Page 74 of Lucy Undying

He’s close I can feel it

I’ve opened the window and will beg him to release me from this torment of poison in my veins

I will hide this journal one last time and then die with Mina’s name on my lips

Mina I love you and I’m sorry I’m so sorry I can’t protect you

63

London, October 8, 2024

Iris

I can barely see through my tears. My breath hitches and my throat burns, in sympathy or because of my sobbing or both.

I was wrong about several things: Lucy isn’t my ancestor. She didn’t live long enough for that. And Mina wasn’t uninterested in Lucy’s fate. Quite the opposite.

But as much as I was wrong about, I was right about a lot. And now I’m certain of two things. The first of which is that Lucy was murdered in an elaborate scheme to take her inheritance—the very inheritance my family built their fortune on.

The second of which is that a vampire showed up and nearly ruined the entire plot.

And I have all the proof.

64

Boston, September 26, 2024

Client Transcript

The world had changed yet again during my time away. Remade not by war, but by new gods of technology. I felt about these things as the Doctor felt about vampirism: unfathomable nonsense not worth studying, best merely ignored.

It was both easier and more difficult to travel now. More options, but everyone wanted documents. Proof of identity and a quantifiable existence. Sometimes it wasn’t enough to dazzle them with a smile and a gentle vampiric nudge. I crept onto ships, slipped onto trains, clung to ceilings and roofs, a tick hitching a ride on the edge of progress.

I didn’t know where Dracula was, but I had a good idea of how to find someone who would.

Romania was beautiful in a way that made me feel less empty. My destination, Transylvania, had looming gray mountains cut by silvery serpentine rivers, dark green forests softened and hazy with clinging clouds. Quaint villages huddled around old fortified churches, nothing around but fields and hills for miles and miles in any direction.

I assumed my destination would be easy to find; it was a castle haunted by vampires, after all. But everywhere I asked—charming Bra?ov tucked into a valley, picturesque Sighi?oara built on a hill, even chaotic and cramped Bucharest at last coming up for air in the aftermath of a dictator—no one knew what I was talking about. I visited Bran, Pele?, Hunedoara, and a dozen crumbling fortress foundations, but none were the right castle. None reeked of Dracula and his history.

How had Jonathan found it? He must have had a guide. But I wasn’t giving up. I ventured to smaller villages, frozen in time. In places where a horse-drawn hay cart was as likely to be taking up the road as a modern car, where nights were still pitch-dark and winters deadly despite all the progress of the world, they remembered. And they refused to talk.

I used their reactions as my map. The more immediate the silence, the sharper the fear, the closer I was.

Eventually I caught that metal clang in my sinuses. The telltale scent of one of Dracula’s vampires. I knew exactly who it was, too. I wandered over hills and through mountain passes, deep into land inhabited only by wild, creeping things, and at last found it.

My heart sank. The castle was in ruins. A repulsive heap of long-ago glory reduced to garbage. Dracula wouldn’t stoop to live there, I was sure of it. But someone else would.

She was waiting for me as I picked my way over the debris. Her hair, once blacker than night, darker than shadow, had a dull quality to it. Her eyes were wide and red. Not the red of blood or frenzy, but the red of rust, of infection, of being slowly eaten away into nothing.

Raven. Ever the bride, loyally awaiting the return of her master.

Her voice was like the fluttering of a dying moth. “Have you seen him? Is he coming?”

All this time, she’d been here for him. And all this time, he’d stayed away. Even if she were to tell me Dracula’s exact whereabouts, I wouldn’t trust her. Not again. But my trip hadn’t been a complete waste. I could still confirm something once and for all.

Slumped in the shadows of the castle was another of Dracula’s vampires. A small, pathetic thing, half starved. Less than a shadow or a memory; a reflection in muddy water.

“You,” I said, pointing to her. “When did you die?” No reaction. I tried again in several different languages. When I asked in Greek, she blinked at me with empty eyes.

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