Page 131 of Lucy Undying

“I’m not sure if I can do it alone,” I say. I died to protect Mina because I loved her. Even seeing what she truly is, there’s part of me that loves her still. That always will. “I’ll need help.”

“What are you talking about?” Mina snaps.

Iris’s lips split into a bloodless smile. “Ask me to help you,” she whispers.

Mina turns her head toward me with a baffled expression. I devoted so much energy and study to that face—its subtleties, its secrets. But I wasn’t looking for the truth. Only for what I hoped to find there and never did.

“You always were a little fool,” Mina says.

“Let’s kiss like we used to, Mina.” I lean close.

Mina laughs in my face. And because she’s laughing in my face, she doesn’t see Iris’s hand close over the knife.

“Shoulda looked right.” Iris stabs straight into Mina’s chest.

Mina screams. It’s a scream of lifetimes dealing death to others while hiding from it herself. A scream of, at last, being truly seen. She scrabbles back on the floor, staring at the silver knife piercing her long-dead heart.

“I did it,” Iris gasps. “Guess I just needed the right inspiration.”

“Mistress?” a vampire calls at the door.

Iris lifts her voice a few notes higher and flattens the tone to a cold command. A perfect imitation of her unconscious mother, who crafted a perfect imitation of Mina. “Close the door,” Iris says. “Wait outside the building.”

The door closes. Iris lies back, giggling. “What a bunch of chumps.”

I walk to Mina. She’s not my Mina anymore. She never was. I straddle her, pinning her to the floor like she pinned Iris.

“Lucy,” she whines, the red light dying in her eyes. They’re brown again. The eyes I painted over and over, desperate to re-create them. I pull the knife free.

She gasps with relief. “I knew you would never, I knew you could never—”

I slip my hand into the hole made by Iris’s silver blade. My fingers find Mina’s heart. The heart I’d hoped so desperately she would give to me. Instead, I follow Mina’s example and take it for myself.

It’s so small, freed from its cage of bone. I wonder why I let it have power over me for so long. I gently insert the silver knife back into it, just in case, but Mina isn’t here anymore. Her corpse is already drying beneath me.

Iris coughs a laugh. I stand and see the reason. Her mother, slumped against the wall, is actually dead now. Dead for real, dead forever.

“Mina made them,” Iris says. “Mina made all of them. Every Goldaming Life vampire is now a Goldaming Death vampire. Including me, probably. No get-out-of-jail-free card when I die, since it was her blood infection that turned us. Oh well.”

I’m next to Iris in a heartbeat. I know, because I can hear her heartbeats. They’re struggling. Too shallow, too slow. She’s lost so much blood.

Iris puts a hand on my cheek, drawing my attention from her arm to her face. “Hey. It’s okay. I promise. I’m happy. God, I’m so happy, and I’m so fucking proud of you. You freed yourself. You’re free. We both are. We did this, Lucy. For ourselves, and for each other. And don’t you dare say that none of it matters if I die. It matters. I promise. We have right now, and I love you right now. And my now is an eternity.”

I open my mouth to say I can’t lose her, but the truth is, I can. I can lose Iris and still love myself. But that doesn’t mean I have to lose her without a fight.

“I have an idea,” I say, running my thumb along her bottom lip. “I don’t know if it will work. And I won’t do it unless you want me to. But if you want to try to stay, I want that, too.” I pause, knowing the full weight of what I’m offering her. Knowing she understands it, too. At least as well as anyone still human can. “Ask me to change you.”

Her eyelids flutter as she struggles to stay conscious, but her smile is still the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. “Lucy,” she whispers, “bite me.” Then she giggles, because even while dying she’s a little shit. I love her so much.

I bite my lips and press them to hers, giving her more of my blood just in case. And then I pierce the cool skin of her neck with infinite tenderness. I take what little remains of her blood, every drop holy, every drop perfect, every drop Iris.

She dies.

I wait, content to sit here forever with my love in my arms.

110

Salt Lake City, January 28, 2025

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