Page 115 of Lucy Undying

“No,” I say to the burning red eyes. “No, I think the fuck not.”

—

My childhood bed, but it’s not dark anymore. Dim light suffuses the room, giving shape to the cavernous contours of the ceiling, the slope angling sharply to the alcove, with its bloody window and those unnervingly suspended closet doors. The whole room points to them.

Everything is fuzzy and slow and painful. The little doors are there, closed tight. Not moving, not breathing, not doing anything except being stupid little doors set midway up the wall in an alcove. I sit up. I have to leave, again. Is this hell? Will I be trapped in this cycle forever?

“You’re awake,” my mother says. She’s not hiding in the darkness beyond the dining room anymore. She’s sitting at my bedside, face smooth and young once more, free of all the machines draining her and keeping her alive at the same time. Like she never aged. Like she never died. Like I never drove a silver dagger into her heart.

“Fucking nightmare,” I mumble, my mouth so dry my gums ache.

“Watch your language,” she snaps. Just like that I’m a little girl again. But nothing has changed. I’m not a little girl. I’m still me, and everything hurts because—

Oh god. I’m awake. And she’s undead.

98

Moab, January 26, 2025

Dracula

He seethes.

They interrupted his time with you. That first plunge of his fangs into your neck, that baptism of his teeth and tongue and throat in your blood. They defiled it. And now he finds out you’ve already been corrupted.

Someone got to you before him. Someone else’s blood in your blood, someone else’s presence in your dreams. This is when he takes control, when he takes everything you are. Your blood, your mind, your future.

But he can’t do that, because someone else is already there. They’re fighting him for control, blocking his unfettered crawl through your nightmares. Trying to make you feel strong and loved and supported. You aren’t any of those things. You’re his.

He doesn’t know where he is, nor does he care. They carried him into a vehicle and transported him to another location while he healed. He hasn’t felt pain in so long, and he flinches from the memory of the kitchen. It fills him with shame.

Someone is speaking to him, so he rips out their throat. The others freeze, unsure what to do as their friend gurgles and chokes, desperately trying to cover the gaping hole.

First, he’ll find that other vampire, the small repulsive thing who thinks she can take you away from him. It has to be her in your dreams. He’ll destroy her, and then you’ll belong only to him. He’ll get you back in his arms, under his thrall. Back in your place.

No one escapes him once he’s started. He learned that lesson a long time ago.

A man calmly asks him to please stop hurting the others. He’s ripped out every throat in the room. All the vampires writhe on the floor, trying to hold in their blood so they have enough left to heal.

They should understand not to speak to him. How could he have a conversation with an insect, an ant, a worm?

They are not the same as him. No one is. No one ever could be.

99

Salt Lake City, January 26, 2025

Lucy

I come back to myself slowly, like a fever breaking.

What did they put over my head? Flashing lights, blaring noise, and pressure strong enough to burst my eardrums. Every sense was overloaded to the breaking point. Whoever designed it knew exactly how to disarm a vampire. I’d admire it if it hadn’t been used on me.

My head is free now, but I’m chained to a chair. I tug experimentally. The chains were also designed by someone familiar with vampires. I’m in a small room partitioned by a curtain. I’m not in Iris’s house anymore, and Iris—

Iris.

I lose some time to a blackout moment of rage and panic. Eventually I shut that down, because it won’t do me any good. I can’t break out by brute force. That’s never been my forte, anyway. I find a single link in the chain and begin working at it.

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