Page 128 of Lucy Undying

It was Mina that night, greeting her old pet Dracula. Not caring that I was cowering and traumatized under the table. It was Mina who decided I was ready to be moved into her room. Mina who crept out of that closet at night to traumatize me. To make certain that her voice, her eyes, her presence were so scarred into my psyche that I’d fall into line, that I’d be powerless to defy or reject her, just like my mother was.

Mina’s been feeding off me my entire life, shaping me in a careful, decades-long campaign of terror and control. Just as she has all her descendants. But looking around, I don’t see anyone else who could be part of our family. Mina, my mother, and me. Mina’s not only been demanding new Goldamings every generation, she’s also been getting rid of them when they no longer suit her.

Unaware of the explosion of revelations happening in my head, Mina’s still talking to Lucy. “Your friends holding Dracula won’t be spared. Except the doctor, because she’s useful. But I think you knew the others would be lost when you sent him with them. You didn’t want him to die. Not really. Because part of you…” She puts one elegant finger beneath Lucy’s chin. “Part of you knew I was still here, didn’t you? Part of you has always known. You never stopped looking for me, and now you’ve found me. Oh! I’ve realized who you are. The scourge of Europe. The slayer of countless vampires. I’ll bet you’re the same little minx who sprang our Boston enclave trap by asking about Dracula. You killed so many of my servants! Lucy, honestly.”

Mina laughs again. Lucy drinks it up, the smallest, most heartbreakingly hopeful smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

Mina smooths Lucy’s hair. “But this is nice, seeing you again. And I was wrong, wasn’t I? You aren’t just a pretty face in a pretty dress obsessed with someone new. You’re a pretty face in a pretty dress, still loyal to me. Still my best, my dearest. And you’d never let anything happen to me.”

Lucy shakes her head. I feel sick to my stomach. What can I do? How can I stop this?

“That settles it, then. You can stay. Loyalty is the one thing we require from all our initiates before I make them anew. And who could be more loyal than you, a vampire whose entire core is made up of her love for me?” She pats Lucy’s head once more, like she might a puppy or a child.

Fuck. Fuck. Dracula didn’t make the Goldaming Life vampires. Mina did. They only smell like him because she smells like him. So much for the Doctor’s belief that no one else would ever dedicate the time and attention and creepy possessiveness required for creating new vampires. I thought I couldn’t hate her more, but Mina is nothing if not ambitious—she’s going to keep finding new ways to outdo herself in the category of “bitches I want dead.”

But then—

Then—

Lucy turns her head. Mina’s right there. Mina, the object of her deepest desire and hope and shame and fear. Mina, the core of her soul. And still, Lucy turns her head, and she finds me. She blinks, and something clears in her eyes. Like a veil beginning to part. She touches her fingers to her wrist, where she’s wearing my backpack strap bracelet.

“Lucy,” Mina commands.

Lucy keeps her eyes on me for a few heartbeats longer. And that’s when I know. Lucy might not even know it yet, but I do. I laugh.

Mina flinches and glares at my mother, like my donkey bray laugh is her fault. “We’re finished here. You can take Iris back to—”

“You’re not her core, you pathetic narcissist.”

Mina raises an eyebrow at me. She puts a hand on Lucy’s shoulder and strokes her neck with a quick flick that makes Lucy shudder. “Oh? I’m not?”

“No. You were never her core. You were just the symbol of it. Everything she wanted, and everything she couldn’t have. Hope and torment in one. Lucy didn’t want you, she wanted the idea of you.”

“Lucy has always wanted me. And now she can be by my side forever.” Mina tugs Lucy’s delicately pointed chin, forcing her to look away from me. “That’s what you want. What you’ve always wanted.”

I roll my eyes. “She wanted the freedom to be herself—truly herself—with someone. That’s what her core was. But she knew even back then that you weren’t the answer. You didn’t love her the way she loved you, and she was ready to leave you.”

Lucy’s eyebrows flicker into a frown.

“You were, Lucy,” I insist, desperate to keep her lucid and connected to me. “You knew Mina would never answer your heart, that she would never be the mirror you wanted. The one that reflected the same wild and open and true love you were brimming with. The night you met Dracula, remember? You were going to free that poor neglected dog. And then you were going to walk away. Choose yourself over all the greedy hands pawing at you, the eyes watching you, the people who said they loved you but only with conditions. Always so many conditions.” I hold out my hand to Lucy. An offering. A question. “Ask me if I love you without conditions,” I whisper.

“Iris,” Lucy says, and she’s so sad, so far away. She tips her head and looks straight up instead of at me. “I wasn’t going to run away that night. I was going to do what my father did and walk off a cliff. That was why I wasn’t afraid of Dracula. Why I went with him. I was ready to die anyway, so I decided to die in Mina’s place.”

“Oh, pet,” Mina coos. “You silly little thing. Mine then, mine now.”

My hand is still out, but Lucy doesn’t step toward me. She’s motionless, her eyes on the ceiling.

How many times can my heart break? I don’t blame Lucy. Not after everything she’s been through. I do blame Mina, though. Mina and my mother and this whole bloody cult. And I can still hurt them. What have I got to lose?

I walk, dejected, toward the door. It’s the single greatest act I’ve ever put on. My steps are heavy, my shoulders stooped, my hands pressed over my heart. Then I pause and turn around.

“Since you’re claiming Lucy,” I say, my tone light and cheery, “I’m going to take what you love most, Mina.”

“Iris,” my mother hisses. There’s a reason we aren’t surrounded by Mina’s other descendants. Each of them eventually failed her, or annoyed her, or ceased to be useful. My mother’s eyes are filled with dread that I’m going to get her permanently killed, one way or another. I wink at her.

Mina barely deigns to glance at me. “I love nothing. That’s the secret to legacy and power. The reason why I’m still here and why all this will always be mine.”

For someone convinced she’s better and smarter than anyone she’s ever met, Mina’s an idiot. “Legacy and power,” I say. “That’s what you believe in. What you believed in so much during your life that you set up Lucy—a nineteen-year-old girl, a girl who loved you, who would have given you anything you asked for! You set her up and then let her die. Then you killed Jonathan’s boss, and then killed Jonathan, and eventually killed Arthur Goldaming and Doctor Seward. Anything to make certain no one had power over you or your bank account.”

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