Juliet Immortal

before slowly shaking his head. “No. It doesn’t. I don’t mind not being the first, as long as—”
    “You’re the last,” I finish.
    “Exactly.” His cocks his head, surveying me fondly down the bridge of that same crooked nose. “You … are very strong. And a very unusual girl.”
    “You have no idea.” I smile. “I’ve got quite a story to tell you, someday soon.”
    “But not today?”
    “No. Not today. Today, we have better things to do than tell stories.” I take his hand and pull him back to me, stealing another kiss, smiling against his lips as he kisses me back.
    And kisses me again.
    And then some more.
    And I know he is mine. For now, for the rest of our lives, no matter what comes next.

CODA

Romeo
    I crouch in the shadows in the corner of the abandoned train station, watching the morning light creep into the birds’ nests near the ceiling, clutching the blanket I’ve stolen from one of the crackheads who called the condemned building home. There were five of them, one a Mercenary of some sort, judging from the blackness hovering in his aura. They ran screaming when I crawled through the door, my skeletal hands scratching against the bird-shit-covered boards, rotted flesh dripping a trail of horror behind me.
    Even the Mercenary ran. He knew what I was, saw what I’ve become, and feared that the curse I’ve acquired might be catching.
    Cursed, damned, cast out to suffer for eternity.
    It’s all true, and I’ve suffered greatly in the weeks since Juliet passed. My senses have been returned to me so that I might know I smell like a plague pit and look like a monster. So that I might feel the pain of the entire world slam into my chest, echo in my brain with every step I take. I am truly a thing of darkness now, a being so wretched I can do nothing but hide in humanity’s corners, fighting to stay warm as the wind whistles through my bones.
    The only thing that keeps me from taking what is left of my sorry life, from laying my head on the train tracks outside and letting the steel beast sever me in two, are the dark lord’s words.
    How pleasantly do you think a few million years such as that will pass? When you are an invisible nothing and no one can hear you scream?
    The greatest liars always tell the truth when they can. Everything else he said was true. I have been cast out of the Mercenaries and returned to my old body, a body ravaged by the atrocities I’ve committed.
    What if the rest is true as well? What if my soul will remain even after this body is gone? Even
this
has to be preferable to
that. Something
preferable to
nothing
, to the torture of a voice without an ear, to existence without confirmation.
    Even a scream as people run away is something. Something …
    Hoarse sobs break the silence, a wounded animal keening at the sun streaming across the wall. I have cried more in the past weeks than in my entire life and afterlife combined. It’s the worst part of this body—the way the emotional pain leaks from my face, shakes my heart like a wolf with teeth sunk deep.My soul is a raw thing newly reborn in a rush of blood. The ghosts that haunted me when I was a Mercenary rub against my insides, crowding me with pain. Remorse. Regret. Hate. Fear. Love …
    I loved her all along. I didn’t realize how much until she was gone, until I was returned to my body and crept back to the place where she died and touched her lifeless hand, cried over her wide, sightless eyes. Juliet. My Juliet. Her soul is gone forever. I can feel the difference in the universe, the absence that is a world with one less spot of light. I tried to save her. I hope, in some fashion, I did. I hope she’s at peace in the mist … or wherever it is good people go.
    I hope that boy she loved is there with her. I didn’t weep for him, but I felt sadness for what he lost. For the first time in hundreds of years I wished I’d had some other choice, that I could have spared them both.
    But there was nothing else I could have done. I couldn’t overpower the dark lord, and their love wouldn’t have survived his torture. The best I could do was put them beyond his reach, offer myself in their place.
    Maybe someday I’ll regret my decision, when these weeks of agony stretch into years and decades and centuries and finally I am nothing but dust and even the luxury of tears is denied me.
    Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps …
    Best to cry while I still have eyes.
    My sobs bruise the silence, stirring the