Page 104 of Lucy Undying

A woman yanks back the curtain. One hundred percent a vampire, obvious through her inhumanly graceful but powerfully efficient movements. But she’s mismatched with the usual Goldaming brand of Instagram filter drones. Her goddess-like beauty is specific, not generic. She’s tall and fat and Black, with hair cropped close to her scalp and no makeup at all.

And she’s pissed. “Why is her heart rate so high?” she demands. The assistant mumbles something but the vampire doesn’t even listen. She points toward the hallway. “Get out.”

The assistant scurries away. The vampire frowns at her tablet, then finally looks me in the eyes. “Are you afraid of needles?”

“Sure. Needles,” I say, on the verge of hyperventilating. How long will it take me to sprint to the elevator? What are my odds of overpowering the guard there?

“Your mother was never afraid of needles.”

“Yeah, well, my mother didn’t have her ovaries excavated without her permission when she was sixteen.”

The frown doesn’t move, but the doctor looks slightly less annoyed at me and more annoyed at the world in general. “I’ll tell you everything I’m doing before I do it, and you’ll calm down so you don’t pass out during the procedure.”

Oddly, I believe her. I can’t imagine her lying; she seems too impatient for it. “Deal,” I agree. I take deep breaths, trying to slow my heart.

“I’m going to insert a needle here,” she says, pointing to my wrist, “and another one here.” My elbow. “This one will draw your blood and send it to the machine next to you. And this one will replace it with standard O negative. The process will take approximately one hour. You may experience some lightheadedness. I’ll have that useless assistant bring you apple juice and a cookie to jump-start your blood sugar afterward. Within a week, your body will have overcome the new blood and returned to its default state. At which point we’ll do this all over again, over and over and over, and I’ll have to be here every single time.”

Her annoyance calms me. “You sound really put out about it, considering you aren’t the one having your blood removed on a weekly basis.”

She sterilizes my arm with practiced efficiency. “They didn’t tell you who I am, did they.”

“No, but I’d love to know.”

One needle goes in. I’ll give this to her—her bedside manor may suck, but her needle skills are beyond compare. She didn’t even feel for a vein. Normally I’d be creeped out, but I’ve had enough blown veins to be grateful for vampiric precision.

“I,” she says, inserting the second needle with ease, “am the genius who figured all this out. I’m the genius who identified the unique properties of your family’s blood and pioneered these procedures. I’m the genius whose incredible, groundbreaking, world-changing work is being used for glorified cosmetic procedures. I’m the genius who has to sit here and babysit a simple blood exchange when I could be revolutionizing medical treatment. I’m the genius who figured out how to use vampiric blood to supplement—”

“Holy shit, you admit it!” I try to sit up, but she puts a hand on my shoulder and keeps me firmly in place. “Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. You admit that Goldaming Life uses vampires! Wait, are you all drinking my blood once it’s out? Is that what it’s for?”

Her eyes flick to the box, but she shakes her head. “I’d never be wasteful with such a limited resource. And yes, I’m a vampire, and I use the correct terminology,” she says, her tone scathing. “Living gods, golden gates. It’s absurd. Names matter, and proper terms should always be used. And yes again, I am more put out by this than you are, because they’re taking your blood, but they took my freedom. It was my own fault, too, due to my own idealistic hubris, assuming we wanted the same things when I agreed to help them.”

I’m horrified. I thought all the vampires were here because they drank the Goldaming Life Kool-Aid. “You’re a captive? They’re holding you hostage? I can help, I can—”

“You’re a Goldaming,” she says. It’s not an accusation, it’s a statement of truth. She finishes attaching the tubes and watches, transfixed, as my blood begins to flow. With a tremendous show of self-control, she drags her eyes away from the blood and checks my vitals before standing. “That’s that, then. The worthless assistant can manage the rest. Please stop looking at me with that guilty expression. It’s not your fault I’m here. If anything, I blame Lucy.”

Her name jolts through me like an electric shock. Is this a trap? Have they known about Lucy this whole time? I lean forward, dropping my voice to a whisper. “How do you know Lucy?”

She looks up from her pad, puzzled. “How do you know Lucy? The last I heard, she was terrorizing Europe, killing vampires everywhere in her search for Dracula.”

Footsteps are heading in our direction. Before I can ask her anything else, the doctor shakes her head. “I hope she finds him. I hope she kills him and puts us all out of our misery in one merciful strike. Susan,” she says without turning around as the expressionless woman opens the curtain, “I’m going to sleep.”

Without another word, the doctor turns and leaves.

“What the fuck,” I whisper. I came down here hoping for solutions, and only found questions.

87

Salt Lake City, January 20, 2025

Lucy

I prowl the edges of the foothills, far enough away from the trail that I can’t be detected, close enough to Iris that I can sense her heartbeat. I’ll know if Dracula comes.

Like every other night this week, nothing happens.

It’s agony, being so near Iris. Every time she has a spike of fear or anger, I want to go to her. Then it ebbs and I can only assume she’s safe without ever knowing what triggered those feelings. I don’t want to know what she’s feeling, I want to know how she’s feeling. Why she’s feeling. She’s barely sleeping, too, cutting our dream time together short.

The impulse to swoop in and take Iris in my arms so we can flee together is agonizing. I should have said yes to coffee, that very first meeting when she looked at me so full of hope and shy bravado after I’d pulled her to safety. I should have taken her hand and walked across the street to the café. I should have sat and talked with her, soaked up every perfectly human moment with such a perfectly human woman. I should have whisked her away on a giddily romantic European tour. I should have held her for hours, doing nothing. I should have hoarded every laugh, every smile, every touch.

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