Page 78 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
I touch the last bullet point on her list:Maybe it takes both of us to break the curse.
I close my eyes. If only that were true. But I’ve tried that approach, too. When Cosmina came into my life, I thought we finally had a chance. I didn’t tell her who she was, but Ididtell her that I was cursed, and that anyone who fell in love with me was doomed.
Cosmina didn’t care. That’s another thing consistent about my Juliet—she does what she wants, and I love her for it.
I only wish the thing she desired most in every life didn’t lead to losing hers.
THE MOUNTAINS OF TRANSYLVANIA—1682
In the superstitious age of witches and vampires, I, an eternally young recluse in a castle on the cliff, ought to be the target of stake-wielding mobs led by priests carrying holy water.
And yet the townsfolk don’t bother me. Perhaps it’s because no babes have gone missing from their cradles. Or that women don’t wander out of their thatched-roof homes in the dead of night, only to return with twigs in their hair and bite marks on their necks, like in other parts of the country where vampires supposedly roam.
Or perhaps it’s simply because I’ve been generous with my wealth. I make sure the nearby villages always have enough food, and I’ve given them paved cobblestone streets and sturdy stone bridges, whereas most in Transylvania still drag their wagons through muddy roads and cross rivers on frayed ropes. Here, there are even extra funds to host celebrations every spring, summer, harvest season, and winter. My money buys goodwill and a blind eye.
Over the decades, my legend has grown. They say I am a benevolent vampire, that I’ve shunned the ways of my kind andinstead spend my days in repentance, in the hopes that God will one day see fit to forgive me the sin of my existence and release me from my immortality. It isn’t far from the truth, other than the vampire part.
Thirty-one years into my residence in that isolated castle, though, a woman climbs the long, winding road up the cliff. She has blue-black hair like a raven’s and wears a cloak nearly as dark. The moon is high in the cloudy sky by the time she knocks on my door.
When I answer, she cocks her head and studies me for a moment. Then she smiles. “I hear a vampire resides here.”
I am speechless. Not because of what she said, but because of who she obviously is. The taste of honeyed wine skims my lips, and I would recognize those bright eyes and the soul they contain anywhere.
She frowns, though, unimpressed with me. She clears her throat. “Perhaps you did not hear me the first time. I understand a vampire lives here. Would you please let him know he has a visitor?”
“A visitor?” I shake myself out of my daze. “I am afraid that your sources have deceived you, Miss…What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t.”
“Ah. Well…if a vampire did indeed reside here, a lady like you ought to avoid him, I think.”
She scowls. “I am far from a ‘lady.’ I have followed rumors and traveled hundreds of leagues to be here, because no ordinary man can satisfy my needs—intellectual or otherwise. A vampire, however, may suffice.”
I laugh, both awed by her fearlessness and titillated by her innuendo. “But what, pray tell, would a mortal woman have to offer a vampire other than a vein on which to feast?”
“Spells,” she says, lifting her cloak to reveal a satchel full of vials, as well as a thick leather grimoire strapped to her waist. “I am a sorceress. I can help the vampire obtain anything he desires—power, fame, and more.”
I hear time stop in this moment.
“Anything?” I whisper.
“Anything.”
“Can you lift a curse?”
“If there’s anyone you will ever meet who can lift a curse, it is I.” She arches a brow. “But I should prefer to continue this conversation with the vampire, rather than his butler.”
Time begins to march forward again. “I am Count Marius Montague. I am no vampire, but I have lived hundreds of years and I cannot die.”
The sorceress moves closer and traces a long fingernail across my lips. Heat flares through my body.
“I am called Cosmina. Let me inside, and I shall help you the best I know how.”
For two years, we practice Cosmina’s lustful magic—a combination of incantations, elixirs, and carnality. I may be the one with the reputation as a wild creature of the night, but in truth, Cosmina is the wilder of us, although she doesn’t limit her thirst to moonlight hours.
In the early morning, she will crawl under the bedcovers to wake me with her mouth, her lips lined with a balm of elderberry juice and herbs that are said to end curses. If I’m reading in the library, she climbs into my lap and makes love to me as she chants a hex-breaking spell. There are more conventional attempts at breaking the curse, too, if sorcery can be called conventional. Necklaces of dove feathers. Ancient protection spells. Runes carved into stone under a new moon.
Yet nothing cures me. An accident chopping wood results only in a scar on my hand the next morning. Cosmina’s experiment of piercing my neck and sucking out my blood—to draw the curse from my body—does not work in the slightest. Even falling into river rapids only renders me unconscious; I cannot drown.
