The Legend of Juliet: Part One (A Vampire Dystopia) (Finding Freedom Novellas)
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Authors: Alexandra Lanc
The Legend of Juliet: Part One
(A Finding Freedom Novella)
By: Alexandra Lanc
Text © 2013 by Alexandra Lanc
All rights reserved. Except as permitted by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this novel may be reproduced or transmitted by any form or means -- electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system -- without written permission from the copyright holder. As it is a violation of the author’s rights, please do not participate in copyright infringement.
The Legend of Juliet: Part One, first edition. This work is New Adult fiction; this series contains violence and suggestive material, and may not be suitable for younger readers.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author, except as stated.
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The dreamers who dream of dark things, that hold secret light.
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
-- Romeo and Juliet: Scene 2, William Shakespeare
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me:
I am a free human being with an independent will.”
―Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
The night is nearly over; the day is almost here…
-- Romans 13:12 (NIV)
Table of Contents:
The Legend of Juliet: Part One
(A Finding Freedom Novella)
“Tell me your story...
...and I’ll tell you mine...”
I was born into this world where vampires rule, this world where humans are at the bottom of the food chain – the pets, the toys, the slaves.
Yes, I was born into this world, and I thought I didn’t mind it…
But I was wrong.
So, who am I?
My name is Juliet.
And I am Human.
I have two precious memories:
One,
Is of the day that I was born.
Two,
Is of the day that I met Sibold.
Chapter One
Sometimes I hate getting up in the morning. It’s not the sunlight that bothers me — it couldn’t be that, because there isn’t much sun around here; it’s mostly cloudy, like an unending rainstorm — it’s the fact that I have to roll out of bed, get dressed, and try to face the day. It’s not that I’m not content, because I am – and things could be much worse, after all.
It’s only that sometimes, things become a bit...
complicated
.
Such as when I run into Master Delouge.
I kept my head down, my green eyes trailing the floor as I padded down the hallway of the Manor in my threadbare loafers, trying to pass by the Manor’s residents without being noticed. It wasn’t an easy thing to do in a house that was continuously full — maids running here and there, setting up bedrooms for new guests, guests trying to find the drawing room where they were meant to meet with Master Delouge — but somehow I managed.
Usually.
I caught my breath as I cut a corner, rounding my way past the library, heading towards the large third story deck that sat at the back of the Manor in a private, secluded area, overlooking a large lake, and the tall pine trees that had sprouted around it. It was my job to arrive there before the tenth hour, and I was running late as usual, which wasn’t a good thing. If I was caught being late again, I was fearful that they would hang me...or
worse
; not many people would mourn me, either, and so my life would fade from existence mostly unnoticed. I tried not to be late, but with Luke gone there was no one to wake me save myself, since the vampires didn’t care to rise until near the time that the tenth hour, the first feeding of the day, arrived.
I bit my lip harshly as I rounded another corner, nearly running into a pretty vampire – a tall, blonde haired woman whose skin was the color of cream, and who was dressed in a scarlet gown which flowed to the floor, trimmed with black lace; probably another of the guests. She gave me a particularly nasty scowl as she muttered something foul beneath her breath, probably assuming that I didn’t know what she meant, that my vocabulary was as indistinct as most other humans’.
Or maybe she didn’t care; this was most likely the case.
It wouldn’t have surprised me, because I never expected kindness – especially from Master Delouge’s guests, who were stuffy and old, agreeing with the idea that humans were “slaves” instead of “pets”, a term that had become popular with some this year; I resented the term, although it was an improvement over its predecessor, but I knew better than to say anything against it.
I rounded one last corner, leaving the scarlet Lady behind. I had almost made it to the deck when I ran into something hard, not looking where I was headed, my eyes still trailing the ground. My head snapped up immediately as I stumbled back a few steps, shrinking, as I knew I should, as I had been taught.
The only problem was that my gaze traveled upwards a bit too far as I shrank back, and I caught the gaze of Master Delouge, whose red orbs turned to fire as soon as his eyes met mine.
“Human,” he snarled, and I immediately looked down at the floor, wondering whether or not I should bow, and deciding that it couldn’t hurt, since I was in trouble already. I bowed halfway, and he snarled even more, so I stopped, shrinking another degree. “Watch where you’re going, you filthy—”
His sentence was cut off by none other than Sibold, who appeared in the hallway just then, materializing directly in front of his father, shielding me from his harsh gaze. “Juliet,” he said in an icily pleasant tone, speaking to me though his gaze rested on Master Delouge, who scowled; I viewed this from the upper portion of my vision, since my head remained bowed. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you.”
“I-I’m sorry, Master,” I stuttered in a hurried tone as I shrunk even further, wanting to hide behind Sibold, though I knew better than to touch him; thankfully he was shielding me somewhat on his own. “It won’t happen again.”
I could see Sibold smile tightly, his face half turned towards me now. “Of course not,” he confirmed, and then his expression brightened a bit, as if he’d just noticed his father, though he’d been watching him throughout our exchange. “Father, so nice to see you. I hope you won’t mind Juliet. I’m afraid I kept her awake far into the night, and she’s a bit tired,” I secretly thanked Sibold in my mind as I let out a slow, shaky breath, my shoulders sagging under an invisible weight, hoping that Master Delouge wouldn’t pay my sigh any mind; he was a vampire, after all, so I knew that he could hear it clearly.
“Don’t make excuses for humans,” was thankfully all that Master Delouge said before he abruptly pushed past Sibold, and started off down the hall, casting me one last, nasty grimace.
It wasn’t until after he vanished that I completely collapsed, my legs giving out from beneath me as I held in a row of sobs, my chest feeling as though a boulder sat on it, it was so tense. I remained on the hardwood floor, shaking, for a moment before Sibold offered me his hand. I stood without taking it, knowing that I would be punished if Master Delouge found that I had accepted the help; it wasn’t wrong for Sibold, a Master, to offer it, but it would be horrendous for me, a human slave, to accept his kindness.
I looked down at the floor again as I stood there before him, my legs shaking beneath me, though I managed to remain standing this time; I knew that his eyes were focused on me, but I couldn’t look up at him. Not only were we not supposed to — vampires were the Masters here, and humans were the slaves, unworthy of eye contact, according to the Laws — but I didn’t want him to see the tears that were brimming my eyes, showing off my fear, because they made feel ashamed.
Everything made me feel ashamed.
And I lived with that shame as best I could – but sometimes it proved too much for me to bear.
“Juliet.”
That – the soft utterance of my name – was all that it took to make me look up, to make me meet Sibold’s gaze, though I knew that his father would kill me if he found out; I couldn’t find it in myself to care then, though. My green eyes locked with his dark hazel ones for a moment before he reached out, and slowly took my chin in his hand, not wanting me to look away -- not that I wanted to, because his eyes had captured me, as they always did. We stood like that for a moment — me, holding my breath, him, staring and steady — before he continued to speak.
It seemed like the longest moment of my life.
“Juliet,” when he spoke again, his voice was even as always – almost monotone, though his hazel orbs continued to hold me prisoner, his touch gentle, “you should be more careful.”
I didn’t answer him as he abruptly released me and then turned away, silently heading towards the deck. I simply trailed after him as the clock struck the tenth hour, my eyes never leaving his graceful form, knowing that he was right – that I should be more careful, because he couldn’t protect me from everything.
“Oh, look...
...It’s a full, full moon...”
I was born on a chilling, cold day in a town called Merciper, named after the woman who would come to be my second mother. It was a town full of humans, though there were vampires in every house too, there to keep the “peace”, if it could even be called that.
My parents grew up in a small home, which had a grand total of five rooms, a breeding ground for human babies. They’d met at a young age, and, having had a spark of romance almost instantly, had been paired together for the future, when they would move to another, larger house in Merciper and have children who would one day come to serve the high-ranking denizens of the world.
That was the way that things worked, functioned. There were a few towns near every city, dedicated to the growth of human slaves. Babies would be born in one house, called a Bright, and then depending on what the vampires’ needs were, would either be shipped off to a Beginning or a Care, where they would be surrounded by other children, and instructed by the vampires that lived there, by the kind that they would one day serve.
The human babies who went to the Beginning houses were like my parents, paired with another human so that when they came of age they could have children of their own, supplying the vampires’ need for “slaves”. But the children who weren’t like my parents would end up at the Care houses, where their guardian vampires would watch over and teach them until they were near the age of six, and could be “sold” to a vampire in need of a slave.
That was the way that it was in our world, the way that it had always been, ever since the vampires had come out of hiding, and had overtaken the humans, tired of the lowly race ruining the Earth with their stupidity.
But me, I was different. I never went to a Care house, though it was decided that I wouldn’t go to a Beginning house, either, a fact that I had always resented, until I was finally Chosen.
As soon as my parents were of age to marry, they were sent to the local Bright, which was run by a kind vampire named Mercy, who actually cared for humans, and who sympathized with their “condition”. After a while, Miss Mercy and my parents had become friends (well, as good of friends as slaves and Masters can ever be), and when I was born she had allowed my parents to keep me, instead of sending me to the Care, to await the day that I would be Chosen, “sold”, the vampires in need of fresh human slaves at the time, nearly every child that was born being sent to the Care house.