now. I can feel her love flowing into me.

“At least we’re dying together,” she whispers. “I just wish it went fast.”

It’s incredible, how my stony heart reacts to this woman each and every single time, melting at the sight of her, the smell of her, her words and her love. I don’t mind dying. But even though this angel of a woman has healed me of my ugliness, I’ve been a monster for so long that there’s no chance I’m going to heaven with her. So, in death, Juliet and I have no chance of being together.

No, I can’t let this happen. I can’t allow these bastards to take her life, and sure as hell not in the cruel manner Victoria will have them strip it away from her. What happened to Lazarus—who is still not quite dead—is nothing compared to what she has in store for Juliet. 

More and more vampires jump on me, and I already sweat trying to keep them off of Juliet. I end up wrapped like a cocoon around her, but I won’t be able to hold out for long.

“Just a little bit more,” Victoria says with evil satisfaction. “Let me tell you what will happen to her when you’re dead, Radek,” she says as the vampires beat, bite and claw at me like crazed orangutans, winning the fight. I keep scanning the town for a place to teleport, but there’s nothing. “I’ll have them fuck her and bite her at the same time. She will die in excruciating pain, and all because you loved her.”

The bestiality in her words and her insatiable desire to watch it happen hurt so bad that I feel them in my gut. The pure, loving woman who healed me, being terminated like a—No, not while I still draw breath. I will fight for her to the last drop of blood. I’ve won wars for wicked kings, I must be able to save my only love.

Before I decide on a move, I do something I haven’t done since the initiation six hundred years ago—I pray. I pray to God, not for myself, since I deserve the vilest things of this world done onto me, but for the woman I love.

My eyes snap open, and an idea comes to me—I cannot teleport to another part of the castle or the town, but I can teleport weapons over to me.

All it takes is an instant to channel my third eye into a funnel, and send two battle axes hurtling through one of the mirrors right into my hands. My arms snap up to catch them. The vampires stop and stare for a few moments, not sure what just happened, how come weapons just formed in my hands.

With a grin, my hands wrap tightly around the axes’ handles, my knuckles showing. They look at the axes as I’m still on my knees, bent over my Juliet who’s crouched at my chest like a child. They look once again at each other, and then they attack.

I leap to my feet, trying to ignore the woe in my heart as Juliet grabs my leg and holds tightly, whimpering, pressing her fragile, warm body to my shin like a terrified dog. The woe adds fuel to my rage. I raise the battle-axes and swing them at the incoming vampires, right into the base of their necks. Heads fly off from the first blow, because I hurtle the axes at them with strength and skill.

My dexterity is still there, as if the last time I’ve done this was yesterday. I move so fast they can barely see the blows coming, and when I need to swing the axes more times at some thicker-necked monsters, I do it as quickly as a machine gun, chopping off their heads.

Juliet screams and claws into my leg as dark blood spurts from the vampires onto her face and all over her body. In a small break between incoming batches of vampires I get a good look at her—dressed as a vampiress herself, the black lace dress barely covering her, more blood on her legs and face and caking in her hair. The mask has ripped off of her face. Mask... I turn my head towards an entire hoard of incoming vampires.

I won’t be able to keep fighting forever. I must have killed dozens, but Victoria has come prepared with an entire army. They’ll keep pouring from my brother’s side of the tunnels until I’m dead and stomped on, and Juliet.... No!

My eyes fix on Victoria’s face. She’s staring at me with perverted lust—it’s the first time she sees me fight, and she’s obviously enjoying it. It probably makes her horny, too, watching me hurtling axes full force into the vampires in a show of violence and power. 

But, like this, I’ll never win. The vampires will eventually overcome me, considering that my powers are limited because of Dracula’s ward spell. But they are all still afraid of the midnight monster.

As they run in from the tunnel, not having quite reached Victoria, she begins walking towards me as if hypnotized. There’s lust swimming in her eyes, and something tells me she’s willing to trade something for one last round of sex, probably on a pile of dead bodies. But then I take my hand behind my head, touching the knot that keeps the piece of the cape covering my face. Victoria stops in her tracks, and so do the attacking vampires, most of them throwing themselves to the side, covering their heads.

Victoria is the only one to remain standing, not sure what’s happening or what to do. I make sure Juliet is behind me. The pain of seeing her crouched and hiding, shivering, covered in blood, motivates me to finish in pain all those who caused her this. I pull slightly at one end of the knot like one would slowly push one piece of a domino, and the mask falls off. I can only hope the curse still works, even though the monster is gone.

In the end, my most powerful weapon has always been my face.

***

Juliet

RADEK WAS RIGHT. THERE is no way to explain what happens to those who look into the Prince of Midnight’s true face. I peek at the scene from behind him, not even sure what I’m seeing at first.

Victoria screams, her frame scrambled like static on old TV sets, as if her body is looking for the right frequency in which to take shape. Knowing what I know, I understand she must be trapped between dimensions, and when she takes shape again in this reality she is simply... Not quite whole. As if she’s two-dimensional instead of three-dimensional, indeed like an image on an old TV screen. At the same time, she seems to be in a lot of pain.

Her right hand, Gruia the guard, is at her side, looking puzzled, probably thinking how to help, but he doesn’t dare to try and touch her. Blisters appear on her skin as the Black Death starts eating at her, and her teeth, visible as she screams, go rotten.

Radek doesn’t take his eyes off of her, watching it all happen, I know by the posture of his body. But then something else draws his attention, and makes his entire body stiffen. He seems focused on something happening inside his mind, and not out here.

“What is it?” I grab his hand tightly, and pressing my entire body to his side, not looking at his face. I’d like to become a part of him right now, like Eve was once a rib of Adam’s.

“There’s a breach in the ward.”

“What?”

“There’s an opening, a spot with no wards, a place we can teleport to through the dimensions.”

Before I even get to open my mouth and say something, Radek has wrapped his arms around me. He flashes with me over to where Lazarus lies, surrounded by the beheaded bodies of vampires. He technically throws us both over Lazarus and, the next thing I know, the tunnel that brought us to these dungeons races by us again, its chill and speed touching our skin, but not affecting our bodies.

Though when the tunnel spits us out again, I’m dizzy as if I’ve just come out of a centrifuge. I barely balance on my feet, and I look around, wondering why I’m not in Radek’s arms. Behind me, Radek is dropping Lazarus to the floor.

If, for a split second, I wondered where I was, I don’t anymore. All I can think about is Lazarus’ inert body, his milky blue eyes now very pale, fixed on the ceiling, his face white, his lips bloodless, his skin splattered with his own blood. I’m sure he’s dead, but then....

“He’s alive,” Radek says.

A woman rushes to Lazarus, dropping to her knees by his side, and starting to check his vital signs. Being as confused as I am, it takes a few moments until I recognize Magda’s silver-white hair over Lazarus’ face. Her bright hazel eyes shoot up at me.

“Don’t just stand there, you’re a healer! Come and help me.”

I react automatically, and fall to my knees by Lazarus’ side, marginally registering we’re inside the bookseller’s house.

“He doesn’t have much time.” Magda’s voice is low, but urgent. “I don’t mean to pressure you, you’re still a young healer, but he desperately needs your help now.”

I try not to panic, moving my hands over Lazarus’ body, scanning him. Some new instinct is telling me what to do, but I’m insecure.

“Stay with me,” I ask Magda, keeping my eyes on Lazarus. “I need you to guide me. I’ve never done this before.”

Lazarus’s shirt is torn all over. Tears sting my eyes as I remember how those monsters ravished him.

“Bring some water,” I ask, opening his shirt to reveal his upper body, tears spilling to my face when I see him so battered. “We have to wash him, I need to see the wounds.” That’s my new instinct speaking again.

While Magda hurries to bring a bowl of water and a clean cloth to wipe the blood off Lazarus’ wounds, I whisper to Radek, who’s now kneeling by my side, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Just listen to your instinct,” he says. “You’re doing great so far, absolutely great.”

Magda helps me wipe the blood off Lazarus’ body. He’s a disturbing sight with his pale eyes unblinking, fixed up on the ceiling, his breath jagged, as if he’s cold, his lips white and cracked. There are bruises around the wounds, where the blood is coagulating already. I feel it clearly under my palms, his blood turning black and pastier than human blood. I lean back on my heels, staring at Lazarus in shock.

“He’s not dying,” I whisper. “He’s turning into one of them. My energy balanced him out, his body is now doing all the work. But there’s nothing I can do to turn him into a man again, his body is just too—” The thought hurts. “Abused. As a human, he’d die.”

Long moments of silence follow, in which both Magda and Radek don’t even breathe, let alone move. The first one to shift again is Magda, who hurries to the window, parting the curtains with her fingers and peeking outside.

“Bring him to the basement.” She can’t be talking to me, I don’t have the strength to carry Lazarus. But then, without waiting another instant, Radek picks him up as if Lazarus doesn’t weigh more than a toddler.

“And where exactly is that?”

“I’ll show you,” Magda says. “I have to come anyway, prepare a comfortable cot for him there. You won’t be able to take him to a room anytime soon, there are vampires all over the place, and they will sense one of them transforming. The basement is like a bunker. I worked my own magic to clear this place of the vampires’ ward so that you could teleport here, and the basement is the safest room.”

I stare at her in awe. “That’s why you left our side at the castle? You were preparing for this already? You knew what would happen?”

“I didn’t know, of course. But I sensed there were many real vampires among the masked people, and I could tell that Dracula was preparing for an attack of proportions. I knew you’d need an ally outside the castle. I couldn’t tell you what I planned, because even walls have ears in that place.” She glances over at Radek, and I remember how my declaration to Lazarus had caused the door to appear by my side. “I’m terribly sorry you had to go through hell, but this kind of magic needs time.”

“You stay here,” Magda then says to me. “Scream if vampires barge in or anything, but I doubt that will happen. They can’t know which house you teleported to, it could be any place in Bran.”

“But what if they attack every house, just to be sure?” I say, panic rising again. But Magda shakes her head and makes a dismissive gesture with her hand.

“The spell Dracula put on them is temporary. It’ll wear off very soon, and then they’ll scatter before the Prince of Midnight can trap them in some nasty dimension. They don’t have the time to search all houses, and they know it.”

After Magda and Radek leave with Lazarus, I contemplate this whole situation. I fall exhausted on the floor and just lie there, my arms spread, my body in the shape of a cross, my hair spread around my head as I stare at the wooden beams above my face. I’m completely spent, mentally numb as if after a good beating, realizing how sore my mind and soul will be tomorrow after everything that happened today.

What happened today.... Today, I almost died. The love of my life, prince Radek Basarab, almost died as well. Lazarus, probably the best friend I ever had, is turning into a vampire as we speak, in the basement of this very house. This whole thing feels surreal, but then the attacking vampires flash through my mind, giving me a sudden headache that’s real as a motherffff. By the time Magda and Radek return, I’m balled in a corner, as if I’m having a terrible ache inside my body, but what hurts is my soul. I only realize that I’m whimpering and moaning when Radek takes me in his arms.

“Juliet, my love,” he says softly, pressing his hot lips to my forehead. He rocks me like a child, his arms in leather strong and reassuring, wrapped tightly around me.

Slowly, fear and pain subside, the tears dry on my face, and all I feel is pleasant exhaustion coursing all through my body. He’s using his powers on me, but I don’t mind. Every patient who’s in pain welcomes morphine, even knowing what it is. Closing my eyes, I breathe in Radek’s natural scent of fresh earth and rain, mingling with the scent of pasty, black blood.

“I think we both need a bath,” I whisper in the curve of his neck, then lift my eyes to look at his face, forgetting all about the monster. Before he can stop me, my eyes are full on his beautiful ivory face with his lips like dark roses and the eyes like thunderstorms. My eyes roam his face, so incredibly beautiful. He’s a true warrior that just fought off not one, not two attackers, but dozens. And not just any attackers, but immortals, vampires. I shudder as I realize just how powerful he actually is. Then it hits me, and I stiffen in his arms.

“Your face,” I whisper. “How come I can... How come I can look into your face?”

Radek smiles at me, stroking my cheek with a loving finger.

“I thought you’d never notice,” Magda says as she brings in hot tea from the kitchen. “Apparently your prince can now control all his powers.”

“It seems I can now activate it and shut it down,” Radek says. “The midnight monster’s curse, I mean. The ugliness is gone, but I’m still a carrier of the magic black plague.” His voice goes dark, low. “I can infect people who look into my face at night with the curse, but only if I choose to. Before, it was like a broken gun that went off of its own accord, without me pulling the trigger, but now it’s.... It’s become deliberate.”

Radek stops talking, his expression changing as if he’s trying to catch sounds outside. I panic. Images of those deadly creatures run before my eyes, not to mention of Victoria, who might not be dead yet.

“What is it?” Magda demands.

“Shhh,” Radek hisses. “Just a moment.”

Magda stands by the low tea table, having placed the mugs on it, but it’s obvious from her reserved and suspicious attitude that she still doesn’t trust Radek. She’s still wary of him. If I’m completely honest with myself, no matter how much I want her and Lazarus to accept Radek, it’s understandable they have a hard time doing it. Lazarus spent a long time undercover, hiding from him, and Magda spent over a century fearing him, concealing her true powers in her bookstore. I can’t expect this to change over night.

“The vampires,” Radek says, letting go of me slowly and walking to the window. By the orange-reddish light that kisses his ivory face when he parts the curtains, I realize dawn is spreading along the wavy mountain horizon. “The ward is coming apart, like loose threads. I can now travel through the dimensions again.” His back flexes through the leather like an athlete’s getting ready for training. “It’s like my arms and legs have been untied, I can move freely again.”

He looks at me, his eyes bluer than usual, as blue as last night in the tunnel, as he fought those creatures.

“Dracula’s power has worn off. His plan shattered. We take back the castle, and you—” He walks over to help me up. I take his hand without thinking, coming to my feet. He looks into my eyes hungrily. “You can come back with me, this time as my future queen.”

I’m overwhelmed, my head swimming.

“Radek...” I manage, then I pause. He looks long at me, but his expression begins to change. He goes from almost enthusiastic to bitter.

“You don’t wish to,” he whispers.

“It’s not like that. What I feel for you, it’s love that runs deep, but it’s a dependent, jealous, sick kind of love. And that castle...” I glance towards the window. “I wasn’t well in there, Radek, and you know it. I was high on you, dependent on you, all I could think about was you, I only existed for you, and those feelings consumed me.”

Radek stares hard at me, his eyebrows knitting in a frown, the blue of his irises turning metal sharp. But before he can say something, Magda intervenes.

“What you both need right now is to get out of these clothes and wash those creatures’ blood off of you. This discussion can wait.” She takes my arm and leads me upstairs. “I’ll be back for you in a minute, Radek, you get another bathroom.”

Radek stays back in the living room by the window, though keeping his eyes on me until I’m out of his field of vision. Even now, when I can’t see him anymore, I feel someone is ripping a part of my body away, like an arm or a leg.

“See?” I turn to Magda nervously as she closes the door to Lazarus’ attic room behind us. “I can’t even be away from him while we’re in the same house, and he’s not even using his mesmerizing powers on me. When I’m back at the castle I’ll be his loyal dog, living, breathing for the glimpses and the attention I get from my master.” I groan, wanting to turn away, but Magda grabs my elbow and makes me face her again. She looks deep into my eyes, her face full of wisdom.

“Listen to me, Juliet, and listen well. This is not the time to oppose the great dark prince. Destiny has taken a fabulous turn for us. Only hours ago, it was just Lazarus and me against the creatures of the Hidden World. Now, for the first time in centuries, those like us, those fighting for the good, the light, actually have a chance. One chance in centuries, maybe thousands of years, Juliet.” She grabs and squeezes my hands in both of hers.

“This isn’t the time to break up with the prince. You have to accept to be his wife. Remember all those properties he amassed all around the Europe? He was preparing to expand his dark power over the world like a huge cobweb, like a cancer spreading and eating everything in its wake. Only his love for you can balance out his dark side, Juliet. Please, understand—the fate of the world may lie in your hands.”

She keeps staring at me, cementing her words in my head, and I begin to feel the responsibility like a huge weight on my shoulders. I open my mouth to say something, a big part of me screaming at me to refuse, to tell the woman to come to grips, tell her that she can’t put this huge thing in my trembling hands, but the door opens and Radek walks in. He stops in the doorway, his eyes moving from me to Magda. His face speaks volumes—he heard every word that was spoken in this room.