Page 129 of Lucy Undying

I shake my head, disgusted. “You’ve always been a vampire. You’ve always looked at the world around you and wanted to take everything. You drained innocents dry again and again, then moved on to the next conquest. No wonder Dracula saw a kindred spirit in you. He had no idea what he was getting into, though. I almost feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for everyone in your orbit. For myself. For my stupid mom. And most of all, for Lucy.” I look at her, but she’s still staring at the ceiling. Lost. That’s okay. It’s not her fault, and it doesn’t change my feelings. I love her without conditions.

“Are you finished?” The cold, carefully contained fury in Mina’s voice drops the temperature in the room enough that I should worry about my health, but I’m not worried about anything. Not anymore. Dracula’s going to be freed, again. Mina has Lucy in her grasp, again. Goldaming Life will continue flourishing, draining money and hope and futures from everyone it touches. I’m not strong enough to beat any of them.

But I can still hurt them.

“Almost finished! Power and legacy, right? That’s your core. That’s what gives you strength, but also weakness. Well, guess what? Without me, you’ve got nothing.” My hands, pressed so delicately over my heart, reach into my structured bodice and retrieve my silver dagger. The one my mom thought was such a joke that she left it on my nightstand, where I conveniently fainted so I could stash it between my glorious breasts.

I stab deep into my palm, then drag the blade up the full length of my forearm. Wrist to elbow, opened. “Blood bank’s closing, bitch.”

Then I sit on the floor and laugh, because there’s nothing else to do now.

108

Salt Lake City, January 27, 2025

Dracula

He plays dead. The three disgusting vampire women know he’s not dead, but if they think him weak, they won’t pay enough attention.

Just like he didn’t pay enough attention. Anger courses through him, a live wire of rage burning so brilliantly he can barely see. Which is a problem, because his senses are all that are left to him at this point. No jaw. Barely any movement or control of his limbs. More than he lets on, though.

He’s been rendered powerless, and he will never forgive them. He’ll never forgive anyone, not a single creature in this entire world. He’ll make them all suffer, he’ll make them all pay, for eternity.

Due to his miserable state, he doesn’t notice at first when the vampire women, those three wretched, worthless creatures, go tense and still with waiting.

He does his best to actually listen to them. He hates them even more for forcing him to act as though they’re worth any space at all in his miraculous, unparalleled mind.

“I smell them, too,” one says.

“Oh! Twenty! Maybe thirty!” That one claps her hands in excitement.

“We can’t win. Not without Lucy. We have two options. Kill him now and solve all the problems in one fell swoop, or—”

“We promised Lucy,” the clapping one says. “We promised her.”

“Or we stay and fight. All my time studying death, dissecting it, trying to find ways for humans to delay it. And now it’s arrived for me, at last. I don’t know how to feel about that. I wish Lucy were here to tell me how I ought to feel.”

The third shakes her head. “No. Those are not our only options. This creature, this monster—” She kicks at him. He tries to snap, forgetting yet again he has no lower jaw. “This pathetic parasite is not worth our lives. He never was. We leave him here. Lucy will find him again. As for myself, I cannot waste another moment on him. Not if I have only a handful of moments more or an eternity of them. I have realized at last that he doesn’t matter at all.”

The clapping one laughs. She leans close, breath sweet and soft against his face, eyes like chips of ice sharp enough to cut. “Did you hear that? You aren’t worth anything. You’re not worth dying for. You’re not even worth killing. We don’t care about you.”

He wants to annihilate them. He wants to rip them into pieces. He wants to gather up those pieces and spit on them, grind them beneath his heel, teach them to fear him. Teach them to respect him. Teach them that he is the only thing that matters. The only thing that’s worth anything.

They walk away.

Come back! he screams, but he has no jaw. It’s a garbled, pathetic, meaningless noise. They don’t get to reject him! They don’t get to leave him! It’s worse, somehow, than being captured, than being injured and defanged and broken.

He writhes on the floor, willing the bones and nerves in his neck to stitch themselves together.

New vampires come pouring in. They’re too late. They’re worthless, they’re pathetic, they make him sick. Finding no fight or threat, most of them leave. The handful that remain prop him up against the wall like he’s a child’s plaything left broken and discarded on the floor. They dump blood into his exposed throat, spilling it everywhere. He chokes and sputters as it slides down his gullet.

One of the vampires promises they’re going to get him somewhere safe. Says that Mina wants to talk to him.

His hands can move again, and move they do. He rips out that vampire’s throat. Tears his head off. The others can fight, but not to kill. Never to kill him. He destroys them. Everything is red, but it’s a new red. It’s not the red of lust, or desire, or even rage. It’s the red of despair.

When their bodies are mounded around him, he staggers into the night. No one will ever have power over him again. No one will ever humiliate him again. He’ll remind them all that he matters. Only he matters. His demon wants to talk to him? Very well. He’ll find her, and kill her, and kill you, too. You never deserved his time. You were never worthy of him. No one is.

He will kill everyone and everything, and the carnage will stand as a monument to how much he matters.

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