Page 116 of Lucy Undying

Then I close my eyes and search. There. A whisper on the edge of my thoughts. Iris is alive, but she’s not awake. I try to wrap my consciousness around her to tug her free of whatever has ahold of her in her dreams, but there’s so much resistance. It takes all my concentration.

If only I could talk to her. I’m getting more frantic, and my fear leaks through into the atmosphere of her dreams. I keep finding her and then losing her again. Dracula is fighting me for control, which means he’s already started his final assault on her.

My stomach turns, sick at the thought. He has so much more experience. How can I win? How can I save Iris from this when I couldn’t save myself?

“Where did you come from?” a man asks.

I open my eyes. He’s tall and gaunt, with paper-thin skin and hooded eyes. A gloriously full head of hair sits atop his head like a leech feeding off the rest of him.

“That’s a complicated question!” I give him my glassiest-eyed smile. “Where do any of us come from?”

He’s not amused. He looks exhausted. I’d swear he’d been drained were he not clearly alive by the sound of his heart and breathing. “I just need to know when Dracula created you.”

I drop my act, too angry to pretend. “He didn’t create me. He killed me. Don’t give him credit for anything else.”

The gaunt man’s eyebrows draw low. I’ve heard his voice before, but I can’t place it. “You look young. I don’t think you are. That’s good. Both because I don’t have to figure out when he slipped through our protective measures and killed you, and because older vampires are more valuable to harvest.”

“Dick!” I declare, figuring it out.

Lawyer Dickie looks briefly offended, then sighs. “I’d ask how you know Iris, but it hardly matters now.”

“Does he have her?” I ask, desperate. I’ll tell Dickie anything he wants, I’ll give him anything he needs. “Is she safe?”

He pauses, surprise at last shifting his features as he considers me. “The blood is life. She’s a Goldaming. We’ll always protect her.”

I smile brightly once more. “Doing a brilliant job. Like when she was in London and your guard dogs didn’t notice she was dating a vampire. Or here in your own territory, letting Dracula stalk her. He was going to kill her in the kitchen; I’m the one who stopped him. Let me go and I’ll protect her myself. The blood might be your life, but Iris is mine. I’ll keep her safe.”

He walks out. I let my head fall back. It was worth a shot. The link I’ve been sawing at with my fingernail is starting to get warm. In another few hours I’ll be through it. But I don’t think I have another few hours.

“Full harvest,” he says to someone outside. “Make it quick.”

The curtain parts again and the Doctor walks in. My old friend, working for my enemies. That’s who Iris met. That’s why everything fell apart.

“I’m going to rip you into pieces and drop you in the ocean,” I say. “But I’ll make certain the pieces are big enough that you can still think and hear and feel. I want you to experience every agonizingly powerless moment of your slow descent into starvation and madness.”

“Hello, Lucy,” the Doctor says, all business in her white lab coat. “You’ve changed. It’s nice. Out of professional curiosity, what did you think of the sensory overload helmet? I never did try it on myself.”

“You love your hands most, so I’m going to rip them off first.”

“Stop being dramatic. We have work to do.”

I’m tempted to plead, but I know it won’t matter. How many men did I hear pleading on her operating tables? “Dracula’s trying to kill someone I love,” I say. “They’ve been working with him, protecting him this whole time, looking the other way while he stalks and kills women. It never stopped. It will never stop unless we stop it. You have to care about that. You can’t be working for him, after what he did to us. You just can’t. It’s breaking my heart.”

The Doctor’s look is so withering it erases nearly a century and a half of life, reduces me to a girl once more. “Lucy. I said we have work to do. You and me. Together.” She pulls a key out of her pocket and unlocks the chains.

“Oh.” I brush them off me and stand, embarrassed. “Sorry. I saw you here and I assumed…”

“It was a mutual agreement at first,” she says, unapologetic. “You inspired me to look into vampirism and its possible medical benefits, which eventually led me to the Goldamings. I assure you I was unaware of the connection to Dracula. They hid him quite tidily. And I liked my work, for a while. It was very promising. But they changed the terms, and I no longer wish to partner with them. Here, drink this.” She reaches into a white box next to the bed and hands me a bag of blood.

“This is Iris’s.” I know the smell, and now I know the taste, because I already drank it as it pulsed through Dracula’s veins.

“Better you consume it than they turn it into products to lure in new acolytes. Besides, Goldaming blood is special. You’ll need your strength to break us out of here. I’ve tried, but fighting and fleeing are not my skill set.”

All good points. It feels wrong to drink Iris’s stolen blood, but I do understand a little more why she read the transcript of my life story. She was desperate, and she needed me, and I wasn’t there. I’m desperate, and I need Iris, and she’s not here.

The scent of the plastic container lingers in my nose, and it’s awkward to drink from. The blood is lukewarm. And still, it’s euphoric. Iris’s blood, her life, her taste, coating my tongue, rushing down my throat, filling my stomach and surging outward in waves of warmth and power.

She already had my heart, but now she powers it. Now she’s part of me, down to my veins. And the Doctor is right: Iris’s blood is different. I was too enraged to notice before when I drained Dracula. Blood is blood, despite what the Lover said about champagne blood, but this is…

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