Page 126 of Lucy Undying

I create this record so my descendants can understand where they come from and to whom they owe their life and legacy. Explaining it over and over is tedious, and I intend to have descendants for the rest of human civilization.

My name is Mina Murray Harker Holmwood, though when Arthur and I married, I adopted the title of Lady Goldaming. Upon moving to America, we chose to keep the Goldaming name. I always liked the shine and weight of it.

I will not bother detailing the circumstances of my youth. I was always fiercely bright and determined to make my own way in the world. I had no advantages through birth, no way to cross the great gulf that separated me from those who had everything through no skill or effort of their own. I found work teaching exactly that type of girl, the spoiled, empty-headed, thoughtless daughters of spoiled, empty-headed, thoughtless wealth. It was around this time I met Arthur. We could never be married—his father had squandered his fortune, and neither of us wished to be poor—but we formed an alliance. Together, we would move upward.

We were well on our way. We both secured engagements with promises of good fortune. An heiress for Arthur, a solicitor with excellent prospects and connections for me. Then disaster struck: My fiancé attracted the attention of a vampire named Dracula.

Normally, this is the part in the story where one would gasp. But as you have been raised a Goldaming, I’m certain you have your suspicions. Allow me to get this out of the way: Vampires are real. Loathsome, grasping, tiresome creatures. I am not a vampire, and neither are you.

After traveling to the continent to retrieve my fiancé, whose encounter with Dracula had left him quite enfeebled, I returned to London. My friends Arthur and Doctor John Seward had encountered Dracula as well, alongside their American cowboy friend Quincey—M? I forget—and an old Dutch doctor, Van Helsing.

As is so often the case, my fiancé had made a mess but I was the one punished for it. No sooner had we settled into our newly inherited home and business than Dracula came to me.

I will not supply the lurid details, but when Dracula bit me, I felt different. There was something special in his bite. I was frightened, but also curious. I’d always had a finer, sharper mind than anyone around me. I wasn’t going to let pain and fear get in the way of opportunity.

Dracula’s goal was to feed on and eventually kill me so I would turn into a vampire under his control. The men’s goal was to find and eradicate him before he could succeed. I had a different idea, though.

I could not speak of it with my fiancé—my husband. I forgot, we had married by then. He was too weak from his experiences to contemplate anything greater than mere survival. The old Dutch doctor and American cowboy couldn’t be trusted either; they were too fixated on killing Dracula. The American, especially, was a devoted hunter and seemed to take Dracula’s activities personally. He vowed never to stop until the vampire was dead.

But Arthur and John listened to me. Dracula had power, which meant we could have it, too. The vampire was yet another example of someone squandering privilege they hadn’t earned. Flitting about Europe buying houses, stalking pretty girls, always looking for the next thing to consume. Never building, never striving, never working toward something greater, because why would he?

Arthur and John agreed that my husband, Van Helsing, and the ghastly American were never going to let Dracula live. Plus, we needed a convincing paper trail should anyone look more closely into Arthur’s inheriting his fiancée’s fortune. We settled on a plan. Pretending to work as a team with the others, we drove the vampire out of London. After pushing Dracula to the brink of panic, we proved to him that we could and would kill him at our leisure. That was important. He needed to understand his life was in our hands.

Arthur was ready to step in when needed, but things lined up perfectly for once. The American stabbed Dracula with a steel knife but was injured in the process. Van Helsing was distracted trying to keep the silly cowboy alive, and Arthur and John kept my husband out of the way.

I crouched beside the coffin where Dracula lay and had a frank conversation with him. I knew he was faking, waiting until he could flee and rebuild his power. Twisting the knife as I spoke, I told Dracula in no uncertain terms that the men I was with and the record we’d left would ensure that he’d never know peace again. He would be hunted to the ends of the earth. No rest, no conquest…unless he let me help him.

I alone could take care of him and make certain he was never in danger. That was the life he deserved, I said. Not luring solicitors across Europe in an effort to find a new home and hunting grounds, not hounded back to the castle he was so desperate to leave.

If he allowed me to see to the details, I would plan his transportation and find him homes and victims, all without consequences or risk. In short, security and ease and luxury in addition to not being summarily beheaded.

It wasn’t difficult to convince him. Despite his trappings of nobility, I’ve always been certain his name and title were stolen. I knew a fake when I saw one. Still, I appealed to his vanity, pretending he deserved my attention and help.

He agreed. He was under my control, as much as any wild thing ever could be.

We went back to London, transporting Dracula under my husband’s very nose. John set Dracula up in a home attached to the sanitarium. It was a tidy situation. Lost souls no one missed served a higher purpose in keeping Dracula fed, and we looked the other way when he dabbled in stalking pretty young women. Thus we kept him satisfied and held in reserve while I worked to secure my legacy.

I had a baby not a year later. It became clear no other babies would be coming. My own body was slowly shifting and changing as Dracula’s infection spread at a creeping pace. No one had ever survived long enough to experience this type of transformation, and I documented it with great detail and interest.

Meanwhile, my first husband died. Jonathan had grown very tiresome. Incessant chatter and complaints about his health and remarks about how the baby looked nothing like him. Everywhere he ate, he’d ask for the recipe and bring it home like a prize. As though I was sitting in the kitchen, longing, hoping for some new task to be dropped in my lap. As though I hadn’t given him everything he had, as though I hadn’t tamed death itself, as though I didn’t regularly visit death to make certain he was still under my control.

Anyhow, Jonathan died. I married Arthur, but London society made it clear they would never accept me. Rumors and petty gossip swirled, and the wrong sort of people began to take interest in the number of unexpected deaths and inheritances we had collected between us. They didn’t think I deserved my place among them.

I was tired of London. I knew I could do very well in America. There, they were not so fixated on who did and did not deserve a fortune; if you had one, you were respected. Arthur and I, along with Doctor Seward, brought Dracula across the ocean to settle in a new home with us.

The child was sickly, which worried me, since I could not have another. I found his very presence draining. Children are much like vampires that way. Doctor Seward was interested in him, though, and found odd properties in his blood. His theory was that since I had conceived after being infected by Dracula, some of the infection passed through me into the child. Not vampire, but not entirely human.

I couldn’t invest too much time or thought in the child, though. I became ill. I was cold all the time. My appetite died. I could sense Dracula nearby, always lurking, waiting to kill me. Despite everything I had done for him. Everything I continued to do for him.

He never got the chance. I died in my sleep, and then I awoke. I was not a vampire, but something new. Exactly who and what I was meant to be. I had always had a superior mind, and now I had a superior body. A superior existence. I was a goddess.

Arthur didn’t even wait until after the funeral to begin spending my carefully earned fortune. He didn’t expect me to come back for it. When I visited him after my death, he died.

Unfortunately, my passing had been common knowledge. I was forced to remain in hiding. With Doctor Seward’s loyal help, I continued investing, growing my wealth and power. And I kept Dracula on an ever-shorter leash. Before, we had controlled him by limiting access to his grave dirt. But something changed when I was reborn: He was afraid of me. Afraid of my divine strength, unassailable and unbreakable. I knew Dracula could not harm me, and because I knew it, he knew it, too.

My son was sickly and unimpressive, but we found him a good enough match. He fathered a single child before dying. In a surprise, he, too, awoke after death. But his weakness in life followed him. He was forever weeping and moaning about the noises and thirst and overwhelming scents. He begged me to end his torment, and as his mother I could not refuse.

That’s important to remember: Just because you are a Goldaming does not mean you deserve your place here.

---