Page 130 of Lucy Undying

109

Salt Lake City, January 27, 2025

Lucy

I go away for a while.

There’s a maelstrom inside me. Mina is here, Mina is alive, Mina has always been alive. Which means that Iris was right: Mina never loved me. If she had, she would have looked for me. She would have known I was still out there. She would never have stopped looking, like I never stopped looking. But Iris is right about that, too. Just like Vanessa was. I wasn’t looking for Mina or even for Dracula. I was looking for myself. For a way to feel all that love, burning bright and eternally hopeful inside me.

Mina and Iris are talking. I keep my head up, staring. The chandelier sparkles like starlight. Between those dots of light, I can’t see myself. I can see Iris.

I watch her, alone in that mirrored reflection. Angry and sad and defiant. If hope is the thing with feathers, Iris’s hope is a talon. Her hope is a weapon. But no, that’s not right. Her hope is a fortress, keeping her safe all these years. Her hope is a home. My home.

Iris isn’t the answer, because I know another person never can be. But Iris is the reflection I need. The mirror to show me the answer. That’s how I do it. That’s how I free myself. That’s how I keep moving and living:

Love.

Love for myself, and love for the person who showed me how to love myself through how fiercely she loves me.

I’m caught in a flood of freedom. At last, I’m releasing the dreams that trapped me as a girl. The ones that told me if I waited just a little longer, if I performed just a little better, if I pretended just a little more, I could be loved by the people who never saw me. Who never wantedto.

They don’t matter anymore. They have no power over me. I’m in complete control of myself and my fate and my heart, for the first time in my endless life.

But—

There’s blood. Blood more precious than any other blood in the world. I turn in a daze. What happened while my entire inner landscape shifted so seismically?

Iris is on the floor, laughing. Her face is pale. Too pale, ghastly and ghostly. “No more Goldamings!” she trills in a singsong voice.

A vampire lunges toward her, unable to resist the siren song of that blood. Mina jumps onto his back, grabbing his head and tugging. Her attempt at decapitation leaves something to be desired; I could give her pointers, but Mina never liked it when I corrected her.

“No one touches her!” she screams. “Get out, all of you! Now!”

Her other vampire minions scuttle uncertainly from the room. They leave the door cracked open, waiting and ready to answer Mina’s call.

Iris keeps going in her teasing tone. She’s lying on the floor, knife abandoned beside her, blood spurting out of her arm as though it can’t wait to be free, either. “No more blood to sell! No more brand-new resting places across the country where you can recharge at your leisure! No more lurking in my life or my closet, you goddamn creepy grasping vicious boring coward!”

“Fix her!” Mina screams as she at last finishes tugging off the head of the vampire who couldn’t resist Iris’s blood. Iris’s mother scrambles to her daughter’s side. She tries to pinch the skin closed, as though that will help. I’m frozen. What do I do?

“I’ll fix her!” Iris’s mother says, her tone wheedling. “I’m so sorry! I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it, don’t—”

Iris slaps her mother’s hands away, rolling out of her grasp. “She’s gonna kill you for this,” she taunts. “How does it feel, Mom? How does it feel having a cold, ruthless, utterly uncaring monster in charge of your safety and well-being? I gotta say, I’m having a schadenfreude field day!”

“Get back!” Mina throws Iris’s mother across the room. The vampire stays where she falls, either too broken or too afraid to so much as move.

Mina and Iris, Iris and Mina. My head is swirling, my body numb. Am I here? Have I become moonlight? Did I dream this?

Mina kneels over Iris, pinning her in place. She tears a strip from Iris’s skirt and ties it tightly around Iris’s upper arm. Then she rips off another strip and begins wrapping the wound. Always efficient and practical. As she works at the business of keeping Iris’s blood contained, Mina speaks.

“I’m going to lock you up,” she says. “Keep you drugged enough that you can’t move, but make sure you’re aware of what’s happening to you, every minute of every day. I’ll harvest you for parts—first, I’ll take every last egg to make an army of Goldamings. I’ll drain your blood as fast as you can make it, and when you beg me for death, I’ll smile and tell you the same thing every day.” Mina leans close to Iris’s ear, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Not yet. I’m not going to let you die, Iris. You don’t get to choose that. I do. I’m life. I’m death. And you’re mine.”

With Mina’s eyes glowing red, her teeth brushing Iris’s neck, her fingers grasping Iris’s body while clutching at her soul, I realize what Iris already figured out:

Mina is Dracula. She always was. They’re soulmates, a matching pair. I could never see it before, but Iris showed me. I drift across the ballroom floor and kneel beside Mina.

I look at Mina, but I say, “My little cabbage.”

Iris’s skin is pallid, her lips almost white. But she smiles and her fear fades. Because she knows. She knows I’m back.

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